Deep Space

My review was written in April 1988 after watching the movie on TWE video cassette. Something went wrong with "Deep Space", a horror send-up that reportedly went through extensive post-production reshooting and tinkering before its recent direct-to-video release. Finished product doesn't fit its title in the slightest. Both Chales Napier and Ron Glass are typecast as a couple of L. A. police detectives, partnered on a case when a monster from Outer Space crash lands and starts killing people. The monster was created by U. S. scientists for military research that went awry, with project director James Booth feeling the heat from his supervisor, a general played by Norman Burton.\ Pic is essentially a too literal, tired homage to Ridley Scott's modern classic "Alien", which already has been the model of several alien-on-Earth cheapies such as "Scared to Death" and "Alien Contamination". Helmer Fred Olen Ray goes to absurd lengths to mimic "Alien", including a scene of a guard calling for his kitty cat which is staged identically, the monster dripping KY jelly. It striking with the same rapid movement (but ropelike tentacles), having a young version that is shaped like an oversize scorpion (instead of the octopus look) and even a variaton of the chest-burster scene. It's all silly, not funny or scary. Cast includes numerous unimpressive cameos, including erstwhiel "Li'l Abner" star Peter Palmer popping up as a fellow copo; he has no scenes with his one-time co-star Julie Newmar, however. Lead players are okay, maintaining a flippant attitude. The monster vaguely resembles the beastie inserted at the climax of Jacques Tournueur's classic "Night of the Demon", and Napier ultimately wields a chainsaw against it.

Let me be up front about this; Deep Space marks the FIFTH horror or killer movie in a row that I've watched with a cop drama element. If it's one thing I hate in a horror movie, it's a police procedural plot or subplot. This is interesting maybe 1 in 10 times. So, forgive me if my score got skewed to reflect my experience, but in my defense, this movie's got it's share of other problems. First of all, I'd like to argue that none of Deep Space takes place in deep space. At all! No, this movie's about two cops, and the old stand-by, the government experiment superweapon, you know, cops want it dead, the government and scientists want it preserved. You heard me. I groaned when I heard this premise. There are cops, lots of cops, lead cop's (Charles Napier, at least nibbling the scenery) partner (Ron Glass) gets killed by a plastic creature... fortunately Napier's girl is also a cop. That's convenient. "Superweapon" spawns two baby superweapons, which cross Alien and The Thing... as does this entire flick. I've gotten off track. The biological weapon in question is being developed on some satellite... which takes two hours to crash to Earth. How far into "deep space" is 2 hours? I'm guessing, not very. Creature effects are limited to puppets, plastic models pulled on fishing line, and a guy (or guys) in a rubber suit. I guess I should point out this is a Fred Olen Ray picture, and one done for a major studio, no less! This surprised the hell out of me, I dunno, maybe he did more, but I've always known him as an indie exploitation filmmaker. I saw his name, and thought, At least there will be nudity! Boy was I ever wrong. On the other hand, I was NOT taken by surprise that this was a 100% wholly unoriginal studio picture. I can't think of a single thing to recommend about this movie, outside of Napier's gruff exterior? His bagpipe skills... provided by a synthesizer? I'm grasping at straws here. Oh, side note, Julie Newmar appears as a psychic, er, tipping off the police, probably filmed in another state, and impacting the plot in precisely NO way. Yup, cops fighting puppets and a guy in a rubber suit, with a government conspiracy biological weapon subplot (that actually gets forgotten), stealing liberally from Alien and The Thing, AND put out by MGM in 1988? I don't know how many producers lost money on this trash, but I don't feel bad for them.

source: Deep Space

~Spoiler~ Let me start by saying that I'm not a big fan of Fred Olen Ray. But I'm down with Charles Napier and Bo Svensen. So I had to give this one a spin. I was very surprised to find this film is more serious than Ray's usual outings. Deep Space (not sure about that title considering the movie does not take place in space) is a bit of an Alien rip off...if the Alien had come to earth. The creature design, which was actually really cool, had shades of Giger's own design. In fact, think "Alien" with more teeth and an overbite. It carries around a strobe light too. It's offspring are well-done also. Other than the monster's design, do you remember that scene in Alien where Harry Dean Stanton goes looking for the cat? You will see that exact scene in Deep Space involving a security guard. On the plus side of the film, the acting is top notch. Like I said, Charles Napier and Bo Svensen are carrying this one so no worries there. And the film's highlight is Napier taking a chainsaw to the creature's guts and blood spewing directly into his mouth-Evil Dead style! Yeah. So, why didn't I really like it? Well, there are a lot of characters that are not needed and there is not much closure. What was up with Julie Newmar's psychic character? And what happened to the seedy government guys? They are the guys you want to see the creature rip apart the most and nothing happens to them. It's like Ray and co-writer Lankford just forgot about them. Maybe they ran out of money or something. Oh well, it's a thousand times better than The Alien Dead.

This movie has some good actors in it. Not marquis names, but people you've heard of. Charles Napier, Ron Glass and Julie Newmar. And for some reason, they are doing a movie that rips off the Alien Movies for no good reason. So, a satellite crashes on Earth, and releases an alien monster that proceeds to kill people. It's mostly about a pair of cops who don't play by the rules (Napier and Glass) investigating this incident, but we also have a group of shadowy government people who mostly stay a room with some consoles, and a psychic played by Julie Newmar, probably because they got her for a day and didn't know how to use her in the film. The real star of this film is the badly done copy of the alien movies, which includes a "facehugger" a "chestburster" and an adult form, but we are totally not ripping off the Xenomorphs from Alien. Ridley Scott and James Cameron had the good sense to hide their aliens to make them more menacing. This movie doesn't show that level of sophistication. They just stick the alien in early on.

A prime example of Fred Olen Ray's no-budget output, this cheerful but tacky sci-fi romp happily rips off the film ALIENS so thoroughly that you'll be astonished nobody sued. DEEP SPACE is enjoyable enough to watch in a brainless way and is pretty entertaining for a "bad" movie, but serious film fans should look elsewhere for their entertainment as this movie is extremely constrained by the lack of budget. The dialogue has obviously been written in a hurry, with lots of silly jokes that fall flat whilst even the serious dialogue is fake-sounding. However, there's a lot of action which keeps the film moving at a fast pace, so much so that the lack of budget is readily disguised for a lot of the time. The film opens with a bad animation of "something" falling to earth and its here that the clichés begin. Everything is clichéd about this film, from the characters to their actions to the situation and the dialogue. You have the pair of lovestruck teenagers who inadvertently become the first victims, the old drunk hermit who nobody believes, and the two unconventional cops always getting chewed out by their by-the-book captain. Thankfully the film is pretty tongue-in-cheek too and never takes itself too seriously, realising that the audience won't either. This makes it more enjoyable than you might expect. The slimy alien monster is a total rip-off of the Queen in ALIENS, except that it looks a lot more fake and is less animate. Even the teeth and jaws are the same. The method of death for most victims is to be grabbed by silly-looking tentacles and then 'splattered' to death. The film isn't particularly gory, instead slimy, and every death seems to end with someone's guts getting sprayed across a wall in loving detail. There are some bloody body parts and also a single severed head (of a guy who looks like Einstein) in there too for good measure. Not content with having just one monster, whoever devised this garbage also decided to throw in two decidedly uncute alien baby critters in too, which kind of look like big scorpions and menace women in ill-fitting negligees. That these are "inspired" by the facehuggers in ALIENS goes without saying - they even jump to attack people in the exact same fashion. Charles Napier takes the lead role of the rugged rebel cop and he's actually very good, and it is he who makes the film watchable. Napier exudes a gruff charisma and his character - although deeply clichéd - is impossible to dislike. That's good, because the supporting cast is populated by cardboard characters and good actors giving bad performances. Ann Turkel (HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP) has the thankless task of being the female love interest (lured into bed with bagpipes no less) while the slumming Bo Svenson is the hard-as-nails police captain. As usual, Ray populates minor roles with once-famous stars such as Julie Newmar or that B-movie stalwart, Anthony Eisley, who is the victim of one of those "wall-splatterings" I mentioned earlier. If you think about it, nothing much actually happens during the course of this movie, other than Napier fighting teenage robbers (cue exaggerated car crash) and assorted aliens. The end of the film takes place in one of those empty factories so beloved of the horror and action genres and openly rips off ALIEN, as one security guard searches for a cat while slime drips from the ceiling and a monster attacks from behind. Still, you've gotta love the over-the-top finale which sees Napier battling the beast with a chainsaw while Svenson goes at it with a crowbar, an axe, not to mention the arsenal of weaponry that he and Napier use on the creature. It's that kind of movie. DEEP SPACE is a pretty poor film, but its never boring and Napier is good value as the lead, so genre fans may well get a kick out of watching it.

Maverick detectives Ian McLemore (Charles Napier) and Jerry Merris (Ron Glass) find a routine investigation of the death of two teenagers takes a twist when they discover the killer is some kind of mutant alien thingy created by the U.S. Government. Naturally, whatever they do pisses off Capt. Robertson (Bo Svenson, proving he really isn't Napier in real life) and interferes with McLemore's plans on bedding young police woman Carla Sandbourn (Ann Turkel). Just kidding, he has mad bag piping skills that get her to take her clothes off (really!). This low-rent ALIEN rip-off from Fred Olen Ray works mostly due to the lead performance by Napier. He is genuinely funny and totally game for the crazy stuff he is asked to do (chasing mini-aliens around L.A.; chainsawing the monster in the finale). And the aforementioned seduction by bagpipe is truly something you've never seen before. Ray skimps on the gore and nudity (odd for him) but does deliver a nice gooey monster (which apparently comes with its own strobe light). Julie Newmar pops up for a few scenes as a psychic who is always calling McLemore with tips on where the alien is. Nice way to cover your holes, Fred.

Alien spin-off I love these str8 to video monster movies. You can always guess what inspired them. In this one somebody saw the movie ALIENS with the space marines who-haaaing it up around the spacecraft. They decided it would be cooler if the alien crash landed on earth and a salt and pepper "MIAMI VICE" cop team had to deal with it. Wrong, nothings cooler than space marines win a run gun-battle with Alien creatures on a space station. However there were some cool points to be had. This film is so old the clothes are now in style again. The men in black show- up, there were using them long before the x-files. There's a scene in his apartment where he's grabbing every hi-tech gun there is but a GSG-9 only because it wasn't invented yet. This scene rivals the TERMINATOR gun store scene.

A Government experiment from space just landed somewhere in L.A., it's a horde of alien pods that unleashes monstrous baby creatures including one huge mother-^%&$^%&* that go around the city killing people in the alleys and neighborhoods, it's up to a rookie cop ( played by Charles Napier from "Jury Duty", " Rambo-First Blood part II" and " Silence of the Lambs") to stop these monsters. Pretty much decent for a low-budget Sci-fi flick that changes the whole Cops-and-Robbers theme to Cops-and-Aliens instead, some of the acting is stiff but there is a good apperence by Batman: The Series's Julie Newmar and a cool looking more that makes this an entertaining movie worth checking out. If you liked " Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn" and " Bad Taste" then this is for you. 6/10.

The late, great character actor Charles Napier, a favourite of filmmakers Jonathan Demme and Russ Meyer, here has one of his rare leading roles. He plays Ian McLemore, your standard-issue rule-breaking, maverick police detective. He and his partner Jerry Merris (Ron Glass of 'Barney Miller' fame) pick up the trail of a monster that's crashed to Earth. But this is no actual extraterrestrial; it's a predatory life form that was designed by the government for use as a biological weapon. Various G-men try to stymy McLemores' efforts as he vows to find and destroy the rampaging, slime-spewing creature. Afforded a relatively bigger budget than was usual for him, veteran B movie director Fred Olen Ray shows us a pretty good time with this one. It's knowingly cheesy stuff; the actors stop short of winking for the camera, but there IS a definite tongue-in-cheek quality to the whole script (written by Ray and T.L. Lankford). Some of the lines ARE pretty dopey. And Ray & company lightly poke fun at the conventions of the genre with their inclusion of various cliches (such as the hard-driving boss (Bo Svenson) who demands results). The body count is modest, but the monster is appropriately gnarly, the pace is good, and the movie generates some genuine chuckles along the way. It also features a unique seduction scene, as McLemore literally charms the pants off of hottie cop Sandbourn (Ann Turkel, "Humanoids from the Deep") by donning a kilt and playing the bagpipes. As was often Rays' style, he packs the cast with a number of familiar faces, some from B movies of old, like Anthony Eisley ("The Wasp Woman"), Norman Burton ("Bloodsport"), Michael Forest ("Beast from Haunted Cave"), Elisabeth Brooks (the temptress from "The Howling"), James Booth ("Avenging Force"), Fox Harris ("Repo Man"), and Rachel Howard (Chili in "Friday the 13th Part III"). Julie "Catwoman" Newmar plays a psychic lady who has to try to convince authorities that her information has merit. The engaging Napier, all full of swagger, has good chemistry with both the sexy Turkel and the amiable Glass. "Deep Space" is no great shakes, but then it's not even *trying* to be. It's merely good, straightforward entertainment that gives fans of the genre a good show for 91 reasonable minutes. Seven out of 10.