There are a great many movies I have seen only because they were featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or Rifftrax. It is rarer to see a movie deserving of, but has yet to receive, that treatment. Such is the case with 1989’s Alien from the Deep.
And that isn’t to say there’s a lack of entertainment value to be found in this Italian-made sci-fi/adventure movie filmed in the Philippines. For the most part, this is a competently made film, which makes the batshit plot, poor dialogue and subpar special effects that much more baffling.
The picture begins with two Greenpeace members sneaking onto an island where an evil corporation will do anything to protect their secret operations. I guess they’ll resort to anything shy of eliminating the many people who live there, including the indigenous people, a missionary and a man who collects snake venom. The company isn’t worried about any of these people, but they will readily open fire on any boat that approaches the shore.
This complete disregard of logic amazes me. The guy who collects snake venom (Daniel Bosch) says he sells it for big bucks to pharmaceutical companies, but how does he deliver the product to them if the island is under siege from a military-style operation? The missionary lives in a stunning, multi-story treehouse that is like something out of Swiss Family Robinson. He definitely isn’t conducting a covert operation, so why is he allowed here? How do supplies get to him and the natives?
As for the natives…hoo boy. These poor souls wear giant African masks of the like I haven’t seen since misguided adventure movies of the 1950’s. And yet, they are simultaneously wearing jeans and corduroy slacks.
E-CHEM, the evil corporation controlling the island, is dumping nuclear waste into an active volcano, sending a beam of pure energy into outer space. I would think they would simply dispose of waste through any method possible, and a volcano does not sound like the best receptacle. And that “beam of pure energy” bit is stupefying. I wasn’t sure if that was the goal or just a side effect. Whatever the intention, it isn’t mentioned again.
This is twice as weird when one takes into account the title has “alien” in it. Seems to me, a beam of energy shot into space might summon a visitor from there but, no, the creature actually comes through the ocean floor. This happens far later into the picture than I would have expected. I wasn’t keeping track, but it felt like an hour has passed before it is introduced. Even then, it feels like a subplot.
The most we see of the alien for the most part is one huge arm of the thing, which ends in a claw. We will see only that one arm so many times that I was reminded of the giant hand used throughout Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. It’s like, “Godammit, we dropped a bundle for this giant claw and we’re gonna show the shit outta it!”
One weird aspect of that appendage is it has some sort of industrial tubing as its exoskeleton. I know they were ripping off Giger’s design for Alien, but I started to get the impression this was meant to be some sort of mechanical creature (or, at least, a hybrid of organics and mechanics). This feeling was compounded by the jets of steam that always accompany appearances of this creature, as if it is somehow both the xenomorph and the Nostromo from that movie.
When we do get to see the alien in its full splendor, it is genuinely impressive. Although miniatures were used for some brief shots, the entire thing stands a couple of stories tall. This is only at the end of the movie, and most of what we had seen up to this point had set the bar very low. Probably the worst effect is a rumbling volcano that looks like a child’s unsuccessful entry in a science fair.
That isn’t too say it is a badly made film. On the contrary, it is surprisingly well-shot. It is almost as if it was made by highly competent technical people who weren’t used to directing actors and writing dialogue.
This is evident through such bizarre dialogue as: “Don’t touch me, you snake squeezer! You’re all alike!” All snake squeezers are alike? In what way? How many does the speaker know, anyway? On the other, that guy is pretty strange, as he spits tobacco at snakes as a deterrent. “Hurry! There’s enough snakes down there that it would take a whole plantation of chewing tobacco to keep them away.” It’s like this picture was scripted not only by people whose first language isn’t English, but by aliens doing an anthropological study of the human race from a very far distance away.
There is one aspect of this production I must give unqualified praise for, and that is the use of great locations, wherever this was filmed. One especially interesting location is a tunnel with a seemingly impossible number of chains hanging from the ceiling, as well as innumerable ones covering the floor.
Alien from the Deep is not a good movie, exactly, but my standards are lax enough that I found plenty to enjoy here. It has a certain “making it up as we go along” vibe that won me over–almost as if somebody took a rambling story told by a group of kids and then made a movie out of it. I just wish those kids had known how to write better dialogue.
Dir: Antonio Margheriti
Starring nobody in particular
Watched on Severin blu-ray