M.A.L. : Mutant aquatique en liberté

"DeepStar Six" is just another "Alien" clone, to be ranked with all "Alien" clones as just another time waster. This might be what it deserves, however, it can be noted as a few notches above other "Alien" clones for its excellent cast, which, even when the story and writing become pretty silly, sticks to it and keeps things running smoothly. The characters are pretty convincing as well, epecially for such low standards as this. And while most of the film is talkly and uneventful, I will proudly state that the last half hour are great and very tension-filled. I was very pleased with the climax, and even the monster was acceptable. If the whole film had been as surprising as gripping as the last half-hour, this might have been the greatest "Alien" clone around. Instead, it's just a pretty good, low-budget flick that's worth watching once or twice if it comes on cable.

**1/2 out of ****

The name Sean S. Cunningham will automatically always be attached to 'Friday the 13th'…his notorious teen-slasher that messed up the genre for good. Yet, Mr. Cunningham did do a few slightly more ambitious projects. This DeepStar Six is a semi-successful undersea-monster mash with surprisingly good acting, decent special effects and a couple of good old-fashioned scary moments. The film deserves a reasonable rating, slightly higher than all other lame and laughable Ridley Scott and James Cameron wannabes. The plot involves an 11-headed crew that is about to finish up a 6-month research at the bottom of the ocean. When exploring the ocean floor, they accidentally stumble upon a hideous and relentless monster. Like it usually is the case in this type of films, it takes a little while before you actually get to see the monster. By that time, human stupidity already exterminated half of the cast…. Granted, the monster itself is one ugly critter and not at all badly put together by the special effects department.

But…let's not praise this film too much, because it simply remains a rather anonymous 80's monster movie like we've seen them so many times before already. Not one action presented here isn't inspired by or similar to the ones featuring in other films and every character is a flawless stereotype. The performances given by the entire cast actually outshine the roles they're playing. Highlight of them all is Miguel Ferrer who portrays the typical, cowardly crewmember. Constantly complaining and arguing at first and when the monster shows up…he flees to and leaves his colleagues to their own device. Every monster flick stars a bastard like that, you know. As well as the super-intelligent and over-ambitious female scientist and the heroic captain who sacrifices himself in order to save his crew. If you ignore these inevitable weaknesses, you'll certainly have fun. You get what you expect, and that doesn't necessarily have to sound like a bad comment.

The late eighties were full of Aliens rip offs and this is one of the better versions. Obviously it was never gonna be as good as it's more illustrious brother but it's not a total waste of time. An underwater team are exploring the bottom if the ocean when they discover what could be a mysterious cavern. Some of the crew want to explore it but the teams leader wants to plant detonators to collapse the cavern. This is a bad idea as soon creatures appear from the cavern and it's now a battle of the fittest, or most sane to be honest.

It's not a terrible movie, it's just not good enough to be classed as great. The cast are ok but it's pretty obvious who is going to survive so the tension is not a great as it could've been.

I don't see why people keep on trashing this movie which has no more shortcomings or implausability than most blockbusters.

Maybe because, as everybody seems to think, everything that has no big stars and isn't the latest multi-billion brainless disaster can't be good ? This one is more disaster movie than monster movie, since the giant crab is only one amongst many problems the survivors has to face. Nothing great, nothing to lose sleep over, just cheesy B fun. So why all this hate when "Leviathan" was a bigger-budgeted but even more stupid and derivative heap of ....

Okay, it's no The Abyss or anything, but for a knock-off of a knock-off, it's pretty damn decent.

The effects, though pretty low budget, are nonetheless well done. The creature design is pretty cool. The characters are likeable and well-written enough to keep me invested in what was happening.

It's no game changer to be sure, but if you're looking for some b-movie monster fun, you could certainly do much worse than this.