Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Deep Star Six' (1989)

You know how you know it's an 80s horror? Only one black actor and he doesn't live past the halfway mark. That aside, I love a good rubber monster! This was one of my favorite movies back when I was a kid, and if you look past the fact that it's would be pretty low budget even for back in the days, it's actually not half bad even by nowadays standards. Actually, it's even pretty good for the K-Mart version of "Leviathan." Seeing as Leviathan is the K-Mart version of "The Abyss."

But yeah, the acting is actually pretty solid for pre-90s horror. The plot is thin but it is pre-90s horror. Lots of good wet shirt T&A which is likely one of the reasons I liked it so much in my prepubescent years of about 10 or 12 or somewhere in there. Not quite sure why they decided the lead male role needed to look like George Michaels. Leviathan was pretty low on the sexy male lead front... maybe they were trying to get a leg up. This movie was essentially competing with the release of Leviathan and didn't have the same cast or budget.

Here's why I recommend this movie. It's the K-Mart version of a bandwagon movie and it was still pretty good. The practical FX were every bit as good as Leviathan, and even though the setting wasn't as good, it wasn't bad either. It had the right atmosphere and suspense and it was fun. Definitely for hardcore horror heads only, and riffers, but it good.

SPOILERS!

Why on god's green earth would the missile protocol for aggressive marine life be to set off the missiles? Seriously? What the fuck is up with that?

"Hay, there's a particularly ornery squid nibbling at our submersible."

"Okay, better set off the nukes no more than a quarter mile away from your station then..."

"Hey, there's an overly friendly sperm whale getting horny with a substation."

"Oh well, looks like we'll have to risk blowing everything up."

And why does some low-level tech guy have the access codes to do this?!? Hell, it's not just that he CAN do it, it's that he's the only one who is SUPPOSED to do it. That makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense. It takes two top-ranking military officers to detonate any nukes in reality. How the fuck did the writer justify this plot device?!?

It's not like they needed that to get the movie rolling. I mean, there was a giant "lobstrosity" (trademark Stephen King or some shit like that... go read the fucking Langoliers) swimming around outside, attacking everything that had a light on it. Leviathan didn't need a nuclear explosion to kick off. It just set the nasty monster on the lose all by itself and that, pretty much, took care of that. Maybe they were hoping that a big nuclear blast would appeal more to the target audience than just a big lobster monster.

I mean, I guess they needed a way to disable their station, but the lobster monster could have done that too. Simple: they release it from its underwater cavern, it starts running amok, it attacks the station and damages it beyond the capacity to escape. No need to complicate things. Hell, they could just as easily had the lobstrosity somehow detonate the nukes. Even with all the fail safes preventing that, it's more believable than some random guy having the capacity to do it.

But yeah. Still pretty good after all these years. I highly recommend it for big rubber monster fans.