DeepStar Six (1989)

At the tail end of the 80s suddenly everybody was making “terror beneath the sea” science fiction horror movies. Sean S. Cunningham’s 1989 DeepStar Six falls into that category. And it has a slight Alien vibe. 

Cunningham is of course best known as the director of the original Friday the 13th.

None of these movies did particularly well. Even James Cameron’s The Abyss lost a stack of money (due to its $70 million budget). DeepStar Six was made on a much more modest budget of $8 million and lost money.

So what went wrong with DeepStar Six? In my view nothing really went particularly wrong. This is a perfectly decent if not dazzlingy original sci-fi horror B-movie.

The setup is solid enough. The US Navy is building a missile base on the ocean floor. The crew of the undersea habitat DeepStar Six is responsible for the construction and to give the project some respectability and make it appear less sinister there’s a marine biologist with the team (you can’t have an underwater adventure without a marine biologist). The Navy can now claim that this is a scientific research project.

Of course things go wrong. One of the things this movie gets criticised for is that we have a long wait to see the monster. Personally I think that’s one of the movie’s strengths. The monster you don’t see is always scarier than the monster you do see. Until very late in the proceedings the members of the team have absolutely no idea what they’re up against. Is it something natural or man-made? They’re not even sure that it is a creature. If it is then what motivates its actions - is it hunger or a lust for killing or fear?

So the emphasis is on the effects on the crew of an unseen and inexplicable menace. Not knowing the nature of the threat means that they have no clue how to counter it. And they don’t know how much real danger they’re in. The fear builds slowly, which makes it all the more effective.

The pacing is pleasingly brisk. There’s a reasonable amount of action, there’s decent suspense and there is a sense of menace.

The special effects are old school (these were the pre-CGI days) and they look good. The miniatures are excellent. The interiors look good - DeepStar Six looks like a place where people live and work and it looks suitably claustrophobic. Obviously an undersea habitat is not going to be spacious.

The monster is not one of the great movie monsters but it’s OK.

The movie never looks cheap. It looks like some real effort was put into it.

I suspect that the big reason for its box-office failure was the lack of star power. The cast members are all perfectly competent but they’re basically solid character actors. Miguel Ferrer is particularly good.

A second reason might have been the lack of a human villain. There is one character who lets the side down but that’s the result of cracking under extreme psychological pressure rather than evil machinations. I like the fact that these are all people just doing their best but audiences love larger-than-life super-villains.

It might also have benefitted commercially from a bit more sexiness.

This movie isn’t perfect but it’s thoroughly enjoyable. It was treated harshly by critics at the time and still gets unfairly dismissed by online reviewers. It’s a B-movie and it isn’t trying to be profound. You just need to approach it with an open mind. And any movie with submarines and undersea action is inherently cool.

DeepStar Six is highly recommended as a beer and popcorn movie.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray looks lovely and they’ve included three (!!) audio commentaries.

On the subject of underwater sci-fi I've also reviewed Leviathan (1989).

The Island of the Fishmen (1979)

The Island of the Fishmen AKA Island of Mutations (original Italian title L'isola degli uomini pesce) is a 1979 horror film directed by Sergio Martino. It was released in the US by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in a heavily edited form (including a great deal of newly shot footage replacing existing footage) under the title Screamers.

It is 1891 and a French prison ship has sunk, presumably somewhere in the Caribbean. There are a dozen or so survivors but their troubles have just begun. Something drags their lifeboat towards an island. They assume it’s a current but we have seen enough to know that there’s something sinister in the sea.

Half a dozen men make it to the beach but before long only three remain alive, the ship’s medical officer Lieutenant Claude de Ross (Claudio Cassinelli) and two prisoners.

One of the prisoners is convinced that this is a voodoo island. He’s at least partially correct.

They think their troubles are over when a beautiful young woman rides up on horseback but she informs them that the island belongs to Mr Rackham and that he does not like trespassers and they would be well advised to leave. They will later discover that the woman is Amanda Marvin (Barbara Bach).

They make their way to the house of Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson) and he seems inclined to be hospitable.

There’s tension in the house between Amanda and Mr Rackham. He clearly has romantic designs on her and she most definitely does not reciprocate his feelings. The household also includes a Haitian voodoo priestess, Shakira (Beryl Cunningham), and she seems to feel a certain attraction to Rackham. There are other voodoo priestesses on the island and Rackham has a small private army of presumably Haitian warriors.

There are monstrous things living in the swamps and in the sea. They seem to be half man and half fish. Everyone on the island is aware of them and they don’t seem too worried. Claude on the other hand is very worried.

As one might have predicted a romance blossoms between Claude and Amanda. Gradually Claude learns the truth about what Rackham is up to on the island, and he also discovers that his services as a doctor are required. Rackham needs him to keep an old man alive. The old man is Amanda’s father Professor Ernest Marvin (Joseph Cotten). The professor had been involved in a scandal some years earlier, a scandal involving horrifying medical experiments. Rackham has good reasons for needing Professor Marvin’s services.

Just as Claude has put all the pieces of the puzzle together he finds that there are important things he did not know and those things change the picture completely.

Professor Marvin, Rackham and Shakira are all mad, but mad in different ways. Somehow Claude has to find a way to save Amanda. And there’s a time factor - this is a volcanic island and the volcano seems to be getting much more active.

The script obviously uses The Island of Dr Moreau as a jumping-off point but pretty soon the story starts developing in rather different directions. There are hints of certain well-known legends and some very definite Lovecraftian elements but I don’t want to risk spoilers by saying any more.

Richard Johnson is excellent as the sinister obsessed Rackham. Claudio Cassinelli plays the hero rôle pretty well and Barbara Bach is a fine spirited heroine (and she adds some glamour).

The movie has a definite steampunk feel. There are occasionally cheesy moments but the Italians had a knack for making cheesiness stylish. And mostly it isn’t that cheesy. The special effects work pretty well. The fishmen are obviously guys in rubber suits but they look fine. The sets are great. As low budget movies go this one looks terrific.

This isn’t really a horror movie. It’s more like a mutated version of a late 19th century scientific romance with some horror thrown in.

This movie doesn’t seem to have much of a reputation which might be a consequence of that heavily altered US version referred to earlier. This movie is so much fun. You’re not supposed to take it seriously. It’s a romp and it’s done with style and energy. Very highly recommended.

Full Moon’s Blu-Ray release is barebones but the transfer is excellent.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a major hit for Irwin Allen (who produced and directed as well as co-writing the screenplay) in 1961. The success of the movie inspired Allen to follow it up in 1964 with the television series of the same name.

Admiral Harriman Nelson (Walter Pidgeon) is an eccentric scientific genius who has somehow persuaded Congress to let him build a highly advanced nuclear submarine, the Seaview. Nuclear submarines were a topical subject at the time, just a few years after the USS Nautilus’s famous voyage under the North Pole.

The Seaview has a number of civilian passengers on its maiden voyage, including a congressman who considers the Seaview to be a waste of money. Also aboard, for some obscure reason, is psychiatrist Dr Susan Hiller (Joan Fontaine). Dr Hiller is not the only woman aboard the submarine. Admiral Nelson has brought along his secretary, Lieutenant Cathy Connors (Barbara Eden) who presence has predictably caused major disciplinary problems.

Apart from its other advanced features the Seaview boasts the world’s only underwater aquarium, which allows Commodore Lucius Emery (Peter Lorre) to indulge his hobby, the study of sharks and other denizens of the deep. Emery also happens to be one of the world’s leading physicists, a circumstance that will soon turn out to be rather fortunate. When we first meet him he’s taking one of his sharks for a walk.

The Seaview is a research submarine rather than an actual warship although it’s rather heavily armed for a research vessel with an array of missiles (with atomic warheads of course) and torpedoes. You just never know when you’re going to need a nuclear missile.

The Seaview has just repeated the Nautilus’s feat and surfaced at the North Pole when an alarming discovery is made - the Van Allen Radiation Belt which surrounds the Earth has caught fire. The sky is on fire! This delightful piece of scientific silliness sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

One thing that is refreshing is that this movie does not follow the very tedious practice, so common in 1950s sci-fi, of blaming every disaster on humans.

An emergency session of the United Nations predictably achieves nothing but a lot of pointless talk. It’s going to be up to Admiral Nelson and the Seaview to save the world.

Admiral Nelson and Commodore Emery believe they have a plan that can do just that. It’s obvious what has to be done. If you have a fire raging out of control what do you do? You nuke it of course. So they have to nuke the Van Allen belt - the atomic explosion will blow the whole belt out into space. All they need to do now is to contact the President of the United States to get the go-ahead (they have very wisely decided to ignore the UN completely). It’s obvious that Admiral Nelson intends to proceed with his plan whether he gets official approval or not. This is one of those science fiction movies that casts scientists very much in the hero mould, with politicians being seen as largely irrelevant.

While the Seaview is involved in a race against time to reach the only location from which the missile can be fired Admiral Nelson finds himself faced with other obstacles. The most serious is that the scientific consensus is against him. The majority of the world’s scientists disagree with his plan. The UN is against him as well. They have ordered the destruction  of the Seaview. Fortunately Admiral Nelson knows only too well that the scientific consensus can be wrong. 

Another obstacle is the psychiatrist, Dr Miller. Dr Miller believes that thinking for yourself and having the courage of your convictions are sure signs of a paranoid personality. 

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea really owes more to Jules Verne than to the average submarine movie. It is in some ways an updated version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This turned out to be a rather clever idea.

The Seaview will be familiar to fans of the television series. Irwin Allen very wisely kept the miniatures and some of the sets from the movie and was able to re-use them in the TV series. It’s still a very cool looking submarine.

The relationship between Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane (played by Robert Sterling in the movie) is a lot more combative than in the TV series. Although we’re told that Admiral Nelson is like a father to Crane they clash repeatedly, usually over some high-handed action by the admiral who tends to regard the Seaview as his own personal property and infringes on the captain’s area of responsibility in a manner that is inevitably going to cause tension. The Admiral Nelson of the movie is a rather more arrogant character that the Admiral Nelson played by Richard Basehart on TV. Walter Pidgeon is fairly convincing as a visionary scientist with perhaps just a bit too much self-confidence.

Robert Sterling is a little dull as Captain Crane. Joan Fontaine seems somewhat out of place in this movie. Having a psychiatrist let loose on a submarine proves to be as disastrous one one would expect it to be. Barbara Eden is there purely to provide some glamour, which she does. By 1961 Peter Lorre’s health was failing but he still has his moments. On the whole I prefer the cast in the TV series but that may of course be due to my greater familiarity with the TV version.

The special effects are pretty well done with the burning sky being quite impressive. Of course it wouldn’t be a submarine adventure movie without a giant killer octopus, and this movie boasts not one but two such creatures. It has to be admitted that the first giant killer octopus in this movie is one of the more disappointing examples of the breed, looking obviously fake. The second example is a great improvement, being clearly a real octopus in a tank with a model of the Seaview.

The Region 4 DVD is barebones but offers a reasonably good anamorphic transfer.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a pure adventure film that (quite rightly) has no interest whatsoever in scientific veracity. As a submarine adventure movie it’s second only to the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in entertainment value. Highly recommended.

Evil in the Deep (1975)

Evil in the Deep (The Treasure of Jamaica Reef) is a 1974 underwater adventure movie involving the search for sunken treasure. Which sounds promising enough, but this movie fails abysmally to live up to this promise.

Hugo Graham (Stephen Boyd) is an LA cop who discovers a treasure map apparently dating to 1787 in the course of a homicide investigation. You might think that a hardboiled city cop would be the last person in the world to fall for the old treasure map routine, but Hugo falls for it hook, line and sinker.

Hugo’s hobby is scuba diving so he has the qualifications to go hunting for sunken treasure. With some diving buddies and the obligatory glamorous blonde, in this case a blonde rejoicing in the name of Zappy (played by Cheryl Ladd), he sets off for Jamaica to find the treasure.

Of course there are bad guys hunting the treasure as well.

There’s not really a whole lot more to the plot than that. We don’t find out anything very interesting about the history of the map or of the treasure itself.

This is clearly a fairly low-budget movie despite some fairly impressive underwater photography. It’s a pity that a bit more money wasn’t spent on hiring a better writer and a better director, and better actors. The movie looks even cheaper that it undoubtedly was.

The movie certainly has some typically 1970s features. There’s some gore, which is unnecessary in a movie that should be relying on excitement and suspense rather than gore. There’s also that rather nasty edge that was unfortunately a feature of so many 1970s movies, of all genres.

Stephen Boyd’s performance is pretty bad but he’s streets ahead of the rest of the cast. Cheryl Ladd was at this time still named Cheryl Stoppelmoor. She married David Ladd during the filming of the movie. She looks good, and she was quite fun in the Charlie’s Angels TV series a few years later, but her acting in this movie fails to excite.

This movie is notable for being one of the comparatively small number of 1970s movies to be directed by a woman, in this case Virginia Stone. Stone’s career amounted to very little, and after seeing this movie I’m not surprised. Her directing is less than inspired.

The only plus for this movie is that the underwater sequences are reasonably good. In fact they’re very good. When they’re underwater the movie almost becomes exciting. Sadly, as soon as we’re out of the water the excitement level drops calamitously. The script is stodgy and unimaginative.

This movie has been described as a precursor to Jaws, which probably overstates its importance quite a bit. The 1970s did give birth to several underwater adventure movies, with Jaws being followed by the less than rivetting The Deep.

I came across this movie in the Hollywood Beauties boxed set from St Clair Vision. The transfer is truly horrible, with severe print damage all the way through and rather washed out colours. It’s letterboxed so at least it’s in the correct aspect ratio but aside from that this is a seriously lousy DVD. It also appears to be a print that has been cut. I was going to say that no movie, no matter how bad, deserved treatment as shoddy as this. But after further consideration of the matter I’ve decided that this movie really does deserve such shoddy treatment.

Evil in the Deep is a seriously dull movie with very little at all to recommend. I’d steer clear of this one.