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Reviews
Surface (2005)
Another gem lost to today's lowest common denominator TV audience.
The problem with TV today is that people have been spoiled by "lite" TV viewing. This type of television show is the equivalent of elevator music or "easy listening" jazz. The typical viewers idea of "continuity" is remembering who got voted off the island last week and wondering who will be the next to go. Show them a program like surface, Firefly, Dr. Who, or anything with a plot arc of more than three episodes and...well, they'll just flip back to Survivor.
95% of the sheep watching TV don't want to rack their brains. They want excuses to not think. They want to make sure the "boob tube" lives up to its name...and they don't want shows that try and go any other route. Because of this, Surface and many other high-quality shows that should have lasted far longer have gotten the axe.
TV viewers don't want stories, or morals, or philosophy, or anything over a third grade vocabulary level. They want people eating earthworms, or over-dramatized "real life" series (no such thing! You cannot observe something without changing the very nature of what you observe) or hormonal shows involving groups of people having trysts and then bragging about it to their friends.
Today's television is nothing but a wasteland, and the few diamonds you can pick out of the dust are just tossed out because no one even knows what a diamond is anymore. Surface was one of those diamonds.
The Terror Within (1989)
Alien was better. (spoilers)
I've seen much worse- but at least those movies had the guts to try something new (even though they tanked doing it).
The Terror Within is a rip-off of Alien. Similarities include (but are not limited to: a homemade flamethrower, a chest-bursting monster, lots of drool, a pair of engineers- one black, one white, an aging male captain who is somewhat heroic, a tense scene in something resembling air ducts, Creature reproduction includes humans, and a pet that is orphaned when its owner is killed.
The most obvious ripoff is the scene when they are searching a storage room (cargo bay) for the creature. Even the camera angles and shot order are similar to Alien.
I'd like to give this movie a 2 but there are other movies I'd give a two...and this isn't as bad as those.