DEEP STAR SIX / LEVIATHAN (double header)

The Cold War is over, the Ocean Wars have begun.  Through nonsensical war games and international posturing the world’s two big super powers, the USSR and the USA, duke it out for real estate on the ocean floor.  Missile sites are quickly and carelessly erected under tight schedules and budget restrictions; national security must be maintained.  The “reds” hate freedom and bacon cheeseburgers and flowers; we’ve got to beat them at any cost.  The people behind these slap dash ocean floor missile silo operations are salt of the Earth, blue collar workers trying to etch out an existence, even at the bottom of the deep blue sea.  Why would you want to launch a missile from the ocean floor, err, umm…shut up and enjoy the movie ya scalawag!

These movies are mindless hog wash for scurvies and gore fiends alike; to truly appreciate this creature filth arm yourself with a stack of Fish Filet and a bottle of warm rum.  Bounce your head off the floor a few times, numb them senses.  Leave your thinking cap at the door professor.  Following are some gore-centric highlights from Deep Star Six for the chunk blower crowd.

A man in a deep sea diving suit is elevated in the air by a crane.  The creature emerges screeching from the airlock; we get our first good look at it.  It looks like a scaly flesh flower unfolding with rows of long sharp tusks inside. Fish with teeth are gross.  It bites the diver in half like it just snapped into a Slim Jim.  The vivisected corpse dangles above the water, blood flowing from it in a shower.  Booyah!

The desperate, pathetic blowhard of the movie steals the last escape pod for himself, dooming his comrades to being a deep sea buffet.  In his panic he ignores decompression protocols.  As his pod races towards the surface his body rapidly decompresses.  Blood oozes from his pores, saturating the cabin in his gloppy bits.  Soon he pops like a human zit from the enormous pressure change.  Booyah!  

The creature snacking on the crew of Deep Star Six is supposedly a giant
eurypterid; or arthropod; a crab like thing that has lived on the ocean floor for billions of years.  These creatures are related to land arachnids, and have earned the name “sea scorpion” even though they are harmless and non-aggressive, it just sounds cooler.  
 

There is a blowhard jerk in this movie that trumps most of the blowhard jerks in other movies.  Snyder has had his fill of manual labor on Deep Star Six; he desperately wants to see the surface world again and get some booty.  Everyone in the crew is anxious to wrap up work and call it a day, but Snyder is really unraveling at the seams, flunking his psyche evaluation, generally not giving a shit.  His lines are pure comedy gold, calling people “piss asses” and basically being an all-around wad of jerk.  Every deep sea creature feature needs a Snyder.  He screws up some missile calibration procedure causing a nuke to detonate underwater and the Deep Star Six to become severely damaged in the aftermath.  Oops.  On top of being the biggest jerk in the crew he is also a shameless coward, running from the creature only to lock his co-workers in with the beast, throwing other people in front of him when the monster closes in for the kill, and stealing the last escape pod for himself.  I dare say that when he meets his grisly end spontaneously combusting like a giant purulent boil I lose a little interest.  

In the future we will all work long hours in an underwater basement, complaining about the lack of good grub and counting down the days we will go port side for some “poo-tang”.  Inevitably, when the time to leave comes close some super storm will delay our departure, a catastrophic mistake or hardware failure will happen, and we will be stuck in an underwater tomb, locked in battle with a deadly ancient sea monster until the rescue comes (hint: it never will).  Consider this a warning. 

Leviathan –

Filthy commie vodka swill causes an underwater epidemic for a crew of hard working, blue collar ocean floor drillers.  Let this serve as a warning to future generations of true blue Americans; Ruskie sauce doesn’t mix with freedom.  Vodka is poison to rebel blood and will cause you to mutate into an underwater sea creature who will probably be a communist too.

Peter Weller is the head geologist in charge, but he’s not a good manager.  The smug resident doctor just seems to do whatever he wants to, ignoring protocol, sleeping late into his shift.  The crew is openly disrespectful and growing more rowdy; some goofball named “Six-Pack” is picking on him ‘I’m going to pop all six of those tops” and his cold blooded director, “Martin”, keeps purring on about potential profit margins.  Why the hell they gave a bombshell CEO a pug name like Martin is anyone’s guess.   The guy can’t catch a break in this dimly lit tin can, but luckily his shift is ending soon.

Oh wait, I was lying, that shit is never ending.  Some inclement weather is parked over the whole operation, making surfacing impossible (or is it just a bunch of corporate lies?), and the crew just stumbled upon a scuttled Russian barge ship called ‘Leviathan”.  With that name it was probably not a Disney pleasure cruise, but that doesn’t stop these thirsty sailors from guzzling down the vodka they find aboard.  Turns out you can’t even trust a dead Russian; the liquor was contaminated by an experimental mutagen that transmogrifies skin to scales, and even works on dead flesh.   It was meant to create an army of super Russian soldiers, but like the good doctor says “don’t fuck with mother nature”.  God damn Reds.

Pandemonium ensues as the crew desperately tries to quarantine the afflicted while questioning who is contaminated with the “Leviathan” commie disease and who is still a true red blooded American native.  The creature evolves into a fun variety of shapes and sizes; like the conjoined zombie carcass, the whipping leg tentacle, and a blood sucking lamprey.  All the ugly cast members are killed off first, the “Shack” implodes like a tin can, and the crew members with slightly better skin are allowed to live and surface with the monster right on their tail.  The token black guy dies; Peter Weller shoots a grenade into the creature’s mouth like he is tossing in a three pointer from the foul line.  “Say ahhhhh fucker!”  I’m pretty sure I saw a finger roll.  He saves the girl that is training to be an astronaut, dolphins sing, and all is right in the deep blue sea once more. 

Hope everyone is staying out of the water this summer!