Yes, Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar is exactly what it sounds like. I don’t even need to say it. But I will. It’s low budget, it’s silly, and it’s a pale imitation of what it blatantly rips off. However … is it bad? Honestly, I think it’s supposed to be. More so, I think it’s the point. Hear me out.
Seriously, I don’t know if director Garo Setian was trying to make a straight-faced off-beat homage or not, but that’s what we get. Indeed, Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar feels like a movie cheaply made in the late 1970s ‘remastered’ for a special edition release. For that very reason, it’s kinda fun.
The story is simple, set well into a future where those with the means don’t die, their ‘souls’ saved as a gelatinous goo that can be installed into hyper realistic cyber humans. We meet Kip (Michael Paré), a rogue-ish type who travels about the galaxy with his daughter Taylor (Sarah French) looking for adventure. They’re doing so in search of the Deepstar, a fabled lost spaceship full of treasure they need because, well, no spoilers. However, there are others wanting a piece of that Deepstar, and Kip has made some enemies along the way. And oh boy, are they under the top. That’s just what the movie needs.
Full of punch ups and shootouts and all sorts of toothy monsters, including a dragon that lives in hot liquid magma and eats prisoners dropped from above in telephone booth-sized capsules, there’s no shortage of action. Add in some believable sets, location shooting, and a rousing score (Joel Christian Goffin), and Space Wars:Quest for the Deepstar has a lot going for it. Where it veers into the cheesy is its acting and dialogue, all either because that’s just the level this crew could get or because it was crafted to be so. I’m going with the second.
Why? Because this is like an homage to those cheap 70s space operas all trying to cash in on the success of Star Wars. The costumes, the gadgets, the scenery-chewing baddies and the big alien beasts, it oozes classic sci-fi cheese like its seams are about to bust. You’ll get what I mean in the first three minutes where you’ll believe that someone in wardrobe must have gotten leftovers from an early season of Buck Rogers and decided to go all in. Except for Paré of course, who keeps his leather jacket on and never leaves the cockpit of the ships he’s on. I say ‘ships’ because there is more than one and to be fair, they all look great.
That’s the thing. I started this thinking I wasn’t gonna make it through, convinced it was one of those movies that blew all its money in the opening salvo and then spends the rest of the film on one or two bland sets with people ceaselessly ‘expositioning’ the plot to bits. But it’s not. It’s not that at all. Setian, who co-wrote the film with Joe Knetter, build some creative set-pieces out of a fixed budget, and while it takes some big pendulum swings in how well that’s presented, Space Wars: The Quest for Deepstar is never once boring. You gotta be in the right frame of mind, I’ll admit, but getting there isn’t too hard once you see what this is trying to do.