Dark Breed

I've loved Jack Scalia's Trilogy of exciting PM Entertainment Sci-fi B-movies that include: T-Force, The Silencers & Dark Breed. Jack Scalia is near perfect leading man for the fun & fantasy worlds of B-movies, with his good looks, rugged voice & no-nonsense attitude he suits the material he does. Scalia produced these movies too which tells me he likes what he's doing & so do i. T-Force was Awesome & an easy 8/10 & The Silencers was also Awesome & an easy 8/10 & equally Awesome was Dark Breed, another 8/10 for B-movie goodness. These movies are perfect video era releases that are full of fun, action, excitement & lots of cool stuff. Here the slickly cool Jack Scalia plays Nick Saxon, a special government agent that gets called into action when a space shuttle returns to Earth carrying a team of infected astronauts, including Bad guy regular Jonathan Banks as Joseph Shay a friend of Nicks & also on board was Nick's ex-wife. The space shuttle is called Aquarius 7 & was on a top secret mission but ended up becoming a vessel for Extraterrestrials that have taken over their human hosts & are now in Los Angeles. There's a nice sense of the X-Files here with a dash of 90's Sci-fi Thriller elements scattered throughout like Species & Predator & Predator 2 & many more that come to mind whilst watching it. Jack Scalia is cool once again as the tough agent trying to track down & stop his old buddy & his team of infected creatures. There's a fantastic action-packed sequence set on a freeway at night that is just explosive action & excitement & i loved how Dark Breed is set mostly at night that gives the film a nice dark atmosphere that's full of that pure 90's cinematography that's blueish light & dark shadows & is very suited & effective here. The special effects are damn good for a 90's Low-budget DTV movie & the creature design is pretty awesome & reminded me a little of The Predator, but still different enough to stand out as a cool movie monster in it's own right. I liked the dark, wet & grubby urban setting of the docks & an old warehouses where nearly all the action takes place because the infected Astronauts are hiding out down there & i loved the pure old fashioned B-movie feel of the film complete with a nice 1950's love song used alot that gives the film a B-movie homage feel (like the cult classic Night of the Creeps) & even when the shuttle comes crashing down to earth it passes overhead a young couple kissing in a roofless car parked on the docks near the river & it was a perfect 50's B-movie setup & homage. Dark Breed is full of Conspiracy & monstrous killers & explosive action set pieces that keep it moving along nicely. I loved Dark Breed & Jack Scalia & his other two films!!! If you love B-movies & the fun type of flicks that you would find on the video store shelves of the VHS era then you will like Dark Breed. Another decent job by director Richard Pepin again!!!

*Mild spoilers* Back in the mid 90's, PM Entertainment put out a large number of highly entertaining straight to video action flicks. Producer Joseph Merhi usually also directed most of the standard action vehicles, while Richard Pepin would do the ones with a Sci-Fi theme (Cybertracker, The Sender, The Silencers etc.). Having really enjoyed The Silencers and both Cybertracker movies, I decided to give Dark Breed a go. It also had Jack Scalia in the lead, who did a fine job in his other movie with Richard Pepin, The Silencers. Dark Breed has all the usual elements of an entertaining actioner with a Sci Fi theme. Car chases, gun battles, explosions, the PM trademark of tons of glass breaking and this time, some very decent looking special effects for the time, especially for DTV material. So if you like that sort of stuff, what is there not to like? Looking at the credits, I noticed some of the people responsible for the FX went onto do FX in several big budgeted productions. It appears that Pepin has probably blown a large amount of the budget around that and not bothered to build a competent movie around it. The single biggest flaw about Dark Breed is basically the fact that it just isn't that interesting to watch. As previously mentioned, everything is there but what made the other PM movies so much fun all seems watered down or poorly handled. It all starts off well enough, with 2 young lovers in a car and a ship coming and landing in the lake beside them. The effects here are neat, and then we're treated to a reasonable chase scene where the "Alien parasites" hijack a truck carrying a mobile home with a good number of smashes and a big explosion at the end. However, it all goes downhill from there. The pace is sluggish, what is only 93 minutes long feels like much more. The cast seems to be completely lacking in any kind of enthusiasm, and just provides "Can I have my paycheque now?" performances. The gunfights are all very, very dull and the fact that they're all set among warehouses and wastegrounds doesn't help. About 45 minutes into the movie, we're treated to a car chase involving Jack Scalia being pulled along on a satellite dish by a van while being pursued by the villains. The camera angles are well done, the stunts are excellent and we're treated to some nice explosions involving a van and several cars. However, what mostly ruins this scene is the fact that the weather changes between each cut, at first the sun is shining, then the road appears wet at one point, then towards the end the sun is shining again. It's only a minor glitch, but one which could have been easily avoided and only cheapens the look of the movie. So you probably get the picture of what "Dark Breed" is like. It's not a bad movie, but when there's so many other movies which do similar, and do it better, I can't think of any reason to recommend Dark Breed. If you're going to see a PM movie, this isn't the one to start with. Try Executive Target, Rage or Last Man Standing. If you want one of their Sci-Fi themed movies, try The Silencers or CyberTracker. If Dark Breed is on TV, give it a go, just don't go out of your way to find it.

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.

Sh!t from outer space keeps crashing onto earth at the start of this movie. First a spaceship with evil alien parasite-infected astronauts. Then a cocoon-canister with alien eggs. Then another lifepod thing with a female astronaut inhabited by a good alien. The female is the ex-wife of Jack Scalia, and he is the star and co-producer of this thrill-ride sci-fi/horror action-fest (okay, I'm exaggerating things a little bit here). Scalia & his alienized ex-wife have to team up to stop the evil astronauts, as they are here to take over the world (with the bunch of eggs helping them to inevitably create an alien army). There's one cool car-chase sequence early on in the movie (actually, it's a truck-chase sequence and why those aliens decided to steal a truck is beyond me). The rest of the film contains a lot of shooting and military folks running around. The special effects are passable, some highlights: the space shuttle crashing in the harbor, a pretty gory autopsy sequence and two nifty rubber suited aliens near the end. At one point or another, "Dark Breed" might remind you of films like "The Hidden" (good alien teaming up with a human to kill the bad aliens) and perhaps even "Predator" (the facial design of one of the evil aliens). Needles to say those are far better movies than "Dark Breed". But it gains an extra point for blowing up a lot of things.

Can't believe these actors signed on for this. Guy wearing an Air Force full service uniform shooting a bazooka...I think not. Not to mention the bazooka is a 2-man weapon....Story points are not made clear; e.g., why the possessed astronauts are standing in the middle of the road, waiting for a truck that's hauling a mobile home. Maybe they were just waiting for someone to stop, I don't know. These were good, reputable actors, relegated to a movie that relied on stunts and special effects instead of telling a story. The basic premise is fine, but there's only so far that suspension of belief will go, and this movie requires you to go way beyond it. Could it have been done better? I think so. Use the same actors, get a better writer, and you might have a decent movie.

Nick Saxon (Scalia) is an ex-Special Forces Vietnam veteran (of course), so when a crew of astronauts returns infected with an alien virus, naturally Saxon is the first person the government calls to stop the spread of these body-snatching interlopers (wonder where they got that idea...). So Saxon and his team are working on stopping the astro-nuts, who predated the diaper-wearing astro-nut from the news of a few years ago by many years. But it's personal for Scalia, sorry, Saxon, because his buddy Joseph Shay (Banks) is one of the unfortunate astronauts taken over by an alien presence. Will Saxon don his Denim and Leather and come out victorious against the alien baddies? Judging by the fact that most of the scenes are too dark to see, Dark Breed is indeed an apt title. Or maybe they could have called it Dark Screen. Which leads us to the schizophrenic nature of this movie. The sci-fi scenes are dark (as if we haven't made that sufficiently clear yet), almost as if to hide their shame at making a sci-fi slog. But as for the action scenes, most of them are shot in daylight and are clearly and appropriately lit. That's normally the way with PM, but maybe they were experimenting with the "moodier" feel of the day, which was ahead of its time, as many movies and TV shows are severely underlit today. So if you're interested in seeing PM experiment with darkness, here is certainly a place to check that out. But we can't honestly say we're on board with it this time. Thank goodness for the plentiful muzzle flashes and blow-ups, because they provide the only light in many scenes. But the action is classic PM, with high-quality explosions, plenty of car stunts, and much gun-shooting. When it settles back into sci-fi territory, the movie inevitably slows down. But we're such PM fans, we had to see this movie, even though we don't like sci-fi slogs. But scenes like the highway chase where Scalia is riding along the back of a truck on an upturned satellite dish are vintage PM and start to turn the movie back in good graces. The scene is reminiscent of PM classic Last Man Standing (1996) and easily could have appeared in that gem. Plus you can actually see the scene, so it stands out from a lot of the rest of the proceedings. But the movie as a whole is a sci-fi actioner, kind of in the vein of Peacemaker (1990). So if you liked that, you might like this. Most of the dialogue consists of characters saying other characters' names repeatedly, almost reaching Airplane! (1980) levels at times. Of course, that's not when the aliens start making pig noises. Even though the aliens are supposed to be scary and malevolent, they sound like a mash up of Babe, Gordy and Arnold Ziffel in the midst of a slop fight. In other cast news Sal Landi, who has been in plenty of movies reviewed on this site, here plays "Zim" Zimmerman, also predating a certain news story. And fan favorite George "Buck" Flower even finds time to stop by in the midst of all the craziness. Tying it all together is Scalia, who looks like a stone statue carved of Treat Williams. In the end, this movie is at war with itself. It's sci-fi sloggery vs. tried-and-true action. If you don't mind your action punctuated by literally dark, boring scenes (or if you genuinely like sci-fi, which is also a possibility), you might be able to extract some enjoyment from Dark Breed.

A group of astronauts led by Joseph Shay (a nicely villainous portrayal by the always reliable Jonathan Banks) return from a failed space mission infected by lethal evil alien parasites that plan on destroying the human race. It's up to rugged Captain Nick Saxon (a solid and credible performance by Jack Scalia) to stop them before it's too late. Capably directed with considerable rip-roaring gusto by Richard Pepin, with a constant swift pace, a compact script by Richard Preston, Jr., several exciting well-staged action set pieces (the wild and explosive outbursts of vehicular carnage are especially stirring and impressive), fluid, agile cinematography by Ken Blakey, a few effectively gross moments of grisly splatter, engaging and well-developed main characters, a shuddery, rattling, rousing score by Louis Febre, and gnarly reptilian extraterrestrial monsters, this handy dandy multi-genre combo romp rates as a perfectly enjoyable and unpretentious serving of low-budget straight-to-video entertainment. The sturdy acting from a bang-up cast qualifies as another substantial asset: Scalia brings some depth and humanity to his tough guy part, Lance LeGault is his usual pleasingly nasty self as hard-nosed military bigwig Cutter, plus there's cool supporting turns by Felton Perry and Sal Landi as two of the infected astronauts, Robin Curtis as compassionate physician Marian, fetching blonde Donna W. Scott as Saxon's spunky ex-wife Deborah, Billy Maddox as Cutter's mean right-hand man North, Carlos Carrasco as the shrewd, likable Fox, Cindy Ambuehl as the feisty Burgess, and the ubiquitous George "Buck" Flower in one of his standard grubby old bum roles. A neat little flick.

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.

Some people take films far too seriously! Like most reviewers or critics for this, Dark Breed. I picked this up for just a pound and highly enjoyed what I got for it. Action packed from the get-go, Dark Breed is a sci-fi rip off from many Hollywood blockbusters, but it doesn't care, because it's got just as much action, if not more, complete with some incredible stunt work from everyone involved! Jack Scalia is just great. He isn't a bad actor, he just seems to have gotten trapped in B-movie hell, yet never fails to deliver. His role in Dark Breed is probably one of his best, and he pulls off the action hero greatly! Far from perfect, but highly entertaining if you remember not to take it all so seriously. Action fans should definitely check it out, as I feel its being sold more as a sci-fi movie than anything else, yet features some amazing stunt work that deserves to be seen!!

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.