I bought this film being an avid classics collector especially of some of the old horror actors like Lugosi and Zucco(a great arch-fiend such as the role of Dr. Moriarity in some Sherlock Holmes endeavors) I found this movie tried to hard to be scary and campy. although it had an aura of the gumshoe mystery to it you could easily get the feeling that the film was almost plotless. However, being Lugosi's only color film it wasn't so bad that I wouldn't have it in my collection. I rated it a hesitant 4 (I debated with a 5).


Bored to death is really the best I can say about this movie.

I didn't really expect a good film, I was just looking for a way to kill some time. Well, I should have done something else.

Although this movie is enlisted as "Mystery / Thriller", I found no thrilling elements. There was some mystery in it, but then again, in most cases, it was only a conglomeration of supposedly mysterious elements - that were not that mysterious. In other cases it was simply pointless and didn't contribute to the plot or it was just inexplicable nonsense that didn't have any connection to the plot.

To sum it all up: the acting is OK, so is camera work and so on. However, the plot is just...stupid and I was not once thrilled or scared while watching this.

If, one day, you have nothing else to do, you might be tempted to watch this movie. I suggest: do something else.


A high level of nervous tension is giving overbearing screecher Laura Van Ee (Molly Lamont) some heart problems. Unhappily married to Ward (Roland Varno) and living in a large mansion/clinic with her hubby and his doctor father Josef (George Zucco), Laura believe someone's trying to kill her. And apparently she is correct in her assumption since the film is narrated by her fresh corpse on a morgue slab. The film frequently closes in on her body, the screen goes wavy and the film settles into flashback mode as she narrates her own story. Too bad she isn't even present for the majority of it! Laura, a former singer in Paris, now thinks she is being held prisoner in her home by Ward and her father-in-law. She hears strange noises and someone sends her a dummy head in a package to try to drive her even more bonkers. After that set-up during the first 20 minutes or so, the film seems to forget all about Laura until the very end of the film, when some absurd, out-of-left field explanation is given about how she was literally "scared to death" by someone from her past who has returned to settle an old score.

So what happens during the majority of this film? Unfortunately, it has little to do with Laura's predicament and more to do with a crew of irritating, chattery side characters trying (and usually failing) to be amusing. Nat Pendleton plays an extremely annoying bumbling detective named Bill Raymond, who hangs out in the home hoping someone is killed so he can solve the case and get his old job back (?) There's also put-upon maid Lilly Beth (Gladys Blake), who Bill seems obsessed with and who finds herself clinically dead at one point. Add to the mix reporter Terry Lee (Douglas Fowley), his airhead girlfriend Jane Cornell (Joyce Compton), Josef's estranged hypnotist cousin Professor Leonide (Bela Lugosi), Leonide's deaf-mute dwarf sidekick Indigo (Angelo Rossitto), blackmailer Mrs. Williams (Dorothy Christie) and someone wearing a green expressionless mask peaking in windows from time to time. This film has far too many pointless characters, far too many dull, talky scenes that really have nothing to do with the plot and completely fails at being a horror film, mystery OR comedy.

The film's chief notoriety is being both Lugosi's only starring role in a color feature and his only color horror effort. Unfortunately, Bela is underutilized here and seems to disappear for lengthy stretches, though his presence in general will be enough of an incentive for fans to check this out. Same goes for horror star Zucco, who plays his role completely straight but has almost nothing to do. The run-time is a measly 68 minutes, but that doesn't keep this misfire from dragging on and on and on for what seems like an eternity.


This snail's-pace "thriller"/mystery seems to have been designed for the theater, not for the movie screen. There is a single set, the various characters' entrances and exits give the film an extremely stagy feeling and when they talk, they usually utter lines of heavily portentous dialogue. The performances are generally stiff, except for Bela Lugosi, who overworks his facial muscles. (*1/2)


Scared To Death has the unfortunate distinction of being my least favorite Bela Lugosi movie. To say the movie is bad is an understatement. It features a plot so lame that you don't care that you don't understand it. If you don't want this horrible film ruined for you, don't read any further! In a nutshell someone is scaring a woman to death and it turns out not to be any of the characters in the movie. It features the absolute worst character acting I have ever seen including a half-witted rentacop and a sadistic male chauvinist reporter and his dingy girlfriend.

Of course, when Bela Lugosi is on camera the movie becomes interesting. Bela is in good form as a hypnotist/magician and of course he gives it his all in this dismal movie that is too long at 59 minutes. Some of the problem lies in the fact that as a Bela Lugosi movie, Lugosi gets far too little screen time. The script gives too much stage time to these very egregious and tedious characters and seems to feature the Lugosi character only because they *had* to fit him in somewhere.

Bela Lugosi gives a great performance as always, I am not sure if even that is capable of redeeming this movie -- especially when the nagging thought kept running through my head that surely someone could have found something better for this great actor to do than this drek. Bela is healthy and strong and powerful and I daresay still sexy here -- why was he being wasted? What great talents are being wasted in such a fashion today? But I digress.

I don't recommend this film to any but the die-hard Lugosi fan or the connoisseur of truly bad cinema. It is almost painful to watch Bela Lugosi a skilled artist playing on such a taudry canvas.

As a side note Scared to Death was Bela Lugosi's only movie filmed in color. (Which actually gives one a reason to watch it, I suppose). I'm going to have to look again more closely, but apparently Bela Lugosi had . . . green eyes! Or are they blue?


Scared to Death is the story of a woman's murder told by the victim as her body lies on a slab in the morgue. Not surprisingly, she tells the story of how she was "scared to death" by a variety of strange events that occurred to her, shown in flashbacks.

Frankly, this movie doesn't have a lot going for it. I rated it a 4/10, which is probably higher than it deserves, simply for Bela Lugosi's presence and reasonable (though not stellar) performance. The rest of the acting was okay.

It starts off with a quite interesting premise-the narration by the spirit of the corpse on the slab. I had thought that it might lead to something interesting, but sadly the script and storyline seemed just thrown together and incoherent. Strange things occur that were presumably frightening enough to cause the narrator's death, but that just bore the audience.

Hardly worth seeing unless you are a Bela Lugosi completist, in my view.


"A woman who was literally frightened to death narrates the story of how she arrived at her untimely demise. The woman is shown going through a series of circumstances that begin to wear down her psyche and drive her to madness. A lengthy line-up of suspects for the person responsible for her death has the police baffled," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. A film filled with baffling mystery; it's substandard is almost every respect, but was shot in color. Bela Lugosi appears, occasionally.

** Scared to Death (1947) Christy Cabanne ~ Nat Pendleton, George Zucco, Bela Lugosi


George Zucco plays the role as Dr. Josef Van Ee who has a strange past and lives in a house with his son and daughter-in-law. His son is having problems with his wife and the son wants a divorce but his wife will not give him one. Bella Lugosi, (Prof. Leonide) visits his cousin Dr. Van Ee after many years of not seeing each other and they both do not like each other very much. The story is hard to follow and the acting is unbelievable and the entire story makes very little sense. Most of the time you see Bella Lugosi and a midget going through various secret panels throughout the house. This picture is in color but really does not help this horrible waste of time.


The only distinction here is seeing BELA LUGOSI in a color horror film--or, I should say, in a horrific B-film photographed in a process called "Natural Color" that makes anything Ed Wood did in the realm of horror look like Masterpiece Theater.

The silly script has a woman in a morgue recalling how she got there and therein lies the only novel idea in the script. How actors like GEORGE ZUCCO, DOUGLAS FOWLEY, NAT PENDLETON and JOYCE COMPTON got talked into putting this one on their resume is anybody's guess.

The script is a complete misfire from beginning to end, nothing is ever explained and there are loopholes galore in what one can make of the convoluted plot. A green mask keeps appearing in a window for no discernible reason until a weak explanation comes late in the story involving a blindfold and a man's vengeance when betrayed by his wife.

Sorry, can't recommend this to anyone except "bad movie buffs" who have to see any horror film ever made, no matter how bad. Appalling dialogue is never for a moment believable and neither NAT PENDLETON nor JOYCE COMPTON are given comic material that offers any relief.


I literally almost fell asleep watching this film.

The plot, such as it is, is that a conniving wife thinks she is about to be scared to death by her husband and father in law. Inexplicably, Bela Lugosi and Mini-Me show up (okay, it wasn't Mini-Me, but a close relative of the annoying midget variety)and act creepy while everyone else is barely acting at all.

There is this strange interspersing of scenes of the woman lying on a coroner's slab, adding absolutely nothing in the way of exposition.

The plot, and I am spoiling nothing here, is that the woman turned over her ex-husband to the Nazis during the war, and now he is looking for revenge by apparently peering into windows wearing a blue mask. He is then caught by the bumbling cop and the inept reporter wearing a dress (yes, absolutely no reason is given WHY he was wearing a dress, since he had not been seen any time previously in the movie AND it was pretty obvious he was a man in a dress.)


Offhand, I can think of only two movies in film history that have been narrated by murder victims: Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd." (1950), one of the finest pictures of all time, and 1947's "Scared to Death," which turns out to be one of the worst. This latter effort also holds the distinction of being Bela Lugosi's only movie to have been filmed in color. Bela here plays a hypnotist/magician named Leonide, who comes with his dwarf companion Angelo Rossitto (who appeared with Bela in 1942's infinitely superior film "The Corpse Vanishes") to cousin George Zucco's house, where George's daughter-in-law is being driven insane by a mysterious masked personage. Nat Pendleton is on hand as a remarkably dim-witted cop, and the juvenile humor that he provides would have torpedoed this film itself, without any help from its other wretched elements. But those wretched elements are there in abundance: The plot here makes little sense, the script is by turns fatuous and yawn inducing, the background music is annoying, the "action" is confined to a few rooms, the characters are ridiculous types, and the entire film is tedious and uninvolving. Bela's grimacing presence doesn't even begin to salvage this one. Anyway, my beloved "Psychotronic Encyclopedia" calls this film "surreal"; the Maltin book deems it "dreadful"; I say that you might require psychedelics to get you through! It's only 65 minutes long, but trust me, they'll feel like the longest 65 minutes of your life! I must also add that this is the first DVD from Alpha Video that I've viewed that seems to have been taken from a respectable-looking print; too bad it was for this pathetic little stinker!


You know you're in trouble when the opening scene reveals that the narrator of the film is going to be a corpse. The coroner wonders out loud about the beautiful victim's final thoughts. The greenish woman on the slab obliges by setting us up for a series of flashbacks.

The director likes the shot of her green face so much that he returns to it over and over again in the film. Always the same shot with the poorly-edited "wooo...wooo" music in the background. Always the same length, which sometimes requires the narrator to pick up the pace in order to squeeze her lines into the allotted time frame.

The movie is designed to help us discover how this woman died. Here's a big hint: read the title of the film again.

SCARED TO DEATH is barely over an hour long, but has enough plot threads for a mini-series:

1. Woman is being "gaslighted" by her estranged husband. Or is she just cracking up on her own? My opinion is that more liberal divorce laws in 1947 would have eliminated the need for the last 60 minutes of the film.

2. Doctor, who seems to have his office and clinic in his house, is being blackmailed by a strange woman who disappears after the first five minutes...or does she? This woman is played by a thespian who I guess only attended Acting Lesson #1: How to use your eyebrows for emphasis.

3. Dopey cop (Nat Pendleton from the Dr. Kildare film series) is the doctor's security man, but is trying to earn his way back onto the police force by solving a murder which he hopes will happen soon.

4. Cop is in love with the doctor's nurse/maid. This is supposed to be the comic relief, but the whole film is a massive joke, so who needs relief? And after hearing him say "Lilly Bet" about 20 times, you'll want to smack him upside the head.

5. Strange traveling magician with dwarf pal, who know all about secret passages in the house, show up and threaten everyone.

6. Local reporter keeps popping up, trying to discover what the "story" is at the doctor's place.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few plot lines. This choppy mess is held together by the flashbacks mentioned earlier, and ends with a "huh?" because the perpetrator turns out to be someone we've completely forgotten about. (But it satisfies Roger Ebert's law that there are no extraneous characters.)

My wife wandered through the room while I was viewing, and asked, "Why are you wasting time with this crap?" I answered, "Because it's so terribly awful that I HAVE to watch it." And that's my recommendation to you. If you enjoy an hour of jaw-dropping unbelief at just how bad a movie can be, this is a flick for you. Not to mention seeing Bela Lugosi in color (even though the color is gangrenous and blotchy). You might just laugh yourself...to death!


Forget Plan 9 and all the other Ed Wood classics, this effort must really take the biscuit as the worst film of all time! To call it tedious, is to pay it a compliment. How on earth actors with the talent of Lugosi and Zucco managed to get involved in this mess is anyone's guess. From the opening credits to the finale, it is one long experience in total & utter unease. There is nothing that can be said in this film's favour and Nat Pendleton's performance must be the most irritating & unfunny in the history of the cinema. The whole thing is just too ridiculous for words, and neither chills, thrills or raises a laugh. In fact, it's very difficult to fathom out exactly what its purpose is - it's certainly not entertaining. Avoid this dross at all costs!


"Scared To Death" is probably best remembered, if indeed it's remembered at all, as Bela Lugosi's only color film. Unfortunately, it was also one of his worst. I had a hard time trying to figure out just what was going on. Was it a mystery or a comedy or an attempt at something in between? Director Christy Cabanne didn't seem to know either. It was ultra low budget and surprisingly filmed in color, odd for low budget poverty row quickies.

The "plot" has the murdered Laura Van Ee (Molly Lamont) "recalling" the events leading up to her death through a series of flashbacks. The story takes place in the creepy old mansion of Dr. Josef Van Ee (George Zucco) complete with the standard sliding panels and secret passages.

Laura is marries to Van Ee's son Ward (Roland Varno) and she believes that they are plotting to kill her. Slow witted Dectective Bull Raymond (Nat Pendleton) and the love of his life, maid Lilly Beth (Gladys Blake)work for the Van Ees. Arriving on the scene, for no particular reason are a hypnotist Professor Leonido (Lugosi) and his dwarf assistant Indigo (Angelo Rossito). Later, fast talking reporter, Terry Lee (Douglas Fowley) and his ditsy girlfriend Jane Cornell (Joyce Compton) arrive after intercepting an attempted call to police from the house. And not to forget the mysterious green masked figure (Lee Bennet) lurking about the premises.

The rest of the film has the principals running around the house accusing each other of one thing or another until we learn the secret of Laura's past and then........................................

Had the director been able to decide whether this film would be played as a straight mystery or a comedy, it had the possibility of being an entertaining little film. They managed to line up a pretty good cast of veterans but Cabanne was unable to bring out their talents.

Poor old Bela, complete with his Dracula cape and pulled down fedora is way below par. I think he's supposed to be parodying himself but it comes off horribly. I had to feel for George Zucco a talented actor who got stuck in this mess. Nat Pendleton had seen better days but is probably the best thing about this film. Fowley does what he can with the fast talking reporter role.

Angelo Rossito had been around since the silents, playing menacing dwarfs but only gets to run around in circles within the house in this one. Stanley Andrews and Stanley Ridges appear briefly as medical examiners.

Could have been better....much better. A real stinker.


I have seen this movie one time, and will probably never want to see it again. I found "State Fair" disappointing with a boring storyline. The actors and actresses were great, and I have to say that Fay Bainter's role as Melissa Frake was a far greater performance than in that 60's version of "The Children's Hour". I didn't care much for this movie because the music wasn't that exceptional and I found that odd. Usually Rodger's and Hammerstein's musicals are the best. The acting was about an 8, the music was a 2, and the story line was -20. I don't recommend this to anybody.


In spite of the tremendous tunes "It Might as Well be Spring" and "It's a Grand Night for Singing," the movie's music is the weakest of any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein movies. Add to this that the movie is introduced by non-singers singing a non-song (OUR STATE FAIR IS A GREAT STATE FAIR....ad nauseum) and the movie lacks the punch and drive of the holy 5--Carousel, Oklahoma, Sound of Music, South Pacific, and King and I. Interesting that this is the only Rodgers and Hammerstein show to get TWO filmed versions (and the less said about the 1960's version the better).

The other BIG shows deal in BIG issues--Nazism, Race, Freedom, etc. "State Fair," however, presents simply a small love story.

The movie is well cast, well filmed (aside from some unfortunate matte work), and pretty; it is NOT up to the standards we expect from its originators.


Hollywood great Michael Curtiz directs Boris Karloff in this middling thriller about an ex-con, just out prison, who is framed for a judge's murder by racketeers; after he's convicted and killed in the electric chair, a team of scientists revive him. Fatigued entry in the 1930s back-from-the-dead horror cycle doesn't allow Karloff to do anything fresh or substantial (indeed, several of his big moments seem lifted straight from "Frankenstein"!). Curtiz can't do much with this hackneyed scenario, and he's certainly not helped by the unsurprising script, though there is one strong sequence at a piano recital. Otherwise, "The Walking Dead" is D.O.A. *1/2 from ****


One cannot help but agree with the title of this film. Why indeed? Why spend more than two hours watching this mess of a film. The only reason I can think of that the Jury gave this movie the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, is that is is different from anything else at the festival. And it is, it is a refreshing view through the eyes of a moviemaker NOT from the west. Unfortunately Youssef Chahine is not up to the task. He has severe difficulty figuring out which story he wants to tell, there are many stories in this film that would make great movies in their own right, but the constant intermingling of them, which might have worked in the hands of a more experienced director, fails in this film. For the first hour you are thrilled with the movie. One of the many stories involves an Egyptian aristocrat who picks up young English soldiers and kills them, one of them however invokes his pity and he ends up falling in love with him. For the first part of the movie this story is well told and interesting, but in the second half it becomes obvious and cliché and the good beginnings are ruined. This is one of his early movies and, although I haven't seen any others, I firmly believe that his production has improved vastly with experience, but you should definitely not see this as your first movie by him.


This is my first comment on IMDb and I'm sad it has to be a harsh criticism of this movie. I wanted this movie to be good so much, and I can only say that from the opening sequence with young hell boy that I was shocked and the poor directing and slapstick that was used throughout the entire movie. I felt like I was watching men in black for most of the movie, the cheesy way that we are introduced to characters, the outrageous overacting and the severe lack of funny of the jokes. Did anyone laugh when hell boy is beat up by the mist guy with lockers? did you not feel uncomfortable and like you went to the wrong movie with the stupid love stories involved? For instance Abe falls the princess in .01 seconds and we are expected to just let it slide because the have a psychic connection. When Liz is pregnant and she has to tell hell boy to bring him back to life I decided I would never see this movie again. I waited that long in to get to that point, because I just wanted it to be good so much. outside of the plot holes and cliché beyond cliché twists the characters are just unlikeable in this one and the music score is an abomination, compared to the score of the first. I felt embarrassed taking my friends to see this and felt like I should apologize to them after it.


When i went to see the original Hellboy i did not have very high expectations and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be extremely enjoyable, i was therefore looking forward to a similarly enjoyable experience when viewing this film. My expectations were most certainly not met. Aside from the visuals, which as you would expect from guillermo del toro were excellent, and Ron Pearlman's turn as hellboy, the film stank. Following the cringeworthy opening scene with young Hellboy (surely just an excuse to get John Hurt in the film) i was hoping the film would pick up with the introduction to our villain, yet the almost immediate revelation of his fatal weakness ensured that we already knew how he would ultimately be defeated. The plot was so utterly unengaging and dull that even the fantastical creatures could not reignite my interest in what was going on. On a side note, not being aware that Seth Macfarlane had voiced the character when i first viewed the film i spent half the time wondering why Krauss sounded exactly like Klaus the fish in American Dad.


The original Hellboy movie had atmosphere coming out of it's red ears, Hellboy II unfortunately misses this point entirely.

To begin with you're immediately hit with the stark voice change of the Abe character, this was a major mistake. The very essence of the Abe character is the way the voice is a mismatch to the heroic way in which he interacts in the many 'situations' - to change this voice for a generic one is a great over-sight and one which straight away puts you on the back-foot in terms of your anticipated enjoyment.

The initial scene of Hellboy as an adolescent looks cheap and feels cheap, both in terms of the acting and the way in which the young Hellboy looks, all adding to a feeling of impending dread that the films makers just don't 'get it'.

Moving onto the older Hellboy character and this too has suffered from a change for the worse. In an effort to introduce more obvious humour the character doesn't have the same touch to it, it's all very disappointing.

I was really looking forward to this film but unfortunately the opportunity to capitalise on the original movie's feel and atmosphere has been totally missed.

It feels like a cynical attempt to make a few more $$$ at the expense of a great premise and some great theatrical characters.

Please understand I'm in no way a comic book purist as in fact I've never even read the comic book version, but I am just someone who really enjoyed the first Hellboy film.


Went to this movie expecting to really enjoy it - was so looking forward to it as both myself and my wife enjoyed the first Hellboy movie a lot. We both love Guillermo del Toro's movies in general and really thought we would love this...

We both saw the first Hellboy movie again before watching this (which I would strongly advise you all to do, as that way you will appreciate just how bad this movie is compared).

Firstly, the story is absolutely terrible and was not worth making a sequel for - this just seems like a total cash in and nothing else. I can't believe that this is the best story they could come up with for a sequel movie. There is just no substance to the movie whatsoever and some of the acting is pretty bad.

Sure there are lots of good special effects and a lot of fighting scenes but it fails to impress as the story is just so bad. The movie has also lost a lot of the edge and suspense it had in the first movie - I seriously feel like the directing in this movie is worse than the first one. Most of the dialogue is dire and amateurish and some of the main scenes in the movie are totally pointless. It really left us feeling empty when we left the cinema and I definitely would not want to see Hellboy 3 anymore should that ever come out.

Also - a lot of the del Toro designs in the movie look like they've just been lifted from his other movies and feel very lazy - I would have liked to have seen much more original concepts in his work and am a bit disappointed with that too.

Overall - a very disappointed Hellboy fan.


I liked the first HellBoy & Guillermo del Toro was too good in Pan's Labyrinth! Which were the reasons for going to the movie with high expectations! Maybe that was the mistake,which left me hugely disappointed.

Good: CGI,few heartfelt moments of romance

Bad: All the characterizations were week,Especially Jeffrey Tambor's(Tom Manning).Tom is always pleasant to HellBoy and is always requesting HellBoy to simmer down, but is always being picked on by Hellboy.Tom Manning doesn't seem ever to be in control so I don't see why Hellboy should be so irritated with him!In the end even Johann Krauss gets angry with him!Maybe they thought that its the most easy way to add slapstick humor!

The initial hype for the Forest God was too much for it to simply be killed by gunshots to the head,whereas all it was able to do was grow and swing its arms!

Prince Nuada's reason for returning from exile to wage war on the human after several centuries is week, there seems to be no strong reason for him to begin the war again!

When Hellboy is fatally wounded,the Prince has the chance to just collect the piece of the crown and have his Golden army but he just leaves asking them to bring the piece!

The team agrees to go after the Prince to save HellBoy, which he is by his father , the Angel of Death(which seems to be just to add a plot for any future Hellboy movies).But even after he is saved they just want to give us more action, so they go after the Prince!

Princess Nuala seems to be always against the war but in the end when Prince Nuada stakes his claim to the Golden Army as the unchallenged heir she is silent as if it was to give an opportunity for the CGI team to show off with a fight sequence!

Verdict: Guillermo del Toro seems to be stuck at Pan's Labyrinth , Hellboy2 seems like just a bad Pan's Labyrinth hangover!

But if you like to watch meaningless impressive CGI action, Hellboy2 is not a bad choice for a pretty boring day. Otherwise it just leaves you disappointed.

why i have rated it 1/10 , is because it is disappointing to watch a good director like Guillermo del Toro completely miss the target.


New York City newspaper reporters compete for news-items on a serial killer who targets young women. Disappointingly awkward drama from revered director Fritz Lang, here taking an oddly conventional approach to the story and scenario and completely ignoring the suspenseful possibilities. Of course, it's a newspaper drama--not a serial killer thriller, but Lang's general workman-like feel doesn't give the narrative any urgency. Vincent Price is appropriately, amusingly snide and sniveling as the inherited-owner of the newspaper; Dana Andrews is typically solid as a prize-winning columnist, but other performances fail to ignite. ** from ****


Dana Andrews George Sanders Thomas Mitchell Vincent Price Ida Lupino Fritz Lang

How could this go wrong? 'While the City Sleeps' probably would have made a better movie if it had been shot as a big, gaudy, Technicolor melodrama, a soap opera about the inner workings of a news conglomerate. It could have been a who's sleeping with who, who's stabbing who in the back-type of movie punctuated with a subplot about a serial killer on the loose. It fails, however, as a noirish crime drama. Pretty dull stuff.


Years ago, I was given a VHS copy of 'The Satanic Mechanic' from a friend who knew of my love of bad movies. My God..I thought I was ready for this but I just wasn't equal to the task. The dialogue...the filler....aaaauuuggg! There is a scene of Lee Van Cleef parking his car that goes on for 5 minutes! My all time favorite scene has to be where Lee takes on a gang of transvestites in a steam bath, after kicking their asses he leaves with the line "See you in hell kid!" This is the only semi-satanic reference that I remember. I have no idea why this was named 'The Satanic Mechanic'. Not once does Lee Van Cleef do anything remotely mechanical or satanical. The cover of the VHS had a great photo of Lee taken from his '80s TV show 'The Master' (more confusion). I challenge anyone to sit through all off this movie! It breaks the rules of the space/time continuum in the way that time seems to reverse itself during the viewing. I myself have watched it over a dozen times and feel all the lesser for it.


My sincerest condolences to anyone who has had the misfortune of watching this film. This is hands down one of the worst films to ever make it to video stores. I only hope you or your loved ones did not make the mistake of watching this movie alone -- it could easily be suicide. However, if you and your friends have a sadistic passion for seeing horrible movies, this should be at the top of your to do list. My favorite scenes include stock footage of a plane taking off (when in fact the plane should be landing), using a caged bird as a projectile, throwing a woman by her breast, and don't even get me started on the ending... Just amazingly awful. Plus, did I mention there are no mechanics or "satanics" in this whole film? Hahaha.


Thursday June 1, 6:30pm The Harvard Exit

Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of Saint Francis is resplendent in its simplicity. Seeing the film on a big screen is an unparalleled experience. The short film preceding it, is another matter. My Dad Is 100 Years Old is a love letter written by and starring his daughter Isabella. Within seconds the phony, pretentious technique of this short identifies it as the work of none other than Canadian poseur and wannabe auteur Guy Maddin. Imagine going to the home of a fabulous chef for what will certainly be an incredible meal. The guests are seated and wait with anticipation for the coming feast. Wine is served, candles are lit and the mood reaches an anticipatory climax. At that moment, the chef's child leaps onto the table and with great delight lays a giant smelly turd. It can certainly be removed and forgotten, somewhat, but avoiding the incident altogether would have been preferable.


I know Guy Maddin directed this short film, My Dad is 100 Years Old, but either acclaim or blame should be rest on Isabella Rossellini's shoulders for this. She knew what kind of picture this would be, and Maddin seems more like a hired hand here than a true visionary. And if anything, the vision of sorts is really distracting and unnecessary and is just really poorly done. I know the intentions are good, and if I had to rate just on intentions it would be much higher praising, albeit in such personal terms. Roberto Rossellini is a great filmmaker, one of the greatest that emerged once the smoke settled from World War 2 in Europe. And his films Open City and Paisan are films that should be rediscovered for years to come as technology overcomes the film industry (even if it's just in museums). But one of his daughter's, Isabella, hasn't done the greatest of tributes, from my perspective, with her My Dad is 100 Years Old short film.

There isn't really anything coherent to the picture, which might have been acceptable had it been maybe more focused, so to speak. What I mean is the same pretension that she seems to be commenting on (although too little too late by the last shot when she calls for the camera to move in front of her directly in profile), and done with a very 'this is how it is' take on things. She makes fun of Fellini and Hitchcock (the latter in profile, the former played by her), as Rossellini himself- or the form of him as portrayed by a huge belly that Isabella recollects was what she remembers the most- rags on anything in cinema that doesn't address morality and the like. Only when Chaplin comes out- also again Rossellini herself playing her along with David O Selznik- does some praise come out. For a film that lasts only 15-17 minutes, it seems like it fills up its time much too smugly and with an air of content at being all over the place. It's interesting to see how the rest of the picture, with its obtuse camera angles and pompous style of editing and framing and dialog, compares with the few precious clips of Open City that are shown, and how more insight into the director is in those clips than in everything else his daughter shows.

Now, in full disclosure, I do like Isabella Rossellini a lot, as an actress, and she is a beautiful woman, but taking the controls on a complete tribute project like this nears all too much to the point of disaster. We get a view of a man who is simply all alone, out-casted by a film community that once embraced him, and sullen by the fact that people don't care about his movies after a while, or the kinds of stories and characters he wants to portray. It sounds really good on the outset, but it's not what I thought it would be when I finally saw it- a mess. I would have much rather had seen a full-on documentary on the director instead of some avant-garde deconstructionist short film. A big disappointment from a big fan of the director.


While everyone praises this film for the fact it documented a town full of crazy nutballs, this was nothing more than a dull and lifeless film that glorified the conformity and stupidity of an entire city. This film was completely one-sided, never taking any issue with the wasteful spending the school placed on the football program or the "redshirting" (they didn't even call it intentionally holding someone back) many of the players participated in. All this film did was show how great it was to be a football player in Masillon and they could easily get away with anything they wanted while being glorified as heroes and political footballs (pardon the pun). I love football, and I love film, which is why I was expecting more out of this standardized film school, cineme- verite wannabe of a film. With little coming from the opposite spectrum of the debate, this is nothing more than a PR video for Masillon football.


Nothing new, nothing great, but kinda funny in spots. There was no one in it I ever heard of, but I don't watch that many newer pictures these days. No big belly laughs, but a few good chuckles. I don't think I could sit through it a second time though.


I saw this movie on the bus back from my summer holiday. I thought the bus driver was joking. I've seen better acting in low budget porn movies. Really. What were they thinking when they were making this movie? No one will ever buy this. The style is for 4 year old kids, but the language and violence is for adults. Neither will want to watch this. Really. Raspberry material. No wait. Even that award will give to much credit to this movie. Bad directing. Bad acting. Bad photography. Bad story, or actually, almost no story at all. This is the sort of movie that gives the industry a bad name. It looks like someone taped this with his own video camera. I think you get the point. Don't watch this, unless you've really got nowhere else to go. Like being tied up in your chair. Or on a driving bus.


Horrible, disaster! I've spend 5 euro for DVD and was very disappointed. Low budget movie with old jokes that won't work anymore. Maybe on younger generations that haven't seen much yet, this movie i suppose can be funny or inspiring for them. But once again, this is another debut movie of new actors. To get through they need to do much better job than that, unveil your talents, become a trademark. Without charisma people won't remember your name and as an performer you have no future. But if you want just to be on screen, than don't do movies, please. Somehow this pathetic comedy came on DVD and did it to Europe. I have always place for a good comedy in my movie collection, but please make me remember your acting, your jokes, your face and your name...


This is without a doubt between the worst films ever ever ever made in history of cinema, this director must be the new Ed Wood. Not even that, because at least he was so bad that he was good. This is so bad that you feel pity. Not for him, for your brain. Please mister Dyonisius be a Dentist or an accountant or whatever else. There is no plot there is no, acting, there is no nothing! I really have nothing else to say about it but apparently i have to keep writing. Just don't watch it seriously, your brain will feel offended by it, use this time to clean your drawers, organize alphabetically your DVD collection, sort your towels by colors, seriously ANYTHING would be better that watching this awful piece of... images.


From an autobiographical point of view, I suppose Mr. Landon wanted to be true to his own experience, but if he merely wanted to base fiction on something that happened to him, then it was less than spellbinding. The entire plot consisted of purely one-note drama all centered around the boy's bed wetting and the mother's humiliation of him for it. Subplots would have been helpful.

The mother made me sick, how she mentally, verbally, and psychologically tortured that boy. Anyone with half a brain knows that no sane kindergarten child, let alone a teenager, would wet the bed on purpose and subject himself to all that crap day after day.

The father made me even sicker, how he failed to stand up for his son, and how he lied to the doctor. "No, I didn't wet the bed when I was a child." In the end it turned out he had. Why didn't he tell the doctor the truth? Because he didn't want to be embarrassed? He'd rather let his son carry the full load of embarrassment himself? Especially knowing exactly what his son was going through, Dad should have been supportive. Furthermore, I kept waiting for that wimpazoid to grow some you-know-whats and tell his abusive wife off, but I waited the length of the entire movie for nothing more than, "Alice, will you shut up?" Shut up? Is that all? How about shut up, pack your bags, hit the road, and never come near this boy again unless you want to be arrested for child abuse?

The late, great, Michael Landon went on to write and direct much better work than this. Perhaps it's just because it was an early work that it falls so far short of his standard. Even Leonardo DaVinci had to start out scribbling.


How did this guy make it through law school? The main character in this movie makes so many stupid moves he deserves to be locked up. And the detective? He's so sure he has everything figured out when in fact he doesn't know jack.

The plot had potential, the acting wasn't bad, but normal people just aren't this clueless.


They say that a defendant who represents himself has a fool for a client. Well, Cuba is one of the Producers of this film and he obviously needs to be protected from himself. He's a fine comic actor but his little smirks, quizzical looks and mugging to the camera just don't work when he's playing the dramatic lead. He's not the only person who's miscast. Marianne-Jeanne Baptiste, so wonderful in 'Secrets and Lies' looks like she has stumbled into the wrong movie. Best (or worst) of all this movie boasts the worst disguise since Jane March in 'Color of Night' - if you don't spot it within the first 10 seconds and then work out the whole plot, then shame on you, you're no movie buff. Destined for DTV or DTTV - don't expect to see this in your local movie theatre.


Does Hollywood even read screenplays?This is a bad movie, but can be fun if you want to count the plotholes.

SPOILER ALERT.... The first bad thing is the flashback: how can CGjr know these things? But there are more questions. Why does the writer wanted us to believe that Eric Stolt's Character is behind the trap? Why does the mask in the beginning look like the face of Tom Beringer? Why does CG jr not see that he is be framed? You can see that Marlowe, Goethe and the biker bookfan are not real persons. Why is he as a fugitive so well dressed? Why does he walk around at daylight without shaving his hair and mustache? Why the plottwist, so Eric Stoltz is no longer a suspect? Where did that came from? Why the last 2 minutes. Why is Cg jr not Guilty?

Feel free to add a few plotholes more.


Narratives in movies can be tricky. Sometimes they're practically a requirement, especially if the plot is convoluted or the prose style ornate, as in Raymond Chandler's work. How could we survive without Philip Marlowe's voice-over telling us that "her hair was the color of gold in old paintings"? Just as often, narrations are a crutch, as they are here, telling us things that an Old Master like Hitchcock would have used imagination and skill to tell us visually. Not only is this narrative sometimes pointless but it varies in tone, as if coming from different characters instead of just Cuba Gooding Jr.'s fugitive lawyer. "There's an old saying: Money talks. The only thing it ever said to me was good-bye." Not bad. (Echoes of Philip Marlowe there.) But then again it sounds sometimes pompous. "Quite simply, the book was perfect." No kidding? What happens in this murder mystery, quite simply put, is that Cuba Gooding Jr. is a disbarred lawyer who is framed for multiple killings of other lawyers. He's pretty bitter about his disbarment, after all. And he IS guilty of something. He comes into possession of a smashing murder novel written by a recent acquaintance, a wheezing old man with no family. When he's told that the old fellow has died of a heart attack, Gooding quite simply appropriates the manuscript, copies it, adds his name as author, and destroys the original. That's known as "plagiarism." The novel turns out to be an exact description of five genuine murders, right down to details that only the police and the killer himself could have known. The pursuit is on.

Well, Gooding's narrative may sometimes become a little precious but at bottom he's pretty dumb, even for an attorney. The decrepit old man, who looks suspiciously made-up from the beginning, calls himself Christopher Marlowe. Gooding doesn't even blink, and I suppose there are people named Christopher Marlowe wandering innocently around, even if they aren't Shakespeare's contemporaries. But when a lone detective tells him about the dilapidated dude's death and calls himself Goethe, maybe a red flag should have gone up.

The location shooting, around New Orleans, is nice but judging from this film it's inhabited largely by people who can't act well. Tom Berenger has a relatively small role as a real detective and does as well as he can with it. Eric Stoltz, never a human dynamo, probably gives the best performance in the movie as a decadent Southern aristocrat. Gooding himself, who was fine in "Jerry McGuire" is an embarrassment here. His most notable achievement is sprinting down a New Orleans street with two cop cars in pursuit. No one else distinguishes himself or herself, though Marianne Jean-Baptiste carries her weight as a friendly and principled lawyer, and Mark Pellegrino is creepy enough to pass as a professor, never mind a serial killer. He has a face that resonates with Crispin Glover's, for what it's worth, and it's probably worth a lot to an informed movie freak.

The direction, quite simply, can be described as "pedestrian." We see a scene of passion on the staircase. A man sweeps a half-naked woman up in his arms and carries her up to her room. How many times have you seen a dissolve into the camera following a trail of discarded garments slowly up to the woman's bed? Don't fib, now. But, actually, there's a surprise at the end of this shot -- because there is nobody in the bed! A cut gives us a distant shot of the standard movie kind of human coupling: they're both naked, he has her pinned against the wall, and her legs are around his hips. I'm not sure anyone really DOES something as uncomfortable as that but it's become a movie convention, like the thumbs up/ thumbs down gesture in Roman amphitheaters, which the Romans never did.

Well, why go on? The sad thing is that it's kind of a neat idea -- framing a despised lawyer this way, even if you do drag in Faust. Simply put, though, it's too bad it wasn't better done.


Watched this movie because it featured Tom Berenger only to find out he only had a supporting role. He should have bypassed this one. The plot is not only bizarre it is quite unrealistic. If one believes that every thing is preordained, then that is the only way the plot would have worked, that the characters had no control over their lives. It begins absurdly. No attorney would ever do what Gooding did - sell out his client, no matter how heinous the client is. A client places his or her trust in the attorney and it is unconscionable for an attorney to violate that trust unless the client reveals to the attorney he is going to commit a crime. Gooding was framed in the story. The frame would only work if Gooding decided to assume authorship of the manuscript of the "dead" man. Many people would not have done that so why would anyone go to all the effort of writing the book on the tenuous assumption that Gooding would assume authorship and in the process destroy the original manuscript? Another example was when Gooding picked up the automatic that the murderer had used to kill Beringer. The script at that point had the killer look at Gooding and say you are holding the gun, implying that Gooding's fingerprints were on the gun. What the screen writer forgot was that Gooding had been a good defense attorney and thus would have known that his hands had no gun powder residue on them but that the killer had gun powder residue from the automatic on his hands. Gooding would have gone free but instead the script had him kill the villain which put gun powder residue on Gooding's hands. With that type of evidence it was most unrealistic to expect that a jury would have acquitted Gooding. Gooding seemed more often than not to mouth his dialog. He was anything but convincing in this role. They should have left this movie in the can.


A Murder of Crows was recommended to me by my enthusiastic aunt and so I forced myself to sit through it despite my complete disinterest in it. It was about what I expected.

Cuba Gooding Jr. played a lawyer who was disbarred when he decided he really didn't want to defend someone he knew was guilty. This fine upstanding man of high moral standards decides to move to Key West to write a book. But book writing is hard. At this point the movie's been going on for some time and I'm completely bored. Then this old guy comes into his life, and the old guy's kind of interesting, but I immediately detected something was fishy when he said his name was Christopher Marlowe. You would think a educated lawyer like Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character would have picked up on that too. He didn't, though.

The old man ends up giving him a 'novel' he wrote, wanting an opinion on the book, and the lawyer is stunned by it. However, the old man mysteriously dies before he can return the book to him, and that's when he does something completely unexpected and decides to publish it as his own. I had to wonder at this point why he had a problem with defending an obviously guilty man just to make money, but doesn't have any problem with plagiarism.

Cuba's character then rises to fame and fortune, although I can't imagine what he could have been thinking he would do at this point. You know his publisher would be expecting another book from him. This really wasn't a well though-out plan.

Next thing you know he's being arrested, because it turns out all the murders in the book actually happened, ha ha ha.

I've never been a big fan of Cuba Gooding Jr. and I wasn't in this movie. I do have to say it did have an interesting story, but I really have nothing else positive to say about it. Eric Stoltz's acting was almost as cheesy as his southern accent, the gratuitous sex scene was just kind of gross, and I never really cared about what was going to happen. The director really failed to draw me in or make me give a hoot about the characters. I would have to say that I would never watch this movie again, or recommend it to anyone, because that would just be mean.


Cuba Gooding Jr. stars in this unusual film about a lawyer who became a plagiarist writer and then a murderer. It's sort of funny, but this film shows a lawyer committing the very acts that he defends his clients on. Gooding plays Lawson Russell, a lawyer whose conscience withdraws his counsel in defending a guilty man. This ends up getting him disbarred. While no longer a lawyer, Russell still gets to keep his integrity as he does charter fishing down in Florida.

The entire film is recounted by Russell and his stream of consciousness (or lack thereof). It follows his progression from a noble man to one with little integrity. Russell's plagiarism of a story from a dead writer acts like some Faustian pact with the devil, where riches are showered quick only to be followed with manic torture. Eric Stoltz plays a rich playboy client of Russell's and Tom Berenger is Clifford Dubose, a detective working some related murders. The shallow and erotic Janine DeVrie is played by Ashley Laurence. I should warn you that the film becomes surprisingly risqué in some of the scenes with her. This is somewhat shocking not only due to the sexual situations (explicit with Cuba Gooding Jr.), but also the huge departure from the film's story-telling feel.

As to one of the main ingredients necessary to make this story work, plausibility, I will say it was a bit up in the air. (*SPOILER*)I had trouble believing Russell didn't see through that old-man getup and didn't think the ending was very likely, even though it does seem like a heck of an idea for a conclusion. This certainly was a different film for you Cuba. 4/10


This movie is bad, laughably bad. Incomprehensibly lame, and yet I couldn't stop watching it. Well, ok, I tried, but on a Sunday afternoon, the TV choices are slim. I admit, the idea is intriguing-- an old man writes a novel about a bunch of lawyers being killed, and then dies himself, but not before showing the book to a disbarred lawyer who claims it as his own & makes a ton of money, but oops! the book isn't fiction & our protagonist winds up implicating himself for the murders. A decent idea is royally fouled-up. What's so bad, you ask? Gosh, what's not? It's hard to narrow it down to 1,000 words. For starters, the terrible makeup. Latex wrinkles alone does not an old man make. Ok, so then let's throw in an --ultra-fake-- English accent to distract you from the fact that this man does not walk, talk, fish, or drink like an old man, ie: SLOWLY. No, it's clearly a guy in disguise & I find it terribly ironic that it's *spoiler* a DRAMA teacher in disguise! Well, you know what they say, Those who can, DO, those who can't, TEACH. Clear case of that going on with this character. (And that's only one of 3 disguises!)

Alright, lets talk about the costumes. Like do you really think that if a lawyer was on the run, hiding in his hometown, that he'd be wearing his usual lawyerly 3-pc suits? Um, no. Come on, shave your beard, put on a tshirt, throw a cap on... we know you have 'em, you wore them in the fishing scene. Or Tom Berenger's "I'm wearing a fishing hat, I must be coming back from vacation" look. What shall we dis next? the dialogue? direction? cookie-cutter characters? voice-over? Cuba's "performance" consisting only of earnest wide eyes & a clenched jaw? Hell, he did the same thing in "Radio", but with a different walk. What about the criminal misuse of Mariane Jean-Baptiste who deserves much, much better than this? Or how about that ending? I won't give it away, but everything gets wrapped up in a lovely little package, but all we get to see is the wrapping paper. It makes no sense. I guess for everything to be explained-- why is she friends with him again? who exactly was that lawyer? why was the judge smiling?, etc-- they wouldve needed to add like another 20 minutes to the running time.

So anyway, if you want to get together with a bunch of lawyers or film geeks, this might be a fun movie to roast, but why not rent an actual good movie instead?


i don't mind the movies not being the real world, i don't mind magical, unlikely or challenging, even illogical but half-baked, over-flagged nonsense is simply disappointing. There seems to have been a good idea for a film here as others wrote but its impossible not see what's coming. In fact I thought well perhaps there'll be some twist I'm not expecting.... no, not really. Oh well, I do like Cuba though. I just wish he didn't have to look so uncomfortable.


This is a devilishly clever picture full of interesting twists and unexpected developments. It's also well produced against the exotic backgrounds of New Orleans and Key West. BUT! (Or is that BUTT?) It looks like a promotion for the tobacco industry. About the only time people are not lighting up or puffing away or communicating through clouds of smoke is while they're involved in chases. (Question. How can our hero run so fast when he smokes so much?) This was a good film that could have stood on its own merits. Did they really need the tobacco money that badly?


I can not share the generally enthusiastic opinion of this film shown by most other IMDb database users. I am sorry about this as I want to like it - its main theme, contrasting the relative importance of love and art, both for Society and for most of its individual members, is significant for us all; and it is a very visually appealing presentation giving an excellent depiction of New York city as it was some 80 or more years ago, mainly in shades of brown that are never jarring to the eyes. I am not one of those who dislike Woody Allen's work .The Purple Rose of Cairo and Love and Death (where he showed he was able to combine farce with both fairly natural dialogue and his beloved philosophical discussions, this deserted him in BOB) are both treasured parts of my private movie collection. Although BOB is largely free of the artificial dialogue which spoils many of Woody's other films, it was spoilt by unrelenting and continuous overacting. Many films include at least one actor guilty of this heinous sin, but when they almost all do so the fault probably lies squarely with the Director. Here you could watch a few minutes culled from almost any point in the film and be confident of finding a shouting match, or characters waving their arms about like windmills.

Many cinema fans do not like watching silent films because of the overacting they are said to feature. This is conventionally explained by the absence of dialogue forcing a greater emphasis on gesture, but John Barrymore even in some of his most unrestrained roles seldom continued exaggerated gesturing beyond the point when it was needed; and this need was often due more to difficulty in creating effective close ups than to the absence of sound, problems that co-existed in those early days. Today an actor can convey a world of meaning whilst quietly sitting at a table by, for example, just raising an eyebrow and uttering the word "Really" in an appropriately questioning tone. In silent days a one word caption "Really" would be almost as effective but the scene at the table, filmed from 5 or 10 metre away, would not do justice to the raised eyebrow in the same way as a modern close up, filmed from a distance of no more than a metre; so I can watch, for example, the 1925 version of Ben Hur more readily than I can Bullets over Broadway - improved technology has made us much less tolerant of artefacts that destroy the intended atmosphere. Fans of BOB claim the behaviour shown in this film is in fact typical of interactions between the types of character being portrayed, and the overacting is not as severe as I am suggesting. I doubt if this is true, but even if so the film itself makes it clear that this would be no excuse. The gangster's hit man Cheech in an early sequence explains carefully that it is no good presenting any dramatic work in a manner with which a viewer cannot empathise - depicted dialogue and behaviour must always be adapted to what would be expected and accepted by the potential audience. I do not live among people who shout and wave their arms about all the time, although I will of course accept such behaviour in a film where it is a natural response to a stressful situation; but if I do not live among people who behave like that, I am not likely to watch a film that shows everyone doing so continuously, for very long before I turn it off - or at the very least feel compelled to complain, as I am doing now.

Bullets over Broadway is of course dangerously close to being a direct copy of the film Mistress, released a couple of years or so earlier, the stories are almost identical, except that the locale has been changed from Hollywood to New York and the film being produced has become a stage play. The same type of moral and artistic issues are brought out in both of them. Mistress was not so well enjoyed by IMDb users, but it is very interesting to compare the impact created by the two works. Whereas BOB plays more like a farce most of the time, Mistress provides biting satire which for me is both more enjoyable and far more effective. It was extremely well acted by almost all the cast, and Robert De Niro in particular gives a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. No wonder the Hollywood elite did not like it, many of its barbs must have struck very close to home! Recently, after watching Bullets over Broadway I re-watched part of Mistress to decide whether my more favourable recollections of it were justified. I noted one short slanging match develop towards the end, this was quickly cut short by another character telling the perpetrator to calm down. Back to reality - this was all I really needed to see.. Mistress was real enough for me to feel like an outsider watching events happening, whereas BOB was definitely more like watching entertainers trying to keep me amused. For me the wrong film has been made available on DVD.


This is an awfully slow movie and it's Ingmar Bergman so of course be prepared to bored rigid with endless celluloid lectures about the strain and awkwardness of (an already uninteresting ) middle class life for 2 hours. Most of Bergman's films always seem to go on and on seeming longer than they actually are.

Absolutely nothing happens throughout this film up until like the last 15 minutes when it FINALLY becomes watchable. Watching a man and his wife walk around in a depressive mood for half a movie is not my idea of a good film,. If anything, just fast forward to the final parts of the film as it's the only time something interesting occurs.


For the average viewer, this movie will no doubt be very confusing and a bit silly. However, for those who adore Bergman films, it will be greatly appreciated.

Although I have seen quite a few Bergman films, I am not a huge fan. While I can appreciate many of his films, sometimes I feel he is just too depressing or angst-ridden to watch. This film, in fact, might just be my least favorite film he did--it's a close call between this film and Persona.

Hour of the wolf is a very surreal film and I think it was deliberately made to be very confusing as to exactly what was occurring--was Max Von Sydow's character a schizophrenic or were there demons or monsters on this island==it's very hard to tell. Frankly, I found myself not really caring.

In addition to MANY confusing story elements, you do get to see an old lady pull off her face and put an eye into a glass of water. This isn't really as gross as it sounds. Also, a man walking up a wall and standing on the ceiling and another guy sprout gigantic wings. All this is reminiscent of a painting by Bosch or Dali.


I happened across this film on the 'World Movies' channel, coincidentally the day after I read Murakami's story (in 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Women'). I really liked the story. So much so that after the first half-hour of the film, I was reading it again, trying to use the book to block out the TV screen. What is the point of this movie? Wait, movie? It isn't really a movie at all, if your requirements for movies go beyond 'being on film'. This is a children's picture-book version of the story. This is the movie's process: Recite the story, almost verbatim, and play tracking shots ad nauseum over the monologue, showing banal instances of what the monologue is saying. Tony and the girl move in together? Lets show her pouring milk! Wife obsessed with clothes? Lets show her wearing clothes! Hell, lets show her, in consecutive tracking shots, wearing SEVERAL DIFFERENT outfits! That'll really drive the point home, that she's a clothes addict. Oh, and don't forget to have a lonely, melancholy piano constantly playing behind the monologue. Because everything's GOT TO BE MELANCHOLY! AND LONELY! God knows we've got no possible other way to convey that, besides the monologue. What do you think we are, filmmakers?!

However, I have advice for the director: Go back to 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman', and try to adapt 'A Poor Aunt Story'. If you can manage to do that one in the same way you did this one, I'll chain myself to the Eureka Tower, and refuse to come down until you've won the Golden Palm. I have advice for potential viewers, too: The story is just over 20 pages long. You can read it in a quarter of the time it would take to watch this slide-show/movie. And it's even got some humour in it, too. Not everything has to be MELANCHOLY.


So much has been said about this film - most of it very positive. For those who love films with little plot or character development, this film is for them. It is about loneliness and isolation. It is also very slowly paced. Pretension also comes to my mind because we, the viewer, are asked to accept significant illogical plot points presumably because it seems artful to do so. Come on. We are asked to believe a very attractive, stylish young woman would, after a few dates, agree to marry a much older, lonely man who apparently does not have much personality. If the reason she does is because he can provide for her all the designer clothes she could buy, she must surely be a very superficial person. Yet, these two apparently find marital bliss although her clothes closet gets bigger and bigger to the point a whole room has to be taken over to accommodate her lack of control. Uh, really!!! Not once is addressed addiction as a serious personality disorder. Rather we are asked to find beauty in that somehow these two mismatched characters with serious problems are happy except for that elephant (or should I say clothes horse) in the middle of the room. I am perhaps viewing this film from too literal a viewpoint yet I came away thinking that I have been snookered. The photography is impressive as are the performances. Too bad the film is like a fortune cookie. Not much food value with a message no one takes seriously.


Wednesday June 1, 9:30pm Egyptian Theater

Tony Takitani is a lonely illustrator. His father is a former prisoner of war, jazz musician he cannot relate to and sees only briefly every few years. Tony hires an assistant fifteen years his junior and persuades her to marry him. She has a compulsive shopping addiction which finally causes her death. He hires a new assistant based on her dress and shoe size so she can wear his wife's cloths while at work, decides that arrangement is too weird and asks her not to come back, sells all the cloths and resumes his boring meaningless life. What makes this story worthy of retelling as a feature film? The slow methodical piano soundtrack let up briefly, but was relentless for most of the picture. I asked one young lady who mentioned she was a fan of the author if she liked the film and she replied yes. I really wish I'd asked her what she thought the story was about. The characters were sedate and unemotional even by Japanese standards. Several moments were so silly and banal they drew laughter. Did I miss the point? Maybe not. The film did evoke a definite mood, good or bad. Some of the visuals were interesting and the camera work was curiously up-angled in a very non-Ozu way. There was a smattering of applause at the end. I guess some folks will cheer for anything. Since it was the final film of the night, it worked well as a nightcap, or rather sleeping pill.


This version of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET was very famous in its day, and a number of critics that I greatly admire continue to praise it even now. But I must sound a dissenting note: although it has its charms, I personally found the film somewhat difficult to sit through due to the age of the cast. On the stage, Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers are usually played by mature actors in full command of both Shakespearean language and their own art, and the physical distance between the stage and the audience allows the cast to create the illusion of youth. But the camera is merciless, particularly in close up, and this film production presents us with the middle-aged Leslie Howard, Norma Shearer, John Barrymore, and Basil Rathbone in roles that would be better served on the screen by much younger players.

To give the cast its due, several of the stars fought tooth and nail against making the film--most notably Leslie Howard, who even went so far as give press interviews stating that he was much too old to play Romeo in a screen production. When forced into the production by contractual obligation, Howard and his counterparts gave it their all, but sad to say the camera did not lie: they were indeed too old. Although some viewers are able to suspend disbelief to accept the stars in such youthful roles, I myself could not. I found it occasionally absurd, but more often embarrassing, with the famous balcony a case in point. All of this might be forgiven if the stars actually generated any sense of passion, but they do not--and it is really here that their ages tell, for instead of the white-hot passions of youth that lead to disaster we have instead a gentle love story with an unhappy ending.

Still, the film really is pretty to look at--it has an engraved quality in its glossy black and white--and if you close your eyes, you can enjoy the 'grand manner' readings, which is a great deal more than one can say for most cinematic Shakespearean interpretations. There is also Edna May Oliver's performance, and she is excellent in the role of Juliet's babbling nurse.

Fans of this film's stars will no doubt wish to add it to their library, and those interested in seeing how Hollywood approached Shakespeare in the 1930s will enjoy seeing it at least once--but I would hesitate to recommend this film to any one outside that circle. Most viewers will be happier with the later Franco Zefferilli version.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer


There isn't any real new opinion I can share with regards to George Cukor's version of "Romeo and Juliet". It feels overly long, the two leads are both far to old to play the young lovers etc. However I do wish to say that it does provide an interesting insight into adapting Shakespeare's plays to film: Strict adherence isn't always the right route. Cukor's version is a near literal translation of the play, whereas the Zeffirelli and Lurhmann versions cut at least half the text. However, this paradoxically produces the slow pace which is a fault for this film. This is a story of transcendent, evanescent love, and having it be slow and anemic doesn't do it justice IMO.

In short, the 1936 version may be the most literal, but the Zeffirelli and Luhrmann films both are more faithful to the spirit of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".


Could they not find any octogenarian actors to play the teenage roles of Romeo and Juliet? This movie was about as believable as High School Play. I want two hours of my life back.

Also, What was that horrible cheesy music being played during the "love scene"? I also the love the juxtaposed images of birds in flight, stars, flowers and streams trying to denote sweet love making!!!

I'm watching this movie while I write this and still can't believe this wasn't filmed in jest.

My suggestion if you are ever stuck watching it make sure you have a box of Ritz. It's too cheesy to watch without crackers.

Spoiler Alert. The movie sucks and they both die in the end.


If you enjoy elderly men and women playing teen aged children, by all means, watch this silly piece of Hollywood. John Barrymore as Mercutio. You gotta be kidding me. And pretty boy Leslie Howard, minus Rhett and the gang playing Romeo, oh yes and mz MGM playing Juliet. What a joke. See the real thing, the Zefferelli version, circa 1968. I bet that is what Will Shakespeare intended.


Well... where do I start? Saying that this version of Shakespeare's classic is "too Hollywood" is insulting Hollywood. In fact, when I come to think what director in film history blew more literary classics, the name of George Cukor immediately comes to mind. Not that he was a bad director, he made very good movies such as The Philadelphia Story, but any time he touched a classic book, the result bit the big one.

We can blame David O'Selznick for the inclusion of 34-year-old Norma Shearer as Shakespeare's 13-year-old Juliet (and so, Leslie Howard as an equally olde Romeo), but we have to blame Mr. Cukor for having her act with a level of vomitive cuteness not reached even in the worst high school productions of the play. Come on, what's it with the introductory Bambi scene? Not even Disney would have done this to the Bard! This kind of cutesy-cute camp seems to be a Cukor trademark: any time I think of Elizabeth Allan as Clara Copperfield waving to Freddie Bartholomew as he leaves in Barkis' cart in the year before's "David Copperfield", I feel sick! Another of Georgie's trademarks I can't stomach is the inevitable adding of corny, unfunny comic reliefs. In this case, Edna May Oliver as the Nurse, and specially Andy Devine, turning Peter into a retard (as was Mr. Dick in the mentioned "Copperfield"). That's not the kind of witty humor that was present in some moments of the Bard's tragedy!

And speaking of that, and let me apologize if someone finds this homophobic, nothing further to my intention, but Cukor has a tendence to recreate sissy characters. I know he was gay, but that doesn't mean that he's authorized to turn what's maybe the play's most interesting supporting character, Mercutio, into RuPaul! John Barrymore's acting is terrible in this one. In fact, there's only an example of good acting here, and that's the always solid Basil Rathbone as Tybalt. Leslie Howard was a good actor, but all wrong for the part, and all the others rank from unmemorable to awful. And the sissiness goes on: all the film looks like a Wigstock celebration, with wicked gay touches, as making Rosaline (the girl Romeo raves about before meeting Juliet) an extremately plain-looking woman with not much attractive. This gay approach makes the film more of a travesty, independently from the theory about the Bard's homosexuality.

However, people seems to like the film because it respects the text of the play almost verbatim. But I wouldn't care if they changed or cut things out, if they respected the spirit of the classic: it's about teen angst, people. Read the book. You can have the full text, but I think the subtext is even more important. And there's no subtext in this version, at least not the one Shakespeare intended.

My question is: has this play ever been accurately adapted to the big or small screen? It's much more than a pompous love story...


Having just sat through this it is hard to put into words exactly what the viewing experience was like.

The plot is pretty much the same as every one of these type of films - Some ancient artifact creates or resurrects a monster, people run around a bit and the monster is killed.

What saves this film from rating a 1 is that it is hilarious (but not at the points where it is supposed to be). There seems to be more pointless and stupid chases in this film than any I've seen for a while.

The monster looks pretty fake but is not so bad that it ruins the film. The music is totally awful and is almost as bad as the dodgy disco music from Friday the 13th Part 3.

The acting and wardrobe are slightly on the dodgy side but it just adds to the charm of this gem of a film.

One to see and then try to forget.


Forgive me if I am wrong but there was something just plain missing from THE RUNESTONE, one of about three Viking Horror idiom films where ancient Viking curses lead to modern day havoc and mayhem. I was able to track down this one and a movie called THE BERSERKER, which won the contest easily by being a silly, sleazy, lurid backwoods hacker. This movie thinks it is HIGHLANDER material, and for the second time in a week I get to fault a horror movie from the late 80s/early 90s for not being sleazy enough. I am not sure when the era of "respectable" medium budget horror started (right after CREEPSHOW 2, maybe) but it resulted in a decades worth of uninteresting no-scares and no-offense meant horror efforts. The whole point of making a horror film is to give a young filmmaker the freedom to be as offensive as they see fit. Real talent doesn't come from disciplining yourself at first, it comes from letting it all hang out and RUNESTONE seemed to have a preoccupation with being respectable.

The monster was cool though: At some point the film switches gears, transforming itself from a DA VINCI CODE-esquire thriller about ancient artifacts, manuscripts, talismans and glowering white haired Swedes into a busy, loud and amusingly obnoxious monster movie. Here we get to see Norse god of war Odin personified by a big rubber costumed goon with glowing eyes, cloven hoofs and a head peaked by a tangle of horns. If only the film hadn't exhausted my ability to understand what the point of it was by then. The gore is ultra low-key, the nudity and sexual content more suggested and non male gaze oriented than usual, and the hero was difficult to care about. The only real sparks in the film that registered in my brain were scenes where "Resevoir Dogs'" Lawrence Tierney gets to chew the scenery as a loud mouth clam-headed police captain between various killings, none of which inspired much dread, alarm or interest to be memorable.

The HIGHLANDER comparisons come because the bulk of the film is set in New York City and involves large, open-spaced townhouses that are so expensive to rent that the only people who can afford to make use of them are set designers for movies. And the use of medieval weapons like broadswords, battle axes and a good icy glare from beneath hooded eyebrows. Seeing Alexander Gudanov dressed up like a Nordic Thomas Dolby to battle this costume designer's vision of Odin didn't provide much of a payoff, and the tail end of the film is filled with so many collapsing townhouse floors that the movie became a sort of ironic commentary on, yes, the 9/11 WTC tower collapse, caused by the weakening of the support girders and the pankcaking floors falling one on top of the other. I didn't see any puffs of dust but am pretty sure that these floors collapsed due to a controlled demolition so 9/11 Truth conspiracy buffs might want to check this film out to help your "research" into proving that Bush blew up the towers. And if all else fails you can post screengrabs of Odin with his eyes all glowing real demonic like and claim that they are non-doctored pictures of Condoleeza Rice.

I think the bottom line here is that horror movies in general took a nose dive during the 1990s due to this frenzied rush to not offend anyone, which may explain why the sleazy Euro Horror years of the 1970s have proved to be so popular now on retrospect. RUNESTONE created nothing new, accomplished nothing notable and is probably only remembered by the scattershot few who bothered renting it as a home video release and perhaps yearn for the good old days when you could go out & rent three movies for $5.00 on a weeknight, watch them safe and secure knowing that your life with not be changed by any of them, there will be three more just like it to check out the following night, there will be no reason to ever watch any of them ever again, and your girlfriend won't be put off by gratuitous exploitational nudity or gross icky gore. Heaven forbid!!

3/10


Wow- what a waste of $1.99! I like cheese, but this is 'stinky cheese' of the smelliest kind!! Save your leisure time & money & rent a Sybil Danning werewolf movie instead!!! Bad pacing, confusing direction, pedestrian acting, cheap visual effects, hokey creature effects (John Carl Buechler- where were you?) and a performance by Alexander Godunov that doesn't seem connected to the same movie adds up to a mishmash the likes I've not seen since my Community College film class days. In defense of the one actor who was completely believable, the raccoon in the woods witnessing the carnage should probably have gotten an honorary Oscar for his convincing reaction shots. Don't get me wrong- I love low budget monster movies and B grade actors, but this one left me feeling, well, stone cold.


This was never going to have been a masterpiece but it need never have been as bad as it is. The combination of sloppy direction, amateur editing, and some unbelievably bad actors leave the film floundering. There are exceptions, Joan Severance and Peter Riegert are professsional and competent, but the chaos around them is overwhelming and they would probably rather that this monstrosity was removed from there filmographies! The plot though preposterous could have formed the basis of decent movie but one gets the impression that not enough time was put into tightening up the script so that the dialogue regularly lurches into the farcical. If you are fans of either Joan Severance or Peter Riegert, both fine film actors, then perhaps you should pass this one by and look to their other work!


While in Salvador, Brazil, in a medical congress, the researcher of Alzheimer Dr. Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane) and his colleague and friend Dr. Deepra Chang (Terry Chen) are invited to visit a local hospital. They find a patient from Amazon with a unique case of tumors in the memory cells, and while examining him, the glove of Taylor ruptures and his finger touches a strange powder. Taylor has visions from 1971, and once back to Boston, he finds that he has genetically stored memories of a serial killer of little girls activated by the powder.

"Memory" is a messy and absurd thriller. I was attracted by the cast, with Dennis Hopper, Ann-Margret and Billy Zane, but I in the end I was absolutely disappointed with the coincidences and the insane and totally unbelievable story. For Brazilians, it is hilariously ridiculous the geographic confusion of the screenplay, with a sick patient coming from Amazon to Salvador (why?); Taylor and Deepra are in a congress in Salvador (there is a footage of the city), they go to a bar and the director uses footage of the front of "Barril 1800", in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro instead of a local bar; the interior of the bar is probably in a studio. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Alucinações" ("Hallucinations")


... because all I offer is honesty here, folks.

I saw this with my wife and friends (and before you ask, she and they are Filipino). Afterwards, as we went home we were... laughing. Not at any of the funny parts. At the over-acting, at the storyline (the lead actress ends up with an Anglo fireman after years of self-imposed virginal solitude), at the gay subplot that could have actually made a better fim on its own. I really didn't care about the other characters at all, and oddly enough the only other white character was a Pinoy stereotype of American women (it's hard to take a film like this seriously when they can't even overcome the things they claim to find offensive in U.S. films).

Having seen my share of Regal and Viva films, I'd say that while the production values were better than usual the director can't overcome the bad acting or maybe his own style of directing.

Personally, I'd have preferred watching Ricky Davao shoot guys in the shoulder...

Somebody should remake "Kabayo Kids" or something like that, gearing it to both Anglo and Pinoy audiences if they want to break in here.

Oh, the film does have one good moment that I recall; one of the guests is admonished for speaking Tagalog in front of thier non-Pinoy guests. That hit home. I happens more often then they want to admit, and they never want to admit it's rude, especially since they know English.

I'd give it a 4 out of 10. Maybe worth a rental, if only to compare notes with future Fil-Am films.


Here's another culture-inspired indie movie about Filipinos that, well, laugh, love, make food, talk about social issues of being Filipino-Americans, and get all heartbroken and stuff. While I don't mind any of that (and indeed was willing to watch this movie), still, I found the characters to be weak and mostly fall into type. The range includes the activist sell-out, closet gay man, womanizer, neurotic old-maid, and unhappy society woman. Of these characters, the only one even remotely interesting is the womanizer because he at least seems like he has a backbone. The rest come up with the most contrived and unproductive reasons to make themselves unhappy so that they can hide their individual nature behind discussions about Filipino culture, which if you think about it isn't a very valuable way to approach it.

I don't know how big the Filipino-American market for this movie is--considering a certain line of dialog, probably not that big and with much worse movies. I found the better parts of this movie were the parts that actually engaged with the characters' culture instead of using it as an excuse to get all sappy, and I actually rather enjoyed the way the dialog went back and forth between Filipino and English almost breathlessly. I would like to see someone take that way of delivering dialog and make a better, more fleshed out movie about it. This one suffered too much from clinging to recognizable types.

--PolarisDiB


I apologize if this critique is quite harsh, but I think American Adobo actually set back the progress that filipino influenced films could have had in the United States. This came out in California months after another Fil-Am film, The Debut arrived in Los Angeles. If it had any semblance of success in the US, it was likely because people were still hyped by the previous film, and did not realize that American Adobo was produced by Philippine filmmakers. As a result, the film came across as "too long", "overly dramatic", "difficult to follow", and "unbelievable story lines for drama". One must first look at Philippine culture to realize that in the Archipelago, there is a tendency to believe that "more is better". THis is manifested in the length of Philippine speeches, concerts, or recognition in any form. From the gay addition involving a son flying back to the Philippines to retrieve inadvertently sent photographs, to the eternally single "old maid" who married the fireman who saved her life after she trashed her apartment, the story lines are incomplete, dragging, and with the multiple plots make for a very confusing follow.

However, there are parts that Americans will find funny simply because they are Philippine farce, and as such make absolutely no sense. For example, a female character gets so frustrated at a Mah Jong game, that she goes on a "roid rage", which in turn results in everyone leaving the house.

FIlipinos who observe gay culture in their media would be delighted to see Christopher de Leon engage in an on screen kiss with another character in the movie.


SPOILER AHEAD----------SPOILER AHEAD-------SPOILER AHEAD-

I have classified this into 3 categories: BAD, BAD, acting by the ensemble cast, flat dialogue by Vincent R. Nebrida or the godawful direction by Laurice Guillen. This movie is a very poor copycat of their Asian counterpart, Man-Woman-Eat-Drink, but this one stinks-BIG TIME!

Starts with a woman who cooks (adobo - a Filipino dish) and looks out the window, while she narrates the opening spiel of the movie -- all to the tune of some funny yet wanting to sound mystifying music that continues throughout the movie-it was irritating!

"American Adobo" is a story about five Filipino best friends as they look for love in New York City. One character is gay (Davao), another is a soon to be old-mail (Picache-the only saving grace of this movie), the third one is a good-looking but shallow womanizer (Montalban), the fourth is an overacting socialite who doesn't know what the meaning of self worth (Bonnevie-too shallow acting, more shrills, shouts, very bad acting), the 5th one is an unhappily married guy (DeLeon). To top the already boring & too much hyped characterization, however dense, don't be surprised when the gay character tearfully reveals that he's been in love with the unhappily married guy for the longest time. Near the end of the film, the cook accidentally sets her apartment on fire and then falls in love with the firemen who saves her, the gay man accidentally mixes up letters to his lover and mother, thus he has to fly back to the Philippines to retrieve the letter containing sexy pics of him and his lover and before his mother finds out - WHEW!!! That is just to name the many senseless scenes in this movie. And why was the movie named American Adobo? If it is a metaphor of sorts, then it failed miserably to put forth the message it wants to convey.

Watching this movie makes you want to drink a whole bottle of Maalox for your upset stomach after tasting that concoction named adobo.


Made me embarrassed to be Filipino. Oversentimental, disconnected, melodramatic drivel that plays on what some people think of as Filipino stereotypes, perpetuates them, and then attempts to put them together in one group setting. The acting is bad, the writing is bad -so do yourself a favor and save your rental fees.


I'll keep this review short, having just wasted the best part of £15 on this "accomplished Giallo" movie.

Quite simply, the film stinks! This is no more a Giallo, than any of Alfred Hitchcock's films are! IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH has been routinely acclaimed and labelled as being a fascinating and innovative mystery drama, in the Gialli-vein. I can assure you, it is not. The premise of the convoluted and inane plot, follows a semi-incestuous family, who may or may not be killing people who may or may not be attempting to blackmail them all. Oh, and one other member of the family may be mentally-challenged/confused! If you love true Gialli, from the likes of Argento, Bava, Fulci, then simply ignore this film, if you are tempted to purchase or rent it. The acting is mediocre at best. The dubbing is reasonable, but clearly little effort's been put into making it fit with any of the cast or their characters' lip-movements. The direction is shoddy, and the photography is full of slap-dash edits/cuts and flashy zoom in's/out's that do the film no justice whatsoever, except to make it "groovy".

Don't be fooled by the text on the back of the disc, that promises lots of seedy and controversial moments. This film is very tame. The decapitations are hammy, and unbelievably fake, that even Herschell G Lewis and Ed Wood, would turn up their noses at them. The incest, is vaguely provocative and contentious, but it goes nowhere fast. And there's almost no gore, no mystery, no tension, nothing of interest to keep you viewing.

This is just a badly made film, made by a bad director, with a cast that really doesn't care or have a clue about the film. Although the 2008 "Severin" Region 1 DVD release is bare-bones, it's still not worth buying. Yes, the film is uncut and uncensored, but to be honest, anyone over the age of 15 is likely to have seen much more appalling, violent or contentious material in your average action-movie. (This makes THE DARK KNIGHT look like DIE HARD in terms of violent or adult material!) The print is relatively nice looking, but there are a couple of moments, when the screen goes black for a second, where the original 35mm print is clearly damaged or faulty. Other negative damage is also noticeable, at the very start of the movie, and through most reel-change points. The end of the movie has about 60 seconds of blank footage remaining, where other credits could be inserted for foreign-language prints. Sadly, on a DVD, this is bad quality control, and "Severin" should be more careful in future for this error.

The only extra, is a whacky trailer, which does the film no favours, but it won't exactly deter you either.

The cod-Freudian psychology is worthless, and whoever made this film, must have taken substantial amounts of LSD, because it's clearly a film that will be enjoyed more by viewers under-the-influence of alternative substances, than anyone who sits through this stone-cold-sober as I did. No amount of talent can save this movie, only because the movie has no clue about what it's trying to be, where it's gone or where it's going. It's an incoherent mess! Bizarre doesn't even come close to how whacked-out this film is.

Ultimately, no one is going to be able to improve this film, so a bare-bones disc is probably all we should be expecting, But to release it as a full-price title, is very cheeky. Only buy this film if you absolutely have to own every Giallo movie ever made! Otherwise, bypass it and look for something with more intelligence, whit and sophistication. There are plenty of worthy titles and directors out there. This, though, is not one of them!


The Salvation films release of In the Folds of the Flesh' has a very misleading cover, showing a leather clad SS vixen who in fact makes no appearance in the film. What you get is a post 1960's sleaze film that is not even all that sleazy by today's standards. It becomes a bore to sit through and you end up not caring for the characters at all who are involved in some form of incest, nazi gas-chamber, decapitation orgy or a murder mystery. There is little gore or explicit scenes though. Nearly everything is implied. Don't bother with this even if you are a fan of 70's exploitation cinema.


The family of a mob boss have plenty to hide within the confines of their beachside castle. There's a body or two buried in the garden, the internment of one of these was witnessed by a criminal on the run, but he says nothing when caught by the police. Some years later that same criminal is released and he returns to blackmail the family of oddballs, lunatics and murderers. In the days before his release the family had killed a few people randomly, but now they get rid of the bodies in a vat of acid in an outhouse. Are you still with me, OK stay tuned it gets more and more hard to follow, the family also have a sister who was locked up in an asylum after she murdered her father, except she didn't, as the truth the doctors told them would be worse for her mental state. OK now, the woman we think is the mother is in fact the daughter, except she isn't, she's an imposter, then the father comes back, except it isn't really him, oh and there's rape, incest a hint of paedophilia, oh and there's some Nazi's who gas merkin wearing naked women, oh and one of the family escaped the Nazi's and now she's traumatised by those memories. Now getting back to the random killings, one of these guys rapes the mother, or was it sister, daughter, I don't think even the director knew, but yeah this girl gets raped and then he gets murdered and the sister who sleeps with the same guy after he raped her mother then gets upset because of his demise. The son, now there's a loon, he is a psycho, if only for his dreadful dress sense, in fact everyone seems to wear bad wallpaper inspired clothes. Hello are you still there, for those who are I hope you're following it because I'm pretty lost. Oh I forgot to mention there's a dog strangling too, for those who love such things, yeah this film is just full of ideas, none of them very coherent, just for good measure and to complicate things even more, the director goes for lots of crazy psychedelic camera-work, shot from crazy angles and with lots of headache inducing zooms in and zooms out and zooms in and zooms out and zooms inI'm dizzy just thinking about it. The saving grace is the fine acting, all the performances are spot on.eh no I'm lying, they're all pretty dire, all these actors went to the Scooby doo bad guy school of acting, lots of sinister looks and eye rolling. The orchestral score is unusual for a Gialloish film and its also pretty mundane and distracting, as is the awful dubbing. So in a film which approaches so many subjects you might think its full of sex and nudity.eh no.

Oh I forgot to mention the Etruscan skeletons, damn.


30 minutes of talking. No flashbacks, memories dreams at all just a doctor talking to a patient who cant decide whether he's from Ireland or USA. (Gabriel Byrnes accent is awful) In this 30 minute first ep nothing happens but talking about a womens problems with her love life, no cracks, witty dialogue wise ass remarks jokes or anything that makes this watchable in the slightest.

The doctor hardly talks accept the usual cliché psychotherapist babble - how does that make you feel, do you want to talk more about that, this show is like real life in a doctors room, boring repetitive slow, the dialogue is immense however nonsensical in every way, nothing sticks in my head after all the talking is done it's plainly a snooze fest.

I'd watch almost anything instead, worst TV show I've watched 2008-09.


Keep in mind while reading my comments that I am - and always will be - an avid Star Wars fan. The first three films helped define my childhood and have stayed with me into early adulthood. The themes and the sheer FUN of the trilogy are truly rare in this day and age.

That being said, "The Phantom Menace" is perhaps one of the worst films I have ever had to sit through, and a disgrace to both Star Wars and Lucasfilm. A true embarrassment, I was near tears through most of the film. Seeing it on opening night, I was thrilled as the trademark intro script scrolled up the screen. Everything that followed was truly horrifying, starting with the most ridiculously stereotypical Asian alien bad guys this side of Ming the Merciless. Add to that a completely dreadful script, way too many effects, no discernable plot line, and dreary "action" sequences, and you have yourself a real stinker. And I won't waste any space talking about the apocalyptic disaster that is Jar Jar Binks.

Poor Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, and Natalie Portman!! Three of the finest actors to grace the screen today, and they have nothing at all to work with. Meanwhile all the dialogue goes to Jar Jar and Anakin, played awfully by Jake Lloyd. Sidenote: Am I the only one concerned with the fact that through the whole movie everyone calls the future Darth Vader "Annie"???

Darth Maul would be a formidable villain, assuming, of course, that he had any lines, which he doesn't. He is silent during his entire lightsaber duel with Neeson and McGregor, eliminating the verbal duel that was at the heart of Vader's fights with Luke in the original series. His role seems detached and his presence does not seem to effect the sequence of events in the least.

And let me say this: there are too many effects. They are not even that impressive, not for a lack of technical wizardry, but because the action they portray is either confusing or non-existent, and there is none of the tension in any of the battle scenes which is even close to that found in its technologically ancient granddaddy, "A New Hope". In fact, considering the technology available, the scenario of the battle scenes seems pretty ho-hum-ish if not trite.

There is not enough room to write all the terrible things about this movie. They even reduce the Force to microscopic organisms that live in the bloodstream. This was the most disappointing movie experience I have ever had. Mr. Lucas, if you or any of your people read this, please take to heart the ramblings of a disgruntled but faithful fan in order to make Episode II much better.