THE cult credentials of Enemy Mine are impressive. Released in 1985, an era when low-rent cult curios and fantasy film oddities were arriving on cinema screens with almost indecent haste, its part sci-fi movie and part buddy film.
Dennis Quaid (front man of many a memorable 80s offering from The Right Stuff to Innerspace) and Louis Gosset Jr (Academy Award winner for An Officer And A Gentleman) star as two interstellar enemies who must learn to live together if they are to survive the hostile world they find themselves in.
Quaid is the tough human soldier from earth who crash lands on an alien planet where he discovers just a single other survivor. Problem is that other survivor is Gosset Jr, a member of the Draconians, a reptilian alien race that Quaid’s Davidge character has been fighting in a vicious and very bloody space battle.
In order to make it through their new environment the two are forced to find common ground and make the best of their new lot in life. As that simple plot suggests, the film is essentially just a bog-standard tale of blossoming friendship in unusual circumstances and hardly the sort of epic battle that much classic sc-fi is based upon but director Wolfgang Petersen (Troy, The Never Ending Story) makes the most of the slim materials given to him and weaves a neat little sci-fi parable that at least warrants a second look 30 years on.
To their credit, Eureka Classics have just released it in high-definition for the first time here in a special edition Blu-ray that really does the film justice. It looks great and it’s a lot of fun to watch even if the effects have dated somewhat and the “hands across the divide” plotline drags a little at times.
The acting is serviceable at best and those effects, courtesy of Industrial Light And Magic, are just about acceptable (One notable exception is the sequence where Drac gives birth to an alien child. That is genuinely memorable and actually quite emotionally involving.) but what really impresses is the production design from Rolf Zehetbauer. The futuristic look for the deserted planet of Fyrine IV he achieves with the risible budget at his disposal is impressive and the reptilian make-up from Chris Walas is similarly neat.
Despite the general cheapness on show, Petersen wrings a fair bit of emotion out of the simple set up and there’s a warm beating heart on show here that most science fiction sorely lacks. There’s more than a touch of Robinson Crusoe On Mars, reviewed in this very space a few months back, and that classic cheap and cheerful sense of satire is visible throughout.
Extras on this first Blu-ray issue are limited – mostly amounting to a collector’s booklet, a trailer and a deleted scene – but the real treat here is the print. Crisp and sharp, it shows that stunning production design off beautifully and allows the film to jump from the screen like it hasn’t since 1985.
