The Abyss **** (1989, Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn) – Classic Movie Review 1293

Writer-director James Cameron’s expensive 1989 sci-fi thriller was a very rare box-office flop for him, taking only $90million worldwide. It’s hard to know quite what went wrong. It looks stunning and the trick work is amazing, especially for its era, winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects (John Bruno, Dennis Muren, Hoyt Yeatman, Dennis Skotak). More action and bigger stars might have prevented it being a box-office flop. Who knows?

In Cameron’s story, an oil-rig crew’s civilian diving team are enlisted by the US search and recovery team to search for and help rescue a lost sunken American nuclear submarine that’s stuck in the Caribbean depths two and a half miles from the surface. Racing against Russian vessels to recover the ship, the team go through hell and high water on the way to encountering an alien aquatic species.

Back in 1989, after The Terminator and Aliens, a very great deal was anticipated from Cameron and his underwater adventure thriller and sci-fi fantasy, especially by the 20th Century Fox studio, which sank a then vast $70 million into it (not including marketing or distribution costs, probably about the same again). And The Abyss is often quite awesome and amazing. It’s packed with action and remarkable Oscar-winning special effects, and cruises very nicely on its decent acting from the cast of good actors and Cameron’s intense, often imaginative direction.

But, though Cameron handles the adventure side of the movie well, both tensely and excitingly, the film is unwieldy, overlong and often unconvincing. Cameron’s screenplay hesitates and holds back just when it should be bold and commanding. The movie gets repetitive and boring around the midway point, as the story starts to stall. And the climactic close encounters with Disney-style monsters just do not work. This is even after the film’s ending was completely re-shot after preview audiences laughed at serious scenes.

Ed Harris makes a sterling, admirable hero as Virgil ‘Bud’ Brigman, but who cares about Bud’s soppy love affair with his ex-wife Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio)? This soapy strand of the story apart, there’s certainly enough here though in the way of ideas and entertainment to engross sci-fi fans.

Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, Todd Graff, John Bedford Lloyd, J C Quinn, Kimberly Scott, Jimmie Ray Weeks, Chris Elliott, George Robert Kiek and Christopher Murphy co-star.

It was 40 per cent filmed under water, pointing the way to Cameron’s Titanic film.

The much more impressive 171-minute ‘Special Edition’ version released in 1992 adds 32 minutes of deleted footage, improving the clarity of the story and characterisations, as well as satisfying by providing more special effects trick-work footage. Ironically, since the original 139-minute version seems overlong, it’s this version that doesn’t.

While making Aliens, Cameron saw a National Geographic film about remote operated vehicles operating deep in the North Atlantic Ocean. This reminded him of the short story he wrote as a teenager about a group of scientists in a laboratory at the bottom of the ocean.

H G Wells was the first to introduce the notion of a sea alien in his 1897 short story In the Abyss.

http://derekwinnert.com/titanic-classic-film-review-77/

http://derekwinnert.com/the-terminator-classic-film-review-105/

http://derekwinnert.com/aliens-classic-film-review-38/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1293

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

Star Michael Biehn signing a copy of the film’s DVD cover during an August 23 2012, appearance at Midtown Comics in Manhattan.