Parasite

I caught this film late night back in the 90's, when this old low budget horror films were actually done very well. Only saw it the one time back in the day, but bought it recently and gave it another watch. It is a pretty good horror film set in space and I like the supernatural flair added to it. I know Event Horizon is also a supernatural horror set in space and I got that one too. Wanted Nightflyers, the 80's movie, but looks like that one has yet to be released on DVD. I know a lot of people hate that one, but I thought it was pretty cool and totally surprised I found this movie on DVD and not that one. This one is a bit less well known.

So the story pretty much starts quickly as it is the year 2022 (wow, next year) and a crew that repairs satellites armed with nukes has some complications. Let me reiterate that, it has complications right out of the gate as there is no chatting, no backstory for each crew member and no kitty cat...they should of brought a cat along! The ship's computer, which for reasons unknown is a sexy gal sitting in an office chair claims the ship is fine, but things are not fine as life support is failing! Another ship approaches, seemingly piloted by someone and they manage to get air from it and they find the corpse of a man and soon the crew of the imperiled ship begin getting taken over one by one as something sinister is at play!

The cast is pretty good, not an A list ensemble, but they definitely know what they are doing. The sets are pretty good too, a lot of the films around the time this film were made do a better job of creating a spaceship than they do now. Granted, there is no explanation as to why there is gravity in the space shuttle. I can chalk up the gravity in the main ship as because it is so futuristic, but not the shuttle that was apparently from 1992.

So, the film was good, a good atmosphere and the music accompanied it well. It pretty much shoots out of the gates as the crew is in trouble almost immediately. Some gore is present, but this film does not particularly rely on that, more on the whole paranoia thing as anyone could be harboring the evil except for the main guy whom we see pretty much all the time. The film is not the greatest piece of work, but it was entertaining for what it was.

I watched this movie on TUBI it's freaky and actually SPOOKY

The Dark Side of the Moon is a creepy but sometimes little stupid (storywise) space horror movie - we get the mark of the beast, the Bermuda Triangle, some space horror, a sexy AI/android. No doubt, this is a low budget B-movie but entertaining in that pulp fiction kind of way. Event Horizon (Paul W. S. Anderson, 1997) may have borrowed some ideas from this one, but is stronger in all aspects (acting, story, production). Anyway, if you want some space horror with a creepy atmosphere and you don't mind a B movie budget you may dare to lock your mind into this one.

It is the year 2022. A mysterious systems failure causes the crew of a spaceship to be stranded on the dark side of the moon...

While this is by no means one of the great science fiction films of our generation, it is unfortunately not easily obtained (although it is on Netflix). Some concepts here are rather clever, most notably the idea of bringing together the Bermuda Triangle and space travel... and then, even throwing in Satanic references, and still having it all make some kind of sense.

The gore was also quite good, though I was confused by the robot (Lesli). I understand she is sort of like the ship's computer and there to answer questions, and I think that makes sense (it sure seems to be common enough in science fiction). But I was confused why she had to be humanoid rather than just built in to the ship. If all she does is sit and talk, why have legs or arms, or even a face?

Dark Side is quite an original story and deserves a merit for being a well written sci-fi film, apart from inheriting a B movie 'feel' about it. It parallels nicely with Event Horizon and Sphere as a movie that fits into the "crisis on a ship" genre. Joe Turkel from Blade Runner is particularly worth watching out for and Leslie the computer has interesting links with HAL from 2001.