Time Suck Theater Review: DeepStar Six
Yes I am behind on my comic reading. And yes, I am at best halfway through most of the 2016/2017 season of any show I regularly watch. It quickly becomes obvious that besides long work hours and other commitments as an adult, I am so far behind because when I do have time, I watch stuff like DeepStar Six.(from here on out referred to as D6)
I saw this underwater gem in theaters with my dad when I was 13. I did not like it then, and I liked a ton of bad shit. So when we discussed the deluge of underwater/creature films of 1989 on a recent episode of The Pint, I became intrigued. I have always loved The Abyss, as that was the only true critical darling of the bunch. I rewatched Leviathan(starring my personal favorite Robobcop, Peter Weller) on Netflix a few years back and found it mildly entertaining with some good practical FX. Why not give the Greg Evigan vehicle D6 another go,how bad could it be?
Therein lies the problem. Despite being the cheapest looking and saddled with the biggest void in terms of known actors, D6 is not really a bad movie. There are not too many unintentionally hilarious moments or such bad performances as to qualify for a round of MST3King. The problem is that this is just a boring movie. 99 minutes long and we do not see the shitty looking creature until about the 60 minute mark. Yes I realize we don’t see the shark in Jaws fully until near the end either, but that was a tension building exercise(oh, and uh the mechanical shark barely worked when needed) and fuck you for comparing this to Jaws.
Greg Evigan gave up raising a teen daughter with Paul Reiser to star in this, hoping for a breakout career in action films I’m sure, and we all know how that ended up. The usually solid and recently departed character actor Miguel Ferrer couldn’t do much with his whiny dialogue as the token coward character of the bunch, although his non creature related death scene is by far the coolest in the film. 80’s hottie Nia Peeples(remember her?) plays a scientist as well as I would play someone suffering from malnutrition, and Matt McCoy, future Lloyd Braun on Seinfeld is bitten in half. No really, that’s all I got for him. Well, when his character is half eaten he is in a dive suit, and the blood and guts hanging from the torso look more like the inside of a Hostess cherry pie than any organs I have ever seen. The creature looks like the creatures from the vastly superior Tremors, except with little arms and a wicked case of underwater eczema.
The one interesting piece of trivia is that D6 was created and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, the mastermind behind the Friday The 13th series. I am assuming if this film was a success we would currently in 2017 be going to see DeepStar Six 12:3D6. Thankfully it tanked and we never were even subjected to a favorite trend of the early 1990’s, the direct to video sequel. There are several musical cues throughout that feel very reminiscent of the F13th series and the ending, wherein our survivors celebrate a tranquil moment on a liferaft before being attacked by the creature again is lifted directly from the first Jason film. Well his mom was the killer in that one, but you know what I mean. Oh and 37 year old spoiler alert.
Five paragraphs on this film also constitute another tragic time suck, but I do it for you, loyal readers so that you do not have to. If you have any suggestions for a film you want me to review, whether it is good, bad or ugly please leave us a note on our Facebook page or here on the site. Keep reading our stuff and listening to our show, plenty more fun content coming your way.
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