DNA (1996)

aka Genetic Code

Borneo. Dr Ash Mattley (Mark Dacascos) has found some bug based enzyme that – if synthesized – could result in completely undetailed and unexplained medical progress that will save millions of lives. How? Why? Huh? The film ain’t telling. Alas, Ash has found no way whatsoever to actually synthesize said enzyme, which, given that his research is a side project he’s doing while he operates an underfunded and understaffed free clinic, is not too much of a surprise.

One day, one Dr Wessinger (Jürgen Prochnow) walks into Ash’s life. Wessinger has found the solution to Ash’s problem, and really only needs his help to find another of those wonderful bugs to realize Ash’s dream. Of course, Wessinger is no mere scientist but a mad scientist, and in truth only wants to use Ash’s enzyme to clone (or whatever) the bones of an ancient, unidentified beast the locals saw as a demon. After the following sudden and inevitable betrayal by the German madman, a cave explodes, and Ash believes Wessinger to be dead as his enzymatic dream.

Two years later, Claire Sommers (Rob McKee) arrives in town. She’s positive Wessinger is still alive and has come to stop whatever he’s up to, and she needs Ash’s help to find him. The expected mix of old jungle movie tropes, an antagonistic “romance” and a monster suit that badly rips off H.R. Giger’s most popular creation ensues.

If a viewer is willing and able to make their way through what William Mesa’s DNA laughingly calls its plot, can survive a long game of trope bingo, and is okay with the film’s bizarre ideas about human relations, speech, and general patterns of behaviour, they could actually get quite a bit of enjoyment out of this one. Really, it’s only the plot’s insistence on pretending to be complicated and deep that could get in the way of enjoyment, for the character work (such as it is) and dialogue are often very funny indeed. There’s really something to be said for a film whose creators genuinely seem to believe 50s B movie mad scientist dialogue is still a good idea in the mid-90s.

To be fair, they then make the good move to hire Jürgen Prochnow for the mad scientist role and somehow manage to convince him to go all-out on it. He’s thundering his lines with greatest conviction and enthusiasm, as if this stuff were Shakespeare or Das Boot, putting so much physical effort into his line delivery, he’d put Ben Kingsley in his “vigorous vicar” mode to shame.

Poor Mark Dacascos has it rather worse than Prochnow. Where the bad guy at least gets all the most ridiculous lines, Ash is such as straightforward white hat kind of good guy, there’s really very little he can do with the role. Apart from showing his expected and typical competence in unarmed fights, knife fights and shoot-outs. Ash, it turns out, must have studied jungle warfare and melee fighting as a useful side-line to medicine sometime. This way, he’ll never be without patients. Alas, he’s also pretty boring. Which seems rather symptomatic for the career of Dacascos, a guy who never really seems to have gotten his fair shake - and no, having to pretend to get beaten up by Keanu Reaves is not what I mean - despite talent and looks and the ability to not be an asshole in public.

The action sequences are generally competently done, Mesa usually staging and shooting them clearly and concisely. Whenever things are supposed to be scary, on the other hand, things do tend to get out of the director’s control.

But then, what could anyone do with a rip-off of the xenomorph this blatant (but crap and green)? Apart from showing it not quite as clearly and as often, of course. Or, just filming it in a way that would not suggest the size of its head will cause the poor guy inside the monster suit to lose his balance any minute now?

But then, what would be the fun in that?