Director: Sean S Cunningham
Writer: Lewis Abernathy, Geof Miller (Screenplay)
Starring: Taurean Blacque, Nancy Everhard, Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer, Nia Peeples, Matt McCoy, Cindy Pickett
Plot: At the bottom of the ocean, the DeepStar Six has just discovered a new and deadly alien menace.
Tagline – Six miles below the surface of the ocean, something beyond your imagination will scare the hell out of you.
Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Standard TV Level Sci-Fi
Story: DeepStar Six starts as an underwater contracting team in the ship with the title in its name are digging for missile silos, with the contract running out, they are being forced into blowing a hole in unstable surface at the bottom of the ocean, Captain Laidlaw (Blacque) agrees to the job, with Joyce Collins (Everhard) running the operation.
When the explosion seems to release something unknown, one of the subs goes missing, while another one comes under attack, it turns into a rescue mission for the crew as they need to survive an attack from a deadly enemy from the deep.
Thoughts on DeepStar Six
Characters – Laidlaw is the captain of the crew, he keeps the deadlines running, while wanting to put his team first, he will lead the investigation into what is happening and isn’t going to let them get injured for their actions. Joyce Collins leads the scientific side of the job, she is here to question decisions for safety, even if she doesn’t always getting given the same respect back from the rest of the crew. McBride is the confident member of the team, he believes he can have any woman too which shows him needing to make the difficult life decision during the rescue mission. Snyder is the member of the team that doesn’t want to still be on the team, he believes he has done his time and when things start going wrong he hits the panic button.
Performances – The performances in the film are basic at best, each actor does see them get their moment to shine with most of them usually performing before their big death scene, Miguel Ferrer is the exception to this rule, with his performance that is the highlight of the acting.
Story – The story here follows a group of underwater engineers building missile silos for the military that accidently release an unknown life form that isn’t happy about being disturbed and wants to kill them, which sees them racing to find a way to the surface without injuring themselves through decompression. This story does feel like a low budget version of ‘The Abyss’ which is easy to see with just how the everything unfolds, the characters having the same kind of arc, with this having a horror side, rather than a mystery side with the unknown lifeform. This does fit into the 80s styles of story telling and production which is all simple and enjoyable to watch.
Action/Horror/Sci-Fi – The action is mostly the group screaming when they get attacked by the creature, it isn’t very intense which does disappoint for the most part, this goes for the horror too, which just never gets past the weak creature style, even if the sci-fi side of the film does want to become much more of a central point of the film.
Settings – With most of this film being set underwater, it does give the film a contained environment for the film when it comes to the race to survive.
Special Effects – We do go into practical effects here which should be praised, even if it is mainly just a creature wobbling around all over the screen.
Scene of the Movie – Decompression mistake.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The characters aren’t very interesting.
Final Thoughts – This is one of the attempts to copy a much more popular film, by putting characters in the similar environment only with a horror twist to everything.
Overall: Simple Sci-Fi
