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Storyline
Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results. In a story owing a lot to _Alien_ and _The Thing_, the crew of the mining base must fight to survive against a genetic mutation that hunts them down one by one. Part of a wave of underwater movies including _The Abyss_ and _Deep Star Six_. Written by
Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>
Plot Summary
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Plot Synopsis
Taglines:
Aliens thrilled you... The Fly shocked you... Now experience real fear...
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Did You Know?
Trivia
There are very few scenes in the film that were actually shot underwater, as production went for the "dry for wet" look. With most of the scenes inside the Shack taking place on soundstages and a tank measuring 130ft x 270ft.
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Goofs
In the scene where the piece of the monster is cut off by the door, the wire that pulls the cut off piece down can be seen.
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Quotes
Justin Jones:
[
as they wait to be rescued]
It's cold out here.
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Connections
References
Alien (1979)
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This movie is always going to be compared to Deep Star Six and The Abyss, because all three films came out at the same time. It is an underwater "Alien" movie, but it doesn't rip off The Abyss, which came out third of the three and none of them did any real business.
Anyway, this movie was one of those films that is engrossing in the theater and transfers very poorly to television and video. I would venture a guess that a wide-screen DVD version may be able to pick-up most of the considerable detail that was placed into this film. The acting is not awful and the story is well-paced, which is a step ahead of the other two 1989 underwater movies. This isn't Shakespere folks, so don't expect it. A little more polish to the script would have helped this movie greatly, but it is a fairly B horror flick so it was expected.
The cast is Weller, Hudson, Crenna, and Pays doing their things. They don't exactly phone it in, but they aren't expected to deliver that many lines convincingly anyway. Whatever happened to Amanada Pays? After seeing this I thought she had a chance to break through, but instead she disappeared.
The setting and special effects are the keys to this one, though. Visually, it is as tough as they come. Like I wrote before, stick to the DVD version, because I already know the VHS version stinks because it is so cloudy and out of focus. Watch the DVD and I can almost guarantee that you will find this movie to be better than you have been lead to believe by others.