• Directed by Fred Olen Ray
• Written by T.L. Lankford and Fred Olen Ray
• Starring
  • Charles Napier
  • Ann Turkel
  • Bo Svenson
  • Ron Glass
  • Julie Newmar

A while back, when I had my Alien Ripoffs festival, I had made up a master list of “acceptable films,” using a set of criteria involving distinct elements from Alien showing up in the derivative movies. One of them was that the proceedings had to take place in a confined space, and by that benchmark Deep Space was disqualified. Which is kind of a testament to the problems with a checklist mentality, since Fred Olen Ray went out of his way to include Alien references in this movie.

The ugly in this case is a genetically-engineered government project. Wisely, they decided to perform the experiment remotely in orbit; unwisely, they had no safeguards in place in case the satellite should spontaneously decide to crash earthward. In fact, from our multitudinous scenes of white-coated scientists arguing with the belligerent general, it seems they had very few emergency policies in place; they can tell when the creature comes alive, but not where it is (hello? A satellite fell and you can’t quite determine where?), and the general seems more devoted to badgering and belittling the scientists than, I dunno, sending some crack military team to recover the “project” before it starts eating civilians.

In the meantime, we meet two standard-issue rule-breaking cops, Ian McLemore (perennial tough guy Charles Napier) and Jerry Merris (Ron Glass). Now, it’s pretty easy to see that McLemore is the take-charge pants-wearer, so Merris has already got that shadow of the Inevitable Dead Partner over him, and the fact that he’s a “person of color” only clinches it; sorry, fella, you should have staying in the Barney Miller squadroom.

Naturally, the get it trouble with their soft-spoken captain (Bo Svenson), who demonstrates the really weird policies of this police department: He relieves them of their guns and apparently puts them on some kind of suspension, yet still expects them to show up at any time of day or night to investigate cases he gives to them and then berates them for.

Let’s see, who else do you need to know about? Oh, that’s right, Policewoman Carla Sanbourn (Ann Turkel), who’s just transferred in and falls right into McLemore’s arms. Yup, apparently loutish rule-breaking cops are just what the chicks dig. Especially ones that play the bagpipes on the first date. No, really.

And lest we forget our designated Confined Cameo, we have Julie Newmar as Lady Elaine the psychic, who wakes up with premonitions when the satellite crashes, and spends her screen time calling McLemore from home and giving him cryptic information on this thing “from the stars.” (From orbit, actually, but you gotta allow those psychics some poetic license.)

So. Yes. The thing from space. Let’s not forget that, shall we? It crashes, near both the Teens Making Out and the Drunk Derelicts (two stock plot elements for the price of one!). One derelict watches as the teens explore the wreckage, and as tentacles come from a big prune-like thing and tear them apart. Naturally, no one believes him, even when the police have to use multiple bags for the body parts. (Classically bad moment: The M.E. takes a look at the big prune thing, and immediately announces a) it’s organic, and b) therefore it’s alive. I’m sure it will come as a shock to the wood composing my desk that it is necessarily alive by virtue of being organic. Same thing with my tuna sandwich. It’s alive!

Just for the fun of it, McLemore and Merris filch a couple of smaller prune thingies they find to do some “investigating” on their own. (In both cases, they just take the thingies back to their apartments and wait for them to open and cause mayhem… but I’m getting ahead of myself.) The big’un is taken back to the police station, where the examiner finds it impervious to all his tools. It opens right up with a single drop of hydrochloric acid, to reveal — Biollante! Pretty much, anyway; it’s got a misshapen Alien-style head with no visible eyes and googly teeth, a second stomach in its belly from which the tentacles extend, and the uncanny ability to generate its own strobe lighting. Any time you see the creature, there’s a flickering light playing on it and nowhere else. The wonders of genetic engineering… It may be a pretty mediocre creature suit, but on the other hand it sure beats the one Ray later used in yet another of his Alien ripoffs, Hybrid (1997). Oh, and by the way, the creature manages to escape the police station without anyone seeing it, or even finding evidence that it was even there. Must be the strobe light.

It’s finally taken this long for the spooks to show up and start their coverup; naturally, that smells foul to McLemore, and in between playing bagpipes for Sanbourn (which gets her into his bed — ah, the charms of Scottish culture) he keeps worrying at the case. Eventually Sanbourn says that the prune thingie looks like a huge cockroach egg, which prompts McLemore to take it to a friend of his that works in R&D at an extermination company (it’s good to have expert friends, isn’t it?). Their examination prompts the egg to open, revealing — a facehugger? Well, it sure looks that way: long crablike legs and a long tail.

Oh, and Merris’ egg opens on its own. Did I mention something about not expecting him to live long?

There’s a chase here of several city blocks as McLemore does in the facehugger that killed his partner, then he gets another call from Lady Elaine that tells him where the creature is now. He and Sanbourn go after it in a warehouse, loaded for bear; the Hero’s Death Exemption comes up in spades, until finally McLemore manages to kill the thing by pure toughness.

Now, in my description, you may have missed some of the Alien references, so I’ll reiterate them: The critters got a vaguely cucumber-shaped head with wicked teeth and no visible eyes; there are facehuggers. There’s even a “Found the cat — AAAGGH!” scene that I didn’t mention.

On the other hand, just having similar creatures does not make a movie similar to Alien. (Just ask anyone who’s seen any of the later Alien sequels.) Sanbourn is far too much a useless damsel in distress. The soundtrack, by and large, sucks. And the critter doesn’t do much of anything, aside from eat the occasional teen or derelict (including the original witness, who gets drunk after questioning and stumbles into the warehouse where the critter is lurking); it just waits for McLemore to get good and pissed off enough to hunt it down.

In other words, the movie ends up without a really strong reason to exist. Sorry, one scene with bagpipes just doesn’t earn enough points.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• gratuitous Lovecraft references: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 4
  • Charles Napier (McLemore) played Adam the Space Hippie in the classic episode “The Way to Eden,” and “Denning” in the DS9 episode “Little Green Men” (the Roswell episode)
  • Ron Glass (Merris) was “Loken” in the Voyager episode “Nightingale”
  • Julie Newmar (Lady Elaine) played “Eleen” in the classic episode “Friday’s Child”
  • Michael Forest (“Hawkins” — which one was he? I dunno) played Apollo in the classic episode “Who Mourns For Adonais?”