The irony of this film the is that the reaction of the producer in the first few scene, should have been the same as the real producer.

What a load of self-indulgent drivel this was.

I'm not going to go in detail as there isn't really much to comment on, no real jokes, poor acting, no direction, no story.

The scene with the salad summed the whole thing up. Lets throw in a pie-in-the-face scene that'll get a laugh.

I saw this film on a flight from Salt Lake to Boston and I don't recall seeing anyone even smile let alone laugh. Rightly flopped at the box office. 0/10


It can't possibly do Albert Brooks' life any good to know that he co-wrote and directed such a limp comedy as "The Muse", which, looking back, could be pinpointed as a stalling-point in his film-making career as well as an obstacle for actresses Sharon Stone and Andie MacDowell, both surprisingly stiff here. Having never found her footing once she became a superstar, Stone made it an unfortunate '90's habit of churning out bigger-budgeted versions of the early flops in her career--the kinds of movies which went straight to tape. Here, she's a kooky, mystery-neurotic who seems to bring good luck to a blocked Hollywood screenwriter. She claims she's a descendant of Zeus, he doesn't care as long as he can sell his next script. Immature, minor offering from a man who used to know the difference between silly-smart and smarmy. *1/2 from ****


I’d watched three films by the same director prior to this one: while no discernible point seemed to emerge from them other than to show the dehumanized state of modern society, I certainly wasn’t enthralled by the unrelenting gloominess of Wakamatsu’s approach. With this in mind, I knew more or less what to expect here – but, then, there were other factors involved which rendered it even less appetizing than his other works!

To begin with, the film opens on a disorientating montage of naked female bodies in a magazine being scrutinized (as it transpires, contemptuously) by the unbalanced protagonist. Then we cut to a group of female nurses in an isolated dormitory – a number of whom spy on two of their colleagues making love; in the euphoria of the moment, they invite in a male passer-by – an unwise decision, as he turns out to be none other than the misanthrope we’d been introduced to earlier…who unhesitatingly shoots dead one of the lesbians! Even if I caught the film mid-way through the credits myself, the whole thing runs for just 57 minutes: while the inherent tension within the central situation could well have sustained such modest duration, this is negated by the static direction – which renders the single-setting claustrophobic and the proceedings merely boring!

Anyway, one by one, the six women (except one who had stunned the madman by questioning his motives!) fall prey to his violent outbursts: one is tied and tortured, while another gives herself to the killer in the hope of escaping her fate!! One wonders why they just don’t turn on him all at once or, even more obviously, try to escape via one of the other rooms in the house (in any case, this is said to have been drawn from a true-life incident). For the record, the black-and-white images are interrupted towards the end by brief flashes of color (such as the aftermath of the above-mentioned bondage scene and the tableau-like depiction of all the characters – naked and bloodied – huddled together in the main hall of the dormitory). The film, then, ends abruptly with the unannounced arrival on the scene of the military forces.


I saw this film about 20 years ago and remember it as being particularly nasty. I believe it is based on a true incident: a young man breaks into a nurses' home and rapes, tortures and kills various women.

It is in black and white but saves the colour for one shocking shot.

At the end the film seems to be trying to make some political statement but it just comes across as confused and obscene.

Avoid.


I am so disgusted that this kind of low-grade film would even be in stores to rent in the first place.

They should have a warning label on the cover: Warning, may cause you to want to poke your eyes out just to keep from having to see anymore of it!!

What a total piece of crap. The acting has got to be the worst part about this, although everything about it is very ameteur-ish, and stupid.

The dialogue all seemed to be made up on the spot. They obviously didn't even have a writer or a screenplay (or a director?), they just filmed a bunch of stupid scenes that don't even make sense and decided to put them together.

Try getting some actors that actually have talent and a script that wasn't made up on the spot, or better yet-- do everyone a favor and go back to your day job.

You must be a total fool to actually sit through this movie in it's entirety.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!


Would-be foreboding sci-fi looks all shiny and new, like a futuristic department store. Three good actors (Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel) come off looking like incompetent dummies in this derivative, cardboard cartoon. When Keitel arrives at the space station of lovers Douglas and Fawcett, he is carrying a strange metal container. Douglas offers to carry it for him and Keitel answers, "NOOOOOOOO!" in a hilariously chilly manner that makes even Richard Burton's overacting seem tame by comparison. Poor Kirk and Farrah even strip down for this one (so much for the classy reputation of vet director Stanley Donen). There is a neat scene where robotic Hector takes a splinter from Farrah's eye, but her reaction afterward (rubbing it like a child and sticking her bottom lip out) is embarrassing. This is one step beyond, all right. It's so far out it's brain-dead. *1/2 from ****


Watching this film had to be the worst waste of time for a Sci-Fi fan. Not even seeing Farrah in her youthful days helped. Acting, directing, and special effects fell down for all concerned with this film.

Give me Attack of the Killer Tomatos any day of the week ... LOL


With a recipe like that, you'd think that this movie would be watchable, but no, the story and director butcher the premise.

This movie isn't even funny, its just dull. To add to the poor acting, awful dialog and insipid story, the director lets a lot of cheesy special effects sequences run on for well past forever. I guess in 1980 these were state-of-the-art so he wanted to make sure that audiences were wowed, but in 2006, its stilted and boring.

There is no reason to watch Saturn 3 -- the story makes no sense (why does the killer even bother going to Saturn 3? why? why would he do that? he's insane but not that insane), the sets look cheap, the sound is cheesy, etc... etc... etc.... It has been deservedly forgotten because it is wretched.


This must be the worst film Kirk Douglas ever appeared in during his long and very successful career and it's amazing he agreed to do such a lousy film. Farrah Fawcett and Harvey Keitel, however, are more in their element as both have done some terrible movies. You can safely assume they took these parts because, at the time, these may have been their best offers.

Another interesting decision for the movie was the director, Stanly Donen, who had a long and respectable career doing mostly MGM musicals (such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). It's very surprising that they lured him into doing such an odd-ball picture. Maybe he, like Kirk Douglas, has a skeleton or two in his closet that they used to blackmail them into doing the movie (this is the only LOGICAL reason I can think of).

Whatever the motivations, the story is about a strangely mismatched couple (Farrah and Kirk) who man a small space station. They are happy to be alone because it gives them a lot of time to dress and undress and dress and undress. I guess maybe Farrah being nude COULD be why Mr. Douglas chose to appear in the film. Hmm--maybe I CAN understand why he chose to do this film.

Anyway, Harvey Keitel's character stumbles into the station. Given that it's the 1-dimensional Keitel, you can rightly assume that he is a slimy scumbag sociopath (that's pretty much all he's played since) and he wants to score with Farrah. Well, along the way he is killed and somehow implants his consciousness into a sex crazed robot who terrorizes both of our heroes.

Gee, with a plot like that, it sure sounds like a surefire recipe for success (or at least giggles). As a comedy, it kinda works. You could laugh at Farrah's acting, the stupidity of the script or the excuses they come up with for the leads to take off their clothes. But, considering it is supposed to be straight sci-fi, it's a total mess.


One of the worst movies ever made, not only in the SF genre (which includes an amazing array of cinematic dung). It's about a robot who tries to shag Kirk Douglas. Harvey Keitel desperately tries to make it a threesome. Farrah Fawcet is there to watch. The movie had a potential to become a good SF classic, like "The Forbidden Planet", but it just lacks any spark, like the director was directing it and making pancakes at the same time. It's terribly flat and artificial. The actors are so "good" you want to get inside the TV and give each one a good kick. Douglas using his final line kills the movie altogether. If you don't end up throwing the tape out the window screaming, in the middle of the show, watch it to the end and learn how not to make movies.


This is one of the worst movies I have *ever* seen.

Saw this years ago in the days when I would watch any film or TV science fiction flick, no matter how smelly.

Boy, did this smell something Rotten!! - WARNING - SPOILER!

The entire thing involved 2x humans and 1x robot running around after a dizzy blonde, each trying to get her into the sack. (including the robot!) The cast was poor, the story sucked and the so-called special effects were vapid.

Some scenes, set up to supposedly shock the audience, were a complete fizzer. We have an opening scene lifted directly out of Star Wars, and interiors reminiscent of Alien. Hardware could have been borrowed from the set of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

The robot looked stupid with its rediculous video camera head and spindly vidcam tripod neck. You can almost identify which bits of a television set was cannibalized to put the costume together. It's fairly obvious there's a man inside one of the dumbest monster costumes to come out of the early 80's! I expect to see something like this in reruns of Dr Who, but not a major movie (which went straight to video).

The ending was stoopid to the first degree.....

CONCLUSION? Watch only if you're completely wasted. Other than that, don't say I didn't warn you!


Two scientists / lovers, Adam and Alex are stationed on Saturn's third moon seeking possible sources of food for Earth's growing shortage. Soon Benson, who's posing as Captain James, joins them and he has brought along components of a robot called Hector. He can control its actions with his brain, as he can be connected to it with a device in the back of his neck. Though his lustful feelings for Alex and psychotic intentions, infects Hector and causes it to go berserk.

Danger, danger! What could have been a Sci-fi film brimming with ambitious ideas, turns out to be a increasingly derivative story that just never gets off the ground and languishes in its uneventfully bonkers premise. It occasionally gets quite nasty and sleazy, but never goes anywhere with this voyeuristic touch to make you squirm. Instead this is given pretty risible treatment. If you going to make something this dumb, it better be shamelessly fun when it finally goes haywire. Honestly for me, that didn't occur much. It takes its sweet time to build up the situation, after watching the characters lounging about aimlessly and eyeing each other off. There's just too much time to kill, as there's little to no suspense generated. From a guy who has done some light-hearted movies ("Singing in the Rain", "Lucky Lady" and "Bedazzled"), director Stanley Donen didn't seem to adjust to the material. He went fishing for the thrills in a very unfulfilling manner and slack pacing eventuated from it too.

What kept me watching were the impressive images in this technically well-made enterprise. The imaginative set pieces and overall design are vividly detailed that you could see where most of the money gone too. The special effects also were exemplary staged and especially convincing. Hector the randy robot is one ominous creation and this showers the dreary air. A broodingly understated music score was integrated successfully and the polish photography had a muggy tinge to it as its filmed in such dour lighting. It's lavished A-grade production values stuck in a cheesy B-grade format. The main influence for this would be the soddenly dire script that spits out some dreadful dialogues. The flimsy story is weakly drawn up as it's filled with baffling intentions and abrupt plot-holes. A fine cast isn't given a whole lot to do. Kirk Douglas floats by in very little effort and might be the film's slight energy. Scary, since how old was he? A lot of the interest arose from his performance. Harvey Keitel sounds unrecognizable and is plain deadpan in delivery. As for Farrah Fawcett, she's totally lacking in her acting skills here and provides a child-like innocence to her part. I guess on this occasion we're only supposed to drool over this benchmark 70s pinup girl.

It has some minor moments, but this mostly cold and uninspired shocker doesn't get up to too much trouble.


How to make SATURN 3: mix a little ALIEN, a little SILENT RUNNING, a little DEMON SEED and then burn it in the oven. Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett man a space station on one of the rings of Saturn --- for what purpose is anyone's guess. They take pep pills and exercise a lot. Their new-age Eden is invaded by psycho Harvey Keitel who unleashes a horny robot on them. Douglas and Keitel fight and the robot, named Hector, takes a shine to Fawcett. This is a terrible movie. It's surely the worst thing ever directed by the once great Stanley Donen. Poor visual effects and the inexplicable fact that Keitel's voice was dubbed by a British actor add to the movie's overall cheesiness.


For those of you that heard about the Farah Fawcett nudity in this 'film' and are curious enough to check it out, don't! Not only is she just weird in this movie and not really attractive, Kirk Douglas shows his bare a$$, its nasty! They really need to have a warning for that, I'm still recovering.

I love entertainingly bad movies, which is what this movie is, and at first glance, you may notice the all-star cast of Farah Fawcett, Harvey Kietel, and Kirk Douglas, but these are the only 3 people in the movie! Only 3 actors, and one main set. Kirk Douglas is just ugly, clearly he took this role to show he was still a leading man, yes, he may be in shape at 64 years old (which is how old he was when this was made) but its creepy! He looks like skeletor, and Farah Fawcett, literally 30 years younger than him, plays a doe eyed dumb blonde that is incapable of being anything but helpless. She act like a much younger woman in this movie, and I don't know how these actors could stay in character its so disgusting.

The dog getting killed, Harvey Kietel's hand being chopped off are part of the fun gore that is in this movie, and the robot is clearly the most convincing actor of the movie, at about 45 minutes in you'll realize there just isn't too much to this movie - after Kietel's character is killed off, that just leaves the two creepy ugly idiots in love (fawcett and douglas) to run from the robot for the rest of the movie. Great stupid late night viewing.


Piece of crap with Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett, 2 people in love and working in space, just the 2 of them on a remote station near Saturn. Into their lives comes Harvey Keitel (His voice was dubbed by Roy Dotrice because his Bronx accent didn't wash) and his friend, a robot named HECTOR. Of course, things take a turn for the worst, when Keitel gets the hots for Farrah. Unfortunately, so does HECTOR.

If you really want an example of "What were they thinking?" then this is the perfect film. It was directed by Stanley Donen, Mr. "Singing In The Rain," for goodness sake! Plus, WHY did Kirk Douglas feel the need to show his buns? (Does this run in the family? See his son Michael in "Basic Instinct," or "Fatal Attraction.").

If you plan of having a "Bad Sci-Fi Movie Festival," then this would be the film to have for it. Otherwise, save your money. If they show it on cable, skip it.


I remember seeing this when it first out, in a theater, and thinking ... why? It was on cable a few nights ago and I watched it again.

You know those shows on TV about bad drivers running from the cops? The only reason to pay attention is that at any moment you're going to see something incredibly stupid. That's what this movie is like, only in slow motion.

If God were truly merciful, he would have destroyed all the copies of this movie before it made the theaters, and long before cable.

(tiny spoiler) ......

Did Kirk Douglas appear in it, it just to see Farrah with no clothes?


Madman and robot chase couple in space. This was the synopsis digital cable gave me, but I went ahead and watched it anyway.

Um, yeah, truly a very very bad movie. One of those films that just fails in every aspect possible; acting, effects, script, sets. And the coup de grace in my book, the pointless killing of a dog. And it's a shame, because the dog was the only decent actor in the flick. I truly believed that it WAS a dog. Unlike "scientist" Farrah Fawcett, or whatever the hell Keitel was supposed to be. At first, with his wooden portrayal and monotone, I thought HE was the robot and maybe Douglas would be the madman. Also none of the actors seemed to be working together, it was almost as if each person was shot separately reading their insipid lines, and then with the magic of 1980s Parent Trap technology, spliced together for the finished product. I bet they never even met each other in person. The high point was Fawcett's nude scenes, but the movie wouldn't even let us have that without showing Kirk Douglas's old man butt. They give with one hand, and punch us in the jimmy with the other. The shoddy acting is enhanced, that is to say made shoddier, by a script so threadbare, they let Fawcett wear it in one of the bedroom scenes (shudder). The words were just there to fill space between the actors who were talking to themselves. This was by no stretch of the imagination a cerebral pick...it pretty much was madman and robot chase couple in space. In a time where you had films like the Black Hole or even 2001, you kinda wanted more from a sci-fi, and Saturn 3 offered nothing but intense stomach cramps and volatile flatulence. We know it is the future and space due to the presence of brightly colored tubes framing all the sets. What is it about tubes that imparts that feeling of future advancement to crappy set designers? My guess, cheapass to procure. The remainder of the sets were just black soundstages with the occasional pipe and metal grid floor. I mean, when even the sets anger you, you know it's gonna be a bad movie. And let's not forget effects. The robot Hector...i mean come on..ABS?? Why would a robot need abs? And the head is just one of those robot arms with two christmas lights for eyes...why sculpt the abs and then give it no head? It's pretty obviously a dude in a suit with a robot arm on his head. And when I say madman and robot chase, I think pursue is a better word, as there's little fast movement where this robot is concerned. Again, costumes and spaceship models anger me in such a non-specific way that I believe it's my hatred for this movie spreading like a cancer through all areas of production...worst gaffing i've ever seen, and the catering was pretentious and tasteless...

cough...

All in all, a very bad movie...good for whatever bad movies are good for. Peace.


I've been wanted to see this movie and finally found it late one night on the SCI-FI Channel. It starts off innocently enough with opening credits. Neat cast of actors and you think it may actually have some value but on the other hand when Fawcett takes top billing over Kirk Douglas one begins to wonder.

Basic plot soon falls into Evil Dude and his robot wants the girl while Ferrah screams throughout the film. Reminds me of those old low budget horror films of the 30's & 40's. Makes for an interesting evening if nothing else is available at the video store, otherwise a real drag. Better to leave it at the video store and go home and read a book. Not one that Kirk Douglas will glowingly talk about when asked about his career.

Rent if you must but be prepared to be bored silly.


Many of IMDb's favorable reviews of "Saturn 3" begin with "This movie scared the wits out of me when I was ten," or something of the sort. These reviews are always favorable. I suspect that these members' recent viewings are tinged with nostalgia. At any rate, here's a review based on an adult's first viewing.

Much of this review focuses on the means used to bring the film's main physical threat, a robot named Hector, to the screen. This stems from the fact that the entire second half of "Saturn 3" is a simple monster movie: Hero saves passive woman from monster. Hero and passive woman run from monster. Hero kills monster. For any of this to be worth your time, the monster has to be scary. Hector--a pencil-necked, wobbling, clumsy, slow-coach stunt-guy-in-a-suit--is not scary.

"Saturn 3"'s budget woes are well-documented. While they don't show up in its cast or set design, they do betray themselves in other ways. The biggest single problem is Hector. Hector is a guy in a robot suit. It's a cumbersome suit, tricked out with fluid-filled surgical tubes and rigid metal plates. In an ineffective attempt to persuade viewers that it isn't a guy in a suit, the suit's designers built up its shoulders so high that they enveloped the guy's head. They then stuck Hector's own "head" atop it. The "head" is an extremely fragile concoction, with two light-bulb "eyes" at the end of a miniature desk lamp arm. It's so fragile that, when it moves, the whole assembly shakes unevenly.

Unfortunately, this means that when the script calls for the monster to stare, frighteningly, at the audience, the camera must zoom in on this stupid, fragile head and lavish attention on it. And that, my friends, is a giggle-inducing moment. It undercuts any remaining credibility this robot has as a threat. Instead, it establishes Hector as a pencil-necked geek. Through the rest of the film, whenever I saw Kirk Douglas struggling for his life with Hector. I wondered: "Why don't you just reach up and snap Hector's tiny little neck? He'll be left blind, and you can hunt him down at your leisure."

We have plenty of time to wonder about this, because Hector is slooowww. That's because, after all, he's a guy in a cumbersome robot suit. Moreover, it's clear that Hector's mind isn't the only thing that's dangerously unbalanced; the suit is on the verge of toppling over more than once.

By the time Kirk Douglas sacrifices himself to destroy Hector, you're so distant from the story that you notice, immediately, that he didn't need to kill himself in order to pull off the trick that kills Hector. It's a trope designed to manipulate the audience, divorced from reason and bereft of emotional impact.

My score of 3/10 reflects Kirk Douglas' reliable work and the rather good set design. The sets are very effective in evoking a dark and claustrophobic mood, and with their vein-like tubes they quite plausibly represent a biological research station carved from lunar rock. The missing seven points are due to the risible robot, Harvey Keitel's wooden acting (perhaps aggravated by his unknown dubber), and shoddy visual effects (even for the period). To be fair, the VFX serve only to establish locations; but this _is_ science fiction. VFX are part of the draw, and they need to be at least serviceable.


"Charade" director Stanley Donen's "Saturn 3," with Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel, proves once again that robotsno matter how smart they areare no match for humans. It also proves that despite his age, Kirk Douglas remains as fit and athletic as everand that Farrah Fawcett's talent is really how loud she can shriek.

Although "Saturn 3" has the elements to make it a minor classic as sci-fi suspense thrillers go, the movie flounders because of awkward scripting, phony special effects, and Stanley Donen's lackluster helming.

The story is set in the future, with neither date nor year provided. The action confines itself to the maze-like setting of a space station. A mentally unbalanced captain, Benson (Harvey Keitel of "Mean Streets"), murders a fellow officer on board a huge space ship by blowing him out of the ship's escape hatch. The captain then takes the dead man's place on a mission to deliver a robot to an experimental food laboratory on Saturn manned by Adam (Kirk Douglas of "The War Wagon") and Alexis (Farrah Fawcett of "Charlie's Angels"). In the words of Adam, if the universe needed an enema, they'd stick the nozzle in at Saturn 3.

When the captain arrives, he claims that he is there to help Adam and Alexis with their research which has fallen behind schedule. He has also brought along a new robot, "the first of the new demigod series" to aid them. The captain also takes more than a passing interest in Alexis and decides to steal her from Adam.

Meanwhile, the captain assembles the robotnamed Hectorand teaches him through direct input from the captain's brain to the robot's huge capsule-encased brain. Eventually, Hector turns against the captain and tries to take over Saturn 3.

Scenarists Martinactor & novelist turned writer--Amis and Oscar-winning "Star Wars" art director John Barry establish textbook suspense by putting Saturn 3 into shadow lock when an eclipse occurs. Shadow lock lasts for 22 days, cutting our trio off from the rest of the universe. No radio messages can be sent from Saturn 3 and none received. What could be more unnerving than to be trapped in a space lab on a desolate planetespecially with a mad robot on the loose! Long before the space station goes into shadow lock, "Saturn 3" is in trouble. Amis never explains why Benson murdered his fellow officer. Or what Benson hoped to gain at the space station. We don't really know if Hector was bound for Saturn 3. Amis never really gets Douglas and Fawcett into any tight spots. There are several close calls, but nothing that will put you on the edge of your seat.

As the movie's chief villain, Hector-the-robot offers few surprises. Certainly, he looks intimidating, but he's not nearly as vicious or intelligent as the monster in Ridley Scott's "Alien." At one point, Adam disables Hector by overloading its batteries when the robot tries to recharge itself. Later, Adam tries to kill Hector by blowing him up. Why didn't Adam simply just run Hector's batteries down and overload him again? More often than not, a science fiction movie is only as good as its special effects. In this department, "Saturn 3" leaves a lot to be desired. The space ships look like plastic models, and the planets seem to be cardboard cut-outs. Veteran director Stanley Donen, with help from Barry, generates atmosphere and suspense, but "Saturn 3" drags along in places, suddenly accelerates, and then stalls out. There are some good moments, like Benson teaching Hector. Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett make a good duo. Elmer Bernstein's sinister music reminds you a little of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." While "Saturn 3" cannot begin to compare with "2001," "Star Wars," and "Star Trek," Donen's film surpasses "The Black Hole" and "Starship Invasions." If you enjoy science fiction movies, hokum like "Saturn 3" should appeal to you.


Do not believe the reviewers who write that this is "overall, not a bad film." This IS a bad film...a very bad film. The only reason I gave it even two stars is that it has some intriguing scenes with FFM, if you know what I mean.

To begin with, the first few scenes appear to have been grafted on to the rest of the film. Why is everybody doing a Broadway show around the transport craft? (And shouldn't they get out of there when the airlock is opened to launch the ship?) Why does HK off his buddy and take his place? Hey, don't you think you ought to fasten your cargo down with straps or something before you zoom off and become weightless?

After that, it gets really bad. KD and FFM are having a little May-December romance at the hydroponics research station, which is inexplicably unmanned except for them. (not that they actually do any research...they're too busy running around in lingerie, taking showers together, and flashing butts. And that's just KD.) Looks like a pretty sweet life to me...Earth is going to hell, but they just keep subsidizing this silly research station so KD and FFM can enjoy themselves.

Then Satan comes...HK with his big buddy, Hector the Robot. Hector is one of the new demigod-series robots, but he looks more like a demitasse-series. He is a big old goofball. He's never even threatening.

But that's enough of all this. Bad FX, bad script, no believability, OK musical score, and dumb plot. Don't waste any chance you have to miss this.


Just what you didn't know you needed - an 80s sci-fi epic from the director of "Singin' in the Rain". With a cast of three - outer-space technocrat Kirk Douglas, wife Farrah Fawcett, and prim British agent Harvey Keitel. Read those names again. The movie opens with some peculiar choreographed stuff that looks like a tribute to the moon landing at the Oscars, and proceeds before long to an absurdly jocular Douglas-Fawcett shower scene. There as elsewhere, Douglas looks like he's having the time of his life - huh huh, I'm in the shower with Farrah Fawcett - only they're being MENACED BY KILLER ROBOTS for Christ's sake, and there he is winking at us. Farrah's blank 'oh my gosh' stares make for a dissonant counterpoint, her star must have been fading around now because we get some gratuitous boob shots. And meanwhile there's Harvey acting as weird as ever while he frantically builds/turns into a robot. There was some kind of money in this movie, clearly, and some of the flashing lights and stuff amount to a dream date for stoners, but it's still an 80s sci-fi epic from the director etc.


Saturn 3 suffers from an identity crisis. To look at the poster you would think it's about a killer robot in outer space. True. But, if you look closely at the poster you'll see that Stanley Donen directed this...that's right, Stanley 'Singin in the Rain, Charade, Two For the Road' Donen. Intriguing. When we first start the film up we get a shot of the underbelly of a large spacecraft emerging from the top of screen and seeming to be infinitely long a la Star Wars. We then get to see a man's body get shattered into a million pieces by Harvey Keitel. Cool. Then we see Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett all lovey-dovey with Keitel more than a little jealous. Eh. Keitel then builds a robot that is able to relate his thoughts. Cool? No, no it's not.

Saturn 3 is part thriller, part bizarre love triangle, part sci-fi but never commits to any part of itself or any genre to be of any interest. The sexual elements may have been golden on paper but they don't amount to anything here; there isn't enough scary moments/gore to be entertaining to horror fans, and the science fiction elements are often so stupid (how did Keitel's ship fly through Saturn's rings and not get smashed to bits?) that it's a tough one to sit through.

Thankfully though, it is quite silly at times with some corny dialogue and overacting by Douglas, not to mention some awful dubbing over Keitel's voice. Why does Keitel kill the man and come to the planet?Why has Fawcett never seen earth? Why does Keitel want to build the robot in the first place if all he really wants is Fawcett? These questions are never answered.

Lastly, back to Donen. Why him? The original director had to bail out because of illness but they couldn't find a young director to spit this project out? Donen is a fine director and should have done more great projects - why did he feel he needed to dumb himself down for this? He couldn't have thought the script was any good, could he? Only virtues: The robot is kind of neat, and the set design isn't bad.

*1/2 out of ****


A mentally unstable pilot kills another pilot & takes over his mission. He travels to a remote hydroponic station on one of Saturn's moons, Triton, where he builds a robot that is connected to his brain by radio. The robot is polluted by his unstable mind & threatens the couple who maintain the station.

Saturn 3 was conceived & originally to be directed by John Barry, who did production design on "A Clockwork Orange", "Star Wars" & "Superman". Barry pulled out after a few days shooting due to creative differences. Stanley Donen, known for his musicals, took over. What you get is a film that tries so hard to emulate Alien but fails on every front. The script ends up an allegory to the Garden of Eden. The sets are not practical, looking like some of Donen's musicals. The acting varies, with Farrah Fawcett clearly not a good actress, although Kirk Douglas & Harvey Keitel are not too bad. The visual effects also vary, from the good (the robot looks menacing), the average (the spaceship sets) to the bad (the rocks in Saturn's rings look like they're in a pond). The ending is a bit of a downer.

Grade: D Review by M. K. Geist.


Kill Bill is a fraud. Terrible, terrible movie! SPOILERS

Spoilers within this post. Enter at your own risk!

I just got back from the noon showing of Kill Bill in which the theater was half full (for a noon showing, that is huge. The theater is one of the bigger ones at the Queensway in Toronto, so it will do well this weekend). What I witnessed in that 100 minutes in the theater can only be described as Tarantino's flipping of the bird to all of us as he looks in the mirror and congratulates himself on being the smartest man in the world. Straight up, Kill Bill is one of the biggest disappointments I have seen in my life. After masterpieces like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and other greats like True Romance, you would think that Kill Bill would live up to those lofty expectations bestowed upon it by virtue and name recognition alone. But not only has Tarantino told us all to **** off, he he has done it while laughing in our faces.

Kill Bill has all of Tarantino's quirky and weird trademarks in it. And it contains strange techniques that at first you think is simply an homage to a film genre. But in reality, what QT did here was get too cute and at the expense of artistic integrity. What we are left with is more Matrix style garbage, a 10 minute anime introduction to Lucy Lui's character, black and white photography for no reason and the bleeping out of the bride's name just because he can. All of this is looked at as being brilliant by the critics and those in similar circles because Tarantino has a free pass right now. His films have enamoured critics for 10 years now and this one is no different even though it is a shadow of the opulence that we are used to from him. To sum it up, this film is all style and has no substance. The style is there, but for what purpose? Why does he choose to do the things that he does? Is it just because he can? Or is it because he thinks he is so much more clever than the rest of us? You guys thought Matrix Reloaded was pretentious, this film might as well be the Architect meets Socrates meets Locke, meets Rouseau meets Japanese smart guy meets Marx. That is how it comes across. Pretentious doesn't even begin to describe it. There is even a blatant rip off of the burly brawl in this film right down to beings jumping up a flight of steps to come and meet the heroine.

I knew I was in trouble five minutes into the film when it just didn't feel right. You know how in Pulp you just knew you were in for something special? You just felt it with the dialogue, the acting, the soundtrack and everything that encompassed the film. Well Kill Bill has the opposite feel to it. None of that magic is present and it is just a bunch of people getting sliced and diced and maimed. There is no snappy dialogue and that is what QT is good at. Tarantino is a lyrical genius and he abandons that here and goes Wachowski Brothers on us and it just doesn't work.

I despised this film with every fibre of my body and it left me in a p***ed off and foul mood. Shame on you QT. Shame on you for starting to believe everything that was said about you. Now wipe that stupid smile off your face and go clean Harvey's shoes and polish his golf clubs. There is a lot of sychophantic baloney going on here and I thought you were bigger than that.

F or a 1 out of 10.


*SPOILERS*

First of all, let me warn you. I've always detested Tarantino, so I didnt'go see this film free of prejudice.

That said, I can't think of a worse film I've seen lately, except "The Matrix Reloaded". The reason is that Tarantino shows too much violence, and that he doesn't show anything else. "But that's the point!" some will say. The point of what? Ok, lets' make a film and let's show a rape and say that that's the point. Does that mean that the film is good?

Tarantino has always been overrated (I disliked "Pulp Fiction" as well). The reason is that he manages to feel unconventional and artsy, so many will feel smart by saying that he's a genius, that his films are masterpieces and all that crap. The plain truth is that he's either a sadistic voyeur or a cunning man who's found a way to make pots of money by exploiting people's naivety. Or both.

Although I don't like gore or black humour, I sometimes appreciate it (eg some films with Vincent Price). The point is trivial, but worth making: black humour has to be, well, humorous. The problem with Tarantino is that he's nothing. A vacuum.

Some reviewers have said that if you don't understand what this film is about, you just won't get it; that it's a mockery and so on. The problem is that if one treats himself to shallow, uninspired, unoriginal, uninventive films, who are shot chiefly for the purpose of using some glitzy special effects and for solvin someone's money problems for the rest of his life, you may find such a film creative or inspired, instead of just the trick it is.

Tarantino is in quotations. He quotes all the time. But a film full of quotations and references is a trick that is worth doing once or twice. After that, it can't hide any more the outright lack of creativity that hides behind the references.

If you watch a gory b-movie (or any b-movie, for that matter), you may like it, even love it, but you'd never go so far as to claim it's a work of "art". Tarantino is "hip" (for the time being), so it's fashionable to call this lame director a genius.

But time will tell.

Remember David Lynch.


Spoiler Alert!!! I like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The story line was strong in RD and less so in PF. PF, though, had interesting sub-plots that loosely wove together to make a good movie.

I also see the genius in the dialog in RD and in the characters in Pulp Fiction. I was expecting to see something in this movie.

Unfortunately, Kill Bill was not interesting, nor genius and did not have a plot. Basically, the main character was screwed over in a previous time in her life and made a top 5 hit-list of people from which to extract revenge.

The way she extracts revenge is to engage in hand-to-hand or martial weapon on weapon combat. Of course, the protagonist wins the fights and the people are checked off the list.

I think Luci Liu (sp?) is the 3rd person on the list. The movie goes into a 20 minute section on how she gets a Okinawan curved sword. Now armed with the best weapon, she takes on Liu's whole team of trained martial artists - and whips them all single handedly. I'm talking 20, 30, 40 individuals who all attack her at the same time in the same room. She still wins.

Then, she battles the "board leader", and after sufficient scenery changes, she wins again.

Each of these battles is full of graphic violence and blood, as you'd expect from the director (I won't try to spell his name). But, you can only show an arm getting lopped off and the resulting gieser of blood so many times. Wait, my mistake, you can show it for 2 hours if you are the movie Kill Bill.

After the Liu's character is killed, #3 is checked off and the movie ends.

There is no plot. The special effects and battle scenes were state of the art, but do not make a movie.

I have no interest in "Part 2" because I have no interest in any of the characters or in more film about Uma killing people with swords. 2 hours was 1.5 hours too much.

Two thumbs down. Don't believe the (if any) hype.


I don't know what people like about this movie. Everyone told me to see it: the critics, my aunt and the kids I went with. However, I was in for a major surprise. The kids I was with didn't even enjoy the gratutious blood or the "really cool" ninja action. This type of movie (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon clone) is getting really old and I wish other moviegoers would start to agree. I really can't think of too much I liked about this movie other than one side character who was particularily interesting. However, she will not be enough reason to go to see part two (I have a feeling she'll make a comeback). Quentin Tarantino is just getting worse with every movie. As a 13 year old boy said tome as we walked out, "It's like they were trying to be funny, but it really wasn't funny. It was just stupid."


Just goes to prove how moronic most present day movie-goers are. How anyone could give this a rating above 3 is totally beyond me. The movie is badly written and directed, end of story. The visuals are just a compendium of clichés stolen from countless other films. The plot is just any excuse for a bunch of over-the-top scenes of martial arts violence stolen from every bad 'B' martial arts film in existence. The only exception being the bad 'B' martial arts films are 50 times more entertaining than this overblown garbage-fest. And if I were Uma or Lucy or any of the other actors, I would be embarrassed to see my name on the credits. If you want to see a good film of this nature, see Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. Those are at least fun, over-the-top violent films. The chances of my seeing part 2 after this are 0 to none. At least I didn't pay anything to see it, because that's what it was worth.


I might be mixing KB 1 and 2 below, sorry for that, it all blends together.

Being no fan of Tarantino (except for Jackie Brown, end of the list), I could not say that there has been anything that specifically great about Kill Bill. The fight scenes are spectacular. Period.

This is a movie in my eyes that tries to say "hey, in case you do not like or understand me, you are just not at an appropriate level of evolution yet, okay?". It is bloody, and illogical. This is often true for Tarantino's movies, I think (I did not like Pulp Fiction either and could not get through it once).

Many have stated this before, but pray tell me, in case you wake up on your hospital bed after years of coma, how on Earth are you meant to grasp the whole situation immediately. And in the first place, why did they wait patiently for Uma Thurman's character to wake up? Did they assume they could chat it over in the end and be good friends again?

The genre works with Asians - all-round, real, not imported Asians I mean- as in Wo hu cang long, but is in my opinion a total miss here. The same is true for the Anime part, which I found ridiculous and overdone. Why bother that much with Lucy Liu's character anyway?

I do not believe there was much originality in this movie. The Charlie's Angels up against each other thing might have worked but did not.

I suggest Tarantino and manga fans watch. Martial arts fans pick something decent instead.


If Tarantino is a genius, then I was a genius at age twelve. With dialog like `silly rabbit, trix are for kids,' I don't understand why people fawn over this juvenile imbecile. His `homages' are just blatant rip offs of movies that we've already seen . Some of which, are so dumb that only Tarantino could be impressed by them. Kill Bill is just an idiotic excuse for teenage mentality violence. How dare they call this excellent film making.


Erm, this is pretty bad actually. I like R Dogs, P Fiction and J Brown but this and its sequel have none of the imagination or style of those other films. Uma is good as usual and there are a couple of good shots but the plot is awful, no characterisation, the fight scenes (they aison d'etre of the film surely) are feeble compared to Crouching Tiger (the actors just aren't up to the physicality of it all - even the Matrix had better fights) and the dialogue is dull as well. Basically QT thinks he's such a genius he can do anything and no one around him will dare to tell him otherwise. A pretty pointless way to spend a couple of hours in all.


A action/crime/thriller about a women named "the Bride"(Uma Thurman) who was at one time a part of a group of world class female assassins until the leader of the group "bill"(David Carradine) and the other assassins turn on her.They beat her up so bad she goes into a coma 4 1/2 years later she awakens from the coma and seeks the people who tried to kill her and her unborn child so she can kill them.

Give me a break this is a very very stupid movie the story is ridiculous a total peace of vile crap.The gore in this movie is like no other movie I have ever seen they must have spent 2 million dollars on fake blood.It was almost sickening to watch the violence in this movie it makes "fargo" look like "the lion king".Uma Thurman's acting was absolutely dreadful.The screenplay was very bad also Quentin Tarantino tried to get clever with the directing but didn't quiet pull it off in my opinion.

Best actor/actress-Lucy Liu

Terrible,Vile,Disgusting,Movie-Jake Hyden

I rated this 2 out of 10

2/10


I've seen Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. There was a lot of blood and gore in these movies, but they had a story - something "Kill Bill" is totally lacking.

I was rather appalled to see this movie so many people are mad about - and to see that it's nothing else but a meaningless bunch of fight scenes, full of blood and bad taste.

Has Tarantino finally lost his mind? Violence for the sake of violence? No plot whatsoever? Fight scenes ten minutes long that make Matrix 2 look like Citizen Kane? What has happened that our society embraces a movie like this which has nothing to show but blood and chopped of arms and feet?


Quentin Tarantino has made some great movies, most of which are highly over rated. So this fits the bill perfectly, ho ho ho. Virtually every scene has the usual cheese soaked dialogue, the macho one liners, the stereotypical characters; including my favourite - the Japanese school girl assassin! Oh the sheer mundane, cheesy crap of it makes me want to hurl. I'm really not sure what Tarantino was on when he made this but it surely must have been hallucinogenic and must have caused brain damage. This movie sucked. The absolutely comic amount of severed limbs, heads and fountains of blood were like something out of a bad B movie horror from the mid 80s. Virtually every character has been lifted, no scratch that, STOLEN from anime movies. It's like a bad kung fu movie - oh wait it IS a bad kung fu movie.

Do not watch this, it is a waste of your time. If you want to see a good Tarrantino movie do not look to this one, if you want to see a good anime movie do not go here, if you want to see a decent kung fu movie simply watch a Bruce Lee movie - since most of the ideas were blatantly taken from these things anyway.

Now onto the 'quirky' direction in Kill Bill. First off - anime mixed in with real actors is not a new idea so that's one more idea that QT robbed. Then we get the oh so original 'black and white' moment where an entire fight scene, one which contained so many fountains of blood they should have been swimming at the end, suddenly losses colour then for no apparent reason comes back? I mean really Mr Tarantino what was the point? You used to make decent movies but frankly I think in this one you were just seeing how many dumb ideas you could put into a movie without people noticing. Do yourself a favour QT and go back to the drawing board. Mr Tarantino has proved himself far, far better than this and frankly it is a waste of a perfectly good budget to produce something this awful.

So why did I give it a 3 and not a 0? Well there were a few good moments, the plot was relatively interesting, the soundtrack went from great to annoying and, lets face it, you've got to give it a couple of points simply for the sheer amount of blood and violence for no reason other than the director had got a load of fake blood on the cheap.

If you like this movie you need your head examining since it is by far the worst movie I have seen all year.


I really cannot understand why films like "Kill Bill" which are based on so much blood and gore are so popular... "Kill Bill" in particular, is 90% ugly scenes and 10% anything else. What is exactly interesting or artful in watching a comatose girl being raped, and then seeing her bite the tongue out of her rapist's mouth?

In order to be fair, I must accept that the direction of the film is good. But what difference does this make, when the film in itself is completely unwatchable? I don't object to bloody scenes being shown in a film, provided that they serve some purpose in the plot, and they do not constitute the film's purpose instead (as it happens here).

In brief, I find Tarantino completely overrated; what's more, in this film he goes way too low even by his standards. If "Kill Bill" wasn't directed by him, and no stars appeared in it, it would be a typical B-movie. Needless to say, I won't even think about watching Vol. 2. Verdict: 3/10.


"Kill Bill vol. 1" in the IMDb's top 100 (right now it holds position n°56) is the biggest joke of the year. The only Tarantino film that should be allowed into the Top 100 is "Kill Bill vol. 2", in my opinion the first time Tarantino did more than steal from other movies.

The line between reference, homage and plagiarism is pretty thin indeed. When I first saw "Kill Bill 1" I thought it was a good film with lots of references to Quentin's favourite movies, the first Tarantino film that I could enjoy. Yet I was more hopeful for the second installment.

At the time I was surprised as to how many goofs I'd spotted in the film. I knew some were deliberately in there, but some were indeed mistakes. At the time I was able to enjoy lots of references.

All that changed last week... when I watched "Lady Snowblood". In my (bold and arrogant) opinion Tarantino has taken just too much out of this film to see it as a reference. Some examples: fight in the snow, dividing the film in chapters, the kill list, the cartoon (images in Lady Snowblood, anime in Kill Bill), the extreme education both the Lady and the Bride had to suffer (and while we're comparing: after seeing "Lady Snowblood", Beatrix's education looked like kindergarten), the big fight in an establishment (okay, the opponents weren't masked, but the next scene was set at a masked ball)... I'm sure I left out a few. As I was watching "Lady Snowblood", my respect for "Kill Bill 1" dropped by the minute. There are way too many comparable scenes for it to be a homage: the nicest I can be is say it's a remake. Oh, and I know that "Lady" and "Bill" aren't the only revenge films out there, but isn't it a coincidence that so many references are out there?

Which brings us to Meiko Kaji, the actress who starred as "Lady Snowblood" and "Female Convict Scorpion" (of which the song "Urami Bushi" can be enjoyed on Bill's soundtrack). It would be unfair to compare Lady Snowblood to The Bride, but life isn't fair, so here we go. While Uma Thurman does her best, a Meiko Kaji she ain't. Kaji had it in her to combine the looks of Venus and Medusa, which is pretty rare. By contrast, Uma Thurman's character resembles the Lady as much as Uma's version resembled the real Emma Peel.

As I mentioned before, I liked "Kill Bill vol 2" better. I know that the dialogues are pretty weak at times (a real problem for Tarantino, by the way), but it's the first time I could see this director do more than make references to films he liked. "Kill Bill 2" is made as an Italian western (Ennio Morricone has vowed to kill anyone who'll still call these films 'spaghetti westerns') and you sort of feel this as you watch the film. The other Tarantinos felt like juxtapositions of references, but in "Kill Bill 2" there's a story, a coathanger, that guides you through the film. If now Tarantino learns how to write interesting dialogues, he actually might be able to make an excellent film. As long as he learns that copying references only works as long as people haven't seen the real deal.

Now it just feels like you've watched "Psycho", the Gus van Sant version.


The reason why many people seem to adore this film alludes me. They claim that it is one of the best action films ever; it is not. They claim that it is original; it is not. They claim it is a masterpiece; it most definitely is not.

This movie was not poorly made at all...it just is completely tasteless, lacking in originality, lacking in good action...basically it is lacking in everything that makes a movie good.

First of all there is the plot. People leave woman for dead, and she comes back for revenge. That's about it.

The action scenes are lame. When I go to see movies with sword fights, I expect good sword action. Kill Bill does not have good sword action. During the main fight scene, all that is shown is peoples' feet falling off. Now I don't know about most people, but I don't consider that good action. I expect clashing swords, skilled combatants, and cool fighting, not people who can't fight pretending that they can.

There is nothing original about Kill Bill at all. Tarantino took old action movies from the seventies and copied everything about them. It isn't like he put a new spin on anything, basically he copied everything about those older movies, only he did so without the skill and experience required to pull it off well.

If this movie had been made by anybody other than Quentin Tarantino, it would have been long forgotten...hell it wouldn't have even made it to theaters.

Tarantino has done so much better in his earlier movies than he did with Kill Bill. What Tarantino was most praised for was the high-energy, witty dialogue that pervaded his earlier efforts, unfortunately in Kill Bill, the dialogue, when there is dialogue, downright sucks.

Overall, I was completely disappointed in Kill Bill. More than that, I was offended that I was led to believe that I was going to see an actually good movie, which Kill Bill is not.


This movie has no story, no character development, no reasonable dialogue and no intelligence. The plot is a weak and empty bus that serves no purpose other than to drive the movie from one fight scene to the next. What this movie does have: a blond-haired, blue eyed girl that wears this totally cool motorcycle suit and, like, totally kills 200 people, single-handedly, with one sword, Awesome!!!!! Doesn't take much to impress at the box office anymore.


I walked out of Kill Bill. Why? Because the Gen X/Y/Zers were enthralled with this bloody, violent kufu exploitation movie. It is a sad state of American or International Western society when movie audiences state that "they loved this movie". A movie that only Uday and Qusay Hussein would find entertaining. GEN X/Y/Z are so desensitized to violence in the movies they have grown up on (e.g. Bad Boys II) that it's no wonder they find this movie f**kin' cool. The truth is Tarantino is a sick, demented, bloodthirsty soul who was forced to watch bloody, '70's exploitation movies in "grind house" theatres as child from a broken home - no place to go - the movie theatre was his baby sitter like Cable TV and VHS/DVD's are to

many of the X/Y/Z'ers today. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers....more...Kill Bill all sick stories. The best thing that can happen to Tarantino is that he will discovered how powerful a G-Rated story can be sans gratuitous violence, foul language, and really bad humor. Grade: F+


I saw the movie tonight (not by choice) and surprise surprise . it sucked! The last good film that QT made was pulp fiction. IMO - I don't think QT is a bad director, but there's no depth and not much thought to his films. all he basically does is make a film look `cool" and that's exactly what this film was! A total disappointment and no surprise there. Plus I think the guy is totally tasteless - he's a professional, he should know better than to talk trash on high-profile films just to bring attention to himself. sad sad sad!


One of two parts of, quite frankly, the worst movie I think I've seen. Certainly it is the only one which sticks in my mind with such a particular distaste.

Tarantino takes unique aspects of some great cult movies, cuts them up, and mashes them blindly and carelessly together into a pathetic ill-fitting jigsaw. All attempts at making these into amusing parodies of originals fail, and in my case, left me writhing in my seat fighting the urge not to run out of the cinema pulling out my hair, screaming. The movie takes itself far too seriously to achieve being a good satire.

Possibly the most annoying element of the movie, and the subsequent one, is Tarantino's onanistic worshiping of Uma. It sickens me to the gut the lengths he goes to in brainwashing the audience with his fetish. Keep it to yourself, Quentin.

Finally, I add, would people stop praising the man for being a genius. He is far from it. I enjoyed Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, but these are not enough to make a man a genius. Hundreds of directors have made a 'couple' of good movies. I feel the afformentioned two are the only ones worth any time from this evidently obtuse director.


This is Quentin Tarantino´s very poor attempt to make an Hollywood version of "Lady Snowblood". I was extremely disappointed wen i saw "Kill Bill Vol.1" and there are many reasons why.

The Reasons Vol.1

According to some sources, this movie was inspired by a great Japanese movie "Lady Snowblood". The story is´nt exactly the same, but close enough. Music and environment are very similar, but then "Lady Snowblood" have something that "Kill Bill" does´nt. Meiko Kaji, who plays the revenging women is about 300 times better actress then "Uma-i-should-be-a-waitress-Thurman".

The Reasons Vol.2

Quentin has become a "Hollywoodirector". Same as John Woo and other great directors, he forgot what he was doing in the beginning. The money is killing these guys and the great art that they have been doing for so many years.

The Reasons Vol.3 (!!Spoilers!!)

One big annoying flaw. How is it possible for a white girl to kill an Asian assassin, who has been trained since god know how many years?

Well, i could write all knight, but i hope that you people understand one thing. This should be a samurai movie and the ONLY thing that make this movie worth watching is Lucy Liu. She´s just perfect!!

Kill Bill

Me...............3/10 IMDB users.....8.2/10

Lady Snowblood

Me...............9/10 IMDB users.....8.5/10


The first half is OK, but chapters in Japan are purely awful. Judging from the high rating of this film, I must conclude that non-Japanese audience didn't find absurdity in Uma's and Lucy's Japanese or unrealistic sword fighting scenes. My 3-year-old nephew speaks much better Japanese than those two actresses. Their pronunciation was so bad that they sounded like mentally ill.

In Japan, TV is showing much more authentic sword fight scenes almost everyday. Uma looks quite weak. No authenticity in her.

All in all, worse than Pearl Harbor. There's nothing wrong with an American who doesn't know enough about Japanese culture or language. But it's different when he makes a movie about it. I'm sure American people will find it offensive when a foreign filmmaker who doesn't know much about western or cowboy makes a non-authentic western film.


My initial reaction upon finding out about "Kill Bill" was largely disappointment ("aren't martial arts films just boring, repetitive fight scenes tied together with a silly story of heroes striving to uphold a sub-human 'code of honour'?"). but I hoped that somehow, Tarantino's wit, visual flair, and 'Escher-like' story construction would shine through.

Having seen the movie, I find that two out of those three aspects of Tarantino's genius survived, but unfortunately the story is utterly stupid (and for me, it doesn't cut it to say "but it was supposed to be stupid"). OK, he puts it into the blender, so that the plot unfolds in a non-linear order, but this doesn't add a damn thing to "Kill Bill" because there's no complexity. The non-linearity becomes little more than a "Hey look at me, aren't I cool?" gimmick. [For instance, does it make a blind bit of difference that the deaths of (1) and (2) are shown in the wrong order? In fact, wouldn't it have made somewhat more sense for Uma to interchange (1) and (2), and Quentin to show them in the correct order?]

Kill Bill has its moments. There's plenty of originality (notwithstanding the barrage of clever references to golden oldies that so inspired QT) and humour (mostly visual, but some funny lines and events, too) and some of the most exciting, spectacular fight sequences ever - for me, the sword vs mace duel was the best of them. The way it's shot, you really feel the impacts, and get a strong sense of the way death, or at least horrific injury, is the immediate outcome of the slightest mistake - this is true for all the fights.

Sadly though, the whole film is pretty much like watching someone play a computer game - a nerdy kid who for a semester has spent all his lunch money on the latest arcade and now wants to impress his peers (and the girls) showing them he can beat it. That's the bottom line.

This film sort-of defies any attempt at rating it in the usual sense, but I'll venture to suggest it deserves 5/10.


Quentin Tarantino's ego has finally overwhelmed his talents. This shameless self-ploitation film is unbearable for its horrible acting, cheesy dialogue, and bare-floor plot. Its celebrated cinematography, no doubt, is breathtaking. But this is a film, not a painting, and it can't rely solely on its visual elements to carry it forward (in this way it is excruciatingly similar to Eyes Wide Shut, another ego-trip from an otherwise immortal director). The cut is especially deep in that it is ranked ahead of films like Raging Bull, Ran, and Tarantino's own Reservoir Dogs (up there with Pulp Fiction for his best). Oh, to have those two hours of my life back (111 minutes of film, 9 minutes of quiet sobbing).


The Amendment giving women the right to vote was only nine years old when this movie was made. It sure shows. I'm not a big feminist (is any male, really?), but I was grinding my teeth whenever the question, "Oh, Darling, won't you be mine?" was asked. Today, it's a quaint notion, but at that time, the idea that a man could own a woman was accepted without any raised eyebrows. I found the love affair between the two leads simply not credible; it had no traction. One couldn't imagine happening today what the Shearer character decides with respect to her new lover -- and we're seemingly so much more sophisticated these days. Ah, 'tis a queer, ironic world. A technical note: If the couple was on Lake Michigan when the storm blew up, somebody needed to tell the author that there just ain't that many islands in the lake, and none within an easy row or swim. A little reminiscent of Puccini's opera "Manon Lescaut," the final scene of which takes place in the "Louisiana desert."


Raw Deal was in the classic Arnie era, the era of one line classics and bad acting. How quality is this film, its just non-stop from start to finish. You've got the classic good guy joins the mobsters gang in order to bring them down - Arnie sports a classic lumberjack shirt in this film as he plays a small town sheriff (check out the car chase at the beginning). He rolls of classic line after classic line, there is one instance where him and his wife have a argument - she throws are cake at him after she has had a few drinks, he says

"You shouldn't drink...and bake"

how cool is that

this looks surprisingly low budget for Arnie, but you have to watch it for its comedy value


From director John Irvin (Hamburger Hill), I didn't pay the fullest attention to this film when it was on, but I guess it doesn't matter. Basically Mark Kaminsky (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is kicked out the FBI for rough treatment of a suspect, he winds up as sheriff of a small town in North Carolina. FBI Chief Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin) enlists Kaminsky to get the man who killed his son, mobster Luigi Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker). Shannon promises to get him back in the FBI if Patrovita is taken down, to do this Kaminsky goes undercover as Joseph P. Brenner to join his gang. That's the basic story that I got. Also starring Paul Shenar as Paulo Rocca, Licence to Kill's Robert Davi as Max Keller, Ed Lauter as Baker, Joe Regalbuto as Marvin Baxter, Mordecai Lawner as Marcellino, Steven Hill as Martin Lamanski, Blanche Baker as Amy Kaminsky and Louise Robey as Lamanski's Girl. I think the only reasons I stayed with this film was because of Schwarzenegger and some eye-catching explosions and action sequences, but I just couldn't get into the story. Okay!


Arnie was the action movie superstar of the 80's films such as Commando, Predator, Conan The Barbarian and of course the Terminator made him a global mega star. Raw Deal however was a misfire, even by action movie standards the plot and acting is laughable. The set up is the usual renegade cop against the evil crime overlord which should be a lot of fun but to many times this film descends in to unintentional comedy. Gunfights are poorly staged and thought out the sets look exactly what they are cardboard to be blown up cheaply, clichéd bad guys, poor script need I go on? Even Arnie isn't the presence he was in his other 80's films he must have know how poor this was going to turn out.

Poor script, acting, and unforgivably in a movie of this type poor action scenes 4/10


Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Mark Kaminski, a sheriff who asked by an old friend (Darren McGavin) to infiltrate the mobsters responsible for the murder of his said friend's son. And of course wipe them out, the stakes are that Arnold can be in the FBI again. Raw Deal is a disappointing feature in Arnold's filmography, it's one of the few Schwarzenegger movies that DIDN'T become all that popular. I think the main reason is because the story is too mediocre and the movie didn't have any fresh twists on the vigilante genre. The action sequences are okay but generally they don't come frequent enough and the story is far too dull to make the action sequences worth pursuing.

* * out of 4-(Fair)


I'm an action movie buff, so I feel an argue to just go out and rent everything with Arnold Schwartzenegger in it. If you're like me, you've seen "Conan the Barbarian", think that cheesy is kind of OK as long as a lot of stuff blows up.

That's the only way you'll get through "Raw Deal". Also, you might have to fast forward through some parts.

Poorly acted, with a sub-intellectual plot, and cardboard characters, the film's dialogue is so bad it's actually funny at times. For example, say this slowly with a serious Austrian accent: "You should not drink... and bake." Does the film itself seriously? No, but sometimes campy doesn't make "bad" good. Sometimes "bad" just stays B-A-D. Skip this and rent "Payback", which has a similar tone but is done well.

Who should see this film:

-- Serious action buffs only, and then only on a rainy day,

and then only if you've gotten through Conan & Predator,

and then only if you're getting it free on TV.

Like most viewers, I'll give "Raw Deal" a 4 out of 10.


Having seen this film 3 times I am still struggling to understand the raw deal arnie is given? Also part way through there is a 10 minute scene where on his way to somewhere arnie pops into a casino to do a bit of gambling, it becomes apparent the craps table is rigged (including the line "magic or MAGNETS") he then immediately proceeds to smash up the casino, and for good measure, drive a truck through it. He then carries on going about his business. Although it has to be said, this is my favourite part of the film, I still cannot see its relevance in the overall storyline. These points however seem to add to my enjoyment of the film and it is one of my arnie favourites, a definite must see.


(There might be a little tiny spoiler here)

Plot -- Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a disgraced cop who finds a chance for redemption by taking on an assignment to infiltrate a Chicago mob. He finds himself in danger of getting in over his head with this role-playing, especially after getting involved with a woman.

Critique -- Not long after I popped this one in, I could see why "Raw Deal" is one of the star's least-regarded films. It's almost completely devoid of the wit and energy that we've come to expect of his best work. Although there's a fair amount of action, none if it is really exciting or memorable, certainly not on par with anything in the "Terminator" films (or even "Eraser", for that matter). In fact, it often seems more like something from the Cannon Films stable than a vehicle for one of the world's top superstars. The script is muddled and unfocused, with a subplot about the hero's alcoholic wife being introduced and dropped abruptly. Irvin's direction is flat and unenergetic, and even Arnold can't enliven the dreary proceedings (though he tries). Reportedly, he only accepted the role to fulfill a contractual obligation, which certainly explains his lack of care in choosing this particular project. In the end, it's safe to say that this is one film that would have been out of print for ages if not for the his presence. Unless you feel you have to watch everything he's done, just skip this dud and rent "Predator" or "Terminator 2."

Rating: (*1/2) out of four

Released by De Laurentiis Entertainment


The premise of this familiar actioner had some potential, with Arnold Schwarzenegger getting to act like a "bad guy" at least for a while, but unfortunately the theme is "explored" in just ONE scene, where he admits that he likes his new lifestyle as the right hand of a mob boss. But eventually he loses his patience, gets his machine gun and decides to wipe out the bad guys the old-fashioned way. And the viewer is inevitably going to wonder: why did they torture us for over an hour with all the secret-agent business, just to get to a "Commando"-type final showdown, where Arnie is able to kill dozens of enemies simply because they are too stupid and slow to get him first? There is no answer to that question, and that's what makes this film ultimately excruciating. (*1/2)


That seems to be the message of Raw Deal, an absurd Schwarzenegger vehicle from the 1980s, in which an intricate plot of mob wars and double-crosses is resolved with a hail of perfectly aimed, vengeance-fueled bullets.

Arnold plays Mark Kaminsky, a small-town sheriff who used to be in the FBI, before he was forced to resign because he brutally beat a man who had raped a small child. His wife (Blanche Baker) hates him because he resigned instead of fighting for his job, she's bored in small-town America, prompting her to ice a cake with an expletive frosted on the top. After she throws it at his head, Arnold returns with the immortal line, "You should not drink and bake."

That sort of depressed but oddly humorous atmosphere permeates all hour and forty minutes of Raw Deal, as Mark is brought in by his old boss Harry (Darren McGavin) to infiltrate the Patrovita mob and bring it down from the inside. Soon the bitter wife is all but forgotten as Mark fakes his own death by blowing up an oil refinery. (Probably an effective way to fake a death, but would a law-loving sheriff fake his death in a way that ensures a hugely disastrous oil fire?)

The plot trudges along through double-crosses and betrayals involving various police officers, mobsters, and the obligatory love interest (Kathryn Harrold, given little do since, even though his wife is awful to him and he's technically dead, he's still a dutiful married man). Arnold bides his time, cracking jokes and doing battle with the minimal threats that come along, until a surprising hit prompts him to forget his weeks of careful planning and simply kill everyone in the mob. It's a shame that hit hadn't happened earlier, it would have saved everyone involved a good deal of time. Wait, make that a RAW deal of time.

The shoot-em-up ending is preceded by a odd scene in which Arnold takes out his vast arsenal, and lovingly inspects and loads each weapon. The scene is filmed with such drawn out zeal that it could only be defined as sexual. As for the climactic battle itself, Arnold breaks the windshield off his car, pops "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones in the tape deck, and drives around a construction site firing at will.

Handling the scene in a such a ridiculous manner speaks to the way this movie could never have worked as an exciting action movie. When the hero is so invulnerable that he can put on rock tunes as he blows away his enemies, there's no audience investment in his fate. As soon as Arnold joins the mob we know everyone but him is going to be dead at the end, and not only that, he will be rewarded for his mass genocide (He gets reinstated for killing roughly fifty men, forty-nine more than it took to get him kicked out in the first place). As silly Arnold-tinged action, this movie can be laughed at, and enjoyed to a certain extent, but never without acknowledging that for the most part the entertainment is at the movie's expense.


I really don't have that much against the 80s. Hey I'm an '83 kid myself. That means I survived 7 years of the decade ... I wore a little mullet and a shell suit ... I'm sure of it ...

But this was the age of the action hero and McB ... sorry I mean Raw Deal is just one of those types of film. Basically it's a vehicle for Arnie to look big, muscular and pretty darn tough. Of course he does it really well ... filling out some rather ugly 80s-wear very nicely indeed. He even has a mandatory arming up scene in there (I really think he filmed just one of these for time-effectiveness and posted it in on the last day of shooting for all his shoot 'em ups).

I'd love to be able to say this a run of the mill all out action effort give it 6/10, lament about its lack of originality, point out its near cut and paste qualities and leave it at that, but damn, this is one confusing film.

One of strangest opening sequences I can recall sees Arnie chasing what appears to be a cop on a motorbike before setting him alight. To the viewers relief we discover that this near homicide was committed by Sheriff Arnie before the biker was indeed revealed as an impostor (phew). Arnie (who 's past as some sort of government agent is briefly touched upon) is basically hired by a director in the agency to go unofficially undercover and basically wreak vengeance upon mobsters who have killed the director's son.

The confusing part is how Arnie ends up in the fire fights he finds himself in and why seeing as he appears to be virtually invincible does he have to infiltrate the mob's ranks at all (the figures involved are all seemingly publicly known) before killing them. Thinking about it where does this small town all-American sheriff get all his guns for this rampage, and how does he rise up within the ranks of the mob so quickly ... I guess all this questions are things that will never be answered and really should never be asked.

In the end of course the director who kicked Arnie out of the agency in the first place turns out to be working for the mob; vindicating Arnie's tactics as he becomes number 86 of his victims. By this time I could almost hear the Simpsons McBane character explain why women always leave the toilet seat up or remark that he indeed does wear loafers!

Unfortunately the film can't even be relied on for classic one liners; the closest we get is after Arnie's wife throws a cake against the wall to which he replies

"NEVER DRINK AND BAKE..."

Go watch Total Recall, or Predator again instead!


Not bad action, but Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting is shockingly awful.

What "acting skills"?

I rarely watch Arnie movies, because they're usually all action and no plot, just one head bad guy against another head bad guy, and his hench-men shooting it out, until Arnie steps in.

Tedious, just like Bruce Willis films. But because I was bored I gave this film a shot (pardon the pun).

The start is very good. A brilliant shoot-out on a group of plain clothes policemen, protecting a witness against a mafia boss.

Then there's loads of dialogue, more action, but ultimately, it's Arnie's acting who makes me give this film a 2 out of 10. It's just bad bad bad. It's also filled with 1980s' pap pop music, which sucks.

That said, with say a better actor, such as Clint Eastwood in the role, instead or Arnie, then maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10 for this movie.


Hi all,

this is the perfect example of YASM = yet another stereotype movie. Movies like this only contribute to increase the bad image that people in the world have of such a beautiful land like Sicily.

As a Sicilian man living abroad, tho, in Finland, I have been listening for ages the comments on movies like the Godfather. Incredible but true, people still think that in Sicily we live like that. Luckily enough, this movie will not be able to make as many damages as the world-famous "Godfather".

The movie, set in the '70s, is sort of a biographic story of a girl, with Sicilian father and Finnish mother, and a younger sister. They moved to Sicily and ... since then the movie can be summarized in four words: Sicily = hell Finland = paradise

Sicily is not the perfect world and Finland is an indeed very nice country. In fact, I live here. But you cannot give such an unbalanced picture of the world. The result? I can already read "motherly advices" of other users, who are Finnish (swedish speaking, which is probably a benefit, if they need to specify it) but are more retrograde of the Sicilian characters of the movie.

The movie has already done the damage, because the motherly advice consists in considering the relationship with a Mexican guy, apparently on the basis that he is Mexican (and therefore, almost Sicilian, here the comment is not clear).

Sorry for breaking a bit the rule of not commenting other posts, but I did it to give an example on how the movie can spoil the image of Sicily.

My recommendation: if you want to watch it, it is your choice, but BE CAREFUL that Sicily is far other thing. Go visit it if you don't believe it. BR Simone Italian-speaking Italian. (Often pronounced as Simone by my beloved grandmother, who was Sicilian-speaking)


Hi everybody! I found the movie really an exaggeration of all the most common stereotypes about Sicily. I hope that the audience of such a movie is aware that this is a movie set in a small town of Sicily of 40 years ago, and that it does not ABSOLUTELY describe how cities are there nowadays.

To all people that think that this is the reality, I strongly invite you going visiting Sicily. The movie was made on purpose to describe terrible happenings only and make Sicily and its inhabitants appear as the very hell... The part I disagree most is especially the beginning where Marja was a so good holy creature and everybody else was a devil... even the music in the background recalled the hell, whereas look at the peaceful music background played during those few extremely peaceful parts set in Finland, during the sauna near the lake (rantasauna) in the middle of the forest...

Reading the comment of Masuchris (which wanted to give a motherly advice to her 17 years old daughter about marrying a Mexican guy or from any other terrible nation) really confirmed my fears: people cannot really make the difference between a movie talking about the worst case, the worst possible experience one can have in a certain place and what the reality is normally.

Please, do not believe that this has been a good description of what Sicily is, because it is not.


What is the definition of a gullible idiot?

A: Anybody who buys the patronizingly glowing reviews posted above!

In case you aren't aware, it has now become standard practice for individuals with a vested interest in low budget movies to talk them up on sites like this in the hope that the public will pay money to watch them at the cinema or on DVD.

Ask yourself this: why would these people need to generate favorable publicity for a movie when a good movie will generate its own favorable publicity through word of mouth?

The answer is obvious.


Once there was a promising Italian director with a nearly perfect hand when it came to splatter fun like "Deliria" (Stage Fright) and who eventually delivered the exquisite, tongue-in-cheek postmodern zombie flick "Dellamorte Dellamore" (Cemetery Man) with Rupert Everett in his perhaps finest leading role. That's fifteen years ago, with Soavi having done lots of TV work in the meantime -- maybe the reason why "Arrividerci amore, ciao", his first big-screen venture after more than a decade, is exactly looking like a professionally executed RAI Uno television assignment. The biggest problem of "Amore" is the script, working moderately, occasionally even quite well for about an hour, after which the story is rapidly mutating from a pretty tight, at intervals hard-hitting crime flick into an extraordinarily boring wife-murder yawn ultimately dissolving into lukewarm air, the end being one of the most awful letdowns in Italian thriller history. It's probably my last Soavi movie: Arrividerci Michele, ciao.


It is an awful movie. It is incredible since the Novel by Massimo Carlotto was so good. Probably Carlotto should have be involved in the screenplay writing to realize a better movie. The only positive point is Michele Placido , great interpretation. I do not understand how a director such as Soavi could make a terrible movie from a very good story. The music is good and the song is beautiful. I am really upset since I love the "noir" and we could have a good chance....... Sorry but I really did not like It, the screenplay has so many problems and some scenes makes you laugh since they are almost ridicule. All the actors except Placido are not as good as we know them. Enrico


Wow, that was absolutely terrible. My neighbor lent it to me to watch and told me it was great, but she's clueless when it comes to horses, obviously. I loved how at the beginning of the movie, the pregnant mare is just standing outside. In the rain; a thunderstorm actually. Like anyone with a mare even remotely close to foaling would leave her outside. How stupid. And then she just died for no apparent reason. It sounds terrible, but I totally cracked up.

And then I never really got the point of the sister/boyfriend subplot. It was really dumb and predictable.

Next point of stupidity: The girl was riding the two-year-old horse at a dead gallop over terrible-looking terrain at night. By the time that horse is 7 or 8, his knees will be so ruined that he won't be capable of cantering with a rider on his back!

And the horse was different in almost every scene. He'd change from flea-bitten gray to dapple gray; he'd change from a Quarter Horse to a Thoroughbred; his face markings would change from a blaze to a snip; it was so obvious!

Anyway, that's an hour and a half of my life that I'll never have back. If you haven't seen it yet: don't! I am a horse person; I have 2 horses of my own, so naturally I'm very critical of horse movies. But that was the worst I've seen since Black Beauty.


I guess this movie might be okay for children or people who don't know much about horses...but I have never seen a more poorly researched movie! As an equestrian I laughed through the entire movie at the ridiculousness of it all. THEY HAD THE HORSE BACKWARDS IN THE TRAILER!!! Other than the major oversights with regard to horses and owning horses, the movie was cheesy and terribly predictable. I was incredibly surprised to see that the movie was not very old - it seems like something that would have been released in the late 80s or early 90s. It was clearly outdated. If you want to see a good horse movie, rent Seabiscuit, or if you're looking for something a little more kid friendly, Dreamer or National Velvet.


I was not impressed with this movie. If a movie doesn't catch my attention in the first 30 minutes I won't watch the rest. It started out violent and I had no idea what the plot even was. All I saw was violence, murder, and drug abuse but no real substance. I didn't finish it. Even the people I was watching it with didn't get the point of the movie either. I was expecting something great out of it though the actors in the film were not names which with I was familiar. Fighting for truth and justice are good causes, but I only saw that in the plot synopsis. I guess it takes a while into the movie to finally get the idea that is what is going on.


Flickers of sophistication. Otherwise, too long, too sentimental, too unselfconsciously overplayed. Berenger almost pulls off the sympathetic broken man character, but without enough cheap action to prop him up, he pretty much melts into the part. The premise is stock standard enough that a brainless monkey should be able to make a movie around it, but the script is so unbelievable, and oddly structured (moments of grainy flashback flicker sporadically through the plot, gradually advancing an all too obvious and predictable back story), with characters introduced in tossed-off, sitcom-ish scenes, never to reappear again, that its hard to get through more than a scene or two without groaning. Still, there are flares of inspiration - or rather, imitation with skill. But they are transitory moments - literally. As my first English teacher said when she was looking for something nice to say about one of my essays: "Good transitions!"


Pretty average show really. Just a whole lot of dropkicks and 1 chick who is more likely than not a bimbo. As a dating show its crap, but as a comedy it's not too bad. But yea its just another average American show. it's got nothing on British shows I'm afraid. It shows up that a lot of American chicks are shallow, as they still go for the dropkicks, even though most of them have slept with heaps of women. I've been told that some of the stuff is made up. The one where the guy did a road trip through states and had sex under each welcome sign, surely cant be true. The army episode was definitely the best, it was very good acting even if the dad wasn't really been himself. Overall 1 episode of this is enough for most people I think.


I should have seen this ambush coming, from the very first office/room whose walls were constructed out of curtains. This movie, amongst others, was required pre-school for mega-talents to come, eg Edward D Wood Jr. Actors walking past painted backdrops, actors arriving through one curtain, and leaving by another, characters finding it difficult to get in & out of cars, none of this is an element of making fine films. It is however, common place for a movie made on a budget shorter than a shoe-string. A movie only for those who collect quantity, rather than quality.


Embarrassingly inept propaganda film that seems to have been hidden away from the public for almost 60 years, since it's release back in 1942, until the miracle of the DVD disc brought it back to be seen by a new, and stunned, generation of movie goers.

It's the hight of WWII and the British want to start trouble for the Germans in occupied Norway by getting the Norwegian people to rise up against them. Sending a number of British agents into the country to try to rescue Norwegian General, and national hero, Heden lead to all of them getting captured and shot by the German Army.

Desperate the British send a trio of secret agents lead by Capt. Robert Owens together with radio and all around handyman Sgt. Harry Hall and Norwegian patriot Let. Eric Falken to finally get Gen. Hayden out of the country and have him used on the BBC to rally his fellow countrymen to revolt against the hated Germans.

Dropped into Norway by plane everything goes wrong for Owen's men almost as soon as they land. Eric's fiancée Inga spots him and, unknowing to Eric, being a German sympathizer reports him and his fellow agents to the local Gestapo. The feared and effective Gestapo act like a bunch of buffoons as their knocked out and disarmed by Eric & Co. after they first disarmed and arrested them.

Helped by undercover Norwegian Agent, the towns blind beggar, Spandling, Owens has the three Gestapo officers tied up. The British agents put on the Germans uniforms that are, miraculously, perfect fits for Owens Falken & Hall even though the three are different in hight weight pants and suite size. The Germans trying to untie themselves and not at all feeling threatened by a blind man, Sandling, sitting guard over them have the shock of their lives when Sandling becomes the worlds first suicide bomber! Sandling blows himself the Germans and the entire building up in a massive explosion with a top secret Brtish super hand grenade that Owens gave him. The rest of the movie is all too predictable with the Germans making complete fools of themselves trying to capture the three British agents and screwing up at every opportunity.

Owens and his men get to the prison camp where Gen. Haden is being held and have no trouble, being dressed in German Gestapo uniforms, in getting him out but need to get the general help for a broken arm he suffered during his rescue. Hiding in the cold Norwegian woods Owens sends Eric, who can speak Norwegian, into town to get help but he's again betrayed by Inga to the Gestapo. We later learn why Inga is so mad at her former lover Eric. Eric checked on her fathers sturdy and sea-bearing sailboat and held Eric responsible for her fathers death when he drowned in the dinky and water-logged dinghy that Eric left him when he tried to do the same thing, escape to freedom in England.

The Germans again capture Owens, as Sgt. Hall gets away with Gen. Heden, and unlike with poor Eric whom they tortured almost to death the Germans try kindness with him by offering him a smoke. All this in order to get Eric to open up and tell them not only where Gen Heden is but what else is being planned by his superiors back in London in regards to the planned allied invasion of Norway.

The ending of the movie makes you think that your watching a war movie about the D-Day invasion of France, with an armada of ships planes and thousands of allied troops storming the beaches, instead of a film about three commandos trying to get just one man out of Norway under the cover of darkness.

"They Raid by Night" is worth watching only because it has actor Lyle Talbot as it's top star playing the head of the British rescue team Capt. Robert Owens. Fame would smile on Talbot ten years later when he met and became involved with legendary "Bad Movie" director Edward Wood Jr. and was cast in four of his cinematic classics; "The Adventures of the Tucson Kid" and "Glen and Glenda" in 1953 "Jail Bait" in 1954 and what many consider to be Wood's greatest masterpiece his "Citizen Kane" the superb immortal and unforgettable "Plan Nine from Outer Space".


The picture is set during German invasion of Norway, the historical events are the following : The invasion began on April 9, 1940. The German Navy and Airforce led the operation . The Hitler plan relied on surprise to avoid interception by the British and to prevent Norwegian forces from mobilizing. The sudden appearance of naval task forces took Norwegian defenders by surprise and allowed airfields around Oslo , Tondheim and Stevenager to be captured by the German intact. German forces at Trondheim advanced and linked up with forces in Oslo. Norwegian forces in central and southern began to surrender. In northern Norway British and French troops fighting against Germans in Narvik. But the Allied decided to pull out of Norway , evacuating forces from Narvik. Norway's royal family and government fled to Britain. Then the British staff assigns a dangerous mission to Canadian officer Owen (Lyle Talbot) to Norway to prepare for a ride to be executed by Allied and especially by the British Royal Navy. His aim also includes freeing a General who is being prisoned by the Nazis at a concentration camp. He's accompanied by Lieutenant Eric(George Neise) and sergeant Harry ( Charles Rogers). In Norway contact a waif-blind man. But Inga (Jane Duprez ) a Norwegian gorgeous girl to whom Eric was once betrothed is now a collaborationist of Nazis and she betrays them.

This is average and low-budgeted movie full of stock-shots of explosions and documentary footage from ships and cruisers. The director is genuinely skillful in the hectically edited cutting room and smartness from pressure exerted by the minimum budget, using even photographs as backgrounds.The movie is starred by B-series actors as Lyle Talbot who terminated his career working for Edward Wood Jr in 'Plan 9 from outer space' and 'Glen and Glenda' ; Charles Rogers , a secondary actor and director of films for Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. And Jane Duprez who had a successful beginning with 'Four feathers' and 'Thief of Bagdag' but finished doing smallest pictures, here she plays a collaborationist or ¨Quisling¨ who was a Norwegian prime minister whose collaboration with the Nazis meant his name became a term meaning traitor.The film is regularly directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet. Spencer Gordon along with George B Seitz were the fathers of the American serial. Bennet' first was a stunt-men in the Seitz's serials. Later on, he struck out on the serial world and went on making serial until 1956, the last year of serial production by American Company. Bennet co-directed exciting serials as ¨Zorro, Superman, Captain Video, Bat man and Robin, Brick Bradford¨ and several others. Bennet's reputation for getting surprising reactions from his actors at the appropriate time was partly explained by his habit of creeping up behind his players and firing blanks. His Westerns with Tim McCoy, Will Bill Elliott, Buck Jones and Ken Maynard are all imaginative, fast- movement and with rattling scenes. Right at the end of his career he directed Sci-Fi as ¨submarine Seahawk¨ and ¨Atomic Submarine¨and again Westerns as ¨The bounty killer'and ¨Requiem for a gunfighter¨.


Lyle Talbot (as Robert "Bob" Owen) fights Nazis in Norway, during World War II. Helping him out are native son George N. Neise (as Erik Falken) and British wisecracker Charley Rogers (as Harry Hall). Mr. Neise's old acquaintance June Duprez (as Inga Beckering) adds femininity and intrigue to the cast. Once engaged to Neise, Ms. Duprez has hooked up with properly accented Victor Varconi (as Otto von Ritter). Mr. Varconi gets the line, "My men have vays of making you talk." Spencer Gordon Bennet's "They Raid by Night", subtitled "A Story of the Commandos", features a very catchy theme song, and is good for a few unexpectedly good laughs.

** They Raid by Night (6/19/42) Spencer Gordon Bennet ~ Lyle Talbot, June Duprez, Victor Varconi, George N. Neise


This movie has a slew of great adult stars but fails to get you interested in a way an adult film should. Among all the stars you couldn't get your kicks from any of the scenes. The movie is shot in a dream like middle age set which is embarrassingly cheesy. The acting is worse than Keanu Reeves, the sex scenes are as exciting as listening to your neighbor talk about their kid in college, and the dialogue is the worse I have seen in a movie. The plot also was worse by ten fold. I'd stick to the amateur route. The audio commentary was useless since it's a skin flick but even then that was bad too. Unless your a diehard Jenna Jameson fan there is little here. 4/10


I am a VERY big fan of Jenna Jameson, but this movie is horrible. At the time Jenna Jameson was married to Brad Armstrong and he was the director of this film and Jenna was the hottest porn star ever. So, of course, Brad tried to make as much money as he could off her by making this big budget porn film. Now I know why they don't make big budget porn movies anymore. In a fantasy world, porn stars could act, but this is the real world and they can't act. That's why there porn stars, if a women as beautiful as Jenna could act, then she would have tried to go into mainstream movies instead of porn. Just because your beautiful doesn't make you a movie star. A fine example of this is Traci Lords, when she was a teen thru her 20's she was one of the most beautiful, sexy women on earth. She made her move into low budget mainstream films and couldn't act. Where is she now? I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 rating just because Jenna is so hot, but there are better movies she has made then "Dream Quest". Come on Jenna, we don't want to hear you talk, as much as we want to see you have sex. Also, you Jenna, would have a lot more fans and more money in your bank account if you would have done anal on film.


Someone told me that this was one of the best adult movies to date. I have since discredited everything told to me by this individual after seeing this movie. It's just terrible. Without going into lengthy descriptions of the various scenes, take my word for it, the sex scenes are uninteresting at best. Jenna in normal street clothes in the beginning was the highlight of the film (she does look good) but it's all downhill from there.


The idea of teaming Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould together in a movie must have seemed like a good idea after their success with MASH. Giving them a half decent script would have probably helped a lot though. Instead we have a half-baked spy spoof with our two heroes stumbling along from one situation to another. About the only decent thing going for this mess of a movie is the fact that it was shot mostly in France. Vladek Sheybal as the head Russian spy is also quite good(he just oozes Eastern European charm). Otherwise, some pretty stupid characters, a few decent explosions and a lot of running around. I hope Sutherland and Gould were well paid for this. Note to producers: If you're going to spoof a genre that is no longer in vogue, at least make it funny.