1989 had not one, not two, but three underwater adventure films. Now, this one would never be confused with James Cameron’s The Abyss, but you may mistake it for Leviathan (honestly I enjoy all three, and can’t believe I hadn’t penned this one up for the blog before).

Directed by Sean S. Cunningham who directed and produced the original Friday the 13th, this one could arguably be the worst of the three with shaky effects, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.

Just like in The Abyss, and Leviathan, we join an underwater crew, navy personnel in this case. Their assignment is to set up nuclear missiles, but when they crack open a cavern, they let loose something… some thing?

And very quickly the body count starts to rise as the crew struggles to survive and maybe, make it back to the surface.

The team is headed by McBride (Greg Evigan) – not really he’s just a sub driver – and his co-stars includes canon fodder in the form of Richardson (Matt McCoy), Scarpelli (Nia Peeples), Snyder (Miguel Ferrer), Burciaga (Elya Baskin), and Joyce (Nancy Everhard).

The film is shot with lots of smoke to make it look like things are shot underwater, and it lacks the claustrophobia of The Abyss. And despite some interesting creature effects this one doesn’t have quite the oomph of Leviathan.

And yet, I enjoy them all. But I’m well aware of its flaws and shortcomings. The sets are a little too big to believed that they are underwater. Sure some of them are snug, but most are large rooms, where you don’t often see the ceiling. Bring the ceiling down a little, and you up the claustrophobia of the situation, and add to the realism.

That being said, the idea of the movie allows me to give it a lot of leeway. Still, the characters are typical horror film tropes, not much thicker than cardboard with the personalities of the actors doing the heavy lifting for all of them.

The film also steals from Alien. It tries to have some kind of set-up for the first hour of the film. Alien very much sets up a haunted house in space, Deepstar tries to set up a slightly similar atmosphere. And you don’t really get a look at any of the creature in either film, until over an hour into the film.

And if McBride thought they had problems before they knew what the creature looked like, wait until it gets inside their underwater base! This is b-movie fun all the way through, and really doesn’t pretend to be anything else.