"The Dark Side of the Moon" Low Budget, Slightly Cheesy, but enjoyable Space adventure

Okay I admit, at first glance a plot that involves outer space, a missing ship, the devil, the moon, and the Bermuda Triangle to boot might sound like a terrible idea for a movie. Yet, 1990's direct to video charmer "The Dark Side of the Moon" (No connection to the epic Pink Floyd album) manages to pull it off rather decently. The year is 2022 and a space ship responsible for maintaining a fleet of nuclear armed satellites starts having a series of mysterious equipment malfunctions. To make matters worse, the crew finds out they will run out of air in twenty-four hours unless help arrives. But then, in a seemly stroke of good luck, they discover an old NASA space shuttle floating around (where else?) the dark side of the moon. Nobody from the shuttle answers the crew's radio calls and when they board it, they discover the body of an astronaut with a chest wound in the shape of a perfect triangle. But the shuttle also has air and rather than let it go to waste, the crew takes it along with the body. Big mistake, for not long after that, crew member Giles Stewart (Will Bledsoe) discovers through his ship's computer (Which for some reason is in the form of a sexy female android named Lesli!) that the shuttle crash landed in the Bermuda triangle twenty years ago! Too bad he didn't discover this sooner because one by one the crew is being stalked, killed, and taken over by a dark, unseen force, the devil himself. Can the crew overcome this evil or is it too late?

Even though this is an unusual plot for a movie and is by no means perfect, everything comes together nicely to create an entertaining story. One factor is the film's dark atmosphere that is created by having as little light as possible on the sets, which quickly establishes that our protagonists are surrounded by an escapable blackness that threatens to swallow them up. The special effects, while not the greatest in cinema history, also serve the film well. The ships floating in space look real enough and speaking of space, it has never looked quite as dark and bleak as it does here. Even the make-up and voice effects used for when a person is overtaken by the dark one are creepy in a subtle way, especially when it comes to the eyes! But the thing that really makes the film stand out is the top caliber of the acting used throughout the picture by everyone, be it Joe Turkel as the ship's chief mechanic, Alan Blumenfeld as the ship's doctor, Robert Sampson as the captain, or Giles Stewart as the ship's lieutenant. This is one of those cases where the actors know they are not doing "Hamlet" but they still give it their all and because of that it makes the movie all the more better. Compare that to the low budget monster films made today, like Syfy's original movies. True, the movie is a bit of a rip off of "Alien" but it's one of the better rip offs of that classic if you're open to a little superstition in outer space. While it won't win any academy awards, "The Dark Side of the Moon" would be a great way to waste some time if you like direct to video monster flicks from the old days.
 P.S. I'm pretty certain the movie is available on you tube.