An unremarkable, by-the-numbers, Friday the 13th clone, Madman will prove to be of interest only to those wishing to catch up on every 80s slasher ever made (an arduous task for even the most seasoned of horror fans) or genre fans wanting to see Gaylen Ross in one of her two post-Dawn of the Dead horror roles (the other being that of Becky Vickers in Creepshow).

Ross, who is credited here as Alexis Dubin, plays Betsy, a counsellor at a summer camp which comes under attack from the legendary Madman Marz, a vicious disfigured killer who is particularly handy with a length of rope and an axe. Also working (and dying) at the camp are a bunch of fairly unlikeable characters, most of whom are quite unattractive (a definite no-no for an 80s body-count flick).

With nary a plot to get in the way of the killing, Madman should at least have been a mindless piece of relentlessly bloody fun, but it is, in fact, a tedious, badly directed yawn-fest that doesn't even serve up the basic ingredients expected from such a filmnamely, a topless babe or two, and some decent gore.

As far as nudity is concerned, all we get is a laughable 'sex' scene, featuring Betsy and her boyfriend making a hot-tub 'whirlpool' (by walking round and round in the water) whilst a naff 80s song plays in the background, and a coy cuddle (inside a sleeping bag) between a shrew-faced woman with a nasty perm and her mustachioed lover (rather him than me!).

Gore-wise, the film is just as disappointing: there are a couple of headless corpses that involve the use of shop dummies splashed with blood, a reasonable hanging from a tree, a few dreadful axings, and an impalement on a hook. All of the effects are rather basic and unconvincing, and to make matters worse, the entire film is shot at night with poor lighting, making the action very difficult to see.

Madman is often referred to as one of the 'forgotten' slashers of the 80s; to be honest, it doesn't really deserve to be remembered.

*** Point of interest: This film is further proof that, when in danger, climbing inside a fridge is your best bet for survival. Whilst being hunted by Madman Marz, shrew-faced woman does what I now refer to as an 'Indiana Jones', and, despite the contents of the appliance being scattered all over the floor, the killer is duped. ***


This movie blows like no other 80s teen slasher flick. The plot is unoriginal, the acting is poor, and all the "teen" counselors are like 30 years old! The only surprise in the film is when the "hero" suddenly gets hung out to dry in the first half of the film. The special effects suck and the whole movie has a feeling that it was written and shot in the same day. Definitely not a movie I would recommend to anyone interested in the teen slasher genre; rent Sleepaway Camp, Happy Birthday to Me, Friday the 13th, or a Nightmare on Elm Street instead. Oh, well, at least I saw it on cable and didn't rent this piece of crap.


Sorry guys, not feelin' this one. Story: Freak in the woods will come and kill you if you say his name too loud. Pretty f**king retarded concept if you ask me, but hey, not all horror movies have to have a TITANIC plot, right? Even so, MADMAN is dull and derivative and has nothing new to bring to the "slasher-in-the-woods" genre. The film plods along dully, the kill scenes are fast and relatively un-bloody and the few requisite sets of tits that you do see (as is required by these types of films...) are from a couple of scrappy sea-donkeys. Avoid this one unless there is NOTHING else in the horror section at your local video store. Check out "THE BURNING","MANIAC", hell, even "FRIDAY THE 13TH" just to name a very few superior slasher/psycho films. A VERY generous 3/10 for the head-in-the-hood decapitation


Well no points for completely ripping off any of the Friday 13th movies i'm afraid. Yes sir-ee-bob, they really pulled the wool over my eyes when they added 'lake' to the end of camp crystal. Even 'camp monkey face' has a more original sound to it. I didn't want this review to turn into a scathing attack...but there are several things that producers need to be aware of when making a horror movie on a summer camp;

1.The name has to be original. 2.The 'camp counsellors' should be younger than 75, and should have some (relevant) acting skills. 3.There should be some randy teenagers sneaking out to the barn every 20-30mins for some nookie, whilst possibly being caught, sliced and diced. 4. The death scenes should contain at least a little violence and possibly some ketchup or another condiment of some kind -not just 'madman marz' casually strolling toward the victim and then a shot of their face releasing a few insipid yells.

After watching 'Slaughterhouse'(which i recommend) - i remember the cold October evening i ordered 'madman', i really thought i had found another rare gem, but luck was not on my side that night, oh no! and i guess it wasn't on the side of whoever bought it from me, but that's another story i guess.

Please don't tell me it's a classic - just because it was made in the early 80's. My advice - the next time you feel the urge to view a movie of this calibre, make some spaghetti bolognese and put it on your head and do your best impression of Axel Rose.

You would have to be a madman/woman to watch this movie.


MADMAN is a pretty anemic horror film that copies everything from Friday THE 13th except for suspense and believability. Even if it takes place in a forested area, the movie is extremely claustrophobic. It almost feels like it was shot in a forest that was built inside a studio. The camera is always in tight close-ups. The whole film occurs at night. We never get to see the natural splendors of the area. The forest just serves as a backdrop to the extremely derivative action. So, the camera never sweeps around the area to give us an idea of the place. The camera is very static and dull. MADMAN almost feels like it was shot on video even if it wasn't. The actors are all forgettable, as are the killings. Nothing really works here. There's one word to describe MADMAN: clunky!

Even the killer, who was sorta formidable looking from a distance during the first part of the movie, becomes ludicrous when we finally see him up close. He looks like a Morlock from THE TIME MACHINE movie starring Rod Taylor. When the camera remains more than one second on the killer's face we can clearly see the haphazard makeup effects. All in all, MADMAN is pretty much terrible and dull. The only good thing is the title and the original movie poster.


It is best to look at Madman as a movie with two halves. The first half of the movie is pretty slow. It does have some suspense but isn't able to sustain a level of interest as it goes from being creepy to scenes of inane chatter by the camp counselors. The second half of the movie is pretty good. Lots of suspense to keep the viewers eyes glued to the screen. Unfortunately a quick and vague ending spoils the atmosphere that was created. I imagine the film makers were hoping to make a sequel. Also, while the ending is vague the film makers don't follow the guidelines of a typical horror movie ending. You may be surprised at who survives and who dies.

On a whole Madman suffers from problems that plague most horror movies. Lack of story, unanswered questions, strange character motivations (would you go into a house which you just saw a Madman exit?) and stupid characters. Stupid characters are common for horror movies but in the case of Madman the characters aren't just stupid but several of them look like they don't even have a brain in their heads. A couple of them even seemed to have trouble speaking. What strengthens the movie is the suspense and numerous good reveals of Madman Marz. I was very impressed at the ability of the director and his timing for having Marz show himself.

Overall Madman is an uneven film but for it's genre it is surprisingly well filmed, if not well acted, and very suspenseful. However, the first half of the movie hinders Madman from getting a better rating. Madman receives a 4 out of 10.


"Madman" has some things going for it- Decent gore, a nasty lookin' killer, moments of tension, and some good blue-tinged camera work for the forest (and abandoned house) scenes. Unfortunately, that only accounts for about 1/3 of the movie. The rest is garbage.

The acting and dialog are all over the place, either stiff as a board or ultra-hammy with nothing in between. There is not one ounce of depth or common sense (even by slasher standards) to any character in the film. And how's this for an engaging plot- One dummy heads into the woods by themselves (of course), doesn't come back, so another goes to find them. Repeat over and over and over. The "fridge" scene alone sums up the sheer stupidity of the movie.

On the overall, this movie makes "Friday The 13th" look like "Citizen Kane".


Another attempt to cash in on the slasher craze of the early 80's. The head being cut off a wheel-chair bound victim was poorly done, in sillouette. Then the "drump-drump-drump" sound when the mad man was coming after a victim just got on your nerves. It's a wonder this film hasn't shown up on cable yet. Bad? That's a good word for it. Especially when you notice no sequel was made. Thank god.


It's another one of those teenagers going camping in the woods movies with really stupid dialogue, bad acting and loud scary music coming in at the appropriate time. The characters are as shallow as their names (Richie, T.P., Betsy...). The music is atrociously bad at some points (especially in the not even full of useless nudity, jacuzzi scene). At some points, the lighting effects are quite nice, but totally irrelevant, why should the wood scenes be lighted in blue ? So imagine a bunch of teenagers : the over dramatic intellectual, the sentimental blonde, the overachieving jock, the curious clown, the feminist and the mustache guy. Now tell me you aren't looking forward to see them get mutilated by the Madman Marz, a legendary farmer who killed his family for no apparent reason. The story is more than predictable, ever so much due to the fact that we see the death of the characters during the first scene as a previews of the gore end. It is redundant, boring, common and badly done. I don't recommend it, it's not even a source of much laughs.


After an intriguing (if not blatantly derivative of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2) opening scene which sets the stage for the story, the film plunges into a pointless series of murders. Some gore, but annoyingly little nudity, so it's a mixed bag for slasher fans, and garbage for fans of good movies.


Another stupid slasher film from the 80s. Basically it involves a bunch of idiots at a summer camp (in November!) unwittingly bringing to life a monster who likes axing his victims...or something like that. Who cares? The movie is crap!

All the characters are annoying and (with the exception of Gaylen Ross from "Dawn of the Dead") the acting sucks. There are some truly ridiculous scenes--a man gets his head cut off and, a few minutes later, a girl comes by, looks at the bloody headless body and says "Are you OK?"; a couple are making love in a tent--their friends outside tell them to come out--the guy yells "COMING!" etc etc.

There are only two highlights here--the death by the hood of a trunk and a nice shot of a guy's butt while going into a hot tub (it's rare you get any male nudity in a horror film). But that's no reason to see this.

I saw it at a theatre back in 1982 full of high school students (despite the R rating). They laughed all the way through and thought it was a good comedy! And there's even room for a SEQUEL (which never happened).

As it stands it's almost impossible to find a copy of this now--that's a good thing! Avoid.


The worst kinds of films are bad horror films. There are those you can enjoy, and laugh at, and there are those that make you want to gouge your eyes out. Take a good look at my rating and guess which kind this film is.

The story? There is none. A killer is on the loose, that's all you need to know. The setting is more important: It's a summer camp, at night, filled with teenagers. Five minutes into the movie the murderer starts to off teenagers and doesn't stop until the end of the film. That's it. No story. No character development. No mystery. Just a bunch of scenes were people die for no apparent reason. It's the kind of film you make with your friends when you're bored.

I like slasher films. They're good as no-brainer entertainment. They're never scary, but at least they kill time. This movie doesn't kill time, it kills you're braincells and drains your energy. It's so stupid you wouldn't believe it, and there is noway anyone could ever enjoy this film... Ever.

The biggest mistake the director, or writer made, was probably to fill the film with clichés. But instead of using different ones, he uses the same one over and over again. A person goes missing. Another person goes to look for him, and is killed. So, another person goes looking and is killed. A third person goes looking, all alone, and not surprisingly, finds himself dead pretty soon. And that's how the film goes. I am not kidding.

If you want to look up a good slasherfilm, try to find one that has something that resembles a plot. If you want a bad slasherfilm, don't rent this one. Because this isn't even a film. It's just a montage of people getting killed for no reason at all.


This movie altogether made me lose faith in humanity. Most movies are set to stun you with good acting,or at least some acting. This movie, however, was set to painfully vaporize the viewer! It wasn't fast, like a good phaser, but slowly tortures anyone hit by it into nonexistence. This movie would be best described as a steaming pile of horse excrement laced with ebola-zaire. Cleopatra terrified me in this film. Not only was Octavia, the one who was supposed to be plain, more attractive than her, but is also a better actor for the simple reason that I didn't have to listen to her for very long. I have just seriously fallen from my chair thinking about having to watch more of this movie! If I was able to give a negative star rating to this movie, all the stars in the cosmos would not express my hatred for this movie.


When the king of a small country is assassinated, his diplomats hire Sherlock Holmes to transport and guard his son and heir on a steamship from England to Algiers. But sinister agents are aboard - can any of the ship's crew and passengers be trusted ?

This is probably the weakest of the forties Sherlock Holmes classics, and isn't really a mystery story at all - Holmes is nothing but a glorified bodyguard in it, it has a contemporary setting (for the time) and even by this series of films' standards it looks threadbare and hurried. It's not really all that bad though and it does have several quirky and interesting ideas; the suspicious pair discussing dead bodies who turn out to be archaeologists, the deaf-mute killer who talks in sign-language, a bomb in a party-cracker, Holmes' ingenious dupe for hiding the king, and so on. A minor film, given the talents of Rathbone and Neill, and a million miles removed from Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic hero, but still a pleasant enough way to kill an hour.


Pursuit to Algiers starts as the world's foremost detective Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) & his faithful assistant Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) are about to head up to Scotland for a holiday when the Prime Minister (Frederick Warlock) of an obscure Europeon country named Rovenia ask's for their help. It seems that the widely-reported car accident that killed his countries King was no accident but in fact a cold-blooded assassination by a terrorist group. He ask's Holmes & Watson to escort the King's son, who lives in London for his protection, back home to take his rightful place on the throne & restore some stability to the country. Holmes agrees & the plan is for him to travel with the King by plane while Watson acts as a decoy & travels to the Mediterranean country by boat. Watson sets sail & is expecting a fairly quiet journey until he hears a report about a small plane being shot down & it's three passengers being killed. Is Holmes really dead? Have the terrorists won? Or is there more to the case than first meets the eye? Watch it to find out...

Produced & directed by Roy William Neill Pursuit to Algiers was the twelfth Holmes film in a series that totals ten made between 1939 & 1946 to star Rathbone & Bruce as Holmes & Watson. The script by Leonard Lee is based on the novel 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as isn't really a mystery, it's more of a thriller & not a particularly good one either. No-one is murdered which is disappointing as I like a good murder mystery so to have a character like Holmes running around foiling a few lame assassination attempts is both a wasted opportunity & felt uninspired. Wouldn't an assassin just shoot his target with a gun & be done with it rather than coming up with silly plans like placing a bomb in someone's party cracker! I found little here to interest or entertain me, I thought it was too predictable & plodding but at only 65 minutes long at least it's short.

Director Neill does his usual competent job but this won't impress many these days although you have to remember this film was made over sixty years ago. The horror & mystery overtones that are ever-presents throughout the rest of the series are totally lacking here which was not a good decision in retrospect.

Technically the film is OK although the ship is obviously a stage. The black and white cinematography is fine. The acting is alright, Rathbone looks a bit disinterested this time around & who can blame him? Bruce as Watson plays the likable buffoon as well as ever.

Pursuit to Algiers came as a big disappointment to me as the other's I've seen in this series have all been very good films. Not really worth bothering with as Rathbone made other much better Holmes mysteries, for die-hard fans only.


The appearance of the Holmes stories was a revolution in narrative. The transition to film was tricky enough, but they more or less stand on their own in spite of their rich history. But by this film, the series was pretty much played out.

The story has nothing to do with detection at all, instead some clever protection scheme. Sherlock would never have done such a thing.

We have the complete transformation of Watson from a trusted collaborator to a buffoon, even making a selfreferential comment at the end about being an incompetent actor. And we have a pretty girl.

Its all too sad to see.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.


Canicule has the distinct aroma of tax write off and trip to France for Lee Marvin in one of his last and least films of his career.

Marvin plays American bank robber Jimmy Cobb who is on the run and now in France. The French authorities want this guy bad, they're even armed to the teeth. The beginning is a homage to Sam Peckinpaugh and The Wild Bunch with a shootout on the Paris streets where a whole lot of people get themselves killed in a botched attempt to take Marvin.

Lee's on the loose with the loot from a bank job that was obviously committed in America because it's in dollars as opposed to francs. But he manages to get to the Normandy countryside where he falls into the hands of a family of farmers who've got their own ideas about him and his loot and his reputation. And by no means is it unanimous.

Canicule is a French attempt to make an American style gangster film and they're not bad at it when doing things like Lemmy Caution with American expatriate Eddie Constantine. This one could have used the real Sam Peckinpaugh however directing this mostly French cast of players with Lee Marvin and Tina Louise. The dubbing and editing is hardly first rate. Marvin is in bad health which the camera plainly shows.

As another reviewer stated Gorky Park is a far better film. That and Death Hunt are the last two really great films Lee Marvin made.


"Canicule" leaves so many questions unanswered. Was the relationship between Lee Marvin's character and the retarded farm boy supposed to be touching, comical or teeth-grindingly stupid? Was the reason Tina Louise disappeared entirely from the film because the editor was a drunken ham-fisted film school reject? What is Tina Louise's character even doing in this film? Did the director just fly around in a helicopter shouting "Wheeeeee!" the entire shoot while the rest of the crew sat around snorting coke and going 'Zut Alors! Zis New Wave film making - it is fantastique!' or something? So many questions...

Okay, long story short. Lee Marvin, dressed as a 1930's gangster, robs an armored car and shoots a bunch of cops and a pre-schooler, then lams it to the French countryside where he's captured by a repulsive bunch of inbred French rednecks. Sound interesting? It isn't. The cops overfly the farm about a ga-zillion times looking for Lee, each shot lovingly filmed from another helicopter (the one where the director was yelling "Wheeeeee!") (or "Le Wheeeeee!" since he's French) but can't find him because he's always in the barn setting fires or strangling nymphomaniacs or whatever.

But here's the depressing part. Ready? Despite being a film built solely around the image of Lee Marvin standing around in a wheat field, "Canicule" would be considered a cinematic masterpiece today if it were made by Quentin Tarantino and starred Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie. It wants to be parody but rarely rises to the level of stick-figure cartoon, in other words the perfect film for a society of porn obsessed violence addicts like the US.

"Wheeeee!"


Horrible, completely ridiculous with a not so slight touch of vulgarity. Lee Marvin is completely lost in this awful and irrealistic world. No interest.


Usually when Woody borrows an idea from Bergman he makes that idea his own, and turns it into something that's clever yet funny and entertaining. It is definitely not the case here. This looks like a Woody Allen parody,made by an unskilled director, totally unrealistic since X loves Y who loves Z who loves A and who in turn loves X to make the circle complete. We have a bunch of clichés thrown in among which the poor little daughter who lived her whole life in the mother's shadow was already brilliantly analyzed on screen by Bergman's Autumn Sonata (with Ingrid Bergman not this crazy old hag with artistic claims). The actors are for the most part quite OK, but what's the use of that? This is a gimmick meant for the soap opera admirers. The "postmodern", intertextual stuff that works incredibly well in movies such as Love and Death, Deconstructing Harry, Hannah and her Sisters etc. completely fails here making the characters appear like frustrated morons too intelligent to be clever. In the end nothing happens, we find ourselves after an hour and a half of murky bore at an abrupt end that took us nowhere. The music was the only thing that saved this movie from a total disaster, Art Tatum works good anywhere, but again, what's the use?... Boring cinematography, all dark and uninspired, too claustrophobic and I really don't care it's what they intended. Check Nykvist's cinematography in the aforementioned Autumn Sonata, or the same Nykvist in Woody's Crimes and Misdemenaors.


September is what I call a real estate movie, because what happens isn't nearly as interesting as where it all happens. In this case, the real estate is a cozy country cottage in Vermont, a warm and cheerfully decorated little place far from the city. The shades are always closed, but warm, golden, late summer sunlight filters through, suggesting that it would be a wonderful place to either visit or, better still, to grow old in. It looks so real and richly detailed that it is hard to believe that it is a set, built for the movie in some New York film studio. The creepy thing about Woody Allen's September is that this totally make-believe house is more realistic than the characters who gather inside.

September is another of Woody's beautifully detailed, sensitively written, lovingly acted and utterly annoying "serious" films. There is a smattering of not-particularly-funny bits of humor, designed to suggest that the characters are clever people, but once again the main traits shared by all are indecisiveness, depression and a gift for long-winded bouts of self pity. The six main characters who spend the weekend in this country home spend a lot of time talking about their feelings, though one has a hard time believing that any of them actually have real feelings. Instead everyone seems to be doing psychotherapy exercises designed to help them self-consciously get in touch with themselves. The end result of this achingly insincere sincerity is an intense desire by the viewer to want to give each and every cast member a sincere slap across the face.

During their years together, Allen gave to his partner Mia Farrow some of the best roles of her career -- as well as some of her worst. This may be the worst; certainly it allows her to indulge in her unfortunate tendency to whine and blubber in despair. The most intriguing aspect of September is that it is inspired by a bit of Hollywood legend, the death of Lana Turner's gangster boyfriend at the hands of her teenage daughter. Allen takes that infamous scandal and uses it as the seed for this film's drama. Farrow plays Lane, who is still living down the notoriety of having killed her celebrity mother's abusive boyfriend and who is now recuperating from her most recent suicide attempt. The feelings of guilt, shame, animosity, bitterness and envy shared between Lane and her mother, Diane (played by Elaine Stritch), would seem to be sufficient to sustain an interesting drama. But Allen uses the dirty little secret behind the old scandal as a minor plot twist, and instead focuses most of the film on a trite four-sided love triangle, in which passion is secondary to unrelenting discussions about each characters' unrequited passions.

Howard (Denholm Elliott) loves Lane, who loves Peter (Sam Waterston), who has a thing for Stephanie (Diane Wiest), who is married but returns Peter's feelings even though she knows that she is betraying Lane, blah, blah, blah. It all seems so high school, especially since they all talk about this, but are paralyzed to act on those feelings. Meanwhile Diane loves only Diane, even though she is partnered with Lloyd (Jack Warden), a melancholy physicist who is depressed over how utterly meaningless existence is.

The problem isn't so much the trite plotting as it is the overall and overwhelming tone of the drama. Woody walked this path before (six characters in a country house) in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY, but did so with a sense of whimsy and an unexpected show of hopeful romance. In September, the characters all talk with that hushed, sterile, halting formality that Allen apes from pretentious European art films. Everyone seems dubbed, disconnected from both their feelings and their dialogue. They might as well be discussing their income tax returns, though that would probably inspire much more enthusiasm. Such pregnant disconnection from emotion all but guarantees audience indifference and certainly is wrong for a story delving into the life of an emotionally disturbed woman.

As for the house itself, the set design, the lighting and the cinematography conspire to make this make-believe slice of rural eden so invitingly charming that it all but betrays the notion that the little house is meant to represent a prison -- or an asylum, if you prefer. It comes to represent the past Lane wants to shed and the past Diane wants to recapture. It is a battlefield to reclaim the honesty of their shared past. To the audience, no matter how flimsy the walls, it is the single thing in the entire film that offers warmth, comfort and promise. And it is an illusion. Which may have been Allen's point from the start.


Denholm Elliott has the hots for Mia Farrow, who has the hots for Sam Waterston, who has the hots for Dianne Wiest. Mia's ex-film-star mother and her physicist husband descend on them, insult everyone and then go away again. All this is set in a house in New England during a storm and power-cut.

Some critics see this as Allen in Bergman mode again but to me its claustrophobic country-house atmosphere is more reminiscent of Chekhov  with one important exception: Chekhov has jokes. This is tedious stuff. No wonder Soon-Yi (in Wild Man Blues) says that she walked out of it.

Fact and fiction got confused in my mind when Mia Farrow's character started talking about shooting her mother's gangster lover when she was a teenager. This may be an allusion to the real-life shooting of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner's daughter. Elaine Strich, playing the mother, is reminiscent of Farrow's real mother Maureen O'Sullivan in Hannah And Her Sisters.


SEPTEMBER is living proof that even a genius can screw up. I'm a real fan of Woody Allen's, and I even thought that "Interiors", which the critics carved up, wasn't so bad. But 'September' is a real dog, a genuine bow-wow. I came across it in the video store (I forget which category I found it under, but it should have been 'Horror'); I hadn't heard of it but was attracted by the cast - Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Denholm Elliot and Jack Warden among others.

We are dumped abruptly into a summer house in Vermont where four neurotic, repressed, and emotionally constipated people are discussing with each other how miserable they are. This interminable whining is interrupted by the arrival of the parents of Lane (Mia Farrow). This provides a change of character - instead of neurotic we get wimpy (the father) and obnoxiously self-centered (the mother). The rest of the movie deals with the emotional entanglements of these six boring folks, with more whining and some inane philosophizing thrown in. The dialogue is leaden enough to sink the Lusitania, the pacing is slower than grain delivery in the former USSR, and action is non-existent (nothing HAPPENS). The movie ends as abruptly as it began, leaving the viewer (assuming he got that far), with two thoughts - 1) thank God, and, 2) what the Hell was the point?

Forget it. See "Love and Death" or "Sleeper" again.


Looking at September I think Woody Allen might have been interested in doing his own version of Long Day's Journey Into Night with this production. The problem is that the characters here are not even half as interesting as O'Neill's autobiographical Tyrone family.

Try as I might I just could not get into this story. Apparently neither could Woody, I see he refilmed the entire story with three different players from those he started with. And he was ready to do it again. Who did Woody Allen think he was, Erich Von Stroheim?

Mia Farrow who was married to Allen at the time is recovering from a nervous breakdown and she's in Vermont at the old family homestead to sell the place. Her famous actress mom, Elaine Stritch is up there as well with stepfather Jack Warden and Stritch has different plans for the place than Farrow does. Also up there are Stritch's prospective biographer Sam Waterston and other friends Denholm Elliott and Dianne Weist. Who could know that Weist would windup as Waterston's boss on Law and Order and that he'd eventually be the boss as well.

Stritch's role is not to terribly disguised as Lana Turner with Mia as Cheryl Crane. I'm surprised that Lana didn't sue Woody Allen. I would have.

Stritch and Warden come off the best, they are at least mildly interesting. The rest you don't really care about as we hear about this one loves that one, but that one loves the other, who loves still another. Except for Stritch who thinks the world revolves around her.

Woody should stick to comedy.


The plot of Racine's "Andromaque" has been described as "A loves B, who loves C, who loves D, who loves E, who is dead". I wondered if this was an influence on the plot of "September", which features a scarcely less complicated string of unrequited love interests. Howard is in love with Lane, who is in love with Peter, who is in love with Stephanie, who is not sure whether she is in love with Peter or not. Lane is the owner of the New England country house in which the action takes place (obviously enough during the month of September). Howard, a teacher, and Peter, a struggling writer, are neighbours. Stephanie is Lane's best friend. To add to the confusion, Stephanie is married, although her husband does not appear. Two other important characters are Lane's mother Diane and her stepfather Lloyd.

"September" may have been written and directed by Woody Allen, but it is not what we have come to think of as a Woody Allen film. For a start it is not a comedy, or even a tragi-comedy like "Melinda and Melinda" or "Crimes and Misdemeanours", both of which combine a serious story with a humorous one. It is quite deliberately made as a deeply serious film, unrelieved by humour. As in a number of Allen's films from this period, such as "Crimes and Misdemeanours" or "Alice", the predominant colours- browns, greys and dull yellows and oranges- are dark or sombre ones. The best way I can describe it is a play written by a would-be Chekhov adapted for the screen by a would-be Ingmar Bergman.

Indeed, Allen described it as "a play on film", and it certainly comes across like a piece of filmed theatre, set entirely indoors with a great number of long takes and few close-ups. Unfortunately, it shows just how dull and boring this style of film-making can be at its worst. There is no action, no sense of movement or character development, just a group of unsympathetic individuals interminably talking over their emotional problems. It might only last for eighty minutes; it felt more like eight hundred.

Mia Farrow gave some wonderful performances during her association with Woody, but here she as Lane and Dianne Wiest as Stephanie seem to be competing as to which of them can seem more whiny and miserable. Nobody seems to have told Elaine Stritch that this was supposed to be a serious drama rather than a comedy, as she plays Diane as an over-the-top comic caricature. The male half of the cast are rather better, but none of them are outstanding and Sam Waterston as Peter is nowhere near as good as he was to be in "Crimes and Misdemeanours". Allen actually shot the film twice, replacing several cast members for the second version. Diane was originally played Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's real-life mother), Howard by Charles Durning and Waterston was only the third choice for Peter after Christopher Walken and Sam Shepard. I wonder what was so bad about the original version.

During the course of the film, we learn that Diane was once a well-known actress, and that many years ago Lane, then a teenager, was supposed to have shot dead Diane's abusive boyfriend. I found myself wondering why Allen did not base his film around this incident, which would surely have made for a more dramatic film that the one he actually made. The reason is presumably that this detail was plagiarised from the life of Lana Turner, whose boyfriend Johnny Stompanato was indeed killed by her daughter Cheryl in self defence, and as Lana was still alive in 1987 too much attention to the incident could have resulted in a writ from her lawyers. As Diane is a hard, brassy, self-centred individual, I also wondered if the use of this particular Christian name was a spiteful dig at Diane Keaton, Farrow's predecessor as Woody's muse.

What makes the film even more disappointing is that it came out during a period, the late eighties, which also saw three of Woody's best films, "The Purple Rose of Cairo", "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Crimes and Misdemeanours". If one judges solely on the basis of a lack of jokes, "September" is more "serious" than any of these films, which all contain a good deal of humour. On the basis of intellectual depth, however, it is the least serious of the four. The other three films all broach weighty philosophical topics, but do so with intelligence, wit and style to produce something of far more interest than the emotional angst and lovesickness which lie at the heart of "September". The nearest it gets to intellectual depth is Lloyd's attempt to use the laws of physics to prove that life is pointless. Woody should do what he does best, not try to be Chekhov or Bergman. And certainly not Einstein.

When I reviewed "Melinda and Melinda" I wrote that none of Woody Allen's films are entirely without interest. I had obviously forgotten "September". But then it is an entirely forgettable movie. The song exhorts us to "Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow". This "September" may be slow but it is far from mellow. The kind not worth remembering. 4/10


Woody Allen's cringe-inducing "September" comes across as something a film student would make if he were given the assignment of making a movie in the style of Ingmar Bergman. It's oppressive, claustrophobic and intolerably whiny, filled with unpleasant people complaining about their boring problems. Though the film is filled with good actors, like Mia Farrow, Elaine Stritch, Dianne Wiest and Denholm Elliott, none of them gel as a cast, and the pacing is repetitive. The film is a huge misfire from Allen, and thankfully it's one of the last times he dabbled in this kind of hackneyed experiment.

Grade: D


Woody Allen has impeccable taste in music. And good thing, because otherwise there would be nothing redeeming about September.

This film was as limp and lifeless as they come. I can recall few films in which I was so conscious I was watching actors reciting dialogue--and bad dialogue, and bored actors. This film felt like a rehearsal. It felt like the FIRST rehearsal, the cast assembled together for the very first time, maybe at like 5AM on a Monday morning, and everybody was tired and cranky and didn't really want to be there, and they knew the script sucked anyway so there was no point in even trying. Certainly, these were the worst performances I've ever seen by Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest. The script felt like a rough first draft--of an artless hack. I can't believe September was a Woody. Too bad he didn't have a real-life Cheech to help him out with this one.

And, worst of all, the film was staged entirely within one house, with curtains drawn against the world. Cinematographer Carlo Di Palma did his best to make the house look interesting, but that yellow and orange lighting scheme became oppressive after a while, and I was longing to step outside and see some daylight. I probably should have--in real life--and turned this piece of garbage off. Unfortunately, I have an obsessive-compulsive sickness that forces me to finish any movie I've started. Mercifully, September ran only 82 minutes, but they were hard, mind-numbing minutes.

The worst Woody Allen film. 4/10


I cannot imagine Woody Allen creating a film worse than September. Never has a film been more stagy - Allen must have intended that feeling, but only God knows why. The direction is poor in every way. The dialogue is God awful, often laughable, and the acting is just as bad. Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest turn in what must be their worst performances. Sam Waterston is ineffective. The two parents (whose names I cannot even recall) seem like their in a different movie - a Woody Allen film. Their delivery is wry and often good, at least it would be if it belonged here. None of the characters ever ring true - never.

What's really sad is that there is a good story underneath this terrible train wreck of a film. Lane's situation and her relationship with the other characters could have been fascinating. Unfortunately, the events of the past are introduced is such a poor way, the same way a really bad play would do it, that they never really seem important. Allen wanted desperately to make a Bergmaesque chamber piece, but Bergman is smart enough to have the outside world exist in his similar films, Persona, for instance.

If you are an Allen fan, then this one is worth seeing - an artist's bad work is nearly as important as his great work. Just be prepared for something utterly awful - at least it's only 82 minutes long. 4/10


What a trainwreck. Cheesey family, bisquick-filled villains, horrible dialogue, even worse acting, cliche after awful cliche, large plot holes, non-attention to some details, over-emphasis of other details....

~Avoid~ this movie, unless you want a good laugh and/or are in the mood to MST.


Interesting premise, but poor ending. Dean Stockwell explains to the family that the aliens can easily track them whenever they use a credit card, etc. The aliens find the family several times.

Near the end, after the battle with the aliens at Stockwell's home, the family and Stockwell leave in Stockwell's car. Part way down the driveway, Stockwell passes the father a couple grenades and tells him to blow up the alien's cars, which the father does.

The aliens can be clearly seen still standing around, alive and well, yet for some strange reason the family and Stockwell think they will all be safe from that point on. Why? They could see the live aliens in the rear view mirror.

The family moves into a new home and the movie ends with a black car pulling up in front of the new home. Knowing the aliens were not dead, and knowing they had easily tracked the family earlier, it was no surprise they found the family again.

One other annoying little thing seen so much in movies. When one of the aliens had been shot or otherwise injured and was lying flat on his back, Stockwell went over, squatted down and practically stuck his face in the face of the alien to check it (the alien) out. Gosh, I wondered what would happen next. Of course the alien suddenly reached up and grabbed Stockwell. Surprise, surprise!


Standard alien-abduction conspiracy-theory story that could be written in one's sleep (and probably was). The centerpiece of the tale is a very unappealing All-American Family...Hollywood Yuppie version. The dad is a complete wimp (he's handed a grenade and says "What do I do?"...that really cracked my kids up). The mom is overbearing, overprotective, and humorless...probably heads the local PTA. And the kid is whiny...but then, look at his parents. The only enjoyment I got out of this movie was watching Dean Stockwell....I loved it when he was frying up eggs for breakfast, and then asked the dad if he would rather have granola..or (with great disdain) Yogurt! Personally, Dean would probably have had a better time if he invited the MIB to breakfast...and barricaded his house against the Yuppies.


The Shadow Men is an absurd and nonsensical take on the men in black (MIB) phenomenon. The move itself is of moderate/low budget.. standard for a straight to video B movie. The plot seems to be standard enough yet, like diamonds in the rough, there are these priceless sequences that make no sense and can cause great episodes of hilarity.

The family:

1) Father, Bob Wilson (Erik Roberts).. Rugged good-looks and a well-manicured beard really knows how to drive a minivan. 2) Mother, Dez Wilson (Sherilyn Fenn) sweet concerned mother, fearful of MIB. 3) Son, Andy Wilson (Brendan Ryan Barrett) Ugly little kid.

The family is making their way home after a trip when their minivan falls under the glare of a bright light.. The family wakes up some time after, not remembering what had transpired, but later suffers from nightmares, alluding to alien abduction. Later they check their video camera, which the abducting aliens failed to notice.. and it had recorded the details of their abduction. The family contacts the Air Force and reports the sighting. Soon after some mysterious men in black pay them a visit and questions them. The MIB wear bad black suits with thin ties and black wayfarer type sunglasses and black conspicuous hats. The mother asks the MIB if they would like a drink, they reply "We will have a Coca-Cola." The MIB start to tail the family and even go so far so to harass Andy in the schoolyard. The MIB leans down and authoritatively asks the lad questions, and though they are surrounded by dozens and dozens of people, no one seems to notice a man in a black suit and black sunglasses and a black fedora harassing a child in the schoolyard. Not too long later the MIB intensify their effort to harass the family. Rugged good-looks and a beard managed to outrun the perusing MIB with his minivan. Apparently all MIB drive 1985 Chevy celebrity sedans.. Still surprising that MIB could be ditched with a minivan. After this incident the family is contacted by the author and retired Air Force personnel Stan Mills (Dean Stockwell) and the family is beckoned to take refuges in Mill's secluded ranch-complex. Though the family feels at ease here it's not long until the MIB track them down and let loose a Chevy celebrity onslaught. The MIB break through the complex's defenses and eventually get inside the house. The MIB can not be downed by a direct pointblank blast of a 12-guage shotgun but can be killed by a blow from a 2 x 4 if swung by rugged good-looks and a beard. After one MIB is downed he falls over and his black wayfarers fall off revealing huge alien type eyes, which would have been clearly visible regardless of what type of sunglasses he was wearing. As it turns out all MIB are alien/human hybrids. Eventually the MIB are driven back and the family escapes, though they are doomed to walk the earth in terror knowing that any Chevy celebrity might be the end of them all. The movie is terrible, but luckily this kind of cinematic folly lends beautiful, unintentional golden humor to this film. Every positive and amusing thing about the film is entirely accidental, as its formulaic and predictable flow is really pathetic. If the film was even a bit more craftily written or the actors tried a little harder it would have been devoid of redeeming qualities. Luckily Justin Stanley and Eric Miller the writers are seriously inept, yet their blunder has inadvertently created a wonder. If you are amused by really bad cinema, or enjoy lifetime made for TV movies, I would highly recommend this film.


..This is definitely a movie for MST3K...My friend and I had fun ripping it apart..the movie just wasn't a

pleasant experience..If you feel like committing suicide,

watch this movie--it will give you the extra boost to help you venture to the other side.


Bought the Video for 50 cents, in the local blockbusters 'culling' of 'rust'. Cover looked good,shadowy figures shrouded by mist, a promise of a 'cracker jack' MIB and cover-ups.

Pace, energy, dramatic tension empathy with character,there is none there.

Eric Roberts, an actor who I was not aware of before this movie,stars as Bob Wilson , a man with very bad facial hair,looking late 70's.There is some scenes in the movie where he looks like he has lost some 'teeth' on the left side and the beard is a beard to hide the fact.

It looks and runs like a 'low budget' B,but without the 'whackyness' to become a cult movie.

The story has been culled from the 'real' UFO alien abduction case's that were abound during the year 1996 and 1998.These books collectively had concluded the the 'greys' have been here all the time,but are so sensitive to sunlight,they are addicted to 'ray bands' and black suits and cars.Because they are so embarrassed off these 'faults' they are determined to remove any evidence that earthlings may have happened to stumble on, that they exist.

The Movie does not get off first base. Dean stock well, who plays the UFO writer Stan Mills adds some , energy' to this movie,but you do feel that somehow Dean is winking to the camera with the thought, can you really believe this.....

Howver there was a 'laff', the dog's name was 'anthrax', a sly reference to 'close encounters....'

Lisa Dinkins, the desk sergeant, looks more angry towards the director on the set, than to the character who'dosn't make her day'.

The Shadow Men, lacks script, and direction.For a film made in 1998 it looks and rides like a 'loss leader'.

It deserves only a two, but I'm open to suggestions that it deserves better. BJay,aka gemma100


This is so bad it isn't even funny. I think it must have been written by an unintelligent child. It really is quite unbelievable how poorly-made this film is. It actually has a good cast, but it is one of those films that you can't understand why it got made at all. Best line: "MIB meet TNT"!


Sorry if this offends some, but I have major problems with this series. Starting with Ian Oglivy as Simon Teplar. Now, his character name may be the same as the character played by Sir Roger Moore in the original series, but he isn't really The Saint. He is vaguely Saint-like, but is far too much a puppet of the organization for which he works.

Instead of suave and cunning, Oglivy's Templar is brash. Rather than a twinkle in his eye, this new "Saint" seems to vacillate between looking slightly embarrassed and looking just bit too smug.

True, I am one of those, "James Bond WAS Sean Connery" and "Simon Templar WAS Roger Moore" types. Perhaps that colors my perspective, but watching some of these episodes in 2008-09 hasn't done anything to change my opinion of the show back in 1978-79 when I first saw it. I have also gone back to watch several of the Roger Moore series recently. They hold up. Rather nicely, too.

The plots are paper thin and the supporting acting is sometimes painful. I would give examples, but they would end up being spoilers.

For completists out there, go for the DVD. For Ian Ogilvy fans, go for it. But, if you have warm, fuzzy memories of the original The Saint shows, don't say that one crabby old fart didn't warn you.


Well, I confess I did not read the book. And, as a person who retched at every one of Margaret O'Brian's performances, avoided that movie. Sooo, I watched the 1994 version basically ignorant of who and what should have been.

The colors and historic feel of the film are wonderful. I am still pondering, however, the fact that Amy had quite a growth spurt and the rest of the family stayed physically the same. Wynona Rider never changed physically or emotionally.

And let's be honest, Claire Daines stunk (stank?). She was a Concord Madonna if there ever was one, born to be martyred. Boring! What an insipid nonentity! And here's a question; why didn't the father TALK? He was just furniture who hung around. How that man could have produced children is a miracle.

Oh well, I've seen worse movies. This one reminds me of Coke that has been shaken in the can and lost its fizzle. Flat. Colorful, but flat.


This version of "Little Women" ranks right DOWN there with the most recent remake of "A Little Princess" for its deeply annoying distortion of the novel. Three examples: Contemporary feminist ideas that hold little in common with Alcott's "feminism" turn the character of "Marmee" (Sarandon) into a plastic caricature of the original. John Brooke is turned into a pert cartoon of a 1950's "beatnik", both in physical appearance and in his speech mannerisms. Professor Bhaer (impossible here to consider in his early 40's, as in the text) makes a mild sexual "pass" at Jo in the theatre which is fully at odds with his abstemious, classical German temperament. .. . I easily could continue with examples of how irritating I consider this film. I never shall waste the money by purchasing a copy. RATING = 0 stars


The only reason this dreadful version of a much loved book even garnered a four from me is because the scenery itself was beautiful, and the actual Orchard House where the Alcotts lived was incorporated into the filming.

This in no way touches on the depth of character from Louisa May Alcott's book, in fact it's so bad that when certain important events occur...don't want to give anything away here concerning the plot...one is left wondering why they should care. The acting itself was wooden--Winona Ryder makes a horrible Jo, and Claire Danes as Beth was truly pitiful--the script did not flow or introduce any of the wonderful aspects of character that was found in the book, or the movie version starring Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, and June Allyson. Watching this film, one does not know that Meg pines away for riches because the family used to be wealthy, and she has never forgotten having the "little luxuries." One does not know that Beth spent a great deal of her time next door at the Lawrence's and was such a beautiful piano player. They don't even introduce the fact that Amy is "ashamed" of her nose, which was most amusing. And Jo, it's miserable the way they butchered her character. Instead of holding her head high above her sorrows and troubles, this film portrayed her as a "oh-woe-is-me" type of character who just felt sorry for herself.

Please don't waste your time on this. If you wish to see Little Women in film, rent or buy a different version. The version with June Allyson was infinitely better than this one. Or better yet, spend some time and read the book.


First off, I've got to say this is half way ridiculous. This shows you how lazy these actors and actresses really are (Yeah Simon, I'm talking' to you!) because I think 3 or 4 were actually the "real" actors' voices. For example, Puss In Boots, the same actor that played him in the actual movie sang for this. On the other hand, Fiona's singing voice was not Cameron Diaz! Pathetic! Oh and my favorite, you vote for a bad one, supposedly "Simon" is singing, but what can you expect, it's not really him! What's the matter with that piece of trash? Does he really think he's that important to where he can judge but not sing? I think not! Wake up people! They could definitely do better than that! I mean seriously, even if Simon can't sing good, it would've been awesome to hear him attempt it! Bottom line, this was disgusting!


The whole Shrek 2 experience wasn't my taste anyway (I thought the original was way better), and this extra they put on isn't as funny either. It sure ain't of the standard of The Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Party on the DVD of Shrek.

All of the major characters can sing a song in this one, judged by no other than Shrek, Fiona and our very own Simon Cowell. But it all just seems so much less funny and spontaneous than the aforementioned Party in the Swamp. As Shrek 2, there's a serious lack of wit, enthusiasm and charm. Well, that's my opinion, anyway.

If I had to rate this: 4/10.


I watched this movie as part of the Philadelphia Film Festival a few years back...it was ALMOST unwatchable. I think the only reason people sat through the entire movie was because there was a Q&A session after the film with Dame Dash and Kevin Hart. I don't think anyone even asked about this film...people mentioned the Woodsmen more than this mock-umentary...The only time it was mentioned was because the events in the film actually happened after filming them....

I'm surprised that with this amount of star power in the film, they couldn't make something more of it. It almost looks like a student film that the entire cast improvised. or at least...attempted to improvise.


The film (Death of A Dynasty) was screening in the same theater where Al Pacino screened his film "Chinese Coffee" for the TFF. The build-up was there. The theater was filled to capacity. Well, the theater was full before the movie began, but by the time the movie ended and the lights came up. PEOPLE disappeared- I'm not being funny... more than 2/3 of the people vacated the theater. This movie was HORRIBLE! Now this is coming from someone who KNOWS Films. To prove it. No film was wasted because it was shot on a Canon XL1 by using the factory electronic lens (instead of a manual lens where the DP could have better control). The actors portraying Jay Z, Damon Dash and Sean "P-Diddy" Combs were all inside jokes where the script was paper-thin. Not having the actual characters who are so well known put the actors in place of having to go over the top in their portrayals of these hip hop icons. Some portions were over exposed (like on the ball court). Did anyone use a monitor or check the F-stop settings? The jump cut editing when Damon Dash was on the phone was trite and frivolous. The Asian girl coming out of nowhere had no back story nor purpose other than screaming "You lookin' at me?" was further proof that this film had no character development. The script was weak because it had no storyline other than a fake story to Dave (who is a parody of "The Source" magazine) which is a non-story in and of itself. Not even the music was worthy of my time. The direction was non-existent and I'm not certain if it's because of the lack of script or vision, but it looked as if someone free-styled every scene and had a guy with a Canon XL1 put it on tape. I found myself anxious and going from wanting this film to succeed desperately to wanting to join the 2/3's leaving en-mass to get the get the hell out of the theater. Nevertheless, I stayed hoping it would get better. It did not. The JMJ cameo and Aaliyah's salute were the ONLY causes for applause in the film. Yet, if you think about it, you do GOOD work for someone you're saluting; not the worse, God-awful thing since Russell's 'Tougher Than Leather' fiasco. I'd have to put this in that category; ego-driven, non talented piece of decadence that is messing it up for REAL talented young filmmakers that could have used that budget and that cast to make something GREAT & FUNNY or at least GOOD.


This was a total waste of film, time, resources, and ... well, never mind, there WAS no talent.

I don't know what this was trying for, except perhaps a rap musical, but it didn't work! This was a totally disgusting display of a serious lack of talent, direction, and vision. It was worse than boring. It was horrid! There IS no dialog, no enjoyment, no point to this "work." Absolutely wretched, and completely disgusting display of new money, no class, and a total lack of taste.

I want my ninety minutes back! *wretches* This bull snot doesn't rate a rating.

the Fiend :.


OK, there are a few cute scenes with Pandas, but apart from that... Shooting the people who made this isn't good enough! But you know, I actually thought this was part 3, because they released it on VHS under that title (since 3 and 4 were never released here). Maybe if I saw the two movies in the middle it might have helped, but as I'm just watching the real part 3 (and I saw the N'Xau imitating Bruce Lee) I somehow doubt.

They should have stopped after part 2 - no more craziness. Make it good or don't make it at all!

I mean come on!

This was about a culture shock of "civilized" people not being able to survive in the desert, not about Panda preservation and running all over the Chineese Wall!


Maybe a small child will find it funny, prompted by the music and cartoon sounds, but the things meant to be funny are just plain stupidity.

I've read bad reviews before, where the reviewer totally bashes the movie they are reviewing. I am not one to do that. I like many things others dislike. But this is just HORRIBLE! I paid $20 to purchase it, along with parts 3 and 4 ($20 for each)) on a VCD, because I had been looking for them everywhere, then saw someone selling the VCD's on Amazon.com. That was the biggest waste of money I ever spent I think. Part 3 was decent, as was part 4, even though it had absolutely NOTHING to do with The Gods Must Be Crazy, except that it was crazy for them to associate it to the series.


Terrible! - if one word could describe this movie, this is it. The acting is atrocious and the storyline is non-existent. The supposed 'funny bits' will only make you cringe and you are forever waiting for the end to come. If you haven't watched it yet - save yourself the time.


Virginal innocent Indri finds herself at a house of prostitution run by ruthless pimp MG. Indri winds up incarcerated in MG's private prison after she refuses to make love to him. Of course, Indri and worldly top con Helga join forces and plan to escape. Maman Firmansyah's blah, uninspired direction and Piet Burnama's dull, talky script thoroughly undermine any trashy vitality this flick needs in order to qualify as a pleasing piece of babes-behind-bars exploitation junk: the sluggish pace painfully drags throughout, there's no gratuitous female nudity whatsoever (the girls don't even show any skin during the obligatory group shower scene!), the expected torture and degradation are both extremely tame and tepid, the moderate crummy gore likewise fails to impress, and even a ridiculous catfight sequence ain't nothing to get excited about. Thomas Susanto's pedestrian cinematography, the laughably lousy dubbing, the excruciatingly overlong 102 minute running time, the sappy theme song, and Gatot Sudarto's cornball score add further abject insult to already appalling injury. Only some decent last reel break-out action offers a little relief from the otherwise overly abundant stultifying tedium. A complete yawn-inducing dud.


While it's one of two movies on Tales of Voodoo Volume 1, there's no voodoo or anything supernatural in it! The box labels it "Hell Hole" but the screen title is Escape from Hell Hole. The title is confusingly similar to Hell Hole (1978) aka "Escape from Women's Hell Hole" A group of women bathe in a river and seemingly the worst thing they have to worry about is a peeping tom, who they easily overpower. No nudity in this or any other scene, however.

A woman named Cardena drives up in a car and seems to be known and liked by all the women. She invites Indri to come and live in the city with her and her uncle M.G. Once they get there, it becomes clear that M.G. wants to take Indri's virginity. M.G. runs some sort of house of prostitution, and he's either in charge of a corrupt branch of the military, or runs a paramilitary outfit, or prefers for his guards to all wear military-style uniforms.

The women who refuse him or otherwise make trouble get put into a prison. Indri gets sent there. The women get tortured and sometimes possibly raped by the guards.

Various unsuccessful attempts at escape or rescue are made, but inevitably fail despite the obvious advantages the women have: they outnumber the guards vastly, and relatively few of the guards have automatic weapons - most have semi-automatic rifles or handguns.

WIP genre enthusiasts may like it, and the fact that it was made in the Philippines gives it some novelty, but otherwise... eh.


i can sheepishly admit, i am a fan of Tom Green. Whether it's Organized Rhyme, his own "The Tom Green Show" both pre and post MTV, or his first forays into film, "Freddy Got Fingered", "Road Trip", and 'The Chad' in "Charlie's Angels", I look forward to watching what he will do next.

With this in mind, I can honestly say, "Bob the Butler" is a horrible film, whether you like Green or not, whether you like movies or not, or whether you have a pulse or not.

What i enjoy about Green is his ability to find humour in such simple things as a cheese sandwich. i love watching him interact with others, altering the everyday altercation with either a minute change of pace, or a major social faux pas, both played with deadpan mock seriousness.

What i don't particularly like about Green is when the joke runs too long, or the joke isn't funny to begin with. The nice thing about all the aforementioned resume bits of Green was quick editing in mind, or jokes that, if they weren't funny, they were bizarre enough to shock you or make you think. Bob the Butler is devoid of any of these things.

The film takes the premise that Green's character cannot hold a job, until he finds himself as a butler for an oddly cast, anal retentive, control freak Brooke Shields. What ensues is a bland, run of the mill, stereotypical movie about a babysitter who is not liked by the kids until they eventually warm up and want the babysitter to be their parent, who is missing out on the kids until they realize too late that the fired babysitter was actually better for the kids than their own parenting.

What's so disappointing is not just the rehash family film formula. It's that Green is as far removed from this type of thing than any comedian, that any hope for him messing within the parameters of this formula is never realized. The opening cartoon credits, if filmed as a live action weekly series staring Green, would be so much better than this boring, uneventful snooze fest. Three things Green has never been accused of, until now. Perhaps that's why he did it.

Grade: D-


Saturday night, time to catch a DVD. We were pretty much settled on "Walk The Line" until we saw this. It had Tom Green, it looked like a "comedy" so we went this way. I obviously knew "Walk The Line" was slightly more acclaimed, but I was in the mood for something light and easy.

"Bob the Butler" is all about Bob (Green), a terrible employee who's tried a stack of jobs with little success. He comes across an ad for a butler course and decides to give it a go. While doing the course he receives a request to babysit (one of his old jobs) and gives it a go. He does well so the mum decides to hire him as the butler. From here we can work out what's going to happen and the plot plays out exactly as you'd expect.

Terrible movie, even for the genre. An all over the place, poorly laid out script with Green way out of his comfort zone. It was sad watching him play this role. The kids were OK but that was about it. Don't waste your time.


This is by far the worst movie I have seen from Disney Channel. The story was weak and so was the chemistry between all the actors. Most appalling was the sexual innuendos. This is the Disney Channel! Please! My kids didn't even like it. Completely inappropriate and not even fun to watch. Another comment was posted comparing it to "Hook", "A Series of Unfortunate Events", etc. I have yet to figure out the comparison. We enjoyed the other movies. This one left a negative impact on us toward Disney. If it was on any other channel I would understand. Although, it still wouldn't have been good. It was choppy and the reaction from some of the characters at times made absolutely no sense.


Fair play to the guy who shot Beyond Vanilla, he took a risk.

On the other hand the production is so bad, the film quality is very low, there is no script, no structure, no insight into the psyche of people interviewed and their movie for getting involved in kinky play. Some pictures are in for shock value but add nothing to the essay.

Apart from the main man showing off in a leather cap, was there any reason to shoot - and show- this movie?


I don't know where to start but one thing is for sure, this is the worst film I've ever seen.

The plot is everything but good (a guy wakes up to find out that he has "lost" his penis), the acting is poor - Joop for example mumbles his lines which makes it sometimes very hard to understand him at all - and the few attempts to be fun (Jekyll tries to have sex even without his penis) simply fail.

I really started to like German movies in the last some years but if this is the new German style I just have to stick to Hollywood productions.


When this movie was made - in 1971 - Sean Connery was certainly best known for playing the ultimate good guy - super spy James Bond, who kept the world safe from every bad guy you could imagine. I can understand why Connery would want to re-image himself, especially since his time as James Bond was approaching its end. What I have a hard time understanding is why he would choose such a poor movie to do it with. Here, he plays Duke Anderson - a career criminal who has just been released from prison and immediately begins plotting his next job - robbing the six wealthy residents of the apartment house in which his prostitute girlfriend (played by Dyan Cannon, in a role that accomplished little except to give a sort of logical reason why this place would be targeted) lives. He puts together a team made up partly of guys he knew on the inside, partly of old cronies from the outside and one guy from the local mob. Throughout the movie, it seems as though everyone's being taped (thus, the title) - but to no end, since the tapes really end up playing no role whatsoever. And, in the end, I wondered about the police - it looked like half the NYPD was on this job!

I thought this movie was poorly written, poorly acted and poorly paced. It's hopelessly dated, reeking of the 70's and with an absolutely dreadful musical score. It lost me right from the beginning with the silly scene of Anderson's last group therapy session in prison. It was dull throughout - a total waste of time. 1/10


Veteran director Sidney Lumet has made many above-average films in his time, but 'The Anderson Tapes', a generic heist thriller from the early 1970s, is not one of them. The dialogue and acting (including that of lead Sean Connery) are both poor, and the Quincey Jones score is horrid; the camera work is better but insufficient to compensate for a movie where none of the characters seem wholly real (in a way quite typical of indifferent movies from this era). Another problem is that the film lacks purpose; the tapes of the title seem quite irrelevant, and although the confused ending is in some sense superior to the glossy "perfection" at the conclusion of movies like "Ocean's Eleven", the viewer is still left asking "so what?". Overall, this not an awful film, but it is lacking in much to distinguish it from the very large number of similar movies.


Well I managed it! Second time round I managed to get through the whole film, albeit in 3 chunks. But I managed to endure it all!

Now I just wished I'd listened to my own review and saved myself the bother. Although the technocobblers did get dulled down the second half it was still rife with it. Whats more in it's place was a morose 'heist' and a meagre attempt at injecting some mob intrigue.

I just can't imagine not only what they were trying to do with this film or how anyone else here can actually think it's a good film. It's not even watchable.

If it's a heist film where's the heist, where's the cunning break in, the cunning break out, out witting the police and the surveillance people? Basically they just turn up at a building and run around like a group of masked removal men.

Why were half of them wearing any masks anyway? One of them lived in the building, and two of them had already been seen by the people in the building. I mean how could any of the tenants not recognise the gay character since he'd visited each and every one of them?!

They leave the paraplegic kid, who's surrounded by gadgets and don't even bother to check and see if any of the gadgets lying about is a radio? Are these the dumbest robbers of all time?

Not only does this film not make sense in small ways, not only are the main issues of the film poorly handled but on top of all of that it's deeply dull from start to finish.

As for the acting, I'm sure they were, but not great or bad, but why bother, the film isn't worth the thought or effort.

The only reason I can see people thinking this film is great I can guess is their respect for Christopher Walken and Sean Connery. Well newsflash guys, Connery has always been overrated and finally after a decade of godawful films people are finally noticing. Funny how the only academy award he ever got was a film he recently got voted worst accent of all time for. As for Walken, he's a funny guy, but he's been spitting out more ham over the last two decades than any other actor I can think of. At least he stopped himself from dancing a jig in this one.

I think maybe you should judge a film on it's own merits [or lack of] rather than seeing big names and expecting greatness.

This isn't great, it isn't even good, it isn't even watchable.


I bought a copy under the illusion that Connery right in the middle of his Bond days combined with the name Sidney Lumet would make a nice little film. Didn't expect it to be watchable but it was a heist film and they are always a laugh.

Instead I got the chance to see the most dated nugget of junk I have ever seen. Trust me considering my collection of tapes that's a feat.

Now I shouldn't really be giving this film a review as I couldn't manage the whole thing. I just could not endure the sight of Mr Connery getting back into bed yet again with Ms Cannon, the half-hearted fawning of a supposedly gay Mr Balsam [didn't know it was possible to underact a gay stereotype] and as for the direction and focus of the film I an only guess that Mr Lumet had other things on his mind.

Beyond all these the sound effects and music destroyed the film most concisely. The 'hidden camera' effects stood out so badly that I just had to keep pressing the mute button to avoid them.

Another film which badly utilises 'modern' technology but not quite as badly as this is 'The Osterman Weekend' but I managed to get through that and it didn't obscure the film as intently as this. So if you want to watch a dated techno-thriller watch that instead.


Sorry, I didn't go for this one.

For starters, it was wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-y too slow. The pace was so glacial it was hard to care what was happening.

The rats were your basic gang of thugs. They were basically modeled after every 1930's gangster flick you could name. The party at the end looked like it was lifted from a Hollywood ball.

The plot was either hackneyed or non-existent. Attempts at cuteness and emotions were so forced it was pathetic. And allowing the mouse and child 'toy' to suddenly function whenever a dramatic moment (hah) occurred just killed it.

A kids movie NOT from Disney. The producers had a chance to make an impact. But they blew it.

For insomniacs only.


This movie came up tonight during a dinner conversation with friends so I Googled it and ended up here. I enjoyed lurking and reading people's comments. And then I read this: "There's nothing here that I believe would disturb a child..." Uh, sure. My mother, older sisters and I saw this movie in the theater in 1977, so I was 4 or 5 years old. To this day I vividly remember seeing the movie ...as well as my incessant, inconsolable sobbing at the (SPOILER) previously mentioned rock crushing scene.

Yes, yes, it was a different time back then and probably kids today are exposed to much worse day in and day out. And yes, I was a young kid. But *no way* is this a typical G movie. Watch it first and decide for yourself before considering showing it to your kids.


Well, I saw this movie was I was quite little... "family" they categorize it. HA! It made me cry and I made my dad turn it off! So I decided to give it another go some almost 20 years later... and its still one of the most disturbing animations I've ever seen (and I've seen quite a few!). Its twisted and depressing, and deals with some rather adult issues (not sex or anything like that, just mature things like loss, death, and infinity) Nevertheless, it is an unusual film with interesting ideas and themes--definitely do NOT recommend for children. If you're looking for something really offbeat, this is it, just be prepared to feel uncomfortable while watching it.


At best this could be described as an 80 minute home movie. In fact, a number of shots show the cameras involved, and they are mere consumer grade camcorders... without anti-shaking features apparently. Many scenes rivaled Blair Witch Project in its lack ability to keep things stable. Terrible panning shots in an effort to keep up with the action. Just thinking about it again makes me want to puke.

Don't watch.


As awful as this is as a piece of film-making, it is pure comedy gold. The entire production reeks of egotism and pomposity, and the whole thing is amplified by the fact that nobody involved seems to realize how outrageous the whole thing is. The whole thing is really a tribute to Shatner's massive ego- though, to be fair, he does seem to have a sense of humour about the whole thing. Even the title is a pompous and pointless misspelling (how is "Spplat" pronounced differently than "Splat"?).

I should add that the advertisements for "Creative Light Entertainment" that come before the movie starts are even funnier than "Spplat Attack" itself.


The first time I saw this on Comedy Central, about a year ago, I thought it was incredibly funny. Lampanelli does have a gift for spouting out crass opinions in a deadpan style that keeps building one shock on top of another until you can't help laughing. I felt much like those in the film's audience appear, initially wanting to be offended and superior, eventually guffawing against my will.

The show wasn't nearly as amusing the second time around, both because the shock of hearing uncensored bigotry on cable was gone and because of something my friend noted at the end of the first viewing: Lampanelli says that it's fun for us all to make fun of ourselves... but you'll notice she really only makes fun of minorities. Very little time is spent dissing white people -- I recall a few minutes about p.c. soccer moms and racist old white guys, the latter being just another excuse for black jokes. But, really, how could she insult whites to the same extent as blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs or gays? There simply aren't equivalent stereotypes, evincing the same contempt and desire to wound, for Euro-Americans. The best she can do is to make fun of her sexually-motivated preference for dating black guys, which itself becomes an indirect degradation of black men and their supposed sexual assets.

It's problematic.


It could be funny.

It could be really funny, but she has to overdo her sexist, racist humor to the point where it's overkill.

Is that her best material? I'm no prude, saint or pervert, but she is short on the jokes and big on the insults.

Her excuse is it's not racist if she pokes jokes at everybody...well it's not funny either.

There is an entire world full of stupid happenings and events that can be funny aside from just people's nationalities or skin color or sexual orientation.

10 minutes is far more than enough of this humor...an hour or so is by far too much.

Is the President or Vice President not doing retarded stuff any longer? Is George Bush all of a sudden a smart, generous, friendly person whit a heart of gold? Is there no events of traffic problems or confusion of sorts that can trigger some comment about daily life? Do I need to hear every 3 minutes about the size of you boyfriend's dick? Or how often you get laid or how a gay man is a fag? It's no longer funny when it's boring...and it gets boring quite easily.

Comedy is not easy to do and her show is not easy to watch unless you are truly a hillbilly with little sense and respect for anybody else.


she is swearing and lots of dumb people laughing her.this is not a comedy,not even a black comedy.i could resist the disgusting jokes only for 8 minutes.nobody can laugh that jokes unless he is idiot.i have doubt about Americans after this show.they gave high points for this show.if they liked it they must have problems in their mind.i can not believe that people pay for this disgusting show.it does not worth a penny..i looked its rating before getting it,but i am very disappointed.this is the worst show i have ever seen. i will be very careful while getting American comedy films/shows. do not take into account of the rating in IMDb.wait for at least 100 votes.i do not suggest seeing this show. do not see it even though it is free.do not waste your time with this.the age limit must be +18 for this silly show.if you don't have psychological problems,you can not laugh any of the jokes.


Here's the immediate problem I have with this movie: Ah-nold trying to be a spy. Sure, he can handle the tough-stuff, but I highly doubt he could sneak around that well. As for the rest, rehashing of James Bond stuff with a annoying Tom Arnold on back-up and a totally taste-less strip scene that makes the movie even longer. Bond movies get to the point in normally two hours. That's all that should be required.


I'm not sure what this film tried to be action, thriller, comedy, spoof perhaps all of the above as far as I'm concerned it succeeded at none of the above. Overlong and tiresome specially the subplot with Jamie Lee as the undercover spy. I also wasn't compelled by much of the action and frankly there wasn't enough of it. Yes there were some dazzling special effects and computer graphics but aren't we all getting tired of a films primary asset being its special effects !


I have rarely seen a movie so bloody stereotypical and offensive towards a group of people. How dare they produce something which is composed of nothing but blatant stereotypes on one group of people alone. It is terrible and I don't care that the movie was good besides that fact, because I do not support pathetic stereotypes like this. They made all Arabs look like women beating, anti-American, stupid terrorists that want to end the world. They portrayed Arabs worse in this movie than they portrayed Nazis in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I have known many Arab Americans and I am sorry, I'm not such a weak minded fool that I'm going to sit through a movie which degrades them like this. The producers showed NO concern whatsoever about who they offend. Fine, they wanna make a movie that offends everybody that isn't as bad because it isn't a "racist" movie. But when they produce a movie that specifically points at Arabs with the finger and makes every other group of people look fine that's called racism. I do NOT think a movie like this is worth anything more than to spit on. Neither are the scriptwriters and the producers.


"Trooper Hook" is an engaging title, suggestive of a colorful robust cavalry Western, maybe something along the lines of those majestic John Ford numbers. Sadly, it's anything but that.

The original story is by Jack Schaeffer, who wrote the novel "Shane." The book wasn't that hot, being essentially a cobbled together and unsophisticated old-fashioned pulp piece. It was made into a Western masterpiece by George Stevens, the director, and his crew.

Well, Charles Marquis Warren is no George Stevens. His direction here and elsewhere is flat and uninspired. The script is of little help. After Sergeant Hook, Joel McRae, battles and defeats the Apaches, they find a captive white woman Barbara Stanwyck who has had a child by the Apache Chief, the camera-ready but modestly talented Rudolfo Acosta.

McRae takes Stanwyck and her child on a stagecoach ride, along with various other passengers, some of them obviously derivative. (When, oh, when, will we see a stagecoach in dangerous country without a greedy banker?) They are pursued by Acosta and his band, who have escaped from prison. Finally, McRae sees to it that Stanwyck and her husband, John Dehner, who has thought her dead for lo these seven or eight years, are reunited. The only problem is that Dehner doesn't like the notion that Stanwyck has been getting it on with an Apache, nor is he particularly fond of the prospect of raising "another man's leavings." Well, en fin, Dehner and Acosta are killed and Stanwyck and her boy leave with McRae, object: matrimony.

I suppose something could have been done with a plot like this, even if the Apaches in some ways are the usual stand-ins for African Americans. But it's a slow story with a lot of grumbling and no sparkles in the script. Whoever thought of casting the familiar and reliable, Viennese-as-all-get-out Cecilia Lovsky as a Spanish duena? She ought to be making Sacher-tortes, not tortillas. Barbara Stanwyck, a good and sexy actress ten or fifteen years earlier, looks steely. We're half an hour into the film before she has a line of dialog -- and not many after that. Joel McRae is almost unrecognizably aged and wears a mustache that makes him look older. It's not that actors in late middle-age don't belong in Westerns. McRae himself did a splendid job two years later in "Ride the High Country", under a far better director, and Gary Cooper was just about right in "High Noon." But, whatever your age, you need a good vehicle and a director who knows what he's doing -- and this ain't it.

It's not an insulting movie. Its sentiments aren't wrong. And it's not outrageously sloppy. It's just plain dull.


Trooper Hook(played by Joel McCrea)is a hard, but good-natured army officer, fighting against the Indians. When taking captive a notorious Apache leader, he finds out the Indian's wife is a white woman(Barbara Stanwyck), with an Indian child. Hook has to bring the woman(and the child) back to her real husband. Of course, there are some complications.(nothing you couldn't have guessed however)And that's about all the story there is...

The only good thing about this western is the acting. Stanwyck and McCrea do a good job. The film itself never becomes irritating, but that's about the best you can say about it. There's hardly a decent story, the songs are pretty lousy and sometimes you can notice that it wasn't exactly the wild wild west they were filming in. Notice that at a certain moment the coach in which our main characters are traveling comes to a stop. When you see a close-up of Stanwyck however, the vehicle seems to be moving. It's just one of the examples of bad filming in this movie... 4/10


This is a very feminine movie. If the evil, vile, yes vicious rule of Man is ever abolished we could be looking at a plethora of movies like this.

The main character is a Woman and she is the only volunteer of her Planet willing to travel to and sanitize and re-educate Earth which is described as the most backward, idiotic, violent Planet in the Universe.

You see, there's this future advanced society of (let's say) hippies on another planet (or time) who don't drive cars, have no TV or money.

"Hippies from Space" - All of them are Caucasian by the way. But don't worry - later on it is revealed that Australian Aborigines are the ultimate sages of Planet Earth. Now if that doesn't convince you of the film's good intentions...

Our female hero comes to Earth via White Bubble (no less) in a garment from the time of the French Revolution and by golly she is repelled by all that horrific meat-eating, air-polluting etc. This is a setting that guarantees some people's instant vomiting:

Hippies from the Future/Cosmos in Paris. A sure-fire blockbuster and next in line to be re-done by Hollywood. Yeah right. "Universal Hippie" (Rated R).

Coline Serreau (of 3 Men and a Baby) wrote, directed AND starred in this movie. If you are frenchophobe and misogynous I strongly suggest you skip this one.

And by the way this happens to reek of eco-fascism in almost every scene. But it is a comedy we must assume - at least the first 30 minutes lead you to believe that. So who knows. In fact it looks like a generic 80s comedy from Europe but it was done in the 90s. Evidently genius transcends the time of mere mortals.

I only have a fuzzy idea of what the "Mastress" of this oeuvre wants but I think: She's criticizing the Modern Age but making fun of the supposed alternatives as well. I hope so because those future hippies are horrific. Almost as dull as the Eloi in Time Machine.

There are memorable, funny scenes in this movie and some that make you cringe. The low point of the movie comes your way during a hospital scene - our hero "re-loads" her energies with the help of a new-born which happens to be the product of a Serb having raped a Bosnian after which she abandoned the child. I have no idea what stuff like this is doing in and for a comedy. It is just one example why it all looks like the essay of a freakishly creative 8-year-old school girl.

Oh, and there is a silent concert here as well, meaning our future genius hippies participate in it telepathically. Can you dig it, man? You see, this is a very esoteric piece we have here. And lurking around every corner there are cathartic collapses and spiritual re-births of bad world-polluting evil-doers.

Incidentally Jesus was, of course, one of those E.T. hippies himself. This is a prequel to "Bruce Almighty" of some sorts. Kind of like "Hippie Almighty". That makes it 3 alternative titles with the word Hippie in this review. I guess we will leave it at that.

This mess of a movie seems to lose its way half-way through. There is a lot of dancing & prancing of people in nature. Skippy hippies on Planet Green. In fact this movie endangers you to believe the French are all women. With or without.

Bummer, I thought "Hippie" was written "Hippy" - what a pity - I imagined those "Hippys" jumping around on their Planet Green like "Skippy" - the credible land-bound Flipper of Australia.

I think it's best to watch this movie drunk or in a feminine state of mind. Of course this is a compliment. So flip your wig and dig it, "Man"?


Since I am a big environmental fighter for clean and sustainable life, this movie was a big refreshing from the start. A funny, simple said story was something new for me since watching Earthlings. Excellent acting crew, camera, director, screenplay and story were very much promising until beautiful nurse forbidden to alien Mila holding a baby whose mother left it because Serbs raped her (during the war in Bosnia probably-but not said). It had to be a Serb who was a rapist and a Bosniak women who is a victim. Crimes were on both sides but this was a classic fascistic move from a story writer or director. Shame, this movie was more promising but fascistic media always has to be involved in our lives. In 90s every Serb was a war criminal and now every Muslim is present as Osama Bin Laden but that's another story. Shame Shame!


This one of the most blatantly non-American fascistic movie I've seen in a long time. So we are treated with ET's living in an ecological paradise looking like a sixties leftover's wet dream. Notice that all of them are white and clean-cut ; apparently, there doesn't seem to be any opposition to this "ideal" way of life (no work, no music, no incentive, no arts, no nothing. Ah, yes : popping rug rats seems to be the only thing worthwile.) One of them is forced to go to Earth, though they admit they've been "quite racists" towards the earthlings. So, on ET's goes to Earth, and what does she do ? Nothing. Oh, yes, scramble the brain of some guys who doesn't think the right way, but in a playful manner. But nothing gets any better. Obviously, their status of Unbermensch gives those aliens the right to mess everything up. Of course, if they are so powerful, they could do something against pollution or whatever seems to be bad, but no, they don't mess with Untermensch. At the end, the alien messes up a football match in a playful way, spoiling the fun of the people who watch it (considered as morons, I guess.) Well, I hate football and rather go to the dentist than see through a whole game, but why can't people appreciate it ? But apparently, in this ideal universes, This Is Bad. Thou Shalt Not Have Fun As Thou Wish. Great. So much for open-mindness. At the end, the ET's finally go back, bringing with them some "good" persons (meaning : who understands that there is nothing better than doing nothing but raising rug rats in a perfect, white, clean-cut environment and goose-stepping no, they left that one out. Well, in the movie's world, those aliens can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather listen to Faith No More with my Algerian friends than deal with their "Silence concertoes", whatever that is. If that makes me one of the subhumans (even if I'm white, so I have a redeeming quality), well, so I am and sue me. In France, the National Front leader is called no, don't call him at all, just boo. It is obvious that if he was a woman and a mother, Mrs Serraut would have found her Führer. Oh, and for those interested, no, there are no special effects. Though those hippies dresses


I always like days in Spanish class when my teacher is out, because she gives us some movie to watch. It's invariably no good, but it's a good opportunity to do homework for other classes or study. However, when she told us we were going to be watching SELENA the next day, all the girls who'd seen it seemed excited. I know enough not to trust their judgement (these are people who's favorite movies include Napolean Dynamite and Cinderella Story).

I was right. I was interested in Selena, the person, when our teacher told us about her. The movie, however, was extremely clichéd. Jennifer Lopez's acting was terribly overdone. The movie held every clichéd scene from movies ever, which I realized from the moment we had a shot of Jennifer staring sadly at a couple kissing, with that look 'oh poor me, I have no one.' What follows is a corny string of scenes such as the "I'm sick of everyone telling me what I want" and the forbidden love with the line "But I love him, Daddy!" J.LO shouted a lot. When rewinding it to find the right place, we played in four times to check; she was crying in three of them.

The writing even stooped as low as "We got married and it's okay with everybody!" followed by "I feel like I could fly! I feel like I AM flying".

The guy who played Selan's father gave the best performance. The best I can say about J.Lo is she looked gorgeous...so much better then the slutty look she has today. I enjoyed the music in the movie (Which i understand was J.Lo lip-synching to the real Selena) and the end footage of the real Selana was nice. Half the people in my class loved it...that would be the other teenage girls. Not the worst way to spend a day in class, but I wouldn't watch it outside of the classroom.


This movie did NOT portray the real Selena nor her family. They are very inconsiderate people. Very money hungry. They will literally "hurt" someone for it as well. Being in the tejano business, you know every band (since it is such a small market). I know bands that were involved with the Q Productions, and every band has been burned in one way or another. They did not get any royalties what so ever, contracts were breached, and the list goes on. At a show in Amarillo, Selena refused to sign autographs and her 1 1/2 hour concert turned into 25 mins because the concert hall was only half full. She was not dedicated to her fans, (it was even written in the Amarillo Globe News the day after). The movie really makes her and her family out to be generous and tight-knit. In actuality, A.B and his father do not get along. Lots of curse words thrown at each other(I witnessed it first hand). Poorly made. Made only for the money that would generate.


Here is a remake of "It Happened One Night", the Oscar winner for Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Now, it's OK to remake a bad movie; you just may improve it. But never try to improve on a great film! I've been a Jack Lemmon fan for many, many years and often wondered if he'd ever made any really bad films. This picture gave me the answer, although I can't say that Lemmon gives a bad performance. He's just not Clark Gable, and shouldn't have tried to be. Miss Allyson is Miss Allyson, no matter what role she plays, and just doesn't carry this one off. To make matters worse, they made a sort of musical out of it. The songs are not memorable, nor do they fit. Their presence is something like a bump in a carpet. They just shouldn't be there. Honestly, if you're a June Allyson fan, you may find this effort amusing, otherwise, I wouldn't waste my time.


Definitely from another era. When Jack Lemmon and June Allyson find circumstances forcing them to share a hotel room, they hang a blanket up between their single beds. I'm not sure why they have to do this - modesty? lack of self-control? I also wondered why Ms. Allyson would marry a man she doesn't love, and why Mr. Lemmon had never thought about loving a woman.

Lemmon and Allyson are starred; and they are interesting to watch, especially during the scene when she declares her love to him. Allyson has an energetic "Scarecrow" number. The movie doesn't sparkle like it should, however. The actors do not make the situation believable. There are times when, instead of background music, there are background songs. This is a bad re-make.

*** You Can't Run Away from It (10/31/56) Dick Powell ~ Jack Lemmon, June Allyson, Charles Bickford


For Keloglan Kara Prens'e Karsi, I thought that, this movie is the worst movie ever made and in my whole life, I won't be able to see another one this bad. But now I understand, I was totally wrong. "Dunyayi Kurtaran Adamin Oglu" is much more successful in being a bad movie than Keloglan Kara Prens'e Karsi. Now I think, as long as the Turkish film producers continue to make movies, I'll continue to see unbelievably bad movies. The money, which I gave for this film was not much, but I feel sorry for my 2 hours spent for nothing. Yes, this movie is nothing. Please take my recommendation: Even if someone gives you money to watch this movie, don't even think about it. I can tell you numerous reasons about why I like a movie. But for this one, there's simply nothing to say. It was supposed to be a comedy film, but I didn't even smile!! Come on guys, is the script writer an 8 year old boy or what? What were you thinking? The original cult film "The man who saves the world" was also a bad movie but at least it was funny, not boring. There were scenes, which one wants to see. But for this, there's nothing to say. I assume that, this film is a bad joke for Turkish people.


Every major cult film fan has watched "Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam" (Man who saves the world) aka Turkish Star Wars. Quarter a century after that was released ,we get a sequel -"Dunyayi Kurtaran Adamin oglu" (Son of the man who saves the world). While the original was meant to be a serious science fiction adventure, this one attempts to be a parody of the old film and various other science fiction films in the vein of G.O.R.A. Needless to say, the result is cinematic sewage.

The film is a basically a serious of gags , none of which are close to being remotely funny. The acting is even worse. Erbil has already sealed his spot in the acting hall of shame with the lame shrek-wannabe Keloglan (he was even worse than Petek Dincoz, which should tell you how amazingly bad he was). Cuneyt Arkin seems to be sleepwalking. Sinem Kobal who is one of the most promising young Turkish actresses working today, would want to erase this off her resume for her career's sake.

The sad news is that this film actually did well at the box office, so we will soon be hit with the inevitable sequel. Let's hope that it completely flops so that the public is spared from another 2 hours of garbage.