DEEP SPACE (1988)

 DIRECTED by Fred Olen Ray

SCREENPLAY by Fred Olen Ray & T. L. Lankford

STARRING  - Charles Napier as Detective Ian McLemore, Ann Turkel as Carla Sandborn, Bo Svenson as Captain Robertson, Ron Glass as Jerry Merris, Julie Newmar as Lady Elaine Wentworth, James Booth as Dr. Forsyth,  Norman Burton as General Randolph.

PLOT - A U.S space probe crashes to Earth freeing it's inhabitant - a genetically engineered killer mutant - codename Sentar.

Sentar goes on a deadly rampage in Los Angeles, killing anyone that gets in its way.

Maverick homicide cop Ian McLemore is called in to track down the killer, little does he suspect the true nature of the killer's identity.

Before long McLemore's partner is killed and the bodies are piling high in the streets of L.A.

Only McLemore, his new female sidekick - a rookie cop, Carla Sandborn and his trusty chainsaw can possibly hope to save the day...

DIALOUGE  - McLemore  - "Stay here. I'm going to kick some monster ass !"

PERFORMANCES  - Most of the acting in this movie can be described as being intentionally (and sometimes unintentionally) tongue in cheek. Best (and worst) of all is Charles Napier as Detective Ian McLemore.

McLemore is every inch the typical B-movie action hero cop - he's tough, uncompromising and has an eye for the ladies. My God, does he have an eye for the ladies. In fact you could say its his defining character trait. 

Whats more, the ladies seem to have an eye for McLemore. Despite the fact that McLemore is clearly in his mid fifties, has a face like John Wayne's saddle, is paunchy and has terrible dress sense (even by 80's standards) the ladies seem to be queuing up to have a piece of him. He flirts shamelessly with literally every female character who appears onscreen, its implied that he's slept with most of the female cops in the precinct. At one point he gets called by his partner whilst he's still in bed (at 1pm in the afternoon, thats vigilant police work for you) and answers the phone with a pair of discarded lady's knickers in his hand. It's implied that they belong to some past conquest of his, personally I like to think that they belong to him and he just likes wearing them (or sniffing them)...

When McLemore is assigned a new partner, rookie cop Carla (Ann Turkel) McLemore being McLemore wastes no time in trying to get into her pants. We are treated to an indepth reveal of McLemore's seduction techniques, any single blokes reading this who haven't got lucky lately might want to pay attention here - we are clearly witnessing a master at work. Watch and learn...

First cook your intended lady love a big fat steak. Be sure to season it heavily (McLemore probably uses Rohypnol), for added flourish add the garnish thrown backwards over your shoulder for maximum effect.

Then invite the lucky lady round to your swanky bachelor pad/sleazy love nest (delete as applicable), regale her with humorous anecdotes about the various criminals you've shot dead in the line of duty and then move on to your masterstroke...Impress her with your bagpipe playing skills.

McLemore (having a vaguely Scottish sounding surname) feels that playing a musical instrument that sounds like a thousand cats being strangled whilst simultaneously dressing like an utter twat is THE surefire way to a woman's heart. And guess what ? He's not wrong. Carla promptly disrobes and the two make sweet love. To be fair, McLemore seems just as surprised by this as the viewers of the film probably are.

Luckily for the population of Los Angeles, McLemore is just as handy with a chainsaw as he is with his instrument. In the final scenes of the movie we see McLemore take on a genetically enhanced killing machine armed with nothing more than a device used for cutting down trees. Unsurprisingly (him being the hero and everything) he wins. McLemore could certainly give Ash Williams a run for his money in the "monster chainsaw murder" stakes if nothing else.

McLemore is the type of character that just wouldn't get put on screen these days and is all the more fun for that. He's definitely the most memorable thing about this movie. I'd quite happily watch a whole brace of McLemore movies (and I don't even mean that ironically).

The other characters are less memorable. Carla is OK but doesn't really do much except shag McLemore and scream a bit. We also get James Booth playing Dr Forsyth (the scientist responsible for creating the monster), he's not in it much and doesn't get to do much except spout some suitabily doom laden technobabble, but seeing as he was in Twin Peaks (he played con-man Ernie Niles in season 2) that makes him alright with me.

Julie "Catwoman" Newmar also shows up, slumming it as a psychic who can predict where the monster is going to attack. Despite this heads-up McLemore and company never seem to arrive in time to prevent anyone dying.

SFX - The design of the Sentar creature clearly owes a debt to H.R. Giger's Alien. From the distance it looks pretty decent.

Up close it still looks fairly good.

Its only when you see it in full body shots that it starts to look a bit rubbery. This isn't helped by the fact that the actor in the monster suit obviously cant see where he's going,  so he just shambles about looking directionless and a bit ungainly. Not a bad effort though considering this movie's miniscule budget.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - McLemore is a man clearly well versed in the arts of both sex AND violence (What ? The bagpipes scene wasn't proof enough of that ?)

The way Sentar kills it's victims is pretty cool (although not very varied). It disgorges slimy looking tentacles from it's body which it uses to strangle it's victims with and then proceeds to eat thier flesh.

We see Sentar do this to several people at various points in the film. Sadly the camera always cuts away at the crucial point so we never actually see much gore.

Sentar also has some "Face hugger-like" spawn that attack thier victims by choking them to death.

Sentar tries the whole "strangle them with tentacles and then eat them" thing one time too many. It attempts to kill McLemore. McLemore uses his chainsaw to hack off Sentar's pesky tentacles and then hack the creature into little pieces. The movie ends and we're left wondering how lucky McLemore was that Sentar didn't have acid blood like his more illustrious cinematic cousin did.

RATING - Deep Space is definitely a movie of two halves. The first half is so slow moving and turgid (full of dull people in labcoats looking worried whilst spouting long, looonnngggg scenes of dialogue) that I almost switched it off in boredom. I glad I didn't though. The film picks up when the monster starts attacking people and McLemore starts trying to impress the ladies. It's these two ingredients that ultimately save it.

A fun little sci-fi monster cheapie then, it loses points for its slow opening so I'm giving this 3 bagpipe seductions out of 5, still worth a look if you want a good laugh though.

Also - why the hell is this film called Deep Space ? Theres not a single bit of it set in deep space, it all takes place in Los Angeles !!!

ART -