This is a film that revolves around two mysteries (which I have now demystifed).

First, did the film makers understand the concept of 'parody' before using it to carpet bomb the audience throughout the film? Parody is when a reproduction attempts to mock, comment on, or pay homage through self-depreciating humour to, the original work. In other words, there should be reasons to parody such work, and they should definitely be clever. I didn't see any of those in the film. I did see some awful 10 seconds jokes that fell flat within 2 seconds of delivery. Bryan Stoller probably went to Eric Roberts and said "hey, I was drunk last night, watching Survivors, and had this brain fart for a straight to DVD release. I want you on board without reading the script...because I plan to direct this film without one!"

And herein lies the second mystery: Eric Robert's career. I use to think Eric Roberts had the career he had because he was unlucky. Now I realize it's because he is stupid (and therefore deserves the career that he had). After watching this movie, it is apparent that he would have been better off had he gone into mainstream adult films, which has higher budgets, more...intense...scenes and roles, better acting and direction, more elaborate and compelling plot lines, and a much wider audience than this B-movie reject (C-movie?).


Except for the appearance of talented Austin Powers impersonator Richard Halpern, this pic was your run of the mill movie spoof. Dated movie references will not help audiences that may come across this endeavor in future. Watch for "Groovy" Austin Powers in the hot tub. It's a hoot and a half.

Poor special effects are overcome by the appearance of numerous starlets in skimpy outfits, so at least that should keep one entertained (if that's what thrills you).

For my money, I would rent the DVD of classic spoofs such as "Airplane" or "Lobster Man from Mars".


This film, had it been done properly, has SO much potential. Parody films are always funny, and people tend to like them because they're light hearted, stupid and silly but fun. This film WAS funny in some parts, but it could have been a lot funnier. The acting itself was OK from all the actors, but...I wasn't satisfied. It seemed a tad empty, and my summary title says it all about the effects. Proper green screens weren't used for this movie...backgrounds were added in after which just looked terrible. No wonder this film went straight to DVD lol. It wasn't ALL a total loss, it is funny and will give you a good laugh (AT it, not WITH it most of the time).


MacBeth, I've always thought, is the most accessible of Shakespeare's 'Great Period' plays. Compact, focused, with heaps of violence, it should have been the play most open to screen adaptations. I'm not aware of a really good rendering of the story, however - the best effort being Orson Welles's vigorous shoestring version. To the list of MacBotches we must add the Connery/Baxendale effort.

(It seems it was not a 'film adaptation' at all, but a TV version that was given a theatrical release, post Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet and Branagh's Hamlet. That might explain some of its flaws, but doesn't excuse them.)

It starts well, with a feisty battle sequence with pleasingly grisly witches looking on. Poor old Gray Malkin and Paddock are cut from the opening scene, but they aren't alone for long. In quick order they are joined by the bloodied Sargent and his account of the battle, the treachery of the Thane of Cawdor, the luckless master o' the Tiger, even MacBeth's meeting with Duncan when he is invested as thane of Cawdor. All of these had virtues that plead like angels trumpet tongued against the dark damnation of their sending off, but sent off they are. These aren't the only cuts, either. This is MacBeth in a hurry.

From the opening battle we are pitched directly into MacBeth's encounter with the witches, which is well done. Brian Blessed, curiously, directed the witchy sequences, and he has great fun with the special effects as MacBeth and Banquo are told of their fates. Jason Connery as MacBeth is awkward, obviously unsure what to make of the verse. Graham MacTavish as Banquo, on the other hand, is capable, making his lines natural and easy. Within a few minutes of Connery's mumbling, the viewer is struck the urge to see the roles reversed and MacTavish in the title role. No wonder MacBeth felt he needed to kill him.

These first few minutes marks the high point of the film. From there we move to Helen Baxendale receiving word of her husband. She's as lost as Connery, and denied the beard that he gets to hide behind. Her "Unsex me here" invocation of evil is embarrassing, not unsettling. There are some reasonably clever touches - MacBeth's "We will speak further" is not a sign of his hesitancy in the face of his wife's wicked ambition, but his attempt to silence her prattling as he throws her onto the bed.

The acting of the leads is the biggest let down. Connery's method consists of staring glazedly about the screen while he mumbles his monologues via voice-over. Baxendale looks pinched and neurotic. An attempt to do something interesting with "Is this a dagger" - the fantastical dagger is a shadow cast by a cross on an altar - falls flat due to Connery's poor delivery and sloppy direction, which mars the production throughout. We accompany Lady MacBeth back into the murder chamber, where she gets to stab the reviving Duncan, but the effect is comic, not dramatic.

Big scenes are botched - the appearance of Banquo at the feast is made incomprehensible through attempts to mix subjective rendering of MacBeth's delusion with what those around him see, or don't see. The second meeting with the witches is even less coherent, and the prophetic visions are confusing. Timing seems to be an issue here - Banquo's banquet is the centrepoint of the play, but the film moves rapidly towards conclusion after it, giving it an unbalanced feel and no scope for the intricacies of the riddles MacBeth is caught in to be appreciated, or for his descent into madness to be convincing. Another crucial cut is the scene where Malcolm tests MacDuff, and MacDuff learns of the murder of his family. This robs his revenge of most of its emotional force - and the character of a lot of the screen time. He's a virtual stranger when he turns up to kill MacBeth.

A point for trying. MacTavish's Banquo earns another. The first few minutes garners another. But that's all. From then on it's sound and fury blah blah blah.


I had high hopes for this production, being one of my favourite works.

Indeed, a lot of it is reasonable: Helen Baxendale is not a bad Lady Macbeth, but lacks the devilry which the original character is infused with. Many of the minor characters do well, and the Scottish settings are superb.

The big disappointment to me is Jason Connery in the title role: he seems to be reading his lines off a cue card with the wrong glasses - surely for the first time, as well. He can do so much better. Any production when compared to the sublime Ian McKellen (Macbeth 1979)who to my mind gave the gold standard performance, is going to struggle to be appreciated, but I actually fell asleep and had to rewind this one before I could get through it - hardly a great sign.

Honestly, one to Avoid.


I have just watched this "latest" version of Macbeth and was pleasantly surprised with the solid acting and obvious effort that had to turn a low budget historical piece into a fully fledged watchable movie.

One note however, the music was very lame and added nothing to the intensity of the film and sounded like someone with a keyboard and a bunch of samplers as opposed to a full orchestral score. I think Paul Farrer needs to get his act together!!!


Jason Connery is not an actor; he is the son of an actor. His Macbeth is the worst I have ever seen. Oh yes, he murders king Duncan, but he also kills William Shakespeare. His wife is even worse. Please, give me Polanski's version on DVD, so I can forget this monster. Jon Finch, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, there you have ACTORS!


If you are a Catalan nationalist anarcho-socialist with unnuanced reverence for the mythologies of the Spanish republic, this movie may be for you. Two brothers, real-life ones (one of them being Marc Recha himself), re-enact a fictional version of a real-life journey they had made through the spectacular Catalan countryside, and history is evoked (pans of bullet-holed walls, artillery booms on the soundtrack) but not shown. There is very little dialog, and most of it is incidental: the story is told in a third-person voice-over, the voice being that of an actress impersonating the real-life sister of the real-life brothers. The images have little to do with what story line there is, which isn't much. Many are stunning, brooding pans across stark semi-arid mountains and rivers (think Terrence Malick or Gus Van Sant -- there's not a little of both "Gerry" and "Last Days" here), interspersed with some stunning still images and motionless frames. These are best enjoyed within the film's superb natural sound environment and without the ultimately tedious narration or even the occasional background music (some quite good, some rather odd, but all gratuitous). The best of what this movie has to say is said in these sequences, with their occasional comment-less inclusion of power stations and dams.

The relationship between the brothers is left sketchy and generic; a major character is a man-biting catfish, never shown. The more the Catalano-nationalist anarcho-whateverist commitments of the director are suggested, the more the film's richer, unspoken message is subverted and the more irritatingly narcissistic the experience becomes. Though the director said at the NYFF screening that the film was conceived from the beginning with its third-person narrative, I'd like to see a version of it without the narrative or the music and with only the natural soundtrack and minimalist dialog -- the result might be more moving, and would in any case not be that much less baffling.

Meantime, this is most likely the only film you will see this year in which a guy strides into the frame with a cloth object (the bathing suit he had been wearing?) dangling from his penis. This is one of the few moments in the whole movie in which your interest is (sorry) pricked by something that's actually happening on screen (what is that? why's it hanging there?), but, as usual, no answers are provided. Very Warholian, very sixties, and a not a little tiresome.


The most irritating thing about "Dies d'agost" (August Days) is not simply that NOTHING HAPPENS in this film but that director Marc Recha has the nerve to pretend that this film is some sort of homage to leftist Catalan journalist Ramon Barnils. Unless mentioning Barnils' name a few times constitutes an "homage," this pretense is an utter fraud. You will learn virtually nothing about Barnils in this film nor about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) nor about the special role of Catalunya in that war. You also will not learn about the collective punishment inflicted on the heroic Catalan people for years afterward by the victorious and vindictive Franco.

The footage of the Catalan countryside is very beautiful, of course, but "Dies d'agost" does not have an extensive and varied enough collection of such scenes to qualify as a travelogue. The large number of stills shown -- not very illuminating images of the forest floor, for example -- is the clearest indication of the paucity of ideas here. The aimless drift of brothers Marc and David during their camping trip does not produce compelling cinema. On the contrary, one's strongest impression is of a film made by and for spaced-out, middle-aged hippies. Don't waste your time. Read a good book about the Spanish Civil War instead. (I recommend Felix Morrow's scathingly anti-Stalinist "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain," which contains a gripping account of the 1937 Barcelona Uprising.)

Barry Freed


Forced, cloying, formulaic. Do these adjectives make you want to run to rent his? Miriam Hopkins was brilliant in the original "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde." A few other early movies of hers, notably "The Story of Temple Drake," are never shown but said to be excellent.

Here, she is cutesy, bossy, and thoroughly unappealing. Ray Milland as a Greeniwch Village bohemian not at all convincing.

The two child performers are creepy and also bear no relation to the Village as it was then.

Speaking as a native of Greenwich Village, I find the setting ersatz, generic, and phony. Not that I was around for a couple generations but my relatives were there in 1937. It isn't funny. It isn't remotely authentic. We don't care about the characters.

So many movies were made about the struggling masses vs the capitalists at this time, and done with elan. "Easy Living" comes to mind. It didn't take place in the Village. But it rings very true. This rings with a thudding knell.


Pat O'Brien portrays Knute Rockne, the All-American Notre Dame football coach. No doubt, this film will be considerably more appealing to those interested in some aspect of "Knute Rockne All-American Notre Dame Football" - probably, it's most interesting to serious followers of football and/or Notre Dame football. You will see some good documentary-style film footage.

Otherwise, it's difficult to recommend this as a FILM. It's not much more than an historical document. You'll "know" the end is near when Gale Page gets a chill - and, don't blink or you'll miss Ronald Reagan doing, of all things, "Camille"!

*** Knute Rockne - All-American (1940) Lloyd Bacon ~ Pat O'Brien, Gale Page, Ronald Reagan


Maybe this wowed them in the 50's, but this is one of those flicks that doesn't age well. It's got that preachy, earnest, downtrodden working man vibe of a 2nd rate Rod Serling live TV "Playhouse" broadcast. The "plot" is by the book, the Cassevetes character's troubled background seems tacked-on, and the love interest is unconvincing and half-hearted.

Sidney Portier gives an OK performance, but man he sure was an annoying, haughty snot. If I had to work with this guy in a warehouse I'd probably want to hit him with a grappling hook too. Jack Warden is good, because as usual, he plays Jack Warden.

Like 90% of the films rated on IMDb (whether they are classics, mediocre or crapola) somehow this one gets rated with 7-point-some-stars. It is in no way deserving of that. Save your time


a real hoot, unintentionally. sidney portier's character is so sweet and lovable you want to smack him. nothing about this movie rings true. and it's boring to boot.


Very resistible but ultimately harmless film version of the children's literary classic which incorporates an animated portion in the style of MARY POPPINS (1964) and BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971). The human cast is very distinguished - James Mason, Billie Whitelaw, David Tomlinson, Joan Greenwood, Bernard Cribbins - but their roles range from the miscast (a 69 year-old Mason as a thieving chimney-sweep!) to the inconsequential (Greenwood as a befuddled aristocrat) to the bizarre (Whitelaw plays several 'exotic' characters - including a circus performer, an old hag, a maid and a fairy - for no apparent reason).

The animated segment of the film, handled by a group of East-European animators, is hardly inspired but mildly enjoyable in itself and, as usual, with this type of thing, there is an assortment of songs one has to put up with, one of which in particular is reprised far too often for its own good. The film was directed by noted character actor Jeffries who had previously directed (far more successfully) other children's films namely THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (1970) and THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN (1972; which I've yet to watch myself but which was released some time ago on R2 DVD by Anchor Bay UK).


I was 12 when this film was released and adored it. The song's were inspiring and it made me feel good, watching it several time's at the cinema. I actually had the soundtrack album and played the song's over and over.

26 years later...I'm ashamed. Just sat and watched it with my 2 daughters who enjoyed it lot's but my cynical older grown up eyes hated it. It's very poorly directed in many places and considering it was Lionel Jeffries directing I really wanted to enjoy it. The character animation was so rough yet the backgrounds were quite good. I remember the critics at the time saying that it was a poor film and was horrified but now I agree.

It is an old film yes, compared to what can be achieved now, maybe that's why I thought it was good then. But that does not excuse it for it's poor acting, directing and sloppiness. The main child actor's voice seem's dubbed which is very distracting too. Can't quite see what they were trying achieve when it was being made, all that it become was a weak film.


Classic author C.S. Lewis once wrote an essay stating that no children's story is worth the reading, viewing etcetera if it can only be enjoyed by children. I'd say this film is an easy one to hold up as a defence of his argument.

Around the age of five or six, I loved it, tracked it down only three or four years later and found it to be wet, poorly animated, dully and confusingly written, and with distressingly repetitive and awful songs (I'm looking t you, hi-cockalorum), showing a production aiming at joyful silliness and whimsy, but resulting with an ugly, twee, frustrating mess.

By all means, show this to your infant, but I would heartily recommend that you don't buy a copy or attempt to sit in on the viewing. If you want something set in the same era but with genuine charm and wit, go after 'Oliver Twist' or the BBC's brilliant adaptation of 'The Box of Delights'.


this is a dreadful adaption of Charles Kingsley's story. The animation is, to put it bluntly, awful. And the songs are a disgrace to film songs, epsecially the "high cockororim" song, which they keep repeating. I feel sorry for Jon Pertwee and David Jason, 2 of Britain's finest talents, providing the voice for the depressing animation sequence. Bernerd Cirbbins tries his best to perform in this awful production ,but fails.

Avoid this film at all costs, even if it is the last film on this planet!


I loathe, despise, and hate this film with a passion that makes the red hot gates of hell look cold by comparison. it's nothing but a campy, frightening, and completly shoddy trip down memory lane to that oh-so-nasty time, the 70's, a decade im glad i wasnt a part of if this absolute trite is all that was on offer!

the animation is sickeningly dated, not least of all with it's tacky, missing frames, and characters with huge, bulbous heads, this film is an eye-sore. from the knowing, snide nod to the parents with the freakily gay sea horse, and it's camp hand motions and kenneth williams-esque voice, to the overtly, unsubtly druggy anthem, High Cockalorum, this film, im sad to say, is one that was forced upon me as a child and i have never fully recovered from the terror it caused me....

This ghastly display of complete terribleness should carry an R rated certificate, so disturbing it is in it's contents!


This is a painfully slow story about the last days of 1999 when a strange disease breaks out and... I stopped caring. This is suppose to be about two people who live over or under each other in an apartment complex. There's a leak and a plumber put a hole in the man's floor so you can see into the woman's below apartment. Also since there is a crisis going on much of the dialog is actually news reports...

Sounds promising?

Not really.

I became distracted and started doing other things which is deadly in a subtitled film. Basically I started not watching, which made events seem even more surreal when I did look up.

It may work for you, it didn't for me.


My Wife and Kids was billed as the 00s very own Cosby show- but unlike the latter, it was unfunny and unwatchable. In fact, it is so poorly written and some of the jokes revolve around Michael mickey taking Michael Jr's dumbness and the fact that he is such a loser- which got more and more tedious and annoying as the show went on.

What was supposed to have been a promising hit, eventually turned into a dumb, silly show later on where the ideas became so OTT and ridiculous. And as for the second Claire, i ended up disliking this character so much: she became a spoilt, childish and moaning teenage brat, in most of the later episodes.

MWAK was no Cosby show trend setter, rather it was just a poor black sitcom by general standards.


I never really started watching the show until it was canceled and started showing re-runs. I actually enjoyed it for the first to third season. Once I saw the fourth and fifth one I was beginning to get irate. The first problem was that they did that irrelevant, scenario of history repeating itself (Jr having a kid like his parents did). The second had to be the one where they had everyone paired up with someone (ex: Katie and franklin) . The third one was when they made Jr even more idiotic than before which was beginning to be tedious and vexing to the point where I wanted to go into the T.V. and beat the stupidity out of him until he's unconscious . The fourth one had to be that zealous dork that Clarie claimed as a boyfriend. The fifth one had to be Katie, she was beginning to be too good for herself and was treated her "boyfriend" Franklin like the pushover he was. The last but not least was Noah Gray-Cabey!! Franklin, Franklin was just scary. It was like watching a terrible combination of Urkle and TJ Henderson only more annoying!!! They seriously jumped the shark when came he to the show. There was little to no realism to his character and the way he laughed was a sign of obvious force showing that Noah can't act. Eveytime I saw that kid just made me want slap he silly. However, B.F.(before frank) this show was funny and very entertaining.


Lets be realistic here. This is one of the worst shows I have ever seen. My Wife and Kids showed real promise in its first season and only went down hill after that. It is so bad that words do not describe. The acting and writing are so dreadful on a consistent basis I wonder if Damon Wayans was producing such an atrocious show on purpose. From top to bottom every performance is ridiculous. Damon Wayans completely phones it in and George Gore II is so horrible I cringe at every over-acted line. Can anyone really watch this show and find it to be entertaining let alone funny? Please I implore you. Do not watch this show. As soon as TV affiliates stop picking this up in syndication we can finally be rid of this absolute garbage.


This is probably the most irritating show I have ever seen in my entire life. It is indescribably the most annoying and idiotic show I have ever seen. Everything about it is just bad.

Synopsis: Different situation comes up each week for the parent to handle their kids.

I could not understand, what kind of idiot would produce this mess in the first place not to mention several season. The script is bad, very bad  it contains both cheesiness and unethical joke that you normally see in rated R or NC-17 movie. Especially for the young boy character where all he does is pleasuring himself, is that what one called family show humor? The casting is also horrible, cause all you see is a really really BAD Actors, period.

Final Word: This Show is a real torture!! This show provides an image of how irresponsible parent can be (using power wrongly rather than understanding). It is zillion times away from reality. Listen to Kenny G would be a god sends compare to this. Watching washing machine twirling around wouldn't hurt your eyes as much as this show.

Rating: 0/10 (Grade: Z)

Note: The Show Is So Bad That Even Mother Of The Cast Pull Her Daughter Out Of The Show.


I jumped for joy to learn this show ended. This show's characters were extremely irritating. None of them had one singing redeeming quality. Damon Wayans is probably the most standable one. Kisha Campbell is... Kisha Campbell. She's just as annoying as she was in Martin.

The kids are all very annoying as well. The oldest is an idiot, the oldest girl is a stuck up brat, and the youngest is frustrating to listen to.

I guess I did like the intelligent little boy. But that's about it.

It did the world a favor by ending.

Let's pray that a Wayan never stars in another show... EVER.


I give the show a six because of the fact that the show was in fact a platform for Damon Wayans as the Cosby Show was for Bill Cosby, it dealt with a lot of issues with humor and I felt that it in fact tailored to getting a laugh as opposed to letting the jokes come from the character.

Michael Kyle An interesting patriarch and a wisecracking person. He is PHENOMENAL in movies, but in the show he was there for the wisecrack and though I loved it, I felt that the laugh was more important than plausibility.

Jay Kyle I have loved her since House Party and have enjoyed her in School Daze and Martin, this was a great role for her and she made a great choice in picking this sitcom to co-star in. I also feel that Jay and Michael were more like equals in the show but Jay was more the woman who fed her crazy husbands the lines and went along with his way of unorthodox discipline because she may have felt that it worked

Jr Just plain stupid, his character should have been well developed and even though he does have his moments of greatness, we are returned to the stupidity as if he learned nothing, which drives me nuts!!!!!!!! Not to mention that most of the situations (in episodes I've seen) seems to center around him

Clair The attractive sister who dated a Christian, I found her boyfriend's character to be more interesting than she was (she'd be better off sticking to movies, the writers should have done more to show her intelligence but it's not stereotypical enough)

Kady Lovable and the youngest daughter. I think the writers established her character most on the show aside from the parents and Franklin

Franklin I LOVE this character and I think they derived it from Smart Guy (T.J. Mowry) which only lasted one season. They did a great job of casting for this little genius (the effort would have been made if Jr would have been the smart one but show the down sides also)

All in all, this sitcom is a wonderful thing and it's homage to the Cosby Show is well done, I love the show and wished it would have stayed on longer than that. I can't wait to see the series finale


Dull one-note characters with next to no development, unimpressive performances by people who sound like they're simply reading lines, and ludicrous special effects combine to make this a genuine stinker. The story begins with eminently bland commando Russo and his fellow soldiers attacking an Al-Qaeda training base. The scene tells us that Al-Qaeda has recently come to seek an ultimate weapon, and also serves to illustrate Russo's only character trait, a tendency to eschew teamwork. With the help of a collection of blank slates and walking stereotypes, including a Russian spy, Russo travels to Chechnyan territory to catch a mad scientist working for the terrorists. Along the way, they encounter vast hordes of flesh-eating bats that fly in broad daylight for some reason. From there, the movie becomes nothing more than a dragging morass of ridiculous action, including a scene in which a swarm of bats slices a soldier's arm off!


An elite American military team which of course happens to include two good looking women and a guy who can't quite grasp teamwork, lots of bats, some terrorists, and a Spetznaz team that acts like the gang that can't shoot straight -- all thrown together in a jumbled plot with mediocre acting. This one has nothing much going for it. The characters are not compelling. Even the setting, which has great possibilities, looks like something out of the middle of rural Pennsylvania, not an exotic Boreal forest in Eastern Europe.

The bats are certainly ferocious looking. They can even pick up a man and fly with him for a few feet (harpies?) or chop off an arm. You see Delta force surrounded by hundreds of bats with a guys shooting assault rifles and pistols at them and bat flopping to the ground. It would be like trying to shoot skeet with a rifle from a distance of 3 feet. Utterly clueless. The dialogue is rancidly unrealistic, with boy/girl jokes and flirts in the middle of tense parts of the mission. One of the team is blown up by a mine and the first one on the scene just stares sadly at his body, stunned, not even bothering to take cover or secure the area. In fact AFTER the rest of the group shows up he talks about how the area is laid out like a minefield -- thanks for the heads up bub.

If you want a contrast in how a horror movie involving a small military group can be done well on a low budget check out Outpost. Harvest is not the movie you want to see. In fact I think I'm going to give it a two instead of a three if I can make it through the second half. Seems unlikely at this point.


I have yet to watch the first entry in this series, however, fortunately, I was still able to follow the complex and intricate plot, with all its unexpected twists and turns, and I applaud them for the utter originality of the concepts herein. In case there is any confusion, let me leave no doubt as to the fact that everything I've just said is coated in pure, carefully nurtured sarcasm, the kind that flourishes and grows exponentially when exposed to crap like this flick. A clear sign that this is unimpressive is that it was directed by a visual effects creator, whose only other credit in that field is a Henry Rooker film that wasn't well received. The acting is average at best, and I defy anyone to not find... Scottish computer-woman(come on, seriously, what is with that last name?)'s Russian accent laughable and/or irritating. There is an attempt or two at stylization in this, and they are reasonable. The action isn't terrible. Cinematography and editing are fine. The music is cool enough. Language is infrequent, if even that. Violence is fairly bloody. I recommend this solely to fans of B-movies, and I will say that you can do worse than this. 1/10


Okay, I can sit through almost any movie, and I tend to get a real kick out of Sci Fi Originals, but there was a major flaw in this movie that made me have to turn it off half an hour into it.

Having served in the US Army, there are certain expectations in a movie including the military. At least some semblance of attention to proper military rank, uniform, and terminology is necessary if you expect a viewer to actually enjoy the experience. "Bats: Human Harvest" had characters wearing rank that was facing the wrong direction on the lapel and, later in the movie, the time was listed as 11:00 hours, but it was full dark outside. Even if the script was perfectly done, and the dialogue spectacular, and the acting Oscar-worthy, if the people making the movie don't care enough about the movie to even bother to look up the proper way to display military time, why should anybody bother to attempt to watch it?


This movie over does it on the cgi i mean sci-fi really they over did it the original '' BATS'' is better it does not use cgi like the sequel. in this movie its the simple people running from mutated killer bats. and really bats in Afghanistan?! the plot involves u.s army soldiers finding a terrorist and being attack by bats and dying<_< but the reason i gave this movie 3 stars is because the way the camera zooms in on the soldiers. the acting is bad and this doesn't even look like a horror movie. in all this movie is a fairly good TV movie for sci-fi channel. but if like sci-fi's movies you'll like this movie because you just like channel 43 oh and if you fall asleep during the movie don't be surprised. oh sorry i think i give it 2 stars instead.


A child-like puppeteer, for a public access children's show, goes over the deep end when he discovers kids he entertains at a hospital were victims of horrible abuse. This movie has some of the worst indescribably monstrous parents you could ever come across. Not an exploitation film as much as an afterschool special on the dangers of child abuse. Seemingly harmless, Mr. Rabby takes matters into his own hands when it seems the police are neutered by lack of evidence to convict loathsome parents of their terrible abuse towards their children. The children are emotionless and zombie-like(..due to the amount of abuse inflicted upon them), the parents loud, inconceivably harsh, contemptible, and belligerent. The mothers, in particular, are so obscene, you'll root for their execution. They are essentially miserable people taking out their frustrations on the kids. Our detectives are a tired lot, frustrated with the whole judicial process, how police procedure is often unable to prosecute those who beat their kids into submission. While the crimes themselves are heinous, the film doesn't explicitly elaborate the grisly activity on screen. I'd say the reason to see this is for Tom Basham's performance as the unbalanced man-child who slips into psychosis. There's quite a weird dinner table sequence between Basham's Mr. Rabbey and his guardian shortly after he murdered the parents responsible for the death of their child, regarding how he lives in a fantasy and how what he had just done has left an indelible mark(..notice the changes in behavior, pretty impressive work, going from innocent to creepy). Peter Renaday is Lt. Hayes, the detective in charge of the homicides cases, expressing on his face the strain that is taking it's toll on him. There's an early performance by John Ashton as detective Matthews, always raising the ire of Hayes because of his inability to follow directions, not to mention how opinionated he is regarding the parents abusing their kids. Awkward laid-back bluesy score that seems improper for a film such as this. Controversial conclusion establishing that even kids can only tolerate so much. A bit too slow moving for my tastes, but there's an effective use, I felt, of Basham's eyes before he takes care of business, waiting patiently as he prepares to strike.


When this movie was made in 1980, I was a teenager in the football stands playing as part of the audience. This was done at Mooseheart, Illinois. The big letters spelling out "MOOSEHEART" at the top of the stands were covered up with a banner in the movie. The director would tell us to cheer loudly at certain points, as if a touchdown was being made. St. Charles juvenile correction center is a real place less than 30 miles from Mooseheart, although I think it may have closed down recently. During one scene, they show a black woman and a white man in the audience watching the game. Right below them, you can see my sister Noel's head (she was 11 at the time). In the VHS version, I can only see the top of her head, but when I saw it on TV in 1981 I could see her whole head and my sister Jacqui as well.

I thought the movie itself was OK for a made for TV movie. Since there's already a description of the movie here, I need not repeat it. It's worth seeing at least once.


I don't know if this type of movie was as cliché then as it seems to be now.

Considering how many "Bad News Bears" films had already been released by 1980, however, I think that this sort of movie was already a tired idea.

A former football player is partially paralyzed in Vietnam and is confined to a wheelchair. The Chicago Bears offer him a PR job but he wants to coach. At the same time, his underage nephew is picked up for armed robbery. We are told that he has already been arrested over a dozen times before and he must now serve some hard time...which turns out to be less than a year!

Of course, the kid is actually a good kid who only needs a tough male role model in his life. The same goes for all of the kids in the detention facility. Yes...even the one locked up for attempted murder! I'm sure you already know what happens so I'll try and keep the rest of this brief.

Our protagonist becomes the coach of the kids' football team. He overcomes the delinquents' cynicism and earns their respect. His team faces off against a local high school team (yeah right!) and they get their butts kicked. Now determined more than ever to prove himself a worthy coach, he demands a rematch. Will these underprivileged, scrappy kids with hearts of gold be able to improve enough to win the rematch? Awful execution of the football sequences ruins any possibility of excitement in this film. "Coach Of The Year" should get penalized for roughing my brain. 1/10


Like another reviewer, my wife bought this movie as part of a 20 movie family pack. I guess you could say that this was a decent made-for-TV movie for 1980, but it is super-predictable and the acting, except for Robert Conrad, is generally sub-par. The football scenes are nothing special and seem to mainly act as filler for the movie. The movie is very dated now, but a decent remake could probably make this into a good movie. However, is that really necessary? I mean, how many "underdog sports team works together for the big game with the undefeated guys" movies do we really need? This is probably a good movie for your younger kids if you find it in the bargain bin, but a sports movie buff will find it lacking.


I received this movie in a pack called "50 all-star Movies" for $18 (45 cents each). Many are good. This one was terrible. It was a hackneyed retread done 1000 times before and each time better. A crippled ex-jock is dared to coach a team made up of juvenile delinquents. They learn from him that they can make it if they play by the rules. I'm sure the kids and the locals were thrilled to be included in a "real TV movie", but I can't imagine what the folks that launched and produced this project figured they could bring to this already over beaten subject. I kept waiting to see that 'new twist' or 'new angle' but, honest, it doesn't come. Avoid this movie. Forget about the 45 cents, I want the 96 minutes of my life back.


What a truly moronic movie, all I can say is the writer must be very fond of magic mushrooms and LSD because this must be the result of one of his 'trips'.

You follow the whole movie thinking alright this is very weird but hey I'm sure at the end there will be a perfectly good explanation for all of this... Only to be disappointed to find erm no there's no explanation at all and the twist at the end makes it even more confusing. At the end of the movie you'll probably have the same facial expression as if you were standing in a Que paying for you groceries and the merchant told you, that'll be 11.95 please and proceeded to elbow you in the balls for no apparent reason. There are so many factors in this movie that go unexplained and I think it leaves it to the imagination of the viewer in an entirely bizarre way. Don't get me wrong I like weird movies, 'The Cell' could easily be described as weird and twisted but in my eyes it's a brilliant movie (despite casting J-Lo who I dislike to the maximum even that didn't manage to sway my opinion). This isn't one of those movies, and I think you should take in to consideration the characters of those who praise this movie. I can tell you they are probably the sort of people that would go to an art exhibition, see a splat of pigeon excrement on a white board and say "Oooooh what a masterpiece, the artist has truly found a unique way to portray eternity" when in actual fact all it is, is bird excrement on a board.

Keep that last bit in mind when watching this movie,

Thanks for reading!


This movie seems a little clunky around the edges, like not quite enough zaniness was thrown it when it should have been. But I mostly enjoyed it.

The storyline is more than a little bit preposterous, so no expectation of "something real" should be included in your viewing experience. Check your brain in at the door. It will not be needed and might be an impediment otherwise.

I quite enjoyed Clennon's performance as the real Dr. Baird. His role was spot on for giving Aykroyd's character a protagonist. What a putz the real Dr. Baird was.

And Matthau was quite good as the lead character's sidekick. Annoying at first, but ultimately lovable. Sort of. Kind of. Or at least something the use of a bar of soap and a lot of water would have been more than helpful.

Actually worth watching? If you're in the mood for a spoof on the psychiatric profession, sure, why not.


This was an 1970s-type irreverent comedy, poking fun at the psychiatric profession and at Beverly Hills. I didn't mind that but I did object to more that irreverence regarding marriage and religion: two topics which secular filmmakers (meaning about everyone in Hollywood and elsewhere) just can't stop trashing.

Walter Matthau plays a scuzzy character, "Donald Becker," who walks around with a cleric's collar on, which offends me but when has Hollywood ever been worried about offending Christians?

Anyway, despite that nonsense the film has its entertaining moments and even some charm to it. Dan Aykroyd is good at paying a nut-case and Donna Dixon ("Laura Rollins") is a knockout. I am sorry she didn't have a bigger role.


I should have known better..the clues were all over IMDB.com. This flick was written and directed by the same guy who has no track record. The cast is a bunch of unknowns with the possible exception of Joe Estevez who seems to specialize in bad movies. Etc. Suffice it to say, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to see this awful, amateurish attempt at film making. Turn on any broadcast channel at 3am and you'll see better movies. Nuff said.


Tommy Lee Jones was the best Woodroe and no one can play Woodroe F. Call better than he. Not only was he the first and best, he was the only person that could portray his grief and confusion. It was a bad let-down and I'm surprised I even made myself watch it. I can even begin how how pitiful they made Woodroe. I understand he would be old by that time, but everyone knows that he would NEVER let that pull him down. The first movie was the best and the only one that I'll ever watch. I hope to God that no more directors plan on continuing or remaking the wonderful classic without Tommy or Duval. Without them, the movies are pointless wastes of time and money for everyone, including the director. IF YOU PLAN ON MAKING ANOTHER LONESOME DOVE MOVIE OF ANY KIND, take mine and billions of others, don't waste time. Continuing the movies is just grinding the first one into the ground. Thanks.


This is probably my least favorite episode. I lived in Cape Girardeau for quite some time. I can tell you there is no ocean or shrimp boats, fresh crab or scallops anywhere near Missouri. Cape Girardeau is the only inland Cape, it's on the Mississippi River. It looked like the license plates were from Mississippi, which may explain why there was so much racial tension. Missouri and Mississippi are 2 completely different states that don't touch one another. There are many roads in and out of town and none of them are Route 6 or Route 666. This whole inaccuracy was very distracting. Also, Cassie did not seem like someone who would want to hang around Dean if she was well educated. I did not buy them as a couple and didn't enjoy the lengthy love scene. Jo was more Dean's style.


André Roussin was a specialist of what the French call "Theatre de Boulevard" : plays where you find the eternal triangle:man/wife/(male or female)lover .Many of his plays gave Elvire Popesco some of her best parts on stage....and the great actress was the main reason to watch them,for Roussin is not Sacha Guitry ,by a long shot.The French audience remembers "Au Theatre Ce Soir' .

Still with me? Roussin's plays were not made to be filmed.And this one is pretty mediocre material ,even if the screenwriters call Lewis Carroll to their rescue .I like Stewart Granger and David Niven ,and Ava Gardner is eye candy .But this might be their worst film ,being crude, predictable -even the native's (Bola -Bola )intervention is ludicrous- a knockabout farce around a Menage à Trois on a desert island where Granger would be some kind of Robinson,Niven ,his Friday and Gardner his girl Friday.


Linda Arvidson (as Jennie) and Harry Solter (as Frank) are enjoying a romantic tryst, when in walks her father Charles Inslee; furious, he chases Mr. Solter out of the house. Undaunted, he goes to her balcony and begs her to elope. Ms. Arvidson is agreeable, and goes to pack. Then, burglar George Gebhardt arrives to rob the place. Though he doesn't get much in the way of booty, thieving Gebhardt manages to use Arvidson's trunk to escape from the police

A Contrived Comedy. Note, during the balcony scene, Solter goes off-camera, so burglar Gebhardt can enter the house undetected. And, Arvidson travels very light, since there appears to be nothing in her heavy trunk; perhaps she just wanted to buff up beau Solter? Director D.W. Griffith, Robert Harron, and Florence Lawrence are illustrious extras.

** A Calamitous Elopement (8/7/08) D.W. Griffith ~ George Gebhardt, Linda Arvidson, Harry Solter


Where to start, where to start....hmmm...well how about some of the stiffest, most unnatural, unbelievable and camped-up performances one can imagine? How about stereotypical "characters", situations and locations? Or what about a manipulative, cloying, utterly wretched script? I can't think of one element in this movie that was original, worthy of watching or interesting.

Note to all you Josh Hartnett/Chris Klein/LeeLee Sobieski fans - enjoy their collective fifteen minutes, folks, because they're not going to be famous much longer...


Life is too short to waste on two hours of Hollywood nonsense like this, unless you're a clueless naiive 16 year old girl with no sense of reality and nothing better to do. Dull characters, poor acting (artificial emotion), weak story, slow pace, and most important to this films flawed existence-no one cares about the overly dramatic relationship.


******************SPOILER********************SPOILER******************** This movie stunk. Just let me say now that I totally agree with what carissaphillips had to say about this. What was Sam thinking? She was with a guy who told her he loved her (3 times in total), was EXTREMELY HOT, and stuck with her though her trying times (Josh Hartnett). But, she decided to break up with him, no, cheat on him with a snobby,ugly, spoiled, rich-brat jerk loser who never said he loved her in the entire movie(oh wait, he wrote it on the wall, does that count?), and left her in her time of need because he was scared (Chris LOSER Klein). Who would you want to be with? The only reason I sat through the entire movie was because it had Josh Hartnett in it and hoping that maybe she would die at the end. I wanted Jasper to get another girlfriend who was actually worthy of him. The whole "your mom" thing was funny. I enjoyed it. I hate it when people around here say it but I think that Kelley deserved it. Jasper should have said it to Sam as well, she needed a good slap. How the romance started is a mystery to me. They never said anything to each other anyway so I don't understand how they got together. "I was thinking about the cheese sandwich you gave me...did it have mustard or mayonnaise or....." Oh what a come on. The supposedly romantic lines were so stupid. Plus he's sosososososososo UGLY! I must admit, I did cry in this movie. For a long time, really hard. Not because she died, but because she broke Jasper's heart. He cried in this movie so many times...he tried to smile for her but he couldn't stop the tears. He cried when 1) He told her he loved her 2) She got sick 3) Chris Klein came back and he saw how happy she was w/ him 4) she died. I cried when he cried because he loved her her entire life, and told her, and yet she was dumb enough to not care and love a guy who left her in her time of need, and who DID NOT CRY at the funeral. 1 1/2 stars only because I LOVE JOSH HARTNETT! Oh by the way Chris Klein, YOUR MOM! -Wiley's sis


This comes close to the worst movie I've ever seen. The writer starts you out in a way that you'll side with Jasper (Josh Hartnett). When he did absolutely nothing wrong, Sam (Leelee Sobiesky) leaves him for Kelley (Chris Klein), in a way that leaves you mad at Sam. You aren't let in on what she feels, so her feelings with Kelley aren't real to you, and their relationship is phony. It drags you in either direction, and it gets rather exhausting and annoying. The only good thing about this movie that I saw was the cast.


I'm not sure why I disliked this film so much. Maybe I'm too old or too male or too something. Just who was the target audience here? If you're it and you liked it, then I'm happy for you. Personally, I found it a bit of a pill. The characters were uninteresting and unlikeable, the script was just plain embarrassing and some, though not all, of the acting was uninspired. Mawkish, tedious and occasionally nauseating -- Surely there's something better on.

On a related issue: Why is it that whenever I see Chris Klein in a film I get an urge to slap him silly? Does anyone else get that?


I watched this on cable because I was a big Leelee fan. Big mistake. What a horrible film. You don't care one bit for any of the characters in the movie. Chris Klein plays a guy who is a complete jerk in the film, and steals away Josh Hartnett's longtime girlfriend. If the writer knew what they were doing, this film would have followed the proven formula, and made Hartnett an ass, and Leelee as the girlfriend trapped in a bad relationship, from which she's saved by Klein. But Hartnett is a really cool guy, who shows a lot of emotion and love for Leelee.

You then hate leelee, because she cheats on Hartnett with Klein, who is a jerk to everyone in the town that's trying to help him and really stuck up.

It's also really campy, and the characters do everything but run around the kitchen dancing and lip synching, and using hairbrushes and spoons and fake microphones (although they come very close).

What a horrible horrible movie. You don't even care what happens in the end because the director never lets you care about the characters.


I rented this movie the other day b/c I love romance stories, but this has got to be the worst one I have ever seen in my life. I find it hard to believe that Sam would fall in love with Kelley after they've said hardly no more than 2 words to each other when she has a great long-time boyfriend who's devoted to her completely. I thought Kelley was a major jerk throughout the movie, and he never changed at all. The only good thing about the movie was Josh Hartnett. I thought he did a wonderful acting job, and I'm going to start watching more movies of his.


One can always tell if I'm enjoying a movie by the number of times I cross my legs, switch positions, make slight rustling noises, etc., etc. The lesser = the better. I moved so many times throughout this movie that I succeeded in knocking over my friends giant tub of popcorn and getting a huge thigh-strengthening workout.

Sobieski, a young actress who at some points in "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" gave some promise for her thespian talents, played poorly in a poorly-written part. Depressing fact number one. Number two: Chris Klein was in it. Depressing fact number three: Chris Klein had lines. Number four: Chris Klein played a valedictorian. Woah. Dummies from rich families unite! Even worse, he actually tries to act, but only succeeds in sounding like a mentally disabled overactor in an increasingly sappy independent version of a Cecille B. DeMille film. Go back to humping your American Pies.

This movie was terrible in almost every sense, save Josh Hartnett's mildly endearing performance as LeeLee's stiffed boyfriend Jasper. Luckily, he refrains from trying to have too many "moments," unlike all the other characters. Of course, this is why he's much better than the rest and he actually shows some mettle here. If you like Josh or are thinking of casting a kid who knows a few things, he's your man.

Hartnett is a sharp actor, but the rest need no further lambasting.

2 out of 10 (for poor Hartnett in this terrible film)


Well, if you set aside the fact that this movie features abysmal acting; and, if you set aside the fact that the story is muddled and wanders off in about five different directions without ever deciding which way it really wants to go; and, if you set aside the fact that I didn't find a single scene in this movie that was remotely interesting; well, if you set all that aside, this is still a REALLY terrible movie!

I take it that this is supposed to be a love story about rich guy/poor girl. I never really understood for a moment how this romance between Kelley (Chris Klein) and Samantha (Leelee Sobieski) ever got started. The inexplicable romance is made worse by a complete lack of chemistry between Klein and Sobieski. The screenplay (by Michael Seitzman) is dull to the point of stupefying. How Seitzman managed to write the thing without falling asleep is a miracle; that he would think anyone would want to pay to see this is unbelievable.

Did I mention that this is a REALLY, REALLY terrible movie?

I'd give it a ZERO, but the IMDb doesn't provide for votes of ZERO. So I give it a one while holding my nose.


I had been waiting eagerly to see this movie, but when I finally got the chance, I was very disappointed. I had to stop half-way (or was it quarter-way?) because of the poor script and directing. Not to mention the poor cast! Josh Hartnett is the only one who can act, and he's much more suitable to be the hero of the story.

Well, basically the story is just about a loose girl from the country who cheated on her long-time decent boyfriend only to have meaningless sex with a spoiled rich brat. This movie failed to draw my sympathy, not even when the writer intended to. I wonder where the moral values go?

The actors are so stiff that when I resume the movie (few weeks after it was interrupted due to its boring nature), they still failed to make me pay attention. The spoiled couple can only disgust me! What a movie!

I think all the people involved in this production need to sit down and review it together so that they won't make the same mistakes next time round. And next time they might consider Josh Hartnett as the protagonist...


Ho hum. Rich good looking kid gets in trouble, poor girl falls in love with him, jealous ex-boyfriend causes tension.. yadda yadda. I actually laughed out loud in many parts of this movie because the next scene was so predictable and just plain stupid. As one scene moved on to the next, I often found myself wondering just how we got there, like I had skipped a few chapters in a book.

The script was pretty pitiful and didn't have me or my wife caring much about any of the characters, except the jilted boyfriend. Now, if the ex boyfriend had gotten an axe, and hacked apart the girl and rich kid, then.... then we would have a movie, and all the stupid dialog and leaps in plot could be acceptable. But, since this movie attempts to be touching and totally misses the boat (and ends up resorting to the romance equivalent of divine intervention to try and jerk a tear)... it just falls very very flat.

Avoid this movie. Clip your toenails instead, you will have more fun.


All I have to say is one word...SUCKS!!!!. The only reason I gave this a 2 is because Josh Hartnett was in it and he's cool. Should have beat that Klein guys ass...stupid dumb and brainless. By the end of this movie you can't stand Klein and you really don't care what happens to Leelee. Hartnett was the only good thing about it.


Interferencia starts as unemployed Martin Sanders (Andres Bagg) hears something strange on his phone, he hears a mysterious man talking to a prostitute named Diana & arranging to meet her. Soon after Martin reads a local paper & sees the front page story about a prostitute being murdered & thinks back to what he heard. Martin confides in his friends Laura (Virginia Lustig) & Aaron (Oliver Kolker) but they don't believe him. Then shortly after the same thing happens again, the phone call, the man, the prostitute & her death reported in the papers. Martin decides he has to find the killer & put a stop to his killing spree but who is it?

This Argentinian production that was apparently shot in just eight days (why so long?) on a budget of about $3,000 (why so much?) was written & directed by Sergio Esquenazi & I cannot believe some of the glowing comments Interferencia has on the IMDb. Out of 195 user ratings as I write this 113 of them rate this pile of crap 10 out of 10, I am sorry but there is no way anyone should be giving a film this bad a quite literally perfect score of 10 out of 10. If a score for a film on IMDb is fixed then this is it, I honestly don't believe that if you showed Interferencia to 195 average people that well over 100 of them would rate it as being absolutely perfect, no way on Earth. The user comments are also amazingly positive, all by IMDb users who have only wrote comments for one film, this. The one user (besides me) who has actually written more than one comment gave it a rock bottom 1 out of 10 which sounds just about right. Everyone is entitled to an opinion but I would stake my life on the fact most of those positive comments are from fake accounts set up purely to big this piece of crap up. Where do I start? How on Earth can I adequately describe how bad Interferencia is? The plot is a mess that basically lives or dies by it's terrible twists, while most twists turn a plot on it's head & alters the perspective of everything that has gone before in a clever & relevant way & are genuine surprises here in Interferencia the twists destroy the first half of the film & makes it utterly pointless in a 'it didn't actually happen' sort of way & the twist is so poorly handled that it leaves you asking more questions than it answers. What made Martin go mad? Why did he imagine the phone calls? Why did he imagine a killer? Why did he imagine the newspaper headlines? No explanation is given for Martin's behaviour during the first hour or so of the film, there's just this absurd revelation that it was all in his mind & that's it, that's all the exposition there is. Then there's a plot twist about Martin's missing wife & her lover before Martin for reasons unexplained starts to kill his friends for no apparent reason. I am sorry but Interferencia is so bad, it's so boring, it's so badly written & thought out that I honestly can't think of a positive thing to say about it. Sorry guy's but that's how I feel, quite simply Interferencia is one of the worst films I have ever seen & is a complete mess both conceptually & technically.

According to the IMDb Interferencia was hot in just eight days, to be honest it doesn't feel like that at all. Nope, it feels more like it was shot in five days! The whole film is an eyesore, Interferencia has probably the worst nighttime shooting I have ever seen. It's like no attempt was made to light the scenes, it's like the makers just went into a dark room or basement or whatever & just shoot the scene regardless of whether you could see anything. The scenes set outside in the daytime have this horrible unnatural blue green tint to them for no apparent reason which just looks daft & becomes increasingly irritating. This strange tint is not repeated on indoor scenes so they are also quite jarring & noticeable. There's no real horror or scares, in fact I would say Interferencia is more of a thriller than a horror. As far as gore goes there are two decapitated heads in a fridge, a knife is stuck in someones mouth & nothing else.

According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $3,000 which makes Interferencia one of the lowest budgeted films ever commercially released surely? Some people think just because a film is low budget all reasonable viewing standards should go out of the window & we should accept any old crap, wrong! To watch this on DVD you will still have to pay good money & I personally think we have the right to expect some sort of good product. If this can get released & praised like it's Oscar worthy then we can all release our holiday camcorder footage (including embarrassing karaoke footage & scenes of total blackness as we forgot to take off the lens cap) & win top prizes at the next Cannes film festival! The acting is awful although the female lead Virginia Lustig is actually rather sexy & helps ease the pain of the final twenty odd minutes as she features a fair bit.

Interferencia is an absolutely terrible film, seriously I beg you don't be fooled by all the fake positive comments, there is no way anyone not involved in this or have some sort of agenda is going to give it a 9 or 10 out of 10. An amateurish mess that is truly horrible to sit through. Sorry but that's the way I see it, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind... you have been warned!


Did you ever watch a really bad movie and get mad about it? Even a movie you didn't have high expectations for? Well I just rented the movie "Dead Line". This is the US video title for "Interferencia". Now I have seen a lot of bad movies, and watched a lot of "B" titles, but this is in another league all its own. It was put out on "The Asylum" label, and anyone that rents a lot of direct to video horror films knows this label. When you rent one of there's you know what your getting. A lot of marginal acting low budget horror, but usually still pretty good. Not this one. The acting by the three leads was beyond bad. Even fast forwarding couldn't help. The tag line on the front of the box says"..in the tradition of DePalma's Body Double. The nerve to compare this to that classic movie. The only true comment is "The screams you will hear are real". Yea you will be the one screaming if you rent this.


If it wasn't for Colin Firth, the movie would be ready for the dust bin! So foreseable, so silly and so badly acted!! Only Colin Firth, as always, shines through this mess as single light on the end of the tunnel!!

The worst was Jennifer Rubin's acting, for sure! Maybe it was because of this script (did they actually have really written one or was it just made up "on the way"???).

To cut a tooo long story short:

It is a MUST SEE only for Colin Firth Fanatics (like me) since he is incredibly sexy and good acting (struggling hard against this "mentally challenged" script). These minutes of Colin-Screen-Time make up a lot of this movie.

Don't spend too much money on it, though. Try to see or get it as cheap as possible (an auction or something like that) and then do stick to the Colin Firth scenes.

The rest of the movie might be dangerous for anyones mental health.


If you need a clue as to whether Playmaker is decent or not, look to its star, Colin Firth, who refers to it in an interview as "absolute rubbish -- I sincerely hope no one ever sees it."

The script and plot are ludicrous, the female lead is unconvincing. The only thing worthwhile is Colin Firth, and he seems slightly embarrassed throughout.

For diehard Firth fans only -- the shower scene alone is worth the $3.99 you might have to shell out, should you find it in a video cutout bin like I did.

I'm happy for Mr. Firth that his days of taking projects like this one are over!


Plunkett and MaCleane are two highwaymen that rob from the rich in order to give to ... well, the rich; comparatively, they ARE the rich. But we know they're the good guys because the chap behind the forces of law and order, a Mr. Chance, is just so evil. He rapes women - or tries to. He beats up his underlings. He commits murder. He has bad breath. He doesn't shave properly. He has no fashion sense. He tortures puppy dogs. That last one is just an inference of mine: we don't actually SEE him torture puppy dogs. But I'm sure he does. Little of Chance's villainy has much to do with his pursuit of Plunkett and MaCleane. It's just something he does in his spare time, a kind of a hobby he takes up to make absolutely certain that we don't like him. He needn't have tried so hard. No-one in this film is likeable.

Let's take stock. Appealing characters? There aren't any: I believe we've covered that. Swashbuckling? Not a swash. Instead we have a kind of grimy heavy-breathing. Dash? Sparkle? Vigour? All gone the way of swashbuckling, I'm afraid. Realism? None of that, either. I think they were TRYING for realism, since everyone was so filthy, but the characters and action had all the plausibility of Errol Flynn - with no sense of exhilaration to back them up. Beauty? Nope. Fine camera work? For a TV crew, perhaps. Humour? You might giggle once or twice if you're in a benevolent mood. Then again, you might not. Dialogue? See `humour', above. Music? Don't even get me STARTED on the music. The music in `Ladyhawk' was, by comparison, uncannily apt; and at least the misguided aesthetic of that score was a consistent one.

Ugh. I apologise to `Ladyhawk' for even THINKING about it in this context.

To sum up: there's much positive badness here and NOTHING good - unless you count Liv Tyler, which I'm in two minds about doing.

I feel as though I've just written a review of the pox. `Not very good,' the review says. It would be much more interesting if I could somehow DEFEND the pox, to claim that critics of the pox have got it all wrong - but I don't know how I'd go about doing that.


If you have few expectations, then this will entertain for 90 minutes. My problem is that they've dumbed down this tale for the modern audience. Highwaymen are already sexy, exciting characters. They don;t need the techno soundtrack and snappy dialogue.


Sorry this was a woeful excuse for a film.. a plot line so holey it resembled a block of swiss cheese and a butch of characters who seemed to me to be utterly devoid of inter-personal relations.. Well except of course for Carlyle and Lee-Miller who i could have sworn were meant to be in love.. Unlike the union of Tyler and Miller who were for the most part, like the rest of the film, utterly unconvincing.. although the end product was uncaptivating and amusing for all the wrong reasons, the production values were high and deserve some acknowledgement..but unfortunately the end result was rubbish..what was everyone involved thinking..? they definitely should have packed up early on this one..


This was one of Christie's later stories. Throughout her long career, she was interested in the shifting narrative and the notion of conflicting agents. Both are essentially the same thing and boil down to questions of who it is that controls or creates the situation.

In detective fiction, the game is a matter of conflicting realities. The murderer intends to change reality to fool the detective, the writer intends to do the same to the reader. Both the reader and the detective are in similar battles to create what they see. That's why her stories often include a writer.

In her works, she explores every combination of tricks she can think of that deal with this. Along the way, we often have bodies that are not who they seem, and times, and intended victims and such. But the real magic of the books is this notion of control. In 'Bertram's' it was literally a building.

Here, it is a dead man. Well, sometimes that happens, but not like this. It is as if the writer were the famous Mr. Rafiel. This is particularly sweet to Marple readers who remember this same character from the 'Carribean Mystery,' which in a way was also framed by her nephew. In that story, Rafiel was the conveyor of the story to the authorities.

The producers of this series have an almost wacky commitment to using a different creative team on each one. Sometimes it produces bland work. The 'Bertram's' episode was rather brilliantly staged. This one is the most lavish of the lot, and has an active camera. But unlike the 'Bertram's' work, it has nothing to do with the story.

The camera moves and captures merely because it can. The 'Citizen Kane' quote at the beginning was a little too literal and blunt. This story is good, but the adapter took out some pretty critical stuff, and that irrelevant camera annoys.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.


What a frustrating movie. A small Southern town is overflowing with possibilities for exploring the complexities of interpersonal relationships and dark underbellies hidden beneath placid surfaces, as anyone who has read anything by Carson McCullers already knows. This does none of that. Instead, the writers settled for cutesy twinkles, cheap warm fuzzies and banal melodrama. The thing looks like a made-for-TV movie, and was directed with no particular distinction, but it's hard to imagine what anyone could have done to make this material interesting.

The most frustrating aspect, though, is the fact that there are a lot of extremely competent and appealing actors in this cast, all trying gamely to make the best of things and do what they can with this--well, there's no other word for it--drivel. A tragic waste of talent, in particular that of the great Stockard Channing.


A very carelessly written film. Poor character and idea development. The silly plot and weak acting by just about the ensemble cast didn't help. Seriously, watching this movie will NOT make you smile. It may make you retch.


God, did I hate this movie! I saw it at a sneak preview 13 years ago, and I STILL have bad flashbacks. It was, without a doubt, the WORST movie I ever paid to see. It was badly written, badly directed, and (surprisingly considering the cast) badly acted. I would rather be thrown off a rooftop onto razor sharp spikes, and then have my skin peeled off, than to sit through it again. Can you guess I didn't enjoy it?


I watched the version with pathetic American over-dubs, maybe this made it much worse, but from what I could make out the film was pretty bad anyway. It seemed low budget. The visuals reminded me of a second rate TV movie, random white dog substituted for Dogmatix, embarrassing 60's BBC costumes, etc. Mainly though, I feel like the characters in the movie did not behave anything like the characters in the comic, and as a result I never felt willing to even try to forgive the poor look of the film. It is always going to be hard to capture the feel of the comics in a film without using animation, and I didn't feel this attempt was worth it ultimately.


Whereas the movie was beautifully shot and reasonably well acted, the script was dull. plodding and nothing we have not seen before. Not once in this film did I ever get the feeling that these people were really in danger. No noticeable climax and a very standard resolution. I believe these type of movies have been overdone and should be given a rest. After all, didn't EVERYONE on the planet see "Schindler's List"?


Yes, this bizarre feature was written by John Sayles. Shot in Toronto, it's yet another '80s era feature about the dangers of the urban jungle, where the police fear to go and the homeless and the criminal classes are the only inhabitants. Into this mix comes the myth of Wild Thing, a feral young man raised by a bag lady after his parents were murdered by a dirty cop on the take (Maury Chaykin) and Chopper, the local crime lord (Robert Davi). Stir in the local do-gooders (priest Sean Hewitt and clueless social worker Kathleen Quinlan), and you have a recipe for some rather unexciting action sequences. Davi is the standout amongst the cast, and cinematographer Rene Verzier does a pretty good job. Otherwise this is a rather lumpen action pic that won't satisfy action fans and will leaves Sayles' admirers slack-jawed.


I can't believe they do this kind of filth out of a serious theme. Totally unrealistic (they seemed to want it to be HIGHLY realistic but all the elements are based on clichés), real propaganda stuff. After seeing this, an addict probably just want to continue his/her career :-) I gave it 2.


I'm not picky with movies, oh I've seen so much crap I could watch anything. Maybe that was the reason I watched this one to the end. Im big fan of RPG games too, but this movie, its a disgrace to any self-respecting RPGer there is. The security-camera footage of a game-play would make it feel more realistic than this movie does. The lines, the cuts, the audio, everything is wrong. In some scenes you can see that it was filmed in some photo when !!!!!(spoilers ahead)!!!!!people running around does not disturb people sitting near computers. I mean would you continue your work if you got ninjas around you? oh and the jokes about pirates, that's the worst one yet in movies!!!!!(spoilers end)!!!!! At least first one felt like a documentary, now it looks like someones home video experiment. You can find better movies at youtube. Top line: Don't waste your time and money on this one, its as bad as it comes.


I guess the previous "House" movie was a hit, prompting Universal to wring a few more drops from the monster cash-cow. The creative team must've been in a recycling mood, starting with the opening theme lifted from 'Son of Frankenstein' and some of the stock footage dispersed through the film, like one unintentionally funny bit of business where footage of Glenn Strange as the monster is mixed with clips of Karloff from 1935's Bride, and compared to how robotic Strange moved, Karloff seems to move like a cheetah in comparison.

Previous film continuity is thrown by the wayside, concerning the miraculous death-cheating abilities of the Wolf Man and Dracula, but when Dr. Edelmann & Larry Talbot discover Frankenstein's monster with the skeleton representing Boris Karloff , Edward T. Lowe does at least acknowledge some of the past movie history, though Talbot curiously never mentions having met Karloff's Dr. Niemann.

Since this was to be the last of Universal's horror cycle, the supernatural elements of The Wolf Man and Drac get(unconvincingly) morphed into medical ailments. Drac is told he suffers from a blood disease, a very rare sickness that allows him to transform into a bat or evaporate if sunlight touches him. >:-] And Larry Talbot just has a little pressure on the brain. Of course all of this is painstakingly explained with a 'lot' of medical jargon being related in many scenes throughout. This proves to be the biggest hindrance, as somewhere along the way the filmmakers seem to forget about actual horror or entertainment in favor of giving the monsters conditions that seem as treatable as a flu.

As a huge fan of the old Universal horrors, it's rare that I feel so bored while watching one. The whole thing just feels like a movie that was made just because it could be, but if this mess hadn't been slapped together, the monsters might never have met Abbott and Costello, so I guess some good came of this.


I have not figured out what the chosen title has to do with the movie. This is another gathering of monsters just like the HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Not exactly a masterful plot, but Universal needed to capitalize again.

Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens) is either very ambitious or over the top in the ego department. He is working on the cure to keep Larry Talbot from turning into the Wolf Man. Somehow Count Dracula happens to drop by to get a fix on his vampirism. And rounding out the good doctor's experiments is the restoring of the Frankenstein monster's energy. Along the way, the kind hearted doctor's blood is tainted with that of Dracula.

John Carradine plays Dracula again. This time he is more convincing. Lon Chaney Jr. as usual is the soulful Wolf Man. Glenn Strange is the Frankenstein monster, who has very little to do this outing. Also with mentionable roles are Lionel Atwill and Martha O'Driscoll.


I've been a classic horror fan my entire life. Many nights stretched until the early hours of the morning watching the Universal films on "Horror Incorporated" and "Creature Feature Night". Sadly, I viewed this film in the early evening and yet it still almost put me to sleep.

I don't think I've ever seen a "horror" picture where everything was so matter of fact. Dr. Edelmann doesn't seem to believe in the supernatural, yet before long he's medically treating Dracula and watching Larry Talbot change into the Wolfman while hardly blinking an eye. He and Talbot discover the Frankenstein monster like it's an everyday occurrence. Edelmann is all fired up to bring the monster back to life, but after Talbot, Miliza and Nina protest he's like "Aww, you're right. No big deal". After realizing Dracula's treachery, he opens the Count's coffin to sunlight and POOF!, he's gone, just like that.

The only person who didn't appear to just be phoning in her lines was Jane Adams as Nina. Her reward is getting bounced off the hump in her back into a pit by the Frankenstein Monster at the end of the film...and no one even tries to rescue her! She, Dr. Edelmann and the Monster all perish, while Talbot and Miliza casually leave the castle.

Definitely the low point for Universal during it's classic horror years.


It's proof that movie makers and their financiers treating their audience with contempt isn't a new phenomena as it was done as early as the 1940s and HOUSE OF Dracula is a great example . You'd think having a film with Dracula , the wolf man and Frankenstein's monster the producer would dictate to the screenwriter to have all three appear in a scene . They had a chance with HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN then when they had a second bite of the cherry they blew it again with HOUSE OF Dracula . To lose one chance is a misfortune , to lose two smacks of cynical money making

It's obvious the producers are beyond caring . Larry Talbot turns up again even though he was shown to die in the previous film which sums up the cynicism of the franchise . It also shows what a poor screenplay it is and we're mistreated to some awful plot turns like Talbot's condition being cured by a special type of plant which will soften his skull . I'm thinking screenwriter Edward T Lowe might have had his skull softened if this is the type of stuff he comes up with

Director Erie C Kenton can't improve on the script and throws in a few spanners of his own . For example Talbot is startled to see Dr Edelmann snatch a lift on a cart but nonchalantly watches Edelmann climb a wall and jump in to the château courtyard . One can't help thinking Talbot's reaction shots were mistakenly switched round at the editing stage

Lon Chaney Jnr is famous for his roles in horror movies but didn't have much of a career outside them . Perhaps that's down to the fact he's not a good actor and here he commits the worst type of acting - being very wooden . It's not entirely his fault though because all the characters spout rather awful dialogue and are all rather wooden due in part to Kenton's lackluster directing

HOUSE OF Dracula feels a million miles away from James Whale 1931 film and its sequel from 1935 and would have been a very sad note to end on . But ironically Universal decided to make one more movie to wrap up their franchise with a horror comedy starring Abbot and Costello


I watched this film when I was a kid, and I thought it was terrible then. Now that I'm older, I found it just as terrible. Universal could have done better than this. They merely decided to make the most money they could out of using all their monsters at once. To me, that was a cheap shot. These characters were capable of holding their own in their own movies, and the choice of actors was deplorable. Dracula needed to be Bela Lugosi, Frankenstein's, monster needed to be Karloff.

In my mind, it was the Disney squalid sequel sequence done decades ago, and it was not appreciated. Umiversal started out with something great and original, and then thought they could pander to the masses with the schlock which is extremely evident in this film.


Okay -- the title "House of Frankenstein", was a reference to a line from the original Frankenstein movie. When they follow it up with a movie entitled "House of Dracula", which makes no real sense, you know that it's just beginning to turn into a franchise.

Without explanation, Dracula is back, and he's calling himself Baron Latos. He infiltrates the home of a Doctor Edelmann, with the claim that he is seeking a cure for his vampirism. Edelmann has a hunchback nurse who assists him (what is it with hunchback assistants in these movies?), but what Dracula is really interested in is his other, more beautiful assistant. At this point, Larry "Wolf Man" Talbot returns (again, no explanation given) and just happens to be seeking the same doctor for a cure to his lycanthropy. And then he just happens to fall into a cave in which plants can be grown to help him, which also just so happens to contain the Frankenstein monster. Dear God, when will it end ... sure, the other Universal monster sequels were silly, but this is just ridiculous.

First the good stuff. There are some great settings, and the vampire bat effects are slightly better than usual. Some of the other effects are pretty neat too. John Carradine isn't bad as Dracula once you get used to him, but still nothing like as brilliant as Lugosi was. In my opinion, Onslow Stevens plays a much better vampire in this movie, although he has exactly the opposite problem to Carradine -- all of the creepiness and none of the class. None of the performances are that great, but it's more due to the atrocious script than anything else -- the female parts are particularly badly written. But stupid as it is, it remains reasonably entertaining for the most part. The best thing about it is it's short length.

Now the bad stuff ... it's not creepy, it's poorly written and it doesn't work. I was hoping the three monsters would begin some kind of a supernatural struggle for power, but it doesn't happen. The focus is almost entirely on Dracula, who isn't particularly well portrayed. On the other hand, this is the only movie in which Dracula infects another man, but it is done via a blood transfusion rather than a bite as Universal were always uncomfortable with the possible homosexual subtext. Larry Talbot is decent as always as the Wolf Man, but he plays a comparatively small part. Once again the part of Frankenstein's monster is reduced to the anti-climatic closing moments. For God's sake, Glenn Strange was fantastic as the creature! Why not give him more screen time? It's unfortunate that the series had to end on this note (not counting the classic comedy "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein"). In the end it just fizzled in the sunlight and died, much like Dracula himself.


Although inevitably linked to the 70's decade, the concept of "exploitation-cinema" is actually nearly as old as cinema itself. Moreover, Universal Studios practically invented the term with their long running monster cycles Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and The Mummy. Every original classic spawned a couple of sequels, at least, and after a while they even thought up the idea of making genuine monster stewing! "House of Frankenstein", released one year earlier and also directed by Erle C. Kenton, was quite a successful effort with interesting ideas and enthusiast performances, but "House of Dracula" is a little too loony for me to recommend it. The plot suffers too much from extremely irritating 'coincidental' situations, forced twists & dialogs and  most of all  a far too short running time to elaborate the monsters' personalities like they deserve. Onslow Stevens doesn't receive top billing but plays the most fundamental role as miracle a doctor who's challenged to cure Count Dracula (Carradine) from his incontrollable thirst for blood and fix Lawrence Talbot's illness of mutating into a hairy Wolf Man whenever the moon is full. During a nightly walk in some caves, they also pick up the remainders of Frankenstein's monster and the good doctor himself eventually undergoes a Jekyll/Hyde metamorphosis due to a bad blood transfusion. The last invitation to the messy party is a female hunchback (though not of the Notre Dame). Something is very wrong when you're watching a movie that is literally stuffed with horror icons, yet the only character in the whole movie that is able to freak you out is an ordinary villager going by the name Siegfried. The actual monsters are dull and their once-fabulous backgrounds are fully drained. Count Dracula is a whining romanticist, Talbot is a pitiable and also whining old martyr and the Frankenstein creation  well, his share in the plot isn't even worth mentioning. There's a serious lack of atmospheric settings and nifty photography in this Universal film, especially compared to all their other efforts, and the abrupt climax is a disaster.


One True Thing may have seemed like a horror movie to the yuppies of the 80's, but it doesn't ring true today... unless you happen to be part of a pampered, upper-middle class family which is so insulated from the world that it has never tasted suffering.

Avoid this shallow flop.


I appear to be in the minority on this one, but I found One True Thing to be schmaltzy, contrived and generally unpleasant. Not that the acting was all that bad, but the characters seemed little more than archetypes (the bad father, oh, but wait, maybe he's not unredeemably bad; maybe there can be a resolution at the end . . .). Admittedly, the woman I was with loved the movie, so maybe you'll like it. But I didn't.


Unlike Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolia's, I left the movie theater feeling VERY disappointed. I started to get into the characters and their complex mother/daughter and father/daughter relationships at the beginning. I even cried. But I had no sympathy for the characters with the ending. The final act did not seem in line with the mother's character at all. So, although the acting was pretty good, I thought the movie on a whole was disappointing.


What really amazed me about this film was that it ringed so false. First of all, who in the late 80's (when the film takes place)lived like this family? A college professor wouldn't make enough money to support the lifestyle I saw on the film. Hence, he and his stay home wife would be plagued by financial woes, especially when she gets cancer. Second, Streep is my age, and most women, particularly in her class (educated, white, well off) experienced the feminist movement. Yet this woman seems oblivious to her anachronistic behavior. I actually felt that she was a very controlling woman who kept her husband an emotional child by taking care of his every need.

The fact that so many people were moved by the film is amazing. I have admired Carl Franklin's films in the past, and I actually like Meryl Streep, but gad, what a manipulative and lying film this is.


Apart from the DA (James Eckhouse), and a brief appearing woman who is convincingly sympathetic to Ellen Gulden's (Renee Zellweger)plight, Ellen herself is the only convincing character--and likable character in the movie. She is the one, not her dying mother, who should be and is--the one true thing. it's not only in the role, in Zellweger's acting, but also in the plot itself.... Until, the plot turns against itself--and makes the mother the "one true thing" in the eyes of her weak willed, shallow husband who can do nothing right for his wife or daughter. The daughter perceives what the viewer perceives, but such intelligent perceptions must give way to the shallow sentiment of the husband who is blanked out on both the realities of his wife and daughter.

To boot, the one powerful scene in this whole movie, when Ellen confronts her father's cruelty, is given the lie at the end. Ellen is just another young strong woman who must be tamed into conformity by a crybaby father. A very flawed movie--so flawed as to be called a bore and not worth the time.


Cronica de un desayuno combines the worst defects of mexican cinema, a rare feat nowadays.

It's pretentious: it wants us to believe that it is deep, only because some scene is out-of-focus, another is pseudo-surreal, yet another plays with the Eisenstein-Infante-Caifanes tradition of laughing-crying faces, the edition is fragmented, and it is all so solemn.

It has a weak script: the main story hardly develops, so it has other three smaller, needless stories, stuck into it. They are only good to make the film last longer.

Most of the acting is bad. A true feat, baring in mind that many of the best known mexican actors were cast.

There is an abuse of unnecesary foul language. To the point that the character of Paloma, who symbolizes the dreams of freedom of a child, uses it throughly.

It is homophobic. The character played by Eduardo Palomo is the sorriest, and most punished, representation of a transexual I have ever seen.

It is very boring. I ended up envying the people that left the theater before the end of the film.

Whatever it tries, it has been done better, in Mexico and elsewhere.

In other words: "Para partirte la madre, nada como una mala película"


I have seen tons of trash, in every language, about every topic and of every trend of film-making. From every period, every director and any kind of budget available. That said I really have to declare:

This is one of the three worst movies I have EVER seen.

It's painfully bad. It's pompous. It's grim. It's incomprehensible. It's annoying. It's a really bad mess. It is a piece of you-know-what.

And, what's more important: it lacks a point. And even if it had one, the characters are so unreal and annoying that it's impossible to overlook the lack of cohesion of the whole thing.

It's just weird for the sake of being weird.

I actually felt sick watching this trash. The theater where I saw it (Lincoln Center in New York) was full when it started. By the end of it, half of the audience had walked out. There was a Q&A programmed at the end but nobody stayed. With the exception of about two sickos everybody else ran for the door, myself included.

Save 2 hours of your life. It's probably one of the worst ever done.

If there is a movie theater in Hell, this movie will be playing 24/7, for eternity...


I live in Mexico City, so I have to suffer throug the trailers for every piece of trash that comes out from all these stupid Mexican filmmakers. You want to admire a Mexican guy for making great films? Take a look at something by Guillermo del Toro (specially The Devil's Backbone), or maybe Alfonso Cuarón (though I really don't like his films, but I respect them).

Mexican filmmakers often produce some of the most terrible utter trash ever (Por la Libre, El Segundo Aire, American Visa), but this is one of the lowest points in Mexican films ever. If you respect your brain, please avoid this piece of **** at all costs. It would be more intelligent to watch some video of a wedding or to watch Britney's reality show. That's got more IQ than everyone in this 'film'.


This might be for those who have been to summer camps, but it sure isn't an entertaining camp. I went to one before, but it didn't make me scream up and down for joy. Instead, it made my head hurt.

The first thing you notice is that Bill Murray actually had some hair in the 70s. Yeah, and he also didn't mind running some. But to get him to run a lot, you would need to give him a woman to chase after.

Its not that some of the stunts can't be funny. For example the running joke with one of the councilors who is always waking up somewhere else due to the movement of his bed. Instead, its that the jokes and stunts were poorly setup and executed. It just failed to be funny.

To somebody who loves comedy, this is a pain. Others are glued to it for life. I wish it was more like Leonard Part 6, but it doesn't come close. "F"


Stripes, an army training camp comedy starring Bill Murray and directed by Ivan Reitman, is a favourite of mine. Meatballs, a summer camp 'romp' starring Bill Murray and directed by Ivan Reitman, is a complete waste of time. It takes a considerable effort for four screenwriters to produce a movie (the word 'comedy' infers a work with mirth aforethought) as witless, anaemic and boring as this.

Murray evidently reached the same conclusion during filming, but his usually reliable powers of improvisation escape him and his flailing attempts to inject life into proceedings just add to the embarrassment - the "It really doesn't matter" chanting scene is excruciating. It doesn't help that the supporting cast is bereft of talent - the funniest thing about them is their hair, but then Meatballs was made in 1979. ("And introducing Chris Makepeace as Rudy" announce the opening credits. No, not THE Chris Makepeace?!).

Mercifully, Reitman rectified his mistake two years later for Stripes. Murray's shtick is so much funnier when he's larking around with the likes of John Candy, Warren Oates and John Larroquette. Ditch this and watch that.


You know, as you get older, you somehow think the movies you did not like when you were younger, might have been because of your youth and inexperience. Case in point, when I saw The Godfather at age 14, I thought it was boring. 20 years later, its an incredible movie to me. In other words, I grew up and began to appreciate great movies.

So I rented Dirty Dancing with my girlfriend last night on her request, as she loved it at age 14 and I hated it at the same age. But I hoped, because I was young and stupid at age 14, perhaps this would be a new experience for me. So I sat down with her to watch, hoping to be enlightened.

Well, the night after watching Dirty Dancing, I feel a violation. I feel like someone reached into my soul and robbed me of 2 hours of my life from watching this cheese fest.

First, Patrick Swayze plays a 20 year old, but he looks like he is 35. And the premise of the movie is him seducing some underage teenager, wooing her with his dance moves. Really Creepy.

Anyway, the movie is the cliché plot where the "wrong side of the tracks" guy and the "rich smart girl" accidentally fall in love with each other. Of course, their romance is fueled by the fact the "rich girl" can't dance a lick, so the "poor hero" teaches her in a week to become an expert dancer for the big end of vacation show, or something like that.

But you guessed it: The disapproving father soon enters and forbids the two to see each other, and the movie progresses to secret meetings of dance lessons and love making. This all culminates into the final scene where the entire resort rallies around the two young lovers while the once antagonistic father accepts the 35 year old dancer as his teen daughter's new man.

Even my girlfriend whimpered at the end of the movie as she admitted it was not anything like she remembered. I didn't press her, but I did smirk a little, and put the Godfather part II in the DVD player.


This is not a good film by an standards. It is very poorly written and the acting is just a little above par (some performances are well below par, but Swayze and Grey do a very good job with little to work with).

What was good:

The dance sequences were choreographed very well and, as stated above, Swayze and Grey were high points.

What was bad:

The script. The "bad" guys were simply too evil to be believable. The best villains are the ones who aren't so obviously evil. These guys (the owner's nephew, the waiter who impregnates the girl) do and say NOTHING that would leave me to believe they could be real people (perhaps there are guys like them, but I sure don't want to see a movie about it).

Another scene, the first where Grey and Swayze meet when the employees at the resort are "dancing". Swayze and Grey dance together and seem to enjoy themselves. The next time they meet, Swayze is hostile towards her. Why? What happened in between to make him dislike her so when they danced well together?

And some of those lines, I mean COME ON (I cringed at the end when Swayze muttered the line "Nobody puts baby in the corner". How did he EVER do that with a straight face.)

Another thing wrong, the setting of the 1960's. Everyone looked and dressed like the 1980's! Who was in charge of the costumes and hairstyles?

The music (original music for the film) was laughable (with the exception of "I Had the Time of My Life" which was a good song).

Not the worst film I've ever seen, but DEFINITELY the most over-rated


Just caught "The Rain People" on Turner Classic Movies late one night. The film was released in 1969. Shirley Knight stars as Natalie, a Long Island housewife who -- exact reasons unknown -- leaves her husband and embarks on a road trip, not knowing exactly where she is going. Natalie is also newly pregnant, which complicates things. Along the way, she picks up a brain-damaged ex-football player "Jimmy" (James Caan), who has been kicked out of his college and is hitchhiking. There are many twists and turns along the way between these two, as Natalie struggles to take care of Jimmy and she begins to realize he is mentally limited and cannot take care of himself. She is going through her own struggles, needless to say, and in no position to care for him. Natalie appears to be a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown at times; she makes some odd phone calls to her husband, who begs her to come home. Natalie tries to dump Jimmy several times, only to have him re-enter her life through circumstances. A young Robert Duvall plays a strange and troubled cop who befriends Natalie. You get the sense all along that this film is going to end badly, and it does. This film is certainly uneven at times, and the script is somewhat lacking. Francis Ford Coppola directed this, and of course he would soon become immensely famous in the next few years for directing "The Godfather." The actors are good ones, needless to say, as they all would have futures ahead of them in film. Shirley Knight is the least known of the three, although she is also underrated as an actor. James Caan is especially effective here and he seems to just inhabit this character. This film remains little more than a curiosity now, no doubt because it is an early movie of Coppola's, and I confess I had never heard of it. So God bless Turner Classic Movies for bringing it to a new audience.


This movie is really stupid and very boring most of the time. There are almost no "ghoulies" in it at all. There is nothing good about this movie on any level. Just more bad actors pathetically attempting to make a movie so they can get enough money to eat. Avoid at all costs.