Lords of the Deep (1989) Concorde/Sci-Fi-Horror RT: 78 minutes Rated PG-13 (violence, language) Director: Mary Ann Fisher Screenplay: Howard R. Cohen and Daryl Haney Music: Jim Berenholtz Cinematography: Austin McKinney Release date: April 21, 1989 (US) Cast: Bradford Dillman, Priscilla Barnes, Daryl Haney, Melody Rayne, Eb Lottimer, Greg Sobeck, Richard Young, Stephen Davies. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
We all know that 1989 was the year of “They Came from Beneath the Sea” with no less than three major movies- DeepStar Six, Leviathan and The Abyss- centering on underwater terror. Never one to miss a bandwagon, schlockmeister Roger Corman climbed on with Lords of the Deep, a cheapie closest in spirit to The Abyss with its saving the planet story angle. It’s a colossally dumb, formulaic movie that offers more laughs than thrills with its terrible acting, silly storyline and low-cost special effects including aliens that look like sea creatures you might see in an aquarium. It’s bad alright, but thankfully it’s entertainingly so.
Director Mary Ann Fisher, working from a screenplay by Howard R. Cohen (Saturday the 14th) and co-star Daryl Haney, images a 2020 where the world is in such bad shape, the idea of underwater colonies is being explored by an outfit called the Martel Corporation. They have an underwater lab set up in a remote location. It’s manned by a crew led by Commander Dobler (Dillman, Piranha), a heartless corporate type who makes no attempt to hide his villainous nature. He may as well have “Bad Guy” tattooed on his forehead.
ANYWAY, weird stuff starts happening as it always does in movies like this. A replacement crew mysteriously disappears on their way to the lab leaving behind an empty sub. Biologist Claire (Barnes, Three’s Company) is studying an unknown specimen that causes her to experience psychic visions. Large stingray-like creatures start attacking them. One crew member is turned into a gelatinous mass that mutates into one of the creatures. Dobler, acting on orders from his boss (an uncredited computer monitor cameo by Corman), tries to silence his crew about the lifeform that might not be as newly discovered as they assume. The aliens might be trying to communicate with Claire. You know, all the usual underwater terror nonsense.
I guess you’re wondering why I’m NOT being hard on Lords of the Deep. It’s simple. I know what it is and it knows what it is and it never tries to be anything more. When you see that a movie is produced by Corman and released by Concorde, you should automatically know NOT to expect greatness or even quality. Hell, it’s a bloody miracle if it’s competently made. I’ll give Lords of the Deep at least that much. The makers didn’t do too bad a job with it. The visual effects by brothers Robert and Dennis Skotak (Aliens, Terminator 2) are pretty good considering the obvious budget constraints. Granted, the alien creatures aren’t the height of imagination, the sets look like a hundred more before it and you can see that they’re using miniatures for exterior sequences. It’s fine; it’s supposed to look cheap. This is what B-moviemaking is all about.
The acting is both horrendous and horrendously hilarious. That Lords of the Deep is populated by stock characters is a given. Out of a crew of six men and two women, the only ones that matter are the ones played by Dillman and Barnes. If it matters (which it really doesn’t), O’Neil (Haney) is Claire’s love interest. Moving on, let’s talk about the two principles’ performances. Dillman is easily the campier of the two. He walks around scowling, sneering and generally acting like a low-rent tyrant in trying to keep the crew from learning anything about the alien lifeform. When somebody doesn’t follow a command, he orders the computer to shut off the oxygen in whatever room he or she is in. On the other hand, we have Barnes who spends most of the movie with her mouth agape. Every once in a while, words come out. That’s the extent of her performance. The writers are really at fault here. Her character should have had dimension given she’s the one the aliens choose to make contact with. Why did they choose her? Can they read minds? Did something happen in her past to indicate she’s the kind of scientist that wants to study rather than dissect new lifeforms?
At least Fisher (producer of Battle Beyond the Stars) keeps things moving at a nice clip. At only 78 minutes, Lords of the Deep isn’t too long a time commitment. Although it went straight to video, it would have been an ideal selection for the bottom half of a double feature at some grindhouse theater. I’ll close by saying I’d rather watch it than DeepStar Six. I’ll take entertainingly bad over simply bad any day.
