Dark Breed

This is an Alien copycat that doesn't have scary monsters and the plot is mixed up. The astronauts inhabited by aliens for some reason are only inhabited part of the time. Why? I don't know and it doesn't matter. You know they are inhabited because they all of a sudden speak in a stupid computerized "scary" voice that isn't scary. The astronauts go places, but it doesn't matter. Then, they rip off the Terminator by having another alien that can kill them. By this time you are extremely bored and don't care. There are, however, lots of explosions. And there is the obligatory "man running away from large explosion just ahead of the leaping flames" scene. Yawn.

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.

As I'm an eager Sci-Fi fan I used to buy every single DVD in this special genre, even if the picture had a bad reputation like Dark Breed a kind of unabashed Terminator alien mimicry, to worsen this weirdo offer has an unbelievable plot, countless blasting, gooey and primitive especial effects.

Aquarius 7 is a Nasa's Project something similar Columbia in outer space, it sudden coming back with the almost whole crew infected by invaders aliens self-called accursed race, except by a superior alien protector embodies in Aquarius's female member Burgess (Cindy Ambuehl) former wife of the Captain Nicholas Saxon (Jack Scalia) who is in charge of rescue the Aquarius 7's crew that landing in a harbor area.

His old friend Joseph Shay (Jonathan Banks) the commander and other five members are tainted by alien organism inside their bodies in process of development, the Nasa commander Cutter (Lance LeGault) demands catch the parasite-hosts in order to study them, the alien invaders put the eggs on the Aquarius 7's capsule that will incubates the eggs in 39 hours, spreading news alien to take over the whole planet, they must find out it and destroy and the time is running out.

It's a shameless hybrid facsimile of Terminator-Alien and others related Sci-Fi pictures, also overdone blasting, myriad machine gun fire, street chases in iron parabolic antenna that in contact with asphalt did not lets out a single spark, slime alien as usually done by others movies, whoever wrote the script certainly was drunk or had smoke mari-juana, anyway a farfetched entry.

Resume:

First watch: 2023 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 4.5.

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.

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.