Unearthed Films takes a trip to THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON with their Blu-ray resurrection of a nineties home video sci-fi staple.

2022: The mission of the Spacecore 1 ship is the extremely hazardous task of "refabbing" Earth's satellites while still in orbit. As the ship tries to get a lock on a stray satellite near the moon, the controls start to go haywire even though the ship's computer – personified by the alluring although completely robotic Lesli (Camilla More, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER) – insists that nothing is wrong with the ship's systems. The disagreement starts an argument between programmer Paxton (Joe Turkel, THE SHINING), grizzled pilot Flynn (Robert Sampson, RE-ANIMATOR), younger co-pilot Giles (Will Bledsoe, UP THE CREEK), and the ship's fretful doctor (Alan Blumenfeld, WARGAMES); that is, until mechanics Jennings (John Diehl, STARGATE) and Cookie (Wendy MacDonald, MAYHEM) inform them that they have less than twenty-four hours before the damaged life support systems go down. Miraculously, a primitive NASA Discovery shuttle emerges from the darkness, offering them the opportunity to dock with it and try to salvage its electrical systems to patch their own. Exploration of the ship leads to more questions than answers as it has no fuel but the air is breathable, and there is salt water and algae below decks. The only human on board is dead and could not have piloted the ship, and no one believes Giles when he is the only one to see the corpse get up and attack one of the other crew members. As the crew become paranoid, Giles learns that the shuttle was reported by NASA to have splashed down in the Bermuda Triangle… so how did it get back up into space, and is it carrying something supernatural or unearthly?

A sci-fi variation on the "ghost ship" strand of the horror genre (the Flying Dutchman is mentioned in throwaway dialogue), THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is derivative – as much of the ALIEN films as the seventies TV movie THE DEVIL'S TRIANGLE – but slick and relatively entertaining for its first half. The Bermuda Triangle "angle" is novel but the various religious elements that suggest a Satanic culprit that might be the devil himself are heavy-handed and look forward to the even more regressive recent credits of the film's debuting screenwriters Carey and Chad Hayes who have managed to meld jump scares with "faith-based" horror stories like THE REAPING, THE CONJURING, THE CRUCIFIXION, and the dire ANABELLE films. Gore is relatively restrained but proficient while the film's visual effects are of a high standard for a video-bound genre piece of the late eighties. The film was the only feature of music video and TV commercial director D.J. Webster and came from the same producers that gave us Brian Yuzna's BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR and SOCIETY as well as THE UNNAMABLE and NIGHTWISH.

Released straight to video by Vidmark and laserdisc by Image Entertainment, THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON gathered dust on the video shelves and bypassed DVD until Unearthed Films announced it as the second of their Unearthed Classics Blu-ray releases. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer comes from a new 4K master and looks excellent for a one million dollar film shot in the late eighties with an excess of deep shadows, backlighting, and saturated color gels. The Ultra Stereo soundtrack is available in a cleaned up LPCM 2.0 track in which one or two screams sound a bit crunched at the high end, as well as a "vintage" LPCM 2.0 track with a trace of hiss. There are no subtitle or captioning options.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by producer Paul White (STONED), moderated by Unearthed's Stephen Biro. White reveals that he was working in Japan for a company picking up titles for the home video boom when he and partner Keith Walley (SPECK) decided to go into production – also forming a sales company to market the films internationally – and provides with a chronology of the Wild Street productions. He attributes that religious elements of the film to Walley and recalls working with the Hayes brothers on their first film here. The disc also includes an interview with actor Blumenfeld (39:43) who trained on the stage in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles in the early eighties, struggling to find work for a couple years with two kids before becoming a regular working actor with almost two hundred feature and television credits. He recalls the long audition process which included group readings for chemistry, his process of character building, and speaks highly of Webster bringing his visual storytelling know-how from music videos and commercials to the film while also being concerned with the performances.