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Unfortunately there was not a 0 for a rating or else I would've chosen it. This movie lacks the star power that the original movie had in such abundance. Carol Burnett, Albert Finney, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Edward Hermann, the innocence of newcomer Aileen Quinn, and expert directing from seasoned pro John Huston (father of actress Angelica Huston)is what made this film so charming. Even the 1999 remake with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Alan Cumming, and Kristin Chenoweth had more to offer than this sorry excuse for a sequel. Before she did this movie all Ashley Johnson was known for was her role as little Chrissie Seaver on the prime time show Growing Pains. She had a few bit parts in movies but I don't know who thought she had talent enough to carry a movie on her own. And adding Joan Collins as Lady Edwina Hogbottom, ridiculous! They couldn't get good enough actors to play the major roles like Daddy Warbucks, Miss Hannigan, and Annie but they will sign Joan Collins to play some British lady? It doesn't surprise me that this movie was as bad as it was. The critics were right to have not agreed with this movie, even if it was only made for TV, it was a poor sequel to an otherwise lovable movie.


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This film is absolutely awful, but nevertheless, it can be hilarious at times, although this humor is entirely unintentional.
The plot was beyond ridiculous. I don't even think a 2 year-old would be convinced by the ludicrous idiocy that the film-makers tried to slap together into a story. However, on the positive side, some of the horrifically inane plot twists provide a great deal of humor. For example, "Wow, Lady Hogbottom has a giant missile hidden in her back yard!" It gets worse (and even funnier), but I'll spare you.
The acting is generally laughable. Most of the kids' roles are sort of cute, but not very believable. On the other hand, Annie is pretty awful all-around. The adults don't take their roles seriously at all, but this is largely a good thing. If they'd tried to be believable, the film would've been even worse. Which is difficult to imagine.
Once you get past the overall crappiness of the movie, there are actually a few standout moments of almost-not-crappiness. The scene where Lady Hogbottom's son runs away with the maid is surprisingly hilarious, though it's an annoying letdown when they get caught by the police. The butler character, while very minor, is a ray of sunlight that almost, but never quite pierces through the gloom.
Watching this movie actually caused me physical pain. Nevertheless, there were a few redeeming parts that made it almost watchable without beginning to hemorrhage internally. Judged on its good parts alone, the movie would be about a 5; unfortunately, the rest of the movie hardly deserves a 1. Thus, I give it a 3.
That's being pretty generous, I'd say.


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Not even worth watching this tacky spoiler ruins everything about 'Annie'. The characters seem almost cheapened by the poorly written storyline and they low quality feeling to the production. It was very clearly made for TV, yet if I found it on my television, I would flick it straight over. The children in the film do an alright job, yet the adults acting is unbelievable and so the movie fails to really draw you in. This film lacked the music/dance numbers thats made the original brilliant and truly does take the shine of the Annie we all love. Johnson, as Annie is at times annoying and over acted..you cannot convince yourself that she truly is Annie. The differences in character appearance continued to irritate me throughout the duration of the film. Sad to say this sequel was a total flop.


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Annie's wig does not look good. she is not cute and pretty enough to play Annie. Annie sticks out in the movie, as her outfits look like Halloween costumes. terrible acting and terrible plots. This movie is such a change from the 1982 version. I think that a younger and smaller girl should have had the lead role. Ashley Johnson portrays a very boyish Annie. Not appealing at all. At least the casting director got it right with Daddy Warbucks. Ms. Hannigan was also miscast. Camilla Belle played Molly alright. "Warning" this movie might insult your IQ so you might just want to only show it to very young children. 8 and younger. Some of the plots are too fictional and could hardly take place in the real world.


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Since the 70s, writer/producer/director Charles Band has been responsible for literally hundreds of science-fiction, fantasy and horror B-movies. Some of them are wonderful examples of how to use a tiny budget to maximum effect; many of them are pretty bad. Trancers (1985) was one of those rare gems.
A Terminator style tale of time-travel and action, Trancers saw Tim Thomerson playing Jack Deth, a future cop given the task of tracking down bad-guy Whistler, who travels into the past by inhabiting the body of an ancestor. Whistler is capable of controlling other humans with his psychic powers, converting them into obedient zombies (the 'trancers' of the title), and attempts to alter the course of history by killing off the ancestors of the leaders of the future. Jack follows him to 1985, determined to stop him.
In this 1991 sequel, Jack is still living in 1985. Having destroyed Whistler, he has settled down and married Leena (Helen Hunt), the young woman who helped him succeed in the first movie. But, for Jack, things don't stay calm for long, and trouble appears in the form of Whistler's brother, E.D. Wardo, who is trying to build a trancer army.
Trancers II lacks the charm and simplicity of the original and is a huge disappointment considering how good the original was. The story is difficult to pick up if you haven't seen the first film (or at least not for a long while), and there is loads of unimpressive action and a few poor special effects. Gone is the inventiveness and wit that made Trancers so much fun; instead we get some cheesy one-liners and a script that feels like it was written on-the-fly.
About the only reason I can give for recommending this film to fans of the genre is the cast, which boasts many names that will be familiar to followers of sci-fi and horror movies: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Richard Lynch, Martine Beswicke. Unfortunately, most of them seemed to be having an 'off day' whilst filming Trancers II, and performances are mediocre at best.
The Trancers series obviously has its fans; four further sequels have since been churned out. Unless the quality has taken up massive upward swing, I can't imagine them being any good.


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The original Trancers is not by any means a great movie. It had massive plot holes and very little in the way of internal logic. However, it was entertaining, better done than most low-budget B-movies, and could be surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Trancers II is none of these.
Trancers II suffers from many of the same problems of most flop sequels. The plot is thin enough to see through and the writing is insipid. It seems that the people behind this movie felt that bringing the familiar faces of the first movie back would be enough, and didn't bother with anything else. Not even veteran B-grade actors like Tim Thomerson and Jeffery Combs were able to drag this film out of the muck.
A brief plot overview: Jack Deth (Thomerson) is a cop from the future who was sent to 1985 to save the ancestors of members of his government. Trancers II takes place six years after the events of the first Trancers. Jack Deth is married to Lena (Helen Hunt), the woman he met in the first movie, and both live with Hap Ashby, the man Deth was sent into the past to protect. It is discovered that the brother of Whistler (the bad guy from the first movie) has traveled back in time to create an army of Trancers, people turned into mindless killing zombies, to kill Ashby. Complicating Jack's mission is the fact that his first wife, who had died long before Jack traveled to the past, was also sent back to stop Whistler's brother, and now Jack finds himself working with her.
I have two real problems with this movie. One is that the method of creating Trancers in this movie is radically different from the methods used in the first movie. What makes it annoying is that, in a rather poor example of Soviet Revisionism, they act like it was always the technique.
The other thing that annoys me is that the love triangle between Deth, Lena, and Alice Stilwell (Jack's first wife) is given very little screen time. This bothered me particularly because it was much more interesting than the actual plot of the movie. It felt like it was just something that was thrown in to fill space in the movie. Alice's character in particular seems very unconcerned with the fact that she is reunited with her husband only to find he's re-married, making her either very shallow or very poorly written.
The only reason I can think of for watching this movie is if you're interested in watching the entire Trancers series (currently totaling six movies). Otherwise, even if you're a fan of the original Trancers, stay away from this tepid sequel.


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Why review good movies when you can review "Trancers II?"
Ooh, this film is soooo lame. I can just picture the cast and crew driving around L.A. with a camcorder, hurling extras in silly monster make-up at poor, long-suffering Tim Thomerson. The stars' families actually turn up to play cameos, probably because Full Moon couldn't afford "real" extras. Lame effects, lame sets, and a script so convoluted it would take eons to untie all the knots - this must be classic Trancers!
And yet...and yet...it rules. Note this is the same thing I say about "Trancers IV." I say it because it's true. What can beat watching an old guy in a trench coat mow down zombies, then bust out with quips like, "Don't worry ladies, they're bio-degradable"? Well, lots of things could be better, but anyway this is still good stuff.
My only significant reservation is Megan Ward, who really stinks up the joint. She's a lousy rival for Helen Hunt's character - they're both young pieces of eye candy, and it would've been more effective if they actually contrasted a bit more. Oh well, you can't have everything. At least the wonderful plot device of the "long second watch" is back in place, and we've got more of Hap Ashby, the least-convincing athlete in the history of cinema (oh, wait a minute - he's got a rival in the form of David Ogden Steirs in "Creator").
I haven't seen this lately, but I do seem to remember that Martine Beswick runs away twice during the final battle. Hooray for lousy continuity! Just one of the many highlights in this fine film.


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This is a big step down after the surprisingly enjoyable original. This sequel isn't nearly as fun as part one, and it instead spends too much time on plot development. Tim Thomerson is still the best thing about this series, but his wisecracking is toned down in this entry. The performances are all adequate, but this time the script lets us down. The action is merely routine and the plot is only mildly interesting, so I need lots of silly laughs in order to stay entertained during a "Trancers" movie. Unfortunately, the laughs are few and far between, and so, this film is watchable at best.


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Me and my friend rented this movie for $2.50. And we both agree on one thing:
THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!
Also me and my friend counted 475 face shots. (Which makes up 95% of the movie).
So in other words: DO SEE THIS MOVIE UNLESS YOU LIKE WASTING MONEY! And I do!



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After the debacle of the first Sleepaway Camp, who thought that a franchise could be born. SC II is superior in aspect. More inspired killings and just whole lot more fun. While that might not be saying much (compared to the first movie), Sleepaway Camp II is worth the rental.
Pros: Entertaining, doesn't take itself too seriously like SC I. Inspired Killings. Cons: Crappy acting and mullets abound.
Bottom Line: 5/10



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Being a slasher film aficionado, I typically will settle in to watch every slash movie that passes over my retinas, which sometimes does more harm than good to my brain, I will say. While channel surfing the other night, Sleepaway Camp II happened to cross paths with me. Of course, I wanted to check it out, as I had heard of the Sleepaway Camp franchise, but have never actually seen any of them (for shame, I know). I will note that since I have not seen the original, my criticism should probably not be taken too seriously, because perhaps what I think is wrong with it is totally intentional by the franchise's own design.
Now I'm assuming that the franchise of Sleepaway Camp is, in itself, a joke on itself. Hell, even the name comes off as an intentional joke. Sleep away camp? It's good fun. I can appreciate the film for wanting to just put together something for pure camp horror value, but that's about as far as I can go. The acting in this movie made the cast of the original Friday the 13th look like thespians doing a rendition of Macbeth. Campy requires bad acting, but come on. Pamela Springsteen as the evil out-of-touch-with-reality killer did a better job of killing off my interest than she did killing off the entire cast. As far as comedy goes, there were a few times where I chuckled, but it was few and far between.
Ultimately, SAC II is pretty boring, and I really did want to sleep away the camp. The deaths are so obviously staged and fake that you can barely appreciate them. If you're looking for a slasher film comedy with good camp, I recommend Club Dread. If your channel surfing takes you across this one, check and see what else is on.


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No wonder Pamela Springsteen gave up acting to become a full-time photographer; it's a much better idea to have her behind a camera than in front of one. While this movie is not without its interesting elements (mullets from hell, etc.), it is outweighed by flaws. For one thing, Angela, the murderous counselor, appears to be about the same age as the campers. Having an older, more threatening camp director would have done a lot for the film. And then you have the murder scenes. The budget was apparently too low to execute most of them properly (no pun intended), although drowning someone in an outhouse toilet is certainly original. But overall, there are a ton of movies out there that are scarier/more fun to spend an hour and a half of your life watching.


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This is an immoral and reprehensible piece of garbage, that no doubt wants to be a Friday the 13th (1980) clone. The poster for this movie makes it look like there's going to be some sort of a cross between Jason and Freddy, which is likely to attract movie-goers. There is NOTHING good or entertaining about this movie about this movie. It just makes me sad, just thinking that some people are going to stumble upon Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) on video or DVD, and waste their time with this sad, cynical, depressing movie.
Angela Baker (Pamela Springsteen) is a camp counselor at Camp Rolling Hills, who hopes that the other campers are as nice as she is, and that they stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, the other campers are realizing that people are disappearing one by one, with Angela making up the excuse that she had to send them home. Could Angela be the killer, who was once a man, who underwent a sex change operation years earlier? Who knows? Who cares?
The 1980s was home to a lot of movies that made the cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead Teenager genres, in which a mad killer goes berserk. Some have a plot, some don't, but they're all about as bad as this one. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is 80 minutes of teenagers being introduced and then being stabbed, strangled, impaled, chopped up, burned alive, and mutilated. That's all this movie is. It is just mindless, bloody violence.
Watching this movie, I was reminded of the Friday the 13th movies, in which the message for its viewers was that the primary function of teenagers is to be hacked to death. The filmmakers of Sleepaway Camp II have every right to be ashamed of themselves. Imagine the sick message that this movie offers for its teen viewers: "The world is a totally evil place," this movie tells you, " and it'll kill you. It doesn't matter what your dreams or your hopes are. It doesn't matter if you have a new boyfriend, or a new girlfriend. It doesn't matter what you think, what you do or what your plans for the future are. You can forget those plans, because you're just going to wind up dead."
And the sickest thing is--and by not giving too much away--the movie simply sets up room for a sequel. Well, why not? They've probably and already taken the bucket to the cesspool by making three or four of these movies. I missed out on the original Sleepaway Camp (1983), and, after watching its first sequel, I will hopefully stay away from the other sequels, as well as the original. And for parents, if you know kids who actually LIKE this movie, do not let them date your children.


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This movie was bad from the start. The only purpose of the movie was that Angela wanted to get a high body count. The acting was horrible. The killings were acted out very badly. Like when Ally got stuffed down that toilet I guess it was in the abandoned cabin. But when the end of the movie comes and Molly and the other guy are in the cabin you see Ally so Angela must have gone in to get her. The part that really got me was when the black girl and Angela were in the cabin and Angela took the guitar string and chocked her. One it was horrible acting and two why wouldn't you just turn around and punch the bitch?!?!? Then when Molly is getting chased by Angela if you have the neigh why not just turn around and stab her??? So stupid. This movie sucked...


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Despite being a sequel to the more potent original, this is more of a comical remake of Friday THE 13TH concerning the further antics of psychopathic Angela, killing more nubile teens for their "immorality" at a camp.
Pamela Springsteen (sister of Bruce) looks great. There are some pretty darn funny sex scenes with some pretty darn attractive girls, but the movie's so (unintentionally) comedic rather than suspenseful, it's a stinker.
* out of ****.
MPAA: Rated R for graphic violence and gore, nudity, and for some sexuality, language, and drug use.


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Angela Johnson (Pamela Springsteen--yes she's related to Bruce), the killer from the first film, is up to her old tricks again. She's one of the counselors at Camp Rolling Hills. As long as the girls at camp are nice and stay away from sex, drugs and swearing things are fine. But a few step over the line and Angela kills them--cracking bad jokes all the way.
The original "Sleepaway Camp" was a vicious and nasty splatter film but had some good points to it. This is vicious and nasty too but has NO good points to it. The plot has been done to death and this adds NOTHING new to the formula. There are plenty of gory killings in here (people are burnt alive, heads are cut off, throats slashed) but all the gore is so obviously fake it actually become comical. This also has the smallest amount of campers I've ever seen and virtually everyone is far too old for their roles (especially Higgins). As expected there's the gratuitous female nudity (here provided by the tremendously untalented Valerie Hartman) and the obligatory good girl/good boy team (Renne Estevez and Tony Higgins). With the sole exception of Springsteen and Higgins the acting is lousy--even by slasher movie standards. There's also a cruel edge to this movie in which one character is drowned in an outhouse! Boring and sick with a stupid plot, pointless nudity and bad gore. Skip it.


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So Angela has grown up and gotten therapy and an operation to turn her into a real life daughter, rather than the son that she was born, and now holds a job as - wait for it - a camp counselor! How appropriate, right? I know, I love it. Anyway, the first sequel to the Sleepaway Camp franchise obeys all the rules of horror sequels - more blood, more imaginative killings (which aren't imaginative, but still more so than the original), more nudity, a more elaborate plot, and generally worse than the original.
It is entertaining in the same way as the original was, in that the characters and wardrobes are so goofy and so authentically 80's that you can't help getting a good laugh. At one point, a guy asks Angela out, and she says "I'll call you," and then quickly walks away. The guy says to himself, "How is she gonna call me? I don't have a phone!" and then he sniffs his armpits, wondering what turned her off (it's the hair, dude!!).
It is a well-known fact that in 80s slasher movies, the murdered teenagers were more often than not being punished by their killer for some kind of bad behavior, usually for being too promiscuous. When I first started getting into horror movies and saw the Friday the 13th movies for the first time in the mid 90s, I didn't realize this. I learned it in a film class a year or two later and was amazed that their was some method to the madness. I was pretty impressed, not only that the movies were passing on some kind of message, albeit a morbid one, but that there was actually some thought put into it.
But not in this movie! At one point just before Angela kills one of her victims, she says "Let this be a lesson to you. Say no to drugs!" Real subtle screen writing there, guys. Then again, the dialogue is the most entertaining thing in the movie. Angela (who, by the way, went through all that therapy and those operations and all that trouble to clean up her past and reinvent herself as a normal and well-developed person and then changed her name from Angela to, umm, Angela), says at one point, "I don't like being the wicked witch of the west, but I know what happens when things get out of control." (People start getting killed...by me! HA!)
Then later, she demands that one of the counselors, Mare, make an apology, to which the girl replies, "I'd rather die!" Sorry, Mare, but you really walked into that one...
Two years ago I was a camp counselor at a sleepaway camp similar to the one portrayed in this movie (except the camp that I taught at had more than three kids to the 15 or 20 counselors and it also had rules, which the one in the movie doesn't). This made me notice the myriad of discrepancies in the movie from what camp life is really like.
That's okay though, you can hardly make a movie like this with a lot of 9 year olds running around, although there were some 10 or 11 year old kids killed in this movie. I hadn't seen that kind of thing much before.
Definitely bad taste, even for a cheesy 80s slasher movie....


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this movie is not good.the first one almost sucked,but had that unreal ending to make it worth watching.this one has nothing.there's zero scare,zero tension or suspense.this isn't really a horror movie.most of the kills don't show anything.there's no gore to speak of.this could almost be a TV,except for a bit of nudity and a bit of violence.the acting is not very good,either.and don't get me started on the dialogue.as for the surprise ending,surprise,there isn't one.i suppose it could have been worse,although i don't see how.but then again,it is less than 80 minutes long,so i guess that's a good thing.although it felt a lot longer. apparently this is the cut version of the film.i found it for a very cheap price,but it still not worth it.if you want the uncut more graphic version,check out the Anchor Bay edition.anyway,this version of Sleepaway Camp II:Unhappy Campers gets a big fat 1/10 from me. p.s.if you watch this movie,you will probably be a bored and unhappy camper.if you are a real fan,you might want to pick up Anchor Bay's Sleepaway Camp(with survival kit) three disc collection containing the first three movies uncut and with special features


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Absolutely putrid slasher film has not one redeeming quality. It has Camp Councellor Angela(Pamela Anderson..awful as the killer;her quips when she wastes people aren't even amusing)on the warpath slaying teenagers who act the least bit naughty or resist her pleadings for good behavior. We run the gamut of boring, clichéd killings such as the slashing to the throat to one kid looking for his Freddy clawed glove, a kid who gets a chainsaw, one girl who gets drilled, one who gets shoved into the crapper(filled with leeches), one who is roasted, etc.
It doesn't have one original idea to offer and is merely a waste of time. That is unless you want to see Valerie Hartmen's(who plays the slut Ally)tits. Most of the violence occurs off-screen so even that will not satisfy.


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This is not horror, as the first part was: This is ("campy") light and humorous entertainment. Like in so many sequels, the action starts right away with no explanations. But there's boobs, so I don't complain. And real boobs that is. If I understand correctly, those are quite rare today amongst the teenage girls in U.S. of A. Which brings to my mind the fact that the main actress here is Pamela "Bruce's sister" Springsteen.
This cannot be thought without the first movie, so I compare this to it. Again there is too small clothing (mainly pants) and funny hair, it's not hard to tell what decade this film is made in. Again there is really strange characters, this time even more visibly "pathological" ones. Especially the personnel of the camp. It's like some mental rehabilitation summer camp. People are older: Most of the actors must be at least 25, but I think they're supposed to be 16 or something. Some "methods" used by the Evil Dyke are quite unpleasant. Actually this movie don't have much in common with the first part, and this is worse than it in every way.


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"The Deadly Look of Love" is essentially "Fatal Attraction" with a couple of twists added onto the back half. The ending will not surprise anyone who has seen more than two or three Movies of the Week. It is yet another cautionary tale about succumbing to temptation, and it adds nothing fresh to the genre.
Brett (Vincent Spano) is engaged to a beautiful woman who just happens to have a sizable trust fund. Even though he has it all, he risks losing everything by starting up a steamy side affair with Janet (Jordan Ladd). Janet, a doe-eyed blonde from Cedar Falls, falls hard for Brett, and she does not take it particularly well when he comes clean about his engagement. Shortly after the wedding, Mrs. Brett turns up dead in the master bedroom of the large, luxurious home she shared with her new husband. When the police question Brett, he promptly points the finger at Janet. Following her arrest, Janet seems to get loonier by the minute - not that she was the picture of stability before. Her defense attorney (Holland Taylor) is convinced that Janet is innocent and is hell bent on proving it.
Did she do it or didn't she? How will it end? You can find out the answers to these questions the next time "The Deadly Look of Love" airs on your local station. And be sure not to miss the moral of this beautiful story: men are pigs, and women are crazy.


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I happened upon this flick on a rainy Sunday, intending to tune-in to something else. Out of curiosity, I accessed the comments here, and found myself watching it to the end. I really didn't do so with intent -- this was one of those movies where you're "fascinated," and watch it for "another couple of minutes," until you finally just watch to the end. And the indictment of it in most of these comments made it more fascinating to view. The one comment where the person really liked it seems to be solely as a result of liking Ladd and Spano, and their earlier roles. But great isn't anywhere to be found anywhere here - story, performances, and particularly the absurd courtroom hi-jinks. We all know that Perry Mason (before Raymond Burr passed the 300-lb. mark), and Ben Matlock, are granted some leeway in cavorting around the courtroom, instead of being boringly confined to a lectern. And Matlock is especially granted the privilege of entering exhibits often by simply going to the jury and showing them, before the judge and prosecutor have even been informed of, or shown, them. No real-life judge or prosecutor would stand for this.
Both Perry and Ben almost always ended the proceedings by wringing a confession of the real killer. Actually Perry nearly always did this, but often Matlock would simply present overwhelming evidence of the true culprit, pronounce it "reasonable doubt," and then leave it to the cops and prosecutors to proceed against the guilty party - sometimes on-camera, sometimes presumed at the end of the show.
But that said, Holland Taylor's histrionics and the amount of leeway afforded her, in the courtroom portion of this story, made the actions of Matlock/Mason more-closely resemble the slow, often boring detail such as seen on Court TV and in real-life courtrooms.
Every character in this presentation was either insipid, unsympathetic, obnoxious, boring, improbable - or some combination of two or more of these.
The ending was the most banal, absurd, even silly conclusion possible - but again, fascinating because of this. Ladd and Spano are attractive individuals, and t.v. movies would appear their best forte - probably best in 2nd-lead (probably better if "3rd-") roles, even in this venue. Taylor could be cast as the aunt or mother of one of them. Give this one 1 star for the story/performances, and 3 additional for the fascination factor.


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I don't remember "Barnaby Jones" being no more than a very bland, standard detective show in which, as per any Quinn Martin show, Act I was the murder, Act II was the lead character figuring out the murder, Act III was the plot twist (another character murdered), Act IV was the resolution and the Epilogue was Betty (Lee Meriwether) asking her father-in-law Barnaby Jones (Buddy Ebsen) how he figured out the crime and then someone saying something witty at the end of the show.
One thing I do remember was the late, great composer Jerry Goldsmith's excellent theme song. Strangely, the opening credit sequence made me want to see the show off and on for the seven seasons the show was on the air. I will also admit that it was nice to see Ebsen in a role other than Jed Clampett despite Ebsen being badly miscast. I just wished the show was more entertaining than when I first remembered it.
Update (1/11/2009): I watched an interview with composer Jerry Goldsmith on YouTube through their Archive of American Television channel. Let's just say that I was more kind than Goldsmith about the show "Barnaby Jones."


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Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham are a good match portraying vastly different siblings, but only Winningham is able to bring something convincing or substantial to her role. Leigh, playing bar-band singer and alcoholic Sadie Flood, constantly leans on older sis Georgia, an acclaimed folk singer in the Joni Mitchell mold. Perhaps due to her double duties as co-producer on the film, Leigh seems to have boxed herself into a corner: she isn't credible as a singer and, even if this is intentional, gives herself far too much screen-time at the microphone. Probably hoping for a tour-de-force, Leigh is wire-drawn and nervous and jagged; however, we simply do not see any talent within this character (Leigh is obviously a solid actress, but she makes decisions here that wall us off from her). If Sadie had even the slightest bit of charisma or appeal, we might be able to buy into the concept that she gets the (small) breaks that she does. As it is, the likelihood of her ever getting up on stage is slim. Director Ulu Grosbard crafts a few intense dramatic sequences, and the editing at the finale juxtaposes Sadie's bar performance with Georgia's sold-out arena show--both singing the same song--and it's a sadly nuanced moment...but really, what's the point? *1/2 from ****


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I'm not going to say that this movie is horrible, because I have seen worse, but it's not even halfway decent.
The plot is very confusing. I couldn't really figure out what was happening and where things were going. When the movie was over, I was left scratching my head. I watched through to the end of the credits to see if they had something after them that may clear things up, but once the credits were over, that was it. I felt like I was jarred from one weak plot point to another throughout the whole movie, with little or no transition between the two.
Character development is very shallow. I couldn't figure out when somebody was angry or had a grudge against someone. I couldn't tell if half of the characters were just supposed to be drunk, stoned, mentally challenged or they just had a bad actor to portray them. This film seems to be based around stereotypes (to it's credit, they are hard to avoid using when you are making a film about a singer in a rock band), which SHOULD make character development easier, since so many other films have already illustrated the suffering of an abused child, or the trials of a heroin addict trying to come clean. Stereotypes are easy to depict, which would explain why so many bad films tend to overuse stereotypical characters. This film, on the other hand, uses stereotypical characters left and right, but then tries to keep them as incomprehensible as possible.
Another problem with the characters is that they seemed to be dismissed with no explanation. I guess that's OK because so little time was spent developing the characters that I really didn't get a chance to know any of them, so I never really missed any of them.
And last but not least was Sadie's singing. It's awful. The music backing her up is not prize winner, but it is usually drowned out by the screeches that are released from Sadie's vocal cords. I swear that there's one point in the movie where she sings a song for at least 10 minutes. I seriously thought I was going to have to turn it off during this howl-a-thon.
As a whole, this movie is confusing. Characters are ill-developed, Georgia's acting is wooden and stiff, Sadie's character is yanked from one bad situation to another, with no back story or explanation. The music was unbearable, and I can think of no good reasons to see this film unless you have a thirst for cinematic pain.


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There were a lot of truly great horror movies produced in the seventies - but this film certainly isn't one of them! It's a shame The Child isn't better as it works from a decent idea that takes in a couple of sometimes successful horror themes. We have the idea of a vengeful child, which worked so well in classic films such as The Bad Seed and then we have the central zombie theme, which of course has been the backbone of many a successful horror movie. The plot is basically this: young girl blames a load of people for the death of her mother, so she goes to the graveyard and raises the dead to get revenge (as you do). This is all well and good, except for the fact that it's boring! Nothing happens for most of the film, and although it does pick up at the end with some nice gore; it's not enough of a finale to justify sitting through the rest of it. The film was obviously shot on a budget as the locations look cheap and all the actors are rubbish. There's really not much I can say about the film overall as there isn't much to it. The Child is a dismal seventies horror flick and I certainly don't recommend it.


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This movie was seriously awful. The acting was the worst! It was worse than a student film. Super cheesy, and I think the worst actor was the old lady. At first I thought to myself, well it's an old movie. Then I remembered that that is no excuse! I've seen older movies with way better acting and such.
The music was terrible to. It was really choppy. The editing was poor (most of the dialog was out of sync.)
Overall, this movie doesn't even deserve a 1. I only watched it because I was so bored, and the movie hardly entertained me. It was just laughable. My dead grandmother's left pinkie toe could make a better movie than this.


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And that comes from someone that will withstand almost ANY viewing. The acting and sound is awful. This might qualify for a "so bad it's good" point of merit,,,for some. However I take my horror movies seriously and this is just crap-it's just soooo cheap, I think that's my major complaint. The dialogue is often hilarious-attention to how many times "you startled me" is used. The "child" actress is seriously god awful-I pray her acting career ended here..her line "DONUTS! I HATE DONUTS" is worth repeated viewing however.


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If you're going to look after a child, make sure they don't live anywhere near a graveyard. Especially if said kid has a habit of drawing gory pictures and disappears at night among the tombstones to see her 'friends'. But, our long haired heroine, oblivious to all the signs, shacks up with her family the Nortons, which include a strict father and a dullard older brother who becomes a love interest for our budding babysitter. Even more spooky than the zombie gang outside is the cast's tendency to talk even when their lips aren't moving, and for the words to not match the movement of their mouths. But enough of that.. domestic animals are being sacrificed, old ladies are having eyeballs torn out and the orchestra won't shut up during any scene, even the quiet ones. Oh, and the editor is having a day off going by the way the film drones on.
In fact, it would been better if everybody involved had taken a breather, smelt what they'd signed up for and gone AWOL. Yes, I know it's hard to get into movies these days, but this sort of starter point is not one on your CV you'd want. If would be like a trainee farm labourer having a conviction for chicken molesting. Featuring one of the worst lead performances ever by the shrill Laurel Barnett, and another almost equally as bad by the charisma-free child actress Rosalie Cole (The next Dakota Fanning she ain't) the film meanders on and on with nothing but padding until we get what passes for a climax.
This involves five or six members of the undead barricading our utterly useless heroine in a shed, while her bit of rough fends off these ghouls with a plank of wood, a one shell shotgun and whatever he can lay his hands on. But back up a minute.. earlier on they were in the car, and they accidentally discovered that the creatures found the noise of the horn so repellent they shuffled off at the sound of it. So do they stay where they are safe? No of course not, they run off to this abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, so the bloke can prove what a hardnut he is the girl can act like she's having a nervous breakdown.
Finally, the film closes. It doesn't end, it just goes to a grinding halt. The main character wanders back to her vehicle covered in fake blood, as if nothing horrible had happened. But, my dear viewer, something horrible has happened. You have just sat through one of the most lamebrained, boring horror films you're ever likely to see, and lost 82 minutes of your life you'll never get back. Just think.. years from now on your deathbed, what you'd trade an hour and 22 minutes for just to spend a bit of extra time with your family. Sadly, it's already too late for me. Don't you make the same mistake :( 2/10


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Alicianne (Laurel Barnett) becomes a live in babysitter for young Rosalie Nordon (Rosalione Cole) who has recently lost her mother. But Rosalie misses her dead mother a lot and continuously visits her grave (conveniently located in a cemetery right behind the house) late at night...where she also meets her "friends"...
This starts off good with a truly eerie sequence in the cemetery...then falls apart. The story is thin and there is TONS of padding to make the film 85 minutes long. The acting is terrible across the board (with Cole easily being the worst). Badly directed with some of the WORST editing I've ever seen in a motion picture. Scenes (and sound) are just cut off with no rhyme or reason. Also the film has terrible (and obvious) post-production sound.
As for blood and violence--forget it! There's very little and what there is looks incredibly fake. I've NEVER seen such fake-looking blood--looks like ketchup! Boring, pointless--a rightfully forgotten drive-in movie. You can skip this one.


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The Treasure Island DVD should be required viewing in any film production course! It's a textbook example of how NOT to make a movie. Watching the movie and then listening to the writer/director's commentary demonstrates graphically the vast chasm between what he knows about the characters and what he communicates to his audience about them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think of movies as a means of communication, and communication isn't complete if the audience doesn't know what the hell the director is talking about. The director's avowed purpose is to make a movie void of "Hollywood conventions". Among those conventions, alas, is consistency of character and clarity of concept. The director himself realizes that audiences often don't understand points where he has purposely avoided a "Hollywood cliché". However, he never seems to grasp the idea that clichés exist for a reason. They are shorthand for conveying complex ideas quickly and clearly. It's fine to avoid them, but they need to be replaced with some other way of communicating the same idea, not simply eliminated. The film is built on an intriguing premise, rich with potential. Two puppets are assigned to fabricate a personality and background for an unidentified corpse that is to be used in a disinformation mission in the closing days of WWII. Soon each begins to populate their personal fantasies with the character and their invention becomes increasingly real to them. Someone with less disdain for the "Hollywood convention" of traditional storytelling could create a wonderful film with this idea. This film certainly isn't it! The puppets do everything they can to bring consistency to these characters, but they are all too often defeated by the dazed and confused script. In particular, I'm becoming increasingly impressed by Gonzo, who plays the lively corpse. In a number of muppet films, he always stands out as a very charismatic puppet.


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The shame of it! There I was, comfortable in the arm chair with a beer and a bag of popcorn, bouyant in the hope of another splendid Muppet night of entertainment. What did I get? Disappointed! How can the Muppets go from the sublime Christmas Carol to this? The humour was dreadful, the songs were worse than Country and Western (and that's saying something) and the plot was as confused and poor as Blind Pew. I think the main problem was that they bit off too much in attempting Treasure Island. A short tale, such as Christmas Carol, is perfect because you can weave the Muppet high jinks around it....here the need to drag the plot along stopped all the fun. Where do the Muppets go next? How about Muppets Wizard of Oz?


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I must say this movie is a Mork and Mindy knock off, when watching it i got the chills, I even wet myself a little. When that Korean guy with the spiders in his neck started kicking people i was like oh my lord Asian people smell and suck cause they eat dogs all the time. Any way back on track Chuck had a somewhat terrible performance and lacked the intelligence of a regular non robotic human being. Some people would compare it to his earlier days when he was a car wash analyzer and believed in the holy ghost and the ghost of Christmas past. This movie is so bad I put my new born child in a box and left it in Mr. Norris mailbox. He can raise my kid I'm not letting him into a world where he thinks chuck Norris is a karate expert Ill let him see what that hack is like in real life for the rest of his life.


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