{"id":5905,"date":"2024-10-13T06:54:27","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T06:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5905"},"modified":"2024-10-14T23:41:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T03:41:31","slug":"deepstar-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/13\/deepstar-six\/","title":{"rendered":"DeepStar Six"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"DeepStar Six <\/strong>(1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sean S. Cunningham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 13, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Taurean Blacque, Nancy Everhard, Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer, Matt McCoy, Nia Peeples, Cindy Pickett, Marius Weyers, Elya Baskin, Thom Bray, Ronn Carroll.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: * \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you follow my reviews, you probably know that I refer to the movie year 1989 as \u201cThey Came from Beneath the Sea\u201d. No less than three major releases centered on underwater terror. First out of the gate was DeepStar Six<\/strong>, a dull, drippy fright flick in which the hapless crew of an underwater military outpost faces off against a giant sea monster. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th<\/sup>), it could have been fun, but it\u2019s rendered lame by a weak storyline and snail-like pacing. It takes more than an hour for the monster to make his first appearance. That\u2019s just too long for a movie that has little else to offer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While installing an underwater nuclear missile base, the crew of scientific facility DeepStar Six discovers a large underground cavern underneath the site. Rather than let resident biologist Scarpelli (Peeples, North Shore) explore it first, project leader Van Gelder (Weyers, The Gods Must Be Crazy) decides to collapse it with explosive charges instead. It creates a massive fissure which frees a large something that proceeds to create destruction and panic among the crew as they prepare for an emergency evacuation to the surface.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The crew also includes Captain Laidlaw (Blacque, Hill Street Blues), sub pilot McBride (Evigan, BJ and the Bear), scientist Collins (Everhard, The Punisher), co-pilot Richardson (McCoy, Police Academy 5), physician Norris (Pickett, Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off), technician Snyder (Ferrer, RoboCop), geologist Burciaga (Baskin, Moscow on the Hudson) and co-pilots Hodges (Bray, Prince of Darkness) and Osborne (Carroll, Friday the 13th<\/sup>). McBride and Collins are romantically involved. Richardson and Scarpelli are sexually involved. Snyder is the unstable one; he\u2019s this movie\u2019s answer to Bill Paxton\u2019s character in Aliens. That\u2019s really all you need to know about the characters, not that the screenplay offers much in the way of development anyway.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Given the utter lack of character depth, it stands to reason that the actors can\u2019t do too much with their roles other than recite their dialogue and die on cue. To say we have only the vaguest idea of what any character is about is an overstatement. They\u2019re merely fish lined up for the slaughter. That\u2019s right, most of them don\u2019t make it to the end, but did you actually expect otherwise? DeepStar Six<\/strong> is, if nothing else, completely predictable. There\u2019s not a single scare or thrill you won\u2019t see coming from 20,000 leagues away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wanted to like DeepStar Six<\/strong>. It has all the earmarks of great late 80s entertainment staring with the Carolco logo, usually a sure sign that what you\u2019re about to see will entertain your ass off. I always got a thrill from seeing the names Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna appear in the opening credits of action-oriented movies. In addition to being directed by Cunningham, his F13 collaborator Harry Manfredini provides the score. Okay, it doesn\u2019t have a big name like Schwarzenegger or Stallone in the lead but if Evigan can hold his own against a funny chimp, he can surely deal with a murderous sea monster (whose name isn\u2019t Sigmund, btw). And what can I say about Peeples? She\u2019s HOT! ANYWAY, all of this amounts to nothing. The makers forgot to make DeepStar Six<\/strong> scary or even interesting. It\u2019s BORING AS HELL!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only nice thing I can think of to say about DeepStar Six<\/strong> is that the monster, initially designed by Chris Walas (The Fly) who handed the reins over to Mark Shostrom (From Beyond), doesn\u2019t look too bad. The only problem is we don\u2019t get a good look at it. On the upside, it\u2019s not CGI. There are at least two half-decent gory scenes, but for the most part it\u2019s fairly stingy with the red stuff.<\/p>\n

\u00a0DeepStar Six<\/strong> was followed by Leviathan and The Abyss, both of which are markedly better than this tepid monster movie. Hell, even the DTV releases Lords of the Deep and Endless Descent are better than this. You know what, I\u2019ll make it simple. In the vernacular of my teen years, DeepStar Six<\/strong> sucks!\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DeepStar Six (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sean S. Cunningham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 13, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Taurean Blacque, Nancy Everhard, Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer, Matt McCoy, Nia Peeples, Cindy Pickett, Marius Weyers, Elya Baskin, Thom Bray, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/DeepStar-Six-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6133,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5905\/revisions\/6133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}