The opening of this immediately makes one a little skeptical. A lot of seafood swimmin around, is this gonna be one of those poorly veiled Save the Whales kinds of deals? No. No it is not and it goes full kinda Fuck Y’All Fish and yer Fishsticks kinda mode by the end. Not necessarily intentionally, but yeah, The Greenpeace definitely ain’t happy about this one. Fuckin grifters. Allegedly.
DeepStar Six is an ocean basement-dwelling station setting up some shit under military contract. Already 2 months past the 4 month stint, the crew is getting a little anxious to get top-side. It’s not like you just swim up, those Bends are a bitch! But the end goal is in sight, except for a new wrinkle. Apparently the building pad for their project might not be stable. Well, just flush an M-80 down there and see what happens! Oh! Shit! That...wasn’t good. And the Water dominoes start to fall from there.
This was directed by the same guy that did the first Friday the 13th film, around the same time as Cameron’s The Abyss and while not even closely similar in plot, budget or effects, they thought this would be a good movie to compete, apparently? This in the era where you always get at least two movies with the same theme into theaters as the studios tried to compete. Well, this is like going up against the Terminator 2 of undersea movies so, yeah, a lot of people passed on this. Why watch the shittier undersea movie after The Abyss, kind of a let-down, no? This one is okay. I like the mostly nameless cast. The plot is kinda more like the first Alien, working stiffs just doin a job, something weird in the nethers. And a lot of Oh Shit! Moments here. Seriously. They are one-uppers when it comes to Oh Shit kindsa shit here. So yeah, like the first Alien, but in the water. And inferior script. and cast. The actors were ok, just not given a lot beyond the old-school space sci-fi technical jargon talk for a lot of it, and they do kinda pale in comparison to the likes of John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm and Sigourney Weaver. And Harry Dean Stanton. Don’t forget Harry!
