Well, this movie is a little pointless. The endings to each sequel aren't shone and the plots themselves except for Edith and Marie, are a little drastic. Can you imagine a beige haired Shirley MacLaine wondering around her apartment naked reading T.S. Elliot while a Mediterranean man and a gorgeous blonde Scot are sitting on the bed, paying more attention to this pixie like artistic woman than the story that she reads? A little odd...Yes...But Shirley pulled it off. All these stories have a theme "Love can drive you crazy." There's also a story of a rich, spoiled woman (Eve) who wants a stupid dress like no other so she tries to blow up the other owner of her dress! Then there's Edith, who loves her author husband enough to come out of her bland, unexciting shell into the characters that he creates. That 15 minute part right there could've been a movie. The doctor and Vic tell Edith that she's crazy but she cries from the roof top "I'M NOT CRAZY!!! I'M IN LOVE!!" There's Maria Theresa, who comes home a day early and catches her friend sleeping with her husband. In out rage she runs to hookers to sleep with another man to drive her husband wild with jealousy. Marie and Fred are two lovers who are confused about life. They decide to make a suicide pact. I was surprised at how cute Alan Arkin really was when he wasn't in "Wait Until Dark"! Anyhow, they both decide that no love is worth the trouble of shooting each other or whatnot. Of course after they finish boffing each other. There's Jeanne, who is followed with her friend by a "mysterious stranger" who was only hired to follow her to make sure that she wasn't cheating on her suspicious husband. All of these stories are odd and a little loony but seeing Shirley MacLaine change so much for each part is delight. She goes to every color of hair, every style of look, through every outfit you can imagine. She looks great! Apart from that, this movie is a little much for kids and well, I don't highly suggest it to anybody other than dedicated Shirley MacLaine fans. OTHER STARS: Michael Caine appears. He's too cute.


With Shirley MacLaine in a variety of different wigs and costumes (and a large variety of co-stars in the cast including Alan Arkin, Rossano Brazzi, Shirley's "Gambit" co-star Michael Caine, Anita Ekberg, Vittorio Gassman and a pre-"Being There" Peter Sellers), I was terrified this was going to be a replay of MacLaine's all-star marital farce "What a Way to Go!" Not quite, as Shirley is playing seven different women this time, in seven short stories about love and sex. The opening tale involving Shirl in a funeral procession is very witty, but the other six seem to progressively lose steam. Not the tour-de-force MacLaine's fans were probably hoping for, it does have some cute bits and pieces but suffers from a muddy production and tepid handling overall. *1/2 from ****


A real contender for the worst movie ever made. Neck and neck with "Plan 9 from Outer Space." The big difference being Plan 9 was made for $500. Pretty much everybody associated with this movie could arguably deserve to be shot. Too bad about losing Morgan Freeman! A real contender for the worst movie ever made. Neck and neck with "Plan 9 from Outer Space." The big difference being Plan 9 was made for $500. Pretty much everybody associated with this movie could arguably deserve to be shot. Too bad about losing Morgan Freeman! How do films like this get made? Should the geriatric hamster who checks the scripts be replaced? Possibly with a grade 2 class somewhere in Alaska? Well that's OK. So long as millions got spent. too bad about it being a vomit sandwich.


As a big fan of Chris Prynoski, I just hate to say, "I don't get it," or at least I don't get the hype. The science fiction of the Civil War era wears out quickly and soon falls prey to a collection of off-the-shelf movie monsters that our grandparents used to watch who were portrayed by Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. among others, (have I given away too much?). The animation varies from very detailed to what seems like four frames per second. And funny? No, not really. Maybe I'll try it again, but if you've ever seen Downtown created by Chris Prynoski, I think you'll find that this doesn't compare when it comes to humor.


I was subjected to this at a party recently and honestly, I can say nothing good about it. The animation was awful, the storyline (such as it was) was incomprehensible. The voice acting was passable, but hardly makes up for how horrible the rest of this cartoon was. After a short time, maybe five or ten minutes, of having this trash inflicted on me, I managed to politely excuse myself and get some chips. How anyone above the age of ten can be so enamored with this remains a mystery to me. But, from what I can see, fans of this genre are rabid enough that poor animation and incomprehensibility make no difference to them, so one negative review equally will make no difference.

On the other hand, if you like GOOD animation, steer clear of this and watch some classic Bugs Bunny instead.

0/5 stars.


Watching Solstice is a bit like platting fog ! yes there is a storyline and maybe the writers are aiming at a student/ teen cult market, but I don't think this film quite hits it. It is like an old 70's / 80's movie. I don't think solstice will be cult or stand the test of time. I was not a big fan of Blair Witch but I could see the appeal and would give that a good rating. If they thought they would capture the same audience they may. Only once I think. Not being the first to slate this movie I feel confident that my opinion is valid. Solstice is weak. You really have to draw your imagination into wanting to be on the edge of your seat with this one. The actors are all good its just the poor movie.


I don't know what the budget was for Solstice, but no one is complaining about it's technical merits. It looks and sounds as shiny as an MTV video of the year. The cast is young and attractive--I would say they looked like they were straight out of a Noxema commercial, but I don't think those are around anymore. The plot contains a secret at the end and not much leading up to it, but that won't bother the target audience. If only there was a memorable villain, like Chucky or Jason, so that the kindergärtners whose parents allow them to watch anything and everything, could remember something to talk about with their friends. At least Jeepers Creepers had that flying scarecrow.

The kid who played Iceman in "X-men" and the dumb girl from "Mean Girls" take a vacation to the middle of nowhere with a group of friends. Central to this story is Megan, who needs some time away to deal with the recent death of her twin sister. Except that she is having visions and experiencing unexplained occurrences that seem to be some sort of communication from the undead. Is it her sister trying to tell her something? Or are the messages coming from the innocent girl that Iceman killed last summer and then buried without telling anyone?

You will only think this movie is original, well-written, or well-acted if you haven't watched very many movies. In which case, you won't care--you and your friends will be more geeked about having scored that six-pack earlier in the evening than anything that happens in any video you might be renting tonight.


Well, those are the words that come to my mind when I think of Solstice.

How many times before a story following that same sort of plot has been told ? Zillions! Why ghost stories only know how to tell one type of story: Mysterious things happen. A particular person start to see and feel odd things. Is it a message from the "other side"? Nobody believes anything this particular person says. Then in the end of the movie the whole thing becomes clear after one or two plot twists. The body of the wandering ghost is found and then she/he can rest in peace, and justice is made finally.

Solstice has a nice production, but that is it. The story sucks. It is weak, deja-vu all over again.


From the writer/director of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT Daniel Myrick, who spins a tale influenced by a Scandinavian thriller MIDSUMMER. SOLSTICE is a haunting yarn about a group of high school friends getting together for one last blow out before heading to college. Less than a year after losing her twin sister to suicide, Megan(Elisabeth Harnois)joins her friends on a trip to the family summer home on the Louisiana bayou. Things get real bizarre when Megan thinks she is being contacted by her sister from beyond the grave. A local hunk(Tyler Hoechlin)comes to dinner and teaches the group a Creole spell of the summer solstice. They actually try and raise Megan's sister from the dead...not without casualties. Flashbacks tend to disjoint the whole story and gets tiresome quickly. Also in the cast: Shawn Ashmore, Hilarie Burton, R. Lee Ermey and Matt O'Leary.


I'm very surprised that it's NOT mentioned that Solstice is a remake of "Midsommer"(a Norwegian/Swedish, horror/drama/thriller, from 2003) I've seen both movies and the plot is almost identical. Of course the details is somewhat different, but overall, it is most definitely the same story. The Norwegian/Swedish story (being the original), IS better (also it made the theaters). Solstice offered no surprises and parts of the story was really to convenient (thinking specially of one of the characters, if you see the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen "Midsommer", then I recommend you to see it first (if you can) before "Solstice".


An adult would find this extremely boring, predictable and immature.

If you are 15-17, you would probably enjoy this movie.

I would not let anyone under 14 see this movie, because of sexual themes and some shock-value spooks. There is basically no gore, just a bleeding finger.

Revenge from the grave is trite and unrealistic and it was done very poorly in this movie. The shove-it-all-down-your-throat ending was expected and not appreciated.

I can't say I cared if any of the characters lived or died, they were all irritating and unintelligent.

A generous 4 stars is all I can muster.


A shockingly boring product, 'Solstice' is perhaps one of the earliest 'by-products' of the Writer's Strike of 2007-2008.

When you rent a movie, your basest hope is to derive SOME pleasure from your money spent. 15 minutes pass, you're annoyed and nodding off at the same time, and you wonder if you should hit Fast-Forward or Eject.

In this film, the characters lack anything resembling human interest. Their dialog contains zero references to 2008 society or culture. This script could have been written in 1980, or 1970 for that matter! It's a by-the-numbers dull-fest!

Want to save a buck on sleeping pills? Watch "Solstice"!


I have to admit I rented this title, without really looking at it very closely, for my wife, as I was renting an action movie, for me. We later sat down to watch it, and after about 15 minutes, I was ready to stomp my DVD player into rubble. There's the father who owns a publishing house who is willing to 'do the right thing' whatever the cost. And what is 'doing the right thing' to this apparently well-educated man? Why publishing obscure holocaust tomes over those books more likely to sell (and thereby rescue his company)! I was doing fine, my wife and I actually have more than a passing interest in books and the publishing industry, in general. But when Sarah Jessica Parker, as a recurring character on a children's show, started singing about how she was my 'extraordinary friend', I lost it. I can't remember the last time I've seen so many people engaged in singing their own praises, so to speak. I'd rather have a root canal than sit through this self-serving love fest.


Well, I hate to burst everyone's bubble before me, but IMAO this was a very ordinary film that was mildly amusing at best. What's worse is that it invokes a hefty glorification of gratuitous violence, so much so that it ruined the film (again IMAO). The violence wasn't ridiculous enough to be a mockery, but an essential part of the film, overstating other perhaps more interesting plot aspects that might have been developed further to a more satisfying - and original - whole.

This is a pity, because it was very well acted (these guys shame some of the more recognized Hollywood stars), and the character development wasn't too bad either. And there was definitely potential, some of the peripheral themes were definitely candidates for further development. What ruined it was that the plot was so bloody stupid. This could have been a great movie if the central plot theme wasn't so banal.

Sorry I couldn't give it more than two points out of ten, but this is an absolute (rather than a relative) scale, it was definitely a masterpiece for the budget they had. Shame about the subject matter.


Hey stop stabbing me! (2003) really disappointed me, i was looking forward to this after reading some positive reviews on here but i found it to be lame, unfunny and most of the characters are all ugly talentless geeks.......... it was obviously a bunch of nerdy friends who THOUGHT they could make some sort of funny "Scream/Scary Movie" type film and cash in!!! Well sadly for them and us, this "film" SUCKS bigtime, it must have been made over a weekend, certainly no longer than that. There was no "acting" abilities here folks, and as for a script, well i don't think there was one, seemed like they were just making it up as they went along!! These desperate students got together and made it on a camcorder it would seem!! Basically, the plot is about this college graduate called Herman Schumacher who rents a room with a bunch of weird student types, but weird things start to happen to Herman, his nymph girlfriend seems to be having sex with all the roommates, one of the roommates seems to be a serial killer, a monster (guy in a gorilla suit), seems to be stealing all his clothes...... nothing is going right for Herman!!! To be honest i didn't make it to the end, i was so bored with this, i suggest people stick to "proper" comedy/horror films such as Scream, American Pie, Road Trip, Scary Movie etc etc, give this film a miss if you can ever find it, it's rare for a reason you know............. because it's total CRAP!


This is the worst movie I ever remember seeing, and I've seen some pretty bad ones in my time... believe me. The acting isn't just bad, it's abysmal. Ludicrous. It's like the makers tried to make this film so it would be as awful and boring and silly as humanly possible. Caulkin's "Rich" isn't great, but it's a heckuva lot better than this drek. The people who made this ought to be banned from the film industry. The only reason this could have been made was for money: don't let it steal yours! Avoid this movie like a disease! Why?

Because it sucks like a black hole.


Richie Rich christmas wish is a film about a 13-year old boy who had a cousin named Reggie. Reggie was very mean to Richie.... So one day Reggie did a embarrassing thing for Richie. So Richie wished in a machine that he was never born.


I used to be a big fan of this show as a teen growing up, but as an adult I find the antics of Will Smith's characters annoying and repugnant. In each episode, Smith acts like a jerk to someone or does something that will obviously negatively effect some other character. Then he continues to act like a jerk while attempting to cover up whatever misdeeds he previously took part in. All of this for the final five minutes where Smith has an epiphany and then is absolved of his actions.

Will Smith's character consists loud and goofy noises and constantly cracking jokes about his looks. His character is extremely narcissistic and classless. The only redeeming quality of this show is Uncle Phil who is actually a decent actor with good comedic timing. Too bad this show degrades his weight every week while going after the lowest common denominator


When I was younger, I liked this show a lot. It was funny seeing Will Smith doing the dumbest things. And the other characters were just as good. I admit, Will Smith can act better than a lot of these rapper turned actors.

Well, now that I'm older, I can see a lot of things that were not noticeable back then.

First off, IMO, Will Smith acts a lot like Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence combined. There is no style, it's the same type of acting, the same "just because I'm black" jokes, and the same "I'm sooo good looking" crap. His jokes are all the same through out the show. I'm picking on the Will Smith character because he is the only one that makes the show dumb. But, I still watch it!!! As for the other characters, they really do a good job! It's just Will Smith, he gets annoying at times. But I'll give to him, he has become a good actor over the years.

Well back to the show...

It's witty, and quite fun to watch. But my only gripe is Will Smith and his old bag of tricks. He's still cool though.


This film was originally released in full stereoscopic format in 1953, and a regular B/W print was released later under the title "Rocket to the Moon". The film is of historic interest as it was one of the first (perhaps the first) of many Sci-Fi movies about space travellers who encounter a "lost" civilization of nubile young women, not only in attractive dresses and perfect coiffures but also speaking perfect English. This theme was so successful that it has been repeatedly followed right up to today when everyone has a much more sophisticated understanding of the realities of space. Historically, it is interesting to compare this film with those of the same genre released more recently such as Femalien or the Emmanuelle in Space series. Over the two generations since Rocket to the Moon was released, films of this genre have gradually changed their intended appeal by becoming primarily skinflicks rather than Sci-Fi thrillers.

	It is unfortunate that Hollywood quickly lost interest in the complexity of producing good stereoscopic films (which are most often now featured in specialist theatres such as the IMAX), and instead has followed what I feel has been a largely disasterous attempt to explore the potential of anthropomorphic lenses even though in the majority of cases these have no conceivable artistic contribution to make to the final product. Although produced for polarised projection, Catwomen of the Moon is one of the very few 3D films which has been made available on VHS tape in analglyphic (dual colour) stereographic format. It has also been released as a DVD, but in non-stereographic format. Whilst the analglyphic tape version will remain of interest to a most people interested in the history of the cinema, I find it very hard to understand the choice of this film for release as a regular DVD.

	This film was not produced on such a low budget as some of its successors. The view of the rocket itself gives the impression that at a pinch this might be large enough for a small monkey, but for its period it makes a serious attempt to show the need for features such as spacesuits for the crew of the rocket. After their rocket lands on the dark side of the moon the astronauts find a deep cavern where air still exists and where these suits can be dispensed with. Scientific improbability returns when they travel back to the surface wearing casual sports clothes and encounter a fairly normal gravitational pull. More surprisingly (?), the cavern is occupied by giant spiders and a group of nubile catwomen who are threatened with extinction, not by the complete absence of any men but by the gradual loss of their air. Logically they therefore plan to steal the rocket and return to Earth in it. The whole plot is worked out in just over an hour (64 min) of quite easy watching; however the story (plot?) does not have the charm shown by the film Fire Maidens of Outer Space which appeared three years later. This is unfortunately not currently available in any home video format, although in my opinion it provides a more enjoyable example of movie nostalgia than the Catwomen.


I picked up a copy of this because of its alleged stereoscopic content. Much of the tape had such poor registration that the stereo effect was lost. A couple of scenes were close enough so that one could see a little depth, but not most of them.

In the copy of the Rhino videotape, there was the tape and two sets of anaglyph glasses. For standard color anaglyph presentations, the left filter is red; the right, blue or cyan (or sometimes green). This one has it reversed, and on the glasses it says to use them in the red-right orientation to see this film, and the standard way to see Robot Monster or The Mask. Well, it's cheaper than redoing the film recording, but if they'd done that, they might have avoided the misalignment.

The film story is pretty weak, and rather silly. In the opening scene, the rocket, which looks similar to a radiator hood ornament, is blasting along, and someone at White Sands is trying to contact the ship. The crew starts to recover from ... what? ... the strain of takeoff? ... without responding for the longest time. Eventually, the commander responds with the equivalent of, "We're okay, now shut up." The rest of the crew objects so strongly that he lets each one of them report his or her conditions, but advises them to keep it short.

As has been observed, the command area of the ship employs office furniture. Each crewmember has a locker, like those found at high schools.

When they go to explore the lunar landscape, it's interesting to see that the space suits are of two different designs. How hot the lunar surface is can be seen by dropping a cigarette onto the surface, where it bursts into flame. Pretty good trick for a part of the moon that ostensibly had no atmosphere.

The technical gaffes ... no, make them howlers ... are so great that it propels the film immediately from science fiction into pure fantasy. Children's fantasy at that.

This is not a film to be taken seriously. If you like honest camp, though, you might find it fun.


Obviously Sonny Tufts was really hitting the bottle when he appeared in this film. He was touted as a new star in the 40's but his messed up personal life really did him in and he was reduced to playing in Grade Z movies and barely getting by. In several scenes he loses his train of thought and because of the low budget the scenes were not re-shot. What a hoot but at the same time pathetic.

This is one of those little sci-fi films that were so popular in the 1950s, usually low budget and inept. But if you are a bad film buff, you can't help but love Cat Women. There are some good actors in this film.....Victor Jory (how far he had fallen!); the wonderful Marie Windsor who made any film in which she appeared worth watching; and Douglas Fowley who was a film staple for years. And then there were the Cat Woman, slinking around in leotards and dog collars.

I won't go into the "plot" but suffice to say it was the same as all the other films which involved lost civilizations on distant moons. It is such fun and if you love low budget films with ridiculous special effects, bad acting and dialogue that makes you cringe, see Cat Women of the Moon. It's a treat!!


CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON is a truly terrible movie, but it is so bad and so horribly produced that it is a must-see for bad movie fans. In fact, it was so bad that it was the inspiration for the main plot for AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON. However, oddly, the plot idea was actually originally in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS!

The film begins on board a space ship bound for the moon that is captained by the great Sonny Tufts. In typical schlocky sci-fi fashion, the inside of the ship looks ridiculous--with lots of inappropriate equipment, no zero gravity, etc.. However, the real action didn't begin until the ship landed on the moon--at which point it's painfully obvious to everyone but this brain damaged crew that their female crew member (Marie Windsor) is working for the aliens living on the moon. It seems they have used their superior intellects to steer the ship there--in the hope that they could steal the ship and invade the Earth. Considering there only appears to be about four of these "cat women", such an undertaking does seem a bit silly, but this is a film you best watch without thinking too hard! Eventually, after battling horrible giant spiders suspended from very visible wires as well as watching the cat-women's exotic and seductive dance, the humans are able to escape their imprisonment and return to Earth safely--minus one crew member who was stabbed. How did they manage this? Well, one of the men is heard yelling off screen that he killed the cat-women as you hear gun fire! Wow, talk about sparing no expense in the final showdown!!

This film epitomizes schlocky 50s sci-fi. The plot is childish, the sets silly and the space suits comical--so much that the film turns out to be a great comedy--unintentional, of course. Bad, silly, poorly done in every way--this film is one of the worst films of the decade BUT is also strangely campy and worth watching--especially if you are a bad movie freak like me.

PS--I still have no idea what a cat-woman is. The film didn't explain this at all and I saw nothing feline in the film.


Marie Windsor is brain washed by moon women. Some scenes are in early 3D.

Windsor had much better showcase in The Girl in Black Stockings with yummy Mamie van Doren and delicious Lex Barker.


This preposterous sci-fi flick deals with the first mission to the moon. While there, the astronauts encounter a subterranean civilization of slinky cat-women dressed in leotards and a giant spider puppet. The men are hypnotized by the cat-women but eventually break free of the spell and triumphantly return to earth.

It certainly appears that space travel has vastly improved since 1953, since the spaceship's crew is using office desks and chairs. The space suits are pretty funny, and instead of ray guns the astronauts carry around plain ol' six-shooters.

I can see why Sonny Tufts was in this movie, since he appeared in quite a few substandard films in the 40s and 50s. But what on earth are fine actors Victor Jory and Marie Windsor doing here? This film rates as probably the worst ever to be remade (just a few years later, as "Missile to the Moon"). Campy film will certainly provide some chuckles.


Things begin going downhill at break-neck speed about the time our hero is forced to wrestle what is obviously a giant rubber spider. While the idea that the dark side of the moon resembles Hugh Heffner's penthouse is appealing, this is one of those movies, made in the early 50s, that made an evening at home in front of the TV seem like a better choice. The FX, such as they are, are transparent, almost as much as the acting. I suppose this could be a 'good watch' if one wanted to see what we had out there during that time frame. This picture was released both in 3D and 'flat' simultaeneously, so Dad took us to see it twice, so we could 'compare.' I think he really just had a thing for the lovely Ms. Windsor.


A few funny moments stretched paper thin. Nothing original here, except maybe the level of obnoxiousness. This movie has virtually no plot, instead relying on Chris Tucker to carry the unfunny movie. If you enjoy excessive bathroom humor, and can stand Chris Tucker for more than 10 minutes, then by all means, enjoy. Ugh.


this movie is just plain not funny. I know I am in the minority on this one, but Al didn't think it was funny either. I'm pretty sure the Manwhich, (Foley), would hate it too. I couldn't relate to the humor, if indeed humor was the aim, and when Chris Tuker speaks I get angry. I always hear people quoting lines from this movie, it's not Office Space people, don't quote lines rom bad movies. You don't see me walking around quoting Robocop 3. In conclusion, this movie sucks, people say wow I can't beleive you didn't like Friday, you should see it again. My response, no the movie sucks why watch a movie that I already know sucks when I can watch one that doesn't suck like Varsity Blues.


I saw this movie quite some time ago. I am only moved to write this review because of the impending release of Next Friday, which must be stopped at all costs. This movie was just awful in every possible way. For proof of this, one only needs to note that even Chris Tucker couldn't make it funny. Ice Cube just sucked. He's one of the best MC's of all time, but he can't write or act for beans. Back to Compton, Cube!

I know I'll be dismissed by a lot of people as some whiteboy who doesn't know what it's like to live in the ghetto and doesn't see the multiple humorous levels of an old, constipated man grunting. If that's what you think, then just catch it next time on TNT (don't rent it, like I did) and post at least one funny line. Hell, post anything that didn't have you either sleeping or puking and I'll reneg on all these comments and eat my keyboard to boot.

In any case, I'm already feeling queasy and tired just remembering this movie. Kill Next Friday! Kill!


This thing doesn't even try to be funny. It's not tragic. It's not comedy. It's not anything. It's one thing for a movie to try to be funny and miss the mark, but this waste of celluloid doesn't even try. There is literally not one single line in this movie worth remembering. No setups. No punch lines. No antics. Nothing. The whole movie tries to ride on Chris Rocks goofball character but he doesn't actually do anything but sit around, get high, and jabber about nothing. Ice Cubes character is as dull as a doorknob and as flat as Kansas. I've seen wallpaper that was more entertaining than this waste of perfectly good oxygen. It couldn't have taken more than five minutes to write assuming it wasn't made up on the fly ("OK. You guys sit there and ...uh... smoke a joint and.. uh.. I know! Talk about booty or something!!"). It's a good thing Chris Rock found Rush Hour. If this movie had set his career he'd be doing standup at an Elks club in Indiana.


I was unable to see how anyone can find this movie funny. Taste is a strange thing i guess... There is not a single scene in this movie that made me laugh. Worse, there are so few scenes that i watched and considered to be MEANT to be funny. Ice cube does his bad acting once again (look at me, i'm a rapper and i have only one facial expression!) The rest is only so-so (nothing special). One of them is when the unfunny guy meets his blind date. However, you saw it coming from a mile, so it did absolutely nothing to me.

If you want to see funny bake movies, check out stuff like Harold and Kumar, or the all-time classic Half-baked.


Possible Spoilers

`Capricorn One' is largely based upon the conspiracy theories of those who believe that the Apollo moon landings never took place, but is set against the background of a fictitious manned mission to Mars. Shortly before take-off, the astronauts are ordered to leave their craft by Dr Kelloway, NASA's director of the programme. He explains to them that the mission cannot proceed because of a faulty life support system. He is, however, unwilling to announce the cancellation of the mission because this might jeopardise continued Congressional funding for the manned space-flight programme. Instead, he and his supporters in the US government have decided to fake a mission. The astronauts role will be to remain in hiding for several months and to provide film of supposed explorations of the Martian surface, after which they will return as supposed `heroes' without ever actually having left the Earth's surface.

The astronauts are initially unwilling to go along with this plan, but are persuaded to comply by the threat that their families will be murdered if they do not. Things start to go wrong, however, when, on the return journey, their spacecraft burns up while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The astronauts realise that Kelloway and his associates intend to murder them in order to maintain the illusion that they died in a space accident, and manage to escape from the NASA complex in the Texan desert where they are being held.

Apart from Kelloway himself, most of the NASA scientists are not in on the plot, but only one of them suspects that anything underhand is taking place. This man mysteriously disappears, but not before he has confided his doubts to his friend Robert Caulfield, a journalist. Caulfield realises what is going on and heads into the desert in an attempt to trace the three astronauts before Kelloway's security forces can track them down and kill them. The film ends with a frantic chase sequence, inspired by both the James Bond films and by Alfred Hitchcock. (In homage to `North by North West', a crop-dusting plane plays a role).

Although the film has a space-travel theme, it is not really a science-fiction movie, but rather a political thriller of the sort that became popular in post-Watergate America. No attempt was made to give the film a futuristic look- the clothes, hairstyles, buildings and cars are all those of the late seventies. Even the design of the Capricorn spacecraft itself was based on the Apollo craft, and the shots of the rocket taking off are supposedly archive footage of an actual NASA moonshot. This was presumably done partly to save costs but also partly to make the film's message more immediate. `The Government is lying to you- now!' is a much more compelling message than `A future Government might lie to you in fifty years time'. From the standpoint of the twenty-first century, however, the film looks dated. What it seems to be saying is `If a manned flight to Mars had been a practical possibility twenty-five years ago- which of course it wasn't- the government of that day might have lied to you about it. '

The film, however, suffers from inherent flaws which are more serious than its dated look. A political thriller may be fictional, but it must be plausible. `Capricorn One' is not. Its plot has more holes than a string vest. What is never made entirely clear is whether Kelloway planned from the beginning to murder the astronauts so they could never expose his deception, or whether he originally intended to let them live but changed his plan when the spacecraft burnt up on re-entry. Either way, however, the plot is unsatisfactory. We are asked to believe that a spacecraft designed to be flown by an on-board pilot could fly all they way from the Earth to Mars, land on Mars, take off and fly nearly all the way back to Earth. Presumably the craft would have to be remote-controlled from Earth, but we are also asked to believe that the entire corpus of scientists and technicians involved in the project, with one sole exception, would fail to notice that the craft with which they were in constant contact did not actually have anyone on board. It is not too far-fetched to imagine that the one scientist who did suspect something was wrong might be murdered to silence him, but it does strain credibility to suppose that the Government could not only have him killed but also arrange for him to disappear so completely that his family, his colleagues and all but one of his acquaintances failed to notice his disappearance. We are then asked to accept that the one acquaintance who does notice also has powers of deduction that make Sherlock Holmes look like a rank amateur and is able to work out precisely what has happened to the missing astronauts from the most tenuous of clues (such as the puzzled look of one of the astronauts' wives when her husband mentions where they spent their last family holiday). The villains seem to be able to call on an endless supply of guards prepared to obey their orders unquestioningly- none of those guards seem to have wondered how the astronauts survived the destruction of their craft or why they are now being called upon to kill men regarded as national heroes.

The film may have had the intention of making people more suspicious of their government, but occurred to me that, paradoxically, it would be more likely to have precisely the opposite effect. Rather than making me think that the Apollo missions might themselves have been faked, it- no doubt inadvertently- strengthened my belief in the reality of those missions by showing just how difficult it would be to create a fake space mission and get away with the deception. 4/10.


This was not a very good movie. In fact, I thought it was one of the worst movies I have seen. I am amazed that they got as many famous people to be in it as they did. The holes in the plot were gigantic, and they left half the story merely to be told by one of the characters in a ten minute synopsis. But I would recommend people who haven't seen it to see it. Good oldfasioned flik to make fun of.


This movie starts out with a promising premise, a manned flight to Mars is planned but just before lift off there is a problem so it is decided to surreptiously remove the astronauts from the ship and fake the whole thing (of course many people believe this is exactly what happened with the Apollo moon landing but that's a different story). The first sign that this movie going down hill fast is when James Brolin asks Hal Holbrook 'how many people know about this' and Hal replies something like 'only a few' but we have already seen about 75 people involved which later turns into about 750. The second worrying sign is when we realise that OJ has a speaking part. Then Elliot Gould turns up to do his best robot impression. We start to ask questions like how does a car accelerate like it's on a hill in San Fransisco when it's on what looks like a flat stretch of road in Houston with no foot on the gas and why when Elliot Gould is arrested by the conspirators on a fake charge is he released the same night to continue his investigations. Unfortunately this movie has no redeemimg features.


"Capricorn One" has a promising beginning: that story about the NASA faking the images of the arrival to Mars makes you think that's gonna be a nice politic film full of suspense. Anyway as the movie gets on the script turns completely tricky and so absurd, the plot splits into several parallel plots and there's a huge loss of intensity. Besides, nor OJ Simpson neither James Brolin are the best actors ever.

A nice air chase with airplanes and helicopters and some entertaining sequences. That's all that you'll find in "Capricorn One"...

*My rate: 4/10

------------ ------------ ------------


Unfortunately this is probably the worst movie that I have ever seen. It does not hold the viewers interest and is boring to the extreme. Acting poor, Sets, terrible. Obviously a low cost budget movie, which should have done every-one a favour and stayed in 1978 where it belongs - Old and unwanted. Sorry - but I doubt if even Bill Collins would have endured this one.


Peter Hymans directed "2010" (1984) one of my favorite films over the years. I read many previous reviews here on this database so I went to rent it...I wish I hadn't! "Capricorn One" should be called "Crap/Corn 101" it's horribly dated with poor effects, lame characters and campy acting from people who should know better. It starts out promising enough, but goes awry and on and on with a terrible ending that leaves you wanting for something. "Capricorn One" is a relic of the late 70s' and should be viewed only as a historical oddity (ie: A pre-scandal O.J. Simpson, the then 'Mr. Barbra Striesand', Elliot Gould and the future 'Mr. Barbra Striesand', James Brolin together!).

Final rating: 4/10 "A below average movie. It may have some wonderful elements but on the whole I cannot endorse it."


I really wanted to like this movie. I was hoping for a classic late 70's paranoia film in the mold of The Parallax View and similar films of that era. Unfortunately, while it boasts a great premise and it's got some interesting bits here and there, it ultimately failed to satisfy on many levels.

It would take a while to catalogue all the flaws in this movie, but I'll try to hit the basic points. The characters are extremely underdeveloped, both from the script and the wooden acting (with a few exceptions). Nobody seems to have any motivation besides "I'm an astronaut," "I'm a sleazy vice-president," "I'm a nefarious NASA director," etc. That's not necessarily the worst possible flaw for a movie, but it does mean that the plot needs to carry movie instead of the characters, and sadly, that just doesn't add up either.

I won't go into specifics, but some of the things that happen in the plot just strained my incredulity too much. I don't mean the major plot point, about the mars mission, but rather an accumulation of little details that just seemed totally unrealistic even though I was able to buy the overall idea of the movie.

Add to all of that a really awful ending that seemed as though the writers just hit a deadline and tacked something on, which also features some totally egregious slow-motion shots (cut back and forth with regular-speed shots! The effect is amazingly tacky).

The only things that prevented this from getting a lower rating from me were the interesting premise and a few scenes featuring witty banter between the always reliable Elliott Gould and Karen Black(!). I'd watch this if it came on TV, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it as a rental.


In truth, I loathe this film - if I have to say anything positive it would be that the chases are quite good. Everything else about the movie stinks. The performances from the principal actors (Holbrook excepted) are painful, the use of a lunar module in the faked Mars landing scenes would not fool a 10 year old viewer. The factual mistakes are too numerous to list, but I guess that the average ignorant viewer would miss most goofs.

I suppose it appeals to UFO, Atlantis, Area 51 and Moon Landing Conspiracy people, and I suppose that it does a service - adding to their sad, empty lives.

Still,I think everyone should watch this once, it's enjoyable trash.


I caught this at a film festival, and I won't be surprised if it gets pulled the weekend after it opens in its limited release in New York and Los Angeles. It's just not watchable.

This is a disappointing sophomore attempt by Jamal, who resorts to the same old one-liners delivered by stereotypical characters - so wooden and absent of any development that the viewer never quite connects with any of them.

Loretta Devine is good - but not great. I've seen her in far better work. Her skills are out of place with the pedestrian acting capabilities of the rest of the cast and the "phone-it-in" direction.

The only thing worse than the terrible production values is the predictable story. I found myself looking at my watch half way through the film, hoping for the end after I finally realized I didn't care about the story, the characters, or the outcome of the plot. What a disappointment for the black LGBT community.

Save your money - my hunch is that this will be buried in the 99 cent give-away bin at local drugstores.


I agree Loretta Devine is a joy to watch. Even with the sub-par dialog she's given, she works wonders.

The plot is shopworn, but I wouldn't care if it were done cleverly. It isn't, but what really torpedoes this movie is the lackluster dialog, especially as the main character is supposed to represent a writer. I'm not speaking of those colorful explosions of verbosity that occasionally punch through--I'm speaking of all the exposition. All that dialog about who is where and why and how. It's as dull as donuts. The writer missed a lot of potential fun with words, I think.

I also think this film suffers from poor editing. There is a lot of slow cutting, probably for anticipated laughs, but the situations rarely generate the laughs to fill up the time. Not from me, anyway. Truly, I think cutting 15 or 20 minutes out of this film would help it a lot.

The performances are generally good, though I thought combining over-the-top caricatures with low-key realism made for a confusing mix. Pick a style and stick to it.


I can truly say this is the weakest and worst SH game yet in the series. It was -very- frustrating! The new 'power up' charge attacks are useless. You'll get whaled on by a monster every time if you try to use 'em. The female characters have been extra "whored-up". The male character extra "dumbed-down", (even by poor James' standards. Buffer does not mean better.) I can say that -any- game that makes you care for an extra person (tag-along female player) always annoys me, and Eileen was NO different. They should have taken clues from the newest Resident Evil (that latest tag-along gal DUCKS when you tell her to and automatically gets out of the way of the weapons when you're trying to attack.) All right: I still own it, and I even pre ordered this, since I'm a giant fan. I do play it, occasionally. The music score was great, as always. The details and monsters good...although I miss the -old-style- gum-heads and dogs. (Those ape critters got on my nerves with their screeching too.) The plot was good.

As soon as Eileen joins my party though: ruined. I hate carting around dead weight like that. I found myself cursing more than usual at any time when I play a SH game, and the fun level deteriorated rapidly after she joined up with me. I simply play up to the part when she joins and then lose interest every time. There's also no good 'extra weapon'. The extra is...what? A weapon for, you guessed it: Eileen. Like anyone's going to dare equip her sorry butt with anything stronger than a purse. O_|| I gave this a 4.

It's not even halfway up to par with the rest of the SH games, even the first, which I've played countless times.


After The Office and Extras revitalised British comedy, and after the success of disturbing Chris Morris works; BrassEye and Jam, The I.T. Crowd is a lofty step backwards for all involved. Morris, Noel Fielding, Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry have all been far better elsewhere. And while Graham Linehan's sentimental sitcom leanings roped in his surrealist writing partner, Arthur Mathews, to make Father Ted a genuine classic, without Mathews, Linehan is free to indulge in the sub-FRIENDS/Seinfeld sitcom he was always in danger of making. It fact, writing is so hackneyed and predictable that the series feels like a real life version of When The Whistle Blows.

Graham Linehan said that I.T. was fertile comedy ground that no one else had cottoned on to. He used the analogy of a bag of money sitting in the center of the room which nobody had noticed and picked up. It never occurred to him that smarter minds than his had passed on the opportunity for a reason. Several in fact. Computers aren't interesting, office based comedy is obsolete after The Office, sitcoms are dead, everyone hates audience laughter (he insists that it is filmed in front of a live studio audience, but really, who cares! It's awful!) etc etc. Characters are broad and one dimensional, you can see the jokes coming, and there are only two standing sets. The majority of on screen antics take place in a grotty basement set, decorated to resemble a teenager's bedroom. Roy (the obligatory Irishman, certainly no Dylan Moran or Dermot Morgan) and his cohort Moss are played as children as adults. The 'catchphrase' "Are you 'aving a laug..." I mean, "Have you tried turning it off and on?" is about as far as the show delves into Information Technology. Jen the arbitrary female, and broad failed professional woman stereotype (obsessed with shoes, long suffering in a quest to find a man) is proof (if any were needed) that Graham can't write female parts. Expect many scenes where Jen laments her life while Roy plays video games.

There are a few episodes that exceed the suffocating s(h)itcom format, and are funny, even quotable. But as the characters are stock, there is no room for any development or investment. Being British means that it is able to push things further than the American dross it apes, at times excel past it, but that really isn't saying much. The cast are more than competent, and do their best with what little they are given. It's a crying shame that Linehan didn't apply these scenarios and actors to another series of Big Train. And that Chris Morris didn't pen Nathan Barley earlier.


The title of this comment is as original as the writing of this programme, what is disguised as witty, alternate comedy is in fact old sitcom rubbish reinvented to create the illusion of decent new age comedy.

What the hell is this!? surely channel 4 can put their money to better use? this really is the definition of lazy script writing and poor acting. Terrible, being a fan of "The Mighty Boosh" starring guest star of "the i.t. crowd" Noel Fielding I decided to tune in to watch this garbage. That was my first mistake, after the pilot I hoped it would get better, that was my second mistake. Don't waste your time. If you want to watch alternate popular comedy watch Garth Mareghis Dark Place or Mighty Boosh, steer clear from this.


Halfway into the 00's, it looks as if CBS is trying to bring back what was a regular event on broadcast TV in the 70's and 80's -- the totally lame low budget TV-movie.

While I don't watch movies or shows that are appalling to me (thus explaining why I watched "Locusts" rather than "Desperate Housewives"), I am entertained by pictures that I find ridiculous. I only caught the last half-hour of CBS' last hastily served pseudo-big event, "Spring Break Shark Attack," and only the young that hasn't seen "Jaws" didn't know what that movie was before seeing it. Whatta hoot. Like "SBSA", the scenes in "Locusts" are eminently predictable.

As my summary above indicates, I really do miss Mike, Joel, Servo and Crow cracking wise at the inanity of movies like "Locusts." Prime scenes for their barbs would have been (SPOILERS!): the opening one where the assistant, showing off for her bug-fearing boyfriend, goes into the chamber full of locusts without putting on a jumpsuit; the following scene with the semi-naked Lucy Lawless (sing the National Anthem again for us, Lucy!) cutting short what should have been a romantic interlude with her chiseled-torsoed boyfriend (played by the wooden Dylan Neal), who whines like a child about how her prestigious Washington position takes her from his bed; the school bus scene when the daughter of the locusts' breeder calls for her daddy; the meeting with the USDA and the Dept. of Homeland Security, in which Lawless briefs a panel wearing full dress uniforms while she is dressed in skin-tight jeans; the inevitable expression of remorse from the entomologist, prior to his bloody demise; the scene in the Pittsburgh office, with the b-day party being interrupted by a picture window full of bugs (plus the revelation that the office hunk is even wimpier than Lawless' bf); the scene in the chopper when Lawless declares she's hormonal due to her pregnancy, and just might kill everyone in the chopper if the DHS doesn't change its drastic plan; the climactic kiss that is interrupted by the buzzing of the swarm; and just about every scene in which people are warned about the locusts' pending arrival -- first, they're in denial; minutes later, they're running for their lives.

I gave this movie three stars for each of the three best things about "Locusts": the eye candy. Her Lawlessness herself, the "MILF"-ish Natalia Nogulich, and the birthday girl from the office, the sexy, magnetic, and buxom Azure Dawn, who, according to her IMDb page, is going to be in CBS' upcoming "Elvis" mini-series as "sequined actress." I can hardly wait!

Keep an eye out for Azure Dawn in the future. On second thought, keep both eyes out. You don't want to miss anything!


Oh my, oh my, oh my. Awful doesn't even begin to describe this moronic waste of time. This movie is really just an incessant cell phone ringing and someone picking it up looking harried and worried. Yet another reason to hate technology--infesting the movies now with cell phones to eat up the scenery. Wow, kept me riveted! This blech of a movie is pathetic and I'm a huge fan of science fiction. This doesn't exactly harken back to the good old sci-fi/B movies of the past--it is insulting and a grind to watch. I was hoping the locusts would eat everyone and start with the people with cell phones parked at their heads.


This sort of thing has been done many times before with bees,slugs,rats and even ticks so why not a creature feature with locusts. This is a made for TV feature starring one time butt kicking warrior princess Lucy Lawless. A swarm of genetically engineered locusts escape from a laboratory and head across America creating a swathe of destruction as they go. This may have been an interesting idea on the drawing board but it has one big problem, the locusts just don't feel threatening.In classic films such as The Birds and The Swarm you feel threatened by the creatures but in this the locusts are more likely to induce a yawn rather than any sense of panic or terror.Half way through the feature the locusts turn carnivorous and this gave me the feeling that ideas had started to run out. I know Lucy Lawless may be trying to move away from Xena but surely she could choose better vehicles for her talent than this half baked attempt at creature feature terror. The dialogue was forced, the direction was slow and probably because the locusts were CGI based they didn't even begin to bring me out in even a Luke warm sweat. I give this 4/10 and that is only because of Lucy Lawless.I will always be a Lucy Lawless fan and anything she is in deserves some sort of score. My advice to anyone out there is to avoid this feature at all costs.


You know when you pass by a car wreck and you know that it's something bad, but you just have to look at it. Well, this is that movie! For the most part it has bad acting and a really silly plot. The only reason that I'm giving it a four is because the Locusts actually look really good when grouped up and close-ups are real Locusts. Some of the government action seems pretty realistic, except for this one General that wants to spray VX-Nerve Gas, but that's really all I can say good about this movie. If your so board out of your mind and you can't sleep then laugh yourself to sleep at this movie. If you have better things to do then you know what to do. I give this movie a very giving 4 out of 10!


This couldn't be funnier, even if it had intended to be. It is a 21st century rendition of those awful 1950s drive-in fodder, supersized radioactive insect movies. It just doesn't know its a parody. It really thinks it's a serious movie. As a result, it has turned out much funnier than Date Movie, Epic Movie and Scary Movie, all the uninspired clones of the Zucker brothers' wonderfully screwy Airplane (Flying High down under) and Naked Gun flicks.

Great sets, nice photography but the praise stops there. The script is stupid and the acting is atrocious. Grab snacks and laugh your head off. Lucy Lawless is a scientist battling swarms of carnivorous locust, a CYA secretary of agriculture and an army general eager to gas the bugs and most of America. All are of about equal intelligence. Well, maybe collectively the grasshoppers are smarter. Remarkable, given they are all stick-on props and CGI.

BTW, the unintentional humour is so raucous I never pegged Xena until I came to IMDb. She isn't nearly so visually arresting out of leather. Her estranged boyfriend though, another scientist, is another matter. He could push this flick over with specialized audience niches. It was guffaw time for me when he walked into Command Central and was introduced as a leader in some sort of scientific field. Square jawed, wavy haired and such a caricature of handsome, you know he must have just come straight from his other job. As an underwear model.

Low moments but big laughs: Every time Lucy jumps up and down like an 11-year-old trying to get the attention of a doubting bigwig. When the biggest mid-script plot turn is the "reveal" that Lucy is pregnant. Prime moment for a line something like, "You remember that night. You came straight home after shooting the g-string commercials and you were unstoppable." No matter; viewers are already laughing so hard they'd have missed the line.

Oh yes, and those amazing CGI effects! Really love the computer simulations of the USA at Command Central where the dark swarms of dots (representing the locusts, ya know) spread across several states as fast as spilled water covers a granite counter top.

Enough already. You get it. Do NOT approach this as serious entertainment.

Oh, I forgot. There is one good performance. It's Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H) as a man outstanding in his field. You got it; a farmer. That's cuz the locusts attack all the crops in Midwestern America. Those good, honest folk don't deserve such diss.


As an electrician, the final resolution for the posed problem is not just beyond possibility... It's beyond reasoning and certainly not plausible except to the most uneducated or jaded viewer. And to partially blame the hybrid hopper on Australia! Who writes this stuff? The premise, while fantastic, could have been much better executed. For all intents it appears that the writers have taken their 90 minutes of screen time, built their story (albeit thin), executed the major plot points (how did the bugs survive the truck on the airfield tarmac?) and then tried to coast home on some pitifully thin technical excuse for a solution. Thank goodness for weather balloons, silver streamers & diverted voltage!!! Give me a break.


This movie didn't start out too bad, we get straight to Lucy Lawless in her underwear. Hey, can't beat that. Actually, Lawless is quite a good actress, something I never would have known from watching Zena. One of the more enjoyable parts about this movie was her relationship with her boyfriend. But that's not good when we're supposed to be enjoying the locusts.

After the first hour, the movie really loses its way. The writers seem more interested in bashing on the military than continuing the story they began in the first half. Basically, the "good" characters don't have a clue what to do, but they're more than happy to criticize the plan the military comes up with. A very dangerous plan indeed, but the military isn't given the opportunity of coming up with laughably absurd ideas and then having them work. Only Lawless and her boyfriend are allowed that option. Probably the dumbest scene in the whole movie is when they're in the helicopter and Lawless starts trying to kill everybody. Um, I think they would have probably had her locked up for the rest of the movie, but they act like nothing happened! That's the type of stuff that really distinguishes writers from hacks.

Then of course there's the scene in the barn. I mean, c'mon, even movies with 1/10th the budget of this thing don't take such liberties with common sense. If you want to electrify the exterior of a barn and two silos, you just hook up a generator to it? Oh, yeah. We are dumb aren't we? The problem was that the writers were so carried away with harping on the military for coming up with a solution that was extremely dangerous that they had to come up with some way of killing all the locusts in a completely safe way in order to draw a contrast between good and bad, but they just didn't have a clue how to do it in a way that anyone over the age of 9 wouldn't laugh at. Actually my 9 year old was laughing. Maybe the writers should have skipped the whole thing about demonizing the military, because they didn't have any better solution themselves? Nah, that would require maturity.

I give it 4 stars based solely on the performance of Lucy Lawless, which was really the only thing good about this.


Lucy Lawless must have needed a payday very badly to sign up for this opus.

Genetically enhanced locust (created by the evil military) are terrorizing the countryside, and the evil military only seem to want to consider chemical or nuclear options to fix it.

The plot is moronic, the characters wooden, the acting bad, and the special effects look cheap.

This is the worst piece of drivel I've seen in years. There is nothing to recommend it. Avoid at all costs.

Xena, where are you when we need you?


Possible spoilers due to references to other literatureassuming you can't guess the ending within the first few minutes.

OK folks, I have a dirty little secret: I really love crummy sci-fi picks. Bad acting, scripts, cheap effects and breaking the laws of physics just make my day. Plan 9 from Outer Space holds a special place in my heart.

While Locusts passed the test on each of these, it will probably (or should) be quickly forgotten, being more schlock than entertainment. Also, as somebody else mentioned, the bug close-ups are actually pretty good, so Locust kinda loses a few points in the cheesy effects category. The cliché alarm rings constantly, from the mandatory troubled romance to the divorced father with the cranky kids to the gruff military general who allows a civilian to boss him around to the national politics to the job climbers to theyou get the picture.

Important things of note:

The brilliant lead scientist sometimes wears hip huggers, a low cut top and no bra, and is photographed from above. I guess they had to do **something** to keep male viewers watching. Hello women: tell me, was there anything to keep you interested in this piece of garbage?

A huge group of 20-somethings stand around watching bazillions of bugs up close as they cover the windows, yet none shriek, barf, or any of the other normal expected reactions.

If you have a basic knowledge of electricity (i.e. current only flows in a complete circuit), you will have problems with this flick. Forget it if you understand high voltage, current capacities, grounding, welding, and arcing.

The movie wraps everything up in the last 15 minutes. I won't say what happens, but if the "feel good" parts of the ending don't make you toss your popcorn, you're one tough viewer.

There's a genetic reference at the end that made no sense whatsoever, but I'm not a bio major.

There is a remarkable parallel to Carl Stephenson's classic short story "Leiningen versus the Ants." This is great literature (for real); if you haven't read it, spend 10 minutes at http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/shorts/lvta.html. It's top notch.

There is a remarkable parallel to one of my favorite crummy Sci-Fi movies "Night of the Lepus." Check out the IMDb reviews of this beauty.

This movie was a total waste of time on all levels.

1 Star


For me this fell just short of the 'so bad its good' threshold - if this were just a degree worse, it would be terrific. Makes the TV disaster movies of my youth - remember the one about the Killer Bees and the super-dome - seem inspired. Terrible writing - that Doug Prochilo has quite a career ahead of him - some gloriously uninspired performances - the guy who plays 'The General' acts like a small town anchorman who swallowed a bad actor - and John Heard may have sunk to a new low. Thank heavens for veteran heavy-hitter Mike Farrell, who does magnificently chasing after some cows, or was that a double? Well, I hope it was fun to shoot, I'm happy for all the folks who got their start on this project, and I hope they all got paid real good - can I have my two hours back, now?


Just finished watching this and its a pretty bad film. A poor storyline, a rubbish script, and another low budget film where everything goes well for the good, and the bad get punished or learn a "valuable" lesson (even though really it was the leading female characters fault for closing down the research in the first place). The leading female character is always right and seems to be an expert in every field telling people what do (another low budget trait). This film just regurgitates all the bad things about low budget disaster movies. Its a shame because if this had been directed and scripted in more of a unique way, it could have brought back feelings of the old B movies about bugs etc.


Between this CBS Made-for-TV movie and the similarly titled SciFi Original "Locusts: the 8th Plague," 2005 was one whopper of a year for killer locusts. It's bad enough we have our hands full in the Middle East, but now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has its hands full with locusts. Surprisingly, the CBS movie had much better special effects. But otherwise "The 8th Plague" was a better, if predictable, movie. The problem with "Locusts" is that it's not really a horror movie. It's almost like the producers said, "Let's figure out what would happen if we had to deal with a swarm of locusts and film it documentary-style." I expect blood and guts when I watch these movies, which there is very little of here. To be honest, this movie is probably a little better than the 1 I gave it -- at least the lady who plays Xena the Warrior Princess was good in this movie. And "The 8th Plague" is probably a little worse than the 4 I gave that movie. But it's the principle that matters. Maybe the CBS locusts and the SciFi locusts can get together in a future movie and have a throw-down brawl, a la Freddy vs. Jason, and we can really figure out who's badder.


I cannot wait to see the goofs start on this horrible, horrible movie... The biggest goof had to be paying the writers who came up with this drivel and called it a story. Aggghhhhh Judging from the speed of the swarm crossing Indiana and Illinois, those locusts had to be doing Mach 4 or so... fast little buggers! I was also impressed with the careful military handling of VX.. providing everyone with full face respirators who handled it. Sheesh people, VX is a nerve gas, and is SKIN ABSORBED too... the gas masks wouldn't have made a seconds worth of difference.

I also choked on my drink when a certain person died from being bitten a couple times.. sheesh, I survived bike accidents with more wounds than he had! I want my my time back!


This is the danger we run into with the new breed of low priced hi-def cameras becoming more readily available...cheap, quickly made garbage. I just can't figure out how it managed to make it all the way to TV??? Was this a USC brat? The son, brother or friend of a powerful Hollywood producer? A laughable plot from beginning to end with some of the worst direction ever to make it to Network. Simple remedial amateur filmmaker mistakes, such as breaking the "180 degree rule" and lack of "continuity of motion" and much much more. I laughed at the mistakes from beginning to end. Example: 1.) Lucy lawless takes a pregnancy test...instead of the test reading blue or pink it reads pregnant! Yet she still has to match the results with the packaging before she reacts. 2.) The inertia of 1,000 locusts would not be enough to break an average pane of glass. 3.) Locust jaws are not strong enough to break through human skin, let alone devour cattle...and so on. This is just an absolute piece of trash. The people who wrote, directed and produced this monstrosity should leave their careers behind and never be allowed to make another heap like this. The entertainment industry is small and there isn't enough space for hacks like them. Now I just can't wait for "Riding in Buses With My Sister" and "Elvis".


First of all, I agree that the plot left something to be desired, but lots of you guys were either too busy laughing or griping to notice that there were explanations for some of the things you guys are knocking. For example, the research couldn't be done on butterflies because they wouldn't pose a threat to any country--hello, the Dept.of Defense financed the study. The pregnancy test thing, does anyone know if they actually say "pregnant" these days? But her looking at the label wasn't stupid, really. All women would have done the same, just to be sure. My only real problem--there was no explanation for this, not even a ridiculous one: did they just leave Peter in the silo? Did they tell his family? Some closure, please! I also agree John Heard should be above this, but who knows his reasons? And the "wooden" acting. Yep, for some characters--some extras, especially the kids, seemed to be smiling with delight rather than wincing in terror, but hey, they are kids (the little girl who played Sofia was quite real, though. I'd keep an eye out for her in the future.) The adult extras and some small roles though, no excuse for them. Enough rambling, my point is this: It was a bug thriller--what did you expect? I enjoyed it for what it was worth, and I bet it was fun to make.


In preparation for this movie, the writers underwent a serious process. The writers went into a room and armed themselves with a jar full of movie clichés. They pulled out one after another. "Military man wants action that could endanger the world." "Sappy love story between two main characters" "Scientist realizes his experiments have condemned the world to doom." "Heroes find a way to fight dire problem with help of a coincidence." I swear, this movie was made by Trey Parker of South Park fame. Watch the episode Die, Hippy Die, and this film eerily mimics that overly clichéd plot line. A small difference, however-South Park is meant to parody. This film was also a testament to how badly Lucy Lawless needs work. My god, Xena, how the mighty have fallen. One positive, however, is that this film really made me and my friends laugh like crazy. If you still want to see it, go into it thinking of it as a comedy. Believe me, it's much better that way.


This has to be a candidate for the worst movie ever made! We haven't seen a bigger load of trash in decades! It's not even one of those movies that is so bad it's funny - it's just plain bad in every way - the plot - the script - the cast - the effects - all terrible. You can't help but wonder how movies like this ever get made? I mean, who would read a script like this and say "hey, this is great, let's make it" or "hey, this is great, I'd like to audition for this movie".

Even if there is nothing else on TV, don't waste your time - turn it off and listen to the radio - go for a walk - play a game - read a book - anything is preferable to suffering though this abomination!


Yes, that's right. Because my D'Onofrio as Det. Goren in L&O:CI was interrupted by an episode of The Contender, which also merits discussion somewhere, I was forced to watch this nonsense. I'm fairly certain that if I was given a typewriter with 6 keys and 20 minutes, my script of Locusts would have been better. The general premise is amazing in that bioengineered locusts somehow escape their scientific compound. This leads to an brilliant display of obvious things, namely pregnant women and biblical references. This movie actually contains lines such as: "I'm pregnant and hormonal, now land this 'copter". And: "You did it.", "No, we did it." I'm not sure when I'll be able to keep food down again. Completely unacceptable. The saving grace of this movie came in the commercial breaks, which touted an excellent new Hallmark classic starring Rosie O'Donnell and Andie MacDowell, two actresses who have no business in show business. One of them plays a mentally handicapped person and if you can't tell which one it is, then I think that says something about each of their acting abilities. At any rate, Locusts was an offense to good taste everywhere and the film industry has been set back at least a decade. Hollywood really needs to adopt a Xenaphobic policy.


Television has spoiled me in the last few weeks...I saw the unbelievable Warm Springs, the very well done Mork and Mindy story, and Rosie O'Donell's heartwarming Riding The Bus. For every great Gem is a great big lump of poo and here it is...Locusts!! First this has been done numerous times before and I don't just mean the premise...the actual Locusts thing and it's just dumb. They had to have known that?? Director David Jackson has done enough decent Television to know a stinker doesn't he? Locusts is the "story" of a scientist who was secretly developing an unkillable swarm of locusts in his lab...don't ask why...we'll never know. When his boss Maddy Rierdon discovers this she insists that the Locusts be destroyed but unfortunately a few of them escape and due to their massive re population powers they intensify to a deadly swarm that will within days eviscerate the entire crops of the United States...and then I assume settle in Hawaii for a vacation...sorry....Now Maddy together with her estranged boyfriend, and the scientist who created them must figure out a way to stop these locusts or save the countries crops from their destruction.

The story is just so incredibly plot holed it's disgusting. The team moves around the country effortlessly from one end to the other in seemingly minutes. There is a pointless love story entwined in the middle of this, and it seemed like the writer got to a point in the story where they said...good enough I give up...electrocute them all and let's move on the a new project. It's not only the writers fault, the cast is god awful. John Heard who I really respect as an actor plays the completely shallow and empty character of the creator of the bugs. He shows no emotion or depth but then no one does. Star of the film...what a claim to fame...Lucy Lawless, looks great, finally out of the whole Xena thing. But she does an equally crappy job. They are all vapid and unemotional and BORING!! The locusts are also BORING...although I have to give slight kudos to the fact that it doesn't look like a big swarm of computer animated bugs flying around. But you don't ever get that creepy crawly feeling a bug movie should give you. The film has one or two spots of slight excitement before dive bombing into B-Movie crap. Avoid this one like a plague of locusts. 4/10


Wow. Nice concept, but... terrible dialog throughout most of it. A lot of the CG seriously sucked and most of the acting was surprisingly disappointing. All in all, this movie was good for a few laughs, just like most b-movies are.

One thing stood out though... Stacey, the office birthday girl. What in heaven's name was some one of her calibur doing in a low budget cheese fest like this?! Despite some of the silly dialog ("...and a bag of chips."), she was believable as her character and shined through. That was the best acting in the entire movie! Can you believe this is the same girl who played the mentally challenged girl in "Heart of the Storm"?! At the pace she is going, Azure Dawn will be a household name in the not too distant future.


I am going to give the reader until the end of this short critique to figure out how the bugs were killed. Because with all of these so called scientist, experts working on how to kill them you would think the solution would be harder then taking a trip to your local Home Depot. This movie is so bad it was good. First thing I didn't get the time-line. The man who dastardly invented these mutant bugs seems to also have picked up the use of super warp speed traveling while working in the lab late at night. One minute he is in Virginia and the next minute he is in Pittsburgh. Same goes for the scientist couple. One minute they are living together the next scene they are separated and she is pregnant. And there was no indication that this was 2 months later..it was like the next day. They are married but for some reason they seem to keep their marriage a secret. Why I do not know. They work for two different agencies. Then we have her father thrown into the mix. Who just happens to be a farmer in the Midwest straight in the path of the Bugs. We see Lucy Loveless who plays the lead seemingly drive to Indiana with the redeemed dastardly scientist ( who BTW daughter was attacked by locust and is now in a coma)from the DC area in warp speed time to warn her father who I guess does not have a radio or TV but has have a super sleek cell phone that the bugs are coming straight for him! Meantime we have the real villain..no not the bugs, not the dastardly scientist but a angry 4 star General who seems a little too eager to gas people with the same poison used by Sadaam Hussian (as were are reminded) to kill the bugs. We see a scene with what looked like a herd of sheep but I think it is cattle since we later find out they were eaten by the locust. They are now carnivorous! This is getting better then that classic movie Frogs. Most of the movie is spent watching scenes of locust swarming down on crowds..causing mayhem at a airport but no one is killed by locust eating them. Except one person toward the end after we find out that they like to eat flesh.but no other reports of death by Locust. And he looks like he was attacked by Slugs. The rest of the movie is spent in a battle of the wills between the Maniacal General and the husband and wife scientist trying to find a way to kill the bugs without killing folks. We have the usual war room scenes too. OK OK time is up for the solution. Seems like the good old Bug Zapper was the solution. This they figure out while bugs get zapped while trying to get into a silo! Yes one giant bug zapper. One had to think that during a day in the backyard having a barbecue someone would of noticed what those things hanging up off a tree limb was there for. Considering every time any bug got near it meant certain death. Kind of like seeing this movie.


(This post contains spoilers, so don't scroll down too far too quickly if you don't want to know what happens) I, being a huge Lucy Lawless fan, could not wait to see this movie. My dad and I sat through the entire 2 hours, which feels more like 4, the entire time thinking and saying "This is so unbelievable..!!", at one point my dad even said that she (Lucy Lawless) must have owed someone a favor..That's how surprised we were that she would be doing something like this. The plot is hard to believe (This coming from someone who couldn't believe more strongly in suspension of disbelief) and it seems the characters overreact, getting the government involved so early on? Their first result using nerve gas that was originally for the war in Iraq? I tried so hard to like this movie, but the final straw was..**SPOILER SPOILER**

When the man who created the locusts is helping Maddy get fuel for their solution, and is KILLED by the locusts..Now, I could see if he staggered in COVERED by them and bleeding to death barely able to walk, but he appeared to only have a swollen eye and cuts on his face. Granted his face was beaten up, I didn't think that an injury like that could kill someone...All in all the only reason to watch this movie would be to see Lucy. She is an incredible actress, but sadly, even she could not save this movie.


spring break shark attack proved to be the superior CBS spring movie. i was thoroughly disappointed by this movie. the release of the locusts was weak to say the least. however the acting wasn't horrible. i wish axlerod would've been the bad guy because that is an awesome name for a villain.

the humor attempted in the movie was god awful. they could've made it more suspenseful and eventually sold it to sci-fi. there is no way this movie will ever be on the sci-fi channel. it is that bad. i don't think anyone is truly scared by locusts after watching that film.

they needed to explore the office love affair more deeply. that might have saved it.


After seeing all the hype from TV promos I Watched this TV film today. Other reviewer have rated it one (1) star - surprisingly, one rater thought it was an "oscar worthy movie". I don't know what that rater watched, nor do I understand how he arrived at his posted rating - which IS more than a little high. What I watched was a film that was full of bad writing, Wooden acting and an uninspired story. Then there is the so-so FX which help make watching this movie a waste of 2 hours. Guess I hoped for more than was shown, pity; thought this may have had promise, maybe even a plausible story. What I saw was a movie that is food for termites.


Having heard so much about it online, The Mad Death ultimately turned out to be a disappointment when I finally obtained it on DVD. The main highlights turned out to be its opening sequence and an eerie synthesizer score.

The main problem with the miniseries is that it is not particularly well written. Many of the characters are too dumb to care about, picking up animals that are clearly rabid even to an untrained eye, and not bothering to have animal bites checked out by a doctor. Furthermore, the film has a certain element of predictability about it, with many of the plot developments telegraphed in advance.

Moreover, there is a disturbing lack of violent animal attacks in the film. If one purchases a film called The Mad Death about a rabies epidemic, the least one would expect would be a good, violent mauling every fifteen minutes or so. Most of the violence here is directed toward the animals, mainly gunshots to the head.


A woman smuggles her cat into the UK, an illegal act, the ban on animals traveling having been put in place to retain the country's Rabies free status. The woman is unaware that her cat has just been in an altercation with a fox, but back in the UK it begins to act odd. After a series of scenes involving the passing of the deadly virus from animal to animal, an American businessman Tom Siegler (Ed Bishop) resident in the UK comes across a seemingly stunned fox at the side of the road. The fox appears docile and is amiable to being petted, so Siegler takes him home, but the fox soon turns on him, Bishop becomes infected and is the first to die. The authorities become aware and immediately set in place some restrictions in the area, a cordon is placed within a five mile radius of his house. Michael Hilliard is a veterinary expert who is persuaded to take charge of the investigation and straight away he sets out to find anyone who came in contact with the dead man before he died, his actions and restrictions don't go down well with local animal lovers and the press also make him out to be a bit of a loon. But as the virus spreads, he seems to be justified, but can he restrict the spread and make the country virus free again? In the 80's there was a real fear that rabies aka "The Mad Death", might spread to the UK, there were frightening TV advertisements to warn and scare the public away from smuggling animals into the country from the continent where Rabies was widespread. A frightening premise for a film? well sure the reality of it is scary, but to make it as a horror The Mad Death really needed to push home the fear, sadly it doesn't. The Fear element just isn't explored, The Mad Death is called that for a reason, its a terrible death, but these factors are just not explored well enough to either strike fear into the viewer or to deter would be smugglers. Little or no tension is built up, too much time is spent early on showing in a rather dull way, how it spreads from fox to cat to fox to dog to human and so on, that soon the viewer will be asking what all the fuss is about. I can also say that I have never seen animal lovers portrayed in such a bad light, every single one in the Mad Death, is played as crazy or with murderous intentions, they have no interest in stopping the spread of the virus, even the merest of actions like keeping your dog indoors is treated with apathy and anger, all in all not very believable. The acting is stilted beyond belief, with numerous silences and laboured pauses, actors staring into space and these aren't the ones that are infected. There's also a love triangle going on that is dull in the extreme. The restrictions set in place by police and Dept of Agriculture are also quite laughable in their laxness, if such an outbreak occurred in reality, the UK would be absolutely doomed. Now i realize some elements of plot have to be there to further the story, but here it is pushed to ridiculous extremes. So has the Mad Death got anything going for it? well, there are a few interesting set pieces, a rabid fox locked in a garage, a rabid Alsatian loose in a shopping mall, spring to mind, but even these are lazily handled. In a time when viruses are a real threat to humanity, its hard to get scared by a poodle and a Labrador running wild in a forest. If the filmmakers were out to scare the audience they failed miserably, if they were out to educate the public as to the risks, they also failed as its a little too preachy


The ambitious script deserves some credit for the way it keeps intercutting the past with the present tense, a technique that results in some intriguing effects; in one scene we see somebody killed, in the next scene there he is, moving and talking! But, the pace of the film is plodding, the performances detached and completely unengaging (or maybe the characters are detached and completely unengaging; in any case, you don't sympathize with them), the direction too "arty" (for example, a driving scene with no dialogue runs about five minutes, while one of Karen Black's "melancholy" songs plays on the soundtrack). Plus, the VHS print I saw was SEVERELY damaged. (**)


I picked this up in a cheap DVD bin. I immediately recognized as 1 of 2 movies that I saw when I was a starving (pretty much literally) student living away from home for the first time, in 1973, and couldn't resist picking it up and giving it a look, that many years later.

As other reviewers have noted, the promotion for the movie is pretty, ahem, imaginative. There's not a lot of sex (hardly any, actually), very little nudity, any reference to homosexuality is passing and irrelevant, there is no horror other than the horror of murder and violent death by knife and gun (we need more???), and it is not oriented towards the supernatural beyond the fact that the villains dabble in black masses -- there are no otherworldly events, no actual contact with the devil a la Rosemary's Baby or Devil's Advocate.

So it's really a detective story. The device of tracking parallel time-lines does add some suspense and tension (exactly what did happen to this girl, and will the detective crack the case); however, I found that the tension peaked somewhere around mid-movie, and the trip to the end more or less plodded to anti-climatic conclusions to both time-lines.

Unrealistic (as I imagine them) scenes certainly contributed to that plodding effect. At one point, amidst wild gunfire, a uniformed policeman tells the arriving detective, "he's up there and he's got one of our men as hostage", and then resumes shooting in the general direction. Uh, yea.

Now, there are unexpected pleasures to be wrought from watching obscure movies now and then, and while I generally am pretty resistant to the 'oh wow, I've been there' effect, I did find the 1972 vintage shots of 'Place Jacques Cartier' and 'Rue St. Paul Est', well before the resurrection of the area as "Old Montreal' to be such a surprise.


Oh come on now, I keep seeing posts where this movie is described as "an intelligent thriller". Uh, where's the intelligence and where are the thrills? I didn't check the "spoilers" box because the entire plot is revealed in the first 15 minutes. I've seen more scintillating plot lines on "The Streets of San Francisco". It has that 1970's made-for-TV look complete with the blurry, quick-fading, washed out MetroColor print that few will ever want to preserve for any film archive. Well, on second thought, I will check the "spoilers" box so I can state that it would have been nice to see a "Rosemary's "Baby"-like avatar of Satan play hide-the-salami with Karen Black. But alas, no such luck - only some swishy Black Mass priest dressed up like Gaius Caligula with too many lines of pretentious dialogue. If no "intelligence" or "thrills", maybe just alittle titillation!!?? Instead we get gratuitous blood and gore - several guys getting graphically gunshot. Well, enough bitchiness; at least it was nice seeing Christopher Plummer looking 20 years younger than he did in "The Sound of Music" which was filmed about 10 years previous??? And Karen Black? She's totally hot-looking here, and, dare I say it, her performance is almost UNDERSTATED.


Probably the worst movie I have ever watched. Actually I didn't expect anything delightful from the beginning, and forced myself to watch it solely because of Christopher Plummer whom I adore. And Christopher Plummer is fine as usual - though he is definitely not performing Shakespeare, but a rather aphasic, gum chewing and cheaply dressed police inspector. But the rest of the movie... oh my God! You won't be spared anything: turbid atmosphere and terrible film score, whorehouses, heroin addicted prostitutes taking drugs, plenty of blood, stabbed cats hanging on the wall, and above all a long black mess scene with plenty of details and a doped prostitute playing the sacrificial victim. Everybody is aphasic, and very few words are uttered in the whole movie. Maybe is it because on the set everybody was embarrassed and ashamed of what he/she was doing there? I usually am extremely understanding towards Christopher Plummer's professional choices in the movie sector: though I think he has wasted his unique acting talent starring in too many mediocre movies, I understand that everyone has to earn a living. But this time it's too much even for the most devoted of his fans! This time he should have had his hands soundly slapped for wasting himself so much! He can be forgiven only if he is able to prove that at that time he was starving. :)


I saw THE PYX 20 years ago on TV, in a "pan & scan" version, and I thought the film's mood was memorable enough for me to seek it out once it became available in widescreen. I finally saw it in WS and the "pan & scan" version suddenly looks better in comparison. So much of the action took place on the far side of the screen (far left or far right) that the screen composition was almost silly. Some scenes, like the one with Christopher Plummer and that gay man walking in Old Montreal, or the interrogation scene we're shot from so far away that I felt I needed binoculars.

If the cinematography was frustrating, the music score was nearly disastrous. What sounded good back in 1973 doesn't necessarily sound good today, certainly regarding that overplayed Joan Baez-like song. The music during the Devil worshiping scene is basically sounds/music played backwards. Playing music backwards to hear Satan is now a funny cliché and that music certainly didn't help create any tension. The acting was forced. Karen Black looked remarkably old even though this is one of her earliest films. The makeup job was bad and the above mentioned cinematography made her look older than she really was. Christopher Plummer's role is almost negligible. The mood is still there but it's impact is lost when seeing in WS. In fact, as the film went on, the less I enjoyed the atmosphere. I realized it was over-zealously lugubrious, not atmospheric. It's also very dated but it's not awful because of it. In fact, it's one of its positive aspects.

THE PYX is a frustrating films ever. So much good stuff going for it and yet so little of it actually adds up to a satisfying cinematic experience. The best thing about it is the 1970s feel/look of Montreal. It's an amazing time capsule.


This is a Burt Kennedy western? Is that Strother Martin acting like Jerry Lewis trying to play a rapist? Why does Ernest Borgnine's character seem to forget at least twice what he said or did in previous scenes? This is one of the most off-kilter western movies I've ever scene until the last 20 minutes which is superb but seems to come out of left-field from a completely different movie. Otherwise, this one plays like The Over The Hill Gang Meets I Spit On Your Grave. This one is either brilliant totally beyond my understanding, or a gory misfire. Until shown otherwise, I give it 4/10.


Bad script and writing makes this a sometimes interminable movie to watch. How long will it take the victims to figure out the scheme of the vicious girl friend? And how dense can people be? This sweet young thing in the likes of Jennie Garth is so obvious it would take an idiot or rather horny devil to figure her out. She's that obvious. Garth's performance is a one level pursed lips performance. No chemistry. I'd drop her too. Tim Matheson, usually a good actor, is stuck in a vacant role of a husband who stands around looking mystified. Even to the point of his wife and son losing it all. Peter Facinelli is not too bad as another victim of our shady little ingénue. Bears a strong resemblance to Dan Futterman. Nice to see Georgann Johnson back on the tube. Since days of Mr. Peepers. She and Michael Fairman play grandparents, if you can imagine that. Also nice to see Leigh Taylor Young back on the screen. Looking very lovely and playing the wife with a nice quality you can't blame anyone for wanting her instead of the little witch. Rod Hardy (no relation to Andy) directed as best he could with a lousy script. Three stars for Young, Johnson and Facinelli. Sorry Tim. Saw this again and stick by my original critique. Garth is dreadful, even more so second time around. Tim still the loser and the wonderful likes of Johnson, Taylor-Young and Facinelli hold their own. Waste of time.


You can't blame Blake Edwards for making this kind of movie.

For years, he depended on the kind of pratfalls that course through "A Fine Mess" as his bread and butter, so to speak. They served the "Pink Panther" series well, and made Inspector Clouseau a world-wide reference point for the ultimate in clumsiness.

But for a movie that basically features two losers crossing the mob in a horse race then moving a piano to a rich lady's house, this film is all over the place. So many people introduced then forgotten, plot lines that go nowhere, laughs that are fun for the moment but have no context.

Shocking, really, this coming as it does from Blake Edwards, who once personified classy comedy with such works as the aforementioned "Panther" films, not to mention classics like "10", "Micki + Maude" and the under-appreciated "S.O.B.".

And with the calibre of talent, you'd expect great things; the manic Mandel, lecherous Danson, luxuriant Alonzo, and wackos like Mulligan and Margolin as mob flunkies all have the fire, but there's just nothing here to stoke the furnace.

There were separate moments here and there that gave me a smile but, like the movie itself, it just lives for the moment, then is gone.

TIDBIT - The idea for this movie actually came from a Laurel and Hardy short where Stan and Ollie try to move a huge piano up innumerable flights of stairs. Hence, the name.

It still is fitting: this movie is definitely a "Mess", if not a "Fine" one.

Three stars. Saved but for the virtue of Mulligan in the cast and a bit part for pre-"NYPD Blue" Franz.


"The Bat" is indeed a very silly low budget mystery film. There are very few male characters, therefore it is not difficult to guess who "The Bat" is. Vincent Price, in the role of Dr. Malcolm Wells, has a good performance and a well developed character. The banker John Fleming has a minor but also very important participation in the plot. However, the motives of the behavior and double-identity of Lt. Andy Anderson are not explained; Cornelia van Gorder, played by Agnes Moorehead, unsuccessfully tries to be an Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, resolving the murders, but her character is simply awful. The cold reaction of the women in the mansion when their close friend Judy Hollander dies due to the insistence of Dale Bailey to leave their locked room is a shame. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Mansão do Morcego" ("The Mansion of the Bat")


I've been on a kick of seeking out "B" (and "C,"D" and "Z") DVD's from the dollar bins. So far, every choice has been a pleasant and surprising experience. This includes "The Bat". The DVD cover graphic shows both Morehead and "Vinnie" in publicity stills form the 1930's so I was expecting the movie to be from that era as well. Wrong! This flick would have been "retro" in 1949, let alone in 1959!! My jaw dropped when I saw a 1958 Ford and that "Jackie Kennedy-esquire" dress worn by Agnes Morehead at "the afternoon tea". A 1928 Packard with Margaret DuMont frock on Miss Morehead would have been more fitting. The embarrassingly overwrought and predictable plot and the wannabe "noir" photography was even more incongruous. But all these shortcomings are forgiven just to watch Agnes Morehead "chew the scenery"! She was truly one of the great stage actresses of the 40's and 50's, but in a low-rent vehicle such as this, she can only be described as the female "ham" equivalent of Olivier! And don't mention Endora! Just as Sir Alec Guinness shuddered for being immortalized by the wretched trash that is and was "Starwars", so did Ms. Morehead at being most-remembered as 2nd banana on such drivel as "Bewitched"...Bottom line, this DVD is worth the ride just for being an out-of-place-in-the-wrong-period, period piece...


If this film is worth watching at all, it is only in some act of compleatism.

Both the 1926 and 1959 films are constructed rather haphazardly. But, in 1926, movie-makers were still struggling to discover the basics, whereas in 1959 cinema was a relatively mature medium, and 1959 version could look back on two prior productions (not counting The Circular Staircase, 1915 and 1956). One infers that the 1959 version was made in haste, with a low budget, and perhaps with a lack of concern.

The screenplay itself is pedestrian. At one or more point, each of the characters does something unnatural because Wilbur (who wrote the screenplay and directed the film) did not find a way to advance the story naturally.

The sets, lighting, camera angles, and music give this movie the feel of a television production of that same era. For example, when there is meaningful use of shadow, it is only to produce simple silhouettes. (I don't know how the actual television production, from a little less than a year later, compares to this movie.)

This film has apparently been allowed to slip into the public domain. My suggestion is that, before one spends even the small sum charged by a publisher like Alpha Video, one should down-load a copy from the 'Net and watch that. If one disagrees with my assessment, then he or she will still be free to buy a higher quality copy for future viewing.


"A mysterious mansion holds secrets and terror for the owner and visitors alike in this thriller, based upon a classic stage play. Cornelia Van Gorder has taken up residence in an old mansion that was the scene of some mysterious deaths years ago. The recent owner of the mansion was a banker who had embezzled money and had hidden it somewhere in the mansion but, he was killed before he was able to retrieve it. Now it appears that someone is stalking the mansion" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

This lesser re-make is most appealing in that it stars enjoyable Agnes Moorehead (as Cornelia Van Gorder) and features fine support from Vincent Price (as Malcolm Wells) and Lenita Lane (as Lizzie Allen). Ms. Lane is an exceptional employee, you'll have to agree; she also served as director Crane Wilbur's wife. Lane and ex-"Our Gang" member Darla Hood (as Judy Hollander) ended their feature film careers with "The Bat". Little mystery, some suspense.

**** The Bat (8/9/59) Crane Wilbur ~ Agnes Moorehead, Vincent Price, Gavin Gordon