Dead Space

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

The plot,as it were,has Marc Singer as a character called Captain Krieger who along with his robot,er,Tinpan (Rodger Hall), zooms about the universe doing not a very lot,it would seem.Until,that is,he answers a distress call from a research facility by the name of Phaebon,where a potentially lethal virus has been discovered.Before long,all manner of hell has broken loose and the virus (that,by the end,has somehow inexplicably taken the form of a giant monster) must be stopped.

Only 70 minutes long.Only 10 characters featured.Yet Dead Space still manages to be a total Dead Zone of a film.

I was enticed to view this very obvious B movie on account of a nice looking cover of a skeleton in a spacesuit.Needless to say,none of the characters featured are ever seen in spacesuits and neither are any of the characters astronauts.Misleading advertising or what?

And the actual film itself is nothing worth watching,despite it's (extremely) compact running time,with it's droll script,bland characters and special effects that could be bettered by the standards of a Wrigley's Spearmint Gum advert.

Tinpan was cool,but that was a robot who belonged in a much better movie.Actually,he's a very,very poor man's C-3PO,but I've got a thing for robots (nothing sexual,but,you know).

12 year old DTV garbage is still garbage.Tinny and one mildly effective jump scene are the only reasons why I feel in any way lucky to have seen what should by rights be in it's DTV grave yard by now.*

The filmmakers apparently had enough money to be able to afford decent makeup effects, but not enough for a creature that would move around and attack convincingly. We never get a chance to see the "monster" move from one place to another - whenever that happens (supposedly), the camera focuses on the "terrified" reactions of the humans that are nearby. And when a man is attacked by it, he simply seems to be holding an inanimate object against himself so that it won't fall to the ground. This is still not the worst "Alien" rip-off around (the two "Xtro" films are even worse, for example); it's actually sufficiently entertaining if you've got 68 (!!) minutes to spare. (*1/2)

I saw Alien. I loved Alien. Dead Space is no Alien. Take Alien and leave out Sigourney Weaver and other credible actors, remove artful direction by Ridley Scott, eliminate wonderful special effects, extract suspense, banish a sensible, thought-provoking script, exile any kind of passion in the material and you have this mess of a film called Dead Space. What a complete bore! Master thespian Marc Singer stars as the space vigilante out to help a space station in the middle of cheesy special-effects land. Soon due to biological testing, a metamorphic mutant is created to fight disease only it ends up becoming a behemoth of evil trying to kill every person alive. The mutant goes through several excrutiating special effect stages including an adolescent stage where it resembles not a little a mini-Godzilla. The film was a test of my endurance not to fall asleep or fast forward or turn the television off. Roger Corman produced this innate rip-off and he should be ashamed. At least if you are not going to use something original, try and do some justice to your source. The film is so bad that there is even a softcore sex scene which happens in a dream! The only dead space in this film was the 80 minute void that I can never replace! Whew! Bow Wow!

DEAD SPACE (1991) is your garden variety ALIEN rip-off about a remote research laboratory on a distant planet trying to find a virus to destroy another even more deadly contagion decimating mankind. They succeed, only to inadvertently create a xenomorph-style monster that quickly works its way through the assembled scientists. Right from the outset you get an outer space battle lifted from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS so you know this one's going to be cheap and cheerful, and it certainly is.

Muscle star Marc Singer (THE BEASTMASTER) is the hero come to save the day, complete with android sidekick, and amusingly enough BREAKING BAD star Bryan Cranston also features right at the outset of his career. There's a bit of sex, a bit of nudity, some gore and a rather stiff monster that's only seen briefly. Don't go expecting much from this one.

The first thing about "Dead Space" I couldn't help noticing immediately was the running time displayed on the back of the VHS-cover. It states 70 minutes! Okay here on the IMDb the running time is supposedly 80 minutes, but that probably includes trailers and/or full closing credits. 70 minutes is practically nothing. How can you possibly tell a proper Sci-Fi tale in such a short period? Well, see below this review for a couple of tips on how to make your film shorter, but usually it's not the best idea. But hey, "Dead Space" is a very redundant movie in general. It is more than obvious that this thing got made in probably even less than a week, under the strict surveillance of Roger Corman. It's a remake of "Forbidden World", which was released also by Corman not even ten years earlier. That movie was a shameless "Alien" rip-off, so basically "Dead Space" is the remake of a rip-off. Only Corman is shameless enough to make the exact same film twice and then still include footage from his other work, like "Battle Beyond the Stars". Marc Singer, who here looks like he might be Kevin Bacon's older brother, plays a lone space macho cowboy who arrives on the research facility planet Phaebon together with his pet-robot Tinpan after they picked up an S.O.S signal. He literally crash-lands amidst a group of scientists that are trying to develop a virus to destroy another virus; namely the lethal Delta-5 disease. Little problem, however, their anti- virus developed itself into a monster and finds pleasure in killing off the crew members. One of the main reasons why I liked "Forbidden World" so much was because of the awesomely cheesy monster design and special effects. That film had an amazing low-budgeted B-atmosphere going for it! "Dead Space" is also very low-budgeted and cheesy, but it never manages to bring forward the same irresistible charm or outrageous enthusiasm. I guess that's a privilege exclusively for 80's movies. The mutant monster looks like a clay dragon and the killings are very uninspired. This is one film that can easily be skipped, except of course if you're a sucker for cheap and amateurishly directed "Alien" rip-offs like there are literally hundreds of out there.

As promised, I'm going to reveal some tips about how to make your movie fit right into the 70 minutes limit. For example: combine sequences! Director Fred Gallo knows that every self-respecting Sci-Fi movie needs (A) a sex sequence, (B) a dream sequence and (C) a monster-bursting- through-the-chest moment. In "Dead Space", these three classic scenes are one and the same! The lead girl dreams she has sex with Marc Singers and witnesses the creature bursting through her chest right before waking up! Secondly, if you have a eight-headed cast but not the time to introduce them, start by killing two of them before the cause of the problem is even properly established. If you don't want to waste too much time on the remaining six neither, then make sure they live up to the most commonly known stereotypical trademarks of cinema. One of them needs to be an obsessed scientist who'll continue with the experiments no matter what, one of them needs to be an insufferable coward and you also need one strong female cast member to put the link with Ellen Ripley in "Alien". See, it's easy.