FirstWitch
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
Scott LeBrun
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.Five out of 10.
Woodyanders
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.
aaronzombie
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 *****.
Mr Parker
Yeah. Right. This movie is right up there with Dusk til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money as one of the worst, if not the worst ever. I rented this one just to make fun of it and it's so difficult to watch that I didn't even bother. This shlock has absolutely no moment of saving grace. The creature on the box looks like a cross between Giger's Alien and Barney. This one is not even worth getting paid to see. You will feel cheap, insulted and even offended watching this chock. This movie isn't even funny. They show breasts for no purpose other than to give you something to hoot about. I've seen home movies that are better produced than this suckfest. Avoid at all costs, unless renting ultrastink garbage is your bag. This is definitely one for the MST3K crowd. Rating: zero out of *****.
