Good, but some parts a disappointment

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2000)

I went in to this film with high hopes about it's content. Having not yet read the book, and hearing that it had been toned down for the big screen, I still was expecting some pretty horrific scenes.
The following comments may be SPOILERS so don't read if you don't want to know what happens.

The amount of blood and grusome murders in this film were severely lacking. Let me just say that I am not a perverted maniac who gets off on this kind of thing, but to make the film work properly, and to really grasp the horror of this psycho, it needed more to shock an audience. For example, when Patrick chops off the blokes head, you only see blood and a slumped out of focus leg on camera, very tame indeed. I thought it would be more Texas Chain Sawish, where there were some quite horrible moments, but it was not to be. The acting was good, and Bale played his vain businessman excellently. The whole cast were good but the camera direction let it down.
Overall I would recommend, but not really an 18 in my book, apart from a lot of sex, but even those scenes were quite tame, with no frontal shots of the women at all. Even Life of Brian has one of them!! I give it a seven out of ten. Wait for the video, and a dark night alone in the house....