Director: J.S. Cardone
Script: J.S. Cardone
Cast: David Beecroft, David Wong, Shawn Wheatherly, Miguel Nunez, Lu Leonard, Frederick Flynn, Louise Fletcher
Running time: 88.5 minutes
Year: 1989
Certificate: 18
Captain Hickock (reliably played by David Beecroft) arrives at an out-of-the-way research station that’s been set up underground, utilising a pre-existing cave system. He’s been sent there by the military who are funding a line of research into long-term sleep just in case interstellar flight travel is ever made possible. The head of the research group, Dr Van Fleet (David Wong), isn’t very happy to see the Captain, who has the power to shut down the project should there not be enough progress or if it’s deemed to be unsafe. The latter being the more likely potential issue since Hickock was sent, primarily, to see what happened that recently caused the death of one of the test subjects.
It doesn’t take the young Captain very long to deduce that something is very ‘off’ with the research and by the time the senior researchers ‘come clean’ about what’s really been happening it’s too late and more deaths are inevitable, particularly when they all become conveniently trapped in the underground facility, with no way of communicating with the outside world.
It would seem that some kind of entity – alien or otherwise – has been attracted to the ‘sleeping’ subjects and is trying to utilise their life energies to return to where it came from. The entity takes on the appearance of the greatest fears of its victims, so for example, the facility’s cook hates rats so is attacked by a giant rat-like creature, while a maintenance guy hates the cook so is attacked by a mutated version of her. The fact that you never see the entity’s true form actually helps build mystery and suspense.
In an attempt to appeal to early computer geeks the entity communicates with the research team via their computers and calls itself John Doe. Obviously, the technology on display in the film is somewhat antiquated by today’s standards, but it’s all good fun and the cast do their best to play it all straight.
Talking of the cast, everyone on board is ‘solid’ and, as expected, Louise Fletcher, who played the nurse in One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is very good as Dr. Erhardt, the facility’s second in command. Plus, James Hong is suitably unnerving as the team leader, although in the film credits the actor is credited as David Wong for some reason.
Being a Charles Band production the budget was obviously very limited, but the production design team do a good job of hiding the cracks and Mark Shostrum (who trained the lads from KNB) does a decent job on the special effects, which are a lot of fun, although wisely kept to a minimum and are kept in shadow for most of the time.
There are a few surprises in store for viewers, especially the death of one character, a fair amount of slimy gore to behold, and some tasteful nudity from a nicely proportioned Maureen Flaherty as she lies prone in one of the sleeper pods. Not surprisingly, Flaherty was better known for the bikini films she appeared in, including Bikini Hoedown.
Shadowzone doesn’t outstay its welcome and moves along at a fair clip, which is to its advantage since there are some silly ideas in it and one scene, which is supposed to last for 40 seconds in real-time, gets hilariously stretched out to about 5 minutes in length!
Overall, the film is a fun sci-fi horror film in the grand tradition of Alien, The Thing and director Cardone’s own The Slayer, and is well worth taking the time to watch. In fact, the director was also clearly influenced by the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, and you can see some of those classical influences too.
88 Films have done a great job on the presentation of the film as it looks great and the sound is very clear too, considering it’s now over 35 years old. There are a couple of special features on the disc including;
Audio commentary with Dave Wain and Malty Budrewicz – This is an enthusiastic and informative audio track that goes into plenty of detail about the film and its makers. Apparently, the director initially focused on writing and rewriting scripts, including for Full Moon’s predecessor Empire Pictures. This was his first film, directing, for Band, and Shadowzone was the first film to be made under the new Full Moon banner.
Trailer (1.35 mins) – A decent, exciting trailer.
