A soldier is trying to stop a van heading right toward him. He only has a bazooka. He shoots three times. Misses them all. Bad boy Nick Saxon asks for the bazooka and he gets hit. He reverses his cap and aims. In just one show with the bazooka, he hits the speeding van. This is our hero. This is Jack Scalia.
It’s a good thing he is tough because astronauts just returned from space and their bodies have been hijacked by aliens. The astronauts were on a super-secret Omega mission and might have been infected by some kind of alien virus that has turned them evil. One of those astronauts? Nick’s best friend. Another one of those astronauts? Nick’s ex-wife.
You can’t have a tough guy expert take on an insane mission unless the ex is involved somehow (see: The Abyss, Outbreak, The Meg, Twister, etc.).
The astronauts still have their humanity, and they are fighting back against the evil extra-terrestrial infection but are overpowered as the aliens have a big mission involving alien eggs. Meanwhile, Nick leads a team soldiers and scientist trying to capture the spacemen and he gets a surprise help from his ex-wife who is infected by a good alien. It’s kind of like the great “The Hidden” (1987) but in a more 90s low-budget action flick way.
“Dark Breed” might be one of the least original things ever put on celluloid but it’s quite fun. Most of the acting is quite cheap and fun, especially when combined with the more grounded acting of Jonathan Banks, who is the leader of the alien-astronauts. It has some neat practical effects scattered about and surprisingly competent action scenes.
The “astronauts come back infected” trope has been done quite a few times since “The Quatermass Experiment” in 1953. “Lifeforce” (1985), “The Incredible Melting Man” (1977), “The Incredible Melting Man” (1977), “Species II” (1998), “Contamination” (1980), “The Astronaut’s Wife” (1999), the venom storyline in the 90s “Spider-Man” animated series, that one episode of “The X-Files,” to name a few. What does “Dark Breed” that those movies and TV shows don’t have? George Flowers in his signature role as a drunken hobo.
