Bullet Points: Dark Breed
One of the byproducts of compiling The Ultimate PM Entertainment Countdown earlier this year, was getting the heads up on PM Entertainment movies I had previously never heard of.
1996’s Dark Breed was a movie that didn’t get a ton of votes from those who participated, which is why it didn’t make the Countdown or even the Honorable Mentions, but those few who did select Dark Breed put it over strong, so strong I knew I had to check it out. The fact that Dark Breed stars Jack Scalia, who I enjoyed in PM Entertainment’s T-Force, didn’t hurt either.
- The Premise: A group of astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Aquarius have a close encounter of the parasitic kind and defy their quarantine orders and make a crash landing on Earth. Now Captain Nick Saxon (Jack Scalia, The Rift), the special forces commander of a top secret division of the United States Air Force known as Omega, has been tasked with bringing the infected astronauts in dead or alive. To up the ante, Nick has a close relationship with two of the astronauts… one is his ex-wife Debbie (Donna W. Scott) and the other is his best friend Joseph Shay (Jonathan Banks, Last Man Standing). Throw in the fact that Nick is haunted by his own tumultuous space mission from years prior and it is obvious early on that this assignment is not going to be a cake walk for Captain Nick Saxon.
- Richard Pepin, You Magnificent Bastard: Awesome car chases and throwing people through glass are two of the things PM Entertainment is most known for… leave it to Director Richard Pepin to find a way to combine both of these action elements in one scene. When Nick first catches up with his now infected best friend Joe… the two go face to face for the first time on the back of a moving wide load truck that Joe and his fellow astronauts commandeered (Nick was lowered down by helicopter, because a PM Entertainment movie without a helicopter is hard to come by). The wide load truck is carrying a what appeared to be an add on structure for a home that has plenty of glass panels inside, which means broken glass everywhere as Nick Saxon finds out the hard way that his friend Joe is being controlled by the parasite inside of him… a parasite that makes Joe much stronger than Nick Saxon. Joe physically removes Nick off the truck and then detaches the wide load trailer. This allows Joe and his fellow infected astronauts to get away and sets up two cars to go crashing into and flipping through the trailer complete with gigantic fireball!
- What Came First? The Parasite or the Eggs?: The astronauts were not the only thing that came crashing down to Earth after the quarantine order was defied… a canister with parasite alien eggs was also jettisoned to Earth and while Nick and his team are tracking the astronauts, Joe is leading the mission to retrieve the egg canister that will lead to an alien takeover of Earth by The Dark Breed that now control them.
- Debbie Deb: Conspicuous by her absence in all this action has been Nick Saxon’s ex-wife, Debbie. Debbie shows up during a warehouse showdown between Joe and his Dark Breed egg hunters and the Omega forces led by the Omega boss Cutter (Lance LeGault, Iron Eagle) along with Nick’s team. Debbie shows up during all the chaos and with her gun blazing, causes even more chaos but manages to get word to Nick to meet her the next day. The two meet at a diner, but it isn’t just Debbie that Nick is meeting with, an alien named Sybedra has entered Debbie’s body and using it as a host so she could come to Earth to stop the Dark Breed. She fills Nick in on the Dark Breed’s plans for the eggs they’ve retrieved and asks for his help to stop them. If Nick and Sybedra can destroy the egg canister and The Dark Breed in time, not only will they save the human race, but Sybedra will be able to leave Debbie’s body safely and the former lovers can reunite… but the clock is ticking… FYI, all this has to be done in the next 39 hours! This is also about the time where Cutter does what so many heads of top secret government agencies are prone to do in movies, abuse their power and betray the hero… and I thought Lance LeGault was an asshole on The A-Team.
Dark Breed was an interesting conglomeration of action, sci-fi, horror and doo-wop music. And even though Dark Breed had some of the classic PM Entertainment elements, it felt different. This could explain why some PM fans love Dark Breed so passionately, while it doesn’t strike all the right chords for others.
Next up, I’ll be striking a chord with fans of Bonus Bullet Points…
- Quasi Futuristic Building: The familiar Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant serves at the headquarters for the USAF. The basement of the building is also used for the space station flashbacks.
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Jack Scalia climb a rope to board a helicopter that was in flight, then Dark Breed is the movie for you.
- Familiar Faces: Powell, one of the Dark Breed astronauts, was played by Felton Perry of RoboCop fame… Robin Curtis (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero) played a doctor on the Omega payroll that questioned Cutter’s ethics and got herself in hot water for it… Last but not least, George “Buck” Flower played a bum. If I didn’t know any better, I would say Buck was actually a bum in Los Angeles who somehow always managed to wander on to movie sets. Flower played similar characters in movies like They Live and One Man Force.
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Jack Scalia use a satellite dish to do some “street surfing”, then Dark Breed is the movie for you.
- The Mushroom Theory of Management: Dark Breed introduced me to this management style and for those of you who have never heard of it allow me to pass along the knowledge. The Mushroom Theory of Management is where you keep your direct reports in the dark and feed them shit once in a while.
