Whether by coincidence or because something was in the water, 1989 featured one of those wonderfully weird instances in Hollywood history where multiple films with identical concepts are produced. “The Abyss” is king of these underwater romps, of course; it has the scope and depth you’d expect from James Cameron.
Next up is “Leviathan,” which leans into the horror, and rounding out the trio is a film that’s very similar to “Leviathan” but is actually a distinct movie, “DeepStar Six.”
Down to the C list
This story of a crew in a deep-sea habitat charged with setting up missile tubes for the U.S. military does not fare well in direct comparisons to its competition, but director Sean S. Cunningham is clearly trying. OK, so his “Friday the 13th” (1980) is more fun, but he’s more serious here. This is his bid at bigger filmmaking, and he doesn’t embarrass himself; he just doesn’t have the full toolbox to work with.
“DeepStar Six” (1989)
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Writers: Lewis Abernathy (screenplay, story), Geof Miller (screenplay)
Stars: Greg Evigan, Nancy Everhard, Taurean Blacque
The biggest area where “DeepStar Six” stumbles, oddly, is that it’s not particularly scary. The practical creature and gore effects are good but too sparse. So it doesn’t achieve the amusement value of “Leviathan.”
The script by Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller is concerned with building personalities, and it achieves this despite having a C-list cast (compared to “Leviathan’s” B listers and “Abyss’s” A listers). Miguel Ferrer went on to the biggest career, and he gets the juiciest role as Snyder, who becomes unhinged like Bill Paxton in “Aliens” but minus the great one-liners.
Everyone is reasonably good, though, and – drawing from his slasher roots – Cunningham makes sure to show off actresses Nancy Everhard, Nia Peeples and Cindy Pickett in tank tops as water leaks into the habitat on the ocean floor. As with “Star Wars,” brassieres do not exist in the reality of “DeepStar Six.”
The special effects are B-grade but effective at that level. I’m guessing composited model shots represent the vehicles, and perhaps a few bubbles give the illusion that we’re underwater. After the crew blows up part of the sea floor to reveal an ancient cave, “DS6” looks quite beautiful as we pan through the depths.
‘I did everything by the book, I followed my orders’
The way Cunningham builds mood is by the book. It’s so by the book that “DS6” isn’t as effective as it should be at increasing the tension; in fact, “The Abyss” has a scarier vibe and that’s not a horror movie. The first vehicle to encounter the creature just disappears from the sonar screen watched by their colleagues, with the victim yelling “Look at the size of that thing!” as his last words. Later, the scene where a crewman yells that there’s something in the airlock is pretty good.
When we finally see the monster, it’s well constructed – definitely better than the CGI creatures that would take over screens the following decade – but also so lumbering in its movements that it seems well-placed shark-hunting spears and machine-gun fire should finish it off.
One of the familiar deep-sea horror beats is someone rising to the surface before decompressing. The script perfectly sets up a head-exploding gag but doesn’t follow through on it, likely because of the strict ratings board of this era.
There’s a flatness to “DS6” because it’s always competent but never spectacularly good nor spectacularly bad. And then when I think deeper about the plot – such as “Why would the U.S. military outsource the placement of top-secret nuclear missile tubes?” – the film sinks further.
Still, it’s worth watching once as you do the “Abyss”-“Leviathan”-“DeepStar Six” trifecta to celebrate Hollywood’s weird underwater obsession in 1989. And besides, in the entire subgenre of deep-sea monster films, you can go lower than this.