'90s Trash?: The Rift (1990)

 I might as well not put this one off!  As part of my look at the Underwater Horror Films from 1989-1990, we have The Rift.  It comes to us from the pair of Dino De Laurentiis, who Produced it, and Juan Piquer Simon, who Directed it.  It made it fun for the Writer, it seems.  He wrote a Script and then someone had to translate it into Italian for Dino.  When he approved it, they then needed a SECOND translation of the Script into Spanish, so that the Director could read it.  They should have just hired the guy who made Incubus (Leslie Stevens) and translated it into Esperanto for him!  The Plot involves a missing Submarine, a ragtag Crew and some strange monsters.  It is the Horror Adaptation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that I've been waiting for!  The Cast is notable for including Ray Wise (who gets top-billing) and R. Lee Ermey, as well as other people less worthy of mention.  Supposedly, the impetus of this Film was Dino wanting to make a lower-budget version of his own Film- Leviathan.  You can see it, although they thankfully tweaked a bunch of it to not make it just a cheaper version of that Film.  For all of the attention that DeepStar Six gets from people (myself included) for being similar to Leviathan, it's kind of ironic to see the origin of this Film.  Can they solve the mystery hidden in The Rift?  To find out, read on...

A proper late-80s/early-90s hero- longish hair, stubble, smart and a bit grizzled- is told that his creation- a Submarine has gone missing.

He agrees to help find it after they both threaten to blame him for it failing...and tell him that a colleague is missing with the Sub.

He joins the Crew of the NEW Submarine- since making two Submarine Models is more expensive than making one- and gets lots of pushback.

An ex of his (naturally!) is part of the Crew and a stern Navy Commander (Ermey) is in charge.

It's not range to see Ermey as a Soldier, but he did go from The Marines to The Navy!

They follow a black box signal and create some false tension by deciding to drive *between* two chunks of Iceberg.  It's a big Ocean- go around!

As they get nearer, they get attacked by a strange creature.

My Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea reference bears more fruit, as this kind of thing happened every other week in Seasons 3 and 4.

They end up very deep, nearly at 45,000 feet below Sea Level.

That's impressive, given that the deepest the Ocean Floor goes is 36,000 feet!

They find a hidden area and go inside, since that works out well in every Film.

Meanwhile, someone is scheming and manipulating things on the ship.

Is it Ray Wise?
Yes, yes it is.

They get attacked by barely-seen Monsters and the Crew is whittled down quite a bit.

To further amp up the tension by having our Hero's Ex get separated.

She's a Military Officer with a career...but in a Screenplay, she's just there to give him a goal to achieve.

On the Ship, samples from the Lab start to mutate.

The plan here is something something Mutation something something Biology something something Genetics.

The whole thing ends with them *further* in the Lab and they must battle a Contamination-style giant monster.  That one's hydraulics actually worked though!

They blow up the Monster (of course!) and kill Wise for betraying them, vowing to reveal the truth.

They have two floppy disks, so that evil Corporation is going down!  The End.

Well, it sure ain't The Abyss.  After 2 of these in a row, what else do I have to say?  Well, the Sub Effects look decent.  The part where it is attacked by the strange creature is less, well, realistic-looking than in probably should be.  The actual on-screen Monsters look fine.  Like the other Films, you only get fleeting glimpses or odd angles most of the time.  This one has a decent, if unoriginal hook to it.  We don't really get to know too much about *why* they are mutating people, plants and things though.  Something something profit, I guess.  It's also odd to see the first 2 guys not *actually* get any comeuppance directly.  Yes, they imply that it will happen, but where's the schadenfreude in that?!?  The idea here is simple, as well.  We just need to get people in a Cave/Ocean full of Monsters- who cares why?!?  Evil Corporations are evil, so there we go.  If you can accept that this is a fun, but fairly-simple Film, you can have a good time.  It's not nearly as deep as the titular Rift in the Film is, but it can be fun.  Given that I read that this was the one with 'killer moss,' it proved to be more interesting than that.  Leave it to a Reviewer of the time to be a bit more negative (and give me a good closing to this look at the Underwater Horror Films of 1989/1990)…

Next time, I jump ahead to 2002.  We're sticking with the Ocean though, so don't put away those flippers just yet.  Stay tuned...