The Dark Side of the Moon (1990) - Discount Event Horizon

Seeing as 'Dark Side of the Moon' came out a whopping seven years before the other sci-fi horror cult classic 'Event Horizon' I can hardly accuse the former of copying the latter!  Perhaps it was the other way around?  Maybe the makers of 'Event Horizon' decided they liked what they saw and made it better?  Either way... we're left with a rag-tag crew of a deep space vessel coming across - technically - a possessed spaceship adrift in space.

Whether 'Dark Side of the Moon' got their before 'Event Horizon' is one thing - it's still eleven years AFTER the other horror space classic 'Alien' came out - and the similarities are all there.  Again, we have the crew of 'space truckers' coming across something bad while on a routine mission.  One of them is the computer itself in female form.  You have an 'android-acting' crewmember, the sets, the jumpsuits and the countdown near the end.

Yet, this isn't 'Alien' - it has enough to be different, but not necessarily enough to be anywhere near the same league.  It has a pretty 'cheap' feel, every set looking just like the corner of whatever studio it was filmed in.  Whereas 'Alien' looked like a real spaceship, this one has 'made-for-TV' written all over it.

It's definitely a B-movie, but this could work better if it knew its limitations, yet it tries to actually be scary and, despite a few tense moments, when the 'horror' (or should I say 'antagonist?') finally shows itself, it's laughably cheesy (effects-wise) and even worse 'cliched villain' dialogue.

Despite the film's many flaws, I couldn't quite bring myself to hate it.  It's actually not that bad.  It's no classic and you definitely have to be in a forgiving mood to spend an hour and a half with a 'discount Kevin Bacon' lookalike and props for the final ending - I actually quite liked that.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights