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user\nDespite the fact that he worked for the worst government of the 20th century, Erwin Rommel is generally well-regarded by historians and World War II buffs as a gentleman, a soldier's soldier, and a brilliant tactician in the field of mechanized warfare. If only Hitler had given him the troops and materiel he had desired in Africa, the argument goes, things would have gone very differently. And that's probably true. Rommel was, in fact, a military genius, and by all accounts an upstanding, honest man.
But this film goes out of its way to portray him as a near-saint. He does his job, trying to win the war for Hitler, but constantly the Fuhrer interferes and gives him ridiculous orders, which Rommel (James Mason) expresses amazement with but rarely actually questions and never, ever disobeys. Only when it's patently obvious that Hitler is leading Germany to ruin does Rommel think of treason against him; this dilemma plays out as the main theme of the film, a good man in bad circumstances trying to do the right thing.
Mason is fine as Rommel, but it's hardly a memorable performance along the lines of, say, George C. Scott as Patton. Of course, Rommel wasn't as colorful as Patton, but this film is so intent on making him look like a decent human being that it forgets to make him interesting. He occasionally lapses into some warmth when with his wife Lucie (a young Jessica Tandy, well-cast), but usually Mason is called upon to give a stiff British performance  as if the Brits were trying to claim Rommel for themselves (though in all fairness all the Nazis have English accents except Hitler).
Done on the cheap, with any battle scenes swiping stock footage, and the beaches of southern California doubling for Tunisia, there's nothing to particularly recommend this film. A remake could be interesting (I'd pick Ed Harris only because of a slight physical resemblance and, well, Harris can act) were it spiced up a little, but this movie mostly demonstrated to me how much more demanding we as viewers have become in the last fifty years; a biography this bland would never cut it any more.
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user\nI hoped to learn something from this movie, but I was disappointed. It is all about Rommel and lauds him as a great general, but at no time in this entire movie did we ever get an idea of why he was great. What made him so successful? Was it his drive, his unwillingness to accept defeat, his discipline with his men? I was looking for a Patton-like rendition that really gets into the character, but this fell way flat. Most of the dialog is contrived and sensationalized, and feels stale and artificial. There is some good action here and there, but not much. The tail end of the story, which discusses his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler, was the most informative part and probably the most interesting. But as a history lesson on Germany's greatest general, this was a failure.
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user\nOh boy. Films like this really bother me. If this movie is supposed to close to truth, then I assume that Rommel knew Hitler for a time before WWII started. In the movie, Rommel mentions how Hitler had changed from before. Well I can't imagine that Rommel wouldn't have known something about Hitler's government policies so Rommel must share some guilt for the German atrocities. With that in mind, I have a problem with a movie that makes Rommel's life at the end a tragic one. He made his choices and we have to feel bad for him? I can't do it. I also can't buy the theory that if the more competent generals were allowed to fight the war, the allies would have had more trouble winning it. If more competent people were in charge, WWII may never have started in the first place. From a movie watching aspect, the film jumps from place to place and most of the time seems like a history special with big name actors playing the historical roles. Leo G. Carroll has a couple of good scenes with James Mason and I liked the fact that everyone spoke English without the ridiculous accents. But other than that not very essential.
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user\nBasic summary: Ipswitch used to be a community of witches and escaped the Salem witch hunts by forming a covenant of secrecy. The first born males descended from these families have supernatural powers, and must come to terms with the seductive, addictive nature of using those powers.
Well, I usually give movies the benefit of the doubt and start from a 5, going from there:
Production: -1 for very obvious audio out of sync, +1 for nicely done special effects, the darkling actually gave me chills, +0.5 for nice colorization (I like the dull blue), -0.5 for the stupid sound track, +0.5 for the opening sequence -- I'm a sucker for stylish compositing and flashy title design.
Story / Script: +1 for decent main idea, -0.5 for DBZ/Matrix/Street Fighter ripoff/pastiche, -1 for not explaining some plot threads very well (spiders, darkling), -1 for boring, predictable ending, -1 for gratuitous exposition, both as words on the screen and as bland monologuing
Acting / Characterization: -0.5 for bad bad acting, although it gets a little better as the film progresses, -1 for lack of character development, especially among all the females
Other: +1 for gratuitous male and female nudity, which is fun to watch, and +0.5 for no sex scenes, which for this genre are usually done very badly and end up being boring rather than hot, +1 for hitting its target audience, teenage sci-fi/horror/thriller fans, even though this movie is not exclusively any of those genres.
Conclusion: This is not a \"film,\" this is a MOVIE. There's really nothing to analyze, it's just good, (relatively) clean fun. Lots of really attractive actors and actresses. Lots of boys fighting in the style of DBZ and Street Fighter. If you like cute actors and actresses, supernatural special effects, and/or mindlessly fun plots, this movie is for you. If you prefer Oscar-worthy, exquisitely-produced film masterpieces with tons of multi-layered, allegorical plot threads and groundbreaking visualization techniques, you probably won't like this film.
Using my twisted logic, this movie gets a 4/10.
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user\nIt seems whenever a mainstream film company wants to make a movies for teens it concentrates on only one thing: sex. Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude but the fact that these people seem to think getting my rocks off is all I'm interested in is highly offensive. Take The Convenant, a film that relies so heavily on you finding the main characters attractive it thinks it can get away without a plot and/or a script that wasn't written by a six year old. This is essentially The Craft with (supposedly) hot guys. And, yeah, that's it. It bored me to tears. Even my friend, who usually laps us crap films, hated it. It is really stunningly bad, to the extent where it can actually be funny. I would have laughed if it wasn't for the fact that several other females in cinema attendance seemed to be enjoying it. They were accompanied by several shifty looking guys who positively curled up and died when the (really cliché) boy on boy kiss happened towards the end. Watching them squirm really was the highlight of the film. I don't think mainstream, Hollywood cinema will ever put out good films for teenagers (or, indeed, for anyone) so I think I'll give up. Unless you're a teen who likes The Pussycat Dolls, thinks Paris Hilton is \"hot\" and watches MTV it's like some sort of wasteland. Life's hard when you're a fifteen year old who likes art house. :( P.S. Someone should have told the Director that not all teenage girls find would be boy band members \"totally HAWT LOL!!!111!!\"
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user\nlet me say first off I didn't go in expecting much, and watching it at prime-time on opening night should have helped. I believe it would have, had there been more than 20 people in the theater.
It sucked so hard. the acting was robotic at best and nothing was really explained until the last 30 minutes of the movie. I guess that was their way of twisting the plot; keep everyone in the dark on crucial info to understand the movies direction until the end and THEN explain things and hope it feels like a twist of plot.
Unknowns until the end of the movie: -What the Eff is a dark-ling? the CG was cool but I want to understand! -why cant powers be willed? especially if mass murder is the ultimatum. -why is willing away powers so bad? your just normal after, right? -who farted?
roughly 50% of the minutes with just men on screen, were shots of them in wife beaters, sleeveless t's and then a gut wrenching pool scene of all teenage men in the skimpiest low riding speedos knowing to ever have been manufactured. I swear you could see the start of the one guys.... well, it was close to soft-core. And of course there was a shower scene, and to mix it up it was of the DUDES. Butt cracks were abundant, a sausage fest in progress. But there was a single girl shower scene in which nothing was seen and she ambles around the best looking dorm bathroom for around 12 minutes. Then there was a girl talk PJ party. the other thing I couldn't get over was the amount of driving that Caleb did in his SUPER COOL ford mustang GT. it was a ford commercial for around 1/4th of the movie.
Don't see it. or go see it with a friend who likes to make fun of bad movies. then it could be worth it. but don't expect anything breathtaking.
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user\nWhen I saw on the voting panel that some people had given this film a score of 10 I assumed they were unaware that the score wasn't out of 100. This is a disaster movie in the real meaning of that term. Poorly written and weakly directed with so-called actors unable to act, but able to grimace when ordered to. For the first 60 minutes the story appears to be going in one direction, then it changes tack and gets involved in a power fight, with extremely poor special effects. Unable to work out an intelligent way for the hero with limited powers to beat the villain with super powers, the \"writer\" cheats. It is obvious that the father was added to the so-called story-line because it was easier than working out an acceptable denouement. Not that the write would even know the word \"denouement.\" Some movies go directly to DVD. This one should have gone directly to the dustbin.
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user\nWow! I just don't even know where to begin with what made this movie so awful. Maybe I should start by just saying that during a \"heated confrontation\" between the antagonist and protagonist, I had to leave the theater because I was laughing so hard. Yeah. The acting really was that bad. The acting was not even the worst part though. The plot was almost entirely shown in the previews. The characters are all grossly underdeveloped. The dialogue and \"dramatic moments\" are ridiculous. The bad guy is a caricature of an out of control, power drunk, sadist.
But hey the actors are pretty, so guess that was supposed to make it all better.
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user\n\"No one really knows how the Power came to be. Not even the Book of Damnation recorded its beginning, but those who mastered it have always been hunted The families of Ipswich formed a Covenant of Silence bla bla bla\" After this intro, we suddenly see Take That. Or was it N'Synch? The Backstreet Boys, perhaps? Well, I don't know which of these they belong to, but one thing's for sure: the descendants of Salem are a boy-band. Can you tell them apart? I couldn't. If you can tell me which is which, I'd very much appreciate it. These boy-band boys looks so damn alike! Seriously now. Is this a horror movie or a film for teenie-boppers? It's sad that the (anyway weak) horror genre has been kidnapped by teens. And this is one of the teeniest I've seen so far. The movie is visually solid, but the cast is so bland, the acting so awful, that it was a trial finishing the movie. As bad as the cast was (after all, boy-bands and fashion models are rarely good actors) the absolute \"stand-out\" in this regard was the guy playing the villain, Sebastian Stan. This guy's overacting is right up there with the worst in the history of film. I have rarely seen someone make such annoying and silly grimaces in such a short space of time. What's worse, he has the most baby-face of all the boy-band baby-faces in the entire cast. I mean, it's a joke.
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user\n210 minute version (extremely hardcore, or so I hear) or the R-rated version released into theaters? Both are terribly awful, of course. Peter O'Toole and Malcolm McDowell have both claimed they wish they had never made this film (the latter of the two men reported this in an IMDb interview!), and I can see why. Nothing but a nonsensical mess of softcore porn and a half-hearted attempt at a plot.
Not much of anything here, other than cheap tricks and stupid scenes. I liked what McDowell himself said about the film: \"It was like one moment I'd be staring, admiring my mule or something, and the next scene would be two lesbians going at it.\"
How true.
What an awful movie.
1/5 stars.
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user\nWho really wants to see that? Disgusting violence, disgusting sex, for such a long time. I do not want to, but I always stayed true to my philosophy to watch any movie as bad as it may be. This was the hardest (right after \"Next Friday\").
It's basically just crap. How can you possibly call it anything else? The story of a Roman emperor as an excuse for gore and T&A. Yeah, yeah, \"Hey, it's realistic, they have been like this.\" Fine, but why bother us with it? I don't care if it has been like this (and there are a lot of scenes where I truly doubt it). The point is, why should anyone wanna see it? Problem is, there is only one reason you could like the film and that would be that you like violence. There's nothing special about it, just cruelty. You can say \"Cool!\" as you'd say in splatter-slasher-movie. But horror movies with violence at least can give you chills and excitement, maybe characters you care about. But here everything is dark, dull and boring. Every character is mad. \"The story of an emperor who can't deal with his power\". What? In the very first scene he runs naked through the woods with his sister! I have no problem saying that we saw a madman for 2 1/2 hours.
But maybe you get turned on by seeing Helen Mirren, being pregnant and dancing. Or 5 minutes of hardcore scenes that some people see as the message of the movie. Or castration, yeah right, that was fun! Real birth scenes, how hilarious! Humans, animals, who cares, let's just treat them as toys.
I don't care what anyone says, this is no movie, this is just 2 1/2 hours of blood and sex, degrading and disgusting. Go watch a porn movie if you want sex or watch a horror flick if you want violence. At least those movies don't pretend to be some artistic masterpiece. And they are shorter.
[0/10] [6 (1+ - 6-)] [0/4]
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user\nProbably not the same version as most of the other reviewers because there`s no real hard core sex . What do people mean by hard core sex ? The sort of explicit hard core sex seen in films starring Traci Lords and \" Big \" John Holmes ? Well anyway this is really poor film , I doubt if I`ve ever seen so many big name actors wasted in a film . The script is really poor and plotless , the directing and cinematography is awful and the editing is non existant . It truly is an absolutely awful film. You could watch this ten times and still not understand what the hell it`s about . The only memorable scene is the one where people are buried up to their necks and a giant lawnmower comes along and decapitates them . Yes you read that right , a film set in Roman times has a scene with a head chopping giant lawnmower !
Trivia point. Many years ago a pirate copy of THE THING ( 1982 version ) was doing the rental rounds on my Island and it been copied onto a rental tape of CALIGULA meaning the pirate version of THE THING starts with the first few seconds of CALIGULA of the man and woman walking through the forest then the title sequence of THE THING starts . This led people who`d seen the pirate tape to believe the forest scene was the opening of John Carpenter`s 1982 film and were very confused as to what it meant. Well that`s what you get for renting pirate videos . But having seen the whole of CALIGULA I don`t know what it meant either
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user\n\"Caligula\" shares many of the same attributes as the 1970 \"Fellini Satyricon\" with bizarre sights, freakishness, and depictions of sexual excesses all set in the \"glory\" of ancient Rome. But Fellini it ain't... First of all it is not as entertaining. Far too much screen time is devoted to bug-eyed, rubber-faced McDowell in the titular role. His performance is far too fey and campy to be convincing. The portrayals by Jay Robinson in \"The Robe\" (1953) and David Cain-Haughton in \"Emperor Caligula\" (1983) are far more persuasive and believable, with the latter being the most nuanced. Relief could have been judiciously provided by developing the surrounding characters more fully. As it is, they are little more than cyphers. One example is the role of Macro, played by Guido Mannari who has tremendous screen presence in an important role, but is mostly left in the background. The only positive features to credit are the adroit use of some Prokofiev and Stravinsky themes in the music score and the inclusion of some of the distasteful but nevertheless accurate actions of the despot. These two factors are far less than what is needed to relieve the prevailing tedium, however.
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user\nI rated this movie a 3 and that was generous. The scenery is ponderous and gaudy, the acting for the most part is terrible. I do think Peter O'Toole did a good job of acting (Tiberius), but he must have been mortified when he saw the final cut of the movie. John Gielgud, howsoever brief his appearance in the movie, still seemed to be playing a role from Hamlet. The hard core pornography parts were neither erotic nor did they do much to further the story. Okay Malcolm McDowell had a nice butt and the guy who played Macro was handsome. The guy who played Claudius, looked more like the traditional depictions of Nero and was certainly at odds with Robert Graves' picture of Claudius. The climactic (?) assassination of Caligula, wife and child is inaccurate in that it shows him after death lying on stairs in an open-air area, when in fact he was assassinated in the underground passage on the palatine hill which ran along the front of the Domus Flaviana that still exists today. There are places in this movie where virtually anything drew my attention away from it--merciful distractions. If you want history, read Suetonius or Tacitus, if you want pornography and sadism, watch Passolini's \"Salo\", but by all means stay away from this movie.
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user\nI'm almost embarrassed to admit to seeing CALIGULA twice. The problems with the production are almost too numerous to mention. The script is sub-standard (it's easy to see why Vidal tried to disown it). The direction is worse. Most of the movie consists of long shots inter cut with close-ups interspersed with cross cuts of mostly un-erotic porn (more prevalent obviously in the \"uncut\" version). The cinematography is especially sub par, giving the whole production a cheap washed-out look that undermines some of the elaborate set designs. The movie should've looked a whole lot better. The overall concept of placing name actors in what would've easily been an X-rated movie (Guccione called it \"paganography\") wears thin after the first hour after Peter O'Toole and John Guilgud exit. Bob Guccione obviously lavished a lot of bucks on this but it all seems like a big waste. If you want a far better understanding of the Roman Empire in the 1st Century watch the mid-79's BBC production of I, CLAUDIUS instead... and if you want porn, jeeze-Louise, look somewhere else.
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user\nFellow Giallo-fanatics: beware and/or proceed with caution  for this movie isn't exactly what it appears to be. It surely looks like a Giallo, with its juicy VHS cover (showing a busty naked girl and a big bloodied knife), rhythmic title and the names of two veteran Italian actors in the cast (John Phillip & Fernando Rey), but it's basically just an erotic thriller without much of a plot. The version I watched is presumably harshly censored  with a running time of barely 77 minutes  but then still there's a severe lack of suspense, character development and most of all sadistic (and typically Giallo) carnage. \"Eyes Behind the Wall\" can briefly be summarized as the gathering of a bunch of perverted characters and the extended depiction of their sexuality issues. It's an interesting effort notwithstanding, because writer/director Giuliano Petrelli (his only film) clearly attempted to do something special, but the overall result is unsatisfying and regrettably tame. Inspired by Hitchcock's \"Rear Window\", the main character is a frustrated elderly and wheelchair-bound writer. He and his much younger lover get their sexual kicks from spying on the single male tenant living across the road. The tenant, respectively, likes to perform gym exercises around the house whilst being naked and clearly has bisexual desires. Wheelchair guy sends his wife over and they have sex. Then, there's also Ottavio the butler who repeatedly rapes schoolgirls. Are there any normal characters in the story? Well no, of course not! The film benefices from a continuously ominous atmosphere, with a moody soundtrack and nifty photography, but none of it ever leads anywhere so it's all just sleaze & sex without significance. There's a truly bizarre twist/revelation at the end of the story, but it comes too late and too randomly to boost up the overall quality. Not recommended to fans of Italian horror/cult cinema, but maybe it is great viewing for psychology students, to analyze the characters Freud-style.
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user\nI was expecting \"Born to Kill\" to be an exciting, high-tension film noir. Instead, it's got two good action set-pieces (one at the beginning and one at the end) and some marvelously atmospheric cinematography by Robert de Grasse (usually a \"glamor\" cameraman and a surprising credit for a noir), but the rest of the film is pretty boring. Lawrence Tierney goes through his psycho kick but it's a strictly by-the-numbers performance, mechanically churning out what the audience expected from him after \"Dillinger\" (an overrated movie but at least better than this). Claire Trevor's character is too stupid and unmotivated to have any audience appeal, and the action (such as it is) stays so resolutely inside that damned house in San Francisco the film becomes claustrophobic instead of genuinely thrilling. It's one of those movies in which the supporting players -- notably Elisha Cook, Jr. (whose character's homoerotic itch for Tierney's is one of the few subtleties in an otherwise pretty obvious script) and Isabel Jewell -- out-act the leads. It also doesn't help that, nearly half a century after Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins revolutionized the depiction of psycho killers on the screen in \"Psycho,\" Tierney's is so gross and obvious he might as well have \"PSYCHO\" tattooed on his forehead. Also, there's no indication in the film as it stands as to why the source novel was called \"Deadlier than the Male\" -- but perhaps James Gunn made the female characters stronger and more interesting than they are in the film. \"Born to Kill\" is a real disappointment from Robert Wise, who already had some quality movies under his belt and would go on to a stellar career.
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user\nThis HBO original is pretty straightforward and pretty dumb. Armand Assante, once again doing a poor Stallone imitation, is Ray Wellman a ex-con just out on parole. All he wants is his old girlfriend Lacy, played by a young Marcia Gay Harden, back. Unfortunately for Ray, Lacy has hooked up with stalwart Elliot, played by Sam Neill. Further complicating matters is that Ray's old Cell buddies want some favors and they kidnap Lacy to make sure they happen. Ray and Elliot team up, despite mutual dislike.
What follows is violent and slow, but Marcia Gay Harden shows us why she would win Oscar in the future, she's not as polished here, but her raw emotion, sincerity and some rather explicit nude scenes almost make this worth watching. Almost.
Rent \"Fever\" (no the title doesn't fit the film) if your a fan of hers, otherwise skip it and be grateful it's stars went on to better things.
Note-this is a hard \"R\" flick for language, violence and nudity.
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user\nI was looking forward to watching this film and was therefore extremely disappointed when I found it to be complete and utter rubbish. Akerman's direction is both heavy handed and cliched (how much more cliched can you get than Paris at night?). The male cast seems to have been chosen entirely for their resemberlance to Egon Schiele's angst ridden self portraits. Yet the themes of jealousy and betrayal which should have been the primary focus of a film of this type are left virtually unexplored. What is left is a turgid melodrama which takes an age to get started and even longer to finish. The only advantage with this sort of film is that it makes you realise how good Goddard and Truffaut really are.
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user\nThis film is about a woman falling in love with a friend of her boyfriend. From then on, she has to divide her time for the two boyfriends: Jack during the day and Joseph during the night.
This film feels like as if it was made with minimum budget. The majority of the film is set in a flat with minimal furniture. There are only three main actors, all the other actors listed in the credits make only momentary appearances. The wardrobe designer doesn't seem to have much to do, as the actors wear very down to earth clothes, and actually most of the time they are naked anyway.
The film is very dialog heavy, which should have made up for the shortcomings described above. However, the dialogs sound too composed and awkward. In the beginning of the film, most of the dialog is a person saying a very long sentence, and then the person says 'Me too'. After the frenzy of agreement, the dialog descends into a mess of disjointed and confused word salad.
The only merit of this film I can think of is that it serves as a feminist outlet which conveys that it is not just men who can be unfaithful.
This film is a great disappointment.
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user\nOne of the most boring movies I've ever seen. Three immature young people have sex and talk about very little except their \"love\" of each other. They don't seem to be interested in much but each other, and only passively so. I was left feeling shut out. Most of the exterior scenes take place at night, so one can't even enjoy well-lit sights of Paris! I gave up after an hour and ten minutes.
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user\nThe only thing of interest about this movie is its subject matter. Taking a look at the Manson \"family\" from the point of view of the family members themselves is a great idea. However, trying to make sense of the uncomprehensible is something that can really only be accomplished in a masterwork -- and this ain't it.
Presumably because there was so much information to squeeze into a screenplay, this film was done in a faux documentary style, with reenactments thrown in. Trouble is, the writing and directing make it impossible to establish those things that make a movie watchable, like character, story, theme and so on.
Worse, there's an incredibly weak sub-plot thrown in that follows a little band of latter-day Mansonites as they go after a reporter who's working on a story on the anniversary of the killings. It's dumb and pointless, and a complete waste of time.
All in all, this movie is one big wasted opportunity. The one ray of sunshine is the acting of Marc Pitman, who plays Tex, who in real life did most of the actual killing. Whereas the female characters come off as giggly airheads in the 60s flashbacks, Pitman manages to convey real feeling.
In short, don't bother with this movie.
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user\nI got encouraged to watch this film because I've heard good word of it: it was supposed to be this thrilling true crime milestone, disturbing, shocking... all that jazz. Well, I am disturbed because I spent money on it, and I am shocked that something so God-awful actually got released. That's about it.
This is a supposed \"new look\" at Charles Manson's family of insane loser junkies and their murders. But if this is a \"new look\" then it's probably \"new\" as in \"fresh and totally inept\": just watching it gave me a headache and I had to give up trying to make any sense of it or even understand just what the director intended it to be.
I suppose I should say something about the plot but fact is, it was so stupid and incoherent that I barely remember if there even WAS a plot at all. There was something about a \"Manson tape\" delivered to a radio DJ (or a TV producer?), then an hour of pointless random footage of \"the family\" in '69, then the Polanski murders (looking like a bad school play) and finally some idiotic part about a bunch of skinheads getting drunk and beating the hell out of one another in an alley (I kid you not), and then it ended (thank God) (Don't ask me to make any sense of that, I'm just recalling what I saw!) The performances were terrible, too. And how difficult is it to make a convincing \"Manson\"? Get a short skinny scrawny bloke, put a dirty wig and a shaggy beard on him. There's your Manson. But this \"Manson\" doesn't even look right. He just looks like, uh, a bloke in a cheap wig and a glued on Santa beard painted black.
Or maybe that's what this film is actually about: Manson's family didn't make any sense, so this film doesn't make any sense, either. It's symbolic! (Yeah, right) I'm still so angry at spending money on this I stopped my normal lurking on this site and registered just to vote 1 for this film and post this warning that will hopefully prevent others from spending their money on this garbage. Stay away from it, it's not even worth renting.
PS. The recent US TV production \"Helter Skelter\" got bad reviews here but I saw it last month (I saw the 1976 original too) and let me tell you, compared to \"Manson Family\", that new Helter Skelter is BRILLIANT and FLAWLESS. And I was disappointed in it! That's how bad \"Manson Family\" is: it makes a flawed and mostly disappointing TV movie look perfect.
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user\nI heard legends about this \"film\" (quotes used so as not to insult films) for a while, so when I finally got the DVD with it, I impatiently started watching it. By the end, I *had* to fast forward through just a few of the most moronic, ineptly made, nonsensical scenes of this pointless childish mess to make it end quicker.
This may be the worst film I've even \"touched\" - and I used to be associated with Troma for a while. \"Manson Family\" makes the bottom of Troma's entries look like daring and groundbreaking art-house filmwork. I could go on and talk about the syphilitic skeleton of a \"plot\" it has, the revoltingly bad \"acting\", the painful, inept \"directing\", the sets and props with their \"dollar ninety nine\" look (I especially \"loved\" the plastic toy guns used in the Tate murder scene!) or the nauseating look and feel of this whole bag of garbage (I think it was supposed to represent a drug-induced hallucination; I have absolutely no idea how a drug-induced hallucination looks or feels, nor do I want to find out - but I guess drug junkies with burned out \"brains\" will love this \"film\" (they seem to be the ones who made it) I've seen many films from various \"Worst 50\" lists, traditionally opened by Eddie Wood's ones - and Eddie Wood would be appalled by the sheer ineptitude and talentless of van Webber (or whatever his name is; I certainly don't want to remember it) I've never seen \"Superbabies\" or its sequel, but I strongly wish that \"Manson\" joined them on IMDb's rating. Fortunately, this obscure garbage probably won't be seen by enough viewers to warrant it sufficiently many \"1\" votes - and so much the better!
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user\nThis has got to be the most god-awful piece of cinematic crap I have ever watched. It makes Mel Brooks movies Oscar-worthy by comparison. Jim VanBebber needs to be publicly slapped for trying to pass this off as ANY form of entertainment.
While some may say that this movie is true to the low budget genre of such classics as \"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre\" or \"Night of the Living Dead\", the production value is not in question. It is VanBebber's ability to cast and present a plausible story line. The casting is deplorable. For the role of Charlie he must have picked the first actor he saw with a beard and long hair. Never mind that this actor's hair came halfway down his back, (Manson's never went much past his shoulders) this actor spoke in a dreadful monotone without so much as a fraction of the personality that Steve Railsback or even Jeremy Davies lent to their portrayals of Manson. The actor chosen to play \"Tex\" Watson had curly blond hair instead of straight dark hair, a fact that anyone who has shown even the most remote interest in the Manson case knows. He looks like a Minnesota farmer on \"Little House on the Prairie\" The actress playing Susan Atkins has a butt wider than Oprah's, While those familiar with the Family members know that \"Clem\" was considered somewhat retarded, the actor portraying him did so in such a campy, Chaplinesque way it was like watching an old Vaudevile act. Instead of Sharon Tate looking like a beautiful pregnant woman, the actress looked like bloated, alcoholic trailer trash. VanBebber speeds up the filming in some places for artistic effect yet this technique hasn't proved remotely useful since \"The Munsters\". The end credits list every known family member yet we are never introduced to the majority of them and those we are introduced to we aren't sure who they are sometimes.
Facts are destroyed in this movie as well. \"Lotsapoppa\" did not die in real life, Steven Parent was shot four times, not twice, Abagail Folger did not have her throat slit, Where were Mary Brunner and Bruce Davis during the Himnan Murder? Patricia Krenwinkel never sported a \"Dorothy Hamill\" hair style.
The most baffling aspect of this movie is what the modern day \"freaks\" had to do with this movie? Why was the girl wearing a rubber mask with a dildo attached? What was their problem with the journalist? What was the meaning or purpose of the final confrontation? Why were they included, period? The viewer never knows!
Holy mackerel, I could go on and on but space prevents it. Don't try to eat popcorn during this garbage because your hand will be too busy scratching your head while you repeatedly say \"What the f---?\"
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user\nA paranoid scientist creates a wolfman by transfusing wolf blood into a meek, quiet, but very large gardener, in order to prove an hypothesis. So the gardener begins nightly rampages and the scientist tries to use him to reclaim his credentials, but is rebuffed by his former colleagues for tampering with nature. Island of Dr Moreau, Frankenstein and various wolfman films all blended together into a terribly dated, goofy, morality play.
Though the subject matter is pedantic and unoriginal at best, this film is not too poorly made, and interesting to watch as a representative of horror film making of its time. Like most mad scientist films, this is a weak warning against fooling around with Mother Nature. It doesn't have the power or intellectual challenges of Frankenstein, but it doesn't ever extend its reach anyway. The acting is passable, as is the cinematography, and the film moves along at an entertaining clip. Some of the dialog is utterly ludicrous, but hey... it's just a movie - and a B minus one at that. There are also a few nice shots of a wolf, and a smattering of humor tossed-in to prevent the film from appearing to take itself too seriously - always a plus for this genre.
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user\nI'm working my way through the Horror Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and THE MAD MONSTER is one of the movies in the set.
I am sure that George Zucco was a good actor; but, this was only the second film in which I saw him, the first being DEAD MEN WALK, in which he played two parts. However, even good acting couldn't save THE MAD MONSTER.
Zucco plays a mad scientist, Dr. Cameron (who was banned from academia because of his unethical and inhumane experiments). He believes that he can control evolution by bringing out the characteristics of one animal into another.
In this case, like so many others of its ilk, it is a transfusion of (I assume) wolf's blood into humans. His goal is to create an invincible army, which he can control through the antidote. The subject of his experiments is his hired hand, a retarded gardener, whose dialogue slows down this snail-paced classic to almost a full-stop.
Beyond his experiments, Dr. Cameron also plots revenge on those who discredited him, using his transformed gardener. However, he loses control of his subject, who begins to transform without the transfusion -- yikes!
The werewolf transformations are classic Hollywood stop-action / makeup effects. No doubt these were groundbreaking techniques of the time; but, in today's digital age it's hard to imagine audiences being scared by this.
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user\nGeorge Zucco was like Boris Karloff in the fact no matter how poor the film he appeared in was, he would always maintain a sense of dignity and turn in a fine performance. \"The Mad Monster\" is no exception to that rule. It is by all standards a poor (if entertaining) film. The filmmakers obviously didn't know how to make the most of their low budget and the script seems as if it was turned out in one or two days. Still, Zucco is fine and believable as the mad scientist.
The film itself is enjoyable on a camp level. Normal horror movie fans for the most part won't take a liking to PRC films. However, these \"Poverty Row\" productions have a small but loyal cult following. Occasionally they would rise above their limitations with \"Detour\" being the best example of this. Usually they looked like this. For all its technically poor qualities, \"The Mad Monster\" is an amusing enough way to kill a rainy afternoon. The DVD from Retromedia is recommended, as it pairs this with another PRC production \"The Black Raven\", the original theatrical trailer, and best of all an interview with Glenn Strange talking about his role in this movie. (4/10)
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user\nA scientist (George Zucco) wants to create wolf men out of American soldiers to fight the Nazis, but is branded as mad. He uses a simpleton gardener (Glenn Strange) to experiment on by mixing his blood with the blood of a wolf. Strange, constantly embedding his dialogue with the tones of Lon Chaney Jr. in \"Of Mice and Men\", has no idea what's going on, only that he sleepwalks. The victims begin to pile up (including a little girl, which modern viewers might find rather disturbing, and two of Zucco's rivals). There is some good dialogue on how man should not mess with nature (still prevalent today) and play God. Zucco's motives may be honorable, but his methods are most questionable. And then there is his daughter, Anne Nagel, who is sympathetically nice to Strange, yet has no idea of her father's deeds. Johnny Downs is a reporter who gets on Zucco's bad side by questioning him, but wins Nagel's heart, thus creating the usual and always dull romantic subplot in classic horror films. At 77 minutes, this is about 15 minutes longer than usual for a horror film of the early 40's (particularly one out of PRC, who released this one), so the romantic story could have been trimmed for costs and to speed things up a bit. Zucco, fortunately, is never hammy; He left that to Bela Lugosi (who always hammed in a deliciously theatrical manner which endeared him to audiences) and England's Todd Slaughter. But try not to think of \"Bride of the Monster's\" laboratory while looking at the one Zucco works in, or some of Lugosi's dialogue in that now classic cult film. \"Mad Monster\" lacks a cult following more because it is not delightfully bad, just has dull pacing in more than a few spots. For PRC and Monogram lovers, I would recommend \"The Corpse Vanishes\" or \"Fog Island\" higher than this
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user\nOK, this movie seems to have been pretty well covered by earlier comments, but there are a couple of items I wish to add. The mad scientist is producing a serum from the blood of a caged animal in order to turn a man into a werewolf. If we suspend our disbelief enough to buy into that, fine. But the animal in the cage is a coyote. That would make a werecoyote. Did audiences in 1942 not know the difference between a wolf and a coyote? They're easy to tell apart. That's weak.
Secondly, this movie was covered in the third episode of MST3k (on the Comedy Channel). It took Joel and the bots a number of episodes to get up to full riffing steam, and they weren't up there quite yet on this one. They DID add enough to this snoozer to keep you awake until the end, but it was not one of their better episodes. They never even mentioned the glaring omission of an actual wolf, and THAT joke was just hanging in the air waiting to be smacked.
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user\nOK, I've now seen George Zucco in at least four separate horror/suspense films recently as I worked my way through various 50 pack collections, and I have to say, the guy had a limited range, but he was good at what he did. He wasn't Karloff, but PRC was lucky to have him.
But the poor guy was stuck in a kind of back-water ghetto of horror films, and he wasn't good enough to take them to the next level of interest....not with the thread-bare screenplays and direction and budgets he worked under. That's the case here.
This movie is, well, slow, stodgy and unexciting for the most part. The \"heroine\" seems to be doomed to be a rent-a-center version of Judy Garland, the \"hero\" is bland as white rice, and the poor guy playing the monster doesn't even get a good transformation scene out of the deal. His make up effects aren't scary at all - he looks like a slightly more shaggy version of a farm hand, is all.
It's not a total waste. Zucco looks good on camera, he chews the scenery while managing to deliver some terribly affected and contrived set speeches without flinching or losing the flow. There are some moody B&W shots here and there that don't completely suck.
So all in all...this movie helped some \"C\" through \"Z\" level actors pay their rent for another month, and it never sinks below a certain hacked out level of quality. Watch it once if you like George Zucco, or just feel the need to see every wolfman-themed movie ever made.
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user\n\"Dr. Cameron, a discredited scientist succeeds with his experiment in creating serum the transforms men into wolf-like creatures. Originally developing this formula to help the world, the scientist decides to use his newly created subject to exact revenge upon the scientists who were responsible for his ouster from the scientific community. The scientist's daughter Lenora grows wary of her father's actions and shares her suspicions with a newspaper reporter. When the scientist loses control of his creature, it falls upon the scientist's daughter and the reporter to stop it,\" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.
Mad scientist George Zucco (as Lorenzo Cameron) creates his formula rather unimaginatively, by mixing human and wolf blood. This brings the beast out in hulking Glenn Strange (as Petro aka Pedro), who is directed to act like Lon Chaney Jr. in \"Of Mice and Men\". Johnny Downs (as Tom Gregory) and Anna Nagel (as Lenora Cameron) are a likable werewolf hunter and damsel in distress. Certainly, \"The Mad Monster\" is no substitute for \"The Wolf Man\"; but, it's a serviceable addendum. The grainy black-and-white photography enhances the foggy, cow-webbed atmosphere. \"God\" (uncredited) strikes up a well-done ending, too. Like Blaine (Robert Strange) said, \"Mingling the blood of man and beast is downright sacrilege!\"
**** The Mad Monster (1942) Sam Newfield ~ George Zucco, Johnny Downs, Anna Nagel
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