We've been getting rain for the first time in months, and I wanted to celebrate with some underwater films. Tonight I watched Deepstar Six (1989).
1989 saw the release of about a billion underwater thrillers. The Abyss, Leviathan, and even The Little Mermaid came out that year. Deepstar Six falls into the sub-category of underwater films that were also Alien rip-offs, which is not a small number, but I feel it handles the premise fairly well. For what it's worth, this one was a TriStar picture, and that Pegasus (especially the classic version) has rarely steered me wrong.
The plot follows a team of Navy technicians working on a deep-sea underwater platform to install missiles on the seabed. The project is apparently headed by a private citizen, Van Gelder (Marius Weyers), and he is pressed for time for some reason. This urgency leads him to rush the job and call for his team to detonate explosives over an undersea cavern. The entirely predictable consequences of that act play out over the rest of the runtime.
I was happy to see Miguel Ferrer again, and he had a sizeable role in this film as Snyder, which I enjoyed immensely. The cookie-cutter 80s action badass lead is McBride, played by Greg Evigan (Looking this guy up led me down a rabbit-hole ending in TekWar, a sci-fi series by William Fucking Shatner). There are three women among the crew, which was a refreshing gender balance for this kind of movie. Collins (Nancy Everhard) is McBride's love interest, and I'm not sure what her actual navy job is. Scarpelli (Nia Peeples) is some kind of scientist, and she is the first to raise concerns about the cavern and its possible inhabitants. Dr. Norris (Cindy Picket) is the base's medical officer, and one of the most level headed and competent members of the crew. Captain Phil Laidlaw (Taurean Blacque) does a serviceable Carl Weathers impression, aided by a glorious mustache. A young Elya Baskin also appears in this as a geo-scientist of some kind. Thom Bray and Ron Carroll play submarine pilots and the first hapless victims of this film's creature.
The last member of the crew is Richardson, played by Matt McCoy. I had an instant dislike of Richardson, and I couldn't put my finger on why (other than the fact that he's a smarmy, leering creep in this movie), so I googled him and realized that he's the bad guy from that episode of Star Trek where Troi and Crusher do jazzercise in the hallway.
The miniatures and practical effects, as well as the designs of the mini-sub interiors were all excellent. This film had a budget of only 8 million dollars, and they spent their money well. It's not the best looking movie that came out that year, but it's far from the worst. The creature design is great, and Sean Cunningham does a good job of teasing it out over the course of the film. The first time we see the creature, it has already claimed several lives, and it erupts from a hatch like an aquatic Graboid. That first look is impressive, but the monster has a few more tricks up its sleeve that keep the tension up even once it has been partially revealed. There are some very nice gore effects, including a chest explosion from a shark dart.
The crew have a chemistry that works, despite being so clearly cribbed from Alien, down to the breakfast table they all talk shit at. Both the Navy folks and civilians, with the exception of Van Gelder, exude an easy blue collar competence that I appreciate in this kind of movie. Snyder is visibly at the end of his rope from the first moment, but the other crew members manage him to varying degrees of success, with the familiarity of people who have been living and working together, in tight quarters, for months. The dialogue is cheesy, and most of the jokes are lame, but there are moments of real humanity between the crew, and especially between each of the crew members and Snyder, as his mental state deteriorates.
The sequences that were actually shot underwater were well done as well. The movie takes the time to establish that McBride can hold his breath for long periods without needing to spell it out, or like lampshade it with a swimming trophy in his bunk, which I appreciated. In general all of the action and stunts were quite grounded, and the only places where the budget really showed through were in the exterior miniature shots of the mini-sub rescue scene, because the miniature kept moving around in ways I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to.
In the latter half of the movie things conform pretty closely to the formula for 80s thrillers, with each character revealing some heartwarming personal detail shortly before they are killed off, and a final couple forming as the survivors are picked off. Greg Evigan does a serviceable job as McBride, but neither he nor Nancy Everhard's Collins have much in the way of charisma, and once they are the last of the crew left alive, it's kind of a relief that the movie is nearing it's explosive conclusion (that would be recreated almost exactly in Deep Blue Sea years later). That's not to say that I didn't enjoy this one, I very much did, but the core couple are not the strongest part of the film.
One last thing that I thought was funny is how casually it is revealed that the missiles they are installing are nukes. I guess it would have been obvious in 1989, but the cold war was in its last sputtering months when I was born (at least according to the history books I read in school, I imagine the books written in the future will have something different to say about this period) a few years later, and that subtext completely flew over my head until it was spelled out. The base is also powered by a nuclear reactor, which provides a nice ticking clock for the climax, as it approaches meltdown.
Overall, this is a fun mashup of genres that failed to really stand out from the crowd upon release, but I think it's one of the better attempts to cash in on the trend of the year while still making something watchable. I give this one a 3.5/5 stars, mostly for the miniature and prop work, and Miguel Ferrer's performance as Snyder.
Now, the most important question, has anyone here watched TekWar? I am so tempted to binge watch the series, but I can easily see it being the kind of thing that's not even 'so bad it's good'. I love Bill Shatner, but the man has made some real turds in his time.