Spacecore Horizon.

The next VHS off the pile was DJ Webster's 1990 sci-fi flick The Dark Side of the Moon. This was a video store staple in the nineties, but one I never bothered with until now.

In 2022 - shit I should have watched this last year - the vessel Spacecore malfunctions and drifts into the dark side of the moon where it finds a long lost space shuttle with something malevolent onboard.

The Dark Side of the Moon was largely lower-tier sci-fi, but it does have some things going for it. The space sets and models were surprisingly decent, made right before filmmakers started trying to do this shit digitally. I did enjoy seeing a few familiar faces. This was apparently Joe Turkel's last film and I can see him being like, “bitch I pushed Jack Torrance off the wagon and ran fucking Tyrell Corp, I be done with this shit”. I was also chuffed to see Friday 4 alumni Camilla More show up as the “Mother” character.

Even though the set up of this film is largely a redo of Alien and then functions as a dry run of Event Horizon - which wouldn't hit screens for another seven years - I did like the tie-in to the Bermuda Triangle. Christ, remember when that was a thing? In the eighties, it was a tangible threat, like quicksand and Stranger Danger. And I'll give this movie some credit, of all the things I was expecting on that derelict ship, Satan was not one of them.

Webster does a serviceable job with the material - especially since his resume consists almost solely of music videos - but does inevitably fall into the same trap as most of these low budget SF pictures where the crew spends an ungodly amount of time searching the ship. This is where I started nodding off, but I was able to snap back into consciousness to see our lead sacrifice himself for the greater good.

The Dark Side of the Moon is watchable fare, but also almost  indistinguishable from the likeminded fare that populated this early nineties era. I would take Gary J. Tunnicliffe's 1996 flick Within The Rock over this if I'm being honest.