Starring - Joe Estevez (Soultaker, The Roller Blade Seven), Blake Pickett (The Exotic House of Wax, The Bite), and Laurie Sherman (Mind Twister, Guns and Lipstick)
Release Date - 1993
Genre - Sci-Fi/Horror
Tagline - "One lean, mean, slime machine"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)
Rating (out of 5):
With the year going the way it is I'm grateful for any new releases that come my way so when Retromedia Entertainment and Makeflix announced another new release I had to jump on it. I was a little bummed that this release, Jack-O and Friends, was a DVD only release but I was excited to check out the other two films in the set. After watching Biohazard 2: The Alien Force I decided to keep it going with the 1993 sci-fi horror straight to video flick Dark Universe starring Joe Estevez.
The film follows millionaire Rod Kendrick (Estevez) who had decided outdo NASA and sent a space craft into space. However, the capsule becomes infected with some sort of spore that overtakes the pilot before crashing back to Earth. A rescue team heads out in search for the craft and the pilot and finds themselves face to face with a monster not of this world.
Dark Universe really peaked my interest especially when I saw the artwork for it which resembled an iconic scene from Alien. Sadly, the film just wasn't as fun and the predictability and lack of enthusiasm with the cast made the film very lackluster. I wanted to love it but I couldn't. The acting is very lazy at times and unenthused at others. If you had seen any softcore porn from the mid-90s then you know exactly what I'm talking about. This is not a softcore flick but if it were we would have seen some life in the cast during the sex scene. The characters are painfully generic and the cast doesn't attempt to do anything to make them stand out. The story for this one is not the Alien rip off I was expecting but it does make it easier to compare to other films like The Blob and anything else that involved a manmade craft crashing back to Earth with something out of this world hitching a ride back. It's not original and extremely dull. The few random nude scenes was the only highlight of this one but they don't fit the story what so ever. Finally, the film has some blood but don't expect to find a gory mess of a film that most of you horror fans are looking for. The make-up effects is fun and we get a few fun props but that's the extent of the it. Overall, Dark Universe was not as fun as I was hoping for and I can't find anything really redeeming about it aside from the nudity. I know that's an asshole thing to say but that's the truth. This is one I can't recommend.
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