Dead Space (1991) – A Movie A Day 2021 #32
Dead Space (1991) – A Movie A Day 2021 #32
My recent viewing of Leviathan put me in a mood for similar sci-fi horror movies, so I searched around until I found something that stood out to me. I stopped searching once I came across Dead Space, a movie that looked like a super-cheap Alien rip-off from 1991 starring Bryan Cranston. Well, Bryan Cranston doesn’t star in the movie necessarily, I’d say he’s a co-star at best, but he is in it. Everything else I assumed about the Dead Space is accurate though. It is indeed a super-cheap Alien rip-off, and I had a lot of fun with it.
Apparently Dead Space is not only a rip-off of Alien, but it’s also a remake of a movie called Forbidden World from 1982. I haven’t seen Forbidden World yet, though I’m sure I will soon. Anyway, here’s the plot for Dead Space. In the future, a “space cowboy” by the name of Steve Krieger intercepts a distress call from a remote research station on an alien planet (the wiki page and IMDB both say the station is on Saturn, but it definitely is not). Krieger arrives to help out, but he finds that not everyone wants him there. Out of courtesy for his trouble, head scientists Emily Stote and Frank Darden (Cranston) inform him of their situation. The small science team at the station have been researching a virus which has mutated beyond their expectations. Stote and Darden think the situation is being handled just fine, but the scientist who sent the distress call, Marissa Salinger, thinks their situation is anything but under control. Krieger ends up staying for a while, and naturally the virus (which is actually an organism that can mutate and transit a virus) escapes and causes havoc. Then the rest of the movie is all about the small crew trying to survive and kill the virus monster before it murders them all.
Like Alien and a thousand other movies that came after Alien, Dead Space is full of dark, claustrophobic hallways being stalked by a creature that gets progressively bigger and more dangerous as the movie goes on. There is a chest bursting scene, multiple scenes with panicked crew members trying to find the tiny and quick monster in the room before it escapes into the air ducts, and even a scene where the monster turns into a Giger-esque creature that towers over the crew. The effects are laughable and fun in a goofy b-movie way, and the plot takes some head-shaking turns that I couldn’t help but smile at. Dead Space is not a good movie, but it is fun. If nothing else, Dead Space was a good late-night movie to go to sleep to, and it opened the door for me to watch some other related movies.
My only real complaint is that the cover art and title are completely misleading. Some of the cooler posters and VHS art for Dead Space show an skeleton in a torn-up astronaut suit floating in space. That never happens in the movie, and the bulk of the movie doesn’t even take place in space. I mean, the interiors the crew members are in are effectively just like any other outer-space horror movie, so maybe I’m getting hung up on a technicality. But if you promise me a skeleton in space, at least make a slight attempt to give me a skeleton in space.