Dark Breed

There sure are a lot of panes of glass destroyed in this PM production, involving a bunch of astronauts coming back from space infested with evil aliens hell bent on taking over the Earth. The leader of the aliens is Mike from Breaking Bad, but, you see, he's also still a good guy underneath.

Their former Captain is out to track them down, along with his ex-wife (who also has an alien in her), some evil G-men, etc etc. It's a PM film, and therefore chock-full of car chases, explosions, and a rather large amount of people being thrown through panes of glass.

I was expecting this to be your usual run of the mill 'people running around a warehouse being chased by aliens' film, that only really happens at the end (and via a flashback also). When the aliens do appear, they are rather, eh, Predator like, but I wasn't complaining as they laid waste to all the G-men.

Throw in some mild gore, loads of gunfights, some not bad car chases, and plenty on nineties cheese and you have all you need to pass the time while you're waiting to die.

One thing: In some scenes the alien contact lenses seem to have been inserted incorrectly.

Actually, things explode a lot! Much of the film's budget must have gone on explosives, cars explode, buildings explode, everything explodes at some point....

The special effects are pretty well staged for a low-budget,straight to DVD/video but the plot gets a bit lost in all the smoke. And I couldn't help feeling there was a really good story trying hard to get out along the way. I would have preferred the film to concentrate on the characters a bit more rather than just sketching them as one dimensional stereotypes. The film was at it's most interesting when it went into 'conspiracy theory' territory.

Sadly, most action films are judged on their special effects these days and if you want a film with lots of action, albeit it all a bit pointless at times, this will suit you fine.

If there is ever Dark Breed 2, be nice to have more story and less explosions.

While I had never seen, nor actually ever heard about, this 1996 sci-fi thriller movie titled "Dark Breed", I have to say that the movie's synopsis sounded interesting enough to make me sit down and watch it, as I had the opportunity to do so here in 2025.

But while the synopsis made the movie sound interesting, writer Richard Preston Jr. Failed to live up to that promise. The storyline in the movie was bland and rather dull, devoid of anything overly interesting. And it was quite a drag to sit through 104 minutes of this ordeal.

There are some familiar faces on the cast list, especially if you watched movies during the 1980s and 1990s, with the likes of Jack Scalia, Cindy Ambuehl, Jonathan Banks, Carlos Carrasco and George 'Buck' Flower. And while the script was subpar, I will say that the acting performances were fair enough.

Visually, the movie was okay. It wasn't impressive special effects, but they were fair enough.

"Dark Breed" was a swing and a miss of a movie, and it is not one that I will be returning to a second time.

My rating of director Richard Pepin's 1996 movie "Dark Breed" lands on a four out of ten stars.

1996 was a busy year for the protagonist of this film as its leading star, 1980's TV heartthrob actor Jack Scalia, a Brooklyn native of Italian descent, featured in not one but two somewhat obscure sci-fi films; 'Dark Breed' and 'The Silencers'. Both of these films suffer from the same problem, that is of having an interesting concept for the story and narrative but which are adapted amateurishly on film.

The plot's tagline for this film is: 'Six astronauts are infected by an alien organism.' Doesn't that sound cool? Well, yeah, but what we have in 'Dark Breed' is anything but. Despite featuring a number of handsome and pretty actors and actresses in its cast, this film never manages to bring out the potential of anyone of them. The editing is poor, and while there are some effects, they do not look at all convincing. The thing is, despite all of this, I do not think that 'Dark Breed' is horrible in any way either. It is certainly mediocre, sure, but I reserve the title of terrible or horrible for films which insult my intelligence or which make me want to stop watching. At least I watched this film until the end and nothing about it was insulting.

'The Silencers', Jack Scalia's other sci-fi film of 1996, is better than this one because for all its mistakes, at least it was not as tedious as this film. With better editing, 'Dark Breed' could have been a memorable sci-fi film, but as it is, it is nothing better than a mediocre and forgettable sci-fi film which, while not terrible in any way, is nothing if not mediocre.

Remember Mad Libs? I just know that they have one where you insert the names and they crank out canned dialog that is appropriate to movies like this. Sorry, Richard, but you need to stay on strike as this script is atrocious! The only good thing about this movie is the special effects and the fireworks. There was lots of loud explosions and numerous bullets expended in the making of this film. There were some really neat effects as the parasites took control of the astronauts. The creatures were nifty. That's it, folks.

If your toenails are clipped and you've nothing else to do, it will pass for some excitement. Just don't listen to the crappy clichés throughout. They'll make you groan.