Of the many AFI awards "La Spagnola" was nominated for (don't blame the institute; it can't be easy coming up with candidates - although Alice Ansara, who played Lucia, DID deserve her nomination for best actress; she even deserved to win, which she didn't), the most puzzling was for original screenplay. This is an ORIGINAL screenplay? There isn't a novel or comic book lurking in the background to excuse the arbitrary plot developments, or to explain the fact that someone took an interest in this material in the first place...? Oh dear.

This is a miserable, squalid movie about miserable squalid characters - even the minor characters, even those who only get one scene, even those who only get one scene and don't even TALK - and the story is one damned miserable squalid thing after another. The way it ends is revealing. (Don't worry: I won't give anything away.) We just sort of fade out, as we watch what looks like the BEGINNINGS of a resolution ... all very honest not to suggest that the tensions can be resolved in a single, melodramatic confrontation, to suggest that the process might well take years, but the thing is, this only looks like even the beginning of the end BECAUSE we fade out. We could have faded out at any other point and the result would have been the same. Unrelated things happen in sequence, like the ticks of a metronome, with about as much purpose or genuine sense of rhythm. And we sense, despite what the fade out seems to be trying to imply, that the metronome will continue to tick on at the same rate until everyone ultimately dies. (It won't be before time when they do.)

Tiny scenes have been added for no reason other than to make the film all the more vile and mean-spirited. Lucia (the daughter) is an English/Italian/Spanish interpreter for the local doctor. There's no doubt she's exploited dreadfully. At first the doctor sees no reason to pay her at all; after a while, he offers a token payment of "a few shillings" a week. (Adjusting for inflation this still isn't much.) The doctor comes across as not a bad man, but a bit clueless and insensitive - when he learns that a patient speaks what appears to be some Slavic tongue, he asks Lucia to try talking to him in Italian, but slowly.

(Spoiler in this paragraph - I suppose.) Then, one day, the doctor asks the fourteen-year old Lucia to stay behind for a bit, gets her to sit on his knee. Obviously he's coming on to her. He starts talking about how much she reminds him of his wife. "You mean the one who hung herself on the jacaranda?" asks Lucia. This scene lasts just seconds. It has no repercussions. Its sole purpose is to let us know that the doctor, who has no bearing on the main story in any event, is a lecherous old toad with a taste for barely pubescent girls, who drove his wife to suicide. Did it even occur to the writer or the director that the film might have actually been richer if they'd stopped laying on the misanthropic spite with a trowel, for just a moment? If the doctor's exploitation of Lucia had been the unquestioning prejudice of a basically good man? Evidently not.

The SECOND most puzzling nomination, by the way, was for the cinematography. The cinematography makes me suspicious. Imagine a fantasy movie that's set in a mediaevel European wood but was in fact shot, by an admittedly skilled cameraman, in a municipal park - there's nothing in particular to give the game away, but you can sense that most of the creative effort has gone towards hiding something. The shots in "La Spagnola" are all very nicely focused and lit and framed, but they don't inspire confidence.


La Spagnola had a lot of potential but didn't live up to expectations. The plot just was not strong enough. Despite fine acting this was a missed opportunity. It has its heart in the right place but not a lot really happens. Alice Ansara is a real find and is a young actor we will here a lot more from in the future.


This is such a bleak and plotless film that unless you are looking for a reason to slit your wrists its probably best avoided. Through a series of brief vignettes in a surreal Australian landscape we are acquainted with Lola and her unfortunate daughter Alice both of whom are destined to be forever betrayed not only by the people they encounter but also by each other. The unrelenting grimness is even reflected in their sexual encounters with a succession of squalid and unsatisfying relationships.

I tried very hard to fall asleep during this movie so that the time would pass more quickly but failed miserably and had to endure it to the end.


The movie goes in circles and the actors and actresses must have been loathing to do perform in it that anyone could take it seriously. One of the big stinkers, BUT well worth watching the first third to Irene Hervey, surely one of the most beautiful women in her day, in a very form-fitting leather, sharkskin gown.


While viewing this film, I found myself laughing through out the entire picture. Diana Wynyard(Alice Overton),"Gaslight",'40, was married to Clive Brook,(Dr. Jack Overton),"Love in Exile",'36 and this couple seemed to argue and fight all the time, Alice kissed a friend innocently in the garden and all sorts of problems started. Jack Overton decided their marriage after ten years was becoming boring and wanted a divorce. This divorce became off again on again through out the entire picture. The Butler,(Phillips) Arthur Hoyt, "Hail The Conquering Hero",'44 did not know if he was coming or going, bringing luggage out to the car and back again and finally was claimed a hero in possibly saving this marriage. This was definitely a COMEDY and should not be taken seriously at ALL!


I have seen true ULTRA-VIOLENCE in films many times in my life, but the last 10 minutes of this movie surpasses anything I have ever seen or imagined. BLOOD SPLATTERING every which way in frighteningly large volumes. This is the GORIEST movie I've ever seen. Make sure to get the German Director's Cut (81 minutes) ---FSK ab 18---, and you will love it!!! :-)

Gruß an: Tony, Andy and Tobi.


I have always had a secret pantheon of actresses (like all movie lovers do) who I could watch most of the time quite happily. In the so-called "Golden Age" of talking films the two twin lights were Bette Davis and Kate Hepburn. I never have really chosen which of the two was the greater. The number of Oscars they won, totaling six - two for Davis and four for Hepburn - meant nothing because Hepburn won one for MORNING GLORY, which is now a historical curiosity, and one for GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, which she knew was a joint one for herself and Spencer Tracy, while Davis' first Oscar was not for Joyce Heath in the badly written DANGEROUS. So the Oscars they won are not really great measuring devices.

Anyone else on that top line - well, I suppose that everyone can fill in some name (Crawford, Russell, Lombard, Garbo, take your pick). To me the third one would have been their only real peer as an actress who could play anything: Barbara Stanwyck. She never got a specific Oscar, although she did get nominated for her best recalled role of the villain Phyllis in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (still the champion icy killer of that period). Towards the end of her career (like Davis and Hepburn she worked up to the end, in her case mostly on television), she got an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. Somehow, given her abilities as sex object (BABY FACE), tragic mother (STELLA DALLAS), killer (DOUBLE INDEMNITY), comedienne par excellence (THE LADY EVE, BALL OF FIRE), even willing to sing in a musical number (LADY IN BURLESQUE - imagine Hepburn trying to sing in a film!), a lifetime award seemed actually more fitting than any particular film choice by the Academy.

Having said that, I must admit one giant reservation for Stanwyck. While Davis was frequently characterized as appearing only in "woman's movies" (then how explain THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER or WATCH ON THE RHINE?) and while Hepburn seemed to be too much the social snob (even in PAT AND MIKE or DESK SET?) they never got as seriously type-cast as Stanwyck did after her best known villain role. Phyllis Dietrichsen is a fascinating bitch - no other way to explain her evil spell on people. She destroys or threatens anybody who is in her way to wealth, using her sexuality as the ultimate weapon. Possibly the sexiest unseen moment in film noir is that brief time off screen between her and Fred MacMurray in his apartment, beginning with them kissing, and ending with her fixing her face with her compact and lipstick. You know they were screwing at that point.

But after that film's success the three stars had different trajectories. MacMurray did an occasional heel again (THE CAINE MUTINY, THE APARTMENT), but was mostly playing good guys. Eddie Robinson played all sorts of characters in all kinds of films, but never another insurance expert. But it is like Stanwyck found herself playing variants of Phyllis every four or five pictures. Not in all her film noir (in the TWO MISS CAROLLS she is threatened by insane husband/killer Humphrey Bogart) but look at some of the other films: THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS, THE FURIES, THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN. Her great intensity was constantly used to make her the most lethal of the three greatest actress (Davis comes next with THE LETTER and THE LITTLE FOXES, but with a bland iciness that rarely breaks until the end).

CRIME OF PASSION is nowhere near as good as DOUBLE INDEMNITY or THE FURIES or even THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS. In fact it has some of the worst writing in a film noir I have come across. Film noir plots at their best are logical outcroppings of humanity and twists of fate (Neff selling insurance to a greedy monster; Robinson spending a pleasant evening with Joan Bennett when they are forced to kill her jealous, insane lover in THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW). Here it comes down to this - do not marry a woman who is insanely into your job status! That's the plot.

Stanwyck works on a newspaper, and she has been contacted by a killer. She dislikes Detective Royal Dano, who belittled her with a sexist remark (actually one of the small, rare, realistic pluses in this 1957 film), and uses her tip to help handsome, nice Sterling Hayden. Hayden and she hit it off, and marry. But she is appalled that he is unwilling to push for promotions she thinks he deserves (at one point later on, Raymond Burr will make the point that Hayden really did not merit the promotions - and pays for saying so). Stanwyck (like Dennis Price in a far better film) starts seeing how to remove competition for her husband, and ends up romancing Burr (married to Fay Wray). But when that fails to change things, she kills Burr - and suddenly Hayden is temporarily promoted. So it can work for awhile.

The dialog is awful. If she were arguing with Hayden about killing someone for a fortune maybe it would work. But she is arguing with a character reminiscent of the young David Morse on ST. ELSEWHERE in terms of "live and let live" philosophy. This might have been better as a comedy in which the lack of push by Hayden leads Stanwyck into finally divorcing her husband (much to his relief). Instead it leads to Hayden belatedly realizing the nut he married. The best character in it is Burr, who when seeing the results of his tawdry affair comes to his senses and resolves to end it and return to Wray, the woman he always loved. One wishes that had been built up a bit. CRIME OF PASSION is only worth seeing if one wants to see all of Stanwyck's films. But be prepared to be disappointed.


This is really an oddball. I really wanted more from it, but viewing this is kind of like having an almost flat soda and trying to tell yourself it's still good.

Two different movies wanted to be made here, a soap-operaish character piece and a police melodrama. All we got was a melodrama of the very bad kind.

Where to start. Stanwyck's character acts in wildly improbable ways and is inconsistent. She starts in a newsroom doing the Ann Landers bit, and it SEEMS that she might want more--and is certainly capable of it--maybe a reporting job. Care was put into creating the newsroom atmosphere, including having a sandwich boy prattling on about sandwiches (and it's "Ike" from "The Waltons"!!!) and a lot of period detail. You think you're going to get some sort of newsroom/police drama. Uh, but no, the brakes are pretty much put on full just as you are getting acquainted with the atmosphere.

As the film continues, it appears that Stanwyck gets a better job in NY. She is going to move on up to something better.

Suddenly, the plot creakily shifts and we never see the newsroom, or the sandwich boy for that matter (hell, thought he might show up as a witness or something later on, I mean, this was supposed to be a noir, right?) Stanwyck, who doesn't believe in marriage, kids, or anything like that, suddenly marries a police office she barely knows and met during work.

It's not 10 minutes of screen time between when she seemingly rejects anything but a career and is next going on and on about wanting to do nothing but darn Hayden's socks. No, I am not kidding.

Then just as suddenly, she is bored of living with Hayden, her cop husband, and begins scheming to get him ahead in his career. If she is so bored, why is she not working? I didn't get the impression he would mind. But instead, she gets into all sorts of mischief, from staged accidents to affairs to get him ahead.

In the middle of all these things, she wants him to transfer to Beverly Hills, where it would be quieter. How is that moving him forward? It's inconsistent with her wanting him to move ahead. When all else fails, she murders someone, as if THAT would propel them both forward. How could it, when the results of the investigation would send her to the gas chamber? Why was his promotion that important to her, to lose her life or freedom over? Just a few minutes earlier in the film, promotion was not important, it was a transfer to a dead end quiet job in Beverly Hills! Huh?!?! The whole thing doesn't add up, or make any sense at all.

And one other thing, just what IS it with that huge looming drive-in screen outside their home? I thought that was going to play in somehow...maybe the noise coming over and bothering the characters, maybe masking an important sound, I don't know.

Heck, just in my wonderings here I am coming up with plot ideas that could have worked better. This cast and story foundation deserved so much more than this.

Very strange movie.


This is an absolute hoot. It is one of the worst films I have ever seen. The joy of seeing this film, other than the unintentionally hilarious dramatic moments, is to get a clear picture of the type of world that director Todd Haynes envisioned in "Far From Heaven."

Barbara Stanwyck, while possessing a hot figure for a 50 year old woman (at the time), was definitely pushing the borders with her looks. It is fascinating that studio heads were still giving her "leading roles" -- but then, once you hear the lines she had to say, you'll come to the conclusion that she must've owed somebody something, because this film is absolutely atrocious. My own poor mother, who's dying of cancer, had enough energy to say, "This one stinks!"

Probably the most exciting thing about this movie is the big kiss between Barbara and Raymond Burr, both who were purported to be gay. It's just exciting to imagine them thinking, "Well, since we are getting paid for this, let's make it look good!" Poor Sterling Hayden is saddled with the worst lines, all of them sounding like they were written for a woman starring in a bad B-movie from the 1950s... which is oddly what this is.

It is, I suppose, interesting to note that "Kathy" (Barbara's character, and the same name of the character that Julianne Moore played in "Far From Heaven") was not content to sit at home and bake pies. She was a rabble-rouser and was going to stir up trouble no matter what. In one hysterically funny scene, Kathy is a prisoner in her own home when her husband and "the guys" are playing cards on one side of the house, and their wives, "the girls" are gossiping on the other side of the house, going on and on and on and on about "cheese and olives." Kathy, rightfully so, rushes off to the bathroom saying, "I'm sick!" Ditto, girlfriend!

Raymond Burr was a wonderful Perry Mason, but in this film he's deadly. But then, so is everybody else.

It also seems strange that not a single couple (of course all "heterosexual") in this film has a child. Everyone is somewhere between 35-50 and no one has a child? I don't believe it.

More fun can be had just by viewing a few vintage shots of Los Angeles in its '50s heyday.

The script, as I mentioned before, is absolutely deadly, a laugh fest almost from start to end. Barbara desperately tries to rhythmically alter her lines to imbue them with deeper meaning, but when she's stuck with stupid, gushy conversation like, "Oh Bill darling!" it doesn't matter what she tries to do to dress this garbage up. It stinks.

Again, it's a blast just to sit through and laugh at, and even if you get up 10 times to use the facilities or grab some cold pizza, you won't have missed a thing. An absolute must for dateless Fridays when you don't care about being fat and lonely.


Early on there is an excruciating scene where a completely unnecessary and extremely annoying office boy is invited to upstage Barbara Stanwyck and Sterling Hayden with a painfully un-funny bit concerning who ordered what sandwich. Nobody is claiming that last sandwich he went out and got and boy is he steamed! You would think that he was one of the stars of the film considering how much the camera focuses on him, but he never appears again and you never do find out about that sandwich! And never mind that his obnoxious whining drowns out crucial expository information that is supposed to set into motion the events that make up the remainder of the film. This is right on the heels of Stanwyck's advice columnist having a conversation with a grumpy editor who mumbles his dialogue unintelligibly. For the first ten minutes, I was going "What?" and "Huh?" and "Who?" to no avail, and I knew I was in for a real endurance test.

Awkwardly scripted and filmed, and deadly dull, "Crime Of Passion" is sort of a pre-feminist tantrum about a driven career woman who unwisely falls for a hulking, middle class police detective (Hayden), quits her newspaper job, feels suffocated by her mundane suburban existence and conceives some baffling scheme to improve their prospects. The movie is little more than a series of drab parties and horribly unexciting phone conversations. The highlights would probably have to be the two thrilling scenes where a car pulls into a parking garage, the passengers climb out and then slowly walk away from it.

Though she was able to pull it off just a few years before in "Clash by Night" and "Jeopardy", by 1957 Stanwyck was now 50 years old and simply no longer convincing as a sultry love interest. Uncomfortably brittle and hysterical, she is unable to meet the basic requirements of her role, although I guess you have to give her credit for trying at this stage of her legendary career. At his worst, Hayden often looked like he was being forced to act in this type of B grade fare against his wishes, as if perhaps a close family member was being held hostage and wouldn't be set free until the final day of shooting.

This is also incorrectly classified as a Film-Noir. In order to qualify as Noir, a film has to be of at least average quality. If it's anything less than average it's just a bad movie about crime. The only interesting thing about this movie would have to be a few surprisingly bold alternative lifestyle references, considering the year it was made. (They come in the first 15 minutes and while never explicitly stated, they're pretty hard to miss.)


Having not seen the film before, my thoughts were that with Stanwyck, Burr, and Hayden, along with character actor Dano and Fay Wray, how could I go wrong? The actors were wasted on this disjointed script, and the drivel that takes place is almost unwatchable. Some examples: Stanwyck saying I only want to make you happy and hope all your socks have holes so i can darn them then all day. And where was the building up to the marriage. They met, and in 5 minutes were married. The movie builds nothing, things just happen as if the director was on a LSD trip. AVOID.


I give the Basilisk props. In one confrontation, he bites the hottie with the scepter in her hand and rips her dress off. Instead of, oh I dunno, say, running for her life, she sits there in her undies and yells at the Basilisk for ruining her dress. The Basilisk stares at her for two seconds, then chomps her torso off. Not only is it a comically bad scene, but we also got to see Yancy Butler in her skivvies. Tremendous. As for the rest of the movie, it's your standard SciFi Original fare. People find relics of an ancient creature somewhere in Persia. Despite warnings from the locals to leave well enough alone, they take everything home to a major metropolitan museum and the thing comes to life. Military grunts come in talking all big and bad about how they'll blow this thing to smithereens, then run like little girls after it starts ripping them to shreds. Science geeks study its habits and try to find a way to kill it. The Basilisk looked pretty cool. The ending was a little dumb, so that pulls the overall rating lower. But if you're in the mood for some bad horror hijinks, "Basilisk: The Serpent King" (kind of a silly title, since toward the end of the movie the Basilisk was proved to be female) will fit the bill.


Opening scene mayhem introduces a formidable beast, a serpent with spiritual vengefulness. It can petrify victims to stone in Medusan fashion, and it can swat you like a fly too. Odd that it has Greek Mythological power, since it's lurking in the Mid-East desert. Treasure hunters and a full moon unleash the giant serpent to emerge and wreak more destruction.

Promising start, but after that initial scene, this film decides it's a junior high school production, and degenerates into unbridled silliness. When the creature is unleashed, does it utilize its horrifying powers for a grandiose or symbolic attack? Like other monsters would? No, it just tears up a museum and a shopping mall. It also wipes out a bunch of "soldiers" who look like they trained for combat by playing war games with GI Joe dolls.

The acting is painfully bad. Somebody recites a line loudly, and then pauses expectantly, as if waiting for a laugh track to be inserted. It reminded me of one of those tween sit-coms on Disney channel. The archaeologist guy (a Robert Downey look-like) wanders around with a pie-eyed gaping expression. He makes dumb quips, and he just looks weird. There's a stock nerdy geek, who has neon-yellow bleached hair and horn-rimmed glasses. The female love interest looks like she's going to laugh hysterically at any moment.

The red-dress greedy rich femme-fatale wannabe girl deserves special recognition. Her tough vamp routine looks more like a shampoo commercial. She runs around with a big heavy gold staff, looking like she's going to trip over her stiletto heels any moment. One guess on how shampoo vamp ends up. And it'll seem way over due.

About as scary as a Care Bears cartoon. For its unintentional humor, it's good for a couple of laughs.


I don't know if the previous comment was made by the director of this awful film but in fact it is just a B series. Poor actor with kind of acceptable special effects are making this production watchable but the whole edit is not good enough to keep you under pressure, humor is too low and the great lines of the story are predictable.

This movie isn't worth the location. If you have taken the sci-fi channel, watch Battlestar Galactica, Dresden Files, Eureka and other good series but forget about this rubbish son of a bitch basilisk.

In fact I am really angry because there was a very good comment here but in fact it's someone who hasn't the same taste as me, and i'm displeased that he said it's the better mini-series or film made by Sci-fi.

Go get a porno it's better And go get your wasting time in your toilets.


"Basilisk" is on right now, the latest CGI monster flick from Sci-Fi, inspired by medieval bestiaries (remember "Manticore"?).

The effects are bad, the characters and situations predictable, the monster really badly drawn, but it's another one of those movies that is so bad, you can enjoy laughing at it. And if it weren't for movies like this, actors like Stephen Furst wouldn't have anything to do.

At least we get to see Yancy Butler running around in a little cocktail dress.

Now I see that there is a minimum line requirement to these comments, so I have to add more content. Let's see...

The soldier popping up out of the manhole, begging for help, only to get pulled back in, that's predictable.

The lone garbage man who sees the monster as he walks to the dumpster, that's a cliché, too.

Oh, and the producers fulfilled another horror movie requirement by having the monster attack a shopping mall. Take that, you blind consumerist sheep!

Ooh, and the monster came to life at a university museum, at a reception for wealthy patrons. Take that, capitalists! Throw in a nutty sidekick, and a hot blonde archeology professor, and we have plenty of the expected building blocks of a shake-and-bake monster movie.

Is that enough lines now?

I see that it is. Who's idea was that requirement, anyway?


Humm where do I start.

First off, Cayo doesn't offer any interesting visuals. Its a shame since it was filmed mainly on the beautiful island of Culebra (i know its beautiful because I've been there, if you judge it from watching the film..well..its just OK)

The photography is just average, no consistent efforts (filters, waiting for the best time of day) to produce nice colors. Basically looks like it was filmed at midday on the harsh tropical sun, with skies blown out, silvery and turbid water, or during not so great weather.(seen on some water shots).

Maybe is was a bad film print, can be fixed, but regardless looks like production compromise and or error, not on purpose.

Its cool, but nothing new, that they told the story by methodically revealing the scenes of the character's past while they live in their presently tragic situation. Its what keeps one semi interested. But, while the clothes and styling somewhat matches the different times of the actors lives, the movie doesn't use color enough to distinguish them.

The editing could be a lot lot better, since the movie doesn't "flow" well most of the time and the music could've used some help.

Also, The director tries to blend in some political satire and humor but it isn't effective and its way to literal and silly on the verge of stupid and definitely cheapens the film.

There are some decent scenes. The detoxification of the female drug addict (Daris Mejias) is one of them, very powerful and emotional, and the acting of young Ivan(Kamar De Los Reyes) while he is having some problems with his wife in his NYC is Good (along with Roselyn) making for a decent scene.

Casting was OK, but OMG, what happened to Roselyn when she got old!!, she didn't age gracefully, looks like she got run over by a truck!! (sorry Idalia Perez!). Even though Idalia can act, its a wrong casting choice IMHO.

I know that not many movies are made in PR and that people that have been in the industry a long time are rewarded with parts in one once one its finally made but that fact certainly doesn't help the film.

But overall the movie looks like too many people made choices on it and doesn't have a definitive style. Which is a shame since its concept warranted a much much better treatment.

Yes this review is a little tough BUT, I'm trying to be objective and not let things pass due to the fact that Puerto Rican cinema is quite lacking in quantity, actually a rare occurrence, and just producing one on film is an achievement, but producing a quality piece is another matter, and Cayo doesn't deliver. I'm not going to write a bogus review just to promote a film (and don't ave any agenda against anyone)

So yes, some points for the excellent PR crew (stylists, grips, gaffers etc) for actually producing something on film :) :) , its hard work. Negative points for production compromises and some bad choices.

Some advice, don't try to make a complicated or huge movie with little money, doesn't work, shoot on video if you have to, and in a more accessible and hence, more economical, location. Keep it simple :)


One of the other users here describes VIOLENT SH*T as "the worst movie ever made by human hands". That's a perfect description, because this terminally boring exercise in incompetently-staged bloody mayhem is terrible on every imaginable level. It makes HEADLESS EYES look like Stanley Kubrick. Shot on camcorder, with computer-generated titles, migraine-inducing video effects and only the faintest attempts at coherent editing (or coherency of any kind), VIOLENT SH*T has the look of a depressing mid-eighties porno, only not nearly as interesting. Its raison d'etre are the taboo-busting gore scenes, but even these are so hilariously inept you're more likely to laugh than cringe - plastic hands, penises, arms, legs, innards and breasts are sent flying as bright pink blood gushes everywhere and the 'victims' bellow unconvincingly. Karl, the 'butcher sh*tter', resembles Eminem with his denim dungarees and cropped blonde hair, and most of his targets look like they've just wandered out of a Scorpions concert with their mullets, thin moustaches, bleached drainpipe jeans and cowboy boots. If nothing else, the film lives up to it's title, because it's both violent and a huge pile of...you can guess the rest. Incredibly, the man behind this catatonia-inducing bilge (one Andreas Schnaas) has gone on to make several other films. Let's hope at least one of them is an improvement over this effort, which is as close a movie has ever come to replicating the sensation of being repeatedly bashed over the head with a tin tray for 75 minutes. Nice when it stops.


Nice effects (for a home video!) and creative killing are the keywords for this no-budget-what-so-ever-movie. But I imagine they had a good time making this. Another positive thing about this movie is that it spawned two brilliant sequels. Watch them instead. They are available in a German Special Edition, which include all three flicks+ tons of extra material! A must buy for all gore-hounds!


In Mid-1987, German Mastermind Andreas Schnaas Set Out To Make The Goriest Film In The History Of Cinema. The Final Product Was Violent Shi t, The Story Of A Mentally Unstable Escaped Convict Going On A Blood-Drenched Killing Spree. The Film Has Virtually No Plot And Serves Only One Purpose... To Make People Cringe With Delight At The Sight Of People Being Mutilated In The Most Diabolical Ways Known To Man! The Film Is Known For Breaking The Barrier And Allowing Many Other German Horror-Fanatics To Make Their Own Low-Budget Splatter Flicks. The Film Is Often Compared With Another Film Released That Same Year. Nekromantik. The Two Films Gained Notoriety For Being Extremely Gory And Were Banned By The German Government. Like I Said Before, This Film Has No Plot, And Was Followed By Two Much Better Films That Were Much More Story Driven. Watch Them Instead.


Seriously. I've seen a lot of low budget, no budget films. I've seen a lot of horror, gore, slashers, and generally nasty films. This is pretty close to bottom of the list. Yeah its violent, but you cant see any actual gore due to poor camera work and disastrous editing (mostly that pixelated effect that the filmmakers must've thought was SO cool). The film is an immature compilation of bad special effects, annoying and generally pointless characters, and buckets of thick pink foamy blood.

The storyline (ok so not technically a STORYline) follows a German man in a plaid shirt shambling aimlessly around the countryside murdering people with a large cleaver. Unfortunately the same effect is re-cycled many times as he overpowers his victims, slam them repeatedly on the ground, cuts off one of their arms at the shoulder, and then beheads them. There are some great concepts for a gore scene, but they're ruined by dark/pixelated shots, and stop-frame slow motion.

If you want to see a gore-fest, this isn't the film you're looking for. After all the hassle it'll take you to track this film down, i ASSURE YOU that you will be disappointed. If you want something German and disturbing, go get yourself a copy of Nekromantik.


Up until now, I have never seen a horror movie that I didn't like. This movie was just awful, awful, awful! The filming is so blurry that you can hardly see what's going on! The sound is fuzzy. The gore is cheap and you can't feel any sympathy for the victims because how stupid they were scripted. I'm sure the director has potential! He must show it. This film does not capture the genius of Mr. Schnaas. This film is also extremely low budget. Although the actors were particularly talented especially the very handsome Mr. Schnaas as the killer Karl, They could not save this movie. Even the castration scene was boring. Mr. Schnaas, Make us a better film!


Now, this is an amateur home-video!! Its an ultra "Z" film only for one propose, too shock, with ultra violent and grotesque scenes, with a non linear\sense story.The film focus the character Karl the Buchter (Andreas Schnaas, also the director) in a killing spree, walking around the woods killing people without a propose, every signle death is sadistic and brutal..(what they are thinking?)!

Its not a film of all gore fans, its beyond that,its a film for real ultra-violent cinema fans, in my opinion the film is a little bit sick,nasty and unnecessary..If you like this one, i recommend: "Antro da Necrofilia" and "Eu Zombie!!! 2- A carnificina total"


After seeing the title of this movie a man can't help but be a little intrigued, so I picked it up. Wow, and is that saying right..."curiosity kills the cat" and it nearly killed me. This is by far one of the most sick and twisted movies I've ever laid eyes on. The movie is about the Karl "The Butcher," an unrelenting mass murderer who shows no mercy to his victims. Judging by the title, you can imagine some of the things he does to his victims...no nevermind, you can't because a sane person in their right mind wouldn't think of the sick ways to kill a person. 'Violent Shit' is filled with dismemberments, disembowelings, castrations, and even feces eating and it's some of the most sickening stuff I've ever seen. If you're into extremely low-budget (this movie is shot with a camcorder) and torture films, this pointless gorefest is the movie for you! Otherwise, if you're easily offended, avoid at all costs or else you will die of a heart attack after the first 10 seconds of the film.


Worthless boring, disgusting garbage. The title says it all, the operative word being "Shit." It's amazing that any video store would pick up a steaming pile like this, when so many other worthwhile films never get picked up. Of course, I live in smalltown Indiana, so that's most of the problem right there. This is offensive trash...


I really only checked FACCIA DI SPIA out because of the torture scenes that have been hyped about it - and honestly, that's the only thing of interest in this one. The film is reminiscent of the "mondo" films of the era, and with the "strong" torture scenes, it also sorta reminded me of MEN BEHIND THE SUN - though not nearly as powerful or interesting.

The film itself is a propaganda-style fictional recreation of events based on actual situations concerning the CIA.

Most of the events portrayed were of little interest to me and most of the film is quiet dull. The acting is sub-par, and again - the only thing I found of any real interest were a few decent torture scenes that included metal-rod-penis-insertion, a strong rape scene, an eel-insertion, an arm-hacking-offing, and an eyeball removal. I can confidently say that this film should be a "pass" for most viewers and would only be recommended for sleaze-film completists - and although the torture scenes are decent, they are short and aren't anything that are so interesting as to make it a must-see...4/10


Whether or not this film was supposed to be powerful I don't know, but despite some ghastly images and a sort of documentary feel, Faccia di Spia is a mostly boring Italian effort. The film, as the English title ('C.I.A. Spy Story') suggests focuses on events surrounding the C.I.A. I'm very interested in sickening filthy cinema, but most of this film is concerned with army related stuff and it really turned me off. There are a few good scenes of torture, however, and they include people having their limbs chopped off, eyes gouged out, set on fire and some unfortunate soul gets a piece of metal inserted into his penis. These scenes may prove to be of interest for some; and indeed they may have for me too if they were involved in a more interesting film. I'm guessing that this film was meant to put a bad light on the C.I.A., and it may have succeeded in doing that for some, but not for me. Italy has made a million exploitation films like this one, and that considerably lessens its impact as rather than showing the ills of the C.I.A. - it just shows that the Italians found a new way to film exploitation. Overall, I can't really recommend this film...although it may appeal to some.


There were few new aspects about Michael Jackson's life in this movie. It is worth watching it, because you'll see some never-shown-before footage from Neverland, Jackson's ranch. And that's about it...

I watched this movie, because I was hoping to finally learn to know some facts about Michael Jackson, especially as a famous reporter as Bashir could interview him. Jackson might very well be the weirdest performer on earth, he is also one of the most popular and famous ones, so I really thought this movie would get us to see objective aspects of the man's life. Very disappointing... Bashir only asks very suggesting questions, all about Jackson's plastic surgery, his childhood and the scandals about child molesting. For 120 min. you'll hear no other things but Bashir trying to force Jackson to say that all gossip written about him is true. This becomes very, very annoying, and one might even begin to feel embarrassed for ever having believed that Jackson's nose was indeed made of plastic, or that he slept in oxygen chambers...

Do yourself a favour: after watching this TV movie, it is absolutely necessary to watch "The truth about Michael Jackson", in which you'll see the footage Bashir never showed, in which he for instance praises Jackson's parenting skills. I bet Jackson never even dared to dream about the day that a journalist would be the underdog for once, instead of backwards!


What is wrong with people today? The comments already placed cite MJ as a 'freak' 'weirdo' and sexual deviant and yet these comments come from people who lives in areas where guys are now permitted to marry other guys, men change sex to women and George Bush to get another term as president.

Some people, I believe, who have not yet been forced to accept the bitter corporate pill of PC behaviour may suggest that MJ is not so weird and freakish as the above.

The film is a stupid and ridiculous attempt by a quite basic journalist to snake his way round someone to may him look even worse than a thousand tabloid newspapers have already achieved and for what exactly? I guess MJ chose Bashir after his fame-chasing interview with Lady Di had hit such heights (did we really want to hear that the future King and Queen of England were both unfaithful to each other). Bashir himself is the sort of weasly character that no-one at school liked as he garnered the truth from the weak to sell to the strong (probably for protection purposes from the school bully). MJ is again let down by himself, so has time arrived that no man but no man can show any genuine care or concern for children without being deemed a paedophile or in Jackson's case and some of the other comment writers here a monster without responsibility.

Get a grip World it is not Jacko we should be concerned about it is the likes of Bashir and the Kid who really worry me.

Living as a boy, so are all men now men, I still enjoy the sound of my own wind is this classed as Manish? I still yearn for the field I used to play football in is this classed as Manish.

In commenting on this pile of dross I am left hopelessly wandering why we bother looking to the lives of these celebs, there lives are so, so different to ours how can we relate to it? Unadmitted envy obscures our will to watch without looking for chinks in there armour.

Do yourselves a favour next time you want to watch this stuff turn it off and pick out a movie doc like 'When we were Kings' now that is art


shame on bashir and shaw for being completely one-sided and prejudicing michael jackson before they ever even started shooting. it's clear they had only one idea; to make jackson look as bad as possible. i felt like i was sort of watching a sun tabloid. bashir is no better than any of the paparazzi's following. but michael wanted to be honest well there you go then.

i don't have an opinion about jackson in the issues raised on this document, since i can assure you I DON'T THINK I REALLY KNOW michael jackson after seeing this document. sure he seems strange and guilty of lying at points but no matter how hard you look you can't tell anything for certain about him, can you? please remember that when you start bashing him. meanwhile bashir catches every little mistake or a sign of "notnormaladultbehaviour", that jackson makes. "omfg he went on the stage early. holy **** he's climbing trees!" use your own brain, people and don't let bashir lead you.

3/10

"Propaganda is ... the deliberate attempt by some individual or group to form, control, or alter the attitudes of other groups by the use of instruments of communication, with the intention that in any given situation the reaction of those so influenced will be that desired by the propagandist."

oh, and btw ask yourself who is the craziest; weird michael, paranoid bashir, insane crying screaming dancing fans, or me for watching this document in the first place?


I saw this movie in an entirely appropriate place -- as part of an all-night quadruple feature at a cinema in Northern Ontario, which could have been more accurately described as "Four lousy films for the price of one"! (For the record, the other three films were "Ghoulies", "Missing in Action" and "Ninja III - The Domination").

I would say that Losin' It is probably the best of these four films  not that that's really saying very much. (It was the concluding feature of a very long night of cinematic mediocrity) . It's not an awful film (particularly compared with some of the other components of this multiple feature), and it has the advantage of having been put together by a crew who knew what they were doing. Rather, it's an assembly line teen film of the period, which is given somewhat more polish than usual by the presence of Shelley Long and the up-and-coming Tom Cruise in the cast.

Two years previously in 1981, Porky's established a profitable template for teen films that many producers are still exploiting today. I see Losin' It as a Porky's knock-off, from a similar time and aimed at a similar audience. Essentially, if you were part of that target audience, you would probably have enjoyed it. I was just passing out of the target demographic when I saw this, so perhaps I'm more blasé about it than I might have been if I had seen it a few years earlier. There's a whole genre of teen sex comedy (which tries to tease the audience while dancing around the fact that they can't really show very much) that loses a lot of its impact once you've actually "lost it" yourself.


Don't let the cast and director fool you. This is a teen sex comedy that's just as bad as any of the dozens (hundreds?) that Hollywood churned out back in the 1980s. Bad enough that this turkey wastes the talents of future stars Tom Cruise and Shelley Long. What's worse is that this was directed by Curtis Hanson (you know, of "L.A. Confidential" and "Wonder Boys" fame -- THAT Curtis Hanson.) I realize he was just an up-and-coming director at the time, but surely he must have taken one look at the script and realized it didn't have a chance. (Maybe he was gambling this film would be another "Porky's" and skyrocket him to fame. He gambled wrong.)

Even if you're a die-hard Cruise fan, you're advised to stay away. Cruise, at this time, had yet to hone the persona upon which he would build his career. In other words, he isn't his usually funny, cocky self this time around, but instead comes across as bland, dull, and surprisingly lifeless. Shelley Long, on the other hand, is quite good in her thankless role as a runaway bride headed to Tijuana for a quickie divorce. Too bad the script doesn't give her anything funny to do.

Also, since this is a teen sex comedy, I should mention that there's almost no raunch and nudity at all. Basically, this film is ninety minutes of three teen-aged jerks raising havoc in T.J., getting into lots of dumb bar fights and a few car chases with the usual Hollywood Mexican stereotypes.

Bottom line: compared to this film, "Top Gun" (which also starred Cruise and John Stockwell) is deserving of ten Academy awards.)


This movie is rather ridiculous and predictable. First of all, understand, that there are absolutely no scary scenes in this movie. I don't think this movie would even scare me as a kid.

I love horror movies, and heard a lot about leprechaun, so I thought I'd give it a look. If you are looking for a scare, I'd recommend that you pass this movie up. However, it may be worth while to watch for a couple of reasosn.

Pure curiousity may be worth it as it is kind of funny. It can be boring to you if you don't appreciate this genre. Jennifer Aniston is awfully cute in this movie. I personally thought it was worth while just for that.

If you have fast internet access, I recommend you check out www.cinemanow.com

You can view Leprechaun for free as it is one of their free movie offerings.


When i rented this movie, I thought I was in for a classic and memorable horror experience. I mean, everybody's heard of this movie, right, so it would have to be sort of good. WRONG! This movie was so bad it wasn't even laughably bad. When it was supposed to be scary, it wasn't. When it was supposed to be funny, it wasn't. The whole movie is pretty much just a site gag ("Ha Ha! Look at the midget run!") with some sort of poor excuse for a plot. Oompa Loopas are funnier and scarier. Also, it has one of those feel good endings that really makes me hate 90s horror. This movie failed miserably.


Not all things at the end of the rainbow glitter. A demonic little Irishman(Warwick Davis) wreaks havoc in a small town in North Dakota when his golden coins are disturbed. Pretty lame, but decent for late late night viewing. Jennifer Aniston's big screen debut. Also in the cast: Mark Holton, Ken Olandt and Robert Gorman. Bad enough to be funny.


I LOVE bad horror movies. On the whole, the whole genre of unspeakably bad horror films is typically funnier that movies that try to be funny, such as "You've Got Mail."

But this movie is so bad, so shamefully poorly constructed, that I was not laughing. I was just bored. The whole time.

Well, not the WHOLE time. At the end, when the leprechaun climbs up out of the well with his face peeling off and screams, for the last time, "I want me go...aah....ohh," I was laughing. And it was kind of funny when he summons his bag of coins from Jennifer Aniston's hand, and you can see the string guiding it over to him. Those are good moments. That's why I gave this film a 2 instead of a 1.

Any film that is so bad that it doesn't even get unintentional-laugh points (except for two), has got to have an overwhelming amount of flaws. And this movie does. So everything works out.


This movie was stunningly poor. Stunningly poor. I am at a loss to explain how anyone could justify one sequel, much less three. Hell, I can't figure out how the damned movie even managed to get distributed in the first place (despite the Jennifer Aniston factor, which is really no factor...her feeble powers are completely overwhelmed by this amateurish nightmare of a film). The story is dull, the dialogue is flat, and the decrepit little villain is evil in the most unimaginative, unmagical ways. It's hard to believe anyone could write such a boring, labored script. If you're looking for a pot o' gold at your local Blockbuster, don't bother searching for it in a plastic case marked "Leprechaun." All you'll find there is a tepid cauldron of algae-coated swamp water.


Call me foolish for expecting an even half-quality film which centers around a demonic leprechaun killing for his gold, but this film was so awful it didn't even supply laughs. How this has a cult following -- or ANY following, for that matter -- is beyond me. How this utter trash spawned five sequels is even crazier. There's no way this brought in enough dough to supply the writer and the director for the sixth installment: "Leprechaun - Back 2 Tha Hood". The title enough is a red flag.

Speaking of the writer, this has to have been written by a seven-year old. It's probably some of the most tiring writing I've ever heard in a movie of ANY genre. Dora the Explorer has better dialogue. Hell, silent movies from the 1920's have better dialogue. How someone would sign for this movie is unbelievable. The chavs in my English class could form better sentences.

All four of the main characters are terrible, terrible actors--although it's Aniston at her finest. The worst is undisputablely Ken Olandt as the clichéd macho, wise-cracking hero. Robert Hy Gorman's role was very infuriating. I'm not sure if the director wanted him to be so obnoxious viewers wanted nothing more than to punch him repeatedly, but if that was his goal it's probably the only successful thing throughout the movie he accomplishes.

Something I can always count on when watching these older slasher (I guess that's what you would call this???) flicks are the awesome kills. They're always great. They usually make me chuckle at how ridiculous they are. Killing someone by jumping on them with a pogo stick was the only enjoyable kill of the movie. Come to think of it, I think this only had three kills in total. Even the body-count is miserable. Not even any of the four main characters died. That was basically what kept me watching--the prospect of one of them getting sliced 'n' diced.

Basically every aspect of this film is a failure. How they could make a movie about a murderous leprechaun any worse than it sounds is astonishing. My brother even fell asleep while watching this. And it was eight in the evening.

I'm probably coming off as up-tight, but I'm really not. I know this movie wasn't supposed to be taken seriously--how could it be if the people making it weren't even taking it seriously?--but I can enjoy the campy, cheesiness of Friday the 13th. Hell, I love those movies! But this... this is just pitiful. Let me say that I know now why I managed to snag the first three in the series for a measly $12. Needless to say I think part II and III of this series may remain unwatched for a long, long time to come.

The oodles of negative things aside, "Leprechaun" did have one saving grace: Jennifer Aniston's legs.


...that you're on the set of LEPRECHAUN. You look around and see the cut-rate production, the poor makeup, the confused crew eating catered lunch meat. You search the "script" for your next line, and it hits you...you're in one of the worst films ever made. Epically bad. The worst. But you're getting paid and possibly getting your SAG card, so who cares. At least it's a production that lacks any pretense of prestige, so you didn't have to sleep with the director. The only problem is, is that with the touch of a button on IMDB.com, anyone can trace you back to this film, and you'll never have really accomplished anything...ever. Was it worth it?

I will give LEPRECHAUN this much, it may be the funniest damn movie I have ever seen. 0/10.


A leprechaun is accidentally freed from his crate and from this moment onwards he terrorizes a household while searching for his gold that was stolen from him. He punishes any unlucky individual who hinders his relentless search of his gold and it up to some teens/kids, Tori, Nathan, Ozzie and Alex to survive to the devastation that this pest is causing them and find the only weapon that can protect them from this malevolent nightmare.

Straight to the point you want? Stupid and unfunny! Yeah 'Leprechaun' is a woefully dull horror flick that leads to spiteful violence with an underbelly of hokey humour, which is unbearably painful. Well, it was for me! I was thinking to myself while watching it, why am I putting myself through a second viewing. Simple, I thought maybe during my first viewing I took it the wrong way, but honestly this time it wasn't any better. Maybe I need to be drinking a lot and I MEAN a lot of alcohol, to find something amusing about it. Because this could have been a great twisted fairy tale nightmare, but it's a nightmare for all the wrong reasons! You might call it more a black comedy than horror, but I believe it didn't work either way. Actually, I thought it opens rather well, but then not too long it falls away quickly. Becoming nothing but a one-idea joke that's filled with too many awful one-liners and wise cracks, which was an uphill struggle to sit through. Sadly all the effort went into the nasty side of the effects, which isn't too bad as the makeup of the leprechaun was excellent and the gore didn't disappoint. But I was just having a hard time with the supposed humour (more like childish), lousy thrills, annoying editing and uninteresting characters. These things bothered me more than the obvious horror clichés, predictability, no frights and that there's not even a real story backing all this up. The acting was average to say the least, though Jennifer Aniston's presence shows and keeps one watching. Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun was obviously enjoying himself by pulling out countless bad-lines. While, the dialogue was just plain nonsense. Almost everything misses the point. Maybe it was a missed opportunity, or I'm just fooling myself. The more I think of it, it felt like I was watching a more nasty version of 'Critters', from the people being under siege in their house and how much do I hate those films, maybe with the exception of the original.

What were the distributors of the DVD I own were thinking? The thing is they got a pretty recent picture of Aniston from her 'Friends' days and stuck it on the original poster art for the DVD cover. Gosh, I don't remember her being on the original cover art. Who's the actual star of the show? Were they thinking that putting Aniston on the front that it would sell by the truckload? *Hmm* I guess that would help, as there would be more fans out there of Jennifer Aniston who might be a tad interested and who most likely skip it not knowing she was in it. I might be talking crap and moved totally off the point, but I just found it an interesting side-note.

It's definitely not worth its weight in gold!


What do you get when you mix HORRIBLE writing, bad acting, shortsighted direction and some of the stupidest moments in the history of Cinema? You get Leprechaun (1993), starring Warwick Davis of "Willow" fame and Jennifer Aniston who would later go on to starring in the popular T.V series "Freinds" along side Courteney Cox (Scream), Matthew Perry (The whole nine yards), David Schwimmer (Six Days Seven Nights), and many others. Friends was a well-written and addictive sit-com, which had allot of Star guest appearances including Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Brad Pitt (Troy). This is of course nothing like Friends. It a simple premise that was poorly executed.

When Dan O'Grady returns to the U.S. after stealing some Irish leprechaun's pot of gold, he thinks he can settle down and enjoy his newfound wealth. He thought wrong. The leprechaun followed him and O'Grady barely gets away with his life, having locked the little monster in his basement. Ten years later, J.D. and his spoiled daughter Tory move in. By accident, the leprechaun is released and almost immediately the annoying creature starts to look for his gold, not displaying any respect for human life.


It was a DVD called Ultimate Boogeyman that I heard about this horror film and it's leading villain from, and then I heard a few other things about it, and decided to see if my predictions would be correct. Basically Daniel 'Dan' O'Grady (Shay Duffin) has returned to America from Ireland after stealing 100 pieces of gold from the magical and nasty Leprechaun (Warwick Davis), but he manages to trap him in a crate covered with a four-leafed clover before having a stroke. Ten years pass, and J.D. Reding (John Sanderford) and his spoilt daughter Tory (introducing Jennifer Aniston, a year or two before Friends) move in to O'Grady's old house. Three painters: Nathan Murphy (Ken Olandt), his brother Alex (Robert Hy Gorman) and their dim-witted friend Ozzie (Mark Holton arrive to fix the house up a little. It is Ozzie that accidentally releases the Leprechaun, hearing voices, and he threatens to kill him if he doesn't get his gold back, and luckily, his powers are weak. Ozzie tries to convince everyone of what he saw, but they obviously don't believe him, and then he and Alex spot a rainbow, and follow it knowing there should be a pot of gold at the end, which there is. Ozzie swallows one coin, and they hide the rest, while taking one to a Pawn Shop Owner (John Volstad) to see if they are valuable, and obviously Leprechaun kills the collector to get his first coin back. Slowly the Leprechaun starts to show up more spooking everyone, until they all know that there is a scary creature after them. Tory goes to O'Grady at the hospital to find out how they can kill the Leprechaun, and when she does find him he says they need a four-leafed clover. So after some chases and trappings, they get time to search for this clover in a big patch, and luckily find it, just when Leprechaun has got his gold and realised one coin is missing. In the end, Alex manages to catapult the clover into Leprechaun's mouth, and he falls into the well gagging green blood and being blown up by petrol and a match. Also starring Pamela Mant as Mrs. O'Grady, William Newman as Sheriff Cronin and David Permenter as Deputy Tripet. Davis as Leprechaun might remind me of another Chucky from the Child's Play series in some ways, with cheeky one liners and a good actor to play the part, but he is not a brilliant lead villain, but fans got many sequels to follow. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is dreadful, the special effects don't do anything, and the story is one of the least interesting ever, apart from maybe fans of the series, no-one is going to enjoy a lacklustre horror like this. Poor!


There was a time, I am ashamed to say when I was into low budget cult horror movies. Ah, you might say that is not too bad. Halloween, The Fog. Plenty to choose from. However I did Not Watch these. I saw Critters, and these. Dam.

It basically stars Jenifer Aniston as an American City Girl who has gone to the country of Ireland (Original for a Leprechaun movie). there two boys find a pot of gold and keep it from the others. Low Budget, badly acted and directed and scripted mayhem ensues. Ther is actually more mayhem going on of screen than on. It would be fine if it was actually funny, and had been aimed at younger kids, they would have lapped up the weird green man causing havoc. But when it is rated 15/R for good reason (it is bloody in parts), which 15 year old is going to go for this when they could go for all those better films out there? It is not all bad though. Some of the gore is suitable stomach churning, and Warick Davis is not that bad. Leprechaun 2 is worse,and that is rated 18. Don't go see.


Utter nonsense, but fun nonsense. Warwick Davis made this deranged plot a camp riot, and Jennifer Anniston makes a good shrieking target victim.

The rest of the cast are not very memorable, except they kept rehashing the same "Lucky Charms" jokes. Some guy with a predictably low IQ swallows a gold coin (!) belonging to a leprechaun who wants it back. That's the whole plot. That's it. The leprechaun hobbles around, searching for his beloved coin, and knocks off a few extras who get in his way.

It bogs down in places, especially with the "nobody believes there's a monster" clichés which are a staple for this kind of movie. Extra legends about 4-leaf clovers are thrown in at random to provide for a resolution. But who cares; you're laughing too hard at how stupid the whole thing is, anyway. My favorite goof is how the house is supposedly long-deserted, but is fully stocked with groceries, naturally including a certain cereal. The cast all seems to be having fun, probably between acting gigs when they had nothing better to do.

For a cheap laugh only. Turn the brain off. And be careful not to eat any gold coins.


I didn't know it was possible to make a picture this terrible. Not only is the movie not scary in the slightest sense, but also the bad parts of it that are often so funny in other horror movies are completely dull in this one. If you read the movie title and thought it sounded lame, you've basically gotten all the emotion this one can muster and shouldn't waste your time actually watching this flop.


and i want me 91 minutes and 22 seconds back.but,we don't always get what we want do we?i guess this is supposed to be a horror comedy combination.well,if so,they left out the horror part.actually,they left out the comedy part too.mostly,this movie very slow and boring,but believe it or not,there are worse movies out there.Warwick Davis plays the Leprechaun,and it looks like has a blast in the role and is not taking it seriously at all,which is one good thing in the movie.Jennifer Aniston is also in this movie,which came out about a year before "Friends".anyway,this movie spawned 5 sequels so far,and to be perfectly honest,it doesn't merit any sequels.for me,"Leprechaun" is a 2.5/10


So, who else noticed that Jennifer has had a nose job? She actually looked Greek when she was younger! "Leprechaun" dances on the screen, a courageously terrible little horror jig that could have only come out in 1993, when movies this bad actually got halfway decent actors.

The movie starts out with some promise as an elderly couple is tortured by a fiesty lil leprechaun who has been robbed of his pot of gold. We are treated to an old lady falling down some stairs and an angry husband who proceeds to lock the lil fella inside of a crate in his basement. Fast forward ten years and a young Jennifer Aniston and her father happen to move into the house. A half-wit accidentally releases the leprechaun from the crate and all hell breaks loose. By all hell breaking loose, I mean not much really breaks loose at all.

The highlight of this film for me was seeing the leprechaun rip a dude's face to shreds and snap a guy's neck then ride a go-cart.

Watch for the 'retarded' guy who played Francis in "Pee Wee's Big Adeventure." Boy, whatever happened to that fine actor? 3 out of 10, kids.


As a quirky film promoting singers this movie is just fine. That's the only nice thing I can think to say about it. Otherwise it's portrayal of the South is about as accurate as The Beverly Hillbillies or The Dukes of Hazzard. I wasn't sure if I should laugh or scream at the ridiculousness of this flick. Having been born and raised in South Georgia, and having spent years in Florida and other parts of Georgia and the South, I can't help but wonder how long it took to find all these places. The movie goes from the armpit of Louisiana to one tiny town in the armpit of Florida over 600 miles away. Then, it sets off for the darkest speck in the Appalachians, another 800 miles away. All this is done in a beat-up old car, because apparently Southerners don't own anything made in the current millennium (with Jesus hanging out of the trunk). I'm not saying they should have set up a musician on an Atlanta skyscraper, or even in the middle of a college football field (although that's the real church of the South). I just don't think that the movie should position itself as a general look at the South, its music and its religion. Jim himself lives in Athens, GA. This is the land of REM and the University of Georgia. As a recent resident of a town only 30 minutes from Athens, I can assure you that snake-handling religious freaks and Jesus Saves Catfish Truck Stops are just as laughable here as they are in NYC or the UK. And no these are not the people electing our politicians (well, maybe that place in Florida). To say they are the margins of the South is putting it mildly. These places made for some great gritty backdrops to play some music in front of, but that's about it. This all might have been more believable if the stories told didn't sound so obviously scripted. I'm thinking the location scout for this film is the same guy that finds people to interview right after a tornado in the Mid-West. Quite a knack for finding the freaks. I've also lived in Cali and NYC. I find it hilarious that people from these places took this movie so seriously. Try getting out of your bubble. The South is actually a really nice place. You should see it sometime. We've learned to read and write and think for ourselves. We hardly even eat dirt or opossum anymore. Jackasses.


We need more negative comments on this film. Sadly it is a strong expression and will continue to influence people, especially youngsters. But we should expose its "alt. country" aesthetic for the exploitative hubris it pretends not to be.

If you make it through this film without laughing out loud at Jim White's nonsense, you should watch it again and really use your brain.

"I decided I'm going to come back to the South and become a Southerner. As best I can. I will never be a Southerner. I will be this imitation of a Southerner. But in a way, I feel like that brings me closer to God, because I've chosen--it's almost like a form of divinity. I've chosen my divinity rather than my divinity choosing me."

Oh yeah? You're like this guy I know who decided he's going to go back to L.A. and become a gangster. He'll never be a gangster. He'll be this imitation of a gangster. But in a way, he feels like that brings him closer to reality, because he's chosen . . . it's like a new form of authenticity. He's chosen his authenticity rather than his authenticity choosing him. Last I heard he'd started an "alt. hip-hop" group no one cares about.

"You don't see the south ... on the interstate. You go 5 or 10 miles off the interstate and you get the South as it was 50 years ago or a 100 years ago. And you can't do that in many places."

SFWEJ is ostensibly a film about "Southern" culture, but its composition--its contrived southern Gothic aesthetic--tells us much more about contemporary American cultural stagnation, evidenced in such desperate identity-quests as White's. It's a shame that he inscribes that identity onto people he doesn't know and I daresay would never ACTUALLY hang out with, just so he can legitimate the ersatz prewar Southern image he's constructed for himself. He's like, what, 40? And he acts like a verbally gifted high-school kid who's still finding himself. He naively makes up stories about people he may not have really known, and inserts himself in between scenes of "authentic" (non-actor) Southerners to remind us that he and they are one and the same (as if such gestures could conceal his position of literary and social power over his subject-cum-object).

By focusing only on the most remote and eccentric locales and people, White, the filmmakers, and the other musicians are only furthering irrelevant Southern stereotypes--keeping the fictional literary South alive so the mediocre, media-addled Anglo-Americans for whom it was constructed more than 100 years ago can go on dreaming their jaded, irrelevant dreams--and buying albums and concert tickets. This aesthetic object, the "South," contains no meaningful or useful information. It has two purposes: to make money, and to get our collective rocks off on an Other.

No one disputes that Pentecostal gatherings are unusual, even Pentecostalsunless they are too young or sheltered to know that there are other people in the world besides Pentecostals. But because they are unusual and there are quite a few of them in "the South" (not to mention in the more Southern nations of the Caribbean and elsewhere all over the planet) they supposedly embody the aesthetic paradox of hell/heaven, bliss/torment, that characterize "the South"'s "atmosphere." Great job, guys. I've never encountered that before. It's not like Faulkner and O'Connor used poetic metaphors a million years ago to justify the ignorance, poverty, and needless suffering they perceived around them. But when ignorance, poverty and needless suffering are the lived reality rather than a marketing tool I have a hard time caring whether there's "beauty in it."

The film doesn't come clean; it doesn't admit that it's primarily a promotion for the handful of alt. country musicians we see trying to blend in with the extras (read: human props). Everything about these pretentious protagonists betrays their conceit and their second-hand rip-off of the '60s folk revival (which was itself an ersatz identity-crisis that had no bearing on the lives of most real people living in the South). How derivative can you get? The way Johansen plays Geechie Wiley's "Last Kind Word" shows me nothing about the "South." It only shows me he has probably seen Crumb, the documentary about R. Crumb, whence most anyone's knowledge of that recording comes. Admit it.

The cinematography is beautiful, but the pretense to ethnography (or whatever you'd call it) is a shameful context for such talent. The scene with Melissa Swingle playing "Amazing Grace" on the saw is gorgeous, but is only palatable as a stand-alone music video; I could do without her oh-so-"Southern" anecdote. Some of the other musicians are talented and seem sincerely inspired. White seems like a nice guy, a dedicated artist and a hard worker. But they've opened an undead can of worms. No doubt many of my fellow Arkansans have seen this film. To what degree it inspires the alt. country scene in this region I don't know, but it can potentially warp lots of minds and that is depressing.

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is perfect proof that the neo-Gothic, alt. country "Southern" aesthetic is a "postmodern" (in Fredric Jameson's sense) symptom of America's lack of historical sense. Don't buy into the pseudo-populist fantasy that the South hasn't sold out, that urban sprawl is not the "real" South, that if you rambled aimlessly in this vaguely-defined region you would find the philosopher's stone Jim White wants to be there. It's all mythology, and unoriginal mythology at that. This film masquerades as a rediscovery or celebration of something the "South" has kept which the rest of America has lost, but if you were to ask White exactly what that is, he couldn't give you a straight answer. If he could, there would be no reason to make this film and the poet/guru facade he cultivates in order to make his living would crumble.


In this rambling, self-indulgent wreck of a film, alternative country singer Jim White-and a host of other music industry "outsiders"--team up with two British film makers to talk (and sing) about the south. While White, the documentary's main searcher for the soul of the south, is by no means a stupid man, neither he nor his British "translators" possess enough profundity to warrant White's constant--and self-consciously "earthy"--philosophizing: the best of his musings amount to bland truisms (e.g., that southern society forces its members into certain molds and excludes those beyond the pale of its narrow norms (a trait, in truth, of most _human societies_)); the worst come across as the disjointed prattling of a man in love with his own voice--a man determined to tell us that his "southern blood" grants him deep, mystic insights into this "exotic" land and its incomprehensible inhabitants. Of course, such metaphysical feats of interpretation are intended to add an air of spiritual legitimacy to White's music: the film, after all, is a search for the world described in White's first album, "Wrong-Eyed Jesus." Such skewed, presumptuous, and (on White's end especially) doubtlessly financial and egoistic aims are especially dangerous; for many viewers will take--and many have in fact taken--this film as a genuine window into the culture of the southern United States.

The problem is that White and his British collaborators possess such a powerful--and, in the issue, _predictable_--set of preconceptions about what they should find in the south, that they hardly bother to look beyond the narrow ken of the camera or listen to anything save the pseudo-profound and affected postmodern "folksiness" of the music and musicians they carry with them. The south, they say (resurrecting a tired old bit of southern gothica), is locked in a Manichaean struggle between Flesh and Spirit, Devil and God; the south is peopled by dead-eyed Pentecostal shouters, undulating whores and raging drunkards, hard-luck miners and born-again deep-fryers; and the south, they say, is all the same--a great cultural and spiritual monolith from the Louisiana Delta to the eastern coalfields of Kentucky. Such gross oversimplifications both complement and determine the film's subsequent course. White and company--with silent, superfluous concrete Christ in tow--spend more time babbling about their own "weighty" insights and showcasing their own music (sometimes while local ragamuffins stare in staged wonder at these "furriners" explicating their little southern souls in song) than in actually interacting with the "natives." When locals do enter the lens, the encounter is always brief, shallow and artificial--indeed, many of the interviews seem staged--and the overall feeling is often _exploitive_. A grotesque menagerie of stereotypes is wheeled before the camera, each one comporting itself in a fashion consonant with the film makers' expectations: the saved cavort with the Spirit and dribble glossolalia from contorted lips; violent "bad men" with vacant faces and empty, idiotic bravado shoot stop signs, do meth, go to juke joints, go to prison; trailer-dwelling sluts revel in sex, bars and bad men; coal miner-banjoists live hard lives and are inscrutable. And occasionally the filmmakers' cursory stabs at even the most predictably stereotypical storytelling degenerate into freak-show gawking, as when the camera, now close up, leers pornographically at the jumbled tattoos of a wretched trailer-denizen or lingers, almost mockingly, upon the painfully unfortunate physiognomy of one of the twice-born.

That said, does _Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus_ possess any commendable qualities? Well, unless you are a doggedly dedicated fan of Jim White or some of the other artists featured here, the answer is no. The camera work, of course, is sometimes passable--and a few of the shots of industrial architecture are _vaguely_ reminiscent of similar scene compositions in Robert Flaherty's _Louisiana Story_ (1948). But Jim White's avowed quest for the southern power in his blood is too flawed by self-absorption, incoherence, and reliance on cheap stereotypes to be salvaged by any minor aesthetic merits. Even casual students of southern culture should look askance at a film that runs roughshod over a large, often troubled but intricately complex and diverse region--a film that, when it condescends to look at southern people at all, only stares at them as specimens, whose life-habits, histories and individual destinies are as straightforward and predictable as those of a toad in a terrarium. White doesn't need southern blood, a spiritual epiphany, a train of fellow independent artists or even some naive British documentarians to "discover" the "Mind of the South" as it is depicted here. A century of popular media, replete with grotesque stereotypes, smug explication, and smarmy missionary sentiment, has interpreted THAT south again and again. White and company are simply pouring old wine into a greasy, poorly stitched bag. Despite initial promises of a spiritual journey, one soon realizes that _Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus_ hasn't gone anywhere at all. Indeed, all of this crass, sterile, artistic self-gratification is transpiring right upon the old, familiar dunes of the "Sahara of the Bozarts." Somewhere the ghost of H. L. Mencken is snickering.


While, as a musician, I enjoyed many of the performances, I found this to be an entirely off-base depiction of the American south. Born and raised in Nashville, TN, I have "ventured off the highway ten miles" many times in Tennessee and never found anyone resembling the mythical southerners depicted in this film. My mother's family has lived in Tennessee for around two hundred years, and of the many stories I have heard about Tennessee as it was seventy-five years ago, I have heard only of intelligent, hard-working people who lived in small-towns, attended church regularly, often went to college out-of-state, drove cars, had electricity, were respectful of their spouses, and did not speak in tongues or pass snakes around on Sundays. These were not the richest of Southerners, they were just average Southerners. The South depicted in this film died with the founding of the TVA, if it hadn't died prior, and frankly it disgusts me that people from Canada and elsewhere are viewing this film and thinking that is at all an accurate depiction of the South.

I currently live in Franklin County, TN, and even poorer southerners who live in cities like Cowan or Decherd do not resemble in the slightest the extreme versions of Southerns found in this film, so if planning a trip to the south to see the southerners sitting on their front porch playing a banjo with a hound dog next to them, save yourself plane fare and don't bother.


This is another in a long stream of movie industry attempts to dramatize the south in a "it's so pretty, let's show close ups of trees and swamps and have people pick banjo's" etc etc.

This is no more an accurate portrayal of the south then say "Forrest Gump". Scenes like inside the barber shop where the guy and the woman are singing some type of murder ballad are pretty much indicative of the tone of the entire movie. If you notice the scene is obviously scripted (like a lot of the film is) and check out the very real discomfort and embarrassment of the locals sitting there waiting for a haircut.

"People in the south won't talk to you if you're driving a new Land Rover or something." Then all through the movie you see "every day people" driving by in mostly newer SUV's and sedans, and the filmmakers are the only ones driving a beat-up 1970 Chevy.

This whole film is mainly a riff on the idea of the south that most outsiders have, a view that is mainly perpetuated by Hollywood.

It's time for the motion picture establishment to make a real southern movie, documentary or not. It's a shame that people who saw this on the BBC believe this to be the way things really are in the southern US. What's even more unsettling is the people in our own country believe it as well.


A mediocre movie. All through the film you get the feeling that there likely would have been much more interesting tangents to follow. Don't expect to hear much musical talent either! Jim White does add some thoughtful commentary along the way but not enough to make up for many boring sequences. I suppose if you are into offbeat and slow movies you might enjoy this one. Also this was not nearly as bad as "Last Days" which I could not even finish. If this movie represented the typical lifestyle of the Southern experience (which it does not) I would be scared as hell to go down that way. I give it four to balance out anyone who thought this deserved anything over seven.


This movie clearly was made with an agenda, and that was to depict the South as being a place full of dirt poor, stupid, inbred rednecks with more fleas than sense. Everyone depicted in this film is a slack-jawed yokel. This film is no more representative of the South than Grosse Point Blank is representative of Detroit. The Southern people, while often retaining their traditional values of faith in God and a deep mistrust of the government, have largely evolved into a cosmopolitan, technology-driven population. Why did this film only focus on rural areas? Why did it completely fail to visit Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, or dozens of other places? Because the filmmakers wanted to make a point, and they couldn't have made it if they had actually visited places that are spread out across the South today.


How do you review this vile piece of trash. It is completely made up of aftermaths of crashes, suicides and murders all taken from police files. There scenes shown are at some points extremely gory and disgusting. Most notably a scene early on of a motorcycle crash where the riders smashed head has wedged its self between a lamp post and a mesh fence.

The film is introduced by Dr Vincent van Gore who tells us he is a professor or gorenology. He obviously reads his dumb and pointless introductions to each section from cue cards. The worst part of this film is the narration. It is given with complete disregard for human life and is extremely offensive. At one point a woman who has hung herself is striped off and the narrator comments on her breast size. It seems he may need a little mental help. The film gets extremely boring very fast as when you have seen one of these scenes you have pretty much seen them all. And after half an hour of the same stuff you become pretty tolerant of the gore and blood on screen. If you enjoy these mondo films then there are plenty more better ones out there. This one is just boring.

4/10


***SOME SPOILERS CONTAINED HEREIN***

This so called 'shockumentary' is sick and obviously written by a very unwell person. The movie is presented by 'Dr gore' who, as he tries his best to read from some autocue and make it sound convincing, narrates us through scenes of recently dead victims of crashes, suicides and murders. If this is what you want, I presume it is or you wouldnt be here right? then that is fine. This movie probably delivers in every way for you. Graphic, Bloody and definitely Gory. The problem I have (apart from the fact that seeing this has made me realise I must have grown up from since when I used to go to rotten.com and impress my mates with just how sick a video or image I could find and mail them!) is that Dr Gore makes some rather pathetic comments along the way in this 'movie'. The worst of which being when we see the result of a train crash and the charred bodies are taken out one by one. One body is that of a pregnant woman. The heat was so intense as to have made a hole in her stomach, revealing the embryonic foetus inside. At this point the good Dr Gore starts a tirade of NONSENSE about -Unmarried mothers being worthless and useless to society and we are better off that this happened to her. Then he just finishes me off with the line 'This is probably one of the most popular and best of our faces of gore. This way we get two for the price of one.'

He is joking about a dead unborn baby. Hmm. I shouldn't have watched this utter trash. To top it all, he then 'introduces' some 'great hollywood special effects' to compare for us, with what we have just seen. Note that the 'great hollywood movie' is actually a film made by the same company which then leads me to the train of thought.. This trash is being used as some kind of advertising platform for a cr4p movie?! (believe me, the movie clip they show is unbelievably amatuer and very stupid!!) Ok thats enough. If you get a chance to see this...well... if you are a teenager..if its a sick evening and a bit of a party then I'm sure it would be fun. Possibly. If you are a bit older perhaps or just value your stomach contents, dont watch this ;) If you are considering PAYING ANY CASH to see or rent this - DONT. These people are unwell. They dont deserve a cent for making this.


How do you review this vile piece of trash. It is completely made up of aftermaths of crashes, suicides and murders all taken from police files. There scenes shown are at some points extremely gory and disgusting. Most notably a scene early on of a motorcycle crash where the riders smashed head has wedged its self between a lamp post and a mesh fence. The film is introduced by Dr Vincent van Gore who tells us he is a professor or gorenology. He obviously reads his dumb and pointless introductions to each section from cue cards. The worst part of this film is the narration. It is given with complete disregard for human life and is extremely offensive. At one point a woman who has hung herself is striped off and the narrator comments on her breast size. It seems he may need a little mental help. The film gets extremely boring very fast as when you have seen one of these scenes you have pretty much seen them all. And after half an hour of the same stuff you become pretty tolerant of the gore and blood onscreen. If you enjoy these mondo films then there are plenty more better ones out there. This one is just boring.

4/10


Which means when I got to a museum and see a blotch on the wall I don't pretend it's art and say a bunch of meaningless, pseudo-intellectual prattle. By the same token, I don't have to pretend that a film lacking in continuity, a plot, good camera work and interesting characters is anything but an annoying and pretentious waste of time.

Gale, as always, is compelling to watch and draws you in....but he his work is wasted in this piece of tripe. Gale - read the script first and look for a good story.

At this point, I need a shower...and can someone smack that annoying and self-absorbed main character?


First let me quote the late great movie critic Gene Siskel, to like a movie you have to like the people on the screen. You've paid your money you've given your time and you have to be able to root for them in some way. In this movie, the movie's central character the heroine is totally unlikeable.

She make extremely nasty comments to her roommate, hangs up on her grandfather when he calls her to tell her her father is dying and is the most narcissistic nasty character I have seen on the screen in a long time. I guess we are suppose to forgive her anti-social attitude because she had quess what-a really bad childhood (who hasn't had a really bad childhood!). Her use of symbolism is maybe out of 6th grade English. Her name is Lily and someone is tending a plant throughout the film, I will leave you to guess what kind of a flower it is. Also there is the requisite crucifixion symbolism and the terrible, terrible secret family secret she must carry-her father has AIDS. Is this 2004? I think you'd be more embarrassed to tell the world your father has tuberculosis or West Nile Virus not AIDS. No one communicates, everyone is lonely and isolated, parents disappoint their children, husbands and wives are alienated-I don't think there is one stereotype not depicted in this movie. The supporting acting is quite good. Gale Harold shines as her neurotic love interest. But the movie is left to be carried by Jennifer Elster and she is just not someone you care to root for.


"Particles of Truth" is a dull, uninspiring film with a weak storyline. The film is about Lilli a washed up artist with bad hair. She is at most unlikeable in appearance and personality. Throughout the film, Lilli is depressed and unkempt. We see why she is so: Her parents were drugged out hippie commune like folks with no direction in life and her love life stinks. Throughout the movie, Lilli meets Morrison a man who suffers from ocd. There is a possibility of a romance for Lilli and Morrison. But their scenes lack chemistry and passion. In a later scene, Lilli sees her dying father. They reconnect briefly and the film ends meaninglessly.


My TiVo automatically records shows with Gale Harold in them, and that is the only reason this movie ever even came across my radar. From the moment I started watching it to the blessed moment when the credits finally rolled, I was stunned at the sheer awfulness of this movie. It very obviously tries *so hard* to be deep and meaningful, and falls flat at every turn. The jarring and distracting camera work, "moody" insufficient lighting, and cliché-ridden plot made the film nearly unwatchable. I kept watching only because I thought maybe it would pull together by the end. It never does.

What this movie is, is a pile of disjointed plot fragments, inane dialogue, and Dysfunctional Archetype characters, lurching around for an hour and forty-five minutes. Gale, who I think is a very talented actor, was completely unbelievable as a germophobe. I blame this on writing and directing. In some situations he is shown as extreme--using an alcohol wipe to open his own medicine cabinet door, for example--but then the next second he is touching people and objects willy-nilly and not appearing to be bothered at all. It's very inconsistent and completely fails at credibility.

The "style" of the movie is to cut away from shots and scenes before the audience can figure out what they are supposed to mean, because that's "deep" and "mysterious" or something. By the end you are supposed to assemble the rubble you've been shown into some sort of cohesive unit, but not only does it not all fit together, but I was left not really caring one way or the other. It was so disjointed that I never came to care about anyone or anything being shown. Too many elements are extraneous and never used--for example the entire storyline (if you can call it that) of the roommate, which neither goes anywhere nor adds anything.

I only didn't give it one star because of the existence of "Manos, Hands of Fate" in film history.


Long and tedious, dull and boring. This seems to be the qualifiers for some independent films these days and "Particles of Truth" is the mark of how these descriptors fit. It is difficult enough to to act, much less direct, write, and "star" and Jennifer Estler is the major problem with the film. Delegate or hire. Although the disjointed stories are meant to intertwine with one cogent story emerging, the blunt edits jump between lost in Yonkers and angst amid the concrete streets of inhospitable New York. The characters themselves are less worthy of self-pity as to simply ignore them as too dysfunctional to bother with an intervention. An artist with a rough childhood, her father dying of Aids, an OCD writer, a failed architect, his wife with breast cancer, one lousy mother, alousy grandmother, and a born-again clinging room mate with a bully boyfriend. None of the stories has sufficient merit to warrant the time to sit through this film.

In need of several edits and possibly a director who is not wearing too many hats, "Particles of Truth" strains to bring forth any form of truth. With the exception of Gale Harold of "Street Time" and "Queer as Folk," performances are less that attention-grabbing although some might find this kind of film a style of restrained acting worthy of note. It's not.

While actors don't bump into the furniture, they don't bump into other characters and thus, the film fails to hit a cohesive tempo. On initial viewing I kept waiting for the actors and action to hit stride, on second viewing, the film took on an altogether student film quality. I'll pass on the third viewing.


Instead of depicting Joe Torre as a regular guy who did a great job with a great team, it made him seem like Ghandi. It was over-dramatic and trite.


There might be a baseball movie out there that can rival how bad this one is, but I doubt it. For such great actors cast in some of the parts, I was sorely disappointed by the performances. The cinematography was poor, going from shots during a game that were obviously on a sound stage to crowd shots from any baseball broadcast. They would purposely do close up shots so you wouldn't see that nobody was actually there. Just not believable at all. I couldn't suspend my disbelief at all. Blech!


I thought the trailer looked great and the acting talent involved really is quite impressive: Julia Ormond, Richard Harris, Tom Wilkinson, and Gabriel Byrne. Not to mention that the story looked interesting. And the cinematography is just amazing--very beautiful, very cold. So, what went wrong? Sadly, the film is crippled by the script. It's the kind of story where the protagonist knows exactly the right bits of obscure information and knows exactly the right people who can give her exactly the information she needs to unravel the mystery. Not only that, she can rappel off the side of a ship like nobody's business. In his review of this film, Ebert said it was "a triumph of style over substance." The style is definitely there, but just before it triumphs, something completely illogical is said or done that breaks the suspension of disbelief the film tries so hard to build up. As for the actors, I got the feeling that they just didn't know what to do with their characters, none of which were very well-rounded. Even Smilla, a unique female protagonist in that she is very intelligent and independent, is not given enough of a personality or a background to inspire the viewer's compassion. And anyway, it's not her intelligence that gets her to the end of the story, it's the fact that she's got more guts than any hero I've ever seen in a movie, male or female. The only truly likable and memorable character is Isaiah, if only because he's just an impossibly cute little kid. In the end, while the movie is aesthetically pleasing, not enough attention was paid to developing a plausible story, well-drawn characters, or a satisfying ending.

P.S.--I almost forgot to mention that Vanessa Redgrave does a very nice job but has to say the line "There is no Mr Lubing. I am the bride of Jesus", which just cracked me up, even though I think it was supposed to be a serious moment.

P.P.S.--The absolute highlight of the movie is a little speech Smilla gives about numbers. It's actually very unique and insightful and, fortunately, it's in the Memorable Quotes section.


I was surprised to see that IMDb users had given this movie a 7.0. It's really pretty terrible. I gave it a 3.0, and that was being generous. It's ridiculous, opaque and all around pretty stupid. It's empty of any emotion or believability. I had no sympathy and very little interest in the characters. Every time I started to get interested or began to like someone, something ridiculous or stupid happened. I was very disappointed in this movie. What did I miss? How come everybody liked it?


The only mystery was "whatlipstick is our heroine wearing?" It is a wonderful color, softly shining and lasts throughout - except at the climax when it starts to fade! Contrasts nicely with Smilla's beady eyes (admittedly quite large) as she stares at the camera. There are so many questions - why am I watching this (rainy evening), what is the role of the police in the plot (surely it is unusual in Denmark for the police to enter an apartment and sit in the dark waiting for the owner to return), how much money does an unemployed person in Denmark get (Smilla's haircut did not come cheap!), how does a worm live in a meteor, what was Smilla looking at through her microscope......... All the old stalwarts are there - Gabriel Byrne, obviously trying to remember where he is; Richard Harris, mercifully silent so just playing with his hair; Vanessa Redgrave, doing a wonderful imitation of Ingrid Bergman in "Murder on the Orient Express". We have the Deus ex Machina - just like in Diva - here is it the Father - kindly, wise, wealthy, with the answer to all questions; he does however enliven his days with the only amusing character, a ballet dancer.


This is a fairly low-key for a crime story, a tale about a woman trying to find out why a young boy fell from a rooftop to his death. I had high hopes for this movie but the last 35-40 minutes were so disappointing that I'd never watch this again. That ending had so many holes to it, it was mind-boggling.

I like Julia Ormand, who plays the lead character, but she's a bit surly and rough with this character. I also enjoyed seeing scenery in Denmark and Greenland, not the normal sites for crime film movies. Few films, I imagine, have been made in Greenland with its brutal temperatures. (There is a fascinating very short featurette on Greenland that comes with the DVD.)

Perhaps worth a rental, but only with a discount coupon, meaning don't spend more than $3 to look at this. Heck, you can buy it for $5 most places, which tells you something.


A strong beginning segues clumsily into a dark and confusing middle.

- Plot devices spring up out of thin air, with little rhyme or reason. EG, the powerful daddy, the buddy with nautical connections, ad nauseam.

- For most of the film, the lead actors seem to swallow the majority of their lines, which are anyway spoken so low as to be unintelligible. If I hadn't had closed captioning, I wouldn't have understood half the dialogue. Is this a thing with "artsy-house" films?

- Does Gabriel Byrne have narcolepsy here, or does he simply wish he were in a more intelligent movie?

Too bad, if it had kept up with the strong beginning, this could have been an excellent film. What a waste of talents like Robert Loggia and Bob Peck.

Summary: better than any sleeping pill.


I didn´t enjoy the film at all. There was too many things in the film that didn´t match the story in the book. Bille August has taken himself too many liberties changing the story all the time. The entire book was based on Smilla´s thoughts, dreams and memories. Things which August totally failed to express.