Deepstar Six (1989)

I haven’t spent a lot of time on the great monster movies that came out in the eighties and I thought it was about time to change that. Though instead of starting off with one of the really good ones the Greg Evigan vehicle Deepstar Six went to the top of the list. Mostly because I saw it on my Amazon Prime watchlist and I hadn’t watched it in years. I had totally forgotten that Sean S. Cunningham of Friday the 13^th fame directed this!

A team made up of Navy personnel and civilians are working to install an underwater missile platform. They are behind schedule which makes some of them annoyed and others in a hurry. A decision is made to blast a cavern underneath the site without exploring it first. Of course, being a creature feature that doesn’t end well as they unleash something horrible. It first attacks the subs, but is soon drawn to Deepstar Six, the station where they all live. The creature gets loose and a lot of crew die in the process of trying to escape to the surface. Basically, your typical monster movie.

There isn’t much to say about most of Deepstar Six. You have the normal hero and love interest dynamic between Evigan’s character and Nancy Everhard’s. Though they do try and throw a curve ball with a pregnancy. There is the smartass and ultimate screw up played by the late great Miguel Ferrer. This is one of the highlights of the movie. Ferrer’s character, Snyder, is part idiot and part coward. Seriously he is a menace. From accidentally setting off a nuclear bomb that wrecks the station, to shooting one of the survivors with a shark gun that explodes his chest, to stealing the only escape pod in a fit of panic the guy causes more deaths than the monster. Well it might not quite be that bad, but it is close.

The rest of the story follows a familiar pattern of people unleash something terrible by their own stupidity or arrogance. Here it is partly both. Then our cast is picked off one at a time by the creature, which is kept mostly out of sight until things get really rolling. This build up is fun because you don’t have any idea what it is until you get it on screen. Heck even after we see it, I still wasn’t sure what the damn thing was supposed to be which gives the movie a weirdly cool vibe. The monster is alien but not in the from outer space sort of way but in the what the hell is it way.

The above isn’t meant to imply the creature design was bad. It’s effective and looks like an animal that is strange enough to be from the bottom of the sea, while still realistic enough to possibly exist. The kills are pretty tame and involve a mini sub getting crushed off screen, a diver in an underwater suit getting split in half, and a nasty bit with a door crushing someone. But the two best kills are when the shark gun explodes a character’s chest and when Snyder takes the escape pod without decompressing. The second involves veins throbbing and blood flowing in a bit of practical special effects work that I really dug.

Deepstar Six isn’t a great movie. That said I think it is a decent entry into that second tier of monster movies that the Aliens and Jaws series inspired. If you have some time and a hankering to check out Greg Evigan in his best non-truck driving role then this is the movie for you. Consider it recommended.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer

Leviathan (1989)

If watching eighties creature features has taught me anything it is that you shouldn’t ever mine under the ocean. It never ends well and there is always a body count. With Leviathan we have a mining team nearing the end of their three-month shift under the ocean. Oh, short timers… the dreaded double whammy of horror movies. While trying to meet quotas one of them disappears over the edge of a pit and when they go looking for him, they find the wreck of a Russian ship named the Leviathan.

Six Pack, the diver that fell, shows up with a safe proclaiming himself to be rich. Well you know what happens. They bring the safe back to the base and crack it open. This unleashes a virus that changes DNA and mutates the human body into something monstrous. The remainder of the movie is the crew attempting to escape while the company tries to keep them below. Why? Not so much to save the human race as it is the bad publicity involved in accidentally destroying the world.

I like this movie a lot and always have. The cast is filled with familiar faces like Peter Weller, Daniel Stern, Hector Elizondo, Amanda Pays, Ernie Hudson, and Richard Crenna. If you ever watched movies in the eighties these are people you have seen before. They are all great in their roles and are a heck of a lot of fun, but I was especially pleased with Ernie Hudson and his character. He gets all the best lines and steals every scene he is in. This is one of those monster movies that has a wisecracking comic relief character. I also enjoyed Daniel Stern who is at his scuzzy best and would give the company’s HR department fits with his antics and comments.

The script, while familiar, is executed in an entertaining manner keeping the action flowing. We get situations that were clearly inspired by and in some cases lifted right from other movies. There are the characters sneaking around the tight corridors with improvised weapons including a flame thrower and another that almost has a creature burst from his chest (I think even they drew the line there…) that should remind everyone of a well-known movie set in space. The creature absorbs its victims and their knowledge rather than just kill them. We know this because we see the faces of those killed in the twisted form of the monster as it changes into different configurations. Now that reminds me of a certain other movie set in an arctic climate. Hell there is even a little bit of Die Hard in the very end!

While not as good as the movies it is “referencing” Leviathan does manage to pull off the special effects work really well. The various forms of the monster all look great and are disturbing. We get giant monsters as well as smaller wormlike ones that burrow into the victims. Hell, it even starts off as a rash before it gets rolling so there is some variety here. I think that the most disturbing part of all is that the monster is people. Infected and mutated but still just made up of people. The effects help support that with some vaguely terrifying shapes that are sort of human looking in many of the creature designs.

Good cast, funny dialogue, and well executed special effects work makes Leviathan a fun if not terribly original monster movie. I go back every few years and watch it and I’m never disappointed. I recommend you check it out.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer