Deadly Instincts (1997)

Cast your mind back several months regular reader(s), to when I wrote about a low-rent semi-porno science fiction horror film called Breeders (1986).  I mentioned then that it had, somewhat surprisingly, been remade in the UK in 1997.  Well, I finally got around to watching said remake, under its US title of Deadly Instincts, over the weekend.  The change of title when crossing the Atlantic was probably down to the fact that it is only a remake of the original in the loosest sense, changing setting, characters and narrative structure while retaining the basic concept underlying the original and the climactic wandering around in subterranean tunnels.  While appearing to have a slightly larger budget than the original Breeders, it feels far less 'authentic'.  The first film was shot on location in New York, but the remake relocates the action to Boston.  Except that it isn't Boston, or anywhere else in the US, but rather the Isle of Man masquerading as Boston.  Which it does very unconvincingly - it just never feels right, from the fake US accents of the mainly British cast to the unauthentic feeling settings which feel as generic as the US title.  (While I'm far from being an expert on US law enforcement, I'm pretty sure that a regular Boston PD patrol car sent from a local precinct wouldn't be marked 'Highway Patrol', for instance, that being a separate division.  A SWAT team certainly wouldn't be using such transport.  But hey, that was probably the only Chevrolet Caprice in police colours available in the Isle of Man).

Instead of the 'police procedural' approach of the original, with a stereotypical NYPD detective doggedly looking into a series of sexual attacks on young women, with the only connection between the victims being that they were all virgins, Deadly Instincts sets its action at an al-girls college, with various of the students falling into trances and vanishing following a meteorite fall nearby.  The detective character is relegated to a secondary role, with the focus now being on one of the lecturers, who is busy shagging one of his students, (played by Samantha Janus).  In fact, for a large stretch of the film, it is this relationship which seems to be the script's focus, rather than the alien invasion.  Which is symptomatic of the film's main problem: a complete lack of focus.  Despite dominating the early part of the film, these two main characters effectively vanish from the narrative for the middle portion, where we instead follow a recently introduced and barely developed as characters, SWAT team as they wander around some tunnels below the college and get killed off one by one.  As we barely know them, it is difficult to give a damn about their fates, (which we are clearly meant to), depriving these sequences of any suspense or shock value.

The existence of the supposed leads is remembered just in time for the film's final third as they descend into those tunnels for a confrontation with the alien. The lack of the investigative plot structure of the original means not only that Deadly Instincts is deprived of any narrative impetus, instead sending characters wandering around aimlessly, but that it lacks any mechanism for a smooth and progressive exposition of the plot as a series of reveals.  Consequently, it has to insert a character - billed as 'Space Girl' - whose main function seems to be to explain the whole business of the alien's motivation for coming to Earth, (to use human women as hosts for breeding its young), in one burst of exposition late in the running time.  Which, of course, makes it feel like an afterthought, which, in a way, it is, as Deadly Instincts clearly wants to be a low budget Alien rip off, (the middle section, with the SWAT team in the tunnels is clearly referencing Aliens), rather than a adult orientated schlock, like the original.  Which, I'm guessing, is down to the film's backers, who were looking for a somewhat wider, less niche, audience for the finished product.

Subsequently, although the girl's college setting would seem to suggest that the audience is going to be in for plenty of sex and nudity, this aspect of the original is severely toned down.  Sure, we get some brief locker room nudity and a couple of flashes of Janus' bare behind, but this is nothing compared to Breeders.  Moreover, there are no sex scenes to speak of.  Most surprisingly, for a film about aliens impregnating Earth girls, the mechanics of this are glossed over entirely.  There is no equivalent to the original's gloriously sleazy scene of a group of the aliens; hypnotised victims bathing naked in extraterrestrial jism, for instance.  The closest we get to that are scenes of the missing college girls in the creature's underground lair, encased in a gelatin-like substance.  Everything that made the first Breeders unique and memorable is replaced by generic scenes and concepts in the remake - the victims are now controlled via crystal pendants fashioned from the alien's meteor/spaceship, rather than as a result of alien sexual molestation, they turn into a horde of homicidal zombies to provide an action scene, even alien abduction is shoe-horned into the new film.  (The latter in the form of 'Space Girl', a n abductee dressed in what looks like a leather bondage outfit, who arrives with the alien, having been used for his race's breeding experiments).  

Deadly Instincts does have its good points, however.  The alien itself is surprisingly effective for a man-in-a-suit monster, being well designed and constructed, (although it still wasn't anywhere near as unpleasant as the rubber-suited and sticky aliens of the original, despite its technical superiority).  Also, whereas the original's cast consisted mainly of adult movie performers, of limited ability and, not surprisingly, acted as if they were in a sex film, Deadly Instincts actually features some half decent actors.  Unfortunately, none of them can make any headway with the script, struggling to establish any kind of sympathetic characterisations.  Todd Jensen as the lecturer, for instance, comes over as sleazy rather than heroic, too interested in abusing his position of trust to get into his students' pants to notice that the college is being taken over by aliens.  Samantha Janus, likewise, is unable to lift her character beyond stereotypical blonde chick who, without warning, turns ass-kicking action heroine before abruptly turning victim in need of rescue again.  The ill fated Kamdaba Simmons, (she was murdered by an ex-boyfriend a few months after filming her role), is given little to work with in the under-written role of Space Girl, a character who, ultimately, exists only to serve as a vehicle for some clunky plot exposition.  Oliver Tobias, looking as if he was still smarting from having lost out to Timothy Dalton for the role of James Bond some ten years earlier and wondering how he kept winding up in this sort of shit, plays one of those cops who is always jumping to the wrong conclusion. 

The original Breeders, despite its obviously minuscule budget and relentless porno aesthetic, never outstayed its welcome and provided a lot of sleazy fun.  By contrast, Deadly Instincts is a lot less fun, hamstrung by an apparent determination, despite its subject matter, not to offend and by a poorly structured script that undermines any attempts at building tension, let alone pace.  At around ninety seven minutes, it is far too long for its material and drags badly for much of its running time.  While the 1986 film was pretty much what you'd expect a science fiction B-movie directed by a gay porn specialist to be like, the 1997 remake is pretty much how you would expect a direct-to-video monster movie directed by a journeyman film maker to turn out, (writer/director Paul Matthews' other career highlights include the execrable Merlin: The Return (2000), a truly shite Rik Mayall vehicle).  While far slicker looking than the original, it is just another generic alien monster movie, lacking the sheer vulgarity and pulpish vigour that made Breeders so enjoyable.