The Relic

The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American lizard-like monster which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The movie was shot in Chicago at the highly-regarded Field Museum of Natural History. Production was originally intended to be held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. However, a deal could not be reached and, after taking interest in the film's premise, the Field Museum offered to let the studio shoot there instead. The film was the second on-screen collaboration between Hunt, Miller, and supporting actor Chi Muoi Lo, all three of whom also worked on the film Kindergarten Cop. The film was released in the United States on January 10, 1997, by Paramount Pictures. It grossed over $48 million worldwide. It was the last film appearance of actress Audra Lindley. Plot John Whitney, an anthropologist for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, studies a tribe in South America and drinks a soup made by the tribesmen. Shortly after, Whitney accosts a merchant ship captain, asking him to remove the cargo he had intended to send to Chicago off the ship. Unwilling to delay the ship's departure, the captain refuses and Whitney sneaks aboard. Unable to find his cargo, he cries out. Six weeks later, the ship arrives on Lake Michigan with its crew missing. Chicago PD homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta and his partner, Sergeant Hollingsworth, investigate the ship and find dozens of bodies and severed heads in the bilge.