Deepstar Six (1989)

t the close of a six-month stint at the U.S. Navy’s Deepstar Six underwater facility, Joyce Collins (Nancy Everhard) and “Mac” McBride (Greg Evigan) can’t wait to depart for the surface, with about a week left of their shift. The rest of the crew go through routine final arrangements with the platform and reconnaissance vehicles. In a separate submersible, Snyder (Miguel Ferrer) joins the team, doing his best to complain about everything from duties to breakfast foods. Just as Dr. Van Gelder (Marius Weyers), head of the operation, finalizes the location for a missile base (per the military’s orders), Collins discovers a strange series of caverns underneath the excavation site.

Geologist Scarpelli (Nia Peeples) wants to take a better look at the massive hollows, as this specific area hasn’t been investigated by scientists since 1963 (when a team unexpectedly vanished), but Van Gelder doesn’t want to waste any time on research – and Captain Laidlaw (Taurean Blacque) just wants to finish the mission. When Hodges (Thom Bray) and Osborne (Ronn Carroll) lose the connection to the remote connected to their SeaCat drilling vehicle, assigned to plant charges and collapse the caves, they dive deeper into the abyss to retrieve it – only to be attacked by some massive creature. The unidentified life form proceeds to ram the SeaTrack command rig, housing Collins and Burciaga (Elya Baskin), cutting off all communications and leaving the craft dangling dangerously on a ledge. Leaving Richardson (Matt McCoy), Snyder, and medic Norris (Cindy Pickett) behind, the captain and McBride exit the Deepstar Six station in a small transport to find out what happened. The situation worsens when Snyder carelessly disposes of the 20 megaton warheads via detonation instead of deactivation, causing extreme damage to the main complex, mechanical failures at the decompression bay, and the likelihood of the entire structure going supercritical in a few hours – on top of further infuriating the mutant behemoth.

The first problem with the film is the amount of time it takes before the monster appears. Although there is a bit of suspense and destruction when the SeaTrack is struck, more than an hour passes before suitable glimpses of the beast are revealed. Using practical effects rather than computer graphics proves to be potent, particularly when the moments of gore show up, and when crewmembers root around in the flooded areas of the cold, metal environment, but even these scenes are too brief to satiate fans of the genre. “We’re going to have to go back down there.” Fortunately, a few bits are just clever enough to momentarily make up for the lack of creature violence (including an accidental harpooning and a grisly, explosive decompression).

The acting is competent (especially from Ferrer, who excels at playing sniveling, temperamental screw-ups), with panicky reactions more than adequate, but the script attempts to involve too much character development for a batch of roles utilized for little more than sequential fodder. Two separate love stories keep popping up to intrude on the action, while annoying martyrdom inspires multiple sacrifices. But despite its flaws, the giant arthropod antagonist is cinematic and enjoyable, and the production values are respectable, helping the film to be above-average for this kind of creature-feature B-movie.

Of the no less than six underwater horror movies released in 1989 alone (including “Leviathan,” “The Evil Below,” “Lords of the Deep,” and “The Rift”), “Deepstar Six” is perhaps the most reminiscent of “Aliens” (aside from, of course, “The Abyss,” which was directed by James Cameron). Disgruntled employees, routine bickering, the use of last names for identification, ships fitted with motion-tracking capabilities that employ a loud beep, claustrophobic locations, undependable vehicles, imminent self-destruction, isolated people awaiting inevitable ambush, and limited weaponry are just a few of the similarities. Still, it’s practically incomparable in regards to the influence, thrills, and nail-biting adventure of Cameron’s 1986 monster movie classic.

– Mike Massie