Years
before the hit first-person-shooter videogame Doom and the Paul W.S. Anderson directed horror thriller Event Horizon flirted with the notion of
Hell, fire and brimstone in the farthest outer reaches of deep space, there was
this low budgeted straight-to-video sci-fi horror flick which somehow managed
to beat both aforementioned items to the finish line. Penned by future The Conjuring screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes as well as being
the only feature film from music video director D.J. Webster, the indie
microbudget chiller with the same title as a certain famous Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon doesn’t quite live
up to the antics of alien knockoffs such as Forbidden
World or Moontrap yet manages to
find its own footing as a piece of old fashioned space horror and fear of the
unknown.
Set
in the year 2022, the crew of the Spacecore-1 is on a routine mission of
repairing nuclear satellites orbiting the Earth when the ship is hit with a
power failure, depleting the crew of heat and oxygen. Out of the deep blackness of the dark side of
the moon drifts a derelict NASA space shuttle with no visible crew members left
alive but plenty of oxygen. Naturally
the crew of Spacecore-1 boards the dormant spacecraft and ferrets over the
oxygen. Unbeknownst to the crew, a
malevolent, invisible force of evil is lurking in the shuttle and very soon the
entity takes possession of the ship mates one by one ala The Evil Dead until only one human is left standing against an
otherworldly armada from Hell.
Mostly
known as the last film of famed character actor Joe Turkel of Stanley Kubrick’s
Paths of Glory and The Shining as well as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, this modestly sized and
mostly sobering chiller co-starring Robert Sampson and Alan Blumenfeld
establishes a typical ensemble space crew before unleashing whatever unknown
horrors the universe has to offer. It’s
a decent production with expectedly claustrophobic and dimly lit set pieces you’d
find on the Nostromo or the Sulaco.
Unfortunately, however, while the film does manage to convey a sense of
dread or unease with occasional moments of violence and gore, The Dark Side of the Moon simply isn’t
all that frightening and it moves at a surprisingly slow pace despite only
running 91 minutes.
For
being a straight-to-video flick, The Dark
Side of the Moon looks pretty good thanks to moody cinematography by Russ
T. Alsobrook though it uses more split diopter shots than your typical Brian De Palma film. Unfortunately the synthesized score by Mark Ryder and Phil Davies of Trancers and Society dates the film as a ‘90s movie almost immediately. Performances are decent with Will Bledsoe
looking a bit like a poor man’s Cary Elwes though the most overqualified actor
in the movie is undoubtedly Mr. Turkel.
Even in a role that doesn’t require much of the actor, Joe Turkel still
manages to make it his own though those thick rimmed glasses will invariably
remind many viewers of Dr. Tyrell from Blade
Runner.
Overall
The Dark Side of the Moon is a
halfway decent B-horror movie with some curious spins on the Bermuda Triangle
and it was somewhat refreshing to see a thriller that relied more on mood than
jump scares, however as aforementioned the film rarely becomes truly
frightening and even drags in some parts.
With time the film did attain a cult following with German black metal
band Nargaroth and Swedish death metal band Crypt of Kerberos both lifting
samples of the slowed down demon voice from the film. Still, when compared to the film and arguably
the legendary videogame it clearly influenced, it sadly doesn’t hold a candle
to either of them.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki