During the great Alien/Aliens rip-off gold rush of the 1980s, it seems that everyone wanted a piece of the Xenomorph pie with every low budget, podunk, wannabe studio desperate to stand on the shoulders of Ridley Scott and James Cameron in order to score so.e of that sweet, sweet green. Enter Fred Olen Ray; an American filmmaker who’s affinity for minuscule budgets and maximum cleavage gave us such legendary trash as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and Evil Toons and who kept at the chance to deliver some hot, Xenomorph action of his own with Deep Space.
Now, before we start, let me point out a few things – firstly the movie isn’t even set in shallow space, let alone deep space and the movie doesn’t even techinally feature an alien as it does a man-made creation, warped by the finky, cosmic hocus pocus of space, Blob-style. And yet, when the creature raises its suspiciously familiar looking, elongated head and roars at the camera, there’s no doubt that Olen Ray is in full Grand Theft Giger mode.
Let’s get deep.
After a secret U.S. military satellite decides to suddenly shift out of orbit and crash on the outskirts of Los Angeles, you’d think that no one would really notice, but when the weird, lumpy cocoon that lurks within suddenly sprouts tentacles and mutilates a horny couple as they look for a good make out point, grizzled lieutenant Ian McLemore is pit on the case.
Despite his advancing years, McLemore is one of those kinds of movie cop that shoots first, never thinks to ask questions at all and virtually heals from bullet inflicted flesh wounds overnight simply because he poured some Jack Daniel’s over it and then slapped a plaster on and despite constantly being on thin ice with his superiors dur to his sarcastic attitude, he still finds time to both woo a new female college while he hunts for the inhuman force that’s arrived in his city.
Flanked by his gun obsessed partner, Jerry, and constantly dogged by phone calls from a psychic who is trying to warn him about the toothy monster that’s eating people in his district, McLemore tries to get to the bottom of things while experiencing a fair amount of pushback from government agents wearing the standard issue dark glasses.
However, when some of the weird, creepy, egg things McLemore took from the crime scene and stashing in his house (always a smart thing to do) hatch into screeching spider creatures that are absolutely not – once more for the copyright lawyers in attendance: NOT – facehuggers, the leathery, womanizing, bagpipes playing, hard boiled cop realises that the perpetrator he’s hunting isn’t of the human persuasion.
But what chance does the craggy lawman have against a spikey monster that boasts whipping tendrils, two mouths and an attitude that could be described as problematic at best.
As a 80s filmmaker, Fred Olen Ray sits snuggly in the same sort of bracket as Jim Wynorski; a director who balances out the fact he churns out utter trash with the fact that he’s utterly self aware and cool with the fact that he churns out utter trash. However, with Deep Space, the normally incredibly frugal Ray found himself “burdened” with a budget of around two million dollars, which in his world was frankly an unnecessary amount. As refreshing as that seems (a director who wants less money? The Hell?), I dread to think what Deep Space would have looked like if Ray has gotten an amount of money he was more comfortable with.
Anyway, despite its very notable flaws, Deep Space is a fairly silly – yet oddly watchable – buddy cop movie that dumps a pound shop Xenomorph into the mix even though most the film fails to make a shred of logical sense.
Predictably, Ray couldn’t give the slightest of fucks and instead just goes all in on having as much goofy fun as he can by chiefly making Ian McLemore the most ridiculously macho character he can even though he’s played by the leathery character actor Charles Napier who is probably best known as that prison guard who gets bludgeoned to death by Hannibal Lector in The Silence Of The Lambs or the government wonk who double crosses Rambo in… well… Rambo. To be fair, Napier totally gets it and goes along with whatever insanity the script throws his way, be it having him casually sleeping on a bench in the middle of police headquarters like a tramp or bizarrely having him serenade a perspective conquest by playing the bagpipes at her at the end of a date in full Scottish get up. He’s the typical, kind swaggering cop that movies would have us believe are single handedly keeping the streets safe despite the fact that he seems to be a borderline alcoholic and doesn’t seem to do a lick of actual police work.
Even more amusingly, he’s flanked by a partner played by Firefly’s Ron Glass who weirdly resembles Cleaveland Brown if Family Guy was doing a Miami Vice skit and his repeated jokes about penis size relating to gun size only helps hang a big, neon sign above his head that positively screams that he probably won’t make it to the end credits. Joining Napier’s veteran drawl are the likes of an underacting Bo Svenson, an overacting James Booth and former Catwoman Julie Newmar in a role that literally makes no sense whatsoever.
In fact, outside of the main, cop vs monster storyline, nothing in Deep Space make much sense. Why introduce Newmar’s extravagant psychic as some sort of guardian angel to Ian if A) they never meet and B) her warnings about the monstrous murderer have no effect on the story whatsoever. Similarly, for all the build up the malevolent government department who created the monster gets, it withers and dies long before the climax and the film seems to simply forget that they exist.
However, if Fred Olen Ray can’t be bothered to care about such things as story arcs, plot resolution and original concepts, he obviously figures why the hell should his audience and so he just bombard us with ludicrous shit until the final showdown. I defy you to keep the belly laughs to a minimum during moments when Ian hops into a car and races to a destination, veering and careening all over the road even though there’s practically no traffic on the streets; or a finale that sees Napier wrassle with a rubbery, Giger-plagiarizing monstrosity that sees him bust out a roaring chainsaw to try and secure the W.
While it’s easy to dismiss Deep Space as low grade crap, Fred Olen Ray probably would agree with you – possibly while he was making the damn thing too – and that oddly gives this remarkably pointless film a surpising amount of doofy charm that probably wouldn’t exist if it had an even slightly more serious director at the helm. For best results, either just add liquor, or just don’t watch it – it’s not like Fred cares much either way.
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