Deep Rising (20th Anniversary Special Edition)

BOTTOM LINE: A modernized retro B-movie flick that monster fans and kids at heart should love. It's a twisted POSEIDON ADVENTURE homage that sails through dark Harryhausen & Spielberg-tainted seas and liberally borrows bucketfuls of gorgeously gloppy gore from those wicked Eerie and Creepy comics that horrified 50's-era moms tried to keep us from reading as we were growing up. The CGI effects are regrettably dated and show their age, but no matter. It's the genuine sense of fun & full throttle action that make DEEP RISING a first rate "park your thinker in neutral and just enjoy" motion picture spook house ride. If you're a fan of the film (or just appreciate seeing a movie looking & sounding as good as it can), then plunk down a few extra bucks and get the Blu-ray remaster release from the fine folks at Kino Lorber. The old DVD and more recent Mill Creek blu are a distant 3rd and 2nd, respectively. The film: 5 STARS. The DVD: 3 STARS. The Mill Creek double feature Blu-ray: 3 STARS. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray: 5 STARSTHE STORY: High tech mercenaries hire a laconic sea captain, who skippers a re-purposed WWII-era PT boat, to deliver them & their deadly secret cargo to an isolated destination in the Pacific, some 800+ miles off the coast of southern China. There, the savage soldiers-for-hire intend to hijack The Argonautica, a massive ultra-luxury cruise ship on her maiden voyage. When they eventually intercept the gigantic pleasure ship, everyone is surprised to find the vessel empty, with no clues as to what happened to the passengers & crew - except for traces of blood everywhere they search ...and then it all hits the fan.THOUGHTS: One of my very favorite guilty pleasure monster movies from the 1990's. Cheesy? Lame-brained? Wonky CGI monsters? Guilty, guilty & guilty. Even so, I love this salty, snarky, sea monster/disaster movie. It has just enough of a tongue-in-cheek attitude to nicely balance the guts & grit, without slipping into self-parody. Treat Williams sets the tone, keeping things as tense or light as the situation demands. Sturdy Wes Studi makes for a very believable hardcore soldier of fortune, and he's got a stereotypical squad of macho lunkheads to order around & back him up, (including Jason Flemyng, Cliff Curtis, Clifton Powell, Djimon Hounsou and the late Trevor Goddard). Speaking of back-ups, Treat Williams, as PT skipper John Finnegan, has a scrappy 1st mate, Leila, (Una Damon), and a terrific Gilligan of his very own in Kevin O'Conner, as ship's mechanic & chief nitwit, Joey Pantucci. Rounding out the cast is a pre-XMEN Famke Jenssen as sultry, spunky Trillian St. James; a headstrong thief who throws in with Finnegan and the ragtag commandos in the hopes of making it off the creature-infested cruise ship in one piece.The icky, deep-sea dwelling thingamajigs, courtesy of primo gross-out creature designer Rob (The Thing, 1982) Bottin, are equal parts disgusting and cool. But exactly WHAT are they? Definitely NOT octopus mutations, as many reviewers have assumed. The film's irritatingly pompous luxury ship owner Simon Canton, (a delightfully disintegrating performance by smarmy Anthony Heald), speculates that the creatures are an offshoot of the Archea Ottoia family. Frankly the things more properly resemble jumbo mutant versions of Bobbit Worms (Eunice Aphroditois). Regardless of whether they are factual or fictional, they are undoubtedly huge, slimy, sneaky and savage. Action is kept at a pretty steady pace, except for the draggy middle third, although that's redeemed by the over-the-top, hair-raising finale. And let's not forget that inspired final shot, which literally left us - and the surviving characters - wanting to know "Now what?!?" A terrific teaser that just begged for a sequel which, regrettably, never happened. *SIGH*UPDATE>>>>THE Kino-Lorber BLU-RAY: This terrific high-def remaster from Kino Lorber is a real winner. First up, I am pleased to tell you that transfer for this KL release is excellent. Kudos to whomever oversaw the remastering process. The fairly recent Mill Creek hi-def double feature release is a distant second compared to this one. THIS is the Blu-Ray you'll want to get if you're a fan of the film. TONS of detail jumps out at you, no matter where you look within the widescreen frame. There is no artifacting, pixelation or edge enhancement that I could detect. The original 2.0 soundtrack has been cleaned up, (now Lossless), and a new 5.1 surround track is available, too. The 2.0 version seems properly balanced between dialogue & sound effects/music, though there are few exchanges where the dialogue is somewhat on the soft side. The overall audio/video presentation here is as solid or perhaps even better than its original theatrical release, IMHO.But wait, there's more! For hardcore fans (that'd be me!) of this aquatic action cheese-fest, there's a ton of terrific bonus content to enjoy. The main gimme is a full-length audio commentary track with director Stephen Sommers and the film's editor, Bob Ducsay. It's an engaging listen with lots of fun and funny recollections of the blood, sweat and tears that went into the making this movie. Next up are individual, newly-shot on-camera interviews with stars Wes Studi, Kevin O'Conner and Anthony Heald and cinematographer Howard Atherton. Additional on-camera interviews feature several of the department heads who oversaw the creation of the computer-generated & practical make-up F/X. Some great stories to be found here, as well. There are also ILM animatics & SPFX test footage for F/X junkies. The slipcover features newly-commissioned cover artwork that's reversible with the original US theatrical release poster art. Promo & behind-the-scenes photo galleries round out the roster of extra goodies. There are no interviews with Famke Jenssen or star Treat Williams, which was a bummer. Honestly though, that's my only gripe. All-in-all this Kino Lorber Blu-ray release of DEEP RISING is a top shelf effort and a definite treat for frantic fans of this slick, slithery monster-mash.

I enjoyed the movie, had it in VCR tape and no machine, so I replaced it with the DVD.

Great creature movie, one of my favorites.

This is your basic bug hunt, in this case aboard a cruise ship.Whose owner is not a good guy.The heroes are hired by mercenaries to carry them to the ship. It turns out that they have really powerful torpedoes on board. The also install a launcher.But that doesn't matter, because when they go aboard to loot the safe, they find an absence of passengers and an abundance of deep sea monsters whose favorite food is ... well, whatever they can catch, as long as it has body fluids it can be drained of.Sea-going disasters haven't been one of my favorite genres since /The Poseiden Adventure/. But this one held my interest.And there was no group of no-name actors going one direction while the name actors go the other way, as in Poseidon (guess which group made it out alive). So this is better in at least one way.

One of my all time favorites!!!

Throw in a bunch of over-acted robbers with some semi-hostages on a ship with an infestation of crazy sea worms (I forgot what they were called so I am calling them sea worms), and you get Deep Rising, which is, dare I say it.... my 2nd favorite Big Budget B-Movie-Like Creature Feature next to Piranha 3D which is in 1st place and The Blob `88 which takes 3rd place!Plot: It's simple yet cool! A group of robbers attempt to hijack a stationed cruise ship, sounds easy enough right, I beg to differ since all the inhabitance of this yacht is gone, well besides six, *bang, bang, bang* I mean three characters (The greedy owner of the ship, the captain, and a lovely woman with a mean streak), Now that the characters are all in place, unleash the sea worms and let the carnage begin, and when it begins, I'm not going to lie.... it's pretty grisly!Review: You would think this movie would capsize over it's weighted down characters and plot but nope, because these characters are basically characters from every epic yet over acted action movie *cough* deadly prey *cough* and it seems their soul purpose isn't robbing the place, loving guns, or even fighting the sea worms, it's more so that they are there to die by the worms and have a few good characters survive! I really didn't have a problem with the special effects, they were much better than Anaconda 1-4s, Deep Blue Seas, and Lake Placid 1-4s! They also didn't just take any ordinary Animal; it was Like Tremors on steroids in the ocean, Tremors had great animatronics with no CGI, you can't say that about Deep Rising for only one soul purpose, there was no animatronics, just pretty epic CGI. The film overall is very entertaining and the two problems I had with it was that I wish we could've seen the massacre but that leads to my other problem, it was a pretty long movie, but it was awesome non the less. The Director (Stephan Sommers) really shows how he wants the humor to balance with the horrors that definitely shows just as much in The Mummy 1 & 2 and Van Helsing! This Movie was awesome and even though it was long I still wanted more at the end, I really wanted a sequel with the same surviving cast and the same director, but no such luck has happened!Acting: It's like Aliens meets Deadly Prey meets Tremors. It had witty one liners, a great try-to-calm-down story to make some extra time go by, and funny, seriously funny, and dead funny characters who you take seriously at first but then laugh with at the end! I especially liked the part when the main robber guy disallowed Treat Williams the gun but then he saw what was coming and he practically kicked it up into his arms. It was a fun time with lots of likable characters!Gore: lots of grisly dead bodies, a mangled living corpse, a broken leg, some people get the blood sucked right out of them, hell, there is even an infamous scene where a woman is sucked right down the toilet and blood sprays everywhere... This film is definitely disgusting in quite a few scenes!Bottom Line: One of the best late 90's creature features, it is a shame I never grew up watching it, instead it was Deep Blue Sea, Lake Placid, and Anaconda that I grew up watching for late 90's movies! This film is a gem and it even has a somewhat 80's vibe to it.... all in all this film is spectacular fun!Rated R for sci-fi violence and gore(Which is weird because there if a fair amount of f-bombs and other profanities in it and there is no "language" in the rating!?!)Is it worth the Buy on a scale of 1-10: 4 (the movie itself is worth a four but the DVD isn't worth much (special features wise)For the Movie itself on a scale of 1-5: 5

This is a very good and underrated monster movie that was never truly appreciated when it was released.!

Kurz & Knapp+ Gute Regie+ Guter Cast+ Gute Synchro+ Gute Story+ Gute Action+ Kurzweilig 95min o.A.+ Nicht langweilig+ Eine Priese Humor+ Eine Priese Horror+ Eine Priese Splatter+/- CGI Effekte leider veraltet, aber noch ok+/- Mittelmäßige DialogeDVD Qualität: Leider sehr miese SD Auswertung. Film braucht unbedingt ein HD Transfer!!!Fazit: So muss guter Trash sein!!! Zurecht 5 Sterne! Einer meiner Lieblings Creature Feature Monster Filme. Kompakte 95min die es in sich haben. Der Cast (damals noch recht unbekannt und heute teilweise Stars) macht den Film noch sehenswerter. Die miese DVD Qualität lässt zu wünschen übrig und ich hoffe es kommt mal ein guter Blu-ray Release. Da es den Film aktuell nur auf DVD gibt und auch nicht im Stream, ist der Film aktuell echt eine Seltenheit. Kann den Film nur empfehlen für gute Trash Fans.

Esta peli de 1998 es una buena cinta dentro del género de monstruos, dirigida por el alguna vez taquillero Stephen Summers, con Treat Williams y la hermosa Famke Jamssen en los protagónicos.Aunque puede no ser la mejor película de monstruos, tiene buenas actuaciones, efectos increíbles cortesía de Rob Bottin, buen humor negro y un monstruo que resulta bastante atractivo, dando como resultado una peli completa y entretenida.El Blu-ray tiene audio en inglés y subtítulo en inglés.NO contiene audio ni subtítulo en español.

Buenisima..divertidisima..y si...la critica decia..mala..sin tema..basura..etc..como siempre a este tipo de peliculas, que no deprimen, no te entristecen....etc..ni caso..es buenísima!! para divertirse..que es para lo que esta el cine..para hacernos olvidar de los problemas diarios, es genial...y para una tarde de sabado o de domingo..espectacular!!!Recomiendo su compra al 100%. Perfecta calidad. Recomiendo su compra y encima a este precio y en blu ray!!!

Best F-ing monster on a boat movie ever. S-load of really funny and clever monologues and dialogues. Treat Williams is indeed a treat!