Dark Breed (1997)

Just perfect...

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

DARK BREED is another hit from the team at PM Entertainment, who seemed to put out minor gem after minor gem in the years 1996 to 1997. This one's a heavily derivative science fiction thriller in which a team of astronauts are infected by alien organisms which turn them into ruthless killers. Only B-movie favourite Jack Scalia can stop them, aided by a female alien on his side.Sure, this is a film that blatantly copies bits from ALIEN, ALIENS, and THE TERMINATOR, but that doesn't stop it being a decent piece of entertainment. It's very fast-paced, for a start, and very violent, with all manner of gruesome death scenes taking place throughout. The trademark PM vehicle chases and crashes are present and correct, and a strong cast does well with the material too. Even the early CGI effects aren't bad. Watch out for ROBOCOP's Felton Perry as one of the infected, George 'Buck' Flower as a tramp, and UNDER SIEGE 2's Jonathan Banks as the chief villain.

Some people take films far too seriously!Like most reviewers or critics for this, Dark Breed.I picked this up for just a pound and highly enjoyed what I got for it. Action packed from the get-go, Dark Breed is a sci-fi rip off from many Hollywood blockbusters, but it doesn't care, because it's got just as much action, if not more, complete with some incredible stunt work from everyone involved!Jack Scalia is just great. He isn't a bad actor, he just seems to have gotten trapped in B-movie hell, yet never fails to deliver.His role in Dark Breed is probably one of his best, and he pulls off the action hero greatly!Far from perfect, but highly entertaining if you remember not to take it all so seriously. Action fans should definitely check it out, as I feel its being sold more as a sci-fi movie than anything else, yet features some amazing stunt work that deserves to be seen!!

Nick Saxon (Scalia) is an ex-Special Forces Vietnam veteran (of course), so when a crew of astronauts returns infected with an alien virus, naturally Saxon is the first person the government calls to stop the spread of these body-snatching interlopers (wonder where they got that idea...). So Saxon and his team are working on stopping the astro-nuts, who predated the diaper-wearing astro-nut from the news of a few years ago by many years. But it's personal for Scalia, sorry, Saxon, because his buddy Joseph Shay (Banks) is one of the unfortunate astronauts taken over by an alien presence. Will Saxon don his Denim and Leather and come out victorious against the alien baddies? Judging by the fact that most of the scenes are too dark to see, Dark Breed is indeed an apt title. Or maybe they could have called it Dark Screen. Which leads us to the schizophrenic nature of this movie. The sci-fi scenes are dark (as if we haven't made that sufficiently clear yet), almost as if to hide their shame at making a sci-fi slog. But as for the action scenes, most of them are shot in daylight and are clearly and appropriately lit. That's normally the way with PM, but maybe they were experimenting with the "moodier" feel of the day, which was ahead of its time, as many movies and TV shows are severely underlit today. So if you're interested in seeing PM experiment with darkness, here is certainly a place to check that out. But we can't honestly say we're on board with it this time. Thank goodness for the plentiful muzzle flashes and blow-ups, because they provide the only light in many scenes.But the action is classic PM, with high-quality explosions, plenty of car stunts, and much gun-shooting. When it settles back into sci-fi territory, the movie inevitably slows down. But we're such PM fans, we had to see this movie, even though we don't like sci-fi slogs. But scenes like the highway chase where Scalia is riding along the back of a truck on an upturned satellite dish are vintage PM and start to turn the movie back in good graces. The scene is reminiscent of PM classic Last Man Standing (1996) and easily could have appeared in that gem. Plus you can actually see the scene, so it stands out from a lot of the rest of the proceedings. But the movie as a whole is a sci-fi actioner, kind of in the vein of Peacemaker (1990). So if you liked that, you might like this.Most of the dialogue consists of characters saying other characters' names repeatedly, almost reaching Airplane! (1980) levels at times. Of course, that's not when the aliens start making pig noises. Even though the aliens are supposed to be scary and malevolent, they sound like a mash up of Babe, Gordy and Arnold Ziffel in the midst of a slop fight. In other cast news Sal Landi, who has been in plenty of movies reviewed on this site, here plays "Zim" Zimmerman, also predating a certain news story. And fan favorite George "Buck" Flower even finds time to stop by in the midst of all the craziness. Tying it all together is Scalia, who looks like a stone statue carved of Treat Williams.In the end, this movie is at war with itself. It's sci-fi sloggery vs. tried-and-true action. If you don't mind your action punctuated by literally dark, boring scenes (or if you genuinely like sci-fi, which is also a possibility), you might be able to extract some enjoyment from Dark Breed.

*Mild spoilers*Back in the mid 90's, PM Entertainment put out a large number of highly entertaining straight to video action flicks. Producer Joseph Merhi usually also directed most of the standard action vehicles, while Richard Pepin would do the ones with a Sci-Fi theme (Cybertracker, The Sender, The Silencers etc.). Having really enjoyed The Silencers and both Cybertracker movies, I decided to give Dark Breed a go. It also had Jack Scalia in the lead, who did a fine job in his other movie with Richard Pepin, The Silencers.Dark Breed has all the usual elements of an entertaining actioner with a Sci Fi theme. Car chases, gun battles, explosions, the PM trademark of tons of glass breaking and this time, some very decent looking special effects for the time, especially for DTV material. So if you like that sort of stuff, what is there not to like? Looking at the credits, I noticed some of the people responsible for the FX went onto do FX in several big budgeted productions. It appears that Pepin has probably blown a large amount of the budget around that and not bothered to build a competent movie around it.The single biggest flaw about Dark Breed is basically the fact that it just isn't that interesting to watch. As previously mentioned, everything is there but what made the other PM movies so much fun all seems watered down or poorly handled. It all starts off well enough, with 2 young lovers in a car and a ship coming and landing in the lake beside them. The effects here are neat, and then we're treated to a reasonable chase scene where the "Alien parasites" hijack a truck carrying a mobile home with a good number of smashes and a big explosion at the end. However, it all goes downhill from there. The pace is sluggish, what is only 93 minutes long feels like much more. The cast seems to be completely lacking in any kind of enthusiasm, and just provides "Can I have my paycheque now?" performances. The gunfights are all very, very dull and the fact that they're all set among warehouses and wastegrounds doesn't help. About 45 minutes into the movie, we're treated to a car chase involving Jack Scalia being pulled along on a satellite dish by a van while being pursued by the villains. The camera angles are well done, the stunts are excellent and we're treated to some nice explosions involving a van and several cars. However, what mostly ruins this scene is the fact that the weather changes between each cut, at first the sun is shining, then the road appears wet at one point, then towards the end the sun is shining again. It's only a minor glitch, but one which could have been easily avoided and only cheapens the look of the movie.So you probably get the picture of what "Dark Breed" is like. It's not a bad movie, but when there's so many other movies which do similar, and do it better, I can't think of any reason to recommend Dark Breed. If you're going to see a PM movie, this isn't the one to start with. Try Executive Target, Rage or Last Man Standing. If you want one of their Sci-Fi themed movies, try The Silencers or CyberTracker. If Dark Breed is on TV, give it a go, just don't go out of your way to find it.