John’s Horror Corner: Deep Space (1988)

Okay, before I get started can we please take a moment to appreciate the lines on this poster?  It’s actually rather indicative of the screenwriters’ skill.

MY CALL:  Three parts Aliens (1986), one part The Thing (1982, 2011), then add shredded cheddar until desired level of horror cheesiness is achieved.  This laughable flick is only advisable for connoisseurs of truly bad horror and sci-fi.  I give it a cheesy C+.  IF YOU LIKE THIS, WATCH:  Other campy Alien rip-offs include Contamination (1980) and the Tokyo Shock-esque Alien vs Ninja (2010).  Enjoy them both with an immature friend and some good beer.  Just want some cheesy 80s space madness?  Then try Inseminoid (1982) or Galaxy of Terror (1981).

Like most 80s horror, the plot is essentially that some “thing” starts killing people.  Not surprisingly, a lot of our questions about the plot will go unanswered.  More specifically, some government scientists engineered this alien-mutant-monster thing.  They never explain why.  Then they put it into a dormant state and shot it into space.  They never explain why.  Then the monster storage space parcel crashes back onto Earth.  They never explain why.  After the first few minutes of the movie the story takes place entirely on Earth, yet it’s called Deep Space.   They never explain why.

After the “ship” crashes to Earth a couple of nearby teens go investigate.  Guess what?  They won’t be right back.  Amid the burning rubble they find a giant pod-thing that is evidently the monster’s cocoon of sorts.  Much as in The Thing, tendrils fire from its body and drag the nutritious teens to its over-sized maw.  Some rather unattractive cops, whose lines are both written and acted poorly to the point of annoyance, investigate and serve as our protagonists.  You never feel the urge to root for them.

Look at this guy.  Is this really our hero?  Don’t you just wish the alien would eat his face off?

So the cops take the alien pod thing to their crime lab where, just like in The Thing, it comes to life, kills, and disappears quietly…from the police station!  Sure, aliens may be sneaky.  But later, every scene with these creatures depicts them as extremely noisy.  Setting this ridiculous notion aside, the cops turn their attention to some other pods they got from the crash site and kept at home—yeah, loud and clear, they brought unidentified alien crash site objects home!  They bring it to some scientist with the theory that it’s like “a giant roach egg.”  These pods hatch out Alien facehugger-ripoffs.  They lunge and skitter across the floor just like them.  If I go by the movie, the best way to kill them is with a baseball bat.

Oooh la la…look at how casual I am about handling this alien roach egg thingy.  Pssst.  Does the chick look impressed?  She looks impressed, doesn’t she?  I am so getting lucky tonight.

Without any clues to get to the bottom of this, our cops turn to a meddlesome psychic (Julie Newmar) who randomly contacted them after the alien crashed.  This plot device feels pointless and forced, and the psychic is no less annoying than the cops.  I was really hoping the alien would win and kill all these losers.  No such luck.

The Psychic Friends Network has been doing so poorly that some of their employees have been dropping freebies about alien invasions on the local police force.  Even the cops could care less.

In the finale, the cops hunt down a fully-metamorphosed alien.  We don’t know if this is “the queen” or simply a developed adult.  They track it by the Alien calling card: clear, thick mucus-like ooze.   Either way, it had the general body form of an Alien with an elongate, exoskeleton-like head with no eyes.  It was hybridized with The Thing, having unevenly mangled teeth and a second toothy maw on its stomach, beside which are half a dozen rubbery, whip-like tendrils.

The final fight is pretty funny and pretty dumb.  Despite some heavy firearms, the creature was ultimately done in with a fireaxe, a chainsaw and a jar of Roach-B-Gone from a pest control company.  Thankfully, the credits started rolling within a minute of the creature’s death to help numb the pain.