A Deep Blue Sea | Offscreen
Are you spending the summer in Brussels, away from the crowded beaches of the Costa del Sol? B-to-Z invites you to take a plunge into the deep… and end up in the clutches of two sea monsters!
In the late eighties, sci-fi made a U-turn, away from distant galaxies as it headed towards the deep blue sea. Next to James Cameron’s genre-defining “The Abyss”, two other films rose to the surface: “Leviathan” and “Deep Star Six”, both solidly directed by American B-film icons: George P. Cosmatos (“Rambo 2”, “Cobra”) and Sean S. Cunningham (“Friday the 13th”).
“Leviathan” is an aquatic version of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” with a dash of “Alien”, carried by an old-school cast (Peter ‘Robocop’ Weller, Richard ‘Rambo’ Crenna), while “Deep Star Six”, with all its classical charms, can be seen as one of the last monsterfilms that used “true” special effects, right before “The Abyss” spear-headed the digital revolution.
Deep Star Six
An underwater research facility, also used as a launch site for nuclear missiles, is threatened by a gigantic sea monster. Part of the wave of undersea action-horror films which vied for our attention at the tail end of the 80s, anticipating the succes of “The Abyss”.