A submarine is travelling to a deep sea station. The sub is carrying replacement scientists. The scientists on the deep sea station are bitter about being mysteriously replaced. Suddenly, there is an earthquake!
Contact has been lost with the submarine. When the deep sea station’s crew investigates, they find the sub resting on the ocean floor with its hatches open and its crew missing. Then the person investigating the submarine also disappears.
A diver is sent out to restore full power to the deep sea station, which was damaged by the earthquake. When he returns … he doesn’t return. His wetsuit returns, filled with a human-sized quantity of undifferentiated goo.
The scientist wants to study it. For science! The captain says no. The doctor also wants it studied. For medicine! The captain says no. The rest of the surviving crew backs them up. The captain stomps off in a huff.
Both scientist and doctor are women. They are the only women in the crew. The captain is constantly yelling at them for wanting to do their jobs. He has conflicts with other crew members, but only really flies off the handle at the women. This could have been well-written. It could have been indicative of backstory, or something subtle. But it wasn’t.
The doctor cultures the goo, and it grows into a weird white manta-ray thing. Is it aliens? It’s aliens!
Lords of the Deep predates The Asylum by about a decade, but it came out the same year as The Abyss. Is this a Roger-Corman-produced knockoff of The Abyss? I don’t see how it could be otherwise. They don’t have any actual underwater scenes, because those cost money. Instead of drowning, characters are threatened with asphyxiation. The underwater earthquake demolition of the deep sea station at the end of the movie looks like it cost at least $3.47 — but remember, that’s 1989 dollars.