Description
So anyway, DARK UNIVERSE is like a short-bus kid’s idea of ALIEN 5 (you know, the one that’s never gonna get made about when the Aliens come to Earth). Joe Fucking Estevez is rich guy Rod Kendrick, who built a rocket and sent it into space just because he wants to get into a pissing contest with NASA. This goes sour, though, when the ship randomly becomes infested by space spores, turning the pilot into a being that is as close as one can get to HR Giger’s design without causing litigation. (This might explain why the damn thing has the arms of a praying mantis.) This alien then goes on a rampage through the swamps of Southern Florida, and only a surly swamp guide and a bitchy news reporter can stop it! From stem to stern, this thing is fucking golden; it’s a shower of crum-bum FX, awkward dialogue, ridonkulous logic and gratuitous everything. The film moves swiftly, doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest and gives you everything you came for, even boobs – you wouldn’t think a story set almost entirely in a swamp would find room for femme nudity, but DARK UNIVERSE does. A hoot and a holler, this one.
Review
Only for the most die hard devotees of schlock.
Admittedly, director Steve Latshaws' "Dark Universe" is miles away from being particularly "good", but this viewer found that he himself didn't altogether hate it. It's a passable (if uninspired) story. Its characters and cast are mostly nondescript, and the special effects are variable. They range from slick (the morphing) to incredibly crude (the main monster). The script by co-star Patrick Moran (who plays Carlson) does include some pretty silly lines. But when all was said and done, I did have some fun with this.
Martin Sheens' somewhat less talented brother Joe Estevez plays the owner / operator of a Roger Corman version of N.A.S.A. On its way home, his first spacecraft, the Nautilus, flies through a cloud of alien spores, which infect the astronaut on board (Steve Barkett) and continue to infect Earth life once the ship crashes back onto our planet. A secretive team assigned to investigate the crash hires young Tom Hanning (Bently Tittle) as a guide.
There's enough enjoyably icky stuff to make this amusing for some fans of the genre. The scenes with the monstrous Steve and a mutated armadillo generate only laughter due to the effects being so corny. The movie does have one thing going for it, at least: a decent music score by Jeffrey Walton.
Some of the cast pulled double duty, but the most notable among them is actually a real legend, Florida based exploitation filmmaker William Grefe ("Sting of Death", "Stanley", etc.) who appears briefly as Hannings' father.
