Kakashi, like quite a few other Japanese horror films, had an unresolved ending and an eskewed sense of logic.

Considering a horror film about "kakashi"/scarecrows of all things makes one wonder what the film is like. How do they make scarecrows scary? That is what I thought when I got this film.

However, the answer, in this case at least, is they can't. The scarecrows were easy to push away and tear apart even for the heroine, Kaoru, and they never once did anything that really showed any power to fear. In short, the monsters of the show were very weak. Excessively so.

The main villain, a psychotically obsessive woman who killed herself, is mostly an evil spirit who can make Kaoru have nightmares, taunts her inside the house, and who later becomes re-born as a scarecrow and dies in a blaze of laughing mania. A possible high point of the story, and the scene that reveals that Izumi was dead and why she died, ends up less than scary and more or less creepy. The woman was pathetically obsessed and completely manic in her childish flaunts of over-dramatic and emo-tistic emotion. This woman has problems, obviously.

In fact, it's safe to say that all of the characters involved in this story had some sort of problem. Kaoru had her incessant and obvious brother complex, Sally and Izumi's parents were obsessed with using scarecrows, and Izumi was... insane. Tsuyoshi was probably the least "humanized" of all the characters. Between Izumi and Kaoru, he seemed more of an object to be taken. Poor guy.

All in all, this movie wasn't frightening even in the nightmare, diary, and scarecrow/escape sequences like it possibly could have been. It was unbelievable in both story and in how poorly it was done. If you're looking for a good horror to give you a scare or even challenge your mind, this is not it.


The question-and-answer sessions were pretty interesting sometimes, and the final question-and-answer round was fun to watch. It was these question-and-answer sessions that really made the game anything interesting at all.

What ruined Friend or Foe was the Trust Box round. Both contestants in each Trust Box round can vote Friend or Foe. If both vote Friend, they split their pot equally. If both vote Foe, they both get nothing. But if one votes Friend and the other votes Foe, the Foe gets the entire pot and the friend gets nothing.

It happened a good 99% of the time, where both contestants in each Trust Box round would state syrupy cases on why they should both vote Friend, then stand there giving each other unbearably fake and cheesy smiles, and then Kennedy reveals their choice and they both voted Foe and go away with nothing. This was one game show where maybe 1% of the contestants actually won a single dime... even the winning two contestants because they both give ridiculously fake smiles and both vote Foe. Of the 1% where any Friend votes were given, it was 90% Friend - Foe and only 10% Friend - Friend. As Carmen-5 said, double Friend votes happened but they were so rare you could count them on one hand. Even Friend - Foe votes were uncommon as too many people were greedy.

This show had a short run because so precious few of its contestants ever took home any winnings whatsoever. The question-and-answer rounds made the game, but the Trust Box rounds broke it. Almost nobody wanted to share, and as a result, both got nothing... not even plane fare home. There was no element of luck here... it was all a matter of trust and greed. Trust was in short supply, greed was abundant. Friend or Foe was a reasonably good idea that was ruined by Aesop's fable of the dog with a steak that saw its reflection in the water. After too many dogs grabbed for the others' steak and ended up with no steak, all the other dogs got the message and walked away from the pond.


I am a great fan of both the series and John Nettles, but the plots of Midsomer Murders seem to be getting more inane with each episode. Granted, there have been some contrived though enjoyable episodes - A Death In Chorus and Country Matters are recent favourites - but this one was terrible.

The scene where the digital photographer continually flashed the film photographer by way of intimidation brought laughter and derision from my family, and the ultimate premise was too far-fetched for words.

Usually, good acting and production values tend to carry even the more contrived episodes through to a reasonable denouement; for me though, this one was just so silly it was beyond saving.

I've read somewhere that the franchise is coming to the end of its run...I hope it goes out on more of a high.


I've always been a fan of Midsomer Murders but here the law of diminishing returns seems to have started. The conflict between digital cameras and film was just plain stupid (would anyone care enough to get so worked up?) and the cop who took over from Barnaby was a ludicrous 80s cliché. Maybe I missed something but I thought he was an Inspector. Not that I know anything about police procedure but I would have thought that you would have to be a higher rank to throw a Chief Inspector off the case. The biggest disappointment was Lisa Goddard. I remember the fizzing chemistry between her and Nettles in the old Bergerac days and I was looking forward to seeing that again. Instead she turned up in the final scene as some hopeless, pointless OTT character. Do you really need the money that much, Lisa? Still, on the plus side, at least Joyce got more to do than make jam this time. Jane Wymark must have been in more scenes than in the last ten episodes put together.


I really used to look forward to watching Midsomer Murders, but some of them are getting so far fetched its pathetic.

People getting murdered because of different type of camera ? Flashing the camera again and again in someones face, in a kind of duel, forcing the other person to retreat as a kind of argument gets out of hand ?

There are some good actors in Midsomer Murders and its good to see some old faces. I can't understand why they sign up to do it. They either haven't read the totally stupid script or are simply desperate to get back on the telly.

I know some stupid things happen in life but for gods sake, is this really the best the script writers can do ? Awful, terrible, dire, etc etc........

Don't know if I'll be watching again. Sad.


I was telling my friends recently about a movie i saw in '92 or '93 that had Jim Carrey as first bill but he didn't show up until the last five minutes. No one knew what i was talking about and so i came here to find out what it was.

High strung is one of the worst comedies and thats why its unknown. it's marketing was poor if it had any and had to milk the success of an actor who was in it for five minutes to get it released.

I can describe this movie very easily, nothing happens but you as a viewer will be bitched at for the whole movie about some pathetic persons life. despite the wit to some of the ideas, its absolutely boring. Its been awhile since i saw it but the one repeated thing that comes to mind is the character's inability to accept that no matter how little milk he puts in his cereal there is always some left when he's done eating. It's so stupid even a real person would not bitch about it, in fact they would just drink it or not , Thats a simple solution but to bitch repeatedly about it is dumb.

It tries way too hard to be funny. Even Carrey is unfunny in his cameo. This is a movie that should of been shelved and never released.

I did see one person liked this movie, maybe that one person is enough to justify its existence, for me its not.

A BOMB


To get things straight, there was only one reason I read both the book and saw the movie. It was to get a mark in my English class.

We were given the book and, after a dozen or so slow hours, the book was finished. And I thought I was free. And THEN my teacher pulls the TV into the classroom. HOwever long it was later, the TV was switched off, and I immediately started ranting about how bad it was. I wasn't the only one.

First off, the acting wasn't bad, it was reasonable. The music was good too (except for one instance which I will rant about later) and the cinematography was decent too.

BUT these things don't really matter if you don't have characters you care about or a decent plot!!!

The book at least attempts to make you care about the characters, it shows little scenes between some of them to show that they are actually human. The movie, however, just dumps you right in the middle of it and expects you to love all the characters instantly, which is especially hard for the main character who I think is a horrible person. What about the character John Barton? He spends the entire time he's in the film smiling, joking and running around, flirting with Josie, he's depressed for thirty seconds, there's a 'tense' moment and then he kills himself. And are we supposed to care? Yes. Do we? NO!!! Because the movie didn't build up his character, didn't make him realistic OR likable. But this actually brings me to the only compliment I can really give this movie. The funeral scene was well done. Well shot, it was reasonably moving. And the song choice was brilliant. U2's 'With Or Without You' is an amazing song and was perfect for that scene. Sadly, they had it sung by tone deaf cats with laryngitis. The singer (whoever it was, I don't care about him enough to look up his name) was HORRENDOUS!!!! Horrible!!!! I just couldn't believe they would let someone ruin one of the best songs ever like that! I hope they didn't pay him, because I would definitely be asking HIM to give ME money. And yes, I know I've spent a paragraph complaining about a song in the movie, but I had to get it out there.

Another thing that bothered me was the ending. The book had a rather realistic ending, not everything was sunshine and smiles. The movie, however, made it ENTIRELY sunshine and smiles, everyone was happy, everything was perfect. It kinda ruined the entire thing, although it was ruined anyway just by making it a movie.

All in all, this movie was worth the one star I gave it purely because of the funeral scene. I couldn't stand any more of it. The only thing that could get me through it was the fact that I want to do well in English and this counted towards the grade.


Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect a movie to adequately convey the rich depth, character and texture of a wonderful and highly entertaining novel. If so, perhaps then this review may be judging the movie too harshly. Nevertheless, as someone who thoroughly enjoyed the book and was looking forward to the movie adaptation, this was a big disappointment The movie adaptation came out approximately seven years after the book was published. To make it more palatable to a modern audience, the scriptwriters have therefore been forced to omit many of the contexts and cultural references contained in the book that made it such a success. This, to me, erases some of the magic of the book -it seemed such an appropriate novel for the times in which it was published and it loses some of its relevance and identity being moved forward into a more modern setting Pia Miranda may be a good actress and, from what I've seen from interviews, a very nice person but she isn't able to give Josie the character depth and dimension that I thought she required. Greta Scacchi's performance as Christina Allibrandi is entirely forgettable and fails to deliver the spark and fiery passion that the same character conveys in the book. Anthony LaPaglia gives a reasonable performance in what must be a difficult role and, if I remember, the respective actor and actress who play John Barton and Katia Allibrandi are also quite good The script and dialogue, so successful in the book, falls flat in this movie. It isn't helped by the fact that the scriptwriters insist on changing the sequence of events in the movie so that they don't make sense like they did in the book. Moving John Barton's suicide from close to the end of the novel to the middle of the movie adaptation makes no sense and serves no purpose, whereas it is evident in the novel why the suicide occurs close to the end. Furthermore part of the success of the novel is it left so many questions in the end unresolved. Why do the scriptwriters feel the need to give everything a happy ending in the movie -i.e. have Jacob meet Katia Allibrandi, have Christina Allibrandi find out her true heritage and the like? Why do the scriptwriters feel that everything has to be spelled out and resolved for the movie audience? This is not a terrible movie, it just falls flat too many times and contains too much unfulfilled potential. Personally I had hoped for much better


Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) spends four years in prison for his killing of a sheriff's deputy. During that time, the Freedom School, a hippie commune led by Billy's lover Jean (Delores Taylor) begins to prosper, releasing newspapers and TV that stick it to the man, caring for underprivileged and abused children, and no doubt doing lots of drugs (oh, I'm sorry - drug use is against the rules there). Billy helps the Indians and the Freedom School stick up to the crooked landowner Posner (Riley Hill), who ultimately calls out the police and National Guard, with tragic (I guess) results.

"The Trial of Billy Jack" is an atrocious film that has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, that may be too high of a price. While it maintains some of the camp value of its predecessors, any enjoyment, unintentional or otherwise, is done in by the fact that the movie is THREE FRICKING HOURS LONG!!! The movie's pretentious, overwrought and hilariously un-ironic political and social content isn't the problem here; it's the length, and boy does it drag.

The first Billy Jack had a certain purity of form. Clocking in at about two hours, it was a reasonably entertaining film which managed to be watchable, with the camp cheesiness and overwrought hippie world-view only enhancing the experience. The movie could never reconcile its pleas for pacifism with the appeal of Billy Jack's martial arts heroics, but it hardly mattered. The overlong guerrilla theater routines by Howard Hesseman and the interminable music numbers were the biggest flaws, but Laughlin managed to keep himself in check.

No such luck here, as Trial of Billy Jack drips with a potent strain of narcissism. Laughlin's film is filled to the brim of self-indulgence, padding the film's running time with self-indulgence and smug posturing. At least a third of the movie is lengthy, droning performances of atrocious excuses for "music", by people with no talent (most egregiously, Laughlin's daughter Teresa). Billy Jack is continually celebrated throughout as a paragon of virtue, albeit a somewhat flawed one, sung about and worshiped by the freedom school kids - yeah, nice humility, Tom. And of course, Laughlin's smug self-assurance that we'll agree with our heroes and their noxious political viewpoint is rather off-putting as well, but he gets around that problem - sort of.

The politics are by their nature laughable, accepting and endorsing every bit of radical, leftist conspiracy jargon as concrete fact. But the way Laughlin paints the issues is what makes it truly offensive. He juxtaposes the film's climactic massacre with real life school shootings like Kent State, portraying them as premeditated acts of mass murder by the National Guard. The villains are bigoted, greedy, harrumphing straw-men, not even convincing as caricatures. Laughlin and Co. seem convinced that they're so important that they're being investigated by the FBI, CIA, and the US government at large for their "scorching exposes" (Laughlin would, in real-life, use this excuse for the failure of his later Billy Jack Goes to Washington). The journalist interviewing Jean repeats leftist conspiracy propaganda as known fact. The final massacre is so over-the-top, it's simultaneously appalling and laughable; the idea that someone would actually hold this viewpoint, however, is what's truly appalling here (although, not as laughable as believing that thousands of rounds fired by trained Guardsmen could only result in three deaths in a huge crowd).

This is offensive, not because of the politics, but because of the dishonesty; it's easy to paint everyone opposed to you as a brutal, vicious Fascist, and thus (in theory, anyway) renders any possible argument against the film moot. Like, you can't dislike this movie unless you're a paid shill, Man. It's a childish argument, and it says a lot about Laughlin that it's his primary defense against criticism. And we STILL have the problem that Billy Jack is kicking ass is pretty much antithetical to the peace and love message we're supposed to be getting.

Okay, the movie has some camp value. The lengthy Indian vision scenes - where Billy Jack confronts his "spirit double" and a cave full of demons - are pretty darn funny, in a trippy sort of way. A lot of the dialogue and acting is pathetically bad (I love the scene where a hippie suggests that the Freedom School "BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THEM!"). But is so pompously self-important throughout - and so LONG - that it isn't even enjoyable. Two hours in, you'll be pining for the original film, with the "epic" karate fight in the lawn, Howard Hesseman's rambling improv comedy, and, yes, Coven's camp classic "One Tin Soldier" - and you'll realize that there's still an hour to go! But overall, this is a film that even the biggest bad movie buff should be leery of approaching.

0/10


This is one of the BAD films I really enjoy. It is not painful or boring to watch but instead falls into the hokey and stupid category that make it great party film. Like Plan 9 from Outer Space, this movie tries so hard to say something and comes off as a completely laughable fiasco. The over-the-top completely serious aspects of the movie raise it to this level. The movie The Apple also rises (?) to this level of dreck as well.

Our hero (?) is Billy Jack, a half-breed American Indian who teaches peace through the repeated use of bone-crunching violence! It reminds me of the funny segment from the movie UHF when they advertise the fake movie "Gandhi 2" and feature Gandhi kicking butt and driving a sports car. It's so ridiculous, it's great! Amazingly enough, this was the third Billy Jack film (after The Born Losers and Billy Jack) and the first to bomb at the box office. In fact, the also deadly serious Billy Jack (1971) made zillions at the box office--not because it was a good film (though it wasn't quite as bad as The Trial of Billy Jack) but because it was a perfect film for the times. The hippy-ish aspects of the movies worked in 1971 but by 1974, it was reduced to a cliché.

A moment not to be missed in this movie--the little boy with a mechanical claw for a hand being gunned down by the evil soldiers as the boy tries to rescue his pet bunny! Meant to be poignant, it's just hysterically funny instead!

FYI--This film had the dubious distinction of being selected for inclusion in the book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time" by Harry Medved. I heartily agree with the choice--but must admit it gets a 2 because it's so darn funny--and it doesn't even intend to be!!


I saw this many years ago when it first came out. I had previously enjoyed BILLY JACK for what it was, an interesting little action picture with a leftist political conscience. So I thought I knew what to expect with this one.

But nothing prepared me for the sheer, mind-boggling bombast of auteur Tom Laughlin's magnum opus. The simplistic political ideas he espouses in this example of wretched excess make Michael Moore and Leni Reifenstahl look like amateurs.

You know the old joke about how you have to get the mule's attention by first clobbering him over the head with a two-by-four? Well, Laughlin feels the necessity to pound that poor mule right into the ground with a pile driver until it's in a hole so deep you can see China on the other side. Subtlety, ambiguity, ambivalence, even the possibility of their being two sides to any issue are concepts that have no place in his universe.

If you're the type who believes that the world is a place of Black and White, Good and Evil, with zero shading between, then you may be able to stomach this film. But let all others beware.


It is impossible for me to describe quite the mind numbing level of badness this movie represents save without swearing. I compare to one of the abominable shifting horrors from H.P. Lovecraft's stories. How anyone can claim it was good without being an intensely close minded person who honestly believes Laughlin's (sadly not unique) brand of conspiracy theory frankly seems impossible to me.

The film is so left wing they did all but urinate on an American flag. I would go so far as to say it actively demonizes everyone who could possibly support law and order, or free market, or anyone else who stand for order in society (such as the national guard).

Even without all the political meanderings present in this flick it is horrible. With a bunch of cheesy plot threads and incomprehensible levels of continuity errors that literally make my head hurt.

I am not eloquent enough to properly describe the hideousness of this ultra-left wing piece of tripe, and so I direct you to the in depth review by Ken Bregg of jabootu.com http://www.jabootu.com/tobj1.htm He says what I cannot say here without profanity.


Overlong and indulgent by what feels like 15 different dream sequences, the sequel to "Billy Jack" barely redeems itself with bigger budgeted action scenes. Tom Laughlin may have been able to coax the Billy Jack character out of his slumber, but in this sequel the man practically needs a pair of crutches. Now the lovable hippie school from the first movie has become a regular college, this accompanied by plenty of ominous voice-over about the endangered state of American universities due to rioting and violent National Guard suppression. To further send home the point, Laughlin throws in a hideous Vietnam flashback massacre to boot. Now the town's hillbillies are better organized and subdue/harass the peace-loving long-hairs and Native-Americans with even the FBI involved. Laughlin gained weight after the blazing success of "Billy Jack"--instead of getting buffer like Stallone for his follow-up "Rambo"--and it shows in the fight scenes. Now, Billy Jack likes to talk even more to his combatants before kicking their heads in. One exceptional dummy thrown out a window, only to land on its head, is actually a real human, but the rest of the action is unremarkable. By the time the government soldiers roll in to mow down the hippies, we've grown so tired of their singing and ceremonies and the 15 hallucinatory dream sequences Laughlin has included to suggest his kinship with Jesus Christ (seriously!), it's reminiscent of the end of Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate", where every romanticized immigrant per screen hour practically justifies the finale massacre. Tucson and Florence, Arizona do provide some wonderful locations.


This film was so bad that the memory of it still pollutes my brain some 25+ years later. About the only reason I went to see it was because it had been promoted heavily as a karate movie, and martial arts films were quite big at the time. What I got instead was three hours of 60's left wing political Bee-Ess served up with a massive dose of self-righteousness. Naturally, the hippie school was the embodiment of everything good and wonderful while The Establishment (meaning; everyone and everything else) was shown as being corrupt, venal, sadistic, and without any positive qualities at all. There was absolutely NO attempt at subtlety or evenhandedness here, instead, this movie grabs you by the throat and shoves your face into its one-dimensional worldview. In short, what ruins this film is its relentless preachiness, that, plus the fact that it so quickly became dated. Anyone wanting to know how Reagan went on to win two landslide elections need only watch this film to understand why, since it was this mindset he was running against.

1/10


This made-for-video movie is actually the first two episodes of the TV series stitched together. They cover roughly the first half of the 1983 David Cronenberg film "The Dead Zone," based on Stephen King's novel. I've never read the book, but I love the movie. And I was looking forward to an updated version with fresh ideas. All this did was poison my memory of the original, which I watched immediately afterwards as an antidote.

Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) is a high school teacher in love with Sarah Bracknell (Nicole de Boer), a music teacher at the same school. But Johnny is smashed up in a horrendous car accident and slips into a coma that lasts for six years. When he awakens, Sarah has married another man, while his once-latent psychic powers come to flower. He now has visions that reveal things from both the past and the future. And this puts him in the path of a serial killer.

This version's bumbling efforts show you how difficult it is to make this essentially silly material credible and affecting. Cronenberg made it look easy, while these filmmakers make it seem like an insurmountable feat. What did the writers think when they watched the original? That all the deft, subtle touches needed to be replaced with sledgehammer blows?

Take the way these two versions handle Johnny's latent psychic abilities. In the movie Johnny has a weird headache on a roller coaster, which may or may not be a premonition of the car accident he's about to have. In this video-movie we know Johnny is latently psychic because he repeatedly anticipates an old carnival huckster's game of chance. And because he always knows where his mother left her glasses. And because he gets a bad vibe from his mother's new sweetheart. And because of a prologue where Johnny as a little boy correctly predicts that a hockey teammate is about to fall through the ice. So you're saying he has psychic abilities, right?

Did they think the story needed less suspense? The movie generates a lot of tension because we never know when the touch of a hand will trigger a new vision. This video-movie kills it by making it a matter of course. Johnny touches someone, he has a vision. It comes off like a comic book superpower, rather than an unmanageable affliction.

Did they think the story needed a lot of trick work? It's bad enough anyone would want to lard this story with unnecessary special effects. But when it doesn't even have the budget to pull it off? Johnny now has the ability to freeze-frame a vision and walk around in it. Yet we see the extras blinking and shifting. And the visions are accompanied by flashing lights and sudden camera moves and strange sound effects; the sounds in particular reminded me of the robots changing into cars on "The Transformers."

Did they think the story needed less emotion? Both versions have only a brief time to convince us Johnny and Sarah are in love before they are torn apart. The movie does this with a few skillful brush strokes. The video-movie adds some lustful groping, but convinces us only that these two are really attracted to each other.

The triumph of the movie is that even with flourishes like psychic powers, a serial killer and an evil lunatic capable of blowing up the world, it's still the story of two star-crossed lovers, still the story of an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary events. It's still human and down-to-earth. This show tries to capture that, but they fail badly.

One problem is Anthony Michael Hall. I haven't seen him in anything since his days of playing high school nerds. I was surprised to see that he's aged into a creepy-looking guy with an icy stare. That also describes Christopher Walken, who played Johnny in the movie. But Walken commands enormous sympathy in his role while Hall comes off as shallow and self-satisfied. Nicole de Boer manages to imbue a bit more humanity into Sarah  and bears a striking resemblance to her forerunner, Brooke Adams. But it's not enough to make the love triangle affecting.

Chris Bruno plays Sarah's husband (an amalgam of two characters in the original movie) with bland semi-competence. Johnny's physical therapist, who has a few lines in one scene of the movie, now becomes a full-blown character  a wise-ass, dreadlocked sidekick played by John L. Adams, whose every quip is more tedious than the last. And the less said about the eye-candy (Kristen Dalton) playing a snooping reporter, the better. The only intriguing character is the Reverend Eugene Purdy, played by the always-wonderful Donald Ogden Stiers. Johnny doesn't like the reverend, yet the character is neither written nor performed as a standard villain. In fact, he seems sincere and likable and may prove not to be a villain at all.

Stiers would be the only reason to continue watching this series. But he's not enough.


I really don't know why there are all those brilliant reviews in so many respected papers and magazines. This was a hell of a deception to me, an utterly boring (cinematography & story) display of cardboard characters played by wooden actors, esp. the highly credited Sophie Rois delivers an exceptionally bad performance. Too much of an artificial appeal to be realistic, too pretentious to be funny, too silly to be taken seriously: so the film doesn't even make it to be a "good bad movie". Not amused.


I honestly cannot believe this show actually made it to DVD! Aaaaaagh! What next??? "Hello,Larry?" "Supertrain"? I saw this when I was 11 and even though they say kids will laugh at anything,that's not necessarily true.

I watched Pink & Jeff go through their cue card read shtick but I sat there as blank faced & confused as Bart & Lisa Simpson when they don'tunderstand their parents. Un-funny! Those girls could not sing at all but yet,managed to squeak into the bottom American top 40 with,"Kiss In The Dark".

The worst thing ever perpetrated on this show...They said Cheap trick was the musical guest one night,so I tune in and guess what? It's nothing more than the video for "Dream Police"!!! What a rip-off! Cool that I saw the video but that's just false advertising. No stars for this joke! A bad one at that! 5 weeks was 4 too many!


Ron Howard, the least daring film maker alive, was just the wrong person to put in charge of making a western. Sure enough, he is careful not to say anything that would offend anyone, and as a result all you get is a bland movie where everything is sort of cancelled out by everything else. Frontier women are strong and self-reliant, except that sometimes they need help from menfolk. Indian warriors are brave and good, except that some of them are evil and brutal. Violence is tragic, except sometimes it's the only way. The white settlers really want to be nice to the good Indians, but somehow they all get killed in the big gun battle. So of course it's nobody's fault they're all gone. Nothing happens here that didn't happen in LAST OF THE MOHICANS, except with no romance at all and very dull characters mucking about in dirt and snow and looking miserable.

What would have made this movie work would have been a strong love story between Cate Blanchett and -- well, not Tommy Lee Jones, but maybe some powerful Mexican landowner or something. Like they get down to Mexico and Cate's daughter has been stolen, so she has to see the incredibly rich and aristocratic Mexican governor, who is an older man and a widower. And he helps her get her daughter back, riding by her side like a guardian and protector, only he and Cate fall madly in love so at the end she stays on in Mexico living in his hacienda and being treated like a queen. And instead of Cate in the dirt and snow all the time you would see her enjoying new clothes and new surroundings and trying on jewelry and things like that, with her very distinguished husband sort of smiling at her in the background. And her bratty daughter could just marry some nice young officer.

And Tommy Lee Jones could get eaten by a pack of Gila monsters.


With Ron Howard, a good cast, and western scenery, not to mention the intriguing title, I expected a good movie. I have never been more disappointed. What I got was an interminable saga of misery, sadism, and familial bitterness, with no redeeming feature. One has to blame the script, to begin with. How unrelentingly dreary, unsatisfying, and distasteful can a script be? But surely Ron Howard understands the need for some sort of a break in the ugliness. There was none. The little girl was the single humanizing factor, and it was too much for her to carry alone. Tommy Lee and Cate, for all their acting skills, failed to evoke any kind of warm, sympathetic response in me. I kept comparing this movie with "The Outlaw Josey Wales" since both were replete with Comancheros, captives, and killings. Yet "Josey Wales" had rich moments of humor and warmth; so much so that I enjoy watching it every few years. I would not watch this movie again under any circumstances. Worst of all, "The Missing" missed any sort of overarching vision that would have given it coherence and meaning.


I am so sorry I wasted 6.00 dollars for this DVD. The selling and promotional materials seemed to indicate it was something of an artful classic. Beware, its a dog. I guess it was about 20 minutes in something said, it doesn't click. This is either bad acting, bad script, but in fact it was both.

I cannot waste the kilowatt hours to see this sad flick again. Ron Howard did himself no favors by attaching his name to this dog.

I mean from the get go, the script was so simplistic and hollow. At times Cate Blanchett changed her phony drawl and driveled moronic script lines, while he uneducated Indian father sounded as if he held a PhD. " I think they were abused"... what you say?

Bad bad bad.

and more bad !


I'm sorry. Maybe I just expected too much after seeing Black Belt Jones. Maybe I expected there to be less of what the filmmakers call "comedy". I could barely stand to watch it. I would have to say that I think this movie is on the top ten of my least favorite films ever.


A team of American special agents lead by super smooth ace martial artist Jones (the ever cool Jim Kelly) travel across Thailand to rescue June (Judith Brown sporting in atrociously overdone Southern accent), the daughter of a U.S. senator who's been abducted by the evil Rangoon (Sam Hiona doing a third-rate Fu Manchu impression). Writer/director Oscar Williams, who previously penned the lowdown funky blaxploitation winners "Black Belt Jones" and "Truck Turner," really fumbles the ball with this disappointingly mild and plodding PG-rated clunker: the sluggish pace, meandering narrative, and especially lots of extremely dumb and forced attempts at painfully unfunny and witless humor doom this baby to outright mediocrity. The cast struggle gamely with the subpar material: Kelly just about manages to retain his dignity throughout, the lovely and personable Irene Tsu adds some spark and spunk as feisty lady cop Pam, Geoffrey Binney is okay as the hip Joe Chicago, and Brown ain't half bad in a second role as the fetching and duplicitous femme fatale Leslie. However, George Memmoli is simply insufferable as the White Rhino, an obnoxious bumbling fat slob comic relief character who's supposed to be lovable and amusing, but instead proves to be extremely irritating and unappealing. Several action set pieces like a dangerous trek down a river on a raft and a raid on a village on a bunch of rampaging elephants fail to deliver the expected thrilling pay-offs due to the fact that they are clumsily executed. A hideously sappy romantic interlude at the halfway point doesn't help matters any. Only in the surprisingly dynamic and exciting last third does this flick finally spring to life, but by then it's much too little way too late to compensate for the general tedium which preceded it. A very blah and forgettable wash-out.


This "sort of" a sequel to "Black Belt Jones" (Jim Kelly's character is referred to merely as "Jones") is far inferior. The comedy is lame, the acting mediocre and the dialogue often very bad. But there is a continuous stream of action running through the film, and Kelly shows once again that he had the stuff to be a martial-arts star (although his career was fairly brief). Plus, there are the colorful exotic locations that help you keep watching even the worst scenes. (**)


This is just in case those of you who shop at Diabolik are going here before purchasing this on DVD and are going by the other reviews, here's an accurate review of the movie. I haven't listened to all of the commentary by the director and producer/star but they call this their tribute to the "giallo" my favorite eurotrash movie. Filmed on Long Island and what looks like some Manhattan apartments, it's a long way from Italy except maybe for some obvious scenes that are kind of "borrowed" (and i say that loosely) from much much better films. I'm not trying to criticize the quality but it's very obvious they had a very low budget to work with and the film looks like a bad VHS transfer (don't think it is it just looks that way there's a disclaimer at the beginning about flaws in the film etc ) with some truly awful sound (there are places where the music pretty much drowns out the dialog so you have to crank up the 5.1 hoping to hear what they're saying). There's a woman right at the beginning who is killed in the shower by a black masked killer clothed all in black with black gloves and a hat right out of any giallo made. This is fine but then the plot begins and as you watch the movie you come to find out her killing seems to have nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. And what a plot! I think these guys have much more in common with Ed Wood than Mario Bava or Dario Argento. Now I'm a big fan of Wood but he crafted a much better film than they have and the comparison is only that the script is the kind of loopy thing Wood wrote in the fifties. Hardly the stuff of giallos. An artist who paints some of the worst paintings ever seen conspired with his insane suicidal wife to be "killed" in order to make his paintings more valuable! Then he goes around (I think its him but then it could be his wife or the art critic- they throw her in as a possible murderess for no understandable reason)slashing up different people who have his art in order to take his paintings back! Anyone getting this?! A great many of the lines spoken are truly incredible and I have to quote a couple. The most Woodian character is a police detective who says (in true Wood fashion): "Give---me---a description and I'll send out an A (pause) P (pause) B. You just have to hear it! Then there's the star saying: " I told you 14 times....." ( as opposed to 13 or 12?).Most of the actors have wonderful Neeew Yawk accents that give this a kind of Hershell Gordon Lewis flavor. Imagine "Have you ever had an.....Egyptian Feast! in Long Islandese and you've got it. Anyway, I don't think this was meant as a comedy (although after the beatnik scene I'm really not sure) but if you're looking for horror this only qualifies if you're looking for so bad it's good I need to be high to enjoy omg I'm horrified I paid for this. Don't expect an American Bird with the Crystal Plumage!


The scene where his mum and dad went to bail Blue?? from jail.

She was sprinkling Holy water!!!.

She was cursing all the demons (in the form of prisoners)to disappear.

That scene almost killed me.

I actually laughed and ended up weeping.

When some of the prisoners heckled her, she shouted at them, "Your Mama, All your mamas".

That's one of my fave jail scenes of all time.

Get Back Satan.

Disappear Demons!!!!!!!!


First let me explain my rating-system. I consider a 5 a movie that's somewhat watchable, a 6 is already a good movie. I gave Haven a 3 because the soundtrack was good and the acting wasn't horrible. Now over to the bad stuff...

I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone. Usually in my reviews I try to say something like: 'this movie isn't recommended for people who don't like slow-developing plots' or 'it's not for people who want the plot wrapped up neatly in the end'. But I can honestly and objectively say this movie was just one of poor quality. The biggest problem is the plot itself. The storyline is multi-linear, characters are being followed and they're all supposed to be connected in one way or another through an event or multiple events. Examples of brilliant use of this method is seen in Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Crash and Magnolia. In these films the story lines have similar prominent themes and the characters are all connected physically. Every character adds more elements to the story until we have a complex web of story lines, constantly crossing paths and having effects on one another. I know this sounds confusing but watch Amores Perros and Crash and you'll know exactly what I mean. Haven makes one fruitless attempt after another to be clever until all we end up with is an unsorted mess of scenes thrown together in a wanna-be movie. That's the best way to describe Haven: it wants to be a lot of things but ends up being rubbish.

The thing that irritated me even more then the gimmick mentioned above was the chronologically scattered framework that was used. I feel like they realized the plot and characters of their attempted intelligent film were overly simple, and they tried to jazz it up with a chronologically scattered framework to fool people into thinking they're watching something clever. I heard the story was chronological at the premiere of the Toronto film festival and then they re-edited the whole film to create the flashbacks. That's not the way to write a story with a scrambled up chronology. You have to actually write the script like that (with chronology switching from the start of your story) or the storyline will be a mess. The storyline has to flow naturally, even if you use chronology like that. A prime example a brilliantly written script that uses the same technique is Memento. The technique used actually adds something to the suspense of the story.

Nope, don't waste your time on this. I usually only write IMDb reviews for films I like but this film was just too dreadful for words, I felt it was my duty to stop another human being from seeing it. I don't see why anyone should see this movie. It's certainly not to be entertained and I hardly think anyone would be enlightened after seeing a film like this.

3/10 and I'm being generous.


I just so it on DVD now.

An OK script goes to waste on 'inspirational' camera shots which are copy-cat & sloppy. The editing is so bad, there's little point to discuss it. While some of the acting is decent, the accent of the local Caymenees is hard to understand some of the time, and harder still to believe it comes off real. Some plot-lines are meant to be connected in a clever way, but we have seen too much of this before, and some parts are so generic-made it's painful. There is no promise from this film - no new actors, nothing to carry this film even to be a has-been; it is a never-was.

Hopefully, we'll see no more work from the makers of Haven.


The director somehow forgot to TELL A STORY, and he overlooked to DEVELOP CHARACTERS. Incredibly, the action got all mixed up in the editing suite and no one was straight enough to sort it out. That's my guess. What else happens when a bunch of stoned young men get together to make a movie on Grand Cayman? The leading lady was set up to have turned sixteen that very day, when Orlando Mister-Twickenham Bloom pops over to make love with her. Trouble is, she looks about twenty-five. Bloom gets acid thrown in his face by her charming brother, and oh-so-luckily his face is wrinkled up, but both his eyes survive perfectly! The movie started like an international James-Bond-type suspenser, but later turned into a lackadaisical picaresque tale about an ordinary boat-polisher and his burning passion. Yawn. Couldn't be bothered to find out what happened, there was no end for it to happen in.


What a horrible movie. It's pretentious and wannabe cool, but the video-clip style editing and constant jumping in time just serve to annoy and confuse. The main problem is the depressing story though. It's about miserable people who all end up miserable, with no redeeming features such as an interesting character study or something like that. It appears to be an attempt at having many seemingly unrelated plot lines coming together at the end like a jigsaw puzzle, but the connections are so tenuous and arbitrary that that aspect falls entirely flat.

Utterly pointless, except for people who enjoy watching misery. The three out of ten is purely for the location, which slightly redeems the movie as something to watch for the pretty pictures.


Writer/director Frank E. Flowers makes "Haven" in the disjointed, jumped-up style resembling his production team's more successful "Crash", which is supposed to be this film's selling point. But, "Haven" only emphasizes what goes wrong with this type of picture. Instead of fresh, it's frazzled. As the story lines wobble around, the cameras leave a relatively engaging Victor Rasuk (as Fritz).

Then, reminding you of "Crash" connections, the film's hooded "Romeo and Juliet" storyline takes hold. "On the idyllic shores of the Cayman Islands, Shy (Orlando Bloom) and Andrea (Zoe Saldana) share a secret her parents can never know - they are in love. But a night of passion leads to the discovery of their secret and a devastating act of vengeance by Andrea's brother (Anthony Mackie).

"Meanwhile, a shady American businessman (Bill Paxton) has fled with his daughter to the Islands to avoid federal prosecution, only to be drawn into a dangerous web of deceit. As lives intersect and truths are revealed, a chain reaction of violence is set in motion that will determine whether love can survive the fall of paradise," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

It all ends by stopping.

**** Haven (9/11/04) Frank E. Flowers ~ Orlando Bloom, Zoe Saldana, Bill Paxton, Victor Rasuk


I have to say, I just saw this movie for the first time last night, and I think it portrayed the Cayman Islands as some drug infested little island. I am a descendant of the island and I am appalled to see that is how the island is being represented. Everyone in the movie spoke with a Jamaican accent and used phrases that are only used by Jamaicans. I cannot believe the Cayman people allowed this movie to be made and degrade this beautiful island where tourist goes to with their families for vacations. If I did not know better this would not be anywhere I'd want to go. Everywhere has drugs and crime, but this movie suggested that everywhere you go on the island that's all there is, the partying and the drugs and the killings. This Island is more than that and those who live there and depend on the tourist to survive should remember that. I vote this a ZERO.

A Cayman Island Descendant.


I thought I had written a review of this travesty of a movie.

There was absolutely nothing worthwhile in it . I agree with the last reviewer its too much nose candy.

They use a hand held camera to the extreme, I have seen better hand held camera work on "youtube."

The acting is second rate by a well known cast.

I will not insult them by naming them, same for the director & writer.

This was filmed on the beautiful Cayman Islands,It should have been done on the Santa Monica beach, that is how much it looked like the Caymans.

Rating * (out of 4) 25 points (out of 100) IMDb 1 (out of 10)


A very different movie than any other...the closest thing you can compare it to is Tarentino's "Pulp Fiction" but only because of it's multi-linear story.

The cinematography rocked. The acting was superb. The sound went unnoticed, so good work guys! But...

Usually in a movie like this, the multi-linear loose ends will cleverly tie together in the end showing why these particular characters were being followed. But it never did this. Bill Paxton and Orlando Blooms timelines ran almost totally autonomous from one another; crossing paths but never changing the outcome of the other. It was merely a gimmick. The first rule of film making...everything has to have a GOOD reason.


This is a wretched, wrong-headed little waste of celluloid. Do not be deceived by the film's strange sleight of hand, mis-focusing the audience on Broderick and Ryan. This is actually a story about a young woman (Kelly Preston) from America and an immigrant from France (Tcheky Karyo) who meet in New York and fall in love. Preston, raised in a small town, finally spreads her wings and flies away to the big city in pursuit of her dreams. There she meets Karyo, the man of her dreams, who loves America where he has come to achieve his dreams. Sadly the two of them are dogged by their sicko, stalking ex-lovers who conspire to wreak mayhem upon them and turn their dreams into a nightmare.

Broderick and Ryan commit heinous crimes, including invasion of privacy (on multiple levels), stalking, and breaking and entering. They are seriously disturbed voyeurs who generate no chemistry and no sympathy. I was touched only by the steady, true love of Preston and Karyo which even overcomes the sinister machinations of Broderick and Ryan. The film attempts to get the audience to identify with the sickos, instead of the true protagonists of this film. Unfortunately, their characters provide no chemistry and nothing with which I could identify. I just felt compassion for the two objects of their demented malevolence.

In a comment thread on this film, someone suggested the film's ending was too pat - that there was too much neat "resolution." To the contrary, this film provides too LITTLE resolution. After the twin menaces of Broderick and Ryan finally depart, were Preston and Karyo able to reconstruct their lives of love and security and promise? Or were they forever reduced to penury as a result of Broderick's and Ryan's conspiracy?

The acting in this film is pedestrian except for Karyo, who is quite good. Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick never come close to portraying 3-dimensional characters - much less, likable ones - or achieving any on-screen chemistry. This is a pitiful excuse for a romance or a comedy or a romantic comedy.

Tragically, this film is about two people from disparate backgrounds who, against all odds meet, fall in love and build a dream life only to have it devastated by two contemptuous criminals from their past. There was nothing funny about two deranged, deluded people utterly destroying the lives of two other people who have found love, happiness and success together in the big city. For me, causing misery in the lives of others is a poor basis for comedy.


I apologize if this is more about Meg Ryan than the movie but I just saw this flick for the first time tonight despite meaning to check it out for years frankly. I just expected more from Meg Ryan -- more from her career to be honest.

She plays her standard semi-bimbo, semi-slick and yet semi-alluring chick with little substance and not much thought it seems for how her dialogue progresses -- DOA and the Presidio some to mind. Her career is chock full of meaningful characters that defined themselves with any number of strong emotional traits. Even her small supporting role in Top Gun was incredibly well done, despite the arguably contrived and cheesy nature of the film (you have to admit -- cheese doesn't get better). She was electric in that movie -- Harry Met Sally of course is another. You felt her true emotion. I'm a hetero male so it takes a lot of soul-searching to write something bad about Meg. LOL. I just think she's a little one dimensional in a lot of her films and Addicted to Love is one of them. I have no idea what her character is truly thinking in most scenes and what her motivation is. I think that a lot of her troubles are poor script choices. But no one is forcing her.

I would skip it or wait for cable.


There has to be something wrong, when you start to sympathise with the second leads instead of the two leads, which is the main problem with Griffin Dunne's mildly amusing, nasty, mean and cruel romantic comedy about obsessed and crazy ex-lovers Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan combining their powers to separate their past lovers Kelly Preston and Tcheky Karyo from one another by playing tricks on them. While Dunne does everything to keep the audience entertained, Broderick and Ryan have nothing you could call chemistry. Karyo does heavy comedy in ridiculous slapstick scenes, which is not really the worst thing in this charm-lacking flick, and Preston is surprisingly tame, compared to her terrific support as bitchy ex-girlfriend of JERRY MAGUIRE (1996). That said, the solution is predictable and disappointing. All in all, rom-com average stuff.


The story seems plausible, but the dialogue is below average. In

all, I found this 'romance' unappealing...something better

should have been done with the idea. What a waste. The

characters are not well developed and very little romance

actually makes it to the stars.

The funniest part (and this is not saying much) is that Linda

requires her father to deliver all her "Dear John" letters like

singing telegrams. Add one more of those and there may have been

something to look forward to every thirty minutes.


thank god i didn't pay to see this movie. alas, a late-night free showing at the theatre down the street was simply not enough to add any semblance of reality to this clunker.

as if the plot isn't bad enough, meg ryan and matthew broderick are so awkward as would-be lovers, i'm surprised there's not more footage of them tripping over each other.

and that inevitable kiss? smarm central. i haven't seen a kiss that awkward since i was in the sixth grade and my boy friend barney (yeah, who am i to talk?) leered "do you wanna french?" at me across the playground.

do yourself a favor and stay at home to wash your hair instead of seeing this movie.


Saw this movie last night in a preview. Had high hopes from the cast and the director. Hopes were dashed on the rocks of cinematic stupidity. At the core of this movie is the story of three couples and their loves, losses, toils and tears.

Morgan Freeman and Jane Alexander play the older, wiser couple who are suffering a heartbreak which is revealed about 1/3 of the way through the movie. Of the three couples, they are the most interesting and the least explored. Here we have an inter-racial couple in their late sixties facing their mortality with a deep abiding love. I could have watched them for 1.5 hours! Couple their interesting story with the fine acting that these pro's deliver and you'd have a great movie.

Greg Kinnear and X are the second "middle-aged" couple. I say X because Greg goes through several women in the movie.

Toby Hemingway and Alexa Davalos are the young couple. Romeo and Juliet, young love, yada yada yada.

What annoyed me about the movie were the constant coincidences. I think only 10 people live in Portland and they all sleep together. On scene involves Greg Kinnear and his new wife Radha Mitchell (who just ended a long affair with a married man, but kept his shirt). Greg and Radha jaunt off to a party with Radha wear the aforementioned shirt. Guess who is at the party? Yup - married man and wife who Radha the real estate agent sold a house to years ago (which started the affair). Of course wife recognizes Radha the Realtor and has to say hello where she of course recognizes the shirt since it happened to be a birthday gift from her to her cheatin' husband. And of course that shirt was missing a tell-tale button which eliminated any possibility of a duplicate. Thus drama ensued...

Another scene that stretched my credulity followed quickly afterward when Greg Kinnear's character decides his body must feel the same pain as his heart and slices off the tip of his finger. Rushed to the hospital by wise and kindly Morgan Freeman who continuously admonishes him to stop telling people he did it himself, Greg falls in love with the Doctor who stitches him up. What was amazing was the Doctor falls in love with the crazy guy who just chopped his finger off.

Oh and the movie had way too much nudity. I'm not a prude but I'm not a fan of excessive nudity for the sake of nudity. Same with some of the coarse language.

Overall rating: I wouldn't pay an airline $3 for the headphones to hear this movie!


*contains spoilers*

My friends and I were in the mood for a light-hearted comedy, as the previews seemed to indicate. It looks like one of those stories where guy gets dumped, meets nice girl, pulls himself up by the bootstraps, gets his dog back, and heals his heart. WRONG! The plot goes more along the lines of guy gets dumped, lots of people have sex or walk around naked, guy pathetically buys dog from nephew, plot goes nowhere. I have no idea how it ends because after an hour, we gave up and walked out. It was that bad.

Weak storyline, predictable and uninspired dialogue, unimaginative (and excessive) nudity and sex for its R rating. Even if you view the movie as a drama instead of a potential romantic comedy, it still lacks depth and doesn't tie you to any of the characters. I found myself watching the scenes in the hope that just maybe the dog would be on camera- at least he was likable and interesting. No such luck. Watch some of the rainy scenes- you can see the sunshine in the background even in the big storm scenes. Altogether awful awful movie.

Don't waste your time, money, or spot in your rental queue. Worst movie I've seen in years.


OK, let me just start off by saying that if you aren't 15 and madly in love or in a mid-life crisis, this movie will seem extremely extremely cheesy...

By cheesy, I mean "I wanted to feel in my body as much pain as I feel in my heart" (get over yourself)... and the actor is meant to say this without laughing. Seriously though i found some parts of the dialog excruciating. As well, who talks about their recently turned lesbian ex-wife to a complete stranger?

Also the story itself seems to have been written by either a 15 year old or a midlife criser. It's just so cliché... the young couple with a tragic end, the alcoholic father, the cutely naive 40 year old who gets his heart stomped on over and over again, and above all, the wise old black man. I think it's about time for Morgan Freeman to find other parts to play... It's also cliché in that everyone falls in love at first sight, somehow confusing lust for love.

The acting was overall OK, though sometimes Kinnear makes you raise an eyebrow. Truly, I think the producers noticed the movie wouldn't have cut it, so they decided to throw in a few naked chicks and I guess it works, I mean i stayed till the end. The only reason i stayed though was for Alexa Davalos (bom chicka wah wah).

This could have been a really really good soap opera.


This is a movie I really wanted to like. Not only was it filmed in Portland, OR where I live, but I was also an extra in it. So, I went into the movie theater expecting a film that was if at least not award-worthy, was a thought-provoking & well-made picture. Plus, it had Greg Kinnear & Morgan Freeman- both Oscar winners- what could go wrong? Everything.

I have not read the book on which this was based, but I cannot imagine it had the simplistic, contrived, and corny plot that the movie contained. The pacing was so painfully slow and quiet, I could hear our crowded theater straining in their seats to stay awake during the long shots of Greg Kinnear's glossy eyes trying to convey his disbelief at why another woman has left him (dude maybe it IS you!)

Even harder to explain is why the director felt it was necessary to have so many sex scenes. 'Feast of Flesh' would have been a better title. Didn't gratuitous nudity go out of style after 'Basic Instinct'? I like a passionate love scene as much as the next, but when you have EVERY sexual encounter involve the woman grinding away on top of the man (who of course isn't showing any of HIS private parts!) it becomes very tacky and cheap. Okay Rhada Mitchell is HOT, we get it! Can she have a conversation with a bra on at least? Nudity does not convey intimacy- emotions convey intimacy.

So, if you want to bored senseless for long stretches of time, by all means see this movie. You can then decide if this movies suffers from: 1. a lack of music/score (I could have heard a pin drop at times), 2. trying to mish-mash multiple plot lines poorly, 3. not developing characters enough so we don't connect or relate, or 4. theme about the "mystery of love" is a very cliché & tired concept.

This movie does not prove a thing about the wonder of love- just because the girl knew her boyfriend would die but married him anyway- is probably the 100th movie to do this (see 'Love Story', 'Dying Young', or 'My Life'). I got what the director was trying to show us, but it wasn't original, didn't explore anything new, or move me. All this movie proves is that good directors can make bad movies!


I can't believe anyone could rate this above a 5. Even sappy people will groan at this film. The characters all seem to be mentally retarded and have the emotional depth of 10 year olds. Really, this is a painfully bad movie that I would have walked out on except that I was too lazy to reach for the remote control which had fallen on the floor.

Borderline soft-core porn is fine if you can actually believe it, but this movie was just a joke. The scene where Morgan Freeman wanders into the stadium to see two people getting it on actually made me laugh out loud, then I realized the only way to watch this film is to treat is as a joke, laugh and make Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style comments and you will have a good time.


only good thing about this movie was Bradley because i connected with him and i feel like him most of the time, though maybe not quite as nice lol. Morgan freeman was good as always but the movie itself didn't really have any kind of message. i gave it 2 stars for those 2 actors. everyone else was lame. it wasn't like Rocky or something where it had a inspirational message of if you try hard enough you can beat the odds, go the distance etc. this like the OP, this seemed to be like don't get married which is stupid, Hollywood likes to make it seem like EVERYONE is cheating on everyone else. thats not true, most normal ppl do stay together for quite a while. and not everyone who is married is cheating on there spouse. i hated that radha Michelle, she frig-gin played him so bad and then left him for that other cheating mofo, it was like wtf that guy slapped her and was also a cheater. so what was the point of that, a cheater can trust another cheater? stupid. but when Bradley met that doctor i was no way, most doctors are NOT nice and pretty like that, that was so Hollywood "chance" meeting right there. i was expecting a different kind of movie, like more romantic not this super depressing nihilistic crap. and whats with movies these days showcasing "city hall" weddings and not getting married in the holy church? stuff like that bugs me to no end. even Indiana Jones got married in a church, but not other "real life" type movies? another thing i didn't like was how loose everyone was, i mean seriously you meet someone for 2 seconds and boom, your in bed with cm on? MAKING A SEX TAPE WITH THEM??? OK, i think they doomed each other with taking advice from a slutty goth chick. ugh, this movie was so stupid, my brain hurts from the lameness.


My partner, after renting this movie from the indie rack at our local rental outlet, and sitting through all 77 minutes (I had to beg her to watch the last 9 minutes), remarked, "It is criminal to watch this movie."

I won't bore you with the plot -- which has some relation to the first half of Psycho. I won't bore you with a lengthy description of the acting and writing -- suffice it to say that the pace was glacial, the dialogue contained no art "Where are you going ... I don't know ..." a typical exchange.

The black and white photography was interesting, for about 15 minutes. Up state New York has never looked more bleak.

I only gave it a 2 rather than a 1 because I watched it all the way through.


I am embarassed to have even rented David Jacobson's "Criminal." The plot has something to do with a man who steals money from his office so he can buy a bigger house for his family. He becomes ashamed and flees the scene. From there, adventure ensues. I guess Jacobson is trying to say something about the monotony of everyday life, but it is not very effective at all. This movie was made before "Pi," but I don't think Darren Aronofsky used this movie as a blueprint. Similarities between the two movies are that they are both shot completely in black and white, there are main character monologues (both including passages about "When I was young...")and both movies clock in under the 90 minute mark. However, unlike Pi, Criminal does not feature good writing, acting, or suspense. The acting is approximately the quality that one would find in a TV spot for a local car dealership. If you must ignore my warnings and you insist on watching this movie, by the end you will be lucky that this movie only wasted 75 minutes of your time as opposed to 2 hours.


To sum it up in one sentence: A forgettable movie, but a forgivable mistake.

Losey. Burton. Delon. Schneider. Cortese. Trotsky. A bunch of great names, thrown into the depths of a weak script that wants to be both, a history lesson and an entertaining political thriller. Shot on location in Mexico and Rome, this European co-production was groomed for international success and turned out to be a devastating disappointment for everyone involved. The audience couldn't cope with it and stayed away, the critics weren't impressed.

The film chronicles the last days of Trotzky (Richard Burton) as a political refugee in Mexico City. Alain Delon tries to play Frank Jacson, a Belgian traveling on a Canadian passport, who murders the dedicated Marxist and atheist.

It is only for a few precious moments that you can partially perceive Losey's talent which he has proved elsewhere (i.e. in "The Servant", "A Doll's House" or "Accident"), and Delon's performance is vain and unconvincing. (The English language clearly overdrew the actor's abilities.) The Losey/Delon team did much better a couple of years later with "Monsieur Klein".


If you get it into your head that the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was in fact a boozy Welsh actor, then you might be able to sit through this mess. Otherwise, be prepared for a puzzler --- it's not terrible, it's just incoherent. Director Joseph Losey tosses history to the wind in favor of an underdeveloped story that introduces a lot of characters but doesn't say who they are or why they're in Mexico. Characters just keep meeting in the half ruins of Mexico City. It's beautifully photographed but has a heavily edited feel to it. Many scenes end very abruptly.

As the assassin, Alain Delon pouts a lot and wears sunglasses. Romy Schneider plays a character that was, at least historically, a disillusioned Trotskyite from Brooklyn! Schneider is stunning but not very well utilized here. And for some reason, she shouts every other line. It's never explained why or how she got hooked up with Delon, but it's just as well...the script offers no motivation for any character. As Trotsky, Richard Burton dons a very fake looking van dyke mustache and round glasses and spouts revolutionary thought into a Dictaphone. Classy Valentina Cortese has virtually no lines as Mrs. Trotsky so why she was cast is anyone's guess.

There's probably a truly compelling story to be told about the last days of Trotsky, but this isn't it.


For the major part Assassination of Trotsky moves with a very slow pace and makes the movie even boring from time to time. Some scenes are over dramatized and creates an uneven tempo. Richard Burton:s character Leon Trotsky is minimized an old man walking around his villa speaking monologues, not enough to save the movie. Alain Delon acts Frank Jacson, the assassin, with bad judgment. The character is overplayed and not convincing. You even have trouble hearing what the man says when English not is his native tung! The story is very interesting and with burton in the lead one suspect that Assassination of Trotsky is a good film. Sadly this is not the case and the movie cannot be recommended. This is not a bad film but it suffers to much from an uneven tempo, bad direction and bad acting. It adds up to 3/10


The one thing that everyone already knows about the assassination of Trotsky is that he was killed with an ice pick. Well, in this film, he is killed with an ice axe. An ice pick, an ice axe, they're not the same. To be precise, he is killed with the pick side of a two-headed ice axe, but even then, that's still not an ice pick, which is something entirely different. So which was it really?

The only reason I'm belabouring this very trivial point is that it results in the single decent piece of acting in this film, the reaction of Richard Burton as Trotsky as he is hit in the head with the axe. As you would probably imagine, you have to wait quite a while to get to this moment in the film.

Other than Burton, the film's leads are Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. Neither one is comfortable speaking in English, the language they are required to use here. Most of their scenes are together. Why weren't their scenes done in French instead?

Since the presumable market for a film about that old villain Trotsky would have to be the European Left, why was this film made in English in the first place? Why not French, the language of the leads, or Italian, the language of the crew? Burton's bits in English as the self-important Trotsky could have been interpolated later while everyone else could have acted in a language in which he could show a little expression. As it is, no one would ever guess that Delon and Schneider are major stars under different circumstances. Schneider seems to be here mostly so she can stand and/or lounge in lingerie, but even that appetizing opportunity goes underexploited since, as a self-respecting Trotskyite gal, she doesn't wear any make-up.

There are several "characters" in this movie who in any normal film would have speaking parts, but since they never did settle the matter of what language they were shooting in, these people just stand there looking stupid and not saying anything. Unbelievably, we are expected to care when one of these ciphers gets killed (cue the cheap-looking mannequin) by Stalinists, or Fascists, or Anarcho-Syndicalists, or anti-Castro Cubans, or the CIA, or whatever. Nothing that goes on in this movie is ever very clear. And anyone expecting to learn a little something about the historical Trotsky will come away with the knowledge that he kept bunny rabbits at home.

Delon plays Trotsky's assassin, Jackson, "spelled without a k". He's Belgian. When asked why a Belgian has a name like Jac(k)son, he explains that he's really French-Canadian. Oh, well, that's clear. Most of the movie operates on a "duh" level much like that.

It is safe to conclude from the preceding that some mystery surrounded the precise identity of the assassin. If that is the case, the hapless direction of the utterly inept Joseph Losey was entirely confounded by a notion like "mystery". Or "tension". He manages to convey neither. The film has very little cutting, and hardly any reaction shots. There is no indication of what one is supposed to feel at any given moment. Everything looks like it was one take and wrap.

Losey is fond of this absurd set-up where two people supposedly have a conversation with one in the extreme foreground and the other in the remote background. Natural sound wouldn't work so there's some badly dubbed dialogue on top. It's an attempt at an "arty" shot that Welles might have done something with, but which is completely botched in the hands of a hack like Losey.

I can't conceive of anyone deriving any entertainment or elucidation from this fiasco. Five minutes spent with any reputable biography are more illuminating than 100 in the company of this film.


Fresh from the hit "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," the comedy duo set out on "Mexican Hayride." Costello plays Joe Bascom, who is on the trail of Harry Lambert (Bud Abbott). Lambert coerced Bascom into swindling friends in Iowa, and Bascom has followed him into Mexico to force him to pay up. Through a series of misunderstandings, Bascom becomes "Amigo Americano" and is honored and feted. Lambert sees this as an opportunity for further land swindles in Mexico, and again tries to use Bascom as an unwitting pawn.

If this description sounds like an unusual plot for an Abbott and Costello film, you would be right. The story is based upon a Broadway show. A&C stalwart screenwriter John Grant does his best to interject A&C humor and routines into the existing Broadway storyline. Two of his best examples are the scene where Abbott rips off Costello's clothes in an effort to hide his initials, which are sewed on every piece of clothing; and the scene with Fritz Feld as an diction specialist.

"Mexican Hayride" is considered one of the weakest films in the A&C series, and I agree. The main problem lies in trying to interject A&C into a Broadway storyline built for other actors. A&C give it their best as usual, but the storyline simply isn't for them. One expects Abbott to take advantage of Costello here and there; it was seen in many of their best comedies. But for Abbott to swindle many people besides Costello simply isn't funny. There are also many gaps in the humor that result in dull moments. I really tried to like "Mexican Hayride," but the storyline simply didn't fit A&C snugly, and the humor is not consistent enough to generate many laughs. 3 out of 10.


HAUNTS is an almost forgotten film that would be better billed as a psychological thriller rather than a horror movie. One of the significant differences is the use of a slow build-up of complications and tension over a period of time in the average thriller; horror movies tend to deliver the scares much earlier, and often feature some element of the supernatural. HAUNTS details the events surrounding a serial rapist and killer in a small town, containing a fairly small body count and concentrating instead on character and plot development.

It begins with the rape and murder of a young woman, with the murder weapon being the unusual choice of a pair of scissors. After this brief introduction, the movie follows a very religious woman named Ingrid, played by Swedish actress May Britt (the synopsis on my copy of this movie refers to her as a "religious young woman," but given that Ms. Britt was in her mid-forties when this was filmed, "young" may be a relative term here). It isn't long before someone begins stalking Ingrid, and the mystery begins. It could be young punk Frankie (William Gray Espy), or Bill Spry, the young man who recently moved into town (Robert Hippard), or it could even be Ingrid's uncle, Carl (the late, great Cameron Mitchell).

My copy of HAUNTS is visibly aged, which really does add to the aesthetic of the film. It comes from Mill Creek's Chilling Classics 50 Movie boxed set. Fans of both older movies and the psychological thriller genre should get a kick out of this, as it is a reasonably well made film with lots of bizarre plot twists and plenty of suspense, although it should be noted that the movies that appear on the 50 movie boxed sets are usually NOT of the highest quality, so this is hardly what I'd call a "classic" in any sense other than age. As it is probably a public domain movie, it might be possible to find it online for free.


This was a real chore to watch. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at least thirty minutes can be cut off this clunker without missing any plot lines whatsoever.

May Britt plays Ingrid, the most unlikeable main character in movie history. Not only is she the coldest fish on earth but she's also a fierce man-hater. The small town she lives in has been plagued with murders committed by a scissor wielding madman. This makes Ingrid even more unbearable to be around as every breathing man she comes into contact with is automatically trying to rape her. Number one on her list is the town rowdy Frankie who also works as the butcher in the local market when he's not having a very inappropriate relationship with the sheriff's seventeen year old daughter. This would be fine had the man playing Frankie not appear to be in his late thirties at least. What's more absurd is that Ingrid constantly refers to him as "that boy".

Ingrid lives alone (no surprise there) on a farm but is helped on occasion by her Uncle Carl played by B-movie king Cameron Mitchell. Did I mention that she also has hallucinations too? Usually the incoherent flashbacks come over her every few seconds. Rubbing a goat, flashback, feeling a bed sheet, flashback, someone closes a door, flashback. Ingrid comes upon a corpse left on her property and that pushes her off the mental edge she was teetering on to begin with. The ending is quite bizarre as Ingrid's fate as well as the relationship between her uncle and her mother are slapped across you face like a dead salmon.

I couldn't care less what happened to Ingrid because her performance was as dead as the person she portrays. We are lead to believe that she was raised in this small California coastal town yet her thick accent begs to differ. This is explained near the end as the time she spent at "a European school up the coast". What? Did they suck the life force from her too? Let's hope Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory is better.


Be forewarned: this review is going to contain a lot of spoilers, but

this is so necessary in discussing this wannabe complicated film.

May Britt plays Ingrid, a lonely rural woman who lives on a farm

and faithfully attends church. A masked killer is terrorizing the

small town and there are plenty of suspects: town bad boy Frankie,

Ingrid's mysterious uncle Carl, and the new stranger guy in town.

The sheriff, played by Aldo Ray, is perplexed. He finds out his

daughter was knocked up by Frankie, plus he must deal with

having two Barney Fifes as deputies. Ingrid is also having many

visions/hallucinations involving her mother, who killed herself after

a tryst with a strange man. Ingrid, just five years old, walked in on

them and mom fled into the bathroom. It is no mystery that the

man in bed with mom was mom's brother, Uncle Carl.

Ingrid is attacked by the masked killer but escapes. Later, the killer

murders the local town lush and dumps her body in Ingrid's

chicken coop. Ingrid is later raped by Frankie, and Uncle Carl

almost walks in on them. Frankie threatens Ingrid if she talks, and

the murders in town continue. Ingrid is a fixture at church, and is

almost raped again after an attack in the cemetery. Eventually, the

masked killer turns out to be the mysterious stranger. Frankie,

however, shows up at Ingrid's house, bounds Uncle Carl, but is

stabbed to death by Ingrid. Carl buries Frankie, makes an

incestuous pass at Ingrid, then disappears after Ingrid goes to the

sheriff.

The sheriff guards Ingrid's house until the morning, when the

deputies can come and dig up Frankie. Instead, Frankie pulls up

very much alive, and the deputies find a grave with Ingrid's goat.

Ingrid is upstairs in the bathroom, dead from suicide.

The sheriff also gets a surprise when Uncle Carl flies in from New

York. He has not seen Ingrid in years, despite Ingrid's claims to

the contrary. Uncle Carl visits Ingrid's house, and remembers how

he slept with his sister before he drowned her in the bathtub, she

did not commit suicide. The final scene, the scariest in the film,

has Mitchell in the bathroom, running hot and steaming water, and

turning around to see a misty figure standing in the bathtub- Ingrid.

This thumbnail sketch might make this sound very suspenseful,

almost Hitchcockian, but it is far from it. May Britt, as Ingrid, tries,

but she is failed by the script. Her Scandinavian accent is

explained away as she spent time in "a European orphanage up

the coast." Huh? Cameron Mitchell, who has never been good in

anything, is not good here. The film makers give him the world's

worst fake gray hair at the film's conclusion: the chalk white goop

looks like it was applied with a trowel. The rest of the cast plays

their routine small town characters without adding anything new.

The biggest mistake here is the convoluted script. There are at

least six different places toward the end of the movie where the

final credits should have started rolling. Clocking in at 97 minutes,

this is fifteen minutes too long. Poor Britt spends most of her

screen time either taking off her clothes (careful not to show any

nudity) or hysterically running away from men, real or imagined. All

the men here come off as horny and stupid. Ingrid is the

repressed frigid queen who fantasizes about being attacked and

raped. She is religious, and Hollywood has been telling us for

years how strange and sexually repressed churchgoers are. The

script never takes any chances, beating the viewer over the head

with heavy handed images from Ingrid's psychotic mind. While

there is some suspense here and there, for a horror film, there is

not much.

The possibilities here were endless, and the film makers did not

take advantage of them. This should have been very suspenseful,

considering the game cast, but everyone loses to a silly script and

terribly low budget. "Haunts" does not haunt.

This is rated (R) for physical violence, some gun violence, sexual

violence, some profanity, some sexual content, and adult

situations.


Once again, the 70's feels like being really weird with its titles and have them have nothing to do with the actual story. i love it. oh wait. no i don't, it's STUPID. oh well. Onto movie 9 of the Chilling classics box set.

What do we have to look forward to this time? well some ultra Jesus loving chick named Ingrid! there's a bunch of murders taking place around the area with a dude with some scissors and soon enough she gets attacked, but she gets away and then a whole bunch of zaniness begins! like rapings and crazily boring scenes that don't need be there! hooray for the 70's! Supposedly Ingrid gets raped by this guy named Frankie. i say supposedly cause...well you'll see later. anyway after a while, the sheriff (who sounds like he has a touch of the throat cancer) and his cronies discover who the killer is and the good ol boys take him out. with guns...although he's unarmed. that always makes me wonder. why is it ALWAYS sheriffs in horror movies? to this day, i have never seen a bumbling sheriff in real life. do they exist? oh well, maybe out west. anywho, Ingrid doesn't believe its over because she thinks Frankie is still on the loose. her and her uncle she's living with takes him out. and all is well........or is it? Little do we know that she really didn't get raped and she made everything up with her craziness. what a twist! oh no wait...the twist was STUPID. and then the movie proceeds to go on for 10 minutes longer than it should describing what the hell happened in the rest of the movie. another reason to show that this movie messed up. it shouldn't NEED to have that explanation, it should be obvious in the storytelling. Even though i may not be a fan of the movie "Hide and Seek", it actually SHOWED us what happened as opposed to this movie that felt it necessary to give us a 10 minute dialogue because they were too stupid to figure out a way to show it.

So the movie ends with the uncle going into the house and going a bit crazy. The end.

Now, is it just me, or for some reason, why do all 1970's movies seem to have titles that have NOTHING to do with the movie. "Bell from hell" "Medusa", etc. i don't know WHY the 70's loved doing this so much when the film's alternate titles are so much better . The alternate title for this film is "The Veil" and granted, that ALSO has nothing to do with the movie, i think overall it's a better title than HAUNTS. because haunts promises ghosts or demons or something. Veil promises...well, a veil. and if there's no veil, i'm not nearly as disappointed.

So yeah, another boring 70's movie. Not nearly as painful as Medusa, but hardly anything is.

Haunts gets 3 pairs of scissors, out of 10


This is a movie that asks you to stick with it to the end, purposely confusing the viewer and leaving them unsatisfied until it is ready to reveal itself. That would be fine, except the payoff really isn't worth the time you'll put into this one.

The main character, Ingrid, lives in a small, quiet community, and has always been considered to be very level-headed by the other residents. However, when she claims to be attacked several times, the police and her doctor start to wonder if she is imagining it. We eventually find out that she has some lurid family history, but we never really know what is real or imagined. The movie is mostly told from Ingrid's point of view, which proves unreliable. She eventually commits suicide and we find out some more of her past, ending with an ambiguous final shot.

I didn't really find the movie atmospheric or involving. It had a low-budget feel and looks to be marketed as a trashy thriller, but it could have been a TV movie considering the content. Nothing really stood out, not much was memorable.

Some recommendations: If you are interested in a movie with similar themes but want more something that will make more of an impact, try "Chinatown," "The Grifters," or "Angels and Insects."


Another day, another bad movie from the "Chilling Classics" boxed set... "Haunts" has a somewhat interesting premise (as other reviewers have stated, overtones of "Repulsion" abound): Ingrid (May Britt) is haunted by the repressed memory of her mother's suicide; she lives on a farm with her hulking uncle (Cameron Mitchell, who once again lends his seal of badness); there's a masked assailant killing local girls with a pair of scissors (in one hilarious moment, he attacks in full view of 2 policemen), and she's just met a poor-postured creep at choir practice. You see, she's a Puritanical girl who shudders at the notion of having her womanly plane violated by a sinister male ("Repulsion" again). There is a ghost-story twist to the whole thing, explained in about as heavy-handed a way as the filmmakers can muster (but still manages to make little sense). By the end of "Haunts," I was confused and apathetic...this might have had something to do with my lulling in and out of sleep while watching. The score by the usually-reliable Pino Donaggio is undistinguished and unmemorable, which is indicative of the film overall.


loved him in Hard Target......did not see enough of him in this particular movie though......he really is a sexy talented actor...was disappointed...if ya got it strut it.....and he definitely has got it! i liked the storyline of the movie but it was very hard to see Arnold....as a BIG fan of his he should of been in more of the storyline and i can see why the female in the movie did what she did he does have a very very sexy voice.....i agree with the other viewer someone should write a role for Arnold quick, one that shows his obvious talents...laughing..that's all i can think of to say on the subject. thank you for your time.


Three stories (all bland and emotionless) unfold in Red Shoe Diaries 2: Double Dare, a terrible anthology filled with loser episodes from the series. The first stars Steven Bauer and Joan Severence and follows their turbulent sex-only relationship. The second is laughably, horribly bad starring a VERY unattractive actress as a cop who wants to get kinky with a guy she never met before. And the third is a so-so story of a game of double dare played between a man and woman who work across the street from each other.

If you liked the original, like me, you will hate the lack of emotion these stupid anthology stories give. One Star out of Four.


My spouse and I went to see this on opening night. We were expecting to see an extremely bad and costly film, and we were not really disappointed. It is a testament to John Travolta's genius that his career survived this disaster at all.

As they say, garbage-in, garbage out. Start with an L Ron Hubbard novel (your first mistake) featuring a completely plagiarized dark-skinned, war-like and hairy alien culture with wrinkly foreheads (if this sounds like Klingons to you, I thought so too!), and add unfortunate Barry "can't get a break" (or maybe it should be 'cant pick a script') Pepper and all you need is Travolta himself - playing the arrogant, merciless, slightly effeminate and quite under-sized leader of the alien colonists. Remove any hint of character development from the script and use the worst of the worst black box technobabble explanations for plot devices. Finally, stay true to the idiotic gibberish you based the film on in the first place, and you've got the makings of a rolling-on-the-floor comedy.

In fact, opening night, in a packed theater, people started laughing out loud about 20 minutes into the film and never really stopped. We had a great time that night. Halfway through the film more than half the crowd was actually interacting with the film, asking "Mr Worf, where's Commander Riker?" and asking troublesome questions about how many hundreds of years gas would remain viable in the gas-tank of a Harrier.

If you need to know about the plot - it's this simple - Earth has been conquered by an amazingly stupid group of Klingon-like aliens, and the remaining humans live in a large domed slave labor camp where they are taught that their sole purpose is servitude because they are stupid, weak, etc. Barry Pepper somehow becomes convinced that he's not born to be a slave, and learns to fly a harrier, etc. It's really not worth the effort of typing. There are a few not-so-subtle and not very original but good messages about ethnocentrism to be found here, but not much else. Some day when you need a good laugh, rent this or borrow it from your local bad film collector.


the friend who lent me the DVD warned me, but it beat all my expectations of lowliness. this film is unspeakably bad. don't go and see it, take my word for it:

* it has no plot.

* the 'actors' suck huge rocks. really huge.

* travolta doesn't even try.

* the most elaborate dialog revolves around the sentence 'grumble mumble'.

* special effects are the worst ever, because they pretend to be serious.

* costumes and characterization make space: 1999 look excellent

i could go on and on and on, but i'm beginning to feel sick just for having to think about it.


Actually, was anyone involved with this total disaster thinking at all? My personal guess: no, and if they were, I'd rather not know about what.

None of the reviews have done BE justice. Having heard what a start to finish mess this was, my brother and I decided to watch it, just for fun. It was horrible beyond all our expectations - and not in a fun way. And so I can now tell anyone who's interested: You must see this movie yourself to realize the sheer magnitude of its badness, stupidity, and ineptitude.

I've heard that BE cost about 70 million dollars to make - though how anyone could have greenlighted it is a great mystery. Since there was nothing on screen to indicate why it had cost that much, my brother and I have also worked out how the budget was allocated:

* Travolta's salary, plus assorted managers and hangers on: 40 million.

* Special effects, film, sets, costumes, makeup and hair extensions: 25 million.

* all other salaries: $4,999,888.

* script: $112 and change.

Though that still doesn't begin to explain the end result. I give up. I'll never understand how Travolta managed to get BE made, or released, for that matter. Why is he tanking his career again? Who knows? After this, why should anyone care? Ah, well. I hope he finds something better to act in in the future; I honestly can't see how he could come up with something worse.

I never thought I'd give anything a 1, but this is indeed as worthy a candidate as I've ever seen. So, * is my vote, and I'd rate it lower if it were possible. Just... incredible. Watch and learn.


What a bad film this is. I thought the critics were exaggerating when they said how bad it was but they weren`t BATTLEFIELD EARTH is one of the worst films released by a major Hollywood studio. It`s badly directed , badly cast ( Barry Pepper as Jonnie makes for one of the least impressive screen hero`s ever seen . Maybe Travolta should have stuck to his guns and played Jonnie . He perhaps would have been slightly too old for the part but at least he does have some charisma unlike Pepper) and has one of the worst scripts ever written. An alien race called Psychlos , sounds just like psychos , I bet they `re really evil and cruel . Oh they are evil and cruel just like psychos . Why do they think rats are the favourite food of humans when it`s the only thing they`ve seen humans eat ? And why do they think " Rat brains " is an insult to humans ? especially when they consider the " man animals " to be a primitive species . And am I alone in finding the term " Man animals " irritating ? Surely it should be " Manimals " ? A far sharper and clever expression . But sharp and clever is no way to describe this script . Cities stand almost intact after a thousand years since the collapse of human civilisation ! Not only that but so do large amounts of firearms , ammo and Harrier jump jets , and a flight simulator for the jump jets where the humans learn to fly within a week , and no doubt they`ll learn what petrol is and learn to put it in the jets in order to fly them . Does this sound very likely to you ? Let me put it this way: Go into a time machine and go back to the biblical times , capture a few dozen people , bring them back to the present and get them to become fighter pilots within the week. Do you think they`d be any good flying planes and shooting down enemy forces ? Me neither . Do you think they could overthrow a superior civilisation ? Me neither ? Do you think anyone involved with this film deserves to work again ? Me neither


I knew this movie was bad, filled with hard to believe nonsense and horrible 'go America go' propaganda; so I had to see it. However this was way beyond my imagination. After returning the video I honestly asked the clerk that even when I'm very drunk to stop me from renting this movie ever again. Hopefully he'll remember that. Although the movie starts funny as we can see Travolta and Whitaker argue in their silly suits about slaves, this quickly turns to boredom. The rest of the movie is the standard very bad, short on budget Si-fi that can't interest any viewer with an IQ above sea level at all. The horrible thing is that the director hasn't even tried to convince you as the main character suddenly learns geometry (ok) and teaches it to his barbarian mates (huh?) who immediately appreciate the essence of it all (they ate raw meat as they have just learned what fire is). But then suddenly the standard IQ of these people goes sky-high: They understand atom bombs, know how to fly a Mig and work with highly cryptic computer interfaces. Check out the fact that the main character discovers the national library and finds a crisp fresh version of the constitutional law (it has been in that very same destroyed library for almost 1000 years and doesn't show any signs of decay ?) At has been a long time since I cried....


This movie should have been a 'Project Redlight'. John Travolta is out of his head and hopelessly devoted to L. Ron Hubbard. That he was able to con 10 other people into investing $80 million towards the making of this movie is the only real impressive angle I can work for this review. Perhaps Travolta wanted to work with Tarrantino again and thought the only way that that could happen is if his own career fell into the tank? Or perhaps he felt it was his duty to make the film in order to get a better seat in 'Dianetics Heaven'? Let's hope that Tom Cruise can learn from Barbarino's mistake.

I don't think it will matter too much to point out everything that is bad about this film, but the acting, the dialog, the special effects, the plausibility of the cave people's quick learning development, and of course, the hair extensions will just have to suffice.

I would have given the movie a 1 out 10 rating, but I did laugh at the movie quite a few times and that should be worth something, I think. The version I watched was on the USA network and it was modified for teevee, so I may have missed some key plot elements that were cut from the original vision of its director, but then again I may have seen some really good Levitra adds in its place. The end credits whizzed by so quickly that it would appear that no one really wanted to have anything to do with this movie except Travolta.

'In preparing a judgment of worth,

I proclaim this lame movie to be worst'

Don't forget that 'I told ya'

to blame John Travolta

and L. Ron for Battlefield Earth.

Oh, if it were only a musical. 2/10.

Clark Richards


This monster flop has an interesting story outline filled with garbage. The aliens have weaknesses that make even the non-rocket scientist in the audience wonder "how did these guys survive long enough to conquer anyone?" The next question I found myself asking is this, "How long would certain things (books, computer-dependent machinery, combustion engines) last and still be of any use to anyone?" Too many things you see in the movie are simply beyond belief. But this is science fiction you say? Of course. The point is that the basic story could have been told without any of these ridiculous questions bugging the viewer if the people making it had just thought things out for an hour or two. I understand that suspension of belief is a requirement of sci-fi fans but you have to limit it to just what is necessary to tell the story you are trying to tell.


When I orginally watched this film I was unaware of the Dianetic / Scientology background that surrounded this film and pretty much saw it from an neutral standpoint. The fact that after I had watched it I felt disgusted and frankly scared that a film like this could be made in the first place made me dig a little deeper into the films background.

After doing a bit of research I came to the scary conclusion that apparently this piece of cr*p that is this film is actually taken seriously by Scientologists, not unlike Christians with regard to the Bible.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, people actually believe this happened - the awful storyline, the 2D characters and the ludicrous mindbendingly stupid conclusion is taken as the word of god.

So now I feel terrified that this 'cult' has the influence to finance and convince Hollywood to waste so much money. I do have to say the Hollywood does produce some god awful flicks, but none so highly publicised or with such big names starring in them.

So avoid this like the plague, don't give distributors any excuse to produce anymore copies of this rubbish and don't waste another second of your life actually watching it.

I give it -10/10