{"id":6781,"date":"2024-10-25T11:07:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6781"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:07:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:07:56","slug":"lords-of-the-deep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/lords-of-the-deep\/","title":{"rendered":"Lords of the Deep"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Lords of the Deep<\/strong> (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Concorde\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 78 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mary Ann Fisher\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Howard R. Cohen and Daryl Haney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jim Berenholtz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Austin McKinney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 21, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Bradford Dillman, Priscilla Barnes, Daryl Haney, Melody Rayne, Eb Lottimer, Greg Sobeck, Richard Young, Stephen Davies.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0We all know that 1989 was the year of \u201cThey Came from Beneath the Sea\u201d 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<\/strong>, a cheapie closest in spirit to The Abyss with its saving the planet story angle. It\u2019s 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\u2019s bad alright, but thankfully it\u2019s entertainingly so.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Mary Ann Fisher, working from a screenplay by Howard R. Cohen (Saturday the 14th<\/sup>) 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\u2019s 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 \u201cBad Guy\u201d tattooed on his forehead.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ANYWAY, 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess you\u2019re wondering why I\u2019m NOT being hard on Lords of the Deep<\/strong>. It\u2019s 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\u2019s a bloody miracle if it\u2019s competently made. I\u2019ll give Lords of the Deep<\/strong> at least that much. The makers didn\u2019t 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\u2019t the height of imagination, the sets look like a hundred more before it and you can see that they\u2019re using miniatures for exterior sequences. It\u2019s fine; it\u2019s supposed to look cheap. This is what B-moviemaking is all about.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is both horrendous and horrendously hilarious. That Lords of the Deep<\/strong> 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\u2019t), O\u2019Neil (Haney) is Claire\u2019s love interest. Moving on, let\u2019s talk about the two principles\u2019 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\u2019t 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\u2019s the extent of her performance. The writers are really at fault here. Her character should have had dimension given she\u2019s 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\u2019s the kind of scientist that wants to study rather than dissect new lifeforms?<\/p>\n

At least Fisher (producer of Battle Beyond the Stars) keeps things moving at a nice clip. At only 78 minutes, Lords of the Deep<\/strong> isn\u2019t 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\u2019ll close by saying I\u2019d rather watch it than DeepStar Six. I\u2019ll take entertainingly bad over simply bad any day.\"\"<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lords of the Deep (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Concorde\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 78 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mary Ann Fisher\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Howard R. Cohen and Daryl Haney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jim Berenholtz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Austin McKinney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 21, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Bradford Dillman, Priscilla Barnes, Daryl Haney, Melody Rayne, Eb Lottimer, Greg Sobeck, Richard Young, Stephen Davies.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Lords-of-the-Deep-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\/6781","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=6781"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7189,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions\/7189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}