Why was there a creature in this movie? The conflict between humans surviving under the sea when an accident happens was a lot more interesting and the movie dedicated the bulk of the screen time towards it. It was a little baffling to me to have the creature in it at all. The effects of the monster were cheezy and I found the death of one character in a compression/decompression-related accident to have the best special effects in the movie.
I fully predict I'll forget that I watched this movie. It feels like it tried to be Alien under water and the filmmakers did not succeed.
I watched this again but the whole time it was playing I kept thinking "Have I seen this before?" And the answer to that was yes, but I didn't realize it until the movie was over and I checked Letterboxd. So I guess it didn't make much of an impression the first time.
The most dangerous thing in "Deep Star Six" isn't the giant, crabby crustacean monster, no, it's actually the character of Snyder, played manically by Miguel Ferrar. Dude actually causes two nuclear explosions over the course of about 8 hours.
I didn't think this was gory until the final act, but here's a warning for anyone who happens to read this...a character fails to go though decompression before surfacing. Let's just say the pressure has to be relieved somehow. It's brutal.
Miguel Ferrer is everywhere! I'm surprised at myself. I don't understand how a movie like "Deep Star Six" got past me. It's right in my wheelhouse. There's a monster. It's Sci-Fi. It's Horror. I certainly knew of the movie for years, but never sat down to watch it. But now that I did, I've found that it wouldn't have mattered if I never had gotten around to it.
I think the movie stars Miguel Ferrer. I say I think because it also stars Greg Evigan. Was he a hot property at the time? This was made about 10 years after he would find fame and cult celebrity as a trucker with a monkey in the hit TV series "B.J. and the Bear". What's sad is that "Deep Star Six" looks like it's the most notable work he's done outside of his role as B.J. Actually though, he may be the second best thing about this movie. He's pretty good in it.
Oh yeah, back to Miguel Ferrer, i.e., the best thing in this movie. He seems like he's always cast as a bad guy, but here he seems to be cast as the stupid guy. Thinking back on how the plot of this shook out, he was the cause of almost all of the bad things that happen. He literally does everything wrong. I gathered that he was the "doer" of the team. The one that handled all of the dirty work around the facility. But I honestly don't know how they all survived previous to the sea monster showing up. How his character didn't accidentally kill them all beforehand is mind-boggling.
The monster isn't seen too much but when it is, it varies in its effectiveness. I have to give it an "A" for originality, but about a "D" in execution. There are several scenes when the monster is swimming around in flooded spaces where the rest of the humans are standing in chest deep water. I have no idea how something the size of the beast could stay hidden or not cause a ripple in such a tight space. The look of it is kind of a cross between a frog with the jaws of the alien in "Predator". It's a neat practical effect but we never get a comprehensive look at it.
As the plot goes, I like the premise of a monster released by an explosion. After that, it falls into a story very similar to "Alien". The last scene features a surprise that caught me totally off guard. I didn't like the happy ending but I have to give this an extra point for the shock.
Directed by Sean Cunningham, stunts by Kane Hodder and score by Harry Manfredini. It's essentially what if team Friday the 13th made Alien underwater. I dig it.
Probably 25 years since I last saw this. It definitely doesn't hold up even to the monster features of those days and I honestly forgot how cliche it all was at the time, but that said, the few gory scenes while they arefew and far between, are fun. I love undersea suspense but this just tries every horror trope of the 80s and 90s it can and it still falls pretty flat.
My feelings about DeepStar Six are colored by childhood nostalgia. It was on a continuous rotation for a couple of months on one of those movie channels, so I watched it probably like a dozen times. Loved it then, and it still stands up well today. Not a lot of substance, but much better than the underwater thriller released the same year - Leviathan, - in terms of character likability.
With all due respect to Dr. Ian Malcom, I began to ask.....now you do have a monster in your monster movie?
Classic 80's deep-sea horror sci-fi. I loved this movie when I was a kid and I still do. So much fun! And the cover art, unforgettable! So. Good.
Shout by Sage020VIP 2BlockedParent2022-07-20T22:32:04Z
Effects are pretty good for 1989, but the plot line/story is pretty basic and tad dull. Most the misfortune can all be traced back to Miguel Ferrer’s character Snyder as he makes every bad decision possible and could be considered the films villain than the monster itself.