I love sci-fi and am willing to put up with a lot. Sci-fi movies/TV are usually underfunded, under-appreciated and misunderstood. I tried to like this, I really did, but it is to good TV sci-fi as Babylon 5 is to Star Trek (the original). Silly prosthetics, cheap cardboard sets, stilted dialogues, CG that doesn't match the background, and painfully one-dimensional characters cannot be overcome with a 'sci-fi' setting. (I'm sure there are those of you out there who think Babylon 5 is good sci-fi TV. It's not. It's clichéd and uninspiring.) While US viewers might like emotion and character development, sci-fi is a genre that does not take itself seriously (cf. Star Trek). It may treat important issues, yet not as a serious philosophy. It's really difficult to care about the characters here as they are not simply foolish, just missing a spark of life. Their actions and reactions are wooden and predictable, often painful to watch. The makers of Earth KNOW it's rubbish as they have to always say "Gene Roddenberry's Earth..." otherwise people would not continue watching. Roddenberry's ashes must be turning in their orbit as this dull, cheap, poorly edited (watching it without advert breaks really brings this home) trudging Trabant of a show lumbers into space. Spoiler. So, kill off a main character. And then bring him back as another actor. Jeeez! Dallas all over again.


Worth the entertainment value of a rental, especially if you like action movies. This one features the usual car chases, fights with the great Van Damme kick style, shooting battles with the 40 shell load shotgun, and even terrorist style bombs. All of this is entertaining and competently handled but there is nothing that really blows you away if you've seen your share before.

The plot is made interesting by the inclusion of a rabbit, which is clever but hardly profound. Many of the characters are heavily stereotyped -- the angry veterans, the terrified illegal aliens, the crooked cops, the indifferent feds, the bitchy tough lady station head, the crooked politician, the fat federale who looks like he was typecast as the Mexican in a Hollywood movie from the 1940s. All passably acted but again nothing special.

I thought the main villains were pretty well done and fairly well acted. By the end of the movie you certainly knew who the good guys were and weren't. There was an emotional lift as the really bad ones got their just deserts. Very simplistic, but then you weren't expecting Hamlet, right? The only thing I found really annoying was the constant cuts to VDs daughter during the last fight scene.

Not bad. Not good. Passable 4.


its a totally average film with a few semi-alright action sequences that make the plot seem a little better and remind the viewer of the classic van dam films. parts of the plot don't make sense and seem to be added in to use up time. the end plot is that of a very basic type that doesn't leave the viewer guessing and any twists are obvious from the beginning. the end scene with the flask backs don't make sense as they are added in and seem to have little relevance to the history of van dam's character. not really worth watching again, bit disappointed in the end production, even though it is apparent it was shot on a low budget certain shots and sections in the film are of poor directed quality


STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Former New Orleans homicide cop Jack Robideaux (Jean Claude Van Damme) is re-assigned to Columbus, a small but violent town in Mexico to help the police there with their efforts to stop a major heroin smuggling operation into their town. The culprits turn out to be ex-military, lead by former commander Benjamin Meyers (Stephen Lord, otherwise known as Jase from East Enders) who is using a special method he learned in Afghanistan to fight off his opponents. But Jack has a more personal reason for taking him down, that draws the two men into an explosive final showdown where only one will walk away alive.

After Until Death, Van Damme appeared to be on a high, showing he could make the best straight to video films in the action market. While that was a far more drama oriented film, with The Shepherd he has returned to the high-kicking, no brainer action that first made him famous and has sadly produced his worst film since Derailed. It's nowhere near as bad as that film, but what I said still stands.

A dull, predictable film, with very little in the way of any exciting action. What little there is mainly consists of some limp fight scenes, trying to look cool and trendy with some cheap slo-mo/sped up effects added to them that sadly instead make them look more desperate. Being a Mexican set film, director Isaac Florentine has tried to give the film a Robert Rodriguez/Desperado sort of feel, but this only adds to the desperation.

VD gives a particularly uninspired performance and given he's never been a Robert De Niro sort of actor, that can't be good. As the villain, Lord shouldn't expect to leave the beeb anytime soon. He gets little dialogue at the beginning as he struggles to muster an American accent but gets mysteriously better towards the end. All the supporting cast are equally bland, and do nothing to raise the films spirits at all.

This is one shepherd that's strayed right from the flock. *


First off let me say, If you haven't enjoyed a Van Damme movie since bloodsport, you probably will not like this movie. Most of these movies may not have the best plots or best actors but I enjoy these kinds of movies for what they are. This movie is much better than any of the movies the other action guys (Segal and Dolph) have thought about putting out the past few years. Van Damme is good in the movie, the movie is only worth watching to Van Damme fans. It is not as good as Wake of Death (which i highly recommend to anyone of likes Van Damme) or In hell but, in my opinion it's worth watching. It has the same type of feel to it as Nowhere to Run. Good fun stuff!


I had high hopes for this one until they changed the name to 'The Shepherd : Border Patrol, the lamest movie name ever, what was wrong with just 'The Shepherd'. This is a by the numbers action flick that tips its hat at many classic Van Damme films. There is a nice bit of action in a bar which reminded me of hard target and universal soldier but directed with no intensity or flair which is a shame. There is one great line about 'being p*ss drunk and carrying a rabbit' and some OK action scenes let down by the cheapness of it all. A lot of the times the dialogue doesn't match the characters mouth and the stunt men fall down dead a split second before even being shot. The end fight is one of the better Van Damme fights except the Director tries to go a bit too John Woo and fails also introducing flashbacks which no one really cares about just gets in the way of the action which is the whole point of a van Damme film.

Not good, not bad, just average generic action.


Isaac Florentine has made some of the best western Martial Arts action movies ever produced. In particular US Seals 2, Cold Harvest, Special Forces and Undisputed 2 are all action classics. You can tell Isaac has a real passion for the genre and his films are always eventful, creative and sharp affairs, with some of the best fight sequences an action fan could hope for. In particular he has found a muse with Scott Adkins, as talented an actor and action performer as you could hope for. This is borne out with Special Forces and Undisputed 2, but unfortunately The Shepherd just doesn't live up to their abilities.

There is no doubt that JCVD looks better here fight-wise than he has done in years, especially in the fight he has (for pretty much no reason) in a prison cell, and in the final showdown with Scott, but look in his eyes. JCVD seems to be dead inside. There's nothing in his eyes at all. It's like he just doesn't care about anything throughout the whole film. And this is the leading man.

There are other dodgy aspects to the film, script-wise and visually, but the main problem is that you are utterly unable to empathise with the hero of the film. A genuine shame as I know we all wanted this film to be as special as it genuinely could have been. There are some good bits, mostly the action scenes themselves. This film had a terrific director and action choreographer, and an awesome opponent for JCVD to face down. This could have been the one to bring the veteran action star back up to scratch in the balls-out action movie stakes.

Sincerely a shame that this didn't happen.


It actually pains me to say it, but this movie was horrible on every level. The blame does not lie entirely with Van Damme as you can see he tried his best, but let's face it, he's almost fifty, how much more can you ask of him? I find it so hard to believe that the same people who put together Undisputed 2; arguably the best (western) martial arts movie in years, created this. Everything from the plot, to the dialog, to the editing, to the overall acting was just horribly put together and in many cases outright boring and nonsensical. Scott Adkins who's fight scenes seemed more like a demo reel, was also terribly underused and not even the main villain which is such a shame because 1) He is more than capable of playing that role and 2) The actual main villain was not only not intimidating at all but also quite annoying. Again, not blaming Van Damme. I will always be a fan, but avoid this one.


Technically I'am a Van Damme Fan, or I was. this movie is so bad that I hated myself for wasting those 90 minutes. Do not let the name Isaac Florentine (Undisputed II) fool you, I had big hopes for this one, depending on what I saw in (Undisputed II), man.. was I wrong ??! all action fans wanted a big comeback for the classic action hero, but i guess we wont be able to see that soon, as our hero keep coming with those (going -to-a-border - far-away-town-and -kill -the-bad-guys- than-comeback- home) movies I mean for God's sake, we are in 2008, and they insist on doing those disappointing movies on every level. Why ??!!! Do your self a favor, skip it.. seriously.


Honestly awful film, bad editing, awful lighting, dire dialog and scrappy screenplay.

The lighting at is so bad there's moments you can't even see what's going on, I even tried to playing with the contrast and brightness so I could see something but that didn't help.

They must have found the script in a bin, the character development is just as awful and while you hardly expect much from a Jean-Claude Van Damme film this one manages to hit an all time low. You can't even laugh at the cheesy'ness.

The directing and editing are also terrible, the whole film follows an extremely tired routine and fails at every turn as it bumbles through the plot that is so weak it's just unreal.

There's not a lot else to say other than it's really bad and nothing like Jean-Claude Van Damme's earlier work which you could enjoy.

Avoid like the plaque, frankly words fail me in condemning this "film".


This flick is a waste of time.I expect from an action movie to have more than 2 explosions and some shooting.Van Damme's acting is awful. He never was much of an actor, but here it is worse.He was definitely better in his earlier movies. His screenplay part for the whole movie was probably not more than one page of stupid nonsense one liners.The whole dialog in the film is a disaster, same as the plot.The title "The Shepherd" makes no sense. Why didn't they just call it "Border patrol"? The fighting scenes could have been better, but either they weren't able to afford it, or the fighting choreographer was suffering from lack of ideas.This is a cheap low type of action cinema.


Blind Date (Columbia Pictures, 1934), was a decent film, but I have a few issues with this film. First of all, I don't fault the actors in this film at all, but more or less, I have a problem with the script. Also, I understand that this film was made in the 1930's and people were looking to escape reality, but the script made Ann Sothern's character look weak. She kept going back and forth between suitors and I felt as though she should have stayed with Paul Kelly's character in the end. He truly did care about her and her family and would have done anything for her and he did by giving her up in the end to fickle Neil Hamilton who in my opinion was only out for a good time. Paul Kelly's character, although a workaholic was a man of integrity and truly loved Kitty (Ann Sothern) as opposed to Neil Hamilton, while he did like her a lot, I didn't see the depth of love that he had for her character. The production values were great, but the script could have used a little work.


I first watched this movie back in the mid/late 80's, when I was a kid. We couldn't even get all the way through it. The dialog, the acting, everything about it was just beyond lame.

Here are a few examples... imagine these spoken real dramatically, way over-acted: "Oreegon? You're going to Oreegon? Why would anyone want to go to Oreegon?"

"Survivalists? Nobody ever told us about any survivalists!"

This movie was SO bad, my sister and I rented it again for her 16th birthday party, just so our friends could sit around and laugh at how awful it was. I don't think we were able to finish it then either!


I saw the Mogul Video VHS of this. That's another one of those old 1980s distributors whose catalog I wish I had!

This movie was pretty poor. Though retitled "Don't Look in the Attic," the main admonition that is repeated in this is "Don't go to the villa." Just getting on the grounds of the villa is a bad idea. A character doesn't go into the attic until an hour into the movie, and actually should have done it earlier because of what is learned there.

The movie starts in Turin, Italy in the 1950s. Two men are fighting, and a woman is telling them the villa is making them do it. One man kills the other, then regrets it, and the woman pulls out the knife and stabs him with it. She flees the villa, and after she's left a chair moves by itself (what's the point of that?), but when in the garden a hand comes up through the ground and drags he into the earth.

From there, it's the present day, thirty years later. There's a séance that appears suddenly and doesn't appear to have anything to do with the movie. The children of the woman from the prologue are inheriting the house. The main daughter is played by the same actress who played her mother. At least one of the two men from the prologue seems to reoccur as another character too. She's haunted by some warnings not to go to the villa, but they all do, since if they do not use it, they forfeit it. People die. A lawyer who has won all his cases tries to investigate a little. The ending is pretty poor. Why was the family cursed? An unfortunately boring movie.

There's an amusing small-print disclaimer on the back of the video box that reads "The scenes depicted on this packaging may be an artist's impression and may not necessarily represent actual scenes from the film." In this case, the cover of the box is an illustration that does more or less accurately depict the aforementioned woman dragged underground scene, although there are two hands, and the woman is different. It's true, sometimes the cover art has nothing to do with the movie. I also recall seeing a reviewer who had a bad movie predictor scale, in which movies with illustrations on the cover instead of photos got at least one point for that.


A group of heirs to a mysterious old mansion find out that they have to live in it as part of a clause in the will or be disinherited, but they soon find out of its history of everybody whom had lived there before them having either died in weird accidents or having had killed each other.

You've seen it all before, and this one is too low-budget and slow paced to be scary, and doesn't have any real surprises in the climax. No special effects or gore to speak of, in fact the only really amusing thing about the whole film is the quality of the English dubbing, which at times is as bad as a cheap martial arts movie.

3 out of 10, pretty low in the pecking order of 80's haunted house movies.


Now, I LOVE Italian horror films. The cheesier they are, the better. However, this is not cheesy Italian. This is week-old spaghetti sauce with rotting meatballs. It is amateur hour on every level. There is no suspense, no horror, with just a few drops of blood scattered around to remind you that you are in fact watching a horror film. The "special effects" consist of the lights changing to red whenever the ghost (or whatever it was supposed to be) is around, and a string pulling bed sheets up and down. Oooh, can you feel the chills? The DVD quality is that of a VHS transfer (which actually helps the film more than hurts it). The dubbing is below even the lowest "bad Italian movie" standards and I gave it one star just because the dialogue is so hilarious! And what do we discover when she finally DOES look in the attic (in a scene that is daytime one minute and night the next)...well, I won't spoil it for anyone who really wants to see, but let's just say that it isn't very "novel"!


This cheap, grainy-filmed Italian flick is about a couple of inheritors of a manor in the Italian countryside who head up to the house to stay, and then find themselves getting killed off by ghosts of people killed in that house.

I wasn't impressed by this. It wasn't really that scary, mostly just the way a cheap Italian film should be. A girl, her two cousins, and one cousin's girlfriend, head to this huge house for some reason (I couldn't figure out why) and are staying there, cleaning up and checking out the place. Characters come in and out of the film, and it's quite boring at points, and the majority of deaths are quite rushed. The girlfriend is hit by a car when fleeing the house after having a dream of her death, and the scene is quite good, but then things get slow again, until a confusing end, when the male cousins are killed together in some weird way, and this weirdo guy (I couldn't figure out who he was during the movie, or maybe I just don't remember) goes after this one girl, attacking her, until finally this other girl kills him off. Hate to give away the ending, but oh well. The female cousin decides to stay at the house and watch over it, and they show scenes of her living there years later. The end. You really aren't missing anything, and anyway, you probably won't find this anywhere, so lucky you.


I just finished watching this movie and am disappointed to say that I didn't enjoy it a bit. It is so slow Slow and uninteresting. This kid from Harry Potter plays a shy teenager with an rude mother, and then one day the rude mother tells the kid to find a job so that they could accommodate an old guy apparently having no place to live has started to live with his family and therefore the kid goes to work for a old lady. And this old lady who is living all alone teaches him about girls, driving car and life! I couldn't get how an 18 year old guy enjoy spending time with an awful lady in her 80s. Sorry if my comments on this movie has bothered people who might have enjoyed it, I could be wrong as I am not British and may not understand the social and their family structure and way of life. Mostly the movie is made for the British audience.


Ben, (Rupert Grint), is a deeply unhappy adolescent, the son of his unhappily married parents. His father, (Nicholas Farrell), is a vicar and his mother, (Laura Linney), is ... well, let's just say she's a somewhat hypocritical soldier in Jesus' army. It's only when he takes a summer job as an assistant to a foul-mouthed, eccentric, once-famous and now-forgotten actress Evie Walton, (Julie Walters), that he finally finds himself in true 'Harold and Maude' fashion. Of course, Evie is deeply unhappy herself and it's only when these two sad sacks find each other that they can put their mutual misery aside and hit the road to happiness.

Of course it's corny and sentimental and very predictable but it has a hard side to it, too and Walters, who could sleep-walk her way through this sort of thing if she wanted, is excellent. It's when she puts the craziness to one side and finds the pathos in the character, (like hitting the bottle and throwing up in the sink), that she's at her best. The problem is she's the only interesting character in the film (and it's not because of the script which doesn't do anybody any favours). Grint, on the other hand, isn't just unhappy; he's a bit of a bore as well while Linney's starched bitch is completely one-dimensional. (Still, she's got the English accent off pat). The best that can be said for it is that it's mildly enjoyable - with the emphasis on the mildly.


Every movie I have PPV'd because Leonard Maltin praised it to the skies has blown chunks! Every single one! When will I ever learn?

Evie is a raving Old Bag who thinks nothing of saying she's dying of breast cancer to get her way! Laura is an insufferable Medusa filled with The Holy Spirit (and her hubby's protégé)! Caught between these harpies is Medusa's dumb-as-a-rock boy who has been pressed into weed-pulling servitude by The Old Bag!

As I said, when will I ever learn?

I was temporarily lifted out of my malaise when The Old Bag stuck her head in a sink, but, unfortunately, she did not die. I was temporarily lifted out of my malaise again when Medusa got mowed down, but, unfortunately, she did not die. It should be a capital offense to torture audiences like this!

Without Harry Potter to kick him around, Rupert Grint is just a pair of big blue eyes that practically bulge out of its sockets. Julie Walters's scenery-chewing (especially the scene when she "plays" God) is even more shameless than her character.

At least this Harold bangs some bimbo instead of Maude. For that, I am truly grateful. And if you're reading this Mr. Maltin, you owe me $3.99!


Low budget horror movie. If you don't raise your expectations too high, you'll probably enjoy this little flick. Beginning and end are pretty good, middle drags at times and seems to go nowhere for long periods as we watch the goings on of the insane that add atmosphere but do not advance the plot. Quite a bit of gore. I enjoyed Bill McGhee's performance which he made quite believable for such a low budget picture, he managed to carry the movie at times when nothing much seemed to be happening. Nurse Charlotte Beale, played by Jesse Lee, played her character well so be prepared to want to slap her toward the end! She makes some really stupid mistakes but then, that's what makes these low budget movies so good! I would have been out of that place and five states away long before she even considered that it might be a good idea to leave! If you enjoy this movie, try Committed from 1988 which is basically a rip off of this movie.


Dr Stephens (Micheal Harvey) runs a mental asylum. He has a different approach to the insane. He conducts unorthodox methods of treatment. He treats everyone like family, there are no locks on the patients doors and he lets some of the inmates act out their twisted fantasies. He lets Sergeant Jaffee (Hugh Feagin) dress and act as a soldier and Harriet (Camilla Carr) be a mother to a doll, including letting her put it to bed in a cot. Dr. Stevens is outside letting Judge Oliver W. Cameron (Gene Ross) chop a log up with an axe, it turns out to be a bad move as once Dr. Stevens back is turned the Judge plants the axe in his shoulder. Soon after Nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) arrives at the Sanitarium having arranged an interview with Dr. Stevens about a possible job. She is met by the head Nurse, Geraldine Masters (Annabelle Weenick as Anne McAdams) and is offered a trail position. She gets to know and becomes well liked among the patients. However things eventually start to turn sour, the phone lines are cut, an old lady named Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) has her tongue cut out and she starts to get a strange feeling that things just aren't right somehow. Then, one night all the Sanitariums dark secrets are violently revealed. Produced and directed by S.f. Brownrigg this film has a great central idea which builds into a cool twist ending, but ultimately is a bit of a chore to sit through because of it's low budget restrictions and a rather slow script by Tim Pope. There are just too many long boring stretches of dialogue by the inmates, not a lot really happens until the final twenty odd minutes. The film has no real visual quality as it's set entirely in the Sanitarium and it's grounds which is basically just a big bland house in the middle of nowhere. There's no graphic gore in it, a few splashes of blood here and there and thats yer lot. There's a bit of nudity, but like the gore not much. The acting is pretty strong, especially Holotik and Weenick. The photography is flat and unexciting and I can't even remember what the music was like. The twist ending is great, but it just takes far too long to get to it. A film that had a lot of potential that was probably held back by it's budget. OK I guess, but I think it would have worked a lot better if the story had been turned into a half an hour 'Tales form the Crypt' episode.


The Forgotten (AKA: Don't Look In The Basement) is a very cheaply made and very old looking horror movie.

The story is very slow and never really reaches anything worth getting excited about.

The patients at the asylum are embarrassingly funny especially Sam and the old woman who always quotes an old saying to everyone. (Look out for the bit when she gets close to the camera, tell me you can watch without laughing!).

Now the gore is very poor looking, with the blood looking pink in many scenes so it doesn't really deserve its place on the video nasties list!.

Overall if you aren't looking for a fantastic horror film and have some time to spare then it's worth a watch.


This movie had a very unique effect on me: it stalled my realization that this movie REALLY sucks! It is disguised as a "thinker's film" in the likes of Memento and other jewels like that, but at the end, and even after a few minutes, you come to realize that this is nothing but utter pretentious cr4p. Probably written by some collage student with friends to compassionate to tell him that his writing sucks. The whole idea is  I don't even know if it tried to scratch on the supernatural, or they want us to believe that because someone fills your mind (a very weak one, btw) with stupid "riddles", the kind you learn on elementary school recess, you suddenly come to the "one truth" about everything, then you have to kill someone and confess. !!! What? How, what, why, WHY? Is just like saying that to make a cake, just throw a bunch of ingredients, and add water forgot about cooking it? I guess these guys forgot to, not explain, but present the mechanism of WHY was this happening? You have to do that when you present a story which normal, everyday acts (lie solving riddle rhymes) start to have an abnormal effect on people. Acting was horrible, with that girl always trying to look cute at the camera, and the guy from Highlanders, the series, acting up like the though heavy metal record store (yeah, they're all real though s-o-b's). The "menacing" atmosphere, with the "oh-so-clever" riddles (enter the 60's series of Batman and Robin, with guest appearance of The Riddle) and the crazies who claim to have "the knowledge" behind that smirk on their faces just horrible, HORRIBLE.

I'm usually very partial about low budget movies, and tend to root for the underdog by giving them more praise than they may deserve, in lieu of their constrictions, you know, but this is just an ugly excuse for a movie that will keep you wanting to be good for an hour and a half, and at the end you will just lament that you fell for it.


too bad this movie isn't. While "Nemesis Game" is mildly entertaining, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief the whole length of the movie, especially the situations that Sara was putting herself into. Are we supposed to believe that:

1) this hot chick is going to go slumming unarmed around abandoned buildings and dark subway tunnels in the middle of the night just to solve some riddles?

2) the protagonists are supposedly such experts that they play riddle games for fun, but don't put the whole "I Never Sinned" riddle together until the very end...and then...and then...get this...she has to do the whole mirror thing to finally put the pieces together?? I know it was the filmmaker's device to show the audience what was going on, but do they really think we're that stupid?

3) when Vern and Sara go to the Chez M to question the blonde, there is not ONE topless chick in the whole building. Nada. C'mon. I know it's Canada, but I would expect more from a country that gave us Shannon Tweed.

And anyone else notice that when Vern was surfing the Web and found that riddlezone site, that when he moused over the link the cursor stayed an arrow, and didn't turn into a little hand (LIKE ALL CURSORS DO WHEN YOU CLICK ON A HYPERLINK)?!? I mean, if you're gonna have the internet play such a prominent role in your movie, at least get the little things right. Geez.


I of course saw the previews for this at the beginning of some other Lion's Gate extravaganza, so of course it was only the best parts and therefore looked intriguing. And it is, to a point. A young college student (Sarah)is finding riddles all over the place and is becoming obsessed with answering them, and in doing so she's unwittingly becoming involved in some game. Now that's fairly intriguing right there but unfortunately it all gets rather muddled and becomes so complicated that the viewer (like myself) will most likely become frustrated. Characters appear with little introduction and you're not really sure who they are or why Sarah knows them or is hanging out with them. All of this has something to do with this woman who tried to drown a young boy years ago and her reason for that was that it's "all part of the design". In reality, it's all part of the "very sketchy script" and when the film is over you'll find yourself feeling that you've lost about an hour and a half of your life that you want back for more productive uses of your time, like cleaning the bathroom, for instance. 4 out of 10.


I gave this a 3 out of a possible 10 stars.

Unless you like wasting your time watching an anorexic actress, in this film it's Carly Pope, behaving like a ditz, don't bother.

Carly Pope plays Sara Novak, a young college student, who becomes intrigued with a game of riddles, that leads her down into subway tunnels underneath the city - a dangerous thing for even a well-armed man to go in alone.

There are various intrigues in the film -- a weirdo classmate who is apparently stalking Sara, a cynical shopkeeper who runs some kind of offbeat hole-in-the-wall establishment that appears to be located in the back alley of a ghetto, a nerdish dim-wit that hangs around the cynic's shop, and a woman named Emily Gray, who is back in prison.

Sara's father is a lawyer who is handling Emily Gray's case.

A few years back, Emily Gray attempted to drown a 12 year old boy. Emily was put in a mental hospital for 5 years, and for some cockeyed reason they let her out again, even though it is obvious she is still dangerously deranged.

The only explanation Emily has ever given for her crime is: I never sinned.

It's all part of the design.

Well, my friend, don't expect to ever get any better explanation than that, because you won't.


I was looking forward to this movie. Trustworthy actors, interesting plot. Great atmosphere then ????? IF you are going to attempt something that is meant to encapsulate the meaning of life. First. Know it. OK I did not expect the directors or writers to actually know the meaning but I thought they may have offered crumbs to peck at and treats to add fuel to the fire-Which! they almost did. Things I didn't get. A woman wandering around in dark places and lonely car parks alone-oblivious to the consequences. Great riddles that fell by the wayside. The promise of the knowledge therein contained by the original so-called criminal. I had no problem with the budget and enjoyed the suspense. I understood and can wax lyrical about the fool and found Adrian Pauls role crucial and penetrating and then ????? Basically the story line and the script where good up to a point and that point was the last 10 minutes or so. What? Run out of ideas! Such a pity that this movie had to let us down so badly. It may not comprehend the meaning and I really did not expect the writers to understand it but I was hoping for an intellectual, if not spiritual ride and got a bump in the road


Four things intrigued me as to this film - firstly, it stars Carly Pope (of "Popular" fame), who is always a pleasure to watch. Secdonly, it features brilliant New Zealand actress Rena Owen. Thirdly, it is filmed in association with the New Zealand Film Commission. Fourthly, a friend recommended it to me. However, I was utterly disappointed. The whole storyline is absurd and complicated, with very little resolution. Pope's acting is fine, but Owen is unfortunately under-used. The other actors and actresses are all okay, but I am unfamiliar with them all. Aside from the nice riddles which are littered throughout the movie (and Pope and Owen), this film isn't very good. So the moral of the story is...don't watch it unless you really want to.


Never ever take a film just for its good looking title.

Although it all starts well, the film suffers the same imperfections you see in B-films. Its like at a certain moment the writer does not any more how to end the film, so he ends it in a way nobody suspects it thinking this way he is ingenious.

A film to be listed on top of the garbage list.


Lowe returns to the nest after, yet another, failed relationship, to find he's been assigned to jury duty. It's in the plans to, somehow, get out of it, when he realizes the defendant is the girl he's had a serious crush on since the first grade.

Through living in the past by telling other people about his feelings towards this girl (played by Camp), Lowe remembers those feelings and does everything in his power to clear Camp of attempted murder, while staying away from the real bad guys at the same time, and succeeding in creating a successful film at the same time.

I've heard that St Augustine is the oldest city in the US, and I also know it has some ties to Ponce de Leon, so the backdrop is a good place to start. Unfortunately, it's the only thing good about this movie. The local police are inept, the judge is an idiot, and the defense counsel does everything in her power to make herself look like Joanie Cunningham! I don't know whether to blame the director for poor direction, or for just letting the cast put in such a hapless effort.

In short, this movie was so boring, I could not even sleep through it! 1 out of 10 stars!


Seriously, I can't imagine how anyone could find a single flattering thing to say about this movie, much less find it in themselves to write the glowing compliments contained in this comment section. How many methamphetamines was Bogdonovitch on during the filming of this movie? Was he giving a bonus to the actor that spat his lines out with the most speed and least inflection or thought? The dialogue is bad, the plot atrocious, even for a "screwball" comedy, and claims that the movie is an homage to classic film comedy is about the most inane thing I've ever heard. The cinematography is below the quality and innovation of that exhibited by the worst made-for-TV movies, the acting is awful (although I get the feeling that the fault for that lies squarely in the lap of the director), and speaking of which, did I mention the direction is so haphazard and inscrutable that it defies the definition of the word? The whole thing is a terribly unfunny (even in the much-beleaguered world of so-bad-it's-funny clunkers), soul-sucking, waste of two hours of your life that you'll never get back. Be afraid, be very afraid...


I'm the type of guy who loves hood movies from New Jack City to Baby Boy to Killa Season, from the b grade to the Hollywood. but this movie was something different. i am no hater and this movie was kinda enjoyable. but some bits were just weird. well the acting wasn't to good, compared to Silkk The Shockers performance in Hot Boyz (quite good) and Ice-T in new Jack and SVU (great). the scene where Corrupt (Ice-T) kills the wanna be Jamaican dude he says something and lights himself on fire burning both Ice-T and the other dude, this kills the Jamaican, however Ice-T is unharmed, very similar to Ice's other movie Urban Menace (which stars both of these actors) were Snoops character is supernatural, however after this there is nothing suggested that Corrupt is like a demon. When MJ (Silkk) gets stabbed at first he struggling but after that he fights normally and was stabbed in the thigh-WITH OUT BLOOD. and when MJ confesses killing a cop cos the cop was beating up his friend Benny was weird, Benny isn't introduced in this movie and the scene isn't in the film. it does hold weight to the fact why Corrupt wants to kill MJ but is still makes u scratch your head. wen Jody writes a letter to Miss Jones character explaining what happened to them afterwords doesn't mention what happen 2 other main characters MJ and Lisa. the film did show the horror and poverty of the ghetto-which plagues the lives of Latinos and Blacks word wide-was a good part of the film, even though the clip of the projects was re-used thousands of times. and the scene where Miles kills the Latino brother by crashing his bike at full speed (not wearing a helmet) and running into my Latino brothers car would of killed him. the movie was similar to the film Urban Menace and half the actors were in both of these movies as well as the production team. it was OK tho. but me being from poverty i love hood films, however if u don't love em like i do Don't WATCH IT. only thing saving me from walking out is it reminded me of the first movie i made which was made with 100 dollars, and my love of the genre.

Nathaniel Purez


The most positive points in this film were the credits (text style) and some moments in Ice-T's acting. The story-line; two rival gangs having to fight it out, with the sub-plots of betrayal, power and change are well worn plots but in this case painful(very) to wade through. The decrepit scenery, which added slight believability in places, and questionable lighting, constantly distracted from any interest/identification with the characters (the shine off of the actress's forehead/nose was blinding, not to mention other scenes with the same problem.) Not even half way into the film I wanted to know more about how and why it came about as opposed to what was going on on screen. A disappointment if you have seen Ice-T in other roles. Kudos to other actors/actresses who seemed to get into their roles despite the weak direction; Corrupt's side kick and the other restaurant worker.


I quite enjoyed The Wrecking Crew (1999), which was the last of the three films in this series (the first being Urban Menace (1999) which I've yet to see). I know it was baaaaad, but the three leads did a pretty decent job, all things considered.

This, however, was truly atrocious. Ice-T was dreadful, and he's the producer! Can't say I've ever heard of Silkk The Shocker (who apparently never learnt how to spell), but his performance was one of the worst I've ever seen in a movie.

Miss Jones did pretty well in her small role, though she later went on to make some atrocious, racist "jokes" on her radio show after the SE Asian tsunami (plus other occasions sadly). Way to go, girl...

No-one else comes out with any credit. Strangely, TJ Storm and Ernie Hudson (who are both pretty bad here) are far better in The Wrecking Crew, which was made, along with Urban Menace, at the same time as Corrupt. How that works, I don't know.

I'm going to try the Ice-T commentary now, to see whether he apologises for the film, or tries to make us think it's a great piece of film-making.


this film has no plot, no good acting, to be honest it has nothing, the same songs play over and over awful acting and if you can actually sit there and watch the whole thing and enjoy it there is something wrong with you. I wish i could give this 0 out of 10 but i cant so it has to be a 1 which is generous! ice-t isn't even a good rapper and even worse at acting, every bit of the film is rubbish, i got this film on DVD without knowing what it was for the price of £1.99 and thought that i had picked up a bargain, i then looked at the IMDb rating and didn't take it into consideration but after watching it found out that the DVD i had bought was a complete waste of time, money and electricity. if you have this film there are two things you can do sell it to someone who doesn't know about it or burn it!


Beware, My Lovely (1952) Dir: Harry Horner

Production: The Filmmakers/RKO Radio Pictures

Credulity-straining thriller from the pioneering producer team of Collier Young and Ida Lupino, aka The Filmmakers (with Lupino pitching in with some uncredited direction).

Robert Ryan is the 'peril' and Ida Lupino is the 'woman' in this entry in the 'woman in peril' style film. Ryan plays Howard Wilton, a tightly-wound psychotic handyman drifter (noooo, Ryan? I know, hard to believe). Lupino is the lonely war widow, Helen Gordon, who hires Howard to do some work around her house. Things go downhill from there as Howard makes Helen a prisoner in her own home.

Howard has a nasty secret, not that he could reveal it. You see, consciousness is a real challenge for him. Maintaining it, that is. He has an unfortunate habit of coming to and finding his employers dead. This is part of the film's problem. The nature of Howard's psychosis is so extreme that it is nearly impossible to believe that he's been free to roam from town to town unobstructed, even in the year 1918 (when the film is set). He can't remember anything that happened ten minutes ago. His violent, threatening, anti-social tendencies are set off by the smallest and most common of things (a young girl flirting, inadequacies involving the war, due to his being rejected for service). I don't know how he even made it past the interview with Helen. There are other implausibilities. If you were locked in your house with a madman, but nonetheless left on your own for periods of time, couldn't you figure out a way to escape?

Ryan, I think, is defeated by the material. It feels like he's overplaying his hand. His series of tics and spasms and the tightly coiled bursts of dementia all have a been-there, done-that robotic feel to them. At this point in his career he'd probably played this character, to some degree, ten times and it shows. We are encouraged to empathize with Howard (I didn't) through shown bits of humanity, like him being stopped in his tracks by a music box and his relating to a group of children who won't judge him. Lupino just has to act frazzled and in distress, which she is more than capable of and does.

The picture had one thing going for it; what would be the eventual resolution of the conflict? So naturally there was a disappointing ending that was abrupt and ineffective.

Of slight interest was a recurring motif where the camera would catch Howard's reflection (in mirrors, water, Christmas tree decorations). This indicated something going on, or about to go on, in his head. Horner (1953's Vicki), who made his reputation in production design, does a fine job of making the house feel like a prison. Credit too, the always reliable RKO art department for the work on the house. In the end, sub-standard work from the principals, who all have much better films to their credit.

*½ out of 4


The only reason this movie is not given a 1 (awful) vote is that the acting of both Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan is superb. Ida Lupino who is lovely, as usual, becomes increasingly distraught as she tries various means to rid herself of a madman. Robert Ryan is terrifying as the menacing stranger whose character, guided only by his disturbed mind, changes from one minute to the next. Seemingly simple and docile, suddenly he becomes clever and threatening. Ms. Lupino's character was in more danger from that house she lived in and her own stupidity than by anyone who came along. She could not manage to get out of her of her own house: windows didn't open, both front and back doors locked and unlocked from the inside with a key. You could not have designed a worse fire-trap if you tried. She did not take the precaution of having even one extra key. Nor could she figure out how to summon help from nearby neighbors or get out of her own basement while she was locked in and out of sight of her captor. I don't know what war her husband was killed in, but if it was World War II, the furnishings in her house, the styles of the clothes, especially the children and the telephone company repairman's car are clearly anachronistic. I recommend watching this movie just to see what oddities you can find.


Artificial melodrama with a screenplay adapted by Mel Dinelli from his play "The Man" concerns a boarding-house proprietress taking in a troubled handyman who may be homicidal. Despite solid work from Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan (both trying their best), this tedious yarn isn't very inventive within its one primary set (which quickly becomes visually dull) and underpopulated cast of characters (there is however a smart pooch who senses the worst!). Hokey and humorless, with a stilted direction from Harry Horner (perhaps Lupino should have directed?). Where's all the suspense promised by the ads? Dinelli also served as a co-producer. *1/2 from ****


Wow, what an overrated movie this turned out to be! It was supposed to be "an extremely suspenseful tale of a crazed killer holding a woman hostage and in terror in her home." Well, I doubt it terrorized audiences in the early '50s and I know it would put today's audiences asleep.

"Sends shivers down the spine," proclaims the New York Times. No, the only shivers I get is that anyone is left on the planet who believes anything the N.Y. Times prints about anything.

Well, it was about a deranged man who held a woman hostage for a short time in her house but the man. "Howard Wilton" (Robert Ryan) was actually harmless and friendly. In fact, this was one of the nicest roles Ryan ever played! Yes, "Wilton" was nuts but he never harmed the woman and only wanted a friend to trust.

The film even turned boring after awhile with very little going on except a lot of yakking.

Beware, my reader.....this sucks.


I can't believe the high marks people have given this film on this site. The writing is incredibly bad with people coming in at just the right time and revealing exactly what the heroine is doing to try to escape. (Don't you just hate it when that happens?). And the acting is so very, very bad that you may get a splinter in your eye from all the scenery being chewed.

A nut is holding her hostage, children are outside the open screen, so she whimpers for help instead of screaming when only a moment ago she was brave enough to be smashing windows to yell to these same children.

She's finally free and alone in the house. Her chance to go for help, so what does she do? Wanders around the house and lies down. She's in the basement, locked away. So what does she do? Takes a little nap. Come on! Most of the movie is the nut wandering away and finding her sitting there snoozing when he wakes her up. Four times! What? If the writer is too bored to actually write a real plot why should we be paying attention? I think the key here is that it was originally a play for the radio, so they filled in with the heroine just sitting around rather than pretending to be screen writers and actually writing any action.

And the ending is horrendous.

The whole movie is completely implausible, horribly written and almost comically acted. Beware this movie at all costs!


Widow hires a psychopath as a handyman. Sloppy film noir thriller which doesn't make much of its tension promising set-up. (3/10)


I have no idea how anyone can give this movie high marks. I didn't rent it thinking it was the next great horror flick, the next great horror spoof, or the next great low-budget horror spoof. Obviously, this isn't meant to scare, but one fatal flaw with the production entirely sapped the joy out of the viewing experience. The sound editing was horrible. I had to work the volume control the entire movie. You can imagine how difficult it is to get into something - even a low-budget spoof - when you're either turning the volume up or down, or trying to anticipate the next time you have to do so. The regular dialogue is very low, and all screams, noises, etc., are VERY loud. We're not talking about toggling between 5 and 7 on the volume control, finding a happy medium at 6. We're talking toggling between 2 and 9 on the volume where it is virtually impossible to leave the volume alone. Again, this movie might be a decent example of what it is meant to be, but you're going to be spending so much time adjusting your volume control that you'll never have the chance to enjoy it.


Seeing the title of this movie "Stupid Teenagers Must Die" made me believe this was a spoof of some kind. I discovered later on the original title was "Blood and Guts". Both titles are misleading, though. This is not a spoof, neither a serious splatter movie. This is something in between, failing in both areas. A group of teenagers is attending a séance at a spooky house and then the killing starts. Sounds over familiar, doesn't it. Well, this movies adds nothing whatsoever to the endless stream of similar movies. And it is badly made. Because of the lack of light the entire film is grainy. Now this effect can be highly effective, but it isn't in this case. The young cast isn't acting too badly, but the director has no clue as what to do with actors. In numerous scenes the actors are clearly waiting for directions, but these are given too late. It could also be an editor's mistake, of course. The characters are unrealistic and the story line just stinks. The sound is terrible at times: conversations are undecipherable, but when talking loudly or screaming the actors are very loud indeed.

This is not the worst horror movie I have ever seen, but it still is a bad one. For me a 3 out of 10.


Now I understand that this took two months to shoot. Really? I'm pretty certain my crew could do it in less than a week. This movie sucked so bad I couldn't even pay close attention. Just more proof that boob bearing women can't always save you from horrible writing, acting and direction. Now I understand it was a no budget endeavor, but there is also no continuity and no real reason to not to turn it off and watch infomercials or foreign news in a language you don't understand. Oh, there are a few decent looking females showing the goods. Still, there aren't enough sexy women alive to warrant watching this travesty perpetrated on the film industry. One of the longest 80 minutes of my life. I trooped it out though with the help of my old friend Jim Beam. Do yourself a favor and get your gun ready cuz you may want to use it after this hack job. Lastly, the individual (moron) who left a comment before mine thought this was a great movie and LOVED it. Just more proof that siblings shouldn't pro-create. Ow, BURN!!! - Captain J


STMD! is not a terrible movie, but it IS quite forgettable. The lighting is intentionally poor in many scenes and unintentionally poor in all the rest, so you are likely to come out of a viewing with a headache or eye-strain. Special effects are imaginative, but obvious. The gratuitous nudity essential for teen slasher flicks is there, of course, along with the archetypical teenagers, but the whole movie just doesn't gel. What was needed was some snappier dialogue and more tongue-in-cheek humor.

I can't really recommend that you use your time watching this movie. I often give a nod to a movie based on just a scene or two that demonstrates imagination or humor, but these are sadly lacking in this film.


Okay, so it was never going to change the world, and it bombed at the box office, but Honky Tonk Freeway is one of those films I fell in love with as a child (the BBC showed it a few times during the 1980s and I happened to have a high quality VHS tape in the machine - lucky, that!) and watched endlessly. I watched the DVD last night and sadly, time has not been kind to this would-be blockbuster. Either that or I've just grown out of this kind of broad, dopey humour. Come on, when Schlesinger is so desperate for laughs he gives us close-ups of novelty underpants with 'amusing' slogans, what can you say about the cast or screenplay?

Certainly, it's ambitious, interesting, unusual and sprawling, but it's never once laugh-out-loud funny. I'd describe it as a children's film with some 'adult' overtones - you can safely let your youngsters watch this, despite the 15 certificate. They won't get the drug references, so don't worry about it. I had a pleasant surprise when I realized I'd forgotten just how catchy both the title song and the song-writing truck driver's 'Everybody's Going Faster, Faster' song were, not to mention the town of Ticlaw's patriotic anthem. The whole cast give commendable performances, the photography is crisp and captures the mood of the various locations perfectly, and there's a real time capsule feeling about the fashions, the cars, the gadgets (especially the dashboard-mounted drum machine), the interiors and the pop-culture references - I was more than a little surprised to hear the nutty bum in the bank loudly telling everyone "I'm OJ Simpson!", particularly now Simpson's legal tangles have overshadowed his sporting achievements. The snag is, there's almost no plot to speak of, it's way too obvious to be witty and not funny enough to elicit many genuine laughs. I wish I'd left this one as a pleasant memory.


A sprawling, overambitious, plotless comedy that has no dramatic center. It was probably intended to have an epic vision and a surrealistic flair (at least in some episodes), but the separate stories are never elevated into a meaningful whole, and the laughs are few and far between. Amusing ending, though. (*1/2)


No, no, no, no, no, no, NO! This is not a film, this is an excuse to show people dancing. This is just not good. Even the dancing is slow and not half as entertaining as the mediocre 'Dirty Dancing', let alone any other good dance movie.

Is it a love story? Is it a musical? Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? It's not that this movie is a bit of all, it's that this movie fails at everything it attempts to be. The film turns out to be even more meaningless as the film progresses.

Acting is terrible from all sides, the screenplay is definitely trying to tell us something about relationship but fails miserably.

WATCH FOR THE MOMENT - When Patrick Stewart enters the scene and you think the film might get better as he brightens up the dull atmosphere. For a second.


I found this movie really hard to sit through, my attention kept wandering off the tv. As far as romantic movies go..this one is the worst I've seen. Don't bother with it.


OK, so my summary line is a cheap trick. But the movie is full of them and it gets absurdly praised, so...

I caught this one on TV (uncut, as TV here shows all movies, that's for you Americans who might say I didn't like it because I saw a cut TV version - fortunately that's only an US thing), and had no idea about what it was. I switched on, caught the last minutes of a show, and the movie began. Within a minute, I was begging it was a comedy, given the particularly ridiculous clichéd beginning (yes, it's a bad movie-within-the-movie, I know, but what a way to try to keep the viewer interested! I don't even know why I didn't switch channels). And, yes, in fact the movie turned out to be a comedy, albeit an unintentional one.

Marina Zudina is pretty enough, but gosh, what a dreadful performance! While casting a foreigner in the role is smart enough (she doesn't talk so bye bye language barrier), yet, sorry, Marina baby, playing mute doesn't mean impersonating Harpo Marx. Her acting is unintentionally funny in many moments, just look at her when she draws an X in the air while stalked by the killer. He wants to kill you, it's no time to play Zorro. We get plenty of "running upstairs" stuff passing for tension, as in the worst slashers, and things like pulling a carpet and a bad guy shots the other. Ugh! Will Hollywood ever learn? Yet the best/worst pearl is having a guy electrocuted in a bathtub and... Well, I have never seen anyone being electrocuted to death in a bathtub, but I'm sure you can't see the blue cartoon rays in real life, do you? And how about immediately trusting a mean-looking guy because he SAYS he's a cop, and not asking him to show you his credentials? OK, so he turns out to be a real cop. But still, not asking for the badge makes no sense (plot-wise, we could always think the credentials might be phony or he might be a crooked cop. Screen writing 101). And how about the big twist? Don't tell me you didn't see that coming from 200 miles away...

I feel sorry for poor old Alec Guinness and his useless stock footage cameo. Now I think about this, what's the point in giving him a "Mystery Guest Star" credit... in the END titles? The movie's over, there's no mystery anymore, and everybody and their brother have identified Guinness (even non-movie buffs will recognize "the old guy from 'Star Wars'"). Yet better off this way, so we can pretend it's not the late great actor.

People keep comparing this to, of all people, Hitchcock. I suppose it has to be John Hitchcock the milkman, as the late Sir Alfred would feel embarrassed out of watching this, let alone making it. And this gets a 6.8/10???? It's Bottom 100 material! But then, we're talking a rating system that allows 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' to appear as the third best movie ever made (check Top 100), so...

2/10.


An obscure horror show filmed in the Everglades. Two couples stay overnight in a cabin after being made a little uneasy by the unfriendliness of the locals. Who, or what, are the Blood Stalkers? After awhile they find out. Watch for the character of the village idiot who clucks like a chicken, he certainly is weird.


This film is about a couple that decides to take a vacation to The Everglades along with another couple and the family dog. When they first get there, they are not welcomed by the neighboring gas attendant that warms them to stay away from the cabin in which they are to spend the night at for the week. After pestering with the old man, three hillbillys also do not take kindly to their arrival as they approach their car and threaten them to leave. After asking some of the local dummies that can't speak or just don't want to answer, they finaly find the cabin. After they settle in, strange things happen to the visitors including discovering crap on their car, the man thats the head of this trip thats an idiot shoots the family dog thinking it was a killer clawing at the door and a series of deaths later on in the end. Adding a church group did not make the story any better. Then at the end, the idiot that survives the whole ordeal goes around the town carrying a shot gun. Lame. thats what this movie is.


Talented screenwriter Alvin Sargent sadly cannot get any engaging ideas cooking in this artificial trifle about a wayward mother and her mature teenage daughter trying to make their lives work in Los Angeles despite mom's flighty behavior. Apart from several good sequences, I didn't quite buy Susan Sarandon as a flake (she's too intrinsically smart and focused to be passed off as this devil-may-care lady), and her naturally grounded personality is a bad fit for the role of an irresponsible parent. Natalie Portman fares much better as her kid, and yet there's a creepy aloofness to her work (and some of her scenes, such as the one where she asks a boy to strip, are misguided and uncomfortable to watch). Certainly not an incompetent piece, "Anywhere But Here" does have moments that work, but it isn't an embraceable film, nor has it proved to be an important one. ** from ****


An Italian/American co-production co-starring Linda Blair and David 'The Hoff' Hasselhoff: how could any fan of trashy horror resist such a treat?

Well, based on the uneventful, extremely tedious, and utterly nonsensical first forty minutes or so, I would have said 'very easily'; thankfully, however, things do eventually get a tad more entertaining with the introduction of several inventive death scenes, and for those lucky enough to find an uncut copy, a smattering of nudity too (unfortunately, my copy was optically edited to remove such offensive material).

The Hoff stars as Gary, a photographer who accompanies his beautiful girlfriend Leslie (Leslie Cumming) to a run-down hotel on a seemingly deserted island in order to take pictures for her latest project, a book about witches; whilst there, frustrated Gary also hopes to try and cure a bad case of blue balls by relieving Leslie of her virginity.

His plans for nookie are scuppered, however, by the unexpected arrival of property developers Freddie and Rose Brooks (Robert Champagne and Annie Ross), their pregnant daughter Jane (Blair), son Tommy (Michael Manchester), pretty nymphomaniac architect Linda Sullivan (Catherine Hickland), and estate agent Jerry (Rick Farnsworth), who have come to inspect the island's hotel.

After explaining their unexpected presence on the island, Gary and Leslie are welcomed by the property's new owners, and when a violent storm suddenly picks up, making it perilous to return to the mainland, everyone agrees to spend the night in the old building. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the hotel's new guests, the place is also home to the spirit of an evil witch (Hildegard Knef), who requires human sacrifices in order to bring herself back to life. One by one, victims are pulled into a swirling red vortex (which is guaranteed to provide unintentional laughs), before meeting a terrible fate.

None of this makes much sense, and the acting is atrocious (Manchester as Tommy is particularly bad, whilst Hasselhoff proves to be one of the better performers, which speaks volumes about the others), but those viewers who make it past the dreary first half are rewarded with some pretty decent moments of gore: Rose has her lips sewn together, before being roasted alive in a fireplace; Jerry is crucified and burnt alive; Linda is tortured by hags and impaled on a swordfish(!!); Freddie's veins pulsate and erupt in geysers of blood; and Gary gets stabbed in the back.

Oh, and Leslie is raped by a guy with no lips and Blair gets possessed (again).


Oh my... bad clothing, worse synth music and the worst: David Hasselhoff. The 80's are back with vengeance in Witchery, an American-Italian co-production, helmed by infamous Joe 'D'Amato on the production side and short-careered director (thank heavens for small miracles) Fabrizio Laurenti directing . Marketed as a kind of sequel to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series in Italy (that was dubbed "La Casa" in there), Witchery delivers some modest gore groceries and bad acting.

A mix of ghost story, possessions and witchcraft, the film bounces clueless from scene to another without letting some seriously wooden actors and hilarious day and night mix-ups slow it's progress to expectable ending, topped with some serious WTF surprise climax. (I just love the look on her face...) Surprisingly Laurenti manages to gather some suspense and air of malice in few - very few - scenes; unluckily for him, these few glimpses of mild movie magic go down quickly and effectively.

The plus sides are experienced, when the gore hits the fan. This department is quite effective and entertaining in that classic latex and red paint style of the 80's Italo-gore, when things were made 100% hand-made and as shockingly and vivid as modest budgets could allow. I could only watch with sadistic glee and few laughters all the over-the-top ways that obnoxious characters (and actors) got mangled and misused, one by one. I only felt sorry for Linda Blair, who apparently haven't been let to try any other than that good old possessed girl / woman role ever in his career, or so it looks like when checking out his filmography.

Well, folks - not much more to tell, and even less to tell home about. Don't expect too much when spending some rainy afternoon with this, and probably you'll experience at least some mild fun. It also helps if your rotten little heart pounds in the beat of 80's euro gore horror. And speaking of hearts - every movie that has David Hasselhoff getting skewered by a sizeable metal object and bleeding heavily around the room and corridors, MUST have it's one on the right place.

This is my truth - what is yours?


There are many different versions of this one floating around, so make sure you can locate one of the unrated copies, otherwise some gore and one scene of nudity might be missing. Some versions also omit most of the opening sequence and other bits here and there. The cut I saw has the on-screen title WITCHCRAFT: EVIL ENCOUNTERS and was released by Shriek Show, who maintain the original US release title WITCHERY for the DVD release. It's a nice-looking print and seems to have all of the footage, but has some cropping/aspect ratio issues. In Italy, it was released as LA CASA 4 (WITCHCRAFT). The first two LA CASA releases were actually the first two EVIL DEAD films (retitled) and the third LA CASA was another film by the same production company (Filmirage), which is best known here in America as GHOSTHOUSE. To make matters even more confusing, WITCHERY was also released elsewhere as GHOSTHOUSE 2. Except in Germany, where GHOSTHOUSE 2 is actually THE OGRE: DEMONS 3. OK, I better just shut up now. I'm starting to confuse myself!

Regardless of the title, this is a very hit-or-miss horror effort. Some of it is good, some of it isn't. I actually was into this film for the first half or so, but toward the end it became a senseless mess. A large, vacant hotel located on an island about 50 miles from Boston is the setting, as various people get picked off one-by-one by a German- speaking witch (Hildegard Knef). Photographer Gary (David Hasselhoff), who wants to capture "Witch Light," and his virginal writer girlfriend (Leslie Cumming), who is studying witchcraft, are shacking up at the hotel without permission. Along comes real estate agent Jerry (Rick Farnsworth), who's showing off the property to potential buyers Rose (Annie Ross) and Freddie (Robert Champagne) Brooks. Also tagging along are their children; pregnant grown daughter Jane (Linda Blair) and very young son Tommy (Michael Manchester), as well as oversexed architect Linda Sullivan (Catherine Hickland - Hasselhoff's wife at the time). Once everyone is inside, their boat driver is killed (hung) and the boat disappears, so they find themselves trapped and basically at the mercy of the "Lady in Black."

So what can you expect to find here? Plenty of unpleasantries! One of the characters has their lips sewn shut and is then hung upside down in the fireplace and accidentally slow-roasted by the rest of the cast. There's also a crucifixion, witches eating a dead baby, a swordfish through the head, someone set on fire, a possession, a Sesame Street tape recorder, the virgin getting raped by some demon, a guys veins bulging and exploding thanks to voodoo doll pokes and some other stuff. From a technical standpoint, it's a nice-looking film with pretty good cinematography, a decent score and good gore effects. The hotel/island setting is also pretty nice. Blair (particularly at the end) and Ross both seem like they're having fun and Knef is great as the evil witch. Even though people like to ridicule Hasselhoff these days, he's not bad in his role, either.

On the down side, despite all the gore, the film seems somewhat dull and it gets monotonous after about an hour. The supernatural themes are muddled and confusing, too. When characters are being swept into the witches lair to be tortured and killed, the filmmakers unwisely decided to superimpose the screaming actors over some silly looking red spiral vortex effect that looks supremely cheesy. And the witch lair itself is vacant and cheaply designed with unfinished lumber. And while most of the cast is at least decent, a few of the performances (particularly the "actress" who plays Hasselhoff's girlfriend and the kid) are so bad they're constantly distracting.


Witchcraft/Witchery/La Casa 4/ and whatever else you wish to call it. How about..Crud.

A gathering of people at a Massachusetts island resort are besieged by the black magic powers of an evil witch killing each individual using cruel, torturous methods. Photographer Gary(David Hasselhoff)is taking pictures for Linda(Catherine Hickland whose voice and demeanor resemble EE-YOR of the Winnie the Poo cartoon), a virgin studying witchcraft, on the island resort without permission. Rose Brooks(Annie Ross, portraying an incredibly rude bitch)is interested in perhaps purchasing the resort and, along with husband Freddie(Robert Champagne, who is always ogling other women much younger than him), pregnant daughter Jane(Linda Blair)and grandson Tommy(Michael Manchester, who just looks bored throughout, probably wanting to watch Sesame Street instead of starring in this rubbish), go by boat to the resort being treated to a look at the property by Realtor Tony Giordano's son Jerry(Rick Farnsworth), obviously a pup in the business getting his feet wet. Along with these folks is architect Leslie(Leslie Cumming, whose character is a nympho)who might help Rose re-design the resort. The boat's captain is killed by The Lady in Black(Hildegard Knef, wearing her make-up and lip-stick extra thick)and a storm is brewing. The boat drives off by itself(..guided by the invisible power of The Lady in Black, I guess)with everyone stuck in the decrepit resort, which is in dire need of repairs. Most of the victims, before meeting their grisly fates are carried through a type of red wormhole whose vortex leads to another dimension(..perhaps a type of hell or something)where they are tortured by these fiends dressed in raggedy clothes with a crummy visage. One victim has her mouth sown before being hung upside down in a chimney, roasted as the others light the fireplace. One poor soul is tortured by harsh twistings of rope wrapped tightly around her flesh before being found hanging from the snout of a swordfish penetrating through her neck. One fellow is slowly suffocating as his veins bulge(..and bleed) and neck's blood vessels burst squirting in Hasselhoff's face! One fellow is crucified with nails hammered into his hands before being hung upside down over an open flame. Blair's pregnant victim becomes possessed with her hair standing on end speaking in another woman's voice. One is raped by this demonic man with a "diseased" mouth as the hellish hobos stand nearby gleefully cheering. The film, despite it's excesses, is mostly dull fodder for those who really wish to see the lowest point in the careers of Hasselhoff and Blair, who deserve better than this. Almost unbearable at times, building little-to-no suspense. Clumsy execution of the death sequences which look cheap and laughable. Sure some gore is okay, but most of the film shows victims after they've been run through the ringer. We do get a chance to see pregnant women(..who look exactly like stuntmen in costume with bad wigs) jumping out three story windows. Oh, and The Lady in Black's reflected face often pops up on inanimate objects for characters to see. Tommy has a little Sesame Street recorder which tapes The Lady in Black's mumbo jumbo chants, obviously used for later. For some reason, The Lady in Black likes to visit little Tommy. He's not at all scared of her, for Tommy's just too bored to show any expression on his face, much less fear. Need I say more? This one's a real stinker. Ugh.


"Witchery" might just be the most incoherent and lamentably scripted horror movie of the 80's but, luckily enough, it has a few compensating qualities like fantastic gore effects, an exhilarating musical score and some terrific casting choices. Honestly the screenplay doesn't make one iota of sense, but who cares when Linda Blair (with an exploded hairstyle) portrays yet another girl possessed by evil powers and David Hasselhof depicts a hunky photographer (who can't seem to get laid) in a movie that constantly features bloody voodoo, sewn-shut lips, upside down crucifixions, vicious burnings and an overused but genuinely creepy tune. Eight random people are gathered together on an abandoned vacation resort island off the coast of Massachusetts. The young couple is there to investigate the place's dark history; the dysfunctional family (with a pregnant Linda Blair even though nobody seems to bother about who the father is and what his whereabouts are) considers re-opening the hotel and the yummy female architect simply tagged along for casual sex. They're forced to stay the night in the ramshackle hotel and then suddenly the previous landlady  an aging actress or something who always dresses in black  starts taking them out in various engrossing ways. Everything is somehow related to the intro sequence showing a woman accused of witchery jump out of a window. Anyway, the plot is definitely of minor importance in an Italian horror franchise that started as an unofficial spin-off of "The Evil Dead". The atmosphere is occasionally unsettling and the make-up effects are undoubtedly the most superior element of the entire film. There's something supremely morbid and unsettling about staring at a defenseless woman hanging upside down a chimney and waiting to get fried.


Witchy Hildegard Knef traps a group of people in an isolated hotel and picks them off one by one in twisted, disgusting ways. I thought I'd seen it all until one unfortunate man here is crucified and then has his head set on fire. Hildy is quite the prankster too: she takes a nagging harpy and sews her mouth shut...then hangs her upside down in the chimney just in time for a roaring fire! "Witchery" made me sick. It made my eyes hurt. I was ready to write it off as the worst movie ever-ever-ever made by otherwise competent people...until the finale. I have to admit I loved the ending. It involves a boy and his toy tape-recorder cornered by Linda Blair looking fantastically possessed. The scene only lasts for about a minute and the movie's over, but you know that old saying: "If you've got a great ending, people will forgive you for just about anything!"


A really very bad movie, with a very few good moments or qualities.

It starts off with pregnant Linda Blair, who runs down a hallways to flee what might be monsters or people with pitchforks, I'm not sure. She jumps through a window and wakes up, and we see she is very pregnant. The degree to which she is pregnant varies widely throughout the movie.

She and an annoying and possibly retarded little boy who I thought was her son travel to an abandoned hotel on an island. Italian horror directors find the most irritating little boys to put in their movies! On the island already are David Hasselhoff and his German-speaking virgin girlfriend (you know how Germans are said to love Hasselhoff...). He's taking photographs, and she's translating an esoteric German book about witches, I think.

Also traveling to the island are an older couple who have purchased it, and a real estate agent, and a woman I thought was their daughter. Evidently she was an architect, and Linda Blair and the boy are the older couple's children. I guess they all traveled to the island together, but it really seemed like Linda and the boy were apart from the rest of them (maybe they were filmed separately).

The hotel seems neat, certainly from the exteriors, but it isn't used to any great effect. An old woman in bad makeup and a black cloak keeps appearing to the boy and chants something in German sometimes, which he eventually records on his Sesame Street tape recorder.

People start getting killed, either in their dreams, or sucked into hell or something. Some of these gore scenes are OK, but not enough to recommend the movie. Though the copy I watched stated it is uncut on the box cover, the death of one character whose veins explode really seems to have been cut. Much of the scene is showing another character's reaction shots, since we're not seeing anything ourselves. The creepiest scene is one in which a man or demon with a really messy-looking wound of a mouth rapes someone. He looked particularly nasty. There's a laughably and painfully bad scene in which Linda Blair is possessed. I wish if a horror movie is going to cast her, they would do something original with her role, and let her leave Exorcist behind her (except for the yearly horror conventions).

In the weird, largely Italian, tradition of claiming to be a sequel to something it is unrelated to, this is also AKA La Casa 4 and Ghosthouse 2. That is, it is supposedly a sequel to Casa 3 - Ghosthouse, La (1988) - it's not (that's also a better movie than this one). La Casa 1 and two were The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) - again unrelated to Witchery and La Casa 3 (and much better than those). There's also a Casa 5, La (1990) AKA House 5, which seems to want to be a sequel to the fake La Casa series and the series House: House (1986) House II: The Second Story (1987), The Horror Show (1989) AKA House III, and House IV (1992). How's The Horror Show fit in there? It doesn't really, it claimed to be a sequel, thus requiring the real series entry to renumber itself to cause less (or more?) confusion. Oddly, The Horror Show is also AKA Horror House, and La Casa 5 is also AKA Horror House 2. Does your head hurt yet?


This film features two of my favorite guilty pleasures. Sure, the effects are laughable, the story confused, but just watching Hasselhoff in his Knight Rider days is always fun. I especially like the old hotel they used to shoot this in, it added to what little suspense was mustered. Give it a 3.


I watched this movie purely for the setting. It was filmed in an old hotel that a friend owns shares of. The plot was predictable, the acting was mediorcre at best, the scares were all gross-outs, not true scares.

I don't remember much of the plot, and I think that's because there wasn't much of one to remember. They didn't even use the hotel to it's fullest potential...The beaches are fantastic and the hotel is situated on a peninsula. At low tide, you can walk almost 1/4 mile into the bay, which is actually an eerie sight first thing in the morning or late at night when the wind is howling through the cracks.

The best way to see this movie is with the remote in your hand so you can fast forward through the action (and I'm using that term loosly)scenes and pause at the beauty of the surroundings!


This only gets bashed because it stars David Hasselhoff. Well, then let me bash it to. Compared to the garbage they call horror coming out nowadays, this film isn't too bad. It has the beautiful Leslie Cumming. She is super hot, but can't talk very well. There is a great scene with her when she is supernaturally raped. She shows off her nice body. Linda Blair does nothing here as well as Hasselhoff. 3/10


We brought this film as a joke for a friend, and could of been our worst joke to play. The film is barely watchable, and the acting is dire. The worst child actor ever used and Hasslehoff giving a substandard performance. The plot is disgraceful and at points we was so bored we was wondering what the hell was going on. It tries to be gruesome in places but is just laughable.

Just terrible


Humm, an Italian movie starred by David hasselhoff and Linda Blair, I wasn´t expecting very much, to be honest and in fact, I took even less than I was expecting. It doesn´t mean this movie is the worst I have seen because I have watched worse things than this but the plot was most of the times confusing and uninteresting and some good gore scenes are the only thing saving this. Apart from that you are going to love some special effects, they are really cheesy and bad. Now I only want to watch "Troll 3" by this same director, sure it is not going to be worse than that.


I and a friend rented this movie. We both found the movie soundtrack and production techniques to be lagging. The movie's plot appeared to drag on throughout with little surprise in the ending. We both agreed that the movie could have been compressed into roughly an hour giving it more suspense and moving plot.


I'm gettin' sick of movies that sound entertaining in a one-line synopsis then end up being equal to what you'd find in the bottom center of a compost heap.

Who knows: "Witchery" may have sounded interesting in a pitch to the studios, even with a "big name cast" (like Blair and Hasselhoff - wink-wink, nudge-nudge) and the effervescent likes of Hildegard Knef (I dunno, some woman...).

But on film, it just falls apart faster than a papier-mache sculpture in a rainstorm. Seems these unfortunate folks are trapped in an island mansion off the Eastern seaboard, and one of them (a woman, I'd guess) is being targeted by a satanic cult to bear the child of hell while the others are offed in grotesque, tortuous ways.

Okay, right there you have a cross-section of plots from "The Exorcist", "The Omen", "Ten Little Indians" and a few other lesser movies in the satanic-worshippers-run-amok line. None of it is very entertaining and for the most part, you'll cringe your way from scene to scene until it's over.

No, not even Linda Blair and David Hasselhoff help matters much. They're just in it to pick up a paycheck and don't seem very intent on giving it their "all".

From the looks of it, Hasselhoff probably wishes he were back on the beack with Pam Anderson (and who can blame him?) and Linda... well, who knows; a celebrity PETA benefit or pro-am golf tour or whatever it is she's in to nowadays.

And the torture scenes! Ecchhhh. You'll see people get their mouths sewn shut, dangled up inside roaring fireplaces, strung up in trees during a violent storm, vessels bursting out of their necks, etc, etc. Sheesh, and I thought "Mark of the Devil" was the most sadistic movie I'd seen....

Don't bother. It's not worth your time. I can't believe I told you as much as I did. If you do watch it, just see if you can count the cliches. And yes, Blair gets possessed, as if you didn't see THAT coming down Main Street followed by a marching band.

No stars. "Witchery" - these witches will give you itches.


Not like I went in expecting a lot out of it, but I was at least hoping for a fun dumb big budget movie. This isn't even that. This item ranks in the bottom half of all the vampire movies I've ever seen (and believe me, I've seen a lot of them). Bad acting, zero characterization, little to no thought, almost non-existent plot (and that that's there you can drive semi-trucks through the holes in). Sure, it has action and is loud, and has more action, and more noise, and blood, and action... These things alone do not make a good (or even halfway decent) movie. Beats me how some people can say this is the best vampire movie ever made--all I can assume is they haven't seen many. I suggest seeing Near Dark instead.


That snarl...

That scowl...

The acts of random violence...

The gutteral voice...

The fetish wear...

That shaven head...

It can mean only one thing...

GRACE JONES IS BACK!

Actually my sources tell me that the title role in Blade wasn't played by the 1980s diva, but by Wesley Snipes.

All in all this is not an improvement.

Blade is an adaptation of a comic character; somehow in the transfer from the simplistic, two-dimensional world of the printed page it has become even more simplistic and lost a couple of dimensions.

The plot is hackneyed almost beyond belief and adds nothing to the vampire genre, in fact, much like Nosferatu, it seems to suck the life out of the audience. In brief, upwardly mobile vampire wants to become more powerful but is opposed by Blade, half-human, half-vampire, all annoying. It all climaxes with Blade being put in a vampire juice press, some bad martial arts and the most pitiful CGI since 1968.

Blade has to be the least empathic character since Dolph Lundgren's Punisher (also a comic adaptation, perhaps there is a trend here?). Surely the audience is meant to be on the same side as the 'hero'? And whilst a vampire can be a tragic character, this is not true of Blade, he is relentlessly cruel, scornful and not a whole lot better than the bad guys.

I assume that Wesley Snipes has an 'acting' career purely so that everyone else can be compared favourably. As he snarls his way through his movie you find yourself looking for a stake - even a ballpoint pen - anything to put Blade in the grave.

As a piece of narcissism, Blade is pretty much unbeatable - we are treated to endless lingering shots of a gym-fresh Snipes for no reason whatsoever. Likewise no other actor is allowed any chance to give a reasonable performance; the likes of Steven Dorff *CAN* act, but they have to play second fiddle to Snipes' tedious performance.

Kris Kristofferson used to appear in good movies, here he is reduced to a sidekick that you just know isn't going to make it through to the final reel. And what happens when Blade finds out? Yes, you guessed it, he rushes to the scene to wreak his revenge in the villain's giant underground lair.

Why can't world-domination take place in a quiet country house? They always go ahead in underground cathedrals that would have had Albert Speer wondering if they were a little grandiose. A lot of these plans could be stopped right now if local councils paid more attention to plans for extending sub-basements.

The rest of the movie is just as dull and unimaginative with nothing new to add to the genre. Vampires have been done to undeath and perhaps they should be laid to rest for a while - at least until someone can think of some way to make them interesting again.

To finish, there *IS* a Grace Jones vampire movie, it's called Vamp and it's about ten times better than this.


generally speaking I don't make negative comments on here. But since this is a festival piece, I don't want you to waste your time when you could see something else that might not be playing again.

I thought the actors were pretty bad. For instance, they totally didn't play off each other, rather, they waited to RECITE their lines which were pretty poor to begin with. The dialogue sounded really forced. Norman or whatever his name tried, or so it would appear, to be witty and biting in the lines he chose but just fell really short.

After words he asked if anyone saw the ending coming and some people were all "yea", and he all but called them liars. Look there were so many clues, the biggest being a briefcase full of cash for a $500 an hour whore. I mean the john gave her at least 20g's... tell tale sign. Now no you couldn't see exactly what was going to happen but by the time the twist actually occurred, I for one, didn't even care. I was just glad to get out of there. I asked him which draft he shot and he said 8.1, maybe next time he will wait to shoot 'til 15.3 cause this needed a lot of work.

But he seemed like a fairly nice guy, he is making his own films, he'll probably get better and I hope he does, not in a snotty way either, I mean it, I wish him luck. Just remember, this is just my opinion.


This show should be titled, "When Bad Writing Happens To Good Actors" considering most of the players have demonstrated immense talent in other venues, e.g. Andre Braugher in Homicide: Life on the Street and David Morse in St. Elsewhere. I'm hoping that the frenetic pacing of the show is adjusted as the series develops along with the obvious cliches and dialogue so absurd I wondered just how stupid the writers imagined the core audience to be. We're beat over the head with the main points of this show instead of being left to gradually figure it out, almost as if the writers feel that they must spell out that the main character is some sort of avenging angel, sentenced to redeem himself from sins, both venial and mortal, via butting into his cab fares many affairs. Watching the premiere required much suspension of disbelief, that Mike Olshanskey's fares would so rapidly spill their guts and he would feel driven to intervene in the lives of utter strangers. That he possesses those "Super-Cop" abilities, to be all things to all people, weapons expert, martial arts master, psychologist, father-confessor, locksmith, and so on, ad infinitum. Pure drivelesque fantasy. What is it about recent televisions shows based in Philidelphia that they all seem to be imbued with a nasty ex-wife and a very disrepectfully bratty child? Overdone. I wanted to like this show, really I did, because it had the virtue of having a premise slightly different than many of the clones appearing in this season's fare and it stars some of my preferred actors. But I'm afraid this is just another possibly good idea ruined by careless execution.


I thought maybe... maybe this could be good. An early appearance by the Re-Animator (Jeffery Combs); many homage's to old horror movies; the Troma label on the front this movie could be a gem! I thought wrong.

Frightmare is a boring, overplayed, half assed homage to the fright films of yore. The story is an old one, young people breaking into a house, getting drunk, making love, and tampering with things that shouldn't be tampered with. The oft  recycled slasher film formula is used here, this time with a thought to be dead actor named Conrad Radzoff doing the killing. In fact, the performance by the Radzoff's actor Ferdy Mayne is the only redeeming quality of this film. He does the snooty Dracula style character very well. But as for the kids, its not so good, with Combs only having a minimal part.

The film lacks entertainment value, and only features one cool character, and one or two scenes that can hold your attention. I do not recommend this film unless you are desperate for something to watch, and this is the only movie left at blockbuster.


1983's "Frightmare" is an odd little film. The director seems to be trying to combine the atmosphere of classic '30s/'40s style horror movies with the shock factor of the then-exploding '80s slasher genre. It isn't totally successful (mostly due to very obvious budgetary restraints, and the less-than-professional caliber of its cast of young actors) but it still has its moments, mostly due to the classy performance (classier than the movie deserves) by the late German actor Ferdinand Mayne, who plays an aging old time horror movie star (ala Vincent Price) named "Conrad Ratzoff." At the beginning of the movie we meet the has-been horror star as he's shooting a commercial for dentures and we quickly learn that ol' Conrad is a bit of a hoity-toity, prima donna jerk-off. Just when you think he couldn't be any more un-likable, the commercial director berates Conrad for blowing a take for the umpteenth time and the old goat pushes him off a balcony to his death. Nice, huh? Conrad then visits some fans at a college campus horror movie club, unfortunately he suffers a heart attack in the middle of his speech to them and eventually ends up back at his mansion waiting to die. Still feisty even at Death's door, he manages to do away with a despised business associate by smothering him with a pillow before he finally kicks the bucket himself. Conrad is then laid to rest in true Hollywood style in a high tech neon tomb with video screens above the casket, which will play personal video messages from Conrad himself for visitors who enter to pay their respects.

It is at this point that the kids from the college Horror Movie Society decide to pay Conrad's grave an after hours visit, breaking into the tomb and taking his body back home with them for an all night party. (Not exactly my idea of fun, but hey, these are characters in an '80s horror film. Logic has no place here.) The college kids spend the evening having dinner with Conrad's body seated in a place of honor, posing for photos with it and even dancing around the room with it, before parking Conrad and his coffin in the attic, planning to return him to his crypt in the morning. In the meantime, Mrs. Ratzoff, distraught over the theft of her husband's body, has called in a psychic friend to try and "reach" Conrad through a seance. You can pretty much figure out the rest from here. Since Conrad wasn't a very nice guy in life, it's not much of a stretch to assume that he won't be any friendlier in death. Psychic Lady makes contact with Conrad and he re-awakens in predictably ticked off fashion, then spends the rest of the movie strolling around the corridors of the students' ridiculously huge house, picking off the young grave robbers one by one. This is where the movie falls apart. Endless scenes of teens wandering around empty hallways saying "Hello? Is anyone there?" are intercut with occasional bursts of violence (we do get a pretty gnarly decapitation scene, which is the highlight of the movie) before the last two survivors finally figure out (WAY later than any semi-intelligent people would have figured out the same thing...but again, we're in an '80s horror film!) that the only way to stop the mayhem is to get Conrad's body back to its crypt where it belongs. The sluggish pacing is padded out with a lot of weird lighting and dry ice fog effects backed by a soundtrack made up almost entirely of sound effects rather than music(thunder, moans and groans, howls, etc.) that becomes severely annoying after a while.

I can't really recommend "Frightmare" to anyone who didn't grow up watching cheap movies like this on late night cable back in the '80s. "Modern Horror" fans will doubtlessly find "Frightmare" incredibly slow moving and goofy. If you came of age in that magical decade, however, you may get a blast of nostalgia from "Frightmare." Fans of Jeffrey ("Re-Animator") Combs may also want to check it out, as the future Dr. West appears in an early role here as one of the unlucky film students.

I will advise the reader to avoid the version of this film on the EastWestDVD label (paired with Roy Ward's "Vault of Horror" and sold at dollar stores) because the print quality is terrible. I'm told the film has gotten a deluxe release via the fine folks at Troma, which seems appropriate. If you're a Troma kind of person then "Frightmare" will be right up your alley.


I don't get it! The teenage leads in "Horror Star" supposedly all are devoted horror fans, yet when their favorite idol (Conrad Radzoff) passes away, they dig up his corpse and do all sorts of disrespectful stuff with it, like disco-dancing it around the house and throw food leftovers at it. That doesn't sound like something real horror fans would do, now does it? I'm a big horror fan and I immensely idolize departed icons like Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Boris Karloff, but it would never come to my mind to ridicule their memory. No wonder Conrad comes back from the dead  admittedly, after a séance  to wipe them all off the face of the earth! Mr. Radzoff already wasn't known for his friendliness in life, since he occasionally killed the directors that disagreed with his visions, and even after his death he suffers from a tremendous ego. Even inside his tomb there are video messages to petrify possible visitors and the group of teenagers will vividly experience that he also enjoys the murdering business outside his film sets. "Horror Star" (a.k.a. "Frightmare" and "Body Snatchers") is a pretty lame 80's horror flick, but there are a handful of cheesy & gory highlights to enjoy. The film mainly suffers from its own stupid plot, since no one  not even a film school student  is stupid enough to steal a recently buried corpse and actually think he'll get away with it, and there are too many tedious moments to struggle through. Conrad's video-speeches from beyond the grave are overly talkative and definitely undermine the tension, but on the other hand his killing methods are pleasingly inventive. One teenager enjoys the experience of getting cremated alive and another one (Jeffrey Combs in one of his first roles!) loses his head in a delightful decapitation sequence. In the absolute messiest sequence, a poor girl' head is crushed by a coffin. Writer/director Norman Thaddeus Vane wanted to bring homage to vintage horror cinema and he obviously how to make film look sinister. The locations and scenery are great, but Vane lacked the necessary funds to provide his film with a proper continuity and editing-job. The acting performances are overall decent, with Ferdy Mayne (imitating Christopher Lee) and Jeffrey Combs delivering the most memorable roles. "Horror Star" can hardly be called a must-see or even a good film, but it's worth tracking down in case you're an admirer of enthusiastically made B-horror.


Conrad Radzoff(Ferdy Mayne), a hammy cult icon, dies from a heart ailment(not before disposing of an ungrateful assistant and TV commercial director, both of whom disrespected him with showers of insults). His body is removed from his mausoleum by some film students(they wish to "invite him to dinner"..they are quite big fans). What these kids(..including a young Jeffrey Combs)don't expect is that Radzoff will be resurrected by a medium to wreak havoc on those who removed him from his place of rest.

The list of violent acts include Radzoff pulling one guy's tongue out, setting a woman on fire, elevating a casket which crushes a woman's face, decapitates one fellow, and cremates another guy alive in a coffin. A really weird soundtrack and pesky fog wraps around Radzoff's ghoulish activities.

Silly hokum from Troma is limited by a very, very low budget and slowwwwww pace. The film feels a lot longer than it is. The film isn't really that gory and we can hardly see much violence because the film is often too damn dark. At times, Radzoff is an ominous presence, yet at other times he just looks real silly.