LORDS OF THE DEEP

WOW. COLOR ME OFFENDED!

This Roger Corman production (from 1989) left me gasping. I have never seen anything so bizarre, so bass-ackwards, so...WRONG.

OK, here's the deal. It's 2020, and the Earth's resources have been almost entirely consumed by the Naked Apes. They are moving into undersea habitats to "conquer a new frontier;" apparently the land and outer space weren't enough for them. The particular Shaved Monkey Habitrail we are observing in this movie is sponsored by a big corporation called Martel -- a name that conjures up fond images of the other big corporations that regulate the lives of humans, like Wal-Mart, K-Tel, and of course Ronco, the company that brought you the Pocket Fisherman. The crew living in this undersea lab is doing...well, I DON'T KNOW WHAT. Science stuff. I dunno. But the scientist with the blonde ponytail, named Claire, has been monkeying with some spongy goo in a beaker, and when some of it got on her hand early in the movie, it made her go all LSD-like, wackadoo, floaty-woaty, like that.

Next thing we know, a new crew of people sent down to spell the scientific team disappears out of their submersible. A guy they send out to investigate that disappearance, disappears. All there is left in his diving suit is more of the spongy goo. They put the contents of the diving suit in a big fishtank, and it forms up into a smiley Manta Ray with blinky red eyes.

And then Brad Dillman, A MAN WE CAN NORMALLY COUNT ON TO OPEN CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE FISH AND THE HUMANS, starts...killing everyone?

This story makes no sense at all. You CAN read it to mean that Dillman is protecting the papier-mache Manta Rays from human incursion, but WHY WOULD HE? He's clearly a helpless tool of the Martel Corporation in this one. It makes me LONG for the daring, if slightly hung-over, Brad Dillman who faced down the title characters in Piranha. (Before releasing them gleefully into the ocean, heh-heh-heh.) Now there's a movie I can relate to.

I have to say, every tiny detail is baffling, not just the plot. The totally uncool jumpsuits worn by every character, with the girly madras yokes and the matching pink piping and buttons...how did they get so many men to wear those outfits? You can see they weren't getting paid enough to humiliate themselves. Why is an undersea lab full of fishtanks? Why is the talking computer named Trilby?

WHY, OH WHY, DO THE SMILEY MANTAS SAVE THE HUMANS FROM THE UNDERSEA EARTHQUAKE?

I can't recommend this one, ladies. I may have to burn my copy.