Leave it to Roger Corman to ripoff one of his own ripoffs! This direct-to-video flick is actually a remake of the Corman produced ALIEN-riff FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982), going so far as to use footage from that which is actually footage from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. You still with me? Marc Singer takes over for Jesse Vint as the space soldier who answers a distress call from a scientific community. Once he gets there with his robot sidekick, he finds out the scientists have been performing a series of genetic experiments that have unleashed a big ol' monster. This isn't nearly as good as the original but it does feature a fine alien and nice performance by Singer. He really can make anything just the slightest bit better with his everyman delivery. The only place where the remake trumps the original is in the insertion of nudity. WORLD had a really gratuitous bit with Vint and a female companion in a sauna type area. This is even more casual as the nudity is inserted in a dream sequence a character has during all the chaos. Finding a place for that in the film's short 72-minute running time is perhaps its biggest merit.
Review of Dead Space
