Deep Rising

Titanic, now there's a good film...  Stop moaning at the back, it is!  Well what if you take Titanic and throw in a giant deep sea squid?  A few months after Titanic was hogging every cinema screen imaginable this next film popped up, with a whopping (it was 1998) $45 million dollar budget I give you Deep Rising.

Now as you can see the one sheet seems to be slightly misleading, you may think you've accidentally stumbled into Godzilla, but in order to keep a typically filmic air of mystery surrounding the content of the feature we are simply given an eye...  But a very nice eye none the less.

Deep Rising tells of the happenings aboard Argonautica, a rather spiffy cruise ship heading on its maiden voyage, and as always occurs at these occasions things start to go horribly wrong and some unsuspecting sea creature runs into a banquet for one.  Along the way a motley bunch of mercenaries and charter boat staff turn up, and a rather glamorous thief join the surviving boat owner and begin a merry death by man swallowing tentacle chase.

The unfortunate thing about this film is that it performed so poorly at the cinema it didn't make back even half it's production costs and to be honest it is hard to see why.  Taken as it is this is a no frills 90s B-movie, with a varied ensemble cast all providing sea creature fodder; they run around the ship a lot, there's the usual double crossing git and some questionable CGI; but for all that it's still a jolly good romp.

When tapeworms attack!

The cast is made up of some familiar faces; Famke Janssen, Jason Flemyng and a then relatively unknown Djimon Hounsou; Treat Williams as Finnegan seems to have been the inspiration for Fireflys Captain Mal Reynolds, from the sarcastic humour to the fact that Williams could be Nathan Fillions older brother the similarity is uncanny at times.  They hold together well as a cast, thankfully there is little overacting here but what does occur is an ability to bring an average script with some down right groan inducing jokes to be fun for an audience.  The actors involved know this isn't a serious movie, so it's tongue in cheek, gung-ho for the entire running time.

Obviously Deep Rising is filled to the brim with special effects, actually most of the time these work the creature is massive and it's crazy, acid filled tentacles are flying about all over the place like some murderous ticker tape on New Years Eve.  It's not perfect, there are points where the actors are clearly imposed over the background but not in proportion; it's probably the only time the word giant can be accurately used to describe Janssen.

But for all it's flaws Deep Rising works, it's a bit of fun, with comedy, gore and an impressive use of a shotgun to open an elevator door.  Watch this film, it's a monster film with guts, guns and cheese-tastic glory; and also use it as a reminder never take a cruise if the ship is on it's maiden voyage.

Deep Rising seems to follow me to every hotel I stay in, settling in for the night flicking through the channels and there it is!  Every single time!  That's when it's great to watch, don't plan it just stumble across it by accident and enjoy...  And for those who have seen it, anybody want to place bets on when the long over due sequel turns up and what happens... My guess is they've joined the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 and are about to meet the polar bear.