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TERROR BENEATH THE SEA
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This is your typical, "Journalists watching military testing underwater spot a fishman and investigate, become hostages of a mad scientist who wants to turn them into more fish people, and barely escape with their lives after lots of explosions," film. Really. If you read the previous sentence, you've just seen the movie. Here are some highlights: The journalists are an asian man named "Ken" and a blonde named "Jenny". Ken doesn't know any kung-fu. Jenny only screams a lot. Definitely not the best heros. The scientist calls the fishmen "cyborgs"...even though the only thing added to them after their skin is grown into scales are some gills. There was a lot of shooting in the underwater lab structure where the scientist keeps his minions and everything. It's okay though, apparently the guns aren't very powerful. Even though surgery is easily accomplished on the monsters with your basic blunt instruments, it takes dozens upon dozens of shots to bring them down. This point is further underlined by the gunshots sounding like tree branches being scraped on pavement. Nothing very threatening there if you ask me. But really, you've gotta love the gunfights. The scientists kill like three (of dozens) of the cyborgs. The cyborgs kill ALL the scientists (with one shot each). However, for the life of them, the cyborgs can't seem to hit Ken or Jenny even ONCE. Obviously these cyborgs were the inspiration for Obi-Wan's line in Star Wars: A New Hope when he says, "Only imperial storm troopers are so precise," after which they don't hit a dang thing for the rest of the film. During the struggle that took us to the end of all time...er, the end of the movie, several of the cyborg's costumes begin falling apart. The funniest moment of the movie was watching the asian guys wrestle with other asian guys...except some are wearing torn-up fishman costumes. How did these scenes make it past the editing room? I don't know, but I'm sure glad they did. Subsonic signals controlled the cyborgs. For example, selecting "work" made them walk around, "fight" made them wrestle each other. Not very useful, but interesting none the less. All underwater scenes were filmed in a dark room. Good idea up until things start falling and fire starts burning. Then "beneath the sea" looks like "in a dimly lit blue room". Some of the actors speak english, some don't...so what the heck. The filmmakers just dubbed them all. Poorly. Our heros' survival instincts are great...until Jenny gets some silicone on her chin. Then she loses all reason to live...and all usefulness. They'd have been better off leaving her behind...but then who would Ken walk with on the beach in scuba flippers at the end of the movie? Considering our underwater structure was stocked with tanks full of nuclear waste in a metal structure built into the bedrock on the ocean floor, things sure did bounce around a lot. All in all, I've seen better, but I've also seen a lot worse. © 2005 actionplant.com. all rights reserved.
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