Before
he became king of the world with Titanic, James Cameron got his start working
for Roger Corman. One of his first jobs
was on Corman’s Star Wars rip-off, Battle Beyond the Stars. Nearly a decade later, Corman was ripping off
Cameron’s The Abyss with this mind-numbingly shitty flick.
Like
The Abyss, Lords of the Deep is about scientists who come into contact with
a friendly, possibly alien underwater species.
For The Abyss, Cameron used the latest advancements in special effects
technology. For Lords of the Deep, Corman
used what looks to be a boogie board with a wet blanket Duct-taped to it. Other times, it looks like a Styrofoam hand
puppet.
Seriously,
I have seen some bad monsters in my time, but the so-called Lords of the Deep
in this movie are among the worst.
The
human villain is Bradford Dillman, whose big villainous act is to make the crew
sign non-disclosure agreements. Meanwhile,
the lead scientist (Priscilla Barnes) wants to save the species. She also spends a lot of time sticking her hand
into some Nickelodeon slime and having 2001-inspired freak-out scenes.
All
of this is handled clumsily, and the good-natured Spielbergian ending will
cause you to slap your forehead in disbelief. It’s only 79 minutes, but it feels so much
longer. The underwater scenes are a complete
joke too, and the subs all look like bath toys.
Dillman
overacts to embarrassing levels. It’s
almost like he wandered in from a Shakespeare festival. Barnes is equally awful as the hippie-dippy
scientist. The acting is so bad that
when Roger Corman pops up for a small cameo as the head of the underwater operation,
he accidentally manages to give the best performance in the entire movie.