Within the Rock (1996, dir:
Gary J. Tunnicliffe; cast:
Xander Berkeley, Caroline Barclay, Bradford Tatum, Brian
Krause, Barbara Patrick, Michael Zelniker, Duane Whitaker)
If you want
Within
the Rock, don't buy the individual DVD -- you can buy it much cheaper as part
of the
Fright Fest DVD package of 8 horror films.
That said,
Within
the Rock is a low-low-budget
Alien ripoff. It
seems to be a made-for-cable TV movie, with cheap studio sets and
cheesy CGI effects.
It seems there's this moon-sized asteroid headed for Earth. So
this crew
of miners is sent to land on it, and bore rockets deep into this
asteroid so as to divert its path.
The miners are typical
Alien carbon copies. They're cynical,
greedy, slovenly, horny, and don't trust "the corporation." You'd
think that with Earth's survival at stake, the authorities would send
a crack
team of military or NASA types. But no. They sent a ragtag bunch
of space misfits to save humanity.
It's stated that the military will send their boys to
blow up the moon -- if the miners fail. Which makes the miners all
the more cynical about their mission. And make the audience
wonder, why not sent the military in the first place?
Anyway, the miners unearth some alien bones in a platinum tomb. No one, except the lead scientist
(a beautiful woman, and obvious Sigorney Weaver
ripoff), seems to care that this is Man's first encounter with
alien artifacts. The miners only want to strip the tomb of its
platinum.
But opening the tomb allows oxygen into it, which regenerates the
alien bones into a ferocious alien. Naturally, this alien begins killing the
miners.
Despite that, this is a slow-moving film. We're 50 minutes into
the story before the killings really start. And because the crew
is few in number, the body count is low.
The science is real bad. The film is set in 2019, and by then,
science can create "oxygen walls" -- a breathable atmosphere which
can be turned on and off, expanded or contracted, and which
surrounds any area, so you don't need a spacesuit. There's no
physical "wall" -- it's just that the oxygen stops at a certain
point. Yet it doesn't leak past this "wall." Not that anything's
holding it back. A person can easily walk past this wall, but then
they can't breathe without a spacesuit.
The spacesuits (for when the oxygen wall is turned off) are real
crappy. These suits aren't sealed. One miner's dreadlocks are
hanging out from under his helmet, into the dangerous atmosphere.
And the faceplates are small, providing a limited range of
visibility.
The computer screens look like something from the 1980s,
though this film was shot in the 1990s -- never mind 2019.
And what's with the gravity? This is a small, moon-sized asteroid,
yet the miners walk around like it's normal Earth gravity.
Even overlooking the bad science, the story is crappy. One of the
miners turns psycho and starts killing his fellow miners for
no reason. Seriously, his murder spree has nothing to do with the alien or
contamination or the atmosphere. He's just a bad dude.
One of the best
Alien ripoffs remains
Galaxy
of Terror. I also
recommend
Inseminoid (aka
Horror Planet) -- which also had a
chainsaw-wielding mad astronaut amid the alien mayhem. But at
least there, it was because the alien infected the mad astronaut.
Other good
Alien ripoffs are
Forbidden World and
Creature.
Within
the Rock is slow moving. Its horror is tepid. Its characters
are clichéd, silly, and
poorly motivated. This film is for
Alien ripoff completists only.
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