El secreto del arrecife

I found this on Tubi and watched it over the course of a week because I'd always put it right before bed and usually fall asleep a few minutes into it. I was expecting a talk fest with little action, but once I watched the whole thing, I found a pretty decent low-budget movie. The acting is serviceable, the plot is alright, and there's plenty of action and decent practical special effects. Worth a watch for fans of science fiction B-Movies.

The underwater sub called Syren 1 is disappeared at a depth of 30.000 feet , and his designer named Wick (Jack Scalia) is sent down by NATO (main chief played by Edmund Purdom) to investigate it . The mission on board a sub called Syren 2 is commanded by a stiff captain (R. Lee Ermey) , the crew is formed by a misfit group (Ray Wise , John Toles Bey , Emilio Linder , Ely Pouget , Frank Braña) and a scientific (Deborah Adair) , former Wick's love interest . Tracking a black box signal , the submarine heads to the deep rift where they find several surprises and dangers . The danger below is now the danger within . 'You Can't Hold your Breath & Scream at the Same Time'

This Sci-Fi/fantasy movie packs a blending of various films , as the deep rift with astonishing monsters (Leviathan , Deepstar six) , a crew saboteur (Alien) , a giant mother of creepy monsters (Aliens) and abysmal underwater mystery with weird beings (Abyss) . Acceptable interpretation and good acting by Lee Ermey , as always , who brings nice performance as a stiff-upper-lip commander , his usual role . The passable secondary cast is full of Spanish actors , such as : Frank Braña , Luis Lorenzo , Tony Isbert and even Pocholo Martinez Bordiú , grandson of dictator Francisco Franco . Cheesy but enjoyable special effects and creatures by Colin Arthur (The Neverending story) . Scale models and functional maquette work by Emilio Ruiz del Rio and Francisco Prosper . Atmospheric and colorful cinematography by Juan Marine , Juan Piquer's ordinary cameraman . Thrilling and adjusted musical score by Joel Goldsmith , Jerry Goldsmith's son . It's produced in middling budget by Francesca DeLaurentiis , daughter of the great Dino . Francesca hired David Coleman to rewrite a 250 pages draft by Colin Wilson . At the beginning the yarn was set in outer space in an earlier draft of the storyline but then was subsequently deemed an underwater setting , providing more stirring and fantastic scenarios . After producing Leviathan (1989) for about $40 million , Dino De Laurentiis , albeit uncredited, decided to finance for his daughter Francesca this medium budget version of his own bigger budgeted movie .

The picture was professionally directed by Juan Piquer Simon (Slugs , Pieces , Extraterrestrials visitors , Supersonic Man), and also producer . The principal shooting for this film lasted eight weeks . Moreover , an additional editing for fourteen weeks was spent by shooting the special effects being carried out by Colin Arthur and Emilio Ruiz Del Rio . Rating : Average but entertaining.

I liked the film overall. OK, I admit the acting (except for Lee Ermey at the end) was uniformly bad. The idea of a land ledge deep down in the ocean was pretty neat. Sure there were stupid mistakes, but hey this is a movie. Look, late at night I prefer mindless monster movies. Another good thing was they didn't try to make Jack Scalia too much of a macho hero. And they didn't make too much romance. When you're facing unheard-of-before monsters who has time to say silly romantic lines we see in so many other movies? There was some smartness in the plot, although I would have liked some more genetics mumbo-jumbo. The starfish monster was pretty good. I'd give it 5/10.

This film sucks on every level. Directing sucks, story sucks, actors suck, creatures suck, sets suck. It's just awful across the board. I didn't realize this film even existed and was the third underwater/monster movie of 1989 (Leviathan and Deep star 6 being the other two). The other two movies mentioned are like Citizen Kane compared to this one. Watch those two for a cheesy, but somewhat fun underwater monster movie. Dont watch this one...you'll never get that hour and half back in your life. It was free for me on Amazon, and i still want my money back.

Saw this as a kid 20 years later still like it. Not likely you will find this but if you do watch it. I've seen a 100 low budget flicks like this it is in the top few percentile. Has a weird cool 80s/90s movie feel mullets and all! Also full of above average gory special fx. If you like Carnosaur, critters or Leviathan you gotta see this.