Main cast: Taurean Blacque (Captain Phillip Laidlaw), Nancy Everhard (Joyce Collins), Greg Evigan (McBride), Miguel Ferrer (Snyder), Matt McCoy (Jim Richardson), Nia Peeples (Doctor Scarpelli), Cindy Pickett (Dr Diane Norris), Marius Weyers (Dr John Van Gelder), Elya Baskin (Doctor Burciaga), Thom Bray (Johnny Hodges), and Ronn Carroll (Osborn)
Director: Sean S Cunningham
Here’s a fishy tale. Between 1989 and 1990, Hollywood was suddenly awash with deep-sea monster movies. Yes, somehow, an entire school of producers got hooked on the idea of undersea terror. Maybe it was a dare to see who could sink the lowest at the box office? And indeed, every single one flopped (ahem) except for The Abyss.
DeepStar Six is one of the more obscure species in this wave of oceanic horror films, perhaps because it doesn’t have any A-list actors or even a creature that’s particularly memorable. We’ve got Miguel Ferrer, who, bless him, is perfect at playing that character everyone loves to hate, but he’s not exactly a marquee name.
The rest of the cast includes Greg Evigan, who’s here to be the ruggedly handsome Guy That Will Live to the Very End. His character’s girlfriend is pregnant with his kid, so guess which two will survive? I’m just saying, DeepStar Six isn’t exactly about to throw us a plot curveball.
In this movie, the crew of an underwater Navy facility accidentally unleashes a prehistoric sea monster while drilling on the ocean floor. Trapped and running low on resources, they scramble to survive the beast—and each other—as panic sets in and alliances dissolve faster than a scuba tank’s oxygen.
For most of the movie, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether they forgot they were making a creature feature. Instead, the focus is on crew dynamics, which are about as stereotypical as they come.
Yes, there’s the black guy who tragically doesn’t make it far, though not due to any monster attack—it’s just the result of a mechanical malfunction. We have Mr Ferrer’s character, Snyder, the guy you’d never want to be stuck with in a crisis. He’s the mechanic, but his panic-driven, downright careless actions actually cause more havoc than the sea monster ever does. Snyder’s antics rack up a body count faster than the creature—who, by the way, is mostly off-camera, probably waiting around for its cue like, “Hey, I am the monster, right?”
In fact, the creature doesn’t really make a splash until the final third of the film. And, oh boy, when it does appear, you kind of understand why they kept it in the shadows. We get standard-issue survivor vs monster fare here, but honestly, you almost miss Snyder at this point. Yes, he was a total screw-up, but he actually had depth, or at least a memorable death scene, compared to the rest of this crew, who flounder for character arcs.
By the end, DeepStar Six feels pretty ho-hum. There’s a reason it didn’t make waves and is largely forgotten today. That said, the movie does give us some time to get to know the characters enough that you do care a bit about their fates. Miguel Ferrer’s performance is the real catch; he singlehandedly steals the show and makes this sea-bound schlock memorable.
But honestly, here’s my biggest gripe: they cast Greg Evigan as the rugged, hunky hero of the hour, and they don’t even give him a shirtless scene? Talk about a bait-and-switch!
