Deepstar Six

You might remember me rambling on recently about how 1989 was a year for undersea mayhem with The Abyss and Leviathan... Well, there's another one. Deepstar Six, directed by Sean Cunningham. You know, the director of Friday the 13th? Well, this one even has a score by Harry Manfredini!

I would have to say for sure that this is the weakest of the bunch. They set this in the "near future" even though there's nothing outlandish about it really. Some undersea exploration team is supposed to build a missile base or something for the navy, but they discover a cave... "Blow it up!" says the boss man, but the other lady says to explore it! They try to get in there before it all goes south, and they unleash some weird crustacean monster who kills everybody.

This one didn't have anything particularly new to offer, so I'll explain some of its merits. The film features Miguel Ferrer, who always seemed to play an asshole, but he did it well. He must have been an asshole in real life to play it so convincingly. It also dealt with de-pressurization and featured a good way of taking advantage of that. Gnarly shit.

The monster was pretty goofy and the characters were bland, so I can't say much else about this one. It came out first though (January), then Leviathan (March), and then The Abyss (August), so they all got better as they went along.