Dead Space

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!

So let me get this straight, Roger Corman for reasons only he himself knows decided to remake the film "Forbidden World". Not only did he remake it, he apparently decided to take out most of the nudity, make it less gory and make it a bit more talkative. Why? I am sure everyone out there would like an answer to this, but I am guessing he wanted to make a more serious version or something. This one is basically a lot less fun version, you have Marc Singer and his robot pal going to a planet cause an experiment has gone array. So yes, like "Forbidden World" only with all the fun stripped from it. It was not all bad as there was one rather good jump moment I was not expecting and there was a couple of good gore effects, but overall "Forbidden World" has this one beat in nearly every possible way. I mean the effects were even better in that one, as was the music. In that one it was a really nifty 80's sounding set of tracks while this was very forgettable. Stupid twists and the ending was not as cool either. That and another thing that made this film kind of hard to watch was the fact it featured more creature in the air vent scenes. I have watched a lot of horror movies the past few weeks and this theme is getting old. The monster does not look as good, the robot looks dreadful (though it did not look great in the original) just not enough here. Even the girls were more attractive in the other film. Though this film features one of the most unheroic moments I have ever seen near the end that had me chuckling too. Still, if I did not get this on a double feature set of movies along with "The Terror Within" I would be a bit more ticked off.

If I am to remember correctly this movie is not half bad until the alien 'hatches' then it goes so far downhill it'll make you feel like your on a rollercoaster.

One particular point sits in my memory, the 'alien' has just escaped and the scientists need to go to the surface for some reason. They make a big deal about how hostile the surface is and how no one could survive on it, but damn it he has to go out and fight the alien. Then they override the computer and open a hatch to ... the south western US! Now we get to see some dude in a suit walk around for like 5 minutes while they blow smoke infront of the camera to make you feel like your in an alien landscape. I believe you can even spot tire tracks on the ground and a rv in the back ground. Then we get a close up of the actor's face looking surprised, a close up of some purple weird dragon head going 'ROAAR' and then the scene of the dude running back to the hatch.

My friends in I had to break down and start laughing, it was one of the most inexplicatble sequences in film since the burlesque scene in Glenn or Glenda.

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)

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.*