DeepStar Six is a bad looking movie. There’s maybe one decent special effects moment–very limited, slightly gory–and it comes at the end, after the film has flubbed bigger effects sequences and other gore moments. Director Cunningham pretends he’s doing “Jaws at the ocean floor” for a while, though it’s never even clear if there’s one monster or multiple ones. Because it’s not a shark, it’s some prehistoric crab thing.
Except the prehistoric crab thing looks like a fifties sci-fi alien mixed with Audrey II. And really cheap. Cunningham and editor David Handman do try to hide the cheapness, but they can’t. Worse, they cut away from the monster so often, it’d be preferable for them to just embrace the cheap and have the thing onscreen. Action sequences might make more sense.
The film takes place at an experimental ocean floor Navy installation. There’s a staff of Navy personnel and civilian scientists. The scientists are Russian Elya Baskin and South African Marius Weyers. It’s not clear why the Navy’s got foreign nationals installing underwater nuclear warhead launch platforms but whatever. None of the Navy personnel wears uniforms or has ranks (other than captain Taurean Blacque) and John Krenz Reinhart Jr.’s production design harkens back to those fifties sci-fi cheapies, not state-of-the-art eighties Navy stuff.
The sets are way too big too. No one’s cramped. There’s always plenty of room, especially in the submersibles. Or Cunningham and photographer Mac Ahlberg are just shooting through walls and it’s not clear because the direction’s so bad it doesn’t matter. Cunningham does nothing good in DeepStar Six. Sometimes he composes for the eventual pan-and-scan (the film’s an utter waste of a Panavision frame), sometimes he doesn’t. In the times he doesn’t, usually because there are just too many cast members in the shot, it’s slightly better. Not the direction, the experience of watching the film. It makes a little more sense, having all those people crammed into a frame. The shots having action taking place at different distances from the camera.
It’s a terribly directed film. Anything helps.
Because the special effects sequences don’t help either. The undersea exteriors are bad. There’s a dullness to them to “hide” them not being shot underwater. Of course, any of those bad underwater special effects are nothing compared when there are shots on the water. Then the composites are just hideous. And the mattes are awful.
Maybe the only surprise–which sadly isn’t Harry Manfredini having a good score (it’s not awful and it’s better than the film deserves, but it’s not good)–so a bigger surprise, actually, is the acting. Greg Evigan gives a better performance than Miguel Ferrer. Evigan’s the enlisted man, working class submarine pilot. Ferrer’s the working class mechanic. Ferrer freaks out at everything and dooms the cast on multiple occasions. Evigan’s romancing pseudo-Ripley Nancy Everhard. She’s the first woman to go through Navy Seal training and, for whatever reason, she wants to manage annoying civilians on the ocean floor.
Matt McCoy is the other submarine pilot. Nia Peeples is a scientist. She’s more convincing than Weyers, who just plays his part like an asshole. Peeples at least has some intellectual curiosity. Unfortunately she also gets the bulk of the objectifying and an unlikely romance with McCoy.
Cindy Pickett is the doctor. By the end of the movie, she’s probably turned in the best overall performance. She’s got nothing to do at the start and a weak finish, but once the monster attacks, she’s always active.
Everhard’s occasionally likable but not good.
Ferrer’s terrible. It’s not entirely his fault–Cunningham’s got a hands-off approach to directing the actors and Ferrer’s got some really bad writing. Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller’s script is risible.
Given the bad script and the bad direction, the cast being at all likable is an accomplishment. Especially since it’s an And Then There Were None burn through the cast. Most of them don’t even get cool monster deaths–none of them do, not even when it’s a monster death because the special effects are so bad–but usually the movie doesn’t even try. It’s a disaster movie about the least prepared undersea operation in history. They’re not prepared for any problems. It’s stupefying.
So there’s the one good effects sequence, the curiosity of the adequate against the odds performances (he, Everhard, and Pickett are all extremely earnest, which helps), and the final jump scare. That one got me, even though I was waiting for it.
With a bigger budget, a better script, a better director, a better cinematographer, a better production designer… DeepStar Six might be downright mediocre. Instead, it’s pretty bad. If Cunningham had just embraced the cheapness though–gone for the fifties sci-fi–it might have worked out close to as is.
But of course Cunningham didn’t, because he makes bad choices leading to bad movies. He sinks DeepStar Six.
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CREDITS
Directed by Sean S. Cunningham; screenplay by Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller, story by Abernathy; director of photography, Mac Ahlberg; edited by David Handman; music by Harry Manfredini; production designer, John Krenz Reinhart Jr.; produced by Cunningham and Patrick Markey; released by Tri-Star Pictures.
Starring Nancy Everhard (Collins), Greg Evigan (McBride), Miguel Ferrer (Snyder), Nia Peeples (Scarpelli), Matt McCoy (Richardson), Cindy Pickett (Norris), Marius Weyers (Van Gelder), Elya Baskin (Burciaga), Thom Bray (Hodges), Ronn Carroll (Osborne), and Taurean Blacque (Captain Laidlaw).
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