Eric Kiviat is the main antagonist of the 1985 adventure film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.
He was portrayed by the late Patrick McGoohan, who also played Roger Devereau in Silver Streak, King Edward I of England in Braveheart and Lyle C. Rumford, Nelson Brenner, Oscar Finch and Eric Prince in Columbo.
Biography[]
Dr. Kiviat is the head of a group of paleontologists in search of the mythical Mokele-mbembe cryptid, rumored to be a surviving member of Sauropod dinosaurs. At the beginning of the film, Kiviat kills rival scientist Dr. Etienne to obtain photos of the cryptid. In Central Africa, one of Kiviat's students, Dr. Susan Loomis, shows Kiviat a pelvic bone of a large animal and a possible trace for the Mokele-mbembe, but he dismisses it as a bone from a giraffe. After she leaves, Kiviat tells his assistant Nigel Jenkins the bone Susan found was legitimate and informs him of his plan to claim the discovery for himself. Kiviat decides to head up the river to another village for more clues and invites Susan along, much to the dismay of her husband George who decides to come with her. After being separated from the others when natives catch them, George and Susan eventually find Mokele-mbembe, a family of Brontosaurus and befriend them, particularly the hatchling who Susan names Baby.
Secretly behind the couple, Kiviat, Jenkins, and a squadron of hired bodyguards ambush the mother Brontosaurus while drinking from the river and tranquilize her. The father attacks them to save his mate only to be gunned down by the bodyguards, angering Kiviat as he couldn't profit off a dead animal. George arrives and questions why Kiviat would do such a thing and is silenced. Before the bodyguards could execute him, they are attacked by African natives and forced to retreat. George and Susan track down the campsite where the mother was taken to, but are quickly caught. Wanting the dinosaurs for himself, Kiviat kills Colonel Nsogbu and frames it on George and Susan, forcing them to track Baby or else he will have the soldiers kill them.
Under Kiviat's orders, George and Susan use the tracking system they tied to Baby's leg to trace him. In a helicopter, snipers prepare to fire tranquilizers at Baby but George and Susan fight back and escape. They take Baby and hide in a cave with Kiviat and his remaining minions in pursuit. They manage to escape by jumping down a waterfall. Baby blindly charges into the villains' camp to rescue his mother and was effortlessly imprisoned in a cage. With the assistance of the natives causing a divergence, George and Susan infiltrate the camp and release the mother, causing her to go on a rampage in search for Baby, resulting in the deaths of Kiviat's remaining men and Jenkins. Kiviat attempts to escape with Baby's cage by driving away in his truck. But with the mother quickly chasing after him, Kiviat doesn't make it far enough before crashing his truck and gets caught in the mother's mouth, who proceeds to maul him to death.