I’ve referred to Dark Side of the Moon in several previous reviews, so it’s probably time it got its own. Let’s state the important things upfront: it’s a lesser rip-off of Alien, it’s 85 minutes but feels longer, and I’d pay real money to see the crowd reaction to it at B-Fest.
In a nutshell, in turns out that Satan has set up shop on the far side of the Moon, and is terrorizing ships which wander into an ill-defined corridor between the Earth and the Moon which corresponds to the Bermuda Triangle. There’s an involved, badly written, inappropriately scored scene involving the film’s hero and numerology which explains all this, to the mounting horror of cast and audience alike.
That out of the way, the film has a reasonable B-movie pedigree. Robert Sampson (Robot Jox, Re-Animator) plays the ship’s pilot. John Diehl (Stargate) is…some crewmember. Never doped out what he does. The great Joe Turkel (Blade Runner, The Shining) plays the computer operator/engineer. The model work is better than expected. Possessed members of the crew have evil green eyes, which is overused but effective at times (especially Turkel). Even the ship’s “Mother” (Alien) rip-off, an android named Lesli, is an interesting take on the concept if underdeveloped.
Still, it’s not very good. If you’re going to sell this crap you need better writing and better performances. Even good actors can only do so much with bad material, and these are (mostly) not good actors. The big reveal, which you see coming from a mile away, is ludicrous. The movie plods unforgivably. The laws of physics, important to space travel, take a real beating.
It’s worth seeing only if you believe my theory that it’s a missing link between Aliens on the one hand, and Ghost Ship and Event Horizon on the other.
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