DeepStar Six

    ‘The Abyss’ was only James Cameron’s fourth movie. Admittedly the second was ‘The Terminator’ and the third was ‘Aliens’ so the man was on a bit of a streak. Even so it’s surprising that the idea of ripping off his fourth movie before he could manage to finish it and rushing a product into theaters was as popular as it was. At least three other movies attempted a ‘Deep Impact’/’Armageddon’ type showdown in 1989. There was ‘Leviathan,’ ‘Lords of the Deep,’ and the first one to actually make it to theaters, ‘DeepStar Six.’ None other than ‘The Abyss’ made any money and none of them were any good either. I’m not really a fan of ‘The Abyss’ but it’s preposterously better than those others.

    Cameron’s production of ‘The Abyss’ was famously troubled and often delayed. Entire technologies had to be invented for filming underwater before they could even start production and near-disastrous complications kept forcing them to improvise and adapt on the fly. Cast members would famously have breakdowns and working conditions were such that although Cameron’s fascination with the ocean would only get stronger he has yet to again attempt to film extended sequences underwater without heavy use of CGI.

    When the broad outlines of what Cameron intended for his next movie, using his rising start clout to make his passion project, began to make the rounds other, less ambitious filmmakers started to nose around to see if they could get some of the gathering interest to rub off on them. ‘Lords of the Depp’ was made by reliable B-movie stalwart Roger Corman and frankly it would have been more surprising if he hadn’t made a rip off. ‘Leviathan’ was the ambitious one of the trio, featuring a much larger budget than the other two, a couple of then-hot Hollywood screenwriters in David Peoples and Jeb Stewart, and a decent cast with Paul Weller and Ernie Hudson. I have yet to see either of these movies but they don’t have great reputations.

    Then there’s ‘DeepStar Six,’ first out of the gate and shepherded into existence by Sean S. Cunningham, director of the first ‘Friday the 13^th’ and producer of many of the other movies in the series. Originally set to be directed by Robert Harmon, director of ‘The Hitcher,’ Cunningham stepped forward to direct it himself when he dropped out. It featured a first-time screenplay by Lewis Abernathy, who has also acted and even appeared in ‘Titanic,’ so James Cameron must have some kind of a sense of humor. The score was by Harry Manfredini, a very prolific composer who also did a lot of work for the Friday the 13^th series. I make a special mention of him because the score to this movie is terrible, all brass and tv-style instrumental stings. The cinematography and editing are fine.

    In interviews Cunningham has been refreshingly upfront about his plans to rip off ‘The Abyss.’ He conceived of the project first, looked around for a script, then threw the whole thing together with the express purpose of being the first in theaters. Budgeted at a modest $8,000,000 it took in just a hair over that amount in the box office and eventually made its money back through rentals and cable rights, and I would bet a sizable amount of money that a lot of that was due to just the poster.

Also rips off 'Aliens,' can't forget that.

    What confuses me the most about this trend of pre-ripping off ‘The Abyss’ is that the filmmakers, at some level, must have known what a horrible time they were in for. The reason the ocean is scary, the reason that ‘Jaws’ works on such a primal level, is that we all know that if we go into a large enough body of water it will actively start trying to kill us. Never mind that suspicion in the back of your head that while it’s unlikely that a shark is at the bottom of the lake or way down at the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool you can’t ever really really be sure. The water itself is dangerous by
simply existing. Humans have been sculpted by the planet to deal with gravity and have ready access to breathable air, you take away those two basic things and no matter what kind of futuristic technology you’ve wrapped around yourself you’ve just started a timer ticking down until your inevitable death.

    And that’s just dealing with natural bodies of water. When you shoot a movie involving large quantities of the stuff you have to get it to where you need it, can manage it, and keep it contained. Water is trying to always escape whatever container you put it in and it’ll soak up whatever heat you have lying around while it’s doing so, most easily out of people. If you’ve got actors splashing around in the stuff you need to make sure they’re not only breathing but that the energy isn’t literally being sucked out of them by the massive heat sink that is that large amount of water.

    At that exact same time as you’re wrangling all that water you have electrical lights and cables and monitors running every which way around sets that have to be built to withstand the occasional flood of actual water. If you can manage to shoot on site, great, you still need spotlights on the surface of that abandoned rock quarry and figure out how you’re going to do multiple takes fifteen feet under water. Better hope that nobody minds being damp for the entire shoot either.

    When it all comes together, as I grudgingly admit it does in ‘The Abyss,’ it can be incredibly breathtaking, showing us shots and vistas that are so far outside of our normal experiences they may as well be on the moon. The sheer determination to have a vision and see it through, along with the massive organizational challenge of putting together a cast and crew, hitting those marks and getting those takes, can be rather awe-inspiring by itself. Based on the existence of ‘The Abyss’ along and the accolades its won I have no problem believing any mad story about James Cameron you’d like to tell me. For any lesser filmmaker the shortcuts and budget limitations become very apparent very quickly. Slow motion models move just not enough like larger masses under water that it very quickly becomes all you notice. The sets walls are shaky and you being to notice how except for the occasional chest-deep pool you never actually see the people and the water in the same shots together. It’s like shooting a cheap movie on a space station except worse because we don’t really know how things operate in airless space but we very much know how things operate under water.

‘DeepStar Six’ is a boringly mediocre movie about people in an underwater base who blow open a hole in the ocean floor and eventually get attacked by a giant lobster puppet before they mostly die and the two bland main characters live happily ever after.