Review: Dead Space (1991)
Directed by: Fred Gallo
Starring: Marc Singer, Laura Tate, Judith Chapman
Written by: Catherine Cyran
Music by: Daniel May
IMDb
This one has nothing to do with the popular video game series; rather, it’s a Roger Corman-produced remake of a previous Roger Corman-produced film, Forbidden World (1982). Although, ever the trailblazer, Corman decided to do this one on a much slimmer budget. Marc Singer is now the leading man, and he makes slightly more sense than Jesse Vint as a lady scientist-banging space mercenary. While there are more lady scientists in the cast this time, in a cruel twist of fate for Singer, the sex and nudity is significantly reduced here, as is the gore, as is the cool music, as is the intrigue. In fact, Dead Space is a bonafide bore and a lesser film than its source material in almost every way. Even Singer’s robot sidekick, though no longer a second-rate Star Wars stormtrooper, now is obviously just a guy in tights wearing some BMX padding that’s been spray-painted gray. The adult version of the creature is a little cool, resembling a sort of dragon insect version of the xenomorph queen from Aliens, minus any articulation of any kind. There are multiple scenes of a stiff puppet being thrown at characters or across the screen, often through a vent covering as it either escapes or pops onto the scene. You can tell everyone here was pretty ashamed of how poorly the monster performed, because the editing goes to great lengths to avoid showing the thing maneuver and, instead, movement is articulated through the eye or body motion of the actors trying to escape from or attack it. Either that, or the editing is just really bad. Or both. Probably both. There are more attempts at humor in this version, but all the jokes and sarcasm are of the ungood variety. I do try my best to find remarkable stuff when watching bad movies, but there just really isn’t much here that’s worth watching. You do get a very early performance from Bryan Cranston, and the poster art really is great, but neither of those things are enough to validate sitting through the rest of it. Go ahead and watch Forbidden World, which is genuinely pretty awesome, and skip this heap of spare parts entirely.
Rating: 1.5 out of 10