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Deepstar Six isn't so much a creature feature so much as it is a film that features a creature. I know those are kind of the same thing, but, well, imagine if Poseidon opened with a sea monster sinking the ship, and then the survivors have to go through the debris, flooded sections, and explosions for 80 beast-free minutes, and then the monster pops up again for the third act just to menace the characters a little more before they escape and the end credits roll. That's what Deepstar Six is like.

The crew of a station on the ocean floor are on a mission to secure some missiles or something along those lines when the missiles are accidentally detonated, seriously messing the station up. Oh, and a giant lobster is giving them trouble too. This is kind of sad: We have this bloody spectacular monster, a perfectly good full-sized animatronic beast that looks cool and manages to create some sense of menace, and yet, its barely in the movie other than people talking about it a bit here and there. It never really makes its presence known until an hour in.

The writing, acting, and direction vary from above-average to rather dull, but at least the score does a good job of conveying a sense of action and suspense. The scenes with the monster are deserving of applause, but again, there's not many of those here. Despite the fact that the creature is more of an afterthought than an actual problem for the characters, Deepstar Six is still a fairly lively movie. If your looking for gore, you won't be too disappointed either, even though this isn't a bloodbath, there's still some Ick Factor here, particularly a rather nasty scene where a guy is attempting to get to the surface in a pressurized escape pod, and ends up melting into a bloody mess instead.

Though it should have been ripping off Alien, Deepstar Six more rips off The Poseidon Adventure instead. I would've been singing praises if it had more of the creature. That was a great monster they had there; only problem is, the rest of the film fails to impress as much as the beast and besides, there wasn't enough of the monster there. 103 minutes and the bloody thing is only in 15 of them!

SCORE:  :smile: :smile: 1/2 out of five

I went to see this one in the theater when it was new. It seemed good at the time, but then when I caught it later on HBO a few times, I noticed what you mentioned: how such a cool-looking monster is hardly even used.

Still, I bought the DVD.  :teddyr: Too bad it was full frame. :bluesad:

I enjoyed the film for what it was worth.  Not too many sea creature movies can actually hold my interest for very long. 

I thought it was pretty good overall.  The characters were fairly sympathetic and the action seemed to move along okay for the most part.   Funny, but until you mentioned the monster barely being in it, I didn't even notice, but you're right.  I think my biggest complaint was the guy who blew up the missiles, he was just way too stupid in comparison to the rest of the characters and didn't really belong in the movie at all. 

Indeed, Deepstar Six is in no way a terrible movie. Its a pretty decent B-Grade underwater thriller, even though it was supposed to be a monster movie but instead was a film that had a monster in a few scenes. Its kind of like a flick that came out not too long ago called King Of The Lost World, where the marketed creature was barely in the movie. So Deepstar Six is kind of like the retro King Of The Lost World, only Deepstar Six was a more entertaining and more compentantly made film, and STILL had a little bit more monster action.

I'm watching this right now, I saw it a few years ago on the Sci-Fi channel and liked it alot. Watching it now though, I must agree that it is really boring. It has been a one hour struggle not to turn the DVD player off, due to lack of action and lack of the aforementioned awesome monster. The creature is immense and an example I would always use for why CGI is totally garbage. The Snyder character is really annoying also (good death tho'), the rest of them I don't care for because they are so boring. It's a shame as this the type of film I really want to like, but I've totally lost interest (thus I'm typing this while it's still on!). Still, better than today's Sci-Fi monster tripe.

Deepstar Six  wasn't that terrible.  It came out in 1989 when there was a glut of these movies.  James Cameron's Abyss came out the same summer as did Leviathon with Peter Weller. Leviathon was actually the most Alien like rip off of the three. 

I rather enjoyed "Deep Star 6" when I saw it. The crustacean type monster was well done and the best gore scene was the one involving the diving suit that was bitten in half by the monster. I enjoyed Miguel Ferrer's little turn as the obligatory treacherous little coward who accidentally pulps himself in the escape pod.