User Reviews

You know a film is basically destined to stink worse than dirty old socks when the eternally quality-impaired Fred Olen Ray and the comparably talent-barren Jim Wynorski are listed as executive producers (worse yet, Ray also co-wrote the "original" story!), longtime hack actor Steve Barkett receives special guest star billing for his quick pre-credits appearance as a doomed astronaut and Martin Sheen's terminally drab, anything but a chip off the ol' block brother Joe Estevez is the closet thing to a name actor in the entire cast. The horrendously derivative rag-bag premise writes a paltry check that the feeble film itself doesn't even come close to cashing: A huge, fanged, drooling dinosaurian beastie stows away on a spaceship which crash-lands in the dense, verdant, real ferny and swampy Florida bayou. Said bulky ugly creature proceeds to munch on lots of folks, causes several local animals to transform into murderous mutants (the ferocious killer puppet armadillo is pretty laughable) and even makes similarly infected humans metamorphosize into your standard blank-eyed, pasty-faced lethal zomboid ghouls.

Steve Latshaw's flaccid direction fails to inject any sense of style or vigor into Pat Moran's threadbare script, which in turn serves as a horrible catalog of every last error one could possibly find in The Bad Movie Book of Serious Cinematic Sins. Said sins include a numbing surplus of dreary chitchat, painfully stilted dialogue (among the choice clunky lines are "I like to watch the news sometimes, but Tom he calls it propaganda" and "This boy scout isn't going to help us find anything"), too much meandering around the woods in circles filler nonsense, a grave lack of any inspired or interesting individual flourishes, a poky stab at narrative thrust and, perhaps the picture's grossest, most unforgivable mistake of all, an insipid assortment of tiresomely one-note stereotypical characters (feisty go-getter female reporter, pompous fat jerk scientist, arrogant macho dude trial guide, meek, skinny nerdy brainiac, shady, double-tongued corporate head and so on). The uniformly flat acting, Maxwell J. Beck's primitive cinematography (the laborious fade-outs and clumsy creature on the prowl POV shots are especially shoddy), cheesy computer morphing f/x, the hokey-looking, pitifully unconvincing monster and Jeffrey Walton's droning, insufferably overwrought score definitely don't help matters any as well. Only some welcome gratuitous nudity (ravishing brunette Blake Pickett in particular makes for a pleasingly ample eyeful sans shirt) and a clever Hitchcock-style cameo by Sunshine State B-movie institution William Grefe as a photo on a dresser effectively detract from the otherwise overwhelmingly substantial tedium and ineptitude that's in alarming abundance in this truly wretched dreck.

DARK UNIVERSE is another very low budget independent science fiction horror flick from the mid 1990s. This one features Joe Estevez and is set in the swamplands of Florida, where a mutated astronaut crash lands his craft and ends up going on the rampage. It's cheap and cheerful, not in the same league as a trash classic like THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN but still mildly amusing. The film is rough around the edges and far too dark, but at least it has plenty of gory special effects to keep you mildly interested.

I got this movie thinking that it would be a bad film, but I thought it was going to be a fun bad movie. Some good gore, horrible story and some boobs. Unfortunately, the only thing it did have was a horrible story! The gore was a no show and there was more topless girls in this segment that came on before the movie and lasted maybe five minutes than there was in this film. The monster looked like a fat Xenomorph from Alien, which is to say it looked okay for a cheap movie, but give me more nasty kills and less speculation, please!

The story, a spaceship runs into trouble as it is about to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Seems the pilot gets infected with some kind of spore and transforms into a monster. Ship crash lands into a Florida swamp, thus the rest of the film takes place on the same area for the rest of the film. A place that is supposedly out in the middle of nowhere, a place where you have to hire a dumb guide though all the while I was thinking the interstate was probably just right out of camera range. Well the monster is on the loose as a group that is looking for the ship soon discovers. Well, they really do not discover it soon enough. The film is just to full of speculation scenes, I mean they seem to know this film is crap, but they do not ramp up the gore and other things that make a film like this thrive and instead treat us to swamp guide arguing with other people.

So that is pretty much all there is to it. There was a point in the film where I thought it was going to start taking off as they did have an interesting aspect to their story as the orange spores soon begin appearing all over the swamp, but just as it looks like it is going to start getting more fun to watch, we get more speculation and more arguing. The ending seems very rushed, but I am going to say that this is also a good aspect of the film as it meant it ended quicker! The fact that Joel Estevez is the only actor I recognize really should have clued me in to how bad the film would be, but I still thought it would be a fun bad...it was not for the most part.

I always worry when I see Jim Wynorski and Fred Olen Ray collaborating on a film project together. The story is simple, and has been done to death. A space shuttle crashes back to earth when the lone astronaut aboard flies through a mysterious cloud and becomes a monster alien. Scientists and a plucky TV reporter try to find the crash site in a Florida swamp and are slowly attacked by the alien/astronaut. People die...

Let me start with the cast. The swamp guide, played by Bently Tittle, is terrible. While most of the cast was written badly, Tittle is the worst. His swamp guide has a giant chip on his shoulder for no other reason than the writers could not think of any way for him to be interesting. The plucky TV reporter and Tittle's girlfriend have gratuitous topless scenes that serve no purpose other than to keep you watching in case they strip again. When the space shuttle is introduced in the beginning, the laughs begin as well. The shuttle is manned by one astronaut, apparently forgetting that there is no gravity in outer space. The ground crew consists of one person as well: Joe Estevez. He talks into a microphone and yells at the astronaut. Ignored by the Academy Awards yet again, Estevez' one claim to fame is that he sounds exactly like his grating brother Martin Sheen. After the shuttle crashes, Estevez sends the team into the swamp to find the shuttle. When the crash site is found, the director uses the old forced perspective by putting a model of the shuttle close to camera and actors in the background so the shuttle looks huge. This did not work in "Carnosaur" and does not work here. The swamp itself looks like the rough of a Florida golf course, or someone's backyard. The killing of the monster, which looks like feces with teeth, is hilarious. You see, bullets cannot harm it, so Tittle's plucky girlfriend fires flares at it, using the swamp gas to ignite the monster. Yes, that flammable swamp gas that haphazardly floats in the swamp air can kill. Never mind that fires are set all through this film, I guess swamp gas was not around then, even though they were deep in the swamp. One of the scientists, when analyzing some spores, finds out the monster has human DNA...I am no exobiologist like he is, but I did not know DNA testing facilities could fit in a backpack, especially one full of specimen jars and giant bottles of sulfuric acid. The special effects look like they were done on someone's home computer, and Estevez was obviously filmed at a different time since all of his scenes feature just him alone. "Dark Universe" is awful. There is not one good thing here, and it is not even funny on a "bad" level. Avoid it.

Where to begin? The spores, to me, they never truly explain how the spores get into the shuttle. After all, a shuttle is space worthily, not allot of open vents to the outside like a car or airplane. But that's minor, you must suspend your disbelieve and go with the flow of the film. The creature is a cool alien like design with the orange spores covering it. The acting isn't exactly Oscar worthy and they do get repetitive on the accident ala INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN. But again that's minor. This movie is crawling with pretty girls who stay in and out of clothing. So, there is that. A cool monster, there is that. An interesting if improbable plot, there is that. All and all, this movie has got a lot going for it. Fun, never dull and cool. If you want a realistic movie, then you probably will want to avoid DARK UNIVERSE, but if you want a fun monster romp with semi-dressed woman, then this is the movie for you. 8 STARS.

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

A spaceship crashes in Florida. Apparently the astronaut on board went through a bad batch of the "Dark Universe" and is now a giant alien slug head. A bunch of people head out into the swamp to check it out. Alien kills some of them. Some other stuff happens.

This was a typically lame B sci-fi movie. The only thing that mildly amused me was near the end:

*SPOILER ON ENDING*

So a woman is hanging out in a grass hut (?) and the alien pops his head in through the wall. We get to watch his alien head squirm around for a good thirty seconds. No other parts of the alien are visible. Just his head. Was he stuck? If he could bash his head in, why couldn't he just worm the rest of his slug body in? I'm guessing he couldn't because there was nothing else to him but his head. The rest of the alien body would have been too expensive to build. While he's stuck, the woman comes up with a plan to kill him using a previously unknown ally prevalent in the swamp environment: Marsh gas. She uses a flare gun to ignite the marsh gas to kill the beast. If marsh gas is flammable, why didn't she go up in flames too? Was it just flammable around the alien's slug head? Was his head dipped in gasoline? Am I thinking about it too much?

It's hard to believe this film was made by some of the same people who would later make the underrated Jack-o, but it's true. First of all though, the movie itself isn't an Alien rip-off like it's said to be, but the alien himself sure is. Anyways, on to the review.

!!!POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!A space ship carrying an alien lands in the Florida swamps. A group of archeologists and a resident of the swamps search the area...BIG mistake!

Some enjoyable moments, a few likeable charecters, and nice scenery, but slow for the most part, bad dialogue, a mediocre plot, and laughable effects. ** out of *****.