With the assistance of hypnotist Dr. Carlo Lambardi (Chester Morris), Andrea Talbott (Marla English) is capable of regressing through a series of past lives. Some, like English maiden Elizabeth Wetherby, are quite innocuous. But Dr. Lambardi takes Andrea even further back  back to a time before humans existed. He takes her back to an amphibious creature that would someday become Andrea. But there are consequences. When Andrea regresses to this She-Creature, somehow it's capable of making the journey back to the present with her. A series of murders up and down the coast are proof. Andrea wants to escape from Lambardi and his powerful control over her. But is his control as powerful as the She-Creature?

What an uneventful way to spend 77 minutes. The She-Creature is dull all the way through. I can't think of anything much duller than watching someone being hypnotized over and over and over. The cast doesn't help much. Chester Morris isn't much of a threat as the baddie. Lance Fuller makes for the most "do nothing" lead I've seen  unless you call staring blankly into space doing something. Finally, while I've always enjoyed Tom Conway's work, The She-Creature gives him little to do and Conway makes the most of it, sleepwalking his way to a paycheck. The only two positives worth noting are the creature special effects (very nicely done and far better than anything you would expect to find in a movie like The She-Creature) and the sight of Marla English in a sweater.

Unless you're able to catch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of The She-Creature, my advice would be steer clear of this one.


Oily hypnotist Carlo Lombardi has virtually enslaved young carnival follower Andrea with his incredible mind powers. His amazing sideshow act consists of hypnotizing young Andrea and forcing her to relive her previous incarnations for a spellbound audience. Soon, Lombardi and Andrea are accepting invitations to the homes of the elite and powerful, where Andrea continues to speak of her life as a young girl in 1600s England. But Andrea has fallen in love with stoic young scientist Timothy Chappel, who is determined to break Lombardi's hold over the girl and release her forever. However, a series of brutal murders has been plaguing the coastal town and Lombardi is the prime suspect. What no one yet realizes is that Lombardi has somehow managed to take Andrea back to her very first incarnation - that of a killer sea monster. The monster can take physical form and obeys Lombardi's every command, and his next command is to kill Timothy! Will Andrea's love be able to save him from her previous self?

This is a very dumb, very cheap and very dull movie. I had to pity Chester Morris as Lombardi, who very obviously wasn't happy about doing these cheesy roles in low budget B movies towards the end of his career. Tom Conway as Timothy Chappel is awful, delivering a stiff, lifeless performance, perhaps two facial expressions and mumbling every line he was given. One has to wonder what Andrea sees him in, although the performance of Marla English isn't much better. She's lovely to look at, but literally sleepwalks through the entire film. The She Creature Itself is a great rubber costume, looking like a cross between a giant catfish, a lobster and a Horror Of Party Beach reject. However, one great rubber monster costume just isn't enough to save this film. The plot doesn't make much sense and the whole thing just kind of stumbles along until it finally dies.

Mike and the bots once again do a great job of making this watchable. Without their comedy commentary, this film is just a stagnant snoozefest.


Even MST3K couldn't shield me from this one. Watching Lance Fuller non-act his way through his role (does he ever change expression???) was about as fun as passing a kidney stone. For that matter, no one in this movie changes expression. The most talented performance was probably given by King the dog. Thankfully at least, the directors failed in their attempt to get John Carradine for the role of Carlo Lombardi. Shot on incredibly grainy film--which, so help me, actually IMPROVES things---and apparently with a lighting budget in single digits. another improvement, since it saved me from actually having to watch the people onscreen. Avoid at all costs.


The She-Creature is a thing from the ocean that looks like an angry lobster. It comes ashore, invisible, then materializes and kills some people. It then returns to the sea. Why? I don't know. Then there's Dr. Carlo Rambaldi, a hypnotist and overall oily guy, who threatens Brack, from This Island Earth, and hypnotizes a beautiful young woman. Brack shows no emotions and does his best to feign interest. Rambaldi makes predictions, has some people killed, and moves into a house that has delightfuly Swedish caretakers. In the end, the lobster kills Rambaldi, the police shoot the monster, and Brack and the beautiful young woman presumably go on to live a rich and full life together. Very dull movie that will put you to sleep faster than Nyquil.


Less importantly, I can't figure out why Sharon Stone is the number one credit when the story isn't really about her character. Other than that, this movie has good intentions and a great story. However, there were a few scenes that just felt overly tense, such as when--possible spoilers--Kevin begins choking on his food and loses consciousness, when Max learns of Kevin's death (which is more disturbing than emotional), and even the scene where Loretta is strangled (but not killed), which is otherwise understandable. This seemingly is supposed to be a family-friendly film, but with these scenes the filmmakers make it look more like a horror/thriller. If the filmmakers had not done this, I believe this film could very easily have been given a PG rating. -6 stars for the tension.


In 1998 two sentimental movie so alike was make one is this and the other is Simon Birch. Both are about the boy tried to make a different in this world despite the fact that they are disable. This movie star Elden Henson as the boy with disturb past and Kieran Culkin as the disable boy, they two become friend and that when imaginary adventure begin.

The movie also consist of many A lister star such as Gena Rowlands, Sharon Stone, Gillian Anderson, Meat Loaf, and James Gandolfini. Yes, that is one hell of a cast but that doesn't really save this film anyway. The movie is dreadful, because by the end of the movie you'll wish you never seen it cause it is too slow and boring.

The script wasn't that bad at all, the character is well written but the situation is boring and dreadful and the sentimental stuff was overdone that it end up being really cheesy. The acting wasn't all bad but the set was boring and unimaginative. And the lighting and cinematography didn't do a good job, it as if the film was shot 3 decades back.

Reason To Watch: Better Not Watch It.

Reason Not To: You Won't Miss A Thing, Feel Like Waste Of Electricity Watching It.

Rating: 3/10 (Grade: F).

Please Rate (Y/N) After Reading, Thanks.


This movie is an unbelievable drag... first of all it has a very trashy look that is obvious from the opening of the movie. The acting is rather unrealistic, the characters couldn't make you care less and the plot evolves unbelievably slow. There are dialogs in this movie that take forever and make no point. When a Detective talks to the Surgeon I though the movie switched to slow motion or someone dropped downers in my drink. Besides these endless sequences with barely anything happening or people talking you get ridiculous over-acting. Watch out for the gay couple in the human meat bar or the epileptic stabbing of the surgeons young colleague. There's plenty of scenes that are beyond ridiculous and many don't push the plot at all.

So what do you get? A surgeon working in a beauty clinic gets obsessed with female meat, starts taking home fat and body parts and cooking them and obviously soon starts killing for fresh meat. Thats about it... he goes on a trip to Hongkong to search for human meat traders, ends up in a discotheque where he meets a girl who soon reveals she wants to be eaten. All this happens in a totally random fashion.. and after that Mr. Surgeon drives home and the plot continues.

Most of the movie is not really repulsive except for the fact that the cinematography is pretty ugly and tasteless throughout the movie. By the end you get a load of gore that looks unbelievably fake (best joke when heads fall out his closet and he beats a guy with one of the heads which is obviously just one of these plastic heads with a wig on. Its hard to say if "Last supper" was supposed to be funny or is unintentionally funny because the crass overacting and the over the top sound FX that remind me of one of those horror-sample CDs are laughable.

I have seen many Asian movies and know they can be pretty slow but this one takes it to the top and makes you wonder why the heck a dozen of scenes are stretched to the max. This movie is as entertaining was watching paint dry and horror fans should fast forward to the end to save 90 minutes of their precious lifetime.


I thought this movie was really interesting. The plot was alright. I usually have no problem watching horror flicks, but for some reason I was really grossed out watching this film! If you like watching people eating each other basically, then you'll have a blast! I think it was the part where the main character fries up some fat he took home from one of his patients. It just made me sick! Just the sound effects had me going!! If you like to gross yourself out, I'd recommend this for you all. The ending also was VERY interesting I thought. I was a bit grossed out when I found out that the main character cut his face off and gave it as a surprise wedding gift at the end. Plus it was weird to see other characters in the movie wanting to eat women meat, like the police guy. WEIRD!


This one was like "Aliens" without the aliens... or maybe it was more like a sci-fi slasher movie... Yes, that's it, a sci-fi slasher B-flick. Some folks say that this movie steals the basic premise of "The Dirty Dozen" and puts it in outer space. Indeed, here we have a group of convicts turned into soldiers and sent off to a planet to secure a space station (or something). Amongst them are a religious fanatic female military doctor, a drug-addict/rapist, a nymphomaniac, and Corey Feldman as a computer nerd. The space station looks, of course, like an old factory. You know the drill: all of them get slaughtered (in a not too bloody way) one by one. Lots of running around, lots of shooting and near the end you won't even care about who's doing the killing or if the mutant make-up looks cool or not. I managed to sit through it without too many problems, so I guess it could have been worse.


Me and my brother had borrowed some movies......all B-rated movies.I thought it would be cool to see Corey Feldman in a horror movie. And he did really good as a computer hacker. But I found the movie as pretty lame, but still pretty fun to watch. I think a lot of new space-horror movies is trying to be in the same class as Alien and the Predator movies, but most movies are far away from close. Legion is ok, it gets 6 out of 10 from me.


I hate to see Terry Farrell's talents go to waste. Terry Farrell played Major Agatha Doyle in this movie, but only to put her talents to waste.

The movie was so boring that if I didn't have Terry Farrell, it would flop. Same storyline as Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers, and honestly, I was bored to death by this book.

I give the 4/10 just because of Terry Farrell.


Terrible film, terribly overacted, terrible over-used plot. Although this movie sports some well known thespians, they cannot hide how utterly terrible this film actually is. Even accounting for a low budget you cannot but flinch from the attempted suspense which soon becomes repetitive, after 30 minutes I was wishing the unseen alien would just wipe out the motley bunch in one swoop. How an actor from 'the Godfather ' could associate himself with such rubbish beats me. Do not pay to see this film!


"Mightor" is god-awful in every respect: animation, story, voice acting, sound, music, etc. Each episode is nearly identical: some bad thing kidnaps the chick, then Ken-doll caveman turns into Mightor, while his kid brother (son? whatever?) puts on a Mightor mask and pretends to be the hero. The kid attacks the bad guy and his Mightor mask covers his eyes. Whilst he can't see, the real Mightor defeats the bad guy. The kid lifts his mask and thinks he did it himself. Rinse, repeat, show after show.

HOWEVER. There is an entity that makes "Mightor" look good: "Moby Dick." This show is too awful to even discuss. Its very existence will depress you like a rainy Sunday after the funeral of a close friend. Cheap, eye-straining (from the constant blurry underwater effects seemingly achieved by wiggling the lens around while printing the film), and soul-draining. If you must watch this, keep some Prozac or St. John's Wort around so you don't kill yourself.


This was about as much fun as sticking pins in your eyes.

This transcends the "so bad it's good" genre so completely that it has created a new "so bad I'd rather be tortured by the Stasi" categorisation. The real monster in this film is the director/writer.

Script: 0 Terrible. No redeeming features whatsoever.

Acting: 0 Appalling. I kept shouting "Quick! Use acting." in the vain hope that someone would.

Plot: 0 Dreadful. More holes than swiss cheese. Trying to set them out wastes valuable time that could be enjoyed NOT watching this film.

Special effects: -58 Rule one of low budget monster movies is "don't show the monster". This film bravely ignores this and instead parades its terrible monster for about half the film. You laugh the first time and then it is an exercise in cringing as you realise you are supposed to be frightened of this thing.

This is the first film that has made me wish IMDb allowed negative ratings. If you never watch this, it will be too soon.


First off, do not go into the movie with any positive expectations. You will then be decently impressed or just neutral about the film.

Ultimately, the revealing of the bigfoot (a guy in a costume) is what makes this otherwise decent movie suffer in the ratings. I will have to add, though, that you don't see much of the creature until half way through the movie.

The first half of the movie was pretty good. Nice, chilling music that complements the dark, scary atmosphere (which, of course is some deserted mountain cabin). The second half is pretty dumb, once you get a full view of the monster. It just isn't as scary anymore. Horror movies have to make you believe in the terror and the monster, but this movie shoots itself in the foot by showing the entire bigfoot. If the yeti had stayed more or less in the shadows, and if they limited the stupid roaring, then I'd have rated it at least a 7.

The acting was par. For B list actors, they performed averagely.

The ending sort of redeems the movie. But then again, please don't have any high expectations before watching the flick. It doesn't deserve any expectation.

However, if you are a crypto movie fan, then you might just enjoy this anyway. There aren't that many bigfoot, nessie, etc flicks out there, so you guys might like this.


With the latest revival in horror flicks, you would at least expect decent movies, since they make a lot of money these days.

But 'Abominable" proofs that turkeys still exist in the genre. Everything is wrong:

-the acting is terrible, especially the female lead is painfully to watch. -the dialog is cheesy: remember when they talk about their past right after a murder with the beast out there ? Oh God... -the lame story rips off Hitchcock's Rear Window and even... Mimic 3. Go figure.. -the creature is something to laugh at. Never scary or anything. -no frights, no suspense, murders appear mostly off-screen.

You can mix horror with humor, like Lake Placid, which worked out great. But this one is not meant to be funny. Avoid at all cost.


This is truly Abominable!

I did an independent test asking a few non sci-fi nerds "What is the 1st word you tend to associate with Abominable?" and almost all of them said Yeti.

Where as this film is more about Sasquatch and he is nothing even close to the Abominable Snowman or Yeti.

Having seen the cast list as the opening credits rolled, I wondered why Jeffery Combs And Lance Henrikson were so low on the billing. Jeff gets about 10 or so minutes screen time, Lance gets even less and both get killed.

Basically this is the old "There's something nasty in the forest" plot. The ending is quite a fun twist and possibly the only surprise the whole movie has to offer.

Watch it if you must, it's fairly harmless.


So, there's a Bigfoot roaming around out in the woods. Lance Henriksen and a couple of buddies are out hunting it. They all get killed early on. I guess they couldn't afford to pay them for the whole movie. Another guy who's in a wheelchair is staying at a cabin, along with his therapist. Across the way is another cabin, this one full of young college girls. The guy in the wheelchair spends the movie looking through binoculars at the Bigfoot hanging around outside the girls' cabin. Yes, Hitchcock did something similar. The girls keep accusing him of being a peeping tom. Eventually our Yeti knocks off most of the girls, and the sole survivor takes refuge with the guy in the wheelchair. There's the usual cornball climax and the usual cornball setup for a sequel.

Overall, it wasn't any worse than average for a Sci-Fi original. The female characters were uninteresting and interchangeable clichés, Lance Henriksen and his buddies at least had a bit of personality, and the guy in the wheelchair did a good job, but never really rose to the lever of being interesting. The worst part was the Bigfoot, he looked extremely silly. He had a huge grin on his face every time we saw him. There was a tiny bit of nudity and a fair amount of gore.

I'd recommend this if you're a lover of B-movies and in the mood for something vaguely interesting to watch on a Tuesday night. Don't wait to watch it on a weekend, weekends deserve something better like Sabertooth or Chupacabra Terror. At least the characters in those movies had personalities.


I loved the previous reviews. Maybe reviews really shouldn't begin with "from what I remember"....... Hilarious that you don't actually have to remember the movie to review it. I saw it. It sucked. Guy knows a girl all his life, going to get married, so he goes off to buy a Lamborghini. OK. Meets scumbag dealer who screws him on the deal. Then, he decides to screw the sales girl........and misses his wedding rehearsal to do it. Then is late for the wedding. Both chicks are hot. So then he decides not to show for the wedding. But then he decides to show up. The whole family has predicted he won't show. He does, with his new girlfriend in tow after being MIA for days. And the first girl still wants to marry him. He even invites his slut girlfriend to the wedding and his bride appears to have no problem with that. OK. The dad of the bride should have beat the living crap out of him and taken his daughter home. Does he? Noooooooooo. He just decides to go along. Great movie. Maybe the girlfriend moved in with them next. That would have made a great movie.


This German horror film has to be one of the weirdest I have seen.

I was not aware of any connection between child abuse and vampirism, but this is supposed based upon a true character.

Our hero is deaf and mute as a result of repeated beatings at the hands of his father. he also has a doll fetish, but I cannot figure out where that came from. His co-workers find out and tease him terribly.

During the day a mild-manner accountant, and at night he breaks into cemeteries and funeral homes and drinks the blood of dead girls. They are all attractive, of course, else we wouldn't care about the fact that he usually tears their clothing down to the waist. He graduates eventually to actually killing, and that is what gets him caught.

Like I said, a very strange movie that is dark and very slow as Werner Pochath never talks and just spends his time drinking blood.


A funny thing happened to me while watching "Mosquito": on the one hand, the hero is a deaf-mute and the director is totally unable to make us understand why he does what he does (mutilating mannequins...er, excuse me, corpses) through his images. On the other hand, the English version at least is very badly dubbed. So I found myself wishing there had been both more AND less dialogue at the same time! This film is stupid (funny how this guy has access to every graveyard and mortuary in his town) and lurid (where would we be in a 70s exploitationer without our gratuitous lesbian scene?). Not to mention the "romantic" aspect (oh, how sweet!)...Miss it. (*)


Average crime drama movie that could have been a classic if the ending was not as idiotic as presented here.Great cast with good all around production.There most probably was a FEDERAL censorship issue here which forced the producers to create the idiotic Hollywood ending.See it if only you are a big crime drama movie fan who understands movie production politics.If not,you may regret the time you spent watching this almost great but ruined movie.Fans of the lead actors will enjoy this one as well......


"The Prime Gig" begins promisingly enough as a comedy about telemarketing with wonderful character actors like Wallace Shawn and George Wendt. Vince Vaughn plays the main character, the "star" marketer at a two-bit storefront telemarketing outfit where the crammed in workers have detailed cue cards posted on the walls to help rebut the customers' objections. The movie quickly throws in a sub-plot -- Vaughn cajoles the boss to hire his bitter handicapped friend. And then, fifteen minutes in, the movie switches gears completely. The first shop closes up, and Shawn, Wendt, et al are never seen again. Instead, we get a corporate expose about a high roller operator (Ed Harris)putting together a team to sell multi-thousand dollar shares in a purported gold mine. Vaughn is skeptical, but is enticed by the prospect of big money, and his attraction for Harris' protege, the beautiful Julia Ormond. The rest of the film alternates between the Vaughn-Ormond tryst, the high pressure goings on at the telemarketing office, and an occasional foray back to the relationship of Vaughn and his handicapped friend. None of the pieces add up. The ending is forced and almost unbelievable in terms of the character development that preceded it. The acting is fine, but wasted. This is a case where the parts are better than the whole.


No great lines, no memorable scenes (okay, maybe one with the

old lady near the end), no interesting twists of fate, no comments

on the human condition. A downer of movie, with unrelentingly

unpleasant people being unrelentingly unpleasant. You never get

to know any of the people or find out their motivations; just as well.

If you're going to rip off David Mamet, you should at least have a

real nude scene, not just some steamy pillow talk.

Some decent acting (notably Ed Harris) and okay cinematography

saved The Prime Gig from oblivion, but I could give it no higher

than a 2.


Do not read these comments past the 2nd paragraph if you haven't seen the movie!

So we're walking through Blockbuster right? Through the sea of assembly line movies we come across a Vince Vaughn movie we hadn't seen yet. Amazing. It's like finding the pot of gold. Further examination of the case reveals that it also has Ed Harris & Julia Ormond. Wow! We need to look no further. The cover boasts an unpredictable ending. Sweet! (I never learn)

The movie begins and the first few minutes are full of Vince goodness. It was fun seeing George Wendt too! Norm! Ok, I hate telemarketers that call people. It's one thing if you call them but when they call me I long for lightning to hit their phone system and electrocute every last one of them. Vince plays one of these types of bastards and is good at getting people to give up the green.

Ok, enough. This is to comment not give a synopsis so let me get to the point. I love a good set up in a movie but 30 minutes is a bit extreme. This movie leaves no surprises. You know every step of the way how it will end and it just doesn't try to make it interesting. The best scene is when Vince is trying to sell the old lady on the investment. The ending left you with the empty feeling that "Penny" was feeling. Wonderful. Still, 2 good things do not make a great movie or even a good movie. They wasted everyone's talent and our time.


I had high hopes for this. Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, lots of good things said at various film festivals... but the lack of a widespread release should have been a hint. This film isn't very good at all.

It will mark me as a philistine to say so but I thought about 7/8 of the film was pretentious rubbish. Much of the dialogue was authentically 17th century, but it was hard to listen to because the sound mix was bad, and the print was so grainy it looked like a pirate DVD. Perhaps not being able to clearly see or hear the goings-on was intentional, but the lack of plot didn't give us much else to concentrate on. There was lots of artful focusing and un-focusing which just appeared as though the cameraman didn't know what he was doing. But most obvious of all was the fact that it was all pretty boring and everyone was acting their little socks off in it to make it "worthy". There are several scenes between Depp and Morton where he coaches her to be a better actress. These scenes drag terribly, they are unmoving and long-winded and slow the film to a virtual halt.

I will give credit where it's due and say that Johnny Depp in a long curly wig, eyeliner and cocked hat was worth seeing. The servant character was excellent. And to be fair the whole boring shebang massively improved about 20 minutes before the end. At this point, the Earl gets syphilis, becomes horribly disfigured, loses control of his bladder and has to start wearing a strap-on metal nose when his real nose rots away. He also gives a jolly rousing speech in the House of Lords which makes us actually care about him for the first time in the film. If the whole thing had been anything like as engaging as the last 20 minutes it would have been an excellent film. As it is, our Christmas and Thanksgiving turkey has been served up early.

Still, worth going to see if only to witness John Malkovich's 'English' accent. You'd think he'd know better after starring alongside Ted Theodore Logan in Dangerous Liaisons, but no.


I have never wanted to walk out on a film more than this one. A few other people in the theater had the same idea except they actually acted on it. This movie is a mess. It can never pick a theme and stick to it. I think we are supposed to see John Wilmot as some kind of free thinking liberated person. Apparently the theme of the play it was based on was that Wilmot could have been remembered as one of the great writers of his age if he weren't so debauched. The film missed this point completely. All I saw was a drunk stumbling around from one aimless, pretentious scene to another. Though the acting was good, no one could save this terrible film. If you want to see a film that has a similar theme and actually makes a point, see Quills with Geoffrey Rush.


Johnny Depp's performance stretches his thespian envelope, but other than that this film is a disaster. The romance between Rochester and Elizabeth Barry is missing one thing -- romance. The idea that Charles II would expect Rochester to do a 180 and write something wonderful for him, and not even read it or view it before using it for to entertain the visiting French ambassador, well, that's beyond absurd. Charles had endured ten years of Rochester's vicious lampoons and knew Rochester too well to place his faith in such a philosophical reversal.

The film was shot in such low light that I thought I must have glaucoma. Every scene! The last quarter of the film concerns Rochester's slide toward death, which probably owed to syphilis, but unfortunately they chose to use makeup which made him look worse than Robert Englund in The Phantom of the Opera.

The film concerns itself almost solely with Rochester's general cynicism and his hostility toward the monarchy, but never ventures an explanation for his malaise (he was probably suffering PTSD from his experiences, at age 17, in three disastrous battles in the Royal Navy during the Dutch Wars). Saddest of all, the film misses the heart of the man, a man who was the greatest wit and lover of his age, a man who relished life and lived it to the fullest, but who also recognized the absurdity of the idea that man is a "rational animal." Disappointing film.


This play and movie completely hoodwinked the critics and public. This is one of the most overrated pieces of garbage to receive such recognition in many years. I found the play appallingly empty and driven by the titillation of sexy young men prancing in undies and a trivialization of sexual molestation to give the whole experience "sophistication." This ranks with The Children's Hour as one of the most disgusting exploitations of homosexuality. Alan Bennett wants us to be aroused and shocked at the plot revelations. However, no one else appears to be shocked except for the headmaster. All the other characters take the teacher's molestations as a coming of age initiation. So if it's no big deal then what's the point of this story?

The entire plot resurrects material ranging from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Browning Version, Butley, and Our Miss Brooks, throws it in a food processor and serves it with new and sexy napkins. The "debates" are drivel that are made to appear substantive. If you know what they are discussing you will realize it's all about nothing.


I was very disappointed with this film, and surprised that it had received such wonderful reviews. Can't anybody see that it doesn't make sense? I was 16 in 1983 and remember what school was like in the UK at that time. Nobody was openly gay. Most friends of mine at 17/18 were desperately trying to lose their virginity - with a girl. The few who later turned out to be gay probably started their sex lives as bit later, at university. At school it was all a bit hysterical. Teachers suspected of fondling were subject to whispering campaigns and were ostracized and hounded. Why would the one boy who has managed to get somewhere with a girl be the one to offer a male teacher sex? Why wouldn't any of his friends be the least bit surprised or worried about this behaviour? Since when did kids in 1983 call someone a "fuck"? Is the audience meant to accept that non oxbridge universities like Bristol and Newcastle (both excellent universities!) were ever second rate? Maybe to a snob like Bennett, but who cares? Why would an entire history class be the only ones good enough to apply for oxbridge? none of it rings true. The only sympathetic character is Rudge, and his character is also involved in the only piece of truth in the whole shoddy exercise - he gets into Oxbridge because somebody knew his father. In real life the others just wouldn't have got in - certainly not the whole class. But Bennett doesn't make us care anyway - he's too busy with his odd thesis for that - but don't ask me what the thesis is because that's not clear either. There's much more. The use of Griffiths just makes one remember his superb performance as a scary queer uncle in Withnail and I - a far superior film in which there is tension and emotion, and characters you love (Withnail, I and Uncle Monty are all believable, comic and fully rounded) none of which are on display here. We just don't care when he dies, and we don't care what happens to the kids, as told in the final scene, because the script doesn't go into who they really are, or what they want. The hook - getting into oxbridge - doesn't seem to really concern them at any point in the film, so it fails as a tension provider. The real theme (everyone's gay) is very ambiguous and never really comes out to say what it thinks about itself (the blowjob never even happens - why not? Did Bennett chicken out?). The fact is, just as Rudge got into Oxford because of his dad, Bennett got the film made because he's a luvvy, with a troupe of backslappers telling him every word he writes is as clever as hell. It has to be so, otherwise this tosh would never have made the screen. The next night I watched "The Last King of Scotland". What a film! What performances! What a contrast with this limp piece of self indulgence!


This could have been a good film. it had all the ingredients, but is ultimately ruined by two thousand times overused clichés which seem to have become fashionable again nowadays (see, for instance 'Brokeback Mountain' or the French 'Le clan'):the first one: the old homosexual teacher, OF COURSE, had to die at the end (the fact that is is a motorcycle accident and not a bashing doesn't matter, finally...); the fact that everyone mourns him at the end does not matter, the moral is safe, he finally 'paid for his sins'. The second one: the fact that the repressed (or maybe just hesitant) gay temporary teacher Mr Irwin, OF COURSE, succumbs to the offer of Dakin, the most disgusting jerk in the film, degrading himself just in order to satisfy some desire he could satisfy with any given (and probably much more honest) prostitute. because here, this is no matter of feeling, Dakin's 'offer' is not, as he so kindly expresses it, a favour he gives Irwin in order to thank him for his admittance at Oxford, it is an attempt made by an immoral being in order to confirm to himself that he can control and manipulate others by exploiting their secrets. I am really extremely disappointed that the British too seem to have succumbed to that crappy Hollywood-type moral and ending. Deleting these two scenes from the film would have been far more appropriate.AND MUCH MORE ORIGINAL.


Lashings of literary quotations, francophone banter and one-liners atop a dialog based on epithets probably give it artistic merit to some minds and if you are a gay and/or terminally jaundiced and world-weary teacher it may well have some meaning for you.

For the other 99.9% of humanity, this is a thinly-disguised rose-colored vanguard for destigmatising man-boy love and as such is odious and disingenuous.

We all know that teenage boys are obsessed with sex but to suggest that so many are actively homo/bi/curious is just wishful thinking on someone's part.

The preoccupation with sex on the part of the adults as well gives greater insight into the writer and directors' minds as epitomized in a scene where one of the boys on being rebuffed by a gay teacher gives some tart comment to the effect that "you are really daring when it comes to talking and thinking but something real happens, you get all cautious"(paraphrased). So, in this film, sex (specifically gay sex) is more 'real' than all the puffery about the value of education that it otherwise pontificates on. A curious perspective but one I am very glad to not share.

To add tedium to odium, it is also badly made. Star turns by the three adult leads were the only thing that kept me seated but were not enough to rescue this turkey. There are numerous technical flaws as noted elsewhere, the contrived ending is cringingly gauche and the headmaster character races past cliché and pythonesque parody in his caricature to become a sad commentary on pro-gay prejudice in film-making.

This is one of two films in the past five years that have made me want to walk out. Since this one actually irritated me enough to write and warn people off it; it now stands in my humble opinion as the worst film I have seen this century.


Words fail me, and yet I feel I must try.

Imagine a truly terrible stage play. The dialogue is so atrociously off the believability scale, you find that your own internal organs are climbing up round the outside of your brain in an attempt to penetrate your inner ear to stop PLEASE GOD STOP this abomination. The story is tedious to the point where watching paint dry as an alternative could give you heart failure from sensory overload. The acting... well, with characters written like this, they could only be plausibly played by creatures of an entirely different species.

Now picture it, not as some dim shadowy figures performing in 3D on a stage 100 foot away, which might make the theatricality slightly less grating, but on a HUGE movie screen. The pantomime timing, the huge close-ups of unspeakably unspeakable lines. The direction never letting you forget for one single second that this is a PLAY darlings. Every fake note reverberating round the auditorium like a death knell, making you intensely aware of your own mortality and the fact that you are scandalously wasting precious hours of the one life you have. There are people you love, and maybe you have never told them - not really. You could have spent the evening telling them, but no - instead you are here, in a cinematic prison of abject misery.

Because there is a lot of literature and poetry discussed, The History Boys has a veneer of intellectual sophistication. However its script and direction is so monstrous in every regard (and a criminal waste of some fine acting talent) that your life would be far more greatly enriched by reading the Stockholm phone directory. Backwards. Twice. That it took the combined efforts of BBC Films, The UK Film Council (lottery funded) and Fox Searchlight to bankroll this is an utterly damning indictment of the British Film Industry.

Everyone involved should be placed in detention. For all history. Twice.


I decided to watch The History Boys after firstly seeing a trailer depicting a seemingly innocent story of the quest to academic excellence and secondly hearing that it was an excellent adaptation.

What my girlfriend and I discovered was a sickening portrayal of homosexual promiscuity made even worse by the strong suggestion that child molestation was 'just a bit of fun' with the offending character portrayed as a misunderstood man. There is no justification whatsoever for the writer promoting this kind of behaviour and the film completely ignores the misery and suffering that the paedophile's victim endures throughout.

I strongly advise anyone looking for thoughtful and insightful cinema to look elsewhere The History Boys is like Trojan horse, on the outside seemingly fun and innocent tale of adolescence and academic but underneath is a dangerous and sickening endorsement of child molestation spearheaded by the writers vile sodomite agenda.


Adapted from a play by of same name, History Boys is a seemingly harmless movie that features a group of posturing, young men in school uniforms, laid over a beaming union jack background. Each one casts an empty fashion model glare at the camera complacent in their stereotypical roles: The good looking, cynical one; the bonehead sports player; the awkward yet talented little one; the token black British guy; and the jolly fat one.

History Boys presents its story with a superficial, pop-fashion twist to make it feel fun and hip, while the movie yacks relentless, philosophical babble over the heads of any real human's comprehension. The movie employs this disingenuous tactic to appease the audience who vainly confuse thought-provoking dialog with the inane drivel meant to confuse the subjective viewer into thinking they are in the presence of genius. This pseudo- intellectual smoke screen is provided to keep the simple minds busy while the story veers into the dark territory that houses the story's genuine issue. History Boys opens up its overcoat and presents crude flashes of the repressed libido and perversion of mature men, and the tragically mislead minds of attention-starved teenage boys.

It is just this glancing over of much heavier issues that should catch any coherent viewer by surprise and beg for further exploration. Yet, History Boys opts instead to treat its pedophiliac tendencies like an 800 pound gorilla in the classroom. A teacher repeatedly fondles his students' genitals on a motorcycle, while another teacher is crassly offered to be "sucked-off" by their student, and accepts. All these minor details are presented as human nature and even defended slightly in the film. Meanwhile, the viewer is intentionally directed to chuckle off these felony offenses as boys being boys, and men being men who simply love to touch boys.

History Boys' misleading and dishonest story has apparently worked wonders on a half- conscious, world-wide audience, so easily impressed by the movies and so unwilling to be disappointed by the theater. Light and fluffy on the outside, the movie is thoroughly demented on the inside - written by a perverted old man and acted out by a group of fame- obsessed boys who wouldn't dare question the material they're given. Coincidentally, the real people behind the movie seem to share the same background and fate of the characters they're playing.

NAMBLA sympathizers will have found their "To Sir, With Love".


I ordered this movie on rental after hearing quite a lot of praise for it.

After about half an hour, I thought, 'It's got to get better soon, surely.' I watched the whole film thinking that it couldn't remain this bad throughout but it did.

At no point was I engaged by the film, and I only left it on until the end because I very rarely turn off a DVD early. The plot was very poor and the acting was nothing special. I'm glad to see since watching it that the ratings have come down slightly, better reflecting the quality of the film.

In my opinion - overrated.


I thought it was a pointless film, full of r-soles.

The acting is okay, but the film left me with a feeling that I had wasted time watching it.

The constant, "sir," this and, "sir," that, got on my nerves, and the writer's idea of setting the film in a Yorkshire Grammar School to fool the audience into forgetting that they are all, essentially, a bunch of toffs, didn't work on me.

I couldn't wait for this boring, directionless pile of pretentious mung to end, and cannot let anyone else watch this crap, so please believe me, PLEASE!!! Never watch this poor, poor film.


The accolades for this movie are proof positive that the key to good reviews from pseudo-intellectuals and film critics is bombastic pedantry intertwined with flagrant homo-eroticism.

This film heaps annoying precocious display upon annoying precocious display, culminating in the stereotypical homosexual fantasy: everyone desirable is gay or suppressing their gay tendencies.

Most of the historical, literary and movie references will sail over the head of the typical viewer, which would be perfectly fine if the material were not so ham-handed, campy and pompous. A few good performances, but all-in-all a disappointing piece of gay propaganda.


An absolutely terrible film, the characters are all so lovely & good I wanted to be sick, Alan Bennet portrays a rose tinted view of the world and although for a bit of light relief I don't mind optimistic films from time to time 'the history boys' takes this concept too far for my liking.

From the first few minutes the film is just annoying to watch, there are some fine actors but the overall optimistic & downright annoying feeling simply makes the film unwatchable.

The lack lustre & unimaginative plot seems to go nowhere very slowly the only redeeming feature I can think of is the soundtrack which contains some classic 80's tunes.


After watching this movie I tried to figure out exactly what point it was trying to make. I mean, if someone writes a play or screenplay, surely there must be some sort of underlying reason that drives them to do so. In this movie it is clearly about promoting acceptance of homosexuality, not only amongst men, but men and school-age boys. I wouldn't like to jump to too many conclusions, but my guess would have to be that a good percentage of the people behind this production are themselves gay, and have felt marginalised for a good part of their lives. The worst part of all of this, is that the movie was grossly, falsely, advertised. This was done, I suspect, so that this movie's "subtle" preachings were not to be done solely to the converted. The continuous references to poetry (whether they were relevant or not, who cares, they were plain boring) would be enough to keep almost everyone who might have considered reading a bit of poetry in their spare time to seriously reconsider. It appears obvious that the actors have merely learnt their lines, and delivered them in such a clichéd manner as to appear "intellectual" without actually really caring about what is coming out of their mouths. All-in-all I really hope that schools in England are, or were, not as depicted in this movie, and that actual teachers and Dons at Oxford take offence rather than sympathise with this shocker.


This is probably one of the most pathetic action flicks I've seen. I rarely hit fast forward even on the most sorry acting endeavors, but this just brought tears to my eyes. Columbo should never do another film, his pouty face and supposed sadness over the death of his father is a hilarious "gem" to watch. I've seen high school plays with more drama than this. Baldwin, at least seems to be laughing at himself in his role which makes it easier to see him as the lothario that his family is famed for. Let's see what else, plot....um yeah....don't even bother listening it will save you from having to make up alternate scenarios in your head. I mean who wrote this script!! I'm angry at even having rented and spent time watching it. The ancient warriors were wholly unnecessary and take up literally about 8 minutes of the entire movie. It's not scary, not thrilling and I found myself wanting to grab a pistol to shoot my screen to get the violence moving. You have been warned!!


Like another reviewer of this movie, I found myself fast-forwarding through this turkey. I rarely do that, because I like to watch the whole thing in order to write an informative review. But in this case, it was just so direly tedious that I gave up very quickly and skimmed through, watching a few minutes here and there.

Accordingly, I won't go into the plot, because I didn't watch enough to figure it out. But from what I did see I gather that a sick guy (Lynch) was searching for an artifact (possibly the Grail) in order to cure himself of some disease. Others, including Columbo, try to stop him. The "Ancient Warriors" of the title seem to appear only at the very end, in order to stop Lynch - literally about two minutes of screen time. Otherwise this is just a sub-standard action film.

And it is pretty awful. Mostly this is down to truly awful acting, the king of which is Columbo, but all are pretty dire. Columbo was a body-building buddy of Schwarzenegger in the before times and it really shows which of them got the acting talent. In fact, Columbo makes Lou Ferrigno look like a Shakespearean thespian by comparison. He really is awful.

Still don't believe me? Let's just say that Lynch is the subtlest of all the actors, many of whom look like they were doing their first job. And I never thought I'd ever say Lynch was subtle.

The action seems pretty standard - for a TV show. For a movie it comes well below expectations. Thank God for the Fast Forward button!

All in all, this movie is a waste of time. Don't bother.

PS: Normally when I say don't bother I kinda hope you'll watch and find the movie as bad as I told you it would be. But in this case I REALLY mean "Don't bother!" But hey! It's your lifespan. You can waste it if you like!


A friend of mine got me this little turkey for Christmas, because he knows I enjoy watching bad movies. Usually I do this as a group event, so my friends and I can all sit back and mock the movie together, but out of boredom I decided to check it out by my lonesome. Next time I watch something like this, I'll make sure to have a suicide watch on hand.

From the title, as well as the box, I assumed this would be a horror flick, with at the very least some cheesy death scenes. Sadly, I didn't even get that much. Ancient Warriors is a low-grade action flick with vague supernatural elements awkwardly shoehorned in. You got some characters with psychic abilities and a dying man looking for a miracle cure buried in a cave in Sardinia, which is guarded by the ghosts of, you guessed it, Ancient Warriors. In any other movie, this would have been the focal point, but in the case of this flick, you have to wonder why they even bothered putting it in. As the gentleman who did the previous review remarks, the eponymous warriors get maybe five minutes of screen time. Most of the rest of the movie consists of boring action scenes and ham-fisted attempts at character development.

I think one of the many, many problems with this film is there's so much going on that nothing gets accomplished. Perhaps that's because there were three writers. It certainly feels like it's trying to be three movies at once. They loaded the movie with about a dozen characters and tried to flesh them all out, which might have worked if they'd gotten decent actors. I mean, you know you're in trouble when Daniel Baldwin is the most gifted actor on the set. The movie seems to be pulling in at least three directions at once; one minute it's a buddy movie, the next it's a shoot-em-up, and for brief spurts it's a supernatural thriller. It's a textbook case of "too many cooks spoil the broth."

If this movie had come out 20 years ago and had at least one famous action star (Jean-Claude Van Damme springs to mind), this movie might have made it on the big screen as a summer blockbuster. As it is, it seems destined to be the kind of movie you find on cable at 3 am when you can't fall asleep. And that's probably where it belongs. If you happen upon this movie in the store at some point, do yourself a favor and leave it on the shelf.


This movie is just incredibly bad. It's not even "nice mindless action".

Horrible action scenes, no matter if it is clumsy fourth grader wrestling style looking hand to hand combat or slow, plodding gun fights.

I didn't expect this to be a well written story or anything, but I have never felt so much disdain for the "heroes".

The dialogues are scandalously dumb.

Without giving away too much of the movie: There are NUMEROUS scenes where the heroes act DOWNRIGHT stupid and incompetent, plus quite often they run away like scared little girls when having an advantage in numbers during the "fights". Anyone who will find him-/herself rooting for the "good guys" must have the patience and love for good only a buddhist monk can have, because the script and the acting aren't helpful in any way to feel for those guys.

The subplot gives you a mentally disabled daughter of the hero whose role is downright offending AND annoying it made me BEG she would get killed or something like that.

If you still want to watch this: 1. Make sure you have a soft spot for bad movies 2. Make sure you like to comment a lot during bad movies 3. Make sure you have people with you who fulfill 1 and 2.

Worked for me to a degree. But don't even try watching & analizing this in serious fashion, it is THAT bad.


O.M.F.G. this movie sits about 5 steps below the definition of Cinema Cheese... Where "B" movies reign, this is find a niche in the "C" category.. Franco Columbu should have stuck to the role of being the legendary bodybuilder who is aging well and working as a Chiropractor in California.. Instead, he trys his hand at producing & starring as lead role in a movie so awful i would have more readily chewed a handful of broken glass than watch from beginning to end..

The marketed plot of the movie is the following: "An Elite Delta Force Team is assigned to thwart a Chemical Weapons Terrorist plot, in the process they are trapped inside an Ancient cave and have to fight their way out using all their skills as a Special Forces unit, against the incredible supernatural evil of awakened spirits of Warrior Guardians" Sounds fargging good right??, the picture of the Skeleton's in armor on the DVD box set the hook in me and i splurged for the purchase...

Aight, lets break it down... There are no damn Skeletons in the movie at all, not a one... Now you think thats bad, there is NO battle between Delta Force and anything supernatural.. In fact, the "Ancient Warriors" is a 7 second scene of six Sardinian young men wearing garb with spears in hand, they step out from the wall from which they were previously superimposed, rocks falls killing Richard Lynch's character, then then back step into the cave wall again & disappear... Don't believe me? you haven't seen anything yet... There is a Baldwin in the movie, yes a real live Baldwin, a "DANIEL Baldwin" i may add, which was probably the lowest priced bid in the Baldwinian Empire.. Baldwin plays the part of a Delta Force Captain who is so out of shape that he could've been taken out by a 90 pound Polish Downs syndrome patient in hand-to-hand combat. In fact the entire "Delta Force" unit in the movie looks about as disciplined as the Guatemalan National Guard. Franco Columbu's role of the lead action character is beyond ridiculous, whilst mastering the double pistol squat run while flailing his hands, his head facing the ground as not to actually see his intended targets, there is a degree of skill required to such buffoonery. The fact that he seems to be completely unhittable by any rounds while in this mode is even more curiously amusing. Occasionally the pistols disappear in one frame and the next he is firing an Uzi, with as much enthusiasm as a stoned teenager playing "operation wolf" on an arcade.. Baldwin gets, NO-KILLS in the whole movie, in fact he is so far on the back burner it makes you wonder why he was even included in the film?.. Most of the time he plays a pathetic combination of "faceman" from the A-Team & a Pimp-Daddy lying on a lawn chair being pawed by adoring busty women giving him manicures. Richard Lynch's character is 80% coughing up phlegm & blood from some un-named disease, and then the other 20% wishing he was in a Chuck Norris flick.. The whole beach Delta Force training scene centered around the buttock region of the token T&A member of the squad, that and assorted elementary school caliber obstacles for the "Elite" Combat Team to negotiate. The action sequences are so preposterous that my eyeballs still ache from absorbing this audio visual toxin.. I love the scene where 3 guys running up with flashlights sends the Squad into a blind panicked retreat off of an 80 foot cliff.. Oh i forgot they were simultaneous under attack by a tin helicopter that obviously encompassed the part of the film budget that the lesser Balwinite did not yet absorb. Nothing, i mean nothing in this film had even a shadow of a basis in reality or the tactical functions of an actual Special OP's team.. Even the terrorists we more organized whenever they were not either mining, searching for the holy grail, or attempting to thwart the mad skills of Franco Columbu's double pistol dwarf walk (I swear he cut loose at least a few pasta farts in these sequences).. The acting as a whole is shallower than THAT ocean on the moon. When watching this movie, if you DO happen to have about an hour and a half of time which can either be spent cleaning a kitty litter box one grain at a time or watching this consider the latter. In any case spare the popcorn & fill a few shot glasses with Pepito-bismol and keep them on standby, your gonna need em'.


You have to have a little patience with this movie, sort of like with the first season of ST:TNG. It gets a little better as it goes along, and the actors get used to each other and their roles. Franco Columbo looks great, for someone who's 60 (or even someone who's 40), but he's totally unbelievable running around with a couple of pistols. He doesn't seem to know just what to do with them. It's better when he's carrying a machine pistol, but he's "The World's Strongest Bodybuilder", not a martial artist or action hero. His performance varies from pretty good to less than average. He's more believable in the non-combat scenes.

Supporting cast is good, performance more even, overall better than average, but the script and plot are both a little weak. The dialog, and the action scenes, are mostly ordinary and unimaginative. You've seen it all before, but better.

If you're considering this movie because of a "supernatural battle against the ultimate evil" blurb (from the DVD I watched), you're going to be disappointed. Whoever wrote that has more imagination than the scriptwriters, and probably never saw the movie. Don't expect much from the 'Ancient Warriors' of the title. They seem more of an afterthought, and play a very minor role in the movie.

There's some entertainment value here, but, like I said, you'll have to be patient and let it dribble out.


Up until now, I have never stumbled upon a dollar DVD that wasn't worth a dollar. I would have thought that anything would be worth one miserable dollar. The forty years of fiscal irresponsibility that began with Lyndon Johnson's final debasement of our currency has reduced the once-mighty dollar to subatomic dimensions; and at the rate the current administration continues to pile up debt, it will not be long before it will take Avogadro's number of the wretched things just to buy a handyman's special, dry-rotted, termite-infested two-bedroom firetrap in the middle of a malarial swamp. What could possibly be so worthless that it is not worth one stinking, lousy, butt-wiping dollar?

Well, this movie is it, folks. It is not worth a dollar. It is not worth a ten cent coupon for cottage cheese that blew out the window and landed on top of a manure pile. It is so bad that no combination of known adjectives could do justice to it. It is not even so bad that it is entertaining. It is just so bad that it is not worth a dollar.

Why do I feel this way? Well, here comes the big, bad spoiler: The ancient warriors are little more than translucent, badly composited wall decorations, and they make only the briefest cameo appearances. Aren't they the smart ones? The rest of the movie involves nothing more original than a series of pointless and poorly staged shootouts between an unlikeable and unconvincing bunch of good guys and a gang of bad guys whose leader (even by today's laissez-faire standards) ought to have his mouth washed out with Lysol and be sent to the penalty box for unnecessary profanity. But possibly he was only voicing his true feelings about this movie. If so, I can understand. Before I was even twenty minutes deep in this excrement, I wanted to shoot everyone involved, including the producers.

I would like to conclude with a protest against having to give one star to this abomination. It is not worth one star. It is not worth zero stars. It is not even worth one crummy dollar.


From the moment you hear that first gunshot, you feel an air of cheesy action crapfest ahead of you. Then you hear that second gunshot, then another, and another...And another....And yet another. They should have called this shoot people the movie. Pretty much the entire film centers around shooting guns nonstop and killing everything in sight.

The one time the films stars aren't shooting their guns, is when they're polishing them...And the one time they're not killing people with their nicely polished guns is when they're having target practice. Yes, you read that right. You get to actually watch the low grade b movie action stars target practice. You get to watch all kinds of guns being fired too, not just machine guns, but 9mm handguns too. One of the b movie stars even pays homage to Chow Yun Fat with his duel wielding 9mm's style of shooting people.

Now don't get me wrong, when I say these guys shoot people, they don't just wing them or nick them...They fu**ing kill them...Dead mind you, deader than 4 o'clock. I don't think I saw even one person recover from the shooting they got. I saw guys taking shots in the head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. And at one point I saw a man get shot in the a**, either that or he had two a**holes.

That reminds me, the actors in this film were like a collective of a**holes. Or, the big stink as I like to call them. They were very wooden, almost totem-like. They somehow made their way from scene to scene, and shot people. I could imagine the director carrying each actor from scene to scene and posing them for each shot given the woodocitificationess of the actors in question.

I didn't hate this film, and for the price of $1.00 I would have to say it was worth it. It was worth a dollar just to see the heavy machine gunner do a Rambo yell while he slaughtered dozens of mindless villains. I couldn't stop laughing during that part of the film either. Going into Ancient Warriors thinking it would suck made sitting through it much easier as well.

All in all, I'd give this film a 2. Just because it's so over the top with gunplay and sets a new standard for bgrade action films, plus there's a Baldwin brother in it, so hey...I'd give it the extra point for that alone. For bad movie lovers only, all others please avoid this at all costs. Even at a dollar.


God no! But the filmmakers did their very best to make it seem so. Perhaps it's an attempt to keep spectators away from the event itself, but I don't think so.

I attended the film with seven other Burners merely two weeks after returning from BM '03, and we all agreed: What a disappointment! Following the experiences of the sad, whiny and uninteresting subjects of the film was like nails scraping across a chalkboard, you just want to leave the room screaming. These folks were not accurate cross sections of the type of people who attend Burning Man. I mean, come on! A GETTY? Please!

Apparently BM '01 was the year everyone "just said no," and the year everyone went to bed early and got a good night's sleep, and the year that everyone abstained from anything even remotely resembling sex.

Anyone who has attended BM will want to save their frustration for something that's actually frustrating, like the state of our government. All others should attend BM and form their own opinions of the event.

Oh, and to make matters worse, there is a typo in the open moments of the film, which leads one to conclude all kinds of unfortunate things.


Perhaps the oddest fact about this movie is that it's an alternate-world sequel: An entirely new plot has been constructed around the same six basic characters from "Four Daughters" (1938). But while that movie was nominated for several Oscars, and was remade in 1954 as "Young at Heart" (Doris Day, Frank Sinatra), this sequel is so lame it made me reconsider the original, not to its advantage.

Claude Rains, Fay Bainter, and Donald Crisp were capable of saving just about any film, but even though they ganged up on this one, it was hopeless, not least because the movie's arteries are again clogged with the frothy Lane sisters and three feeble counterparts (Dick Foran, Frank McHugh, Jeffrey Lynn).

In the thankless role of a father who returns years after deserting wife (Bainter) and their frothy daughters, Papa Rains is so charming that he manages to make believable their ludicrously swift forgiveness of him. But Mama and her goody-eight-shoes girls would forgive him, or anyone, of anything. Every character in the movie is wearisomely benevolent. Even the bad boys  Rains and John Garfield  have hearts of gold.

Well, maybe not gold, since metals don't break as easily as these hearts. When blonde daughter (Priscilla L.) falls for Garfield, Mama convinces Papa that the only decent thing for him to do is: First, send boyfriend Garfield packing; and second, abandon his family again. Huh?? After they've just welcomed Papa back and forgiven him?? But guess what? Papa Rains does it, and so does Garfield, dumping Blondie without so much as slap on her bum.

Unhappy ending? Clearly it's not meant to be. Marriage is supposed to be the happy ending, right? And we're buried in nuptials or the promise thereof: Blondie winds up with one of the milksops (I don't even remember which one). Mama Bainter and fiancée Crisp tie a pretty frayed knot. The only fun pair-up, though, is hardly a nuptial, and hardly admirable in the real world: Bad Boys Rains and Garfield wind up together at the train station, setting off as con men teamed up to rip off the world. (They start with a bookish fellow traveler-- he's wearing glasses-- who nevertheless believes he's buying a whale tooth from Moby Dick. Hollywood never misses a chance to dis' book smarts and respect street smarts.)

So the film ends with Garfield and Rains eloping. And why not? They're the most romantic couple in the whole movie.


This extraneous aside from the Four Daughters series is said to have been made by popular demand, and to have defied the rule that sequels or spin-offs are never up to par. I don't know about the first part of that, but I strongly disagree with the latter conclusion.

The Four Daughters/Wives/Mothers series ranged from "not-too-bad" to "really-quite-bad" (4 to 2 on the IMDb scale). This entry was far below the abysmal standard set by the others. They should have left Garfield dead instead of resurrecting and renaming him. He was the worst feature of the previous films and perfected his obnoxious character in this one. Rains was as close as anyone (except cook/housekeeper Robson) got to being a sympathetic character in Daughters Courageous, and he barely rises above detestable. Even his noble gesture at the end doesn't salvage his role or the film.


`Full Frontal' is maybe my greatest deception this year. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and having such a cast, I would not believe that the film could be such a crap. There are lots of characters, but none of them is well developed. Therefore, the viewer sees many famous actors and actresses on the screen and is not able to understand who they are, what are their motives, where they are. The plot is very confused, and some actors and actresses perform more than one role. The image and photography are horrible, using a kind of fake Dogma '95 style. I do not know how such talented people could be part of such a mess: friendship or big money? Anyway, a huge waste of talented people and of my time and money, in a film that never works. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): `Full Frontal'


Even though it received 5 stars from many critics, this is the worst movie I have ever seen, including a number of porn movies. I have no objection to sex and can tolerate foul language but a movie should have some redeeming qualities and this movie has none. Basically no plot, no suspense, no romance, no fun, no good jokes, no good sex--just a sorry attempt by some excellent movie makers to be cute with no payoff! I rate this movie even worse than Burt Reynolds worst failure with Dom Deluise (when he and his cast appeared to be having a great time making an unfunny movie) because Soderbergh and crew have the skill to do so much better. I still don't understand why so many critics thought this was such a great movie. Must be some kind of Hollywood inside joke that they are not sharing with the rest of us!


In Spanish there's a saying that translates: "Grow fame and go to sleep". I think this happened with S. Soderbergh, where he took advantage of his surprising win at the Oscars Best Director competition and the success of his movie Erin Brockovich along with his pal Julia Roberts and her high peak in the moment he made this movie. Without those 2 mega successes he wouldn't convince many studios to make this movie, and none of us would ever seen it. The box office barely went over the movie budget.

A mix of troubled characters related all to the movie business create a confused and complicated web of feelings, relationships, weird behaviors and "rendevouz" that are let to almost pure improvisation by the director, and in retrospective it sounds very interesting but we haven't seen many movies with such a proposal maybe not because nobody has thought about it but because it's very hard to make it successful and achieve a fine piece of work. In this case I don't think that the weight of Oscars and fresh success help that much in accomplishing that nice piece of work. A very good and daring idea where all the actors were abandon to their own choices in make up, dressing and craft supplies. Niece piece of work... for the actors and crew who make it, in their own private screening or party, not for us who felt it was a waste of time and my $1 that cost renting it. There is some arrogant smell in the air that I felt heavily since I saw for the first time Mr. Soderbergh old fashion sort of feminine style glasses frames and it was strongly confirmed by watching this movie.

I don't remember in recent years a movie where I start watching the running time as early as I started with this movie: when it ran for 15 min I was already impatient, and for a good 1 hour or so I felt uncomfortable for not knowing anything of what was happening and not connecting but a couple of dots in the whole plot. Maybe that was the precise goal of Soderbergh, don't know. I felt bored watching a huge bunch of nonsense which might have make sense but at the end it didn't. Brad Pitt was quite right at the end: I don't know who did it. We strongly hope there's better to come from Soderbergh.


Well what can I say? I have always been a massive fan of Julia Roberts and the entirety of her work, but this really shocked and dismayed me. It's plot is poor it is unbelievably uninteresting and bored me to tears. beside 'Open Water' it is the worst camera work i have witnessed (bar home videos) I am very eager to collect the majority of Julia's work and so I decided to go for it and have a peek at this seemingly entrancing film, however it was to my distaste. It lacked any real plot and seemed to be a group of people talking to a dodgy camera, hence i have promptly returned the film and hope never to view its likes again. If you're curious to see what I'm talking about, don't look. It's a nasty shock. Strike one Julia.


Question 1: *What* was this movie all about? Question 2: What or who prompted its selection as IMDb movie of the day?? (Which in turn has prompted this review.) This has got to be one of the most pretentious and pseudo-high brow movies I've ever seen. Soderbergh has made a movie that so labors on being arty, that you end up witnessing a massive exercise in an aimless and fruitless(one follows the other, I guess)story(?) telling.

When I began watching this movie, I was all excited about it - what with such a massive star cast and Soderbergh's reputation. At the end of the movie, I felt cheated of my time and effort that this movie demanded.

You're better off watching a re-run of "Traffic".


"Full Frontal" is the ultimate exercise in Hollywood masturbation. It's a movie . within a movie . WITHIN A MOVIE. Is this clever, or merely solipsistic? If you've seen any of Soderbergh's better films, I'd recommend you stick to those and avoid this one. Among the many detracting points, the lighting is terrible (half of the film is shot on digital video . with lower production values than many of your own home movies), and the cast seems to know that it's all an in joke. Ha ha! Hollywood is soulless!! But who gives a damn? There's no way into this film. None of the characters are worth identifying with. even after you are allowed to realize that half of them are merely characters in ANOTHER movie ABOUT a movie. Jesus. are there really no new ideas? Is the next Soderbergh film going to be about the bowel movements of Hollywood heavyweights? Skip it and rent `Traffic' again.


Now we know what Soderbergh (and Von Trier) would have done if he were old enough for 8mm: make a day-in-the-lives documentary of a group of related people and throw in a film (within a film (within a film (etc))) theme, producing not so much a confusing, but a thoroughly uninteresting film. Ala David Lynch, this is the director's film, and he'll do whatever he damn well pleases with continuity, plot twists, and character development regardless of how well it connects with the audience. The message is that Soderbergh is the artiste, and if the film doesn't satisfy, then tough.

Beyond the ranting, I just could not recommend this to anyone I know, unless they were a closet Blair Underwood fan. I don't even want to think about the mainstream audience who might wander into this based upon Julia Roberts...


The movie only cost $2 Million!  You can tell.

The actors chose their own wardrobe!  You can tell

The all time worst vanity film ever made by a Hollywood Director - You can tell!


Steven Soderbergh is a talented director, and I respect his decision to do a low-budget picture, but this movie didn't do it for me. I am a firm believer that visuals take a back seat to script, when it comes to making a good movie. You can shoot a feature-length movie on a home video camera with bad lighting, and it can still be good as long as the script is well-written and the characters are engaging. In this case, the characters aren't engaging. First off, it's harder to make an interesting film about wealthy Hollywood types. It's better to make movies about ordinary people, with whom the audience can relate. I just felt distant from these characters, and I found it hard to get wrapped up in their lives. The director throws the audience a couple of curve balls, but they come off as more pretentious than nifty.

The film's strong points lie in its concepts, but the execution is poor. I like the idea of an ensemble of A-list actors working for little money, and not having the luxury of trailers or craft service. The ensemble cast of popular film and TV actors is definitely talented, but good acting can't save bad material. One of the reasons why I was interested in seeing the movie is because I heard that all the dialogue is improvised by the actors. Well, either I heard wrong or I was lied to, because in the DVD commentary (which is very good, by the way) Soderbergh explains that only the scenes between Nicky Katt and Enrico Colantoni are heavily improvised.

If you want to see a better film that uses a similar style of filmmaking in a more successful way, watch Mike Figgis's "Timecode." That film is all improvised and shot on video in real time. In that case, the experiment was a success. I'm not a big fan of experimental films in general, because in most cases the directors are simply being self-indulgent and pass their work off as high art, simply because they're being different (or "revolutionary," as the more pretentious directors phrase it). Hell, making a whole movie that centers on an hour and 30 minutes of a fat slob watching TV is something different, but who would watch it? There's nothing wrong with being artistic in the process of making a film, but you must make the material at least somewhat interesting to the audience or it's simply cinematic masturbation. There are more self-indulgent films out there than "Full Frontal," but this just wasn't my cup of tea. If the script were good, I wouldn't even notice the poor visual quality, but since it wasn't, I was able to notice it and as a result it hampered the film.

My score: 4 (out of 10)


Steven Soderbergh is a brilliant director and he's one that is experimental by heart but when your already established in the industry these experimental films can be pretty risky. As much as I admire him he fails badly here. This is one of those movie in a movie plots and there are several characters that the film follows and all have some sort of connection whether they know it or not. Julia Roberts plays a reporter named Catherine and she's interviewing an actor named Nicholas but while on his flight he finds a love letter and thinks Catherine slipped it into his bag. But she denies it and he keeps pestering her about it all the way to the movie set. Here the film shifts and we see that Catherine and Nicholas are really actors named Francesca and Calvin and that the whole flight was part of a film. Meanwhile, a woman named Lee (Catherine Keener) is sick of her marriage and writes her husband Carl (David Hyde Pierce) a letter but he doesn't see it. Lee has set up her sister Linda (Mary McCormack) on a blind date with a producer named Gus (David Duchovny) but Linda works as a masseuse and has already given Gus a massage and agreed to an extra 500 dollars for "Release". Linda needs the money because she is going to Arizona to see a man she met on the Internet. This man is Arty (Enrico Colantoni) and he's a director and writer of a play about Hitler and they have both lied to each other about they're age. Steven Soderbergh shot this film with mostly handheld digital cameras and in several scenes its very difficult to watch the action that takes place on the screen. Soderbergh usually uses these types of cameras for his films and he's usually a master craftsman with the way his films look and "Traffic" is a beautifully shot film. But this is not and it's the type of film that young film directors make when they have no money. Soderbergh has the experience and knowledge to at least shoot his films in a more professional manner. If your a young fledgling director and so is your cinematographer than we can understand shots and scenes being blurry and out of focus. But I don't understand shooting a film like that if you don't have to. Script and story is mainly about how things appear one way on the surface but are different when you look closer. The actors that come away from this looking the best are McCormack, Keener and Pierce. They're ordeal is more understandable and the performances are pretty good. But this is film that just doesn't work and Soderbergh's attempt at style ends up being completely annoying. I give him credit for trying something different but he should have known better.


I remember my thoughts when I picked up the movie. "I've heard this is pretty good." I don't remember where or when, so I rented it. After watching this dreck, I now think, "Somebody lied to me." The lies just get better and better (or worse and worse) depending on your perspective

The lies continue. Look at the top of the page under Genre. The first word is COMEDY. Huh? Comedy for whom? There's nothing funny here.

Go to: Box Office and Business. Budget $2,000,000. I didn't think that Julia Roberts did anything for less than 20 million. I think that somebody is guilty of fraud. How do you quantify a big fat favor from her? This is fraud on an Enron scale.

Finally, this is from the Plot Summary: "Julia Roberts, Blair Underwood, David Duchovny, Brad Pitt (cameoing as himself), David Hyde Pierce, Catherine Keener, and Terence Stamp are reason enough to see the film, which is billed as a 'movie about movies for people who love movies.'"

A movie about movies for people who love movies? What? This should be billed as 'self-indulgent crap'!

And notice who was left out. Nicky Katt (although very annoying) was the best actor in this mess.

Alas, there is some truth. It was filmed in 18 days. I think just about anyone would agree, that sounds about right.


I looked forward to watching this film - Duchovny, Hyde-Pierce and Brad Pitt are amongst my favourite actors. I knew the film was going to be a little wierd, but then, I like weird. And I knew it was an arty lo-budget affair. But none of this was to prepare me for the nonsense that followed.

To make a good film you need a good plot, and good characters. However the characters in this film have absolutely no character. There's nothing in the film that keeps you watching, it's more like highlights from 'Big Brother'. Only duller.

From one monotonous conversation to the next, 'Full Frontal' is nothing more than an exercise in self-indulgence. A way for the director to say "I got these big stars to perform for free".

And to further my disappointment more, Julia Roberts is in this film. An actress I've always been irritated by.

Don't bother watching this film, you'll never see those 2 hours again.


The kindest thing that one can say about this film is "Thank God it's not any longer!"

Don't get me wrong. It was an ingenious idea--$2 mm home movie, highly improvised, fine director in Steven Soderberg, a very talented cast, complex movie within movie (within movie--as the last shot shows) structure--but the result is far less than the sum of its parts. It's a dirty patch on the bootsoles of all involved comparable only to Spielberg's "AI"--which was until I watched "Full Frontal" the worst film by a talented director I had ever seen.

I won't bother reprising what passes for a plot. Suffice it to say that the film covers 24 hours, and feels longer. It's rather like being trapped watching the home movies of a group of very artsy, very neurotic, very self centered, and ultimately very boring people.

If I were to single out one aspect that is particularly like fingernails on the blackboard, it is Catherine Keener as Lee. I must say that it's probably a pretty good piece of acting, since Lee is every man's nightmare--needy, self centered, manipulative, cruel (her office behavior would get her fired at any decent firm--of course the character is an HR person, and so there is a drop of reality there), and completely loathsome. She makes any Woody Allen neurotic look like the poster child for mental health. It's probably not an unrealistic portrait of a certain kind of woman. The question is, do you want to spend even 101 minutes with her?

I decided to watch this based on favorable buzz I had heard. Learn from my error. Avoid at all costs. This is 101 minutes of mind-numbingly self centered Hollywood masturbation, without a single relieving touch of charm or humor. I hope that Mr. Soderberg has the grace to blush when this leaden turkey is mentioned.


If nothing else the film FULL FRONTAL is remarkably ill-named. Other than its sexual connotation, "full frontal" implies a head-on attack, a blunt and honest approach. That is not obvious here, rather, Steven Soderberg's film goes the longest way possible to get a conclusion that is obvious, if indeed the film has a conclusion in the first place.

The film features a film within the film, and seems to feature flashbacks to real life moments that inspired the fictional moments in the film. But it becomes apparent that the stories are running on parallel lines and really don't relate. So? The message seems to be that real life is reel life is real life is reel life, and so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah. Nothing new there. So much fuss over such little inspiration.

The film seems to be an experimental film of the sort that any director with Soderberg's success would have outgrown years ago. Calling in all of his big-star buddies to make guest appearances only magnifies the sheer haplessness of the mess. Had he used unknown actors, perhaps the film would have seemed sufficiently obscure to rate as an oddity. As is, the film seems to be little more than a bunch of friends having a party, getting properly intoxicated and then breaking out the home video camera. Like most such slapdash movies, I'm sure it is an embarrassment to all involved.


I am not sure what the director was thinking.... Was was his objective and I even thought this was pieces of a movie that never made it to the theater. I just bought the DVD for 10 cents, so, I am not worried about my money, but I am upset for the time that I took to choose and then to watch it. I should have known better from the start that the movie is going nowhere! I suggest everyone who reads this never, never try watching this movie. I have to agree with some of the critics..... This is the worst movie..... I mean the worst movie I have ever watched. What a waste of cast.... So many good people in this movie, and what were they thinking.... As the movie mentions.... Is it just about money.... But this is even a low budget movie.... So I don't get it...


Some parts were weird but good acting.

It was funny and had a excellent story line.

It was entertaining and had lots of drama.

you can relate to the characters and their problems.

I also liked the way it was directed.

It was good for a foreign film.

Some parts were weird but good acting.

It was funny and had a excellent story line.

It was entertaining and had lots of drama.

you can relate to the characters and their problems.

I also liked the way it was directed.

It was good for a foreign film.


Mirko Crocop is one hell of a fighter when it comes to K-1, Pride FC and now UFC. His famous "left high kick" has put many opponents to sleep. Now it wasn't an opponent he put to sleep, but it was me. This movie had some acting without some real emotions in it, it was like Crocop turned into a Robocop...altogether with the entire cast. Although Crocop is a credible fighter,(The man would kill all those so-called action heroes in real combat!) in this movie he never convinces. The fighting-scenes were just too easy. Still I hope he will get another shot starring in an action-movie. But please let a real martial-arts movie-director do the choreography to spice it up. I rate this movie 3 out of 10, just because there is little hope of Crocop being a real action hero.


Really, if you have insomnia, watch this move. I sleep after watching half of the movie.

This movie is basically about a special agent/assassin who fails in a mission and is sent to an island for "reeducation".

Ultimate Force will only please those Mirko "Croatian Cop" Filipovic hardcore fans and nobody else. Cro Cop acting is bad. Specially when he's fighting... You'll not see a lot of MMA (Vale-tudo) fights in this movie which is a shame.

And it's funny how he uses this movie to show some despite to a certain Brazilian Vale-Tudo fighter. The only part of the movie that made me laugh out loud.


It's easy to say, "Not enough Cro-Cop!" with a film like this. Then again, that's what MMA highlight DVD's are for. I agree with another viewer who saw this film as a bit Van Damme-ish, it is very much so. On that note, it's about what one can expect for a first effort. The film lacks the cheese of Bloodsport, though Mirko lacks none of the credibility that Van Damme does. Cro-Cop is, with little doubt, the best pure striker in the fight game today, utterly lethal kicks and punches proof positive when his knockout record is reviewed. Whether it's the left high-kick that put Igor Vovchanchyn and Aleksander Emelianenko to sleep or the straight left that broke Bob Sapp's face, Cro-Cop's striking is without question. His acting, well, that's another story. It needs work. That said, it certainly wasn't any worse than anyone else's in the film. The genre of the martial arts hero may be in a bit of a lull (unless you're a vampire), but a man of Mirko's considerable ability may just be able to revive it. If, that is, he chooses the fake fighting over the real thing.


My father rented "The Bible Collection" DVDs over the Easter period, but I was interested in watching only two of these and that was only because of who directed them - this one by Italian film-maker Olmi and the already-reviewed SAMSON AND DELILAH (1996) by Nicolas Roeg.

Of course, as Roeg's film obviously elicited largely unfavorable comparisons to Cecil B. De Mille's 1949 spectacular, so too does this one to John Huston's notorious 1966 biblical flop. Still, much as that film proved a disappointment, its undeniable grandeur is vastly preferable to the ordinariness and quasi-documentary style of Olmi's effort (the star cast Huston assembled certainly didn't hurt - whereas here only Italian actor Omero Antonutti is recognizable at all, as the rest of the cast is comprised of non-professional Moroccans)!

To be fair to Olmi, he handles the events with some imagination - as they're presented in the form of campfire tales narrated by nomad Antonutti (who also takes on the role of Noah) to his people - and the images (accentuated by Ennio Morricone's wistful score) are often poetic...but the over-familiarity of it all and the distinct lack of excitement displayed throughout results in sheer dullness! Thankfully, the film is only around an hour and a half in length - whereas most of the other titles in "The Bible Collection" ran for something like twice that running-time (as does, after all, John Huston's THE BIBLE - IN THE BEGINNING itself). One other asset to the film, at least in its English-dubbed version I watched, is the melodious voice of Paul Scofield (who dubs Antonutti throughout).


"Genesis: The Creation and the Flood" is a good film if you want someone to read the Bible to you. It is 98% narrated by the British actor Paul Scofield. The actors rarely speak.

This film covers a period in the Bible that is difficult to dramatise. There are so many characters in bloodline between the creation of man and the birth of Noah that you can't pick a main protagonist. The film makers could have dealt with this in two ways:

OPTION 1 - Break this period down into three or four separate stories linked together by a narrator i.e 1)The Creation, 2) Adam & Eve 3)Cain & Able, 4) Noah

OPTION 2 - Use a narrator to read the Bible.

In this film they use a narrator to read the Bilble and it seems as if he is reading the Bible almost word for word. The "actors" rarely speak. I'm not even sure if they are actors as their faces rarely convey any emotion. The actors from the silent movie period such as Charlie Chaplin were able to convey emotions without speaking. The actors in this film however just move from one scene to another with blank faces whilst the narrator reads from the Bible.

I gave this film 1/10 because the score by Ennio Morricone was soothing. The score was the only redeeming factor.


Being a child of the 80's I grew up on horror, everything from Freddy to Pinhead (and of course my favorite, Jason). I remember being 7 years old and watching Dawn of the Dead, it freaked me out, I had nightmares for weeks, even seeing it when I was 25 it still freaked me out. After that I became a zombie freak, Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, Day of the dead, Return of the living dead and more recently the 28 films became some of my favorites. Seeing the trailer for this film I thought it looked great, I knew it was a low budget film but this didn't bother me, seeing that some of my favorite films are low budget "b" films. When I saw it in the store I grabbed it and payed $14 (even though i usually buy used films much cheaper) for it seeing that I was already interested in the film and it was attractively packaged. That night I put it in kicked back with a beer and anticipated some awesome zombie fun. Boy was I wrong, this film was simply horrible, the acting was poor the story was non-existent and the quality was straight garbage, seemingly an attempt at a blairwitch type video camera affect and a total copy of the concept off diary of the dead (which wasn't great but is eons better than this), but with no plot. This film is unworthy of even existing, I own over 600 films and and love everything from evil dead to good fellas, night of the comet to American beauty and I can honestly tell you that i feel like destroying this film because it is a disgrace to my collection, avoid it at all cost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


In this age of the zombie renaissance (which seems to be giving way to a revitalized interest in vampires, thanks to TWILIGHT...yawn), we seem to be surrounded by all things undead. No mystery there: thanks to the spread of information on the internet in the late 90s and, soon after, the film 28 DAYS LATER, common moviegoers finally caught on that there was more to horror than lame slasher flicks featuring an endless succession of bemasked murderers.

They rediscovered the works of Romero and others, and found that there was something about the zombie sub-genre that spoke to our deepest nightmares: a fear of society, its inhabitants, and its collapse. This seemed especially relevant in the post-9/11 era. Watch news coverage of the zombie crisis in George Romero's NIGHT and DAWN and try not to think about that terrifying, fateful day in September, 2001.

What remains a mystery, however, is that almost no one --during the Romero heyday of zombies or their 21st Century 'renaissance'-- got it right. In this reviewer's opinion, there are about seven, yes, SEVEN films that have truly realized the full potential and promise of the undead theme, and sadly, two of them are remakes and two are semi-satirical send-ups of the genre.

So I shouldn't be too surprised in the disappointing and wasted effort that is THE ZOMBIE DIARIES. I'd heard a lot of good internet buzz about it, so I decided it was worth the three dollar rental. I knew there was a problem when I had to turn it off about halfway into the film. Was it too gory, too intense, too scary? Not in the slightest. Though I returned a day later to finish DIARIES, my opinion of the film on my first attempt hadn't changed.

What could have been an interesting premise --a zombie outbreak documented by several camera-toting groups in the English countryside--falls flat on its face before the opening credits have even finished. We're treated to an anti-climactic interview about a nasty plague sweeping Asia at the beginning of the film, which marks the only occasion I can recall that a movie loses its momentum within a few minutes of the opening titles. Even worse is the stiff, pompous cast we're forced to contend with. Not one of the cast members convincingly sells any urgency, not to mention the fact that the dead are returning to life and the country has been plunged into total chaos.

The narrative and script are seemingly aimless; we're bored quickly by the pretty scenery of the countryside, where (occasionally) non-threatening zombies show up and stumble about. DIARIES loses itself in an insular and uninteresting world -- what's going on in the cities? What about TV and Radio news reports, which in the other films (like NIGHT, DAWN) proved the most stirring and memorable moments? I understand small productions like this have budgetary constraints to consider, but the filmmakers missed an all-too important cue in not giving their boring little universe some scope. What should conjure feelings of isolation in the audience only makes us lose interest before the second act has even arrived.

The zombies themselves are shambling Romero knock-offs, and not well-done, either. The special effects used to create the monsters are professional enough, but rubber stamped with all the "ooh" and "aah" trademarks any college film student hopes to afford. "Look, the zombies have white contact lenses! How creepy!" Aside from the fact that these ghouls are among the least scary I have seen in a long while, the reactions the characters have to them are even less convincing. A group of survivors seem to have no fear confronting a cadre of marauding flesh eaters in one shot, but are ostensibly paralyzed at the appearance of a single ghoul the next. Also, though agonizingly slow, these zombies seem to have no problem sneaking up on adrenaline-pumped humans in wide open grazing fields. Go figure.

The ending of THE ZOMBIE DIARIES is a feeble attempt at throwing the audience a curve ball, and while I won't give anything away, the film's conclusion is completely tacked on, and frankly, a cheap shot that seems at once out of place and mundane.

DIARIES is just one example (in a LONG list of books, graphic novels, films, video games and other media) of why the zombie resurgence failed. Few of these works seems to have had the guts to break away from the "rules" laid out by the "...of the Dead" films, ultimately to the artistic detriment of each.

Due in part to these reasons, THE ZOMBIE DIARIES fails in originality, and succeeds in not much else. One wonders how good a zombie film this MIGHT have been.


Once again, much like reviews for 'The Signal', I am completely baffled by the rave reviews this film has received. Please don't make the same mistake I did and be drawn in by the eye-catching (and very misleading) cover art. None of it takes place at any point in the film.

80 minute film with 'Zombies' in title features what must be all of 10 minutes screen time of zombies altogether. The rest is just mindless driving / running / and pointless, awkward dialogue.

I'm a huge zombie movie fan - but I never thought I would despise a film so much as to go out of my way to urge people NOT to watch it. 'The Zombie Diaries' proved me wrong. It is dreadful.

The film focuses on a few different groups of idiots who are scattered around the British countryside just as some kind of 'unexplained virus' hits all major cities. All groups appear to have absolutely no common sense.

This first becomes apparent when the first group of 'survivors' encounter a zombie in a farmhouse they were supposed to be staying in. Rather than fight off one zombie in a relatively secure house, they run blindly into a dark forest where they encounter even more undead.

Then, in complete darkness, in the middle of a forest where they've encountered zombies, they decide to stop and make a fire. This kind of clown-shoe logic ripples through the rest of the film.

We cut to a completely different group of survivors looking for supplies in an abandoned town. This and many more overlong scenes involving this group has absolutely no relevance to the rest of the film.

The Zombie Diaries is basically made up of scenes that defy common sense in order to try and drum up tension. Cue countless shots of people walking round darkened corridors, barns, stairways, woods etc with only the camera light guiding the way. The first time this is done it is quite suspenseful  by the 5th time it happens, all suspense is lost and you are simply left watching a tactless idiot take 10 minutes to walk down a hallway and open a door.

Cut to yet another completely different group of survivors.

They've secured a farmhouse and guns, yet there are countless scenes where, in pitch darkness, everyone simply stands on the field outside the house blindly firing at zombies ambling towards them. Once they drag this out for another fifteen minutes or so, a noise is heard from inside a darkened barn (surprise, surprise), cue yet another dragged-out 'let's investigate with just the camera light to guide us' scene.

The final chapter tries to make a statement about us being the real monsters, not the zombies  by then I'd grown so bored that I applauded the deaths of the remaining survivors and cursed the gods that this moment had not arrived sooner.