The Rift

The Rift (1990)

'You Can't Hold your Breath & Scream at the Same Time'

An experimental submarine with a very experienced crew, the "Siren II" is sent to find out what happened to the "Siren I" after it mysteriously disappeared in a submarine rift. Things go awry when they begin to find things that shouldn't be there...

Date of release
1990-03-09
TMDB
4.7 / 10 (94)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Action, Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller
Director
Juan Piquer Simón

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $1.3M
  • Filmed in: Madrid

The Rift is a 1990 Spanish science-fiction horror film directed by Juan Piquer Simón and starring Jack Scalia, R. Lee Ermey and Ray Wise. The story concerns Wick Hayes (Scalia), an engineer who is blamed for the disappearance of the submarine he designed, and leads an investigation team to the depths of the ocean, where he encounters an array of abnormal creatures. Part of a wave of underwater fantasy films released around 1989, it was retitled Endless Descent for the U.S. market.

Production

In a contemporary Fangoria article, producer José Antonio Escrivá said that he wrote the film's outline. The original version was set in space. According to Piquer Simón, he was the one who changed the setting to distinguish it from Alien. He chose an underwater environment after coming across a news item about a rash of invasive seaweed caused by toxic waste in Norway. The original draft was written by Mark Klein.

Piquer Simón and Escrivá claimed that they were unaware of other supernatural underwater films made around the same time, such as The Abyss, Leviathan, DeepStar Six, The Evil Below and Lords of the Deep, and denied that The Rift had been made to capitalize on them.

Leading man Jack Scalia had just suffered a setback after the sudden shutdown of a film he was shooting in Hong Kong, but received the offer to star in The Rift two days after he got back to the U.S. He was cast after a single meeting with De Laurentiis in his office. With De Laurentiis attached, the actors had certain expectations of quality about the project, and Ray Wise felt that that they were not necessarily met. R.

Escrivá and Simon originally wanted Sergio Stivaletti to work on the film, and he agreed to design at least one of the creatures, but a scheduling conflict with The Church arose and he had to pass. Fellow Italian Carlo de Marchis, who had worked on Leviathan, was brought on board. Artist Ron Cobb, an alumn of both Leviathan and The Abyss, also contributed to the creature design.

Principal photography started on October 3, 1988, and lasted eight weeks. An additional fourteen weeks were necessary to capture the effects sequences. This was the longest shoot of Piquer Simón's career. Filming took place in Madrid, but most of post-production took place in Los Angeles. During production, the film's budget was quoted as US$1.3 million.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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