Halloween Horror; DeepStar Six (1989)

Well once again we return to 1989 for another horrifying movie from beneath the water. What is it with 1989 and ocean movies? Seriously this is like the year of ocean movies: Leviathan, DeepStar Six, The Abyss, Lords of the Deep. The Evil Below and The Rift (which actually came in early in 1990 but I’ll toss it in with the 1989 ocean films ). I guess I could have done a whole month on this, but sadly I choose Leviathan and DeepStar Six (base on the fact I have a vague memory of them being in the theaters along with The Abyss).

Anyway……lets us once again sink slowly to the ocean floor to witness DeepStar Six a film with not one but two descriptive taglines.

“Not all aliens come from space.”

“Save your last breath…..to scream.”

PLOT

(quick aside…I will only be speaking in generic terms for the characters in this film so expect a lot of this guy, crew member, girl crew member, doofus guy, etc. you’ll understand why by the end of the review. Thank You)

Welcome to the ocean floor. Here we have a group of engineers living in a underwater habitat, DeepStar Six, for the last six months. This time these people are working for the U.S. Navy and their job is to install nuclear missiles on the ocean floor. Now this is never explained why this is happening, but I should have known better than to ask myself why this needed to be done.

Alright so the crew sets out to find a suitable location to drop a palate of missiles. They choose to send their little two man sub out to find a spot….which is on top of a lava formed cavern millions of years ago. Why not there?  I mean a nice flat spot near the base could work too….but whatever. So yeah they are going to blow up the top of the lava cave and place the missiles on the pile of debris left by it. Wait? What? That… I mean why? Why not just….you know…flat ground….urgh!!!! Whatever.

While exploring said lava cave the little submarine is attacked by something big they only see on the sonar and destroyed. Then said big sonar blip swims over and attacks the DeepStar Six station and destroys the submarine workshop. This leaves the crew in an immediate lurch as they have no little submarines to drive to safety. Well whatever

will the crew do now?

Well they basically forget about the attack, the two dead guys are almost immediately forgotten and they go about trying to still drop this bucket of nukes on the ocean floor. Wait! Weren’t you all just attacked by some big undersea creature? Nobody wants to discuss to deal with that? Nobody? Just want to go back to work on the missile job then? Well ok! They go about this job and of course a doofus crew member accidently sets the self-destruct sequence on them. Whoops! Well of course there is no way to stop this and the missile explode! Now the station is hit by shockwaves from the blast and we have all the required pipes bursting, flooding hallways and shaking one would expect. Now the base is even more wrecked and it looks bleak for the remaining crew. They decide to evacuate the base in the giant escape pods that are still functional. Wait! Why  was the loss of submarines so bad if they have these escape pods

WAIT!!!!! Where is the damn monster that attacked the sub and base before! 2/3 of the movie is over and the creature is still not a major player.

Well let’s get to that!

While doing a few minor repairs outside the base a dude is attacked by said unknown beastie. He is “rescued” but only bits of him and while doing so the underwater monster breaks into the flooded base. I think there is only about 30+ minutes left and we finally get to the horror part of this movie. The unknown sea creature now begins to terrorize the crew inside their base.Now the remaining crew must race to get to the surface, survive monster attacks and try not to die due to just being really dumb.

Lets explain how a shotgun works. First don't point it at friends."
"Ok. I got it."

"OH NO I DON'T GOT IT! I DID SOMETHING BAD!"

Yeah, with little actual movie time left we have doofus who set the missiles off, jump in an escape pod and blast off to the surface. Well he didn’t decompress properly and we all get to see the Hollywood version of rapid decompression. We have the captain of the base get smooshed in half by a door. Then we actually get the monster arriving via biting the unfortunate fellow who went outside to fix stuff in half and bursting out of a tube. Then we get some friendly fire death via CO2 cartridge stabby pole weapon. The doctor of the place goes all electrocution suicide to try and kill the beast. Then our last girl crew member, who isn’t the lead, just dies with the old pulled under by something bit.

The monster, when it is finally shown, is like the size of an elephant (well maybe an elephant as we never see the whole beast, just the head and upper torso but it is still really big) and looks like a wyrd crab! It just sort of postures and roars when it is shown on screen. Yeah an undersea crab monster roars! What the frak is that about. While it is shown it’s movements are ponderous, but it then moves stupid fat while in the water. What is that about. Speaking of moving around this beasty can easily travel through hallways, airlocks and tubes. How? This thing is stupid big, yet it squeezes through spaces 1/3 its size? Even better while in waist deep water the crew can’t seem to see this killer crab. How is that? The creature is as much a disappointment as the crew and plot.

Anyhoo….eventually the lead man and woman escape to the surface and safety. Well……until the crab monster arrives for a last ditch attack. This leads to another Jaws final scenario that we should all see coming. You know like every other giant creature monster attack movie finale.

CAST

Taurean Blacque….ummm…never heard of him

Nancy Everhard….who??

Greg Evigan……wasn’t this dude on a sitcom….yeah the “My Two Dads” horrible concept show.

Miguel Ferrer!! I know him as Bob Morton! The guy who helped create Robcop!

Nia Peeples….no idea.

Matt McCoy…I know I saw this guy on Seinfeld, but that was it

Cindy Pickett….wasn’t she the mom in that Paully Shore movie about the farm…Son in Law. Yeah that’s it, and now I feel ashamed of remembering that.

Marius Weyers…yeah no idea on this guy either.

So……..a cast of veritable nobody actors. I mean maybe they were big t.v. people at or before 1989 and were hoping this would be their big break. Sadly, it was not

WHY GOOD?

It is not!

WHY BAD?

It is just such a dumb movie.

The plot….Navy undersea missile base run by the most incompetent crew ever is attacked by sea monster that is never really an issue until the last 30 minutes of the movie.

The acting is awful. They are the most inept scientists/military crew ever!

The monster is awful looking and somehow defies spatial awareness and simple physics.

The best bit of gore is totally spoiled for you on the poster/cover.

RECOMMEND?

Just no. Never watch this.

There is nothing scary in this film. If there is a anything horrific here, it is the cast and plot of the film. I love a good bad movie, but this was just sooooooooo bad. Like unwatchable garbage bad!

Ugh! Just such a dumb movie. I’m actually mad that I sat all the way through this turd of a film.

This movie is Sci-fi/Syfy original movie bad. I question how it got made and widely released.

Well……I guess if you like seeing nipples through shirts then this is the movie for you.

Seriously?! Do none of these women own bras? Perky nipples get more screen time than the damn sea monster!

Well this takes me to the fourth undersea creature horror feature for the month. I’m jumping ahead to 1998. Let us travel the depths to discover the horror (if there is any there) the come s from the film Deep Rising.