After appearing in many W.A.V.E. Productions, actor Dave Castiglione jumped ship and founded his own low-budget video company, Sharkey Video. For this film, he also was able to nab such W.A.V.E. starlets as Pamela Sutch, Dawn Murphy, Laura Giglio, and Debbie D. Their presence is about the only saving grace in this bloated, overlong slog.
In the ‘20s, vampires attack flappers on a boat, and it promptly sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Eighty years later, the government hires some divers to look for a pair of missing divers near a toxic waste spill off the coast of Virginia. Plucky reporter Pamela Sutch eventually discovers the vampires have survived and now lurk around the area feeding on swimmers.
Deep Undead is pretty terrible in just about every department. It also contains the most laughable special effect I’ve seen in some time, which I guess is worth something. We are supposed to be under the impression that the prologue is taking place on a cruise ship, but for a few minutes, it’s hard to get any real confirmation on that. Eventually, Castiglione cuts away to a toy boat in the middle of a mud puddle. Wow. I mean. Wow.
The main issue is all the boring underwater scenes. The green-tinted underwater photography is pretty hard on the eyes as it is, but things get even worse when Castiglione switches to the black and white POV from the divers’ cameras. Plus, the underwater scenes go on forever. We get it. You rented the diving equipment. I’m sure it was expensive, so you’re going to showcase it in the movie. It’s just that Castiglione should’ve trimmed these scenes way back. The scenes on dry land aren’t much better, especially the ones that are loaded with dialogue consisting mostly of diving gobbledygook. If you’re a seasoned diver, you may appreciate all this attention to detail but anyone who just wants to watch an aquatic vampire movie is going to be up shit creek.
Deep Undead is certainly ambitious for a shot on video horror flick. I’ll give it that. That doesn’t mean it’s good though. Even worse is the fact that it takes forever to reveal its soggy bloodsuckers and even then, it’s not worth the wait.
Laura and Debbie are pretty much wasted as the underwater vampires and don’t get nearly enough screen time to make much of an impact. At least Pamela delivers a good performance. Whenever she wasn’t on screen, my interest in Deep Undead sunk like a stone.
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