Such a range of comments for this forgotten film! What exactly is it's appeal? One commenter denounces it as unmitigatedly dull. Another reviewer gives it a 9 out of 10??

I agree at least in part with almost everything said here. As far as a serious movie is concerned (not serious subject matter, but in terms of a 'serious' production effort) 'Green Ice' certainly isn't much. It is a highly-predictable, run-of-the-mill property. It almost excels at being boring. But is that always a bad thing? Sometimes one wants precisely that. A simple exercise in a known format. Some eye-candy to watch when you come home on a Friday night after an exhausting week. So let's not turn up our noses entirely at this kind of picture. It has its uses.

Now, as far as particulars: Ryan O' Neal is worth watching in almost anything. That's one. He is interesting enough as an actor, to be found entertaining even in a snoozer like this one. Secondly, the film has demure beauty Anne Archer as his co-star. This alone makes it worth a view.

Third, although the acting is hum-drum, it is at least adequate. Let's face it the roles as written don't offer much to any actor. The dialog and the mild chemistry between the two leads, is at least passable. . on the low end of the scale. And that's what we're talking about here. Low end. A movie can be bereft of many redeeming qualities but as long as it doesn't really do anything that is blatantly wrong, can it be all bad?

Fourth: amazing scenery. South America. Nuf said.

Fifth, some intriguing stunts with hang-gliders.

Sixth: Bill Wyman's unusual, upbeat soundtrack. At first, it seems ludicrous and inept. But you'd be surprised how it it sticks with you. In retrospect, it works.

Seventh, (and not least of which) there is one quite chilling scene in the very beginning of the movie: the killing of six Anglos in the forest which includes the rape of a young American tourist (in the film, she is Archer's sister). This scene has the appropriate edge to it.

So there you have it. Yes, its stilted and awkward and trite and forgettable, by the standards of normal film-viewing. We acknowledge that. This is a mediocre film. But it is not sub-par for what it set out to do.

So, judge it by the standards of something like, say . . "Capricorn One", "Avalanche Express", "Cassandra Crossing" and others of the same stripe. Looking at it that way, it's really not all that bad. you just have to like slumming.


A poorly developed action adventure film shot largely in Mexico, this affair begins in promising fashion, but after its first of several changes in direction occurs within the plot line, little remains that will interest a viewer. A group of international students (in reality organized supporters of anti-government rebels) is massacred in Colombia by Federales as action opens, while during alternating scenes Joe Wiley (Ryan O'Neal), an American electronics engineer, visiting Mexico to recover from a divorce, meets an affluent socialite, Lillian Holbrook (Anne Archer). When the two become romantically involved, a complicated situation forms since Lillian is being wooed by Meno Argenti (Omar Sharif), a powerful plutocrat who controls the emerald trade for the rotten Mexican government, thus leading to shared distaste between the two men. When Lillian travels to Colombia in quest of her missing younger sister, Joe goes with her, an act not endorsed by Meno who wishes to wed her for personal reasons other than love, and a climactic conflict between the rivals can result only in violence. The screenplay is a hotchpotch with a thread of intended light-hearted romance woven among such disparate themes as murder, torture and sadism, along with grotesquely silly stunts that Joe and his cohorts perform in attempts to foil the evil Argenti. The piece is heavily cut for distribution, and editing is very choppy, increasing the episodic nature of a script that consistently meanders, scenes honouring logic being very rare indeed. The players are somewhat hindered by their cliché laden lines, O'Neal being even more encumbered by a large assortment of electronic and other specialized equipment that is magically available for use in situations requiring derring-do. Camera-work under supervision from cinematographer Gilbert Taylor is strikingly effective and creative but general mistreatment of basic rules of continuity sinks this effort despite its pretty scenic effects.


Green Ice is a caper movie that was made long after the caper movie was in fashion. To say that it is a belated addition to its genre is an understatement. It has an attractive trio of leadings actors in Ryan O'Neal, Anne Archer and Omar Sharif, but they don't seem overly impressed with the material and turn in workmanlike performances at best. The film reeks of indifference.

The story has American electronics expert O'Neal visiting Latin America and being recruited into a scheme to steal emeralds from a Colombian consortium. In true caper movie style, we get to see the plot as it is hatched and the subsequent robbery as it is put into motion.

The attractive locations serve the film well, giving it a pleasant backdrop. However, events in the foreground are less attention-grabbing. The robbery sequence is OK, and there's a half-lively fight at the end, but these are scant pickings compared to the better films in this genre. The story never really builds up to a head of steam. It just ambles along without urgency, and the few enjoyable moments there are come and go all too quickly. The supporting performances are generally bland. This is basically a missed opportunity and a rather dull way to spend your time. If, for some reason, you're absolutely determined to see this film then do; if not, don't go out of your way to find it.


This is pretty definitive of the campy science fiction movies that are just meant to be fun. In accordance with the campy aura, the film's main focus are a group of teenagers who hang out together, and whose camaraderie is indicative of such films, and could still be an inspiration. It's mostly just the same story: kids witness something from outer space, aren't believed, and solve the mystery themselves. Gobel plays a likable intelligent sort who is benevolent to the kids. One scene that makes this rank a level better than the usual is the "Goo Goo Ga" scene. A lot of hilarious bits, and make no mistake, this is what the movie is designed to do. It's appealing to see people behave in a civilized way to each other, as they do in this movie. And to be willing to help each other, again, is inspirational. Campy, but more assets than detriments.


There exists the phrase, "It's so bad it's good". Well, this film could well have been created from start to finish under that principle.

I've voted just a single point in its favour (only because zero is not an allowed option). By any sane analysis "The Day it Came to Earth" is dire: the plot is contrived; the acting is wooden; the camera-work is suspect; the sound is indistinct; the scary bits just aren't; and best of all, it came in the night, not in the day.

And yet, a one dimensional voting system like this does not do justice to the complete ensemble of the TDICTE experience. Why have I watched it six times? What makes it so compulsive? How can something so poor, something so wrong in every respect, be this good? Honestly, I can't say. Find out for yourself. Watch it, live it, but don't say I didn't warn you.


A rather inoffensive monster indulges his rock-collecting hobby after being partially revitalized by said rocks. Sadly, he fails to murder a small, shrill, annoying 30ish college sophomore and his larger, furrier, slightly less annoying roommate. In fact, the monster harms no one other than the hoods who murdered him and dumped his body into a lake, which he adopts as his home following his revivification by the greenish meteorites. This may have been the inspiration for most of the menaces on the "Smallville" TV series. The ending is remarkably incoherent, alternating between scenes of the monster holding the final meteorite fragment aloft and quick views of a descending roman candle ball which makes funny sounds. Finally, the police lieutenant shrugs and the movie is over.


I can tell this tried to mimic some of those vintage B-movies of the 50s, so I realized how scary it would be if it was filmed in the dark. Sad to say, but that's really the painful downfall of this movie. It does have an interesting story, but the fun is missing!


Ever wonder why some films have faded from view and are little spoken of? RAWHIDE is a great example and contains many reasons for its general obscurity.

Things go wrong the moment Susan Hayward arrives on the scene. This woman cannot act and her character is completely overbearing and obnoxious.

This is simply a badly written story made worse by bizarre performances by Hugh Marlowe, Dean Jagger, George Tobias and the thoroughly freakish Jack Elam who is either the highlight or the low-light of the film.

Jack Elam gives all to his role with his eyes bugging out, licking his lips and his teeth, sticking out his tongue and his jaw and positioning his head in every freakish position that he can. And he gets close-ups! All he needed was to have his head spin around a la Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST.

Hugh Marlowe is awful and doesn't seem to realize he is in a movie.

Dean Jagger mutters much of the time as the semi-simpleton of Marlowe's band of gold robbers.

George Tobias plays an ethnic in the manner of El Brendel, yet looking like Alfonso Bedoya in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.

Tyrone Power does the best of all with a cookie-cutter character.

On the other hand, the location shooting in Lone Pine is very attractive and the digital restoration made the image quality look near to real life, but in black and white.

I can't envision myself ever watching this grueling film again.


This could very well be the worst movie ever made. It is beyond me why there are so many people that have positive things to say about this truly awful piece of film.

Let's get something straight, I don't think it's "awful" because it's violent. I think it's awful because it was made by a bunch of hacks.

Just go up to the actors listed in the film to see what they've done after this movie was made in 2006. It looks like only two have gone on to do other things. That's because the acting in this movie was an abomination. You could use this movie in film class to show young directors how to NOT get good performances out of their actors.

First of all, the casting was atrocious. They couldn't find a less threatening guy to play the antagonist then they one in the film. He looked like the small doofus that played the little guy on the chain gang in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." And we're supposed to believe this guy has been living in the woods when he's wearing clothes that looked like they were freshly bought off the rack from some new Western store. The woman, "Hope," looked like an ugly Baby Spice. Why anyone would want to kidnap her is a mystery. Jeffrey Dahmer took better care in picking victims than the evil guy in this movie.

Second of all, the character development was none existent. Let's forgo the third-of-all and fourth-of-all and just rattle some more off here.

There were scenes where the captive could easily get the chains off by lifting them over her head. The first scene had a woman go through torture to stay alive only to kill herself when she got through the hard part. The movie took place over a month yet they looked just as clean at the end of the movie than they did at the start of the movie. The school girl victim was the most annoying character ever. I was begging for her to die. The ending was retarded.

The movie was typical Euro movie making: Don't explain anything, just film a bunch of stuff and play it off as being artsy.

It's like these Japanese horror films. They say they don't like American horror films because we have to explain everything and we have to exact revenge on the antagonist. I say, it's lazy screen writing to not provide back-story and a resolution.

Avoid this movie at all cost. If you see it in the store do us all a favor and burn it. No eyes should ever witness the abortion that is Broken. I'd like to spit in the directors' faces for being such hacks and somehow getting a bunch of moronic fans to back their lazy garbage. Go screw.


Broken is a simple story of a good mother who wakes up in a nightmare. Trapped with a serial killer, she must take herself to the brink of pain and strength to survive and discover the fate of her daughter.

What's good about "Broken" is the gore (I've only seen the unrated version), the performances, and the location. The brutal, unflinching gore scenes serve to unnerve the viewer - this ain't know Lifetime movie, and you're instantly on edge and expecting the worst. And the lead characters, Hope and the Man, do a good job of portraying their situations without much dialogue. There's a LOT of screaming and grunting here - I wondered what the neighbors must be thinking. Which leads me to what I found bad about "Broken" - I just never got to know or care about the characters. Is the bad man making some sort of social commentary on the sheltered lives of women? Does he want to create an equal to live out his days in the wilderness with? Does he just think it's a kick to torture women? Who knows? And Hope is pretty thinly drawn, so I'm just not into her journey of being broken or rebuilt or whatever.

Still, the downbeat ending and the fact that it tried to be something more than it was are commendable.


This isn't even a remotely well put together film. It has no real plot. The film is disjointed and shows pieces and never puts them even remotely together. This film has a guy that tortures his victims and the director and writer torture anyone stupid enough to fall for this. It amazes me that people continually begin to make apologizes and put indie films on a pedestal just for being indie. I don't care of this film was made for 3 dollars or 3 million it would suck either way and trust me this movie sucks. The only thing you will get from this is the gnawing urge of wanting the time back you wasted on this crap. Want to know how the guy kidnapped his victim? What happens afterwards? Where the hell this true story is going? You won't none of these questions are answered. It's bad film making all around. I kept wanting to like this film... Sadly it was impossible too. Broken makes little sense. Broken is just like this review is starting to get. Repetitive.


Alright. So...had they done this film for 500 dollars, i would have given them props for trying and said it was pretty friggin' excellent. But it says they spent 500 000 British pounds on it. What the hell did they spend it on??? That's almost a million US dollars. That fog machine and the spotlight behind the trees must have been pretty damn expensive. Not to mention the consumer camcorder they filmed this dog crap on. A soap opera looks better than that. Anyways, to the story...I guess the man in the hat was supposed to the villain? I sure as hell was cheering whenever he beat the crap out of that ugly ass blonde big-nosed whiny twit. All she did was scream whenever she was lucky enough to be getting away. Total moron, and a crappy actress as well. She totally deserved to die, and in a perfect world, she would have died in the first 3 minutes into the film. Also the brunette he brought over that kept on screaming for 3 days, I was really hoping he'd slit her throat and not just cut her tongue out. Man was she annoying. The end was also fantastic, I'm not even going to get into it. Please avoid this film like a plague, this garbage isn't even bad-good.


a woman sits at her daughters bed and the next thing we see is that she is somewhere in the woods in a coffin-like box. WTF? there is no connection to ANYTHING in the next part of the movie, except that she has a daughter. then she's bound to a tree with a razor-blade in her stomach which she can pull out and save herself. (i don't think anybody would survive that) i don't need to talk about the other girl having no problems at all after her tongue has been cut out.

this film gets increasingly boring every time the mountain-top-view is shown and we see how many days have passed since the beginning.

i don't know which is worse: this or http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189456/...


Literally the worst piece of crap movie I have ever seen, and I have seen Glitter. That is the only valid thing that I have to say but I have to reach ten lines to post this comment considering no one has anything but nice things to say about this axe wound of a movie. In summation, some chick gets kidnapped by some crazy idiot with a bad haircut and is made to clean pans. Apparently she also has some kind of a daughter who she is trying to find. Anyhow, its not even worth my time to attempt to retell the rest of the story, so in brief, rocks fall and everybody dies. Highlight of the movie: you get to half see some chicks boobs while captor guy whacks off.


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It seems the Directors were in way over their heads. Poorly Directed, Poorly Filmed, Poorly Written, and Poorly Acted. I understand it was low budget and all that, but come on... First year Film Students could have done better. Small wonder it went straight to DVD. And another thing... the "Special Features" part is one of the most Inane, Juvenile ramblings from a "Director?Writer" I have ever seen/heard. He even goes as far as threaten physical violence against critics that have posted negative reviews of his film on the web. They should stick to making Music Videos...

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This movie is yet another that has been poorly made by a fan of films, who cannot execute one properly. A film student maybe? OK, the camera work is good and the overall quality of the picture is good, but this film has no real point. The acting is terrible and this film is full of moments that will have you shouting at the screen in annoyance. Moments where the actress has ample opportunity to escape her captor but just cries and wails constantly. The worst unrealistic part of the film is where the girl gets her tongue cut out. She covers her mouth and collapses, only to be fine and eating food the next day! Surely someone with their tongue cut out in some woods and chained to a tree, would bleed to death rapidly? The movie is full of these inconsistencies and is very unrealistic and pretty pointless, solely relying on lots of fake blood and a few gory bits to carry it. I got the feeling that maybe the director has tried to make this film very arty, with funny camera angles and out of focus parts. It doesn't work. I wouldn't recommend this film unless you enjoy watching pointless unrealistic gore. Surely in 2006 we are past the need to be entertained by lots of fake blood and people having their legs broken etc? It takes more to make a great movie than cheap gore. A coherent storyline and an overall ending point perhaps?


After dating a wonderful man, Hope (Nadja Brand) comes back home, sees her daughter Jennifer and goes to sleep. She wakes-up in the woods with a psychopath (Eric Colvin), fighting to survive for more than forty days and asking information about her daughter to the stranger.

"Broken" is a sick, unpleasant and disturbing low budget movie. In spite of having a reference in the beginning of the movie that it is based on a true event, the pointless story is completely flawed, the character of Hope is a total idiot and the schoolgirl is very stupid and annoying. There is no explanation about where they are and how the women have been kidnapped and transported to the middle of nowhere; Hope is an imbecile, and I do not understand how her character does not kill the sadistic maniac when she has the chance and after being tortured the way she had been; the schoolgirl screaming all the time is really irritating, provoking the nasty situation with her tongue. I did not like this gross movie. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Jogos Sangrentos" ("Bloody Games")


While browsing through the DVDs at my video store, this one caught my eye for three reasons: 1) The cover art closely resembles an awesome French flick called "Inside" ("A l'interieur")-- which I recommend to any extreme horror fan 2) The Dimension EXTREME logo at the top, which has delivered some awesome titles ("Eden Lake", the aforementioned "Inside", and "Storm Warning") 3) The glowing reviews written all over the box which claim it makes "Saw" look like child's play and that it had won several awards at film fests ...

Well, let me say, as the box compares it to "Saw", it's as if "Broken" writer/director took EVERYTHING that made "Saw" a quality movie, did the opposite of it, and crafted possibly one of the worst horror films I have ever seen. I can't even qualify as fully seeing it. It was so abhorrent I couldn't watch it passed the 50-minute mark. I doubt I missed anything ground-breaking.

The acting is some of the most dreadful, desperate attempts I've ever seen. It's no wonder both the actress (Nadja Brand) who played Hope and the nameless torturer (Eric Colvin) have never had any work after the production of this abomination. Hope is our story's protagonist, and during the oh-so tame "torture" scenes we're supposed to root for her, but literally all she does is whimper and bitch throughout the whole movie, and there is about three minutes of character development before she is captured so we don't even know her character to sympatheize with. Needless to say I was hoping she would die the most brutal way possible. I couldn't even bear to follow through to see if she got away or not. Here's to hoping she was burned alive or something.

The antagonist says about 30 words throughout the film, and it's usually two- or three-word demands at Hope to 'wash this' or 'clean that'. I guess he lives in the woods that he holds Hope captive? We don't really know. We basically know nothing at all. Including who he is, why he tortures people, why he chose Hope, how he captured her, what the point of sewing a razor into her stomach was, and why the hell he insists on wearing this ugly hat. It really isn't menacing at all. In fact, there's nothing menacing about him. He is contrived, utterly cheesy, generic and completely baseless. If Hope were to get away in the movie, the only good thing that would come of it would be she would probably kill this guy. It's too bad they both weren't being tortured.

The gore that there is is nice, I will give it that. The setting is pretty nice-looking as well. But the camera work is about as lacklustre as the characters' acting so the nice surrounding is rendered pointless.

Pointless like this movie.

Please, please, PLEASE don't buy this. Don't even rent it. Don't contribute any of your money towards these people so they can think they did a quality job, or even worse, make another film.

.5/10


Broken starts as single mother Hope (producer Nadja Brand) returns home after a date to her young six year old daughter Jennifer (Megan Van Kerro), after making sure Jennifer is alright Hope goes to sleep herself. Suddenly Hope wakes up to find herself in a wooden coffin, a day later a man (Eric Colvin) lets her out but then ties a rope around her neck to a tree & balances her on a log, inside a deep wound in her stomach is a razor blade to cut through the rope & save herself from choking, Hope manages to reach inside her own body to find the blade & cut the rope. After this first test the man then chains her to a tree & makes her clean his pots & pans & tend a little vegetable patch in the middle of a forest, as you would. Hope tries to escape but the man punishes every attempt. Is Jennifer still alive & will Hope be able to find help?

This British production was written & directed by Simon Boyes & Adam Mason who also edited it & it's a bit of an odd film, it's supposed to be a stark horror thriller but it just feels like something is missing. Available in the US in both 'R' rated & 'Unrated' cuts I will be basing my comments on the longer version although a few extra gore shots doesn't significantly alter the film overall. Broken is a strange film & hard to categorise, it starts off feeling like a Saw (2004) imitator with a gruesome trap of some sort but then it settles down into a bizarre imprisonment film as this seemingly random man keeps Hope chained to a tree in a forest so she can wash his dirty pans & grow vegetable's for him. Nothing is ever revealed about the man, his name, his origins or why he is doing what he is or how he even managed to kidnap Hope in the first place or why he choose her & the list just goes on. The two barely speak a word to each other & even then it's just short sentences, there's no idle chit-chat here as Hope develops a strong bond with a flower & the opportunity for a conversation with a flower is limited to say the least. You know, to be honest I was sitting there watching Broken & I was just thinking to myself when Hope slashed the back of that guy's leg but he still had her back didn't he realise things were not going to work out? I mean if he wanted a woman to cook & clean for you (who doesn't?) maybe he should try the lonely hearts ads in the local paper, & this time it might not be a bad idea to not actually kidnap & mutilate said woman, you know because that sort of thing generally doesn't help fledgling relationships does it? There's also a strange twist ending which makes little or no sense, why did that guy keep Jennifer in a run down shed? Surely that's an extra mouth to feed? Also when Hope was trying to break the door down why didn't Jennifer say anything? You know something like 'don't open the door mum or you will get a face full of nails' would have been helpful, wouldn't it?

Personally I felt the film was lacking something after an OK start & a fairly intriguing premise it goes nowhere & never gives any sort of reason for anything that happens or even where the action takes place. There's a bit of gore but not that much, there's a couple of scenes of people reaching inside stomach wounds, someone pulls some stitches out, there's a broken leg, someones head gets bashed in & a tongue is pulled out which begs the question how do none of these extreme wounds not become infected without proper medical treatment & they quite frankly live like tramps? Considering that Hope has been living wild in the middle of a dirty forest exposed to the elements her white shirt is remarkably clean at the end after forty odd days isn't it? Just off topic for a moment I have no idea why this film is called Broken but a quick IMDb search brings up at least another 38 films with exactly the same title.

With a supposed budget of about £500,000 this is well made & has decent production values but I didn't find it scary as much as a little unsettling. Filmed in some wood here in the UK in Cambridge somewhere although it could have been shot anywhere since one tree looks much like another. The acting didn't do much for me & that woman who screamed constantly got on my nerves, sure in that situation in real life you might scream that much but it's no less irritating to have to listen to.

Broken is a film that may grip & disturb some but the lack of story or logic behind anything that happens meant I couldn't get into it at all, that's just my opinion so treat it as such but Broken didn't do much for me & ultimately felt a bit pointless.


hey kids, you ever hide in a closet and watch your grandparents make creepy sex for about an hour and a half? well, thats about what this movie going experience is like. the first 15 min. are repeated again and again, and the victim has downs syndrome........... yuck

the acting is awful, the story is retarded, and there is only one good gore gag in the whole film, which they use multiple times. don't waste your time, stop trying to pass this crap off as horror go watch saw, you'll have a much better time and not feel bad about wasting $25 and a hour and a half of your life.....

or just go watch the fly, cuz it rules....


I know nothing about the reality of the supposed true story it is based on. But someone came up with a great first 10 minutes and last 5 minutes, and then promptly did a runner, leaving their abandoned 5 year-old daughter to finish it off. Yet another appalling screenplay that is far more painful than any brutality inflicted on screen. There is presumably a crowd of people who find this lowbrow fodder food for thought. Fine. But what is left for us grown-ups is way too stupid, crass and plain unforgivable. I suggest you watch the intro, then do something more useful like counting the hairs on your forearm, and make sure you set your alarm to ensure that you don't miss the ending. If this was an essay, I'd give it D+ and note that if they had written more than 4 lines, it would have been great.


Let me start by saying that this movie was so bad that it inspired me to register as a user on this website and write a review.

This movie is only entertaining for the sick and twisted. I've seen movies like Hostel and Saw before. I would agree those movies are far more gruesome, however they do offer a plot line, which offers the audience some intrigue and interest.

Unfortunately, this movie is just disgusting. It offers absolutely no plot line, not even a piece of a story. The script was horrendous at best. There is also no resolution. On top of which, the killer is also a total incompetent pussy, which is contradictory to movies of its genre.

The only good side to this movie was the acting, which was pretty good for this genre of movie. If nothing else, this is why I give it 2 stars instead of 1.

How they got funding... I just don't know!


First, I love horror films including slasher flicks but there is nothing here. They seemed to have had a decent director of photography and the acting isn't bad but sadly the problem is the film as a whole is pointless, senseless garbage. The point (if in-fact there is one) of the film seems clearly just to shock you with over the top gore and mindless violence, a theme I'm entirely sick of and in my opinion a total waste of film-making dollars. Maybe if they spent at least 5 minutes working out a story and characters it would be a decent film. But they sure as heck did no such thing here. Could have been good but this film will not be remembered.


Oh joy,, another foreign torture/bloody movie that sadistic gore hounds try to convince themselves and other people that it has value or merit. To anyone with an IQ higher than a rock this is NOT a good horror movie, it's just another mindless, silly gore fest.

While the movie "Inside" at least had suspense in the first half of the film, in the end , the movie Broken is just another excuse to show how much the human body can take getting ripped apart and how much an audience can stomach it.

Storyline takes another back seat to "special blood effects".. (yawn) It's not scary people, it just fossil fuel for the sick. I really think those men that get excited over movies like this should have a" I love tortured women" printed on their forehead, so that we know to keep our daughters and sisters away from your twisted selves.. :) LOL


I think you'll find they misspelled the title of this movie. Only a few letters out, but it should've been BOREDOM, because that suits it down to the ground.

It did start off with a nice dark tone, but never went anywhere and budget restrictions can hardly be blamed because there's no problem with the look of the film, it's simply the screenplay that's lacking.

That's about it really, barely worth even a rental as you're not missing anything.

P.S. I'm sure that by now most people are aware that IMDb reviews are a breeding ground for hype from the people involved in the film itself, if not then beware of all the high ratings/reviews a lesser known film receives, especially early on when the film's newly/barely even been released. You have been warned!


Is there anything that happens in this movie that is NOT predictable? I think not. Basically the movie is cliché after cliché and really nothing ever comes as a surprise. It makes the movie extremely predictable and because of that the movie is also seriously lacking in tension. So for a thriller it is not tense and unpredictable enough but also as a drama it's a failure. This is because the movie its story is highly unlikely. I mean, no way this could ever happen in real life, as in the same way as the events occur in this movie. So the movie has a real suspense and credibility problem.

But it truly are the clichés that killed the movie. It was cringing stuff at times. Everything is so formulaic in this movie. The predator is portrayed as a cool heartless, almost psychopath like sexual frustrated boy and the victim as a naive young woman, who acts like she didn't see any of this coming. Everything that happened in the movie was so obvious and all seemed to happen for a reason. Such as the sequence in which the 'predator' fixes the 'victims' broken car. That has got to be one of the oldest clichés out of the book. I knew what the movie tried to achieve after that point. I tried to look as if the teacher and the student were really growing toward each other trough the eyes of the other persons around them. It was so incredibly obvious and cheap that I almost wanted to stop watching the movie after that point. The movie is filled with moments like these.

The title might suggest that this is a cheap porn movie but this in fact is a sappy made for TV movie. Which means that everything is slowly happening and the movie spends halve its time on character development and unnecessary sub-plots to make the movie even more drama like.

I'll admit that Elizabeth Berkley is pretty good acting in this movie. She makes some of the clichés and events look even almost realistic at times. Her Hollywood career is as good as over after appearing in the Paul Verhoeven movie "Showgirls", so unfortunately she will probably only still appear in movies- and television series like this one. It's a waste of her talent and she surely deserves better. All of the other characters are a disappointment. Corey Sevier plays the cliché pretty 'untouchable' rich boy and the way the husband of the main character is portrayed is even worse. He looks more like a sexual frustrated predator than the true predator of the movie. He basically tries to have sex with his wife in every sequence. He wakes up, he wants sex. Before he goes to sleep, he wants sex. He gets home, he wants sex. It might be a realistic thing but I don't know, it just didn't feel right for a movie like this one and the story in general.

A cliché filled movie and I can't think of any reason why anyone should ever watch this movie. It's predictable and therefor also lacks in suspense and credibility. Not an 'horrible' movie and it certainly is a watchable one at times but all the weak and cliché elements in the movie also make this far from a recommendable one.

4/10


There are a couple of prior comments here which opine about this flick's abundance of clichés throughout -- and I agree completely, both with regard to the characters AND the dialog.

I'd read about Elizabeth Berkly's awful performance in the equally-awful "Showgirls," which I've never seen - and her performance here, while not awful, is barely up to the standards of Lifetime's worse fare. There was not a hint of depth to her character, but then there probably shouldn't have been. If so, it would have placed the film completely out-of-balance, since there wasn't a hint of depth or charisma - not a trace - in any one character, performer, or portrayal.

The principal's handling of Liz's initial complaint after her tutee had kissed her in the hall was laughable. Her husband's initial reaction and advice were likewise (Forrest Gump, attacking Jenny's boyfriend in his car provided a more realistic, intelligent action, and, hell, he was mentally-challenged).

The smarmy, unctuous lawyer (excuse the redundancy) father of the lying student actually performed something probably worthy of praise in his performance: he was both laughable and thoroughly annoying at the same time, no mean feat. Her attorney was more of an insensitive nerd, also not unknown in the profession.

Finally (and frankly, I rather enjoyed this part), the police were such a collection of insensitive oafs, that you'd rather depend upon Barney Fife, without Andy, to handle all law enforcement and investigation in your community. I know that most real-like cops fall a bit short of the sharpness, intelligence and empathy of the level displayed by most characters on the "Law and Order" series', and the like -- but dolts of this level seem to be a staple on "Lifetime."

Finally, I found a kind of "story within a story" fascination with Josh's concoction of his being the "victim" of his teacher. This scripted performance within the story was even worse than his overall performance in the main story. This was something of an achievement, like going from "F" to "F-minus."

This whole lame situation should have been resolved - in real life - in about 15 minutes, following a realistic meeting between teacher and school authorities, with husband involved. But then that would have precluded the contrived drama following, and left an hour's blank film in the camera.

But the writer(s) here, proved with their ending, they could do even worse. When the situation was finally "resolved" and "righted," this was accomplished in all of about 45 seconds, with no indication of what measures might have been forthcoming in any "real world" context for the perpetrator and his parents, or whether they might have been able to find some sort of path toward redemption.

This one's a 2* presentation; the second "*" because it does have some mild "fascination."


Student Seduction finds Saved By The Bell Alumni Elizabeth Berkley on the other side of the desk and attracting the attention of young and hunky Corey Sevier. Speaking for myself I can truthfully say that no teachers save one ever did anything for me hormonally back when I was a student. That was a Ms. Diaz who was a music teacher in Junior High School. Even as a young gay kid, I could see what she was doing to the rest of the class. She was the only teacher I had who in any way could have been played by Elizabeth Berkley.

Corey being the hotty he is, is also used to having his own way with women whether they agree or not. The fact that he comes from rich parents reinforces that belief. He's flunking chemistry which is what Berkley teaches and to keep his GPA up she agrees to tutor, but believe no more.

So when he attempts a rape and gets no for an answer it's damaging to his ego. When Berkley goes out of channels and reports the crime to the police, the cops who are keeping in mind the cases of Pamela Smart and Mary Kay LeTourneau just don't believe here. Sevier's parents have the wherewithal to get a good publicity spin on this for their boy.

Student Seduction which is a misnomer of a title if there ever was one is trash all the way. After the beating that Berkley took for Showgirls this TV film was not an upward career move.


Anyone giving this movie a good review obviously must have had something to do with its creation. This movie is a painful suckfest. The acting is stiff, the stock generic soundtrack is laughable, the direction is bland and strangest of all, the teacher really isn't all that attractive (making the student's blatant advances all the more awkward). The creative minds behind this trash should disband and spread out to prevent further displays of such concentrated craptitude. I'm certain that some starving kids in Africa could have used the money squandered on this project. Hell, the funds would have also seen a more enlightened purpose fueling a crack-addict; at least someone would be getting some entertainment out of it. For the sole reason that it didn't give me a terminal illness, I'll give this film a two.


A group of annoying bikers get stuck in the dessert and fall victim to the remaining members of the savage killers.

As good as Wes Craven's original film The Hill Have Eyes (1977) was, this sloppy sequel is as bad! It's dismayingly routine, with very few remotely interesting characters. This sequel just lapses into clichéd, uninspired slasher garbage, and pretty much lacks everything that made the original film a cult classic. You know a sequel is bad when the only good scenes in it are the flash-backs to the original film! The only bright spot is a decent music score from Harry Manfredini.

Robert Houston, Michael Berryman, and Janus Blythe return as their original characters, but it's all in vain.

Hands-down Craven's worst film.

BOMB out of ****


A gaggle of kids - standard slasher movie characters, all of them - who are associates of one of the first film's survivors, go to the desert to race their bikes and test their experimental fuel - and are menaced by the surviving mutant (Michael Berryman) from the first film, as well as a new ugly thug, "The Reaper" (John Bloom).

Silly sequel; truly a disappointment from a talented horror veteran (Wes Craven), from whom I expect more than just a run-of-the-mill slasher film, which is what this is. The first film could have been seen as a statement on the breakdowns of family units, but writer / director Craven obviously didn't care about making Part II particularly intelligent.

Highly reminiscent of a "Friday the 13th" movie, with a Harry Manfredini score that sounds much too familiar.

Cast is nothing special at all, though it is amusing to see Penny Johnson (Jerald), recently of the TV series '24' (she played Sherry Palmer), paying some serious dues, and to see Janus Blythe reprise her role from the first film.

Michael Berryman is fun as always; with those distinctive features of his, he was born to be a cult actor.

The fiery finale is okay.

You know you can't take a movie seriously when even the dog has flashbacks!

3/10


THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BUT YOU SHOULDN'T EVEN BE CONSIDERING WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

On the face of it this was a fairly tempting no brainer movie  the premise of the overrated (but not bad) original pasted onto the eighties slasher movie template  a touch of continuation with the Bobby, one of the survivors and Ruby, the feral girl (and the family dog, who gets his own flashback  draw your own conclusions!) from the original and the promise of much inspired teenager-slashing in the desert.

They are hooked up with some motocross riders and their girlfriends (one of the girls is blind and has Daredevil like enhanced senses  I am not making this up) and heading to a meet in some unspecified place to test out Bobby's newly developed super-fuel (they're carrying gallons of the stuff  deus ex machina alert!)

The kids decide to leave the highway and head across country thanks to one of the stupidest plot contrivances in cinematic history  they forget that the clocks went forward the night before  all of them!! This happened about twenty minutes in and I kept watching!!! More fool, me.

From there on its the usual predictable nonsense and features Michael Berryman (with a REAL tenuous explanation of his survival from part one) and a super lame villain (its Jupiter's brother!!) who looks like a retired wrestler with a big fat gut (y'know  he's fat  just run away!!)

None of this should be completely damning  there are a million pointless, predictable slasher flicks but some of them actually have a touch of originality  even if its only in the way the cast are killed off.

Boy does this movie fail  did Craven just take the budget and spend it on drugs? At least fifteen minutes of its overlong eighty six are taken up with flashbacks from the original (and not even the good bits from the original!)  the killings are bloodless and stupid and the killers are about as menacing as a drunk uncle at Christmas. And don't get me started on the ending...

This is the kind of dull, lazy, artless, stupid, `will this do?' filmmaking that gives horror cinema its bad name. It isn't even entertainingly bad  its just bad and should be in IMDB's 100 worst.

Pointless  avoid. You have been warned. 1 out of 10 only cos theres no zero option.


I rented this film on accident; I thought I was renting The Hills Have Eyes part 1. That didn't turn out to matter though, because nearly the entire contents of the first film have been conveniently spliced in to this flick. A double feature? More like ninth circle of flashback hell.

Now, film-hounds will tell you that the flashback is a weak cinematic technique but that a skilled director can sometimes pull it off. These people assumed the dreamer was bipedal. When a DOG starts having flashbacks... My God. I was so young.

My rating: 2/10. A documentary, perhaps, on how a horror films can go wrong, akin to the "Teenagers: Don't Drink and Drive" flicks shown at some high schools. Avoid.


I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw The Hills Have Eyes Part II at Blockbuster, I didn't even know that Wes had created a sequel from his brilliant classic. My boyfriend and I didn't even hesitate to pick it up, we thought it was going to be another awesome fright fest of the blood thirsty cannibals with probably better effects since Wes had pretty much made good money at that point and also established himself as a great film maker at that point. So we watched it last night with the lights off and you know what happened after the movie was over? We just looked at each other with the most blank stare as if we just saw a car accident. The Hills Have Eyes Part II was just a poorly made film and Wes should be ashamed of himself for ever thinking that this would have been a good movie. The characters were just ridicules and not to mention that he brought back characters that either died in the first film or would have no purpose in this sequel. Not to mention the characters from the first film have flashbacks from the first Hills have Eyes movie, but also the dog has a flashback as well! This story was just a bomb.

We have a group of teenage friends on a bus just going across the country, one of the girls happens to be Ruby, the little cannibal girl from the first film that saved the baby, somehow she's established herself into a model citizen that has a bubble gum personality, until she bumps into her old relatives at the same site with the group. That's right, they're all at the same site and now they are invited to dinner, where I'm sure they'll be the guests of honor.

The Hills Have Eyes Part II was really pathetic and low, not to mention beyond unbelievable. They didn't explain some of the deaths, they never explained what happened to the rest of the family from the first film, we only see the brother, and he has a pointless role because you don't see him for the rest of the film. Also of course some how the blind girl manages to save the day... I just, I can't, I'm sorry, I just really hated this film. I can't believe Wes did this to his own classic tale, just please do yourself a favor, stay as far away from this film as you can, it's no wonder I didn't hear of it, probably people don't wanna think that it ever happened.

1/10


I watched this one despite the generally low scores, and for once Im siding with the negative reviews. People have mentioned the barrage of flashbacks in the first twenty minutes, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't figure what possible purpose they served, other than padding out the running time and driving the audience mad. The acting and characterisations were all pretty terrible, with the so called heroes mostly being obnoxious and the mutants being virtually comedy characters. There's almost no gore or suspense, even the bits that should be exciting never really pay off in a worth while way, and the few good ideas in the movie (traps and some cool locations) are pretty much squandered. The potentially cool bits are the only saving grace of this one, but its still about 95 plus percent useless so Id say avoid.


I just watched The Hills Have Eyes2 1985 and the soundtrack sounds like Friday the 13!Someone tell me if they think so too.I was just sitting around and thought I'd watch part 2 of this little miniseries and I'm a big trivia buff.I told my husband and son this should be good like the first one right?Wrong think again.This was so corny and i kept getting the feeling the music in it sounded so familiar that i gave some thought to it.i don't wanna give any major parts away but like save your time effort and money because it is definitely not worth it.I love most 80's movies and music mainly because I was a teenager to all that corny,quircky but amazing stuff. This movie went way too far beyond that I can tell ya Oh well live and learn i guess.


I understand that Wes Craven needed money desperately in order to eat warm food, but he went too far. "The Hills Have Eyes Part II" is probably the worst sequel to any Horror movie. Yes, I even prefer "Exorcist II: The Heretic" to this crap.

The movie starts the same as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" with a prologue that tells what happened in the previous movie and reminds us that "the hills still have eyes". After the prologue, Bobby has flashbacks from the first movie; now, this scenes have background music. His psychologist tells him that everything's okay and blah, blah. He is now in a biker gang (for sporting motives). But he decides not to enter a competition or something like that in the same hills where his family met cruel fates. So his friends return to the hills, in company of Beauty! who may be now 30 years old. Beauty has also flashbacks! and still remembers how she almost kills Pluto. Wow, this is something new... a dog with flashbacks. But wait, the movie continues with extreme cheese! The plot even gets stupid. How could Bobby fell in love with the cannibal girl from the original? She was way hot back in 77 I must say in his defense. Anyways, the gang returns to the hills (duh) and one by one these kids are killed by Pluto (still as ugly as in the original, or even uglier!), Lizzard, and company. Let me say that the death scenes are cheesy as you can get. Not even like in "Friday the 13th". One of the boys is smashed by a giant rock in a super cheesy scene. The rest of the death scenes involve stabbing and stuff.

How could I help this movie? There's no possible way. I can't recommend it because it's at the bottom of the worst. The fact that it uses music from "Friday the 13th part 2" makes it even more a slasher movie than exploitation. Yes, this sequel is a 100% slasher flick. It has terrible acting, horrible gore, stupid dialogs, scenes, etc. There isn't something good about it. Some camera angles even copy "Friday the 13th part 2." For example, when Lizzard is holding a machete but you can only watch his boots. The ending of the movie is really bad. The gang got dumber and slower with time, and they couldn't even escape from the burning place...

Now, this is one of the worst slashers ever. I'm not exaggerating. This is a pathetic "Friday the 13th" rip-off but with characters from the original "Hills Have Eyes" (the same plot, characters, gore, music, acting, even cinematography!). Shame on you Mr. Craven. You've done enough harm to the genre.


People say that the first part was a great classic, and that the sequel was bad. Well, they are idiots!

The first film was a piece of excrement, with flies on it and all, and the sequel should not even be described using words because no language has words bad enough to describe it. Can I call a film a "son of a bitch" or a "bloody idiot"? No? Then let me refrain from describing it till it becomes possible to just call a movie a "damn bastard".

I won't go into stuff that others have already mentioned, save one: Behold: The dog had a flashback!! This is so groundbreaking stupid I think every single review should repeat it. The bloody dog had a bloody flashback. How stoned a writer has to be to think of such an idiotic thing?

I'll jump over the laughable effects, colourless blood, and beaten to decomposition (not just beaten to death) clichés, and go straight to how annoying the flashbacks from the first movie were. I don't think I've ever seen a sequel that had as much content from the first movie. I was not clocking, but I know that if you take out those flashbacks, the film would be MUCH shorter.

Let me finally speak of nudity. Films have different kinds of nudity, it might be essential (Malèna), it might be casual (Godfather), artistic (Manderlay), or exploitive (Basic Instinct). But nudity in The Hills Have Eyes 2 does not fall into any of these categories. Actually it needs a whole new category called something like "nudity that makes straight men go gay"!! It looked as if they approached the cheapest and most worthless actress and paid her an extra $50 to bare her ugly breasts when no such thing was due, needed, or fitting at all.

Pure cinematic abomination.


Wes Craven's 1977 movie "The Hills Have Eyes" was a surprisingly great genre movie. When Craven needed cash he decided to make "The Hills Have Eyes Part II" in 1985. It's a rush job that is sloppy and lazy written and often feels and looks like a B-movie, with some bad pacing, ineffective build-up and lame characters and acting performance, also due to its writing.

What this sequel mostly does wrong is relies too much on its first movie. It needlessly features same characters and actors from the first movie and the movie is filled with countless flashbacks of events that happened in the first movie. This is a real cheap way of film-making of course and quite annoying if you have already seen the first movie.

It's not being very original on its own and it most importantly is ineffective as an horror movie. The way the overall story progresses just isn't that interesting and often too predictable. There is also too little happening and when there is something happening it isn't being very effective, due to its build-up and overall story.

The movie has lots of characters in it, which you never really get to care about and you are just waiting for them to die. The movie is also basically the one killing after the other but none of them are really original or surprising enough to leave a lasting impression on the fans of the genre.

No tension, no excitement, no originality. No reason to ever watch this movie really.

4/10


Gernerally regarded as being one of the worst sequels ever committed to film, this begins with about five minutes of flashbacks to the first film, followed by a cheap shock (guy sneaking into girlfriend's room in a mask) , then more flashbacks. After which a group of dirt-bike racers (using some type of gasoline created by survivor of the first film, for the obligatory cameo) leave for a motor-cross competition in the desert. They stupidly decide to take a shortcut, and when their bus breaks down, they end up in the same area where the first film took place where they're set upon by two survivors of the cannibal family. Bad references to the first film scattered throughout the early scenes don't help, nor does an uneven pacing, but it's well photographed in the desert, capturing the desolation and isolation of it, and the low budget sets (Ha! What sets? It was probably filmed using anything they happened to find in the desert) work well. Also has pretty good foot chase through the rocky cliffs between a couple of the bikers and Pluto, and a couple of other good actions scenes, but that can't hide the fact that, for all its explosions and chases, there's really just not a lot going on here. Personally I don't think this is quite as bad as some people claim, it's no worse than any other mindless sequel (for example: Saw V) but it's no prize winner either, and it pales in comparison to the original Hills Have Eyes. More of a plot, and a better ending (like the first film, it doesn't explain how the hell the last two characters get out of the desert, nor what happens to Ruby) would have helped considerably.

*1/2 out of ****


Why is it that so many sequels come out this way? Presumable because most of them are about money, pure and simple, rather than an interest in saying or doing anything new with established characters. The original 'Hills Have Eyes' was a genuine classic, was frightening because of its realism. Part 2, however, just jumps on the 'Halloween/Friday the 13th' bandwagon. Due to the fact the music of 'Hills 2' is composed by Harry Manfredini (who composed the incidental music for most of the Friday films), you could often be forgiven for wondering when Jason Voorhees is going to pop up. That's not to say the music's bad. In fact, the climactic tune is one of Manfredini's best.

For what it's worth, 'The Hills Have Eyes 2' concerns a group of bikers who take a short-cut across the desert and break down. Among their number is Ruby (now called Rachel), who has become part of society. Before long the bikers are being killed off one by one in typical slasher style. The main problem with this film is that most of the characters are so stupid they're unbelievable. The bikers are stereotype no-brain teenagers. Michael Berryman is still good as Pluto (though the character is nowhere near as scary as he was in the first film). Then there is Papa Jupe's conveniently never-before-mentioned brother The Reaper, who is just too dozy to take seriously. If you're a fan of slasher films, then this is fairly entertaining - though maybe for the wrong reasons.


Craven promised an interesting career in the Horror genre with The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes during the 1970's. He made rough, hardcore, groundbreaking grindhouse cinema  regardless if they're good films or not they were unique and opened doors for a great director. Unfortunately throughout the 20th Century Craven went on and off from horror to comedy, to drama to thriller and so on but what I never knew about was his sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes; reading up on The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 I came across an article stating Craven made the film for some extra cash. Well, I'm not surprised.

Craven poured his heart, soul and love into the original movie The Hills Have Eyes hate it or love it, it is evident Craven put effort into it; did he with this sequel? No. Here you can see talented film makers, writers and actors putting in laughably weak efforts with a cruddy script, paper thin characters, an obscure and ill fitting Friday the 13th-esque score/vibe, silly special effects and overwhelming mountains of unintelligence. For an example; every character has a flashback within the first twenty minutes of the film and to make the movie more inept than it already is, even a dog has a flashback! This movie is a flashback extravaganza! The acting is irritating to the extent where it is painfully unbearable. One character is blind though you won't know it until she actually says so as she is so poorly written and unconvincingly acted. There is also a scene where she is running through a cabin, note: a cabin she has never been to in her whole life yet she runs through the house as though it is her very own home  blindness can mean second sight with senses perhaps, but not the way this movie does it; it just looks silly, as I said, its poorly written. Do not expect Michael Berryman to have slurred words, a speech impediment and borderline brain damage as you see here in this film he speaks quite fluently and walks like an average person; was this the Pluto we saw in the original film? Nope. If you're looking for any incestuous, inbred, radioactively mutated hill killer like the first film this is certainly not the place to look for it; especially when the mutants in this film can drive motorcycles (stylishly so). This film has no character development, bad acting and a story copied and pasted from the first and slasher formulated  this is Friday the 13th mixed with The Hills Have Eyes. For 1985 I guess that is where the money came in.

Something that really irritated me (amongst everything else) was this spontaneous introduction of Reaper. Who is he? Where did he come from? Sure, the hillbilly father in the original film could have kept something from Big Bob Carter and not told him of his other mutant offspring but it's just...illogical, especially when Reaper is so unintentionally funny. Also, whatever happened to the other characters from the first film? What happened to Brenda, Doug or the mama mutant or any of the other surviving mutants? Not only the lack of character explanations but these new characters are simply put; murder dolls  as I said, this is Friday the 13th though the only problem in saying that is that these teenagers don't have sex, smoke drugs, drink alcohol, be naked  nothing. They're so unbelievably boring and they don't even have the classic slasher teen formula going for them  what a waste.

The film has cheesy special effects (just look at the cover) and the script is the exact same as the first. This movie isn't even entertaining  it's just painfully awful. You see it is films like The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 is why horror is very overlooked and under-rated as a genre. The non-horror viewing public slander horror films as predictable, cheesy and stupid however there are a lot of horror films out there that prove such a statement false  though The Hills Have Eyes part 2 not only encourages the "all horror movies are dumb" idea but takes it ten steps further. This movie has no soul and that's where I question Wes Craven as a director. It has one too many Friday the 13th elements to it and it's so unbelievably bad  but not in a good way like Troll 2 or Manos: The Hands of Fate. For me, Craven is a hit-or-miss film maker but when you read up that he needed quick cash then you should be well aware of what you're in for; The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 is it.


Is it really possible for a movie to be this bad? I only watched this because my friend attempted to rent part 1 but accidently picked up the sequel instead. This movie is beyond horrible. Our heroes are so stupid ("Today's the day of the time change!***I can't believe none of us remembered!(???) ***) you start wishing the cannibals would just hurry things along and finish them off, or the bus will run over a land mine and they'll all die at once or something. The only even marginally entertaining in this movie is an unintentionally hilarious bit in which the pet dog has a flashback to the previous movie; I almost laughed myself to tears after seeing that.


I recently acquired this via the full-frame Image DVD in anticipation of the HTF Halloween challenge; I knew the film was nowhere near as well regarded as the 1977 original  but I wasn't aware that Craven only made it because he was hard-up for cash, that he later disowned the result and that the picture was even shelved for two years (by which time he had re-acquired his stature with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET [1984] which itself developed into a franchise and, ironically, the director would also return to much later after another lean period in his career)!

Anyway, this sequel is really quite lame as these things go (especially given that the original director is involved): apparently, there was so little plot to work with that the makers felt the need to pad out the running-time with gratuitous recollections of some of the highlights from the first entry  including an outrageous (hence, justly infamous) dream sequence by Beast, the heroic Alsatian! Similarly, the mutant cannibals this time around are relegated to just two  Michael Berryman's Pluto, who's shown to have somehow survived two separate vicious attacks by the dog(!), and yet another relative (brother to Jupiter from the first film and, thus, Pluto's uncle), dubbed "The Reaper", and who appears out of nowhere.

The motocross-enthusiast protagonists are among the most obnoxious heroes to feature in this type of film  the kind that you don't care whether they live or die. In fact, just about the only characters to engage our interest are a blind girl and Janus Blythe's Ruby herself  who has been domesticated in the interim (at the end of the original, she had saved a baby from a fate worse than death and, as seen in an alternate ending on Anchor Bay's SE of the first film, had even joined the surviving members of the cannibals' victims). Though Robert Houston (Bobby) is also on hand, his character is conveniently put out of the way at the very beginning: he freaks out when a motor race is set to take place in the desert near where his family was attacked all those years ago and opts to stay behind  Ruby (who's even changed her name) and Beast, however, go along and, though the former's confession about her past isn't taken very seriously by her companions, both of course prove instrumental in the new victims' safe-keeping.

Incidentally, Craven knew when he had a good thing going and, so, reproduced here two death methods from the original  Berryman himself, in fact, expires yet again at the hands of Beast (though he's met with the fate that had previously befallen his brother Mercury), while The Reaper's come-uppance is an even more elaborate and protracted stunt than Jupiter's demise in the 1977 film and which would have been more appropriate for a Road Runner cartoon! By the way, Ruby herself inexplicably vanishes from the proceedings during the last third or so!


Wow this was one terrible sequel. I don't even know where to start on how bad this movie was. It was just so low budget and so dang boring. Somehow Pluto (Michael Berryman) is still alive after the first movie. How I have no idea. Then there's one other cannibal The Reaper. His name sounds cool right? Too bad the character is so terrible it's not even funny. This entire movie is mostly flash backs from the first movie. Even the Dog has a flash back! This movie is pretty disappointing and really poorly made too. I don't know what Wes Craven was thinking when he made this one. Please avoid this movie at all cost; it's not worth your time. If you want to see a good Hills Have Eyes movie. Go see Hills Have Eyes (2006) (1977) The Hills Have Eyes II (2007) those movies are much better! I give The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 a 2/10


I can never be sure what movie I am going to see when the names are the same. I tried to watch the original Wicker Man the other day, but whoever wrote the description got it wrong and it was the Nick cage version.

I tuned into the followup to The Hills Have Eyes last night and was fooled again. I didn't even know there was a Wes Craven version as I saw the 2006 movie. The description on Showtime was for the 2007 movie, but they showed the Wes Craven version of Hills Have Eyes II. I god cheated as this version was not worth losing 90 minutes of my precious sleep.

Maybe it would be scary for some tweens, who would not get to see it for its "R" rating, but it was cheesy horror with only one slightly gory sequence. Disappointing, to say the least.


Almost a decade after Wes Craven's original shocker - he directed this lesser known and largely inferior sequel. If I didn't know better, I'd say part 2 was trying to make the original look better by comparison. Yeah - it's that bad! It is about a group of dirt bikers who travel by bus out into the desert to race. They, of course, end up encountering the remaining members of the cannibalistic family living in the hills, which are just Pluto (Michael Berryman) and his uncle - some big guy named Reaper. Unlike the 1977 classic, this sequel is basically just a lack luster 80s slasher with minimal gore and a depressingly small amount of nudity. Seeing Berryman riding around on a dirt bike was probably one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen and his dialogue sound much to intelligent for a semi retarded inbred. That Reaper guy was funny and the only thing I actually enjoyed about the movie. He looked like a wrestler with Down Syndrome. If you are like me and love the original than there is NO need to punish yourself by watching this crap... Avoid!


A motocross team backed by Tommy, who has invented a super fuel that will change the way of racing, must trek across the desert to compete in a competition. However Tommy gets cold feet and Rachel (aka Ruby) decides that she will take the team. While, travelling on the bus they find out that they're going to be late and so they decide (by a vote off) to take a detour and get themselves stranded after damaging the bus on the beaten track. Unknowingly to them someone is watching them and waiting for their chance to pounce.

Okay, so after reading and hearing how BAD this flick is. I was reasonably surprised by it. I was expecting an atrocity, but what I got here was nothing more than a rancid slasher vehicle that has more in common with the 80s slasher gruel. That's not to say I didn't find it insipid, but by its reputation I expected far worst, but its just another routine (that I found curiously fascinating) sequel trying to cash on the original with a few amusing sequences. What made the original a successful package, just didn't translate here. It's not as brutal, aggressive and intense, while the adrenaline levels are very meek and it lacks that rough edge. Everything about it is uninspired, but there are a few random moments and ridiculous situations. Like oh it's pointless flashback time! Poor Bobby poor Ruby and even the superstar of a dog Beast chimes in. Why? Well, to remind just how better the original is compared with this junk. It's simply a retread of the original with the family being replaced by retarded teens and to up the suspense, one of them just happens to be blind.

Wes Craven wrote and directed this lumbering mess and you could easily tell the creative juices were at an all time low. The most effective scenes occur when it has the blind girl unknowingly stumbling across her dead friends. Some of the cast decided to hang around for the sequel. The favourite of the cannibal clan, Pluto (who healed up very well) played by Michael Berryman adds a lot the flick. Janus Blythe who was Ruby returns to take on her dwindling family and for a couple minutes at the beginning Robert Houston reprises his role as Bobby. Oh and not forgetting Beast! The rest of the pesky cast were either annoying fools or simply plain meat for the chopping board. On the other hand, Tamara Stafford was acceptable. John Bloom is an eccentric comic brute (no, goose) in the part of Papa Jupiter's older brother, The Reaper. While, Craven's mind numbing material (especially the script) and direction left a lot to be desired. There was effective location photography put to good use by capturing the impressively foreboding backdrop. Everything else is so-so or below par like the music score, uneven pacing, cut-away deaths with big casualty list, goofy stunt work (where the cannibals seem to lay the smack down) and a dead-weight story with full of "come again moments?" and a very merry conclusion.

A terribly soulless low-grade sequel by Craven that I found oddly amusing.


'The Hills Have Eyes part II' isn't the lowers of the low you can go with a sequel of a good film, but it probably is pretty close. In some ways it felt almost as a parody of the original and that surprised me, as it is made by the same man who made the first one: Wes Craven.

From some freak co-incidence one of the feral cannibals has survived from the first movie, even thought we saw em' all get killed, and this time he's accompanied by his uncle, which was something of surprise, as he wasn't mentioned in the first film and the daddy of original head of the cannibal family mentioned only having two children, a daughter who died and the bloodthirsty psychopath son. But then again maybe he was lying.

But okay, this time the group of would be victims are a group of motorcyclist in a way to a competition to seal their fate (literally this time). They are accompanied by Ruby (Janus Blythe) who actually is the daughter of the feral family, now civilized with the help of the survivors of the Carter family. This story short, the buss has an accident and they are forced to stay near the silver mine occupied no other than Pluto and ol' uncle Reaper.

The whole film is just idiotic. Not that the first one was any brain food, but this is one is just one huge cashing in attempt. There's lots and lots of flashbacks from the original film, showing off how the Carter's snuffed the cannibals. That would have been appropriate for a quick montage, but now I felt, that the scenes were put in just to make the movie a bit longer. They also substituted for the lack of bigger cannibal family.

As it often is the actions of the people stranded among psychotic people were far from the normal behavior of people in that kind of situation. People went out to cuddle even though they knew, that their friends were missing.

The acting was pretty horrible, and this time there wasn't even good atmosphere to back it up.

All in all THHE:PII felt very forced effort and maybe that's something the movie really was. Craven did it directly after 'The Nightmare on Elm Street', which is a movie, that provided one of the most known horror characters of cinematic history. Maybe Craven felt upping the ante with one of his older creations. All I can say he's failed. Horribly.

Rating: 2 of 10

Camp Rating: 5 of 10


If you are as curious about this movie as I was I would highly recommend not wasting you're time, it kinda sucked. So instead of wasting you're time looking for it i'll save you 87 minutes by spoiling this movie completely.

PART 1 A group of stupid bikers get ready to go into the the desert for a motocross competition, oh yeah one of them is blind. Bobby has a bunch of flashbacks and Ruby is now known as Rachel (she is now sibilized and pretty much normal other than THE FRIGGIN FLASHBACKS!

PART 2 The kids make there way into the desert and there bus breaks down (duh duh duhhhhhhhhhhhhh) After realizing there pretty much f***ed they decide to look around. Thats when Ruby gets attacked by Pluto and kicks his a**. She then claims to the kids that she is the now legendary Ruby.Pluto takes off on one of the bikes. Two of the idiots go catch him, they catch him he surrenders. But one of the kids falls into one of the family's traps and is killed by the reaper (papa jupes big bro.).

PART 3 3 more kids are killed and ruby hits her head on a rock (you never find out what happened to her) The blind chick and one other survivor burn the reaper to death. Feel free to email me at moviefreak372333@yahoo.com


This is a strange detour in the otherwise interesting career of Wes Craven. It's mostly just a rehash of the first film. I couldn't stand it...at one point we are treated to a flashback from the first movie...as remembered by the FAMILY DOG! Skip it, you'll be doing yourself a favor.


Two idiots (Ted Danson, Howie Mandel) plan to bet on a horse in a race that's fixed to win. But they have to deal with the Mob and the Mob's head wife who is sleeping around.

Wow--is this BAD! I saw it in a theatre in 1986 and remember hating it and being really amazed at how lousy this was. I figured with Ted Danson in it (who was popular from 'Cheers' at the time) it couldn't be bad. Well, I was wrong! He tries but the material is hopeless. Mandel was just annoying. The rest of the cast are just there.

Purportedly Danson shot nude scenes for this movie but they weren't in the final cut. Also there were sequences shot with Danson and Mandel imitating old Laurel and Hardy routines (hence the title) but THOSE were cut too. I heard the studio was horrified by the final result (no shock there) and just released it very quietly and it died a quick deserved death. Easily one of the worst comedies of its time. Just painful. Avoid.


A Fine Mess is a perfect description of this movie..Ted Danson and Howie Mandel star in this disaster about a couple of goofs who overhear a plan to dope a horse and then get involved and chased.

The movie is dull, boring and completely unfunny..I think this was made too early in the careers of Danson and Mandel...made five years later with a better script it would've been much much better..

On a scale of one to ten..0


Only at the IMDb can one find multiple positive comments for awful films - doesn't matter how awful, what film, who made it, or who's in it - the film will have its defenders.

Well, I'm sorry to say, this film cannot be defended on any level, and this comes from someone who will pretty much go to the mat to defend Blake Edwards, because I think he's a great director. But, this film comes from his worst period - where he was making one completely unfunny film after another. This, however, is the nadir of his career. There is not one funny gag (and I cannot say the same about any other Edwards film), not one funny performance, not one patented Edwards great comedy shot, just and endless series of terrible gags, all rehashed from better films, until this thing finally limps to its stupid conclusion. One knows one is in trouble the minute the film begins, when one is assaulted by an insipid rock-and-roll (circa 80s) song instead of a witty or tuneful Mancini score. One knows one is in further trouble when there is not one single note of Mancini music in the film, even though he receives credit for Original Music. The only Mancini piece, save for the title song, is source music for a player piano. Otherwise, we get Blake trying to be hip and using rock songs - well, they not only stink, but they kill the comedy.

I think I'm going to look up what are generally considered the worst films ever made, and my guess is that every single one of them will have at least five people saying it's a misunderstood masterpiece. Of course, what one comes to realize are that these "reviews" are written by people who were kids when they saw the films in question - and when that's the scenario, they love everything they saw as kids. No person with any critical faculties could think A Fine Mess is anything but A Fine Mess.


Picking up where the first Ultimate Avengers left off, UA2 finds the Avengers not getting along very well as they encounter the Black Panther and continue to deal with the alien invaders of the first feature. Thor is mostly absent from the film as he's off on some personal quest of his own that keeps him separated from the other heroes until the climax, while Bruce Banner/Hulk spends most of the feature incarcerated for the destruction he caused before.

IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM, DO NOT READ FURTHER, THERE BE SPOILERS HERE:

I'm going to go out on a limb here by going against the grain of the previous reviews, because honestly I don't think 'Ultimate Avengers 2' is particularly good. Heck, the animated direct to DVD features from Marvel & DC have been pretty hit & miss on both sides, and sadly UA2 is a miss for Marvel.

The first Ultimate Avengers, while not perfect, was still a solid introduction to the characters, their dynamics and their personal issues. The sequel, however, fails to offer any truly satisfying resolutions to those problems. Captain America's struggle to adjust to the 21st century and the effect it's having on his personality & work ethic is touched upon again but it never really goes anywhere, nor does the brief contrast shown between Iron Man and Captain America ever really develop, and his hook up at the end with Black Widow feels forced despite some previous hints of a mutual infatuation between them. Similarly, the marital problems between Hank 'Giant Man' Pym and his wife Janet 'Wasp' Pym are revisited and shown to have gotten worse, as Hank is made out to be an even bigger asshole with an over-sized ego here than he was in the first film, but as with Captain America's problems, the manner in which it is concluded - with Giant Man dying in the final act in what is apparently meant to be his redemption for being an egocentric jerk for most of the story - is not a satisfying one. If anything, Giant Man's death feels forced in the most laughable manner, partly because he really didn't even take enough abuse during the fight to warrant dying.

Iron Man himself was one of the few highlights of the film, and Black Panther came across pretty good, but that doesn't redeem the film's big flaw: it feels like it was rushed out the gate as quickly as possible, and the story & characters suffer for it. It's too bad, because the potential for a better animated film was definitely there, but it just wasn't utilized.

Still, the outtakes in the special features section were pretty funny.


Early on, there's a number of indicators making you think that "Fanatic" might actually become a really worthwhile and sadly overlooked early 80's horror gem, like the downright awesome opening sequences with a delightfully tongue-in-cheek film in film structure, the catchy opening credits tune and a glimpse at a fairly ingenious horror/exploitation plot. "The Last Horror Film", or "Fanatic" as it got released under the Troma label, reunites Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, mostly known as the stars of the infamous video nasty "Maniac". The main difference between the two films, apart from the fact that "Maniac" is much more famous, is that "Fanatic" actually attempts to tell an interesting story. Joe Spinell, the embodiment of sleaze, stars as a slightly deranged New York taxi driver Vinny Durand (cinema history already proved that this can be a very dangerous profession if you have mental issues) who obsessively dreams about a career in the film industry. He has written a script especially for his muse actress Jana Bates (played by Munro) and travels to the French cinema city of Cannes to inflict his big breakthrough. Obviously, nobody in Cannes takes Vinny seriously and it doesn't even come to a face-to-face meeting with Mrs. Bates. In the end, Vinny sees no other alternative than to fanatically stalk his idol even into her bathroom. Meanwhile, the people standing in the way of Vinny Durand's oh-so-promising film career are mysteriously getting killed. The script of "The Last Horror Film" is quite contemporary accurate with news reports and film posters from around the time of release. It's also a horror film suggesting that watching violent and sleazy horror films is likely to turn you into a mad-raving psychopathic serial killer. That's great, really helping our case there, guys! This is exactly the taboo that myself, and probably a couple of thousand fellow horror fans, wishes to discredit and than this film cheerfully comes along. Some nicely gross make-up effects and gratuitous sleaze make this a worthwhile early 80's exploitation effort. Most effective element is the parodying of the supposedly glamorous industry of film festivals, where people think everything is a publicity stunt (even when persons go missing and top actresses hysterically run through the hotel lobby only dressed in a towel). Caroline Munro surely looked better already, since her haircut makes her look like a badger. Joe Spinell's character is a sick and perverted momma's boy who peeps at girls skinny- dipping and jumps on strip dancers during the middle of their act. The topic of crazy lunatics stalking their media idols is disturbingly up- to-date but the elaboration is too often tedious and overwrought. There's a pretty stupid and totally unnecessary plot twist near the end that nearly ruined the entire film for me .Admittedly the twist is ambitious and unexpected, but there was absolutely no need for that to happen.


Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, co-stars of William Lustig's grimy sleaze-fest Maniac, reunite for this tacky slasher that was shot almost entirely on location during the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, and, thanks to its technical shoddiness and pretty awful script, also feels like it was written, produced, and edited during those few weeks as well.

In typical slasher fashion, The Last Horror Film opens with a nekkid blonde being murdered in a hot tub, but, in the first of several plot twists (there is a double whammy right at the end), this death is quickly revealed to be a scene in a film that is being watched by Vinny Durand (Joe Spinell), a sweaty, lank-haired, delusional low-life who, infatuated with horror-star Jana Bates (Munro), travels to Cannes to try and convince the actress to appear in his non-existent movie.

When members of the cast and crew of Jana's latest flick (called Scream) begin to disappear, only to turn up dead several days later, the finger of suspicion naturally points to Vinny, the crazed, drooling fan who has been stalking poor Jana, but is he really responsible, or is someone else killing time by killing in Cannes?

Spinell, who was completely convincing as a deranged psycho in Maniac, fails to generate the fear this time, instead putting in a rather weak performance which sees him rapidly switching from 'threatening' to 'whimpering mummy's boy' in a rather laughable manner. However his performance is practically Oscar worthy when compared with that given by his real-life mum, Filomena Spagnuolo: she plays his on-screen mother and somehow even struggles to make this role convincing!

Also disappointing is Munro, an actress who usually compensates for her wooden acting by looking absolutely stunning; here, however, sporting big hair with blonde streaks, she looks far from her best (who the hell thought it would be a good idea to make her look like a cross between The Bride of Frankenstein and Elvira?). And she doesn't even get her kit off, despite a scene that requires her to run full pelt down several flights of stairs in nothing but a towel!

Fortunately, despite the iffy plot, and even iffier performances, The Last Horror Film isn't a COMPLETE waste of time: there are a couple of squishy murders (a throat slashing/decapitation and a bullet to the head); lots and lots of topless ladies (this is Cannes, after all!); clever references to some thematically appropriate current affairs stories (John Hinckley's assassination attempt on Reagan and the shooting of Pope John Paul II); and the film also acts as a nifty time-capsulea reminder of days gone by, where titles like Cannibal Holocaust could be found adorning the billboards of sleazy flea-pits around the world.


Joe Spinell will always be one of my favorite actors. There was something about this guy that made him fun to watch, not to mention the fact that he was one of the most underrated actors in the business. The problem he had in his career was that he never was offered good scripts, especially leading roles. He had the talent, but the industry was sour to him. Here he had a chance to make a really good horror flick but failed miserably. Had this movie been a really brutal, in-your-face gore flick, he would have succeeded and possibly gone onto better gigs. Unfortunately, the opposite happened and after this garbage he almost vanished completely and never got another chance.

Score, BOMB


The Last Horror Film. What an ambitious title. I bought this film (for $2.00) at a local market, purely because I heard somewhere that it was a quasi-sequel to "MANIAC" (One of the greatest horror films of all-time). Well for anyone else who heard this let me tell you now, its not. The story is a fan of a horror actress goes to Cannes to see her and convince her to star in a film with him. Unfortunately he is a nobody so things dont go his way. Then people start dying.

I admit that I really enjoy seeing Joe Spinell act on the screen. He really does have a great talent, if only he had been in better movies. Caroline Munro is her own enjoyable self, and the rest of the cast seems to be made up of family and friends of the filmakers. This film for me was really a missed chance at making a film about somebody who would do anything to get their film made, with an idea that nobody would support. That would have been good. Instead we get a video nasty plot with the above idea as a (badly done) framing device. In fact I think the main character in this is autobiographical of the director himself (Think about it) and his ambition to make a horror film. In fact halfway through I wasnt really interested in this movie anymore and wanted to see what kind of film Joe Spinell's character could make instead. But all up for the market its pitched at its an ok film.


This movie is not underrated. I think it deserves being rated poorly. Even though I do think the main guy is good at acting like a slimeball, the story is not very exciting. I also do not like the main woman's hair, she looks like a skunk. There are some moments of slapstick that seem a little odd (like the cake falling on the sun bathing torso).

All in all, this movie is not very memorable. 3/10 for a potentially interesting idea and a good lead character.


This made for TV movie plays it way too safe despite good tries by Fawcett and Bergin. The story of a woman and her down syndrome child should have been moving, but there are no surprises, and the whole two hours dwindle away to a conclusion that will make you wonder what the point was in the first place. Ill conceived soap operatics involving Jewel's other children are boring, and does anyone notice Fawcett does not age in the entire sixteen years the film takes place? A disappointment in its pedestrian execution. I give this a 3.


The Sci-Fi channel. Despite having some really good original TV series, I always think of the network first and foremost as the "Disaster/Monster B-movie network". Even its documentaries are blatantly science fiction. That may come as a shock to some people, but dude, you CAN'T find a crystal skull with a metal detector...

I only watched this movie because I was bored and I have a more than passing fascination with archaeology. I don't normally watch Sci-Fi Saturday.

Now, as a writer, I understand that ideas are a dime a dozen, but I also know that we've been out of ideas pretty much since we've had the ability to HAVE ideas. That said, I understand the similarities to The Librarian and Indiana Jones, but COME ON! Don't make the hero of this movie dress IDENTICALLY like Jones! That's just taking the similarity too far!

I applaud the idea of a female hero, but don't make her so gung-ho about guns that she admits they're her "security blanket" and continues using them after realizing time and time again the hard way that the monster's completely bulletproof.

I can also understand the need to draw in the young adult demographic, but having the tweenaged girl be a complete genius and outthink the adults in almost every scene smacks of badly written Mary Sue fanfiction, especially if the concerned father seriously makes such a stupid decision as to take the kid into the heart of the war in Iraq(wearing bright pink no less), let alone repeatedly exposing the kid to an invulnerable monster when there's a perfectly good hidden sanctuary where she'd be safe. There's a reason why we have satphones, people.

As for the writing, the movie was so completely predictable, it's hard to come up with a suitable adjective to describe it.


The delectable Dina Meyer and the normally competent Lochlyn Munro co-star in this turkey made for The Sci-Fi Channel, about archaeologists unleashing an unkillable monster from an Egyptian tomb. Meyer looks great in black leather and shooting two guns at a time a la Tomb Raider Lara Croft while Munro simply looks like an idiot in an Indiana Jones hat about two sizes too big for his head. The movie goes nowhere once the monster is unleashed, which happens about five minutes in. At times, the creature looks like a poor man's griffin; at other times, it morphs into a bad copy of Inhotep from the first two THE MUMMY movies. The dialog is from hunger, as is the acting. Other than tuning in to get a look at the beautiful Meyer, this one is best skipped.


A hacky pastiche of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and a little of "The Librarian", with mediocre acting, a non-sensical script, and a shape-changing sphinx who is alternately mediocre CGI and laughable human. While not as truly vile as some of the SciFi channel offerings, there is little else to recommend this. You could find a worse way to waste two hours, but you would have to try. As usual, everywhere in the world (Greece, Iraq, etc.) look just like where the movie was shot, in this case Canada. The sets are either obviously something else (power plant standing in for secret underground base) or so minimal (burned out 50 gallon drums for Iraqi war zone, a few Styrofoam pillars for Greek ruins) as to be distractingly laughable. Everyone continues to shoot at the obviously bulletproof monster, and if you can't guess who the traitor is I hope your babysitter didn't ruin it for you.


No surprise - about what you would expect from a third rate network. The budget was probably whatever the limit on the producer's credit card was. All of the typical clichés for a poorly written / directed / acted project that looks like it was done by a bunch of film students over a weekend in Vancouver. (Yeah, we noticed that Egypt, Greece, and Iraq all look a lot like British Columbia in the fall, cough, cough)

The only real surprise is that someone with the talent of Dina Meyer would agree to participate in this kind of garbage. Yeah she looked great, but come on, put any physically fit 40 year old actress in an outfit inspired by Laura Croft and they will too. Need the work that badly eh - what a shame.

A big waste of time and pretty sad considering how many other potentially decent projects didn't get bankrolled so this waste of film could.


Riddles of the Sphinx (2008) which I saw on the UK Sci-Fi Channel Today out of boredom more than anything, is clearly a homage (Rip-off) of Indiana Jones, Right down to the Main Character's job as a College Professor and his choice of clothes complete with Indiana Jones style Hat..

The biggest problems with this is the dire acting and totally unconvincing performance by the lead actor

The budget is VERY low as most of the 'action' in filmed in front of not-very anonymous Backscreen...as The Filming ALL took place in Canada and There are only 4 characters in the entire Film...So the 'Double Agent' is obvious from the get go...

I'm a big fan of these types of Adventures, but this badly needed more money spent...and as a result my rating is low.

*1/2 out of *****


Not the worst movie ever, but not even mediocre. Set at beginning of summer break, yet the season is quite obviously fall. Although I've seen both leads in other films that were fairly good, this one really leaves good effects and acting behind. The story is old, the filming is discount and the graphics moderate at best. Once finished, it may be that you feel dismay at never getting those two hours back. Life's too short for films of this caliber, so go throw a ball with your kid or take your spouse to dinner. Many activities would be less a waste of time. The music gets at least a four out of ten. All in all, good movie to throw on in the background while you're cleaning out your laptop files.


Is there any way you could just FIRE your writers, directors and casting director? They need to be told they don't have any business being in this business. The actors didn't even seem convincing, so either this is because they are just that bad OR the director doesn't know how to help anything. The beast didn't look good in the least bit either. I really don't understand the continual monies filling the coffers to waste film on these "productions." There are better stories, better heroes and better music.

Terrible drudge. Waste of time is what my 13 yr old boy commented to me about this "movie" I am using that term loosely here. Someone needs to seriously get someone new to head up the programming for SciFi, someone with the ability to tell someone no when they hear a bad idea. I've seen B-rated movies that are better than this, B-rated movies that SciFi channel PLAYS on it's channel. Why don't they take some pointers even from those movies and you know... strive for that?


The stars could all have performed the musical as written--the most accomplished, acidic, and cynical of Rodgers and Hart's output, thanks to a great book by John O'Hara, but Columbia just couldn't leave well enough alone, although it certainly didn't take away half the score and replace it with half-baked numbers by Roger Edens, like MGM did to "On the Town." At least Columbia just subbed a few other R&H numbers that are always worth hearing.

Sinatra was close to perfect for Joey Evans--although certainly no better than Gene Kelly would've been; both Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak were equally attractive, although since the only musical number that Rita has to put across is "Zip," in an incredibly bowdlerized version (robbed of its intellectual heart) I wonder why her voice had to be dubbed. Would it have mattered if it weren't pretty?

The fact that this show, one of the most downbeat of all Broadway productions, was turned into yet another sweetsie-poo Hollywood confection (and of course moved from Chi, of which it reeks, to San Francisco, of which it doesn't) is yet another tragedy in the history of taking Broadway musicals to Hollywood, which, with the notable exception of "Oklahoma," just means that the show got butchered. It loses its edge about halfway through, when Joey starts being nice, Vera starts being nice, the puppy is nice, and everyone gets to live happily ever after--what a precious moment!!!

Hollywood was better at making its own musicals--"The Wizard of Oz" and "Meet Me In St. Louis"--are head and shoulders above any Broadway adaptation from MGM (whose musicals generally stink) and both Warner Bros and RKO, in the 1930's, make shows that put any of the "spectaculars" in the shade. One Fred and Ginger number is worth about 70 Marge and Gowers.

Oddly enough, Columbia showed that it could do a pretty good job with an original musical--one with Rita and Fred Astaire that contains some great original songs by Jerome Kern and at least one terrific dance number with Fred and Rita, "You Were Never Lovelier."

What Columbia did to Rita shouldn't ever have happened. With the right handling, she would have been a truly immense star, rather than the pinup girl she was fated to be at the studio most famous for the three stooges.


An aging Rita Hayworth appears in a role beneath her talents.

A beautiful Kim Novak (who has little acting skill) looks frighteningly out of place dancing and singing -- not to mention acting.

Barbara Nichols (who had great acting skill) was woefully underutilized.

Sinatra never was handsome enough to play such a character as Joey Evans. And yes, I am one of the people who is NOT charmed by his singing.

A disaster yesterday and hopelessly dated today, Pal Joey is what many people eat on the cob.


Papertrail is cliched trash with absolutely no redeeming features - period. The one point of interest is the cast. Poor Chris Penn! Despite top-notch performances in Short Cuts and The Funeral he's still paying the bills with straight-to-video 'entertainment' like this derivative turkey. Ditto Michael Madsen - there's actually a scene where the two sit quietly facing each other, presumably lost in thought over why they're still paying their agents.