I saw this advertised on Netflix in the "Gay and Lesbian" section and the synopsis sounded cute, so I thought to myself that it wouldn't hurt to give this movie a shot.

Wrong. From the beginning of the movie, we have one of the most unique plot lines ever to be featured in a gay movie... a hot sad gay guy has just been dumped by his boyfriend and looks for love in all the wrong places, starting with the escort section in the back of a gay rag! How unique! Not to mention the escort who shows up happens to be a good looking Australian guy stuck in a financial rut (who has the strangest bones and muscles ever seen in a torso). Needless to say, the escort is only interested in business, but the hot sad gay guy falls for him and helps him out by giving him a high-profile job at his business firm! Then it gets even more original from here. The escort falls in love with his business partner and here begins a complicated gay love triangle.

What is with this rut lately of gay films that continually explore the sad and lonely single lives of very attractive gay men who are financially successful and situated that pairs them up with a very attractive "come from the wrong side of the tracks" guy in relationships that go awry? The only difference with this movie is that it was poorly acted and heavily laden with a continual line of gay clichés that as a gay viewer myself, I was embarrassed just watching it! This movie was so amateurish, it could only be adored by a pretentious small-town gay and lesbian film festival wedged between various film shorts and a documentary on gay life in Anytown, America. What a load of garbage and a waste of my time! I couldn't identify with anything or anyone in this so-called "movie".

It was neither charming nor witty. The plot was trite, the characters were shallow, the story writing was lazy and the whole idea was predictable from the start. If very attractive gay men can't seem to get it together in the real world, then I guess the average Joe such as myself doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell either!

Gay or straight, this movie was trash. Watch "Chuck and Buck" instead.

My Rating - 0 out of 10


I actually sat through the "making of" section of this DVD, and upon finding out that it was made with no budget and mostly straight actors then it all made sense. The premise of the movie is at least interesting enough, but everything about this movie just didn't work. The dialogue comes across as unnatural and stiff, and with the exception of the hustler/photographer wannabe character, the acting is pretty poor. The story plays out like a bad soap opera, with far too many contrived plot points. And the music is thoroughly horrendous! Every time the electric piano chimed in at the "serious" moments, or one of those bad songs started I wanted to throw heavy cookware at the television!


Easily the worst movie I have ever in my lifetime seen. The titled intrigued me and the story line could have been good but there was absolutely no character development, among other things. A fourteen year old fag-hag could write a better script than that. Absolutely the worst screen writing I have ever in my life encountered. The actors were decent and probably would have been great if the screenplay was no so poor.

I was very disappointed in this. Congratulations though to the actor playing Ian. I see a lot of good potential in him, I just hope he finds some better movies to star in.


Holy cow...what that guy "AussieStud" from Providence said...really, REALLY awful. It's shot on video, it looks cheap, the acting is terrible...nothing to recommend this movie at all. Get some porn and be done with it...seriously, both the acting and the production values will be far superior to this dreck. I simply cannot say how rotten this movie is. I tried to find one performance that wasn't painful, but failed.

The actor who plays the lead is hot. The "hustler" is really not attractive enough to be worth all the trouble he causes. A bad, bad movie, proving that gay men need to demand a little bit (well, a lot) more quality from their artists.

Did I mention it was awful?


An indie film about two couple gay men's lives, how they deal with relationships and responsibilities. Every man has his own problem, dashing outside, but desperate inside.

How to pursue the lifestyle you are seeking for? How to find another perfect half of your life? Films can offer different options, but reality itself deters you, not everyone is lucky enough to get what he wants. The world looks more colorful and uncertain when you are aware of its capacity and emptiness, rather depressing.

Actors are all unknown, and the acting is just so-so, not so convincing but for a small romantic film, I should not ask too much.

Still not get the title, why "200 American"? Maybe I missed something and I admit I had been fallen asleep during the film playing. Shameful for me! I always think I can survive from any films no matter how boring or awful they are.


EVIL ALTAR has very little going for it except for the story, which in more capable hands could have been compelling, in an epic and gruesome sorta way. But as it is now, the whole production is almost amateurish. I've never seen so many continuity errors or truly bad framing. The camera's positions were often at the wrong spots, which created a confusing sense of placement. The acting was nonexistent. The characters were nearly all awful. Only Robert D'Zar was sorta convincing as the evil sheriff, and the evil man himself was well cast but his acting was, for the most part, lazy (which is understandable. He must have known this flick wasn't worth it). The dialogue was totally pitiful. You could see the microphone bobbing up and down at the top of the picture. And the horror elements of the story were, for the most part, unintentionally funny. A floating killer baseball? One has to see the scene to believe it. Who would have imagined that anyone would have ever conceived the idea that a floating ball would be terrifying or scary?!?! Certainly in the way it was made in the movie. Then there's the whole bit with the collector appearing on TV and killing the reporter. I really laughed out loud then. The "Freddy Kruger-inspired" scene doesn't make any sense and is ineptly done, making it golden in my book of really bad cinematic moments.

I like watching horror movies. The more obscure, the better. Unfortunately, there's very little to recommend of EVIL ALTAR. As bad as a lot of it was, there were simply too many boring moments for the movie to be entertaining on a continuous basis with its sheer ineptness. I recommend this only for horror completists. Others should steer clear from this crap.


Satanist Reed Weller (William Smith) need to get 103 children for sacrifice (the last one must be a virgin) so that he can become immortal. Trouble starts when Teri (Theresa Cooney) accidentally shoots and kills Weller's kidnapping henchman while hunting with her dad. D'oh! And he was so close as he was on body no. 102. But, since this is an 80s horror movie, it doesn't matter as Weller resurrects his helper and decides Teri will be the final sacrifice. This really drops the ball in terms of 80s horror as you have very little gore and no nudity. It actually reminds me of one of those cheap horror novels you would buy back in the day with a myriad of small town characters running around and somehow it all comes together. This was co-writer Brent Friedman's first screenplay and he went on to do quite a few horror films including the superior SYNGENOR, THE RESURRECTED, NECRONOMICON and TICKS. Superchin Robert Z'Dar is the small town sheriff under Smith's control and their scenes together seem to be a battle of who can deliver the raspier voice. Smith wins, we lose.


True, Evil Altar has its share of imperfections and flaws. Some viewers may be turned off by the lack of originality or by a few technical problems, but I certainly wasn't bothered by these imperfections during the screening of this movie. Evil Altar is a story of Reed Weller, a sorcerer, a warlock and Satan's faithful servant who likes to torture and sacrifice unfortunate kidnapped persons in his barn. In the beginning of the movie, even before the titles, Reed Weller assigns an unfortunate boy suspended from the ceiling to collect a hundred and three children that should serve as offerings. Then, the evil man cuts the boy in the chest and informs him that his soul may be taken away any time. Apart from kidnapping and sacrificing people, Reed Weller also likes to boast and he does so by stating his power is absolute. Self-confidence is what I especially liked about this bald-headed character... Thirty years later, the kidnapped boy still roams the countryside in order to collect one hundred and three children. He is known as The Collector and he's ugly as hell. One day, he whacks a local kid over head with a baseball bat, and that's where real problems begin. Up to this point, The Collector was supplying Weller with kids from other towns since local kids were of no use to Weller. When a lawyer from the city stops in Weller's town, The Collector strikes again and abducts the lawyer's son. The plot thickens. The Collector is shot down by a local girl during a hunting accident. In his sack, a curious surprise is hidden. The girl's father calls the cops, the local sheriff appears, and the viewer immediately gets the impression something's not right here. Indeed, the sheriff is in league with Weller, and so is about every man and woman in this town. The plot is really quite complex for a b-flick. As it is revealed later, a number of townspeople made a pact with the devil in exchange for a little favor. These poor fools are now completely under Weller's power. When the sheriff notifies his master of the hunting accident, The Evil Man resurrects The Collector, and sends him out to haunt the girl who had the nerve to mess with Reed Weller. The girl, her brother, the brother's girlfriend and the lawyer searching for his son all have to face the powers of darkness in order to save their souls... Evil Altar offers not only this intriguing plot but also some blood, especially near the end of the movie. In one scene, The Collector visits the poor girl who shot him, pulls a bullet out of his guts a gives it to her as a souvenir. There is also a man with a hatchet embedded in his back, one throat slashing (not too convincing, I'm afraid) and one nice stunt involving The Collector being set afire and thrown into a swimming pool. One complaint about the ending: With regards to Reed Weller's assertions concerning his absolute power, it seems to me that The Evil Man was defeated too easily in the finale.


When a horror film is as dull as this, I don't understand why they don't add a bit of blood for at least some minimal entertainment. Even if they had of used red paint, it would have been more interesting. As it is, Evil Altar is a deadly boring film that could have been good if directed properly. I mean come on, the plot involves abducting children for sacrifices, and yet there is virtually no gore or blood in this film! There aren't even any bare breasts. There is perhaps only one half-decent scene when a man is set alight and falls into a swimming pool, but apart from that the pace just plods along like a tortoise.

This is another 80's "horror" flick to be avoided, unless you're a die-hard collector.


Trying to rule the earth with dark powers never seemed quite popular. Not as awful as I thought it would be, but it still stinks! Crummy, cheap-jack and totally muddled covers the bases of this dank supernatural / occult 80's horror film starring the beefy, square-jaw Robert Z'Dar. No surprises. Its routine stuff (the usual small town secret) and the premise holds a nasty side to it, but director Jim Winburn's incompetently lazy and laboured handling brings it down. Atmosphere is non-existent, and suspense follows the same course that we're left with weak thrills coming off mostly droll. While it can be unintentionally funny, there wasn't enough of it to cover it. Special effects are little, but are gaudily executed. The lousy story doesn't come together, or even tie in that well with an endlessly moronic script of terrible dialogues and choppy editing with awful continuity. The high-strung music score telegraphs everything. There are actually one or two decent moments, and the grimy look works to its favour, as these things could make for campy fun, but it all comes off rather boring and worthless to care much.


This terrible flick is simply beyond bad.The plot is not interesting and stupid,the acting is atrocious,the special effects are fake(I found here possibly the lamest throat-slashing ever)and there is absolutely no suspense,no thrills.This poorly made,miserable movie is not even funny in some campy ways.To sum up,I wouldn't recommend this ridiculous mess.You should learn from my mistake.My evaluation:2/10.


Beyond atrocious horror film was apparently made in the director's sleep, and edited with a buzz saw. Cheap and awful in every way possible. The plot synopsis on the back of the video box made sense; the film didn't. Don't watch it if you value your sanity. 0 out of 4 stars.


I get a kick out of the many characters on the show. Unfortunately Ted Danson cannot help but add his personal political views to the script and as a result he loses about half of his potential audience. The co-stars of the show deserve better. Start a service business in any small town America and then bash half of the towns populous. Not a good idea if you want to succeed in any business. Ted is a good actor but apparently so independently wealthy he doesn't need a larger television audience. He selfishly discards the other cast members forgetting they add more value to the show than he ever could. Re-cast the Becker character with anyone who can act and at the same time keep his political mouth shut and the existing cast of characters could carry the show, without Ted Danson. Terry Farrell is an excellent actress. Hattie Winston has a great deal of talent. Shawnee Smith's character is adorable. The other cast members add so much to the show you can almost ignore Ted Danson's snotty little remarks about the republican party and conservatives in general. Wise up Ted! It's not all about you!


I saw the Strangers With Candy movie yesterday at a free screening. I'm a huge fan of the show (I own all 3 seasons on DVD) and I couldn't believe my luck at having been given a pass. For the most part, t.v. shows don't translate well on the big screen and it pains me to say that Strangers with Candy the movie is no exception to this rule.

Basically, the film is a re-hashing of the same gags and jokes true fans know and love (and will unmistakably remember) from the t.v. show. This lame regurgitation simply didn't work, and it was evident through the acting that the actors themselves felt uncomfortable reciting the same material.

A side note: At the risk of sound like a total obsessive nerd and the equivalent of SWC "trekkie"....why the hell did they change Derrick??? and the Flatpoint campus (not to mention its new location directly across from the Blank residence!) And this Megawatti person is such a lame substitution for Orlando!

This is not to say that the film didn't have it's funny moments--it did have it's fair share. The opening prison montage was especially funny and memorable. Stephen Colbert was hilarious in every scene, and Amy delivered as usual.


I like the series, I think it's hilarious. This movie takes the plot of a 1/2 hour TV show and stretches it to 90 minutes, making it VERY bland. They could have done a lot better with the whole thing. While it has a few laughs, it does not compare to the series as a whole. The jokes are so few and far between that the audience is itching for them when they come. It's really sad, this had a lot of potential. Even Stephen Colbert didn't seem to want to do a very good job with it. His character wasn't as biting or sarcastic as usual. I guess this could be considered as a prequel to the series because it tells the story maybe a week before the series starts, but it's nothing that couldn't have been picked up just watching the show. Totally unnecessary, not worth the drive all the way across town to the one theater that was showing it. The best thing about this stinker was seeing the trailer for John Cameron Mitchell's new movie!


I hadn't heard very good things, so I didn't go into it with high expectations, and still it managed to disappoint, big time.

Where was the over-dramatic "after-school special" music?

Where were Jerri's funky pets?

Why did they change Derrick, using an actor that isn't butt-ugly?

And why, for the love of God, wasn't it funny? Almost every joke felt forced, and half of them were simply recycled from the show.

God...DAMN IT!

I would much rather they just bring the show back. Probably not gonna happen, now that Colbert is such a big star that he's coining words that dictionaries take seriously. Come to think of it, whoever first said that "Strangers" would make a good movie was speaking nothing but truthiness.


Being in Australia (so far from most things of good taste), I was overjoyed and shocked to see the Strangers movie at the local DVD store. I didn't even think it was going to be released here.

I hired it immediately, although with some trepidation.

Rightly so. There were a couple of laughs but sadly the team had no idea who they were making the film for. I would argue that it WASN'T made for the fans since there were several recycled jokes that die-hard fans would have spotted and cringed at immediately.

"I'm not pushing you away, I am pulling me closer to myself"... you just can't re-use lines like that. Gold the first time, old the second.

So in short, great cast with lacklustre plot and terrible writing. A disappointment for a SWC obsessive like myself.


I went out of my way to see this film, dragging my naieve roommate with me. I saw it at our local second run theatre for a more expensive price than usual as it was not a main film there.

I love Amy Sedaris. She is probably the funniest comedian I have ever come across. Strangers with Candy however felt like an comedy skit that was stretched from the humorous 5 minute length to 90 minutes. Granted, there were a lot of people in the theatre laughing out loud, but I found these were people already familiar with the director, other actors and the type of off-beat comedy it was going to be. Being a big fan of Sedaris is not enough to carry you through this movie. It wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen, but it was getting close. I agree with another post on here that says that if your humour is middle of the road, you may not like or get the comedy in this film. I like dry humour, British humour, but am a fan of all of it overall. I didn't get this comedy though, I just didn't find it funny. You can only laugh so hard at slapstick, weird teeth and deranged teachers for so long, in my case about 5 minutes. I was very disappointed and do not recommend this movie for anyone outside that small clique whose personality type can only be described as "sideshow."


This is a pretty disappointing movie, coming on the heels of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk's terrific performance in "The In-Laws". That was a great movie. This is not. It seems like the entire production was under financed and thrown together. The production values are sloppy. In one scene you can actually see the lighting cables and c-stands as the stars chase through a hallway. I can only assume Arkin and Falk agreed to do this film out of friendship for John Cassavettes. This "Double Indemnity" parody is just not worthy of any of them though. However, there is one great, great moment in "Big Trouble" that stands out: the world's longest spit take. This is done early in the picture when it seems the movie might actually recreate the fun and excitement of "The In-Laws". Watch as Alan Arkin samples some of Falk's herring liquor. It's a show stopping, side splitting moment.

But after that, stop the tape. There's nothing else worth seeing.


Knowing the kind of work of which actors Alan Arkin and Peter Falk and writer Andrew Bergman are capable, the blame for this jumbled, poorly made "comedy" can only be laid at the feet of director John Cassavetes, or whoever it was who was responsible for it. Supposedly Cassavetes didn't direct most of it but was brought in to replace a director who was fired. If that's so, it's understandable why he was fired. If it's not so, then it's Cassavetes who should have been fired. While all accounts I've read about Cassavetes mention that one of his most endearing traits was his wild sense of humor, there's certainly no evidence of that in this misfire. Falk tries valiantly to breathe some life into this lumbering mess, but Arkin seems to be waiting for someone to tell him what to do--or at least to give him something funny to say. If the producers had wanted to make a sequel to the hilarious Falk/Arkin "The In-Laws," then that's what they should have done. The picture is somewhat schizophrenic--it SEEMS to be a sequel to "The In-Laws," and was advertised as such, but Arkin's and Falk's characters and situations have been changed so drastically that it's really a completely different picture.

Anyway, the film is virtually a complete dud. The few gags that made it into the picture are ruined by bad timing and poor editing. In addition, much of the film makes no sense whatsoever (there were major production problems, with constant cast and crew changes, and it shows) and the movie did no good for anyone connected with it--especially the audience. While "The In-Laws" was a major hit, this thing came and went pretty much overnight. It was savaged by critics and ignored by audiences--justifiably on both counts. If you're not in the mood to see otherwise extremely talented people embarrass themselves, do yourself--and them--a favor and skip this.


Robert McNamara was deceptive and cunning back in the 1960's, and he has not changed one bit. While I think Mr. Morris is a fine filmmaker and this film is worth watching for technique, Mr. Morris allowed McNamara a podium to rewrite history without challenge. In that way, this film is a failure and shows that Mr. Morris is not capable of rigorous, investigative reporting. McNamara at one point in the film says that whenever he went before the press, he never answered the question asked but rather answered the question he wished was asked. He does the same in this film and Mr. Morris allows him to get away with it. McNamara controls the moment and rewrites history to suit his needs. Anyone who lived through the years when he was Secretary of Defense knows that he personally lied constantly to the American people and he was, and is, guilty of war crimes (at least he admits to this point). As such, this documentary is a shameful attempt to seek forgiveness and is just another lie on the part of someone who wants us to believe that he was a peacemaker, when in fact he was a contemptuous war criminal.


Hooray for Robert McNamara! As the Grim Reaper gets ever closer to calling his number, former defense secretary and mass murderer Robert McNamara sits down in front of a camera and admits he could be considered a war criminal. Maybe a war criminal? Here's a news flash for you, Mac, you are a war criminal. There is nothing fantastic or enlightening about Robert McNamara confessing to war crimes. Gee, if only Henry Kissinger would feel a little guilty when he undertips a waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant. McNamara can do all the documentary pseudo-confessions he wants but the gates of hell are opening up nice and wide just for him. If he really wants to purge his sins, it's going to take more than a half-hearted I might have goofed; perhaps a thousand-mile trek carrying Kissinger's head on a pike before prostrating himself on a Cambodian killing field, or maybe on top of some leftover ordnance in Vietnam, or perhaps he could set himself on fire like a Buddhist monk or that silly Mormon. If McNamara is seeking some form of redemption with this postgame mewling, he fell way short of the mark.

Aside from the above complaint, this documentary is also kind of boring. I give it a three out of ten because at least McNamara owned up to something, though not nearly enough, while Henry Kissinger still walks the streets with his goodies intact.


This David Hamilton movie is something of a disaster. It has a half-decent story (coming-of-age/love triangle) and a mediocre script. All of Hamilton's usual trademarks are here - stunningly beautiful & innocent young girls, soft-focus photography, lots of nudity, gentle lesbianism, and a romantic soundtrack. There is/was a good movie to be made with the given material & cast, but this is not it. The editing is appalling, and at times the scene shifts seem somewhat disjointed.

It's worth remembering that Hamilton was an iconic photographer of his time and experimented with taking his art into the movie field, in many ways pioneering the penchant for photographers in the adult industry to also dabble in video work.

However, on the plus side, there are very good performances from Dawn Dunlap (as Laura) and James Mitchell (as Paul), and the soundtrack is quite nice.

To summarise, I'd say that unless you're a fan of Hamilton's other work, e.g. Bilitis, Summer in St Tropez, then this is best forgotten.

I rate it 4/10.


David Hamilton may have made his name as a photographer but Laura leaves his writing and directing abilities with a lot of question marks. The plot and characterisations have holes that you could drive an army through.

When Paul asks if Laura would pose for his new sculpture Sarah refuses so why does she then say that she will take photos of a naked Laura for Paul to use? It's as if she is saying, "No, Mr Wyler, Laura will not pose naked but I will take lots of photos of Laura in erotic poses so that you can ogle her young naked body at your leisure." This is surely not the action of a responsible parent, especially as she knows him well enough not to let Laura anywhere near him. This is evident at a party given by Paul. Sarah, her husband Richard and Laura are invited to the party but Laura is left at home. There are other unanswered questions such as what did the woman at the party want to talk to Paul about and why was Paul allowed access to the ballet school? There is more but it would take too long to go into it all here.

As this is an erotic film centred around art, there is obviously a certain amount of nudity. David Hamilton shows his photographic background by having the ballet students adopting various poses and so looking like living tableaux. There was too much use of fade-to-black and the permanent soft-focus was annoying. This film does not warrant more than 2 stars.


David Hamilton is so impressed with himself as a photographer, that he has convinced himself he can make a good film. Well, he's wrong. For example, I have a theory that he saw a good use of a fade out in a movie once and thought that if one fade out is good, then 75 of them must be great! Again, he's wrong. There is one sequence where Sarah (Maud Adams) is speaking to her daughter Laura (Dawn Dunlap) who is lying in bed. The camera shows Sarah talking and then slowly fades out to black only to shift to Laura in bed as she responded directly to her mother and continues the conversation. Maybe Hamilton felt this would make the dialogue have more resonance. Again, he's wrong. I've noticed that Hamilton is wrong a lot in this film. The movie fails on so many levels that I cannot begin to list them all here. All I can say is that you should avoid this movie at all costs. I give it a 1/10.


What's the fun of watching a cartoon about a boy who gets grounded for every little thing he does? It's basically watching a boy get tortured by a man.

The show is lame. The catchphrases are lame. "Radical!" Like I never heard that before. I don't have an interest in surfing, skating, or anything of the sort. This show is just as lame as a show can get. I wonder if they still air it.

I do not recommend this show for anyone without an interest in sports. Even if you do have an interest in sports, watching a little boy get grounded every episode is not entertainment.


Son of a "B" (Sorry for the offensive letters)! This show sucks and blows at the same time, denying the laws of physics! All the characters are retards, except they're not retards, so they have no excuse! Otto, the "leader of the gang" smarts of to everyone in authority and almost never gets punished. And when he does he always gets out of it, except in one instance. His dad is an idiot because I said so. OK, that's not why. His dad is a tolerable character.

Reggie, his sister, has a penis, definitely. She hangs out with the boys and is not attracted to any of them. She likes "Squid" (Another character) and pities him because Otto decides to be a scum bag and make fun of him, but she almost never does anything about it. She also has some stupid magazine called "The Zine". And no one reads it. It's like, WTH?!?! She puts the stupidest stuff in there, like, "California sweet spots" and other pansexual shenanigans.

Squid and Twister would take way too long to go into detail with. So Squid: Nerd who is pretty annoying. Twister: A pushover retard ****head.

The show also had minimal morality. It was like, "If you're smart you fail at life," and "If you suck up to your parents you can get away with anything." As opposed to Twister's brother, who didn't get away with anything.

The show is entertaining, but you don't want it to be, and you feel guilty when you like it. So, don't get guilty. Screw this crap. If you see it on, burn your TV (Unless it has TiVo).

Overall: It sucks. 2/10. And Otto has a very small or nonexistent man part.


Rocket Power is basically a show about four typical preteens.They are the sports fanatics who love to be better then the others.We got Otto,an airhead who wants to go big.Reggie,who is the smart reporter,but also the surfer girl.Twister is the silly,random jackass of the group and Sam is the super smart kid,who has more book smarts then street smarts.As if I haven't seen this before! Now,I lived in a "ghetto" town in Pennslyvania,so I don't know what life is like in New Jersey or California.but looking,it makes me not want to go.To me,its only showing that people on the coast states are stereotypical idiots who care more about sports and kicking ass,then anything else.I know,it deals with lots of issues,like breaking the rules,being carefree and being kids,but for God's sake,what the hell!? I might be so wrong,because I haven't seen this show in years,but how is this realistic?And what the hell is with the slang?I'm around lots of gangs nowadays,and I've never heard anyone say I've never heard the word "shoobee"or whatever it was.Even when I was at the beach in Maryland,I never heard one surfer kid say that.And what's with he word "lame-o"?Honestly,these kids are like 13 or 15 and they are still using baby ghetto talk.I haven't said "lame-o" since I was like firkin ten! All an all,I hate this show.It's not as good as Nick was making it out to be.If they laid off the weak and stupid slang,and stopping with the stereotypical comments (like all skaters are stupid,all neighbors are creepy pedos,smart kids are losers,older siblings are bullies and all that drama).But again,the point is,this show had lots f potential,but this totally blew up.If I want to see cartoon kids skating,I can watch Scarred or go see some of my friends go skateboarding.


This show is so bad. I think Klasky and Csupo haven't heard that animation must be funny for kids. Well, this is certainly NOT funny. The animation is bad, the story is bad... and the characters are bad. Only Tito can sometimes be funny. But almost everything in Rocket Power sucks ass. A better name for it:Rocket Crash. I don't have other words for it.

Because Otto is dumb and not cool,

Twister is a son of a bitch,

Reggie is older but NOT cooler,

and Sammie is a nerd.

And the plots are ridiculous, and there obviously isn't any timeline in the show. In one episode they need money, so they sell they're Shore Suck beach restaurant, but in other episodes they HAVE a cottage in the mountains, where they go to in vacations or something like that, and it's probably really theirs, since they always go to the exact same. Why not just sell that?!

It's no wonder they cancelled it. It was hilariously bad and super annoying. End of comment.


Many of the recent cartoons like "Bratz " "Trollz " or the infamous "all grow up "start to became annoying stories about pre -teens that keeps talking about stupid things that nobody cares about the drama of being a teen or their obsession to be "cool ". Well , "Rocket Power " was the first in start with this stupid tendency , and maybe for that reason it is the most annoying and boring cartoon of all the time . Seriouslly ,in what the hell were thinking the writers of this garbage? That just because the main characters of this show are a bunch of animated posers that keep surfing all the day people would consider this show "cool" ? could say many reason why I hate this show ,itis stupid ,corny ,poorly animated ,the music is horrible ,the characters are annoying and many things ,but I guess that would be obvious . I'm glad that when I was a kid I have better shows to see , this is just a stinker without redemption . I would give it a zero if I could . This sucks !


Well written, well acted, well photographed, well directed but absolutely hideously edited horror film. Good editing should be invisible. It should never call attention to itself. The editing in THE FRIGHTENING makes the film unwatchable. There are these absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary flashes of white every two seconds. This makes watching THE FRIGHTENING about the same as experiencing Chinese water torture. What were they thinking? Brinke Stevens makes a nice cameo appearance, and the lead actor who plays her son is very good. I can't believe a director as accomplished as David DeCoteau would give his movie to an editor who made the film an unwatchable experience.


The Frightening was indeed BAD!!!The acting I do have to admit was well,but the story line,characters and death scenes were either stupid,mediocre,or unexplainable.There are other films that are the same genre and fall under the same category as this one,and they all are way more superior.The concept however,was still just a bit creepy.If what had happened in the film happened to you,you would have to put yourself in the main character's shoes.Most of the ways people died were also avoidable.It just seems as if the director told them that they needed to act so stupid in order to make people like this film.Avoid this film as much as possible,but if you absolutely feel the urge to pick it up off the shelves one day,I warn you with the deepest concerns a person can have for another.


As a former high school wrestler, a movie centered around a wrestling team would normally be good viewing....not in this case. This movie made me mad in ways other crappy movies didn't. Its a shame because i wanted to like this movie too.

The plot is (at the beginning anyway) a high school wrestler killed a kid during a match and is forced to relocate as part of therapy. He moves with his mother to a nowhere town where the popular kids are on the wrestling team (wish I went to this school) Strange things begin to happen and a group of weirdos dressed in black slaughter all the freaks and geeks around school. The plot thickens and the wrestler has to decide who to fight for, the freaks or the jocks.

This movie was a big let-down. I know it was a crappy B-movie but at least since it had some wrestling in it they should have at least had some action. I mean I was hoping at the end of the movie the main character would wrestle the captain of the wrestling team/murder squad for the right to live or something. Instead we get an axe to the back and a Sixth Sense ripoff ending.

Grrr....I could have written a better script 4 out of 10


the ending is decent but overall the movie is pretty bad. the acting is terrible except the lead guy is OK but mostly they are overacting. the cinematography is horrible during the scary scenes, it made me feel like i was going to have motion sickness and sometimes it looked like the editing was off. when they would cut from one character to the next, it did not line up right. and the gore is just too overdone, especially for how little slashing there is. i wasn't expecting much and that is basically what i got. i only watched it because i have a thing for scary movies but i definitely would not recommend it to someone and if someone asked me about it i would say watch it if you have nothing better to do.


The bad guys aren't scary, more like geeks! The killings are bad and to much ketchup were used! And the plot is lame and predictable. My son could have made a better movie in a school project.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS FILM


Corey (promising new star Matt Twining) moves to a new town for a fresh start after a tragic wrestling match leaves his opponent dead. He finds endless support from his curiously optimistic mom (Brinke Stevens), but is still torn between two peer groups at Hallow's End High. The 'freaks' (goth kids) and the 'stepford kids' (preps) are both intent on adding Corey to their ranks, but why is everyone acting so friendly and why are some of them running around campus killing people?

There's no nudity, but an absurd amount of time is spent focusing on the male physique as scantily clad "teen" boys wrestle, take slow-mo showers and walk down hallways in their underwear. Yes, like it or not, you've yet again entered into the fantasy world of DeCoteau and scripter Matthew Jason Walsh, where ones purity of soul is determined by whether they wear white or black boxer briefs.

It was filmed in Mexico and is dedicated to late cult directors Paul Leder and Paul Bartel.


This film is dreadful on every level.

It masquerades as cleverly thought-through juxtaposition and story. When it's nothing more than a bloke with an idea and a corpse he feels the need to bury.

Written by the genius that wrote Amores Perros, translated into vapid nothingness by Hollywood. The squandering of what was doubtless a brilliant script.

Watch the sunrise instead, or watch this film and pause a moment to write a review that actually explains why you think it's actually good. Without looking for theme, symbology and story that isn't actually there...


********** Many Spoilers, Many Flaws *************** The premise of the movie is a Border Patrol agent, Norton, isn't too fond of illegal aliens and kills one. Pete, the title character's slaughtered friend, finds out its Norton and takes him and the body on a journey to bury him in Estrada's home village.

Problem: The killing was just a bad accident. Its pretty apparent the agent had remorse but panicked and hid the deed along with his Border Agent buddies. The Border Patrol are portrayed as two dimensional bumbling racists while the Mexicans are kindhearted, trying to survive. Although Hollywood wants you to believe in the dignity of their fellow man there is none for the Border Patrol. Norton is never really given a chance to explain what happened to Pete.

Problem: The promise that Estrada makes Pete keep in the event of his death is based on a lie that cheapens the characters involved and doesn't make sense. My guess it pushes the movie over the 1:30 mark.

Problem: There is multiple POV versions of a couple of scenes that don't really differ. I'm tired of this cinema trick and its useless here except to push the movie over 1:30.

Best Part: Levon Helm as the blind hermit. This is BY FAR the best and most "insightful" part of the movie. Dwight Yoakum's performance is also good but Levon steals the movie.

BIG Problem: Tommy Lee Jones has no range. He has an unsympathetic constant deadpan delivery. Shouldn't be allowed to carry a movie.

Wait for it to come out on video. Finally, for those who hype the "new Western" such as this film and Brokeback Mountain, rent "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." This shows real conflict, heroism, friendship and sacrifice. Also, "Shane" for the breathtaking scenery.


I must say that from the previews this looked like just my type of film - powerful, good acting, tense, maybe a bit slow but only in a smouldering-with-tension kind of way. Perhaps that is why I was so disappointed with the plot-less tedium that was Three Burials. A border patrol guard kills a Mexican and this prompts an hour and a half (it seemed like at least 3) of the guard being dragged across the country by the Mexican's friend. And it is revealed that the guard's wife had sex with the Mexican - but with no character development this is simply unfathomable. This utter lack of character development is the inherent problem with the film and it renders most of the characters' actions to be inexplicable. Moreover we are expected to sympathise with the Mexican immigrants yet without any of the protagonists in the film being any more than almost comic stereotypes I was left completely cold. I agree that the politics are sledgehammer PC but this would not have bothered me at all if the film hadn't been so lacklustre. Unfortunately, despite the excellent acting of Barry Pepper as the border guard, this film is as vacant as the Texan desert in which it is set.


I simply can't see why this film has scored such a high rating. I'm generally in agreement with a lot of people's opinions on films, so when I was recommended this as being a simply awesome film I had to watch it.

What I experienced was film with a plot line so thin it was painful, characters with no real 'character' about them (which may well have been the point) and a bizarre use of flitting back and forth throughout the plot.

I mean what is this film about? Retribution? Friendship? Perhaps, but it seemed to go on for a very long time with me wondering exactly if we were going to get to a point...

All in all, worth a watch if you're someone who appreciates obscure films that seem to strain a non-existent theme. Hey, perhaps I missed the point but thats the beauty of opinion.


This movie represents the kind of self-righteous pious moralising that renders one quite nauseous. To put this in context, I watch many movies from all parts of the world, and I enjoy slow art house movies as much as fast moving dramas or intelligent action movies. I hired this on DVD, based on positive buzz, and did something I very rarely do with DVD's. After half an hour or so, I could see exactly where this movie was going, and I began to fast forward through the move, reverting to play to observe key plot points. If you fancy being preached to by being beaten over the head by a moral maniac, then you might enjoy this over-rated nonsense. If it were artistic, or intelligent, then I could forgive this movie it's sins. Yet it has the ultimate sin, which I do not often encounter in movies, which usually have something to recommend them, of being rather dull.


Skimming through pages of glowing reviews for this movie made me wonder if Netflix switched disks on me. The first half hour was promising, but it rapidly collapsed into a hopeless mess. The story lurches across a field of gaping holes in the plot, and requires a chain of unbelievable circumstances, then simply disappears into complete irrationality. The characters are all shamelessly predictable PC stereotypes. The key plot elements require either suspension of reality or severe naiveté. The film needs to be viewed surrealistically to make any sense at all. But its a not surreal; its just contrived...badly. RoadRunner cartoons manipulate their environment less outrageously. If you want the audience to connect the dots, fine...but for Pete's sake, provide some dots.

If you want to revel in a predictable PC piece about Mexican illegals and Texas rednecks, and don't need a cohesive story, this one's for you. If you want to see a good film with TLJ hauling a corpse cross-country, rent the last couple episodes of "Lonesome Dove".

I understand that this was TLJ's first feature directing job. Tommy...keep the day job.


Several times while watching this awful movie I thought of Bugs Bunny. After the movie was over I realized why I had these thoughts: Bugs would occasionally 'reach' into his body and pull out something he needed to further the story. It could be a blowtorch, fully operative, or a bowling ball or a weapon. So too with Three Burials. When the story advances to the road aspect of the movie, we get 'surprise' devices like .... finding a blind man listening to a radio in the boonies somewhere in Mexico .....how this living-alone, elderly impoverished sightless man was able to find the fuel to run the .....presumed..... generator since his cancer-ridden son hadn't visited in six months is a different story problem...... The sub-professional screenwriter .....of this movie....., Arriaga, then reaches for the blow torch again when the Barry Pepper character 'escapes' from captivity and enters a cave to hide only to be bitten by a rattlesnake! .....how this beaten-up man, dispirited, exhausted, malnourished, riding without a hat in the daytime Mexican sun then slung over a horse and riding for unknown hours, over rough terrain, could survive a rattlesnake bite is another story whopper too...... There were other fanciful inventions like the ones mentioned but on to other problems with this movie. Repeated flashbacks can be acceptable in telling a story but only when the question is answered, "Would the story work better being told in a more linear fashion"? During the early parts of Three Burials I was confused several times when characters I was just beginning to learn about were time shifted backwards. For this viewer, the confusion this caused wasn't worth the effort itself and the story would have been clearer had they told it straight forward. .....Plus, later on, this creaky device is just dropped from the movie altogether!..... Something else now: Is Arriaga making a political statement by showing virtually all of the white Americans as defectives in one way or another while all the Latino's are benign, generous and overall, good guys? More: The character played by Jones is certifiably insane. Really weird guy. Next: In brief but numerous flashbacks they show the relationship between Pete and Melquiades as a deep one of mutual trust and affection. How then to deal with the duplicity of Melquiades in telling Pete about his non-existent family in Jimenez? Is this something you would do to a good friend when talking about your death and how you would want your family notified? It's pathological and calls into question M.'s character. Finally: Three burials take place. The final one, after all the tedious agony Pete's gone through to have it occur, is a half-ass job with the body not even deeply/fully buried. The local animals would have his remains eaten and spread all over the place, assuming of course, that there would be anything edible after all the amateur embalming that has taken place. PS: Why the need to show the corpse over and over again?


Overall, Strange Behaviour is a fairly lame sci-fi/horror hybrid with seemingly ordinary kids making a few bucks at a research facility and turning out a little bit...wrong. There are a few decent shocks here and there, but mostly it seems like there's just something missing - like the filmmakers lost part of the script on the way to the shoot and just went with it.

Cinematic ally, there's no real reason to watch it, but there's also no real reason not to.

However, our hero goes to a party (for no reason) and it's a costume party (for no reason) and eventually everyone breaks out into a synchronized dance to Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes." That's quite possibly the greatest scene in a movie ever.


"Dead Kids" aka "Strange Behavior" is really lame movie without scares or invention.The cast is horrid and very unappealing,the special effects are truly awful and the film is incredibly boring.Why do a lot of people like this piece of scum is beyond me.Sure,the concept is original and creative,but it should be better revealed.In conclusion,don't bother with this one.


I just got it on DVD because I read of all the positive hype, and loved movies like "Stepford "Wifes", "Desturbing Behavior" and "The Mansurain Candidate", and I hoped to find more movies in this genre. I stumbled over this movie, and though I had found what I was looking for because of the good reviews and interesting plot, but I was really WRONG!

First of all, this movie has a really slow pace! You can deal with that is the acting and the atmosphere is good, but none of these were good. There was just about no atmosphere at all, you never get a shock or feel scared or even interested in the characters.

The Good: Kid with scare mask makes a kill. (Really great mask!) Nice filming while riding the car. (camera on backseat) Plot with potential

The Bad: only 5 kills in the entire movie, and only one is interesting. No interest in the characters hardly any focus on the experiments/plot Lots of random talk, no continuation in the movie No atmosphere, you feel nothing but boredom while watching this movie Boring surroundings Boring sound side of the movie

Conclusion: Not worth watching, even if your a horror fan. There is no reason for watching this movie, unless your a major fan of someone in it :-S Don't know who that should be!


After watching the first 3 in a two period to see what was so good about the series, I decided to watch this as an off-chance. I was horribly disappointed. While it might have come out before Shanghai Noon, this was just plain unbearable to watch with painfully BAD stereotypical dialogue with a plot thrown in around the last 2/3rd of the movie. Do yourself some justice and skip this movie if given an option. Only watch it for morbid curiosity, but you'll only be disappointed. I feel like this horrible film tainted my eyes after watching the first 3, which were full of movie magic. The action scenes in this one didn't even keep my attention at times.


Saw this dvd and was completely distracted by the soundtrack that was about 10 seconds behind the actual words that were spoken. For a Jet Li film I thought it was good but I would like to see a repaired version. I see about 2 or three martial arts films a week and this was the worst subtitled yet.


"House by the Cemetery" is one of the weaker movies I have seen from Lucio Fulci. It has a weak, unconvincing story that seems to rush by at an unsatisfying fast pace, leaving us humble viewers with nothing even remotely pleasing or memorable. It is about a family who moves into a creepy house that is haunted - not by a ghost - but by a psychotic killer who inhabits the basement. He kills some unsuspecting visitors to the house, who happen to wander in as well as the eerie babysitter. All of the death scenes are very weak and poorly presented, which is surprising for a Fulci film. The ending seems to make an attempt at some suspense, but fails along with the rest of the movie. I must say, with all the disappointments this movie threw at me, I did like the gloomy look to the film as well as the house which deserved a little more attention considering how creepy it was. This is not at all a good movie, but you can't get it right every time - can you Fulci?


This has to be the worst horror film ever, pathetic storyline, and the film looks like it's been cut by the uk censors. The film is 76 mins of rubbish, the thing in the cellar looks like it belongs in a 50's sci-fi film and is nothing like the cover for the film. An italian dubbed film with horrible acting and and cheesey script.

The worst thing about it is now i own it!


THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1 outta 5 stars) Dreadful piece of garbage. You will probably enjoy the movie if you are really into gruesome special effects... but if you are looking for an actual story... or real characters, forget it. A totally generic family (father, mother and annoying young child) move into a scary house so the father can do some research for a book. There's a little ghost girl that only the young boy can see. She hangs around and keeps warning the kid to stay out of the house... but will he listen? No! There is a weird babysitter who keeps popping up out of nowhere and a landlady who may as well walk around with a big sign saying "Next Victim" around her neck when she comes to visit. Some of the "going down into the basement" scenes are kind of suspenseful... but this is negated by the totally over-the-top blood and gore that is usually the next step. Plus there are about FIVE "going down into the basement" scenes... one right after the other. I was already rolling my eyes after the third one. Apparently some US copies of this film have a couple of reels mixed up... which would explain a lot of headshaking moments in this movie but by no means ALL of them.


I finally watched "HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" last night and I must admit, I was quite disappointed. Deemed by many fans as being one of Fulci's most 'goriest', I prepared myself for countless scenes of bloodshed and gore and instead got nothing more than the usual pap featured in the countless horror films of the 1980's and a few dust bunnies that were blowing across the floor.

Fulci, the king of gore, has proven in the past with such films as "ZOMBIE", "THE BEYOND" and "CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD", that a movie with a terribly thin plot and terrible actors can still entertain with high levels of unnecessary and perhaps redundant gore - but "HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" is an entirely different story altogether.

Fulci continues his usual tradition by casting the worst bunch of actors that could be scrounged up at the local playhouse and giving them a ridiculous script/dialogue to be delivered while giving the audience countless camera shots that pan across the eyes of the actors as they try to make sense of the imminent danger that they have been put in. First of all, the title of the film is misleading. Yes, there is a 'house by a cemetery', but the main focus point of the film seems to lead to the dwellings of the cellar beneath the house. The cemetery itself really has no relevant bearing on the story, it is just a sinister backdrop to the house, a shallow attempt to make the situation seem more eerie than it really is.

The thin plot revolves around an incredibly stupid couple, Norm and Lucy (!), who leave their comfortable town house in New York City for the quiet digs of New England, a manor that they haven't even seen before signing the papers with the realtor (!!). They also have an infant child, Bob, who appears to be quite androgynous. Thanks to the ludicrous 'voice overs' provided by a woman who also dubs the voice for a little girl, she makes Bob look and sound incredibly stupid every time he opens his mouth to say something.

Nothing is quite believable by the time the troupe move into the 'Freudstein House', as known by the realtor and her assistant, 'Oak House' to Norm and Lucy. Strange happenings begin to occur once they take occupation of the residency. Mysterious noises, the sounds of children whimpering and the fact that something evil in the cellar is making a nuisance out of itself by killing off everyone who makes the mistake of moving into the house should have been enough reason to send Norm and Lucy packing their bags and demanding a full refund from the Realtor. But do they move out? I think not. Instead, the happy threesome decide to blow off the strange phenomena with a bottle of Xanax while turning a blind eye and deaf ear at the same time.

To add to the silliness, a mysterious babysitter by the name of 'Anne' moves in with the family who seems to know something about the strange happenings related to the cellar, yet is stupid enough to venture down into the dark to get herself 'offed' in a ridiculous fashion involving a butcher knife. There is one scene of gore in the opening scene where a woman is murdered by a knife-wielding zombie who gets it through the top of her cranium, the blade penetrating through her open mouth. Other than that, no scenes of further violence take place until at least an hour into the movie if you don't count the scene involving a decapitated mannequin as witnessed first-hand by Bob and later through an un-related flashback by Nancy (!!!).

Some above-par gore scenes contained in "HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" would include a man getting his throat torn out and a woman meeting her demise with a screw-driver type implement after she gets her foot stuck in a crack in the floor! Other than that, there is very little body count contained in the film and one death scene is just plain confusing which involves a woman getting dragged down a set of stairs by her feet, hitting every step on the way down with her head!

Only one scene stood out for me in this movie and that was when the realtor backs out of the driveway after leading the family to their new home, accidently knocking over a tombstone to which she yells, "DAMN TOMBSTONE!" before speeding off in a cloud of dust. This is also just one of the many countless incidents contained in the movie that bare absolutely no relevance whatsoever on the plot, including a scene where Anne is cleaning up a trail of blood off the kitchen floor and an inane second story-line involving a prior occupant of the house who committed suicide after claiming the house was 'possessing' him!

When the evil is encountered in the cellar, you will be amazed to find how much its motives for being down there in the first place have absolutely no baring on anything else that has taken place in the movie! Nothing seems to make sense, and the ending is just confusing!

I'm not exactly sure what Lucio Fulci had in mind while filming this movie, but I think the finished product was of something that not even he could have envisioned! "HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" is absolute garbage at its worst and should be avoided by all Fulci fans!

My Rating - 2 out of 10


*Contains minor spoilers* (but it doesn't really matter cos the movie sucks anyway, and you'll probably have more fun reading my spoilers than actually watching it!)

I saw this movie in the bargain DVD rack at my local Blockbuster, and since I had mildly enjoyed some of Fulci's other movies I decided to give it a try. After all, at £5.99 for a DVD, you can't go wrong, can you? Well, yeah, you can! I curse Vipco for parting me with my money and lumbering me with this steaming pile of celluloid excrement! The incoherent plot involves some psycho doctor who has been living in the basement of a Boston mansion since the start of the 20th century, occasionally popping up to hack off the odd body part to replace his decaying limbs. His next victims are the New York psychologist and his family who move there to study suicide. Also, we get some bull about the doctors wife and a little girl (were they supposed to be ghosts?) who turn up from time to time to hang out with the psychologists irritating son and utter some ominous, pseudo-cryptic warnings into the camera while the whole cast try not to laugh. This makes it sound waaaay better than it is.

To be fair, hardcore Fulci fans and students of crappy B-movie eurotrash may glean a little (very little) enjoyment from this. There are a few tense moments (the scenes in the cellar) and some striking imagery (such as the blood rising from Freudstein's tomb), yet the film is so disjointed that even these fail to inject any interest. Endless plot points go unexplained, such as the shop-window sequence and the real estate agents who apparently know there's a nutter under the house but don't bother to do anything about it and keep moving people in there! And what the hell was it with that babysitter!? She was always in the house, even when the parents were there, and spent most of her screen time staring into space! Was she supposed to be scary (she wasn't even a bad guy) or was it just that she didn't know how to act!? Now, I could have overlooked these many problems if the movie had kept me excited, for example if they had put in some kickass good-guys-fight-back battle scenes (like in Zombie or Demons). Unfortunately, nothing vaguely exciting happens in House By The Cemetery, the only action we get is a few bloody killings, which are nothing special, and a cheesy boob-shot near the start (if you're looking for that sort of thing)! And thus I must announce to the world that this film breaks the most important law in Italian horror cinema: You can make it corny and cheap and incoherent - but it has to be fun! House by the Cemetery... is boring!!


Wow! Not one of Fulcis best! Actually quite dreary, devoid of suspense and atmosphere. I should also say logic, but thats not to be expected from a Fulci-flick. Its sad because the locations look quite good, and this could have been an effective movie if he'd had the skills. There is virtually no buildup of tension, the music is boring and the dubbing of the kid is annoying. There are some attempts at foreboding images, like the picture of the house and the mannequin, but they are not enough to sustain interest. The subplot with a little girl from the past is poorly handled and the Freudstein ending is totally laughable. Even a movie with nonlinear and dreamlike structure should have some focus and coherence. Fulci managed that in his effective "The Beyond" but here it is completely absent. For fans only.


Why is it that Fulci fans are so die hard and fail to admit that the director didn't even make a decent horror film? After hearing so much about his films when i was a teen, and seeing all his gory make up on Fangoria magazines, i decided to finally rent some of his stuff. Was i ever disappointed, this film is ludricroious, mainly because it doesn't even resemble a horror film. Most of the time is wasted on back drop information that leads up to a banal climax.


I consider this a mediocre horror flick. The picture quality was not good due to the directors penchant for poorly lit scenes. The director also used other amateurish tricks like facial closeups and excessive blood all over the place. I can't tell you how many times my 14 year old asked questions like 'What is that?' or 'Why did they do that?' This was due to many holes in the plot. Two thumbs down from this house.


I love movies with a theme of cemeteries and haunted houses. This cheap italian movie was terrible. You'll want to shoot your tv every time you hear the little boy's dubbed voice. Don't waste your time. Learn from my mistake


The plot: A family moves into a house close to a cematary. Something weird is going on in the basement. Could there be a maniac dwelling there?

Comment: A horrible movie. Completely devoid of any suspense. Nothing further has to be added.

Acting: Horrible, everybody is horrible. The voice dubbing on the young boy is intolerable.

Gore: Plenty. Disgusting splatter-filled gore, looks gruesome, not stylish at all.

Verdict: 0 out of 4. The pits.


I do not forgive this movie for wasting 90 minutes I could have better used turning my compost pile.

There is a child, supposedly a boy, named "Bob." "Bob," or, as I like to call him, "Diana," is an effeminate midget with fishy lips, and long, platinum blond hair that would be more appropriate on a Swedish girl. He-she is dubbed in a nasal, liquid voice that really aggravates his most noticeable quality: he's a stupid, fey dwarf who detracts from this movie in the sense that he's often the scariest thing on-screen in this ridiculous "film."

A good case in point is when the creepy babysitter, who has allowed caterpillars to roost on her face where other people have eyebrows, stupidly locks herself in the decrepit basement. She finds herself, of course, about to be murdered by the inexplicably animated corpse of the house's former owner, Dr Freudstein. So, she pounds on the door and screams at the top of her lungs for help. DianaBob's reaction to all this pounding and screaming is to stare at his stuffed monkey (a sign of something, surely) for a few minutes, before taking a pink squirt-gun in hand and finally deciding to rescue the by-now-dead babysitter. You must watch this ludicrous scene to appreciate it: the killer, wielding an absurdly large knife, takes not less than 45 seconds of movie time to climb the stairs leading to his victim; Bob doesn't even START TOWARDS THE DOOR until his babysitter is already dead. This farce of an action sequence descends all the way to the ninth level when DianaBob, having finally opened the basement door, finds himself in the same predicament as his babysitter. Thinking quickly, he runs up the stairs and then CLOSES HIS FOREARM IN THE DOOR. Now, when most people, even small children, close their arms in doors, their basic instinct is to open the door a bit to dislodge the arm. Not Bob. Bob remains stuck in the door up to his elbow because HE KEEPS TRYING TO CLOSE THE DOOR ON HIS ARM. He doesn't think to open the door and free himself, of course, until the walking corpse has closed to within six inches of grabbing his hand. I realize that this scene was supposed to add drama, or something, to the movie, but it ends up being only illogical and silly.

There are lots of reasons to hate this movie: the English dubbing is typically terrible, something for which I can't hold the Italians who made the film responsible. However, the Italian-to-English script translation should have been better. The English voice-actors are universally horrible, and the person doing "Bob's" voice is the worst. He sounds, at best, like a sniveling toddler, even in the most banal scenes.

The droning, ersatz soundtrack, laced with obnoxious synthesizer warbling, is unforgivable. I have heard more adept, emotionally relevant music on a Game Boy game's soundtrack. It crescendos from silence to onslaught almost instantaneously, and, without exception, clashes with what little atmosphere this movie creates.

Technical ineptitude isn't the worst thing about this film. The characters are utterly one-dimensional. They act without reason or perceivable logic, and they are oblivious to their environment. Worse than that, they're stupid. Bob's mother actually tells him that the babysitter may have gone home to see her parents after she is killed; in fact, Bob's parents make a career of ignoring pretty much everything Bob says or does. The babysitter herself is never explained. In fact, Bob's mother doesn't seem to think it strange at all that a pale, creepy young woman, who doesn't ever, ever speak, materializes from nowhere to look after her son. The father, whose job is merely a convenient excuse to get the family in the house in the first place, bobs randomly in and out of the movie, saying little and contributing nothing.

The story is an incomprehensible labyrinth; perhaps trying to understand just what the hell is going on is supposed to be the challenging part about this movie. There isn't any plot to speak of, and neither is there any story worth remembering. People say things, go places, and are then killed. The killing scenes are graphic and bloody; they're also extremely overdone, and more silly than scary. The makeup effects are done well, but not good enough to redeem this film in any way.

Toward the end of the film, which I won't give away, the voice-actor's director has Bob's character whine and snivel and cry and moan and weep into the microphone: the sounds DO NOT AT ALL correlate with what is happening onscreen. This part of the movie is so unbelievably irritating that it deserves it's own paragraph, but it's futile. You just can't understand how irritating it is to listen to Bob's English voice make these noises while the Bob onscreen looks only mildly upset. You must see it and hear it to understand.

There are many, many other illogical and ludicrous events, actions, and circumstances prancing around this film, mocking your intelligence and giving your reason the finger. Watch it with pen-and-notebook and see what you can find that I haven't mentioned. (You can trust that I noticed!)

This is an amateurish, poorly executed movie, made for no other reason than to shock with extreme gore. It's good for a few laughs and nothing else; it's not even worth the six bucks it costs to buy it. The only valuable thing about it is that it serves as a darkly hilarious reminder of what to never, ever do with camera and film.


The first review I saw on this site about this movie was someone calling it a masterpiece. This movie is as much a masterpiece as Friday the 13th IV isn't a masturbation piece. And that doesn't even make sense. But neither does this movie.

Spoilers- I could sum up this movie by saying it's about a fruity looking Swedish kid who moves into a house with his parents and eventually watches them get murdered in the basement by some 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm. However, I'll add a little more.....

First of all this movie is crazy boring. Secondly, it involves some 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm. Now those two sentences shouldn't be referring to the same movie, but in this case they are.

From what I can piece together the family moves into this house out in the countryside so the dad can research the death of a colleague who also lived in the same house. The colleague basically hung himself as a result of living in a house haunted by an 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm. Like in many haunting movies the colleague dude conveniently left a cassette tape explaining just enough about the bad stuff going on in the house to make the viewer decide not to turn off the movie yet. As you continue to let the movie play you'll quickly realize you made a mistake.

So the family moves to the house and the Swedish boy starts seeing some 1800's-ish looking girl, but it's hard to tell since this movie was made in the 70's. Her clothing may have been normal small town 70's gear rather than 1800's gear. Also some googly eyed babysitter chick shows up and generally acts strange, but never does anything and is eventually killed. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because there's a scene where an 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm (yes THE 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm) kills some broad in the house and the babysitter cleans up the blood the next day to hide it. So if she's helping this basement monster out why does he later trap her in his basement and kill her? Maybe she didn't do a good enough job of cleaning up the blood and she was already on thin ice with him to begin with.

General strange noises and what not happen in the house and at some point there is the discovery of a grave in the living room, which is obviously where this 1800's doctor is buried. Or is he buried? Well he might be. Whether or not he's the guy in the basement with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm is up to speculation, but it is mentioned in the movie that the doctor performed devious experiments when he was alive. So the doctor either created this basement monster or he IS him. Either way, the movie is so boring you won't care. All you'll care about is why this guy in the basement is 99% monster except for his one normal arm.

In summary you could say this movie is about a family being haunted and eventually killed by an 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one monster arm or you could say it's about a family being haunted and killed by an 1800's doctor with no eyes or mouth and one human arm. But no matter how you look at it, they all die and you'll also die a little inside when you go to google this house so you can stay there for a night and make your own bootleg ghosthunters TV show and try to sell it to the travel channel only to find out that you can't even find this house because nobody cared enough to put it's real location anywhere on the internet.


Ah...what have we here....yet another Conan The Barbarian rip off do I see?

Yes indeed and sadly not one of the better ones I might add.

Following the enormous success of the aforementioned pinnacle of the genre, it was inevitable that the market would be flooded with cheap cash-ins.

Now if there's one country in the world that seems to always be the fastest to leap onto any given cinematic band wagon, then it surely must be Italy.

And not just the fastest either, the Italian movie industry, especially in the late 1970's and early 1980's, was probably also one of the most prolific and could churn out seemingly hundreds of films on any given theme (the theme being usually dictated by what happened to be successful in Hollywood at the time) Take for instance the success of George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead (which was released in Italy as 'Zombi') Within no time at all, enterprising Italian producers had released a whole slew of cheaply made (but often rather watchable) virtual copies of the film.

And so it came to pass (damn! - I sound like a Sword & Sorcery movie narrator now!) that with the remarkable success of Conan, Italian film producers, true to form, released numerous clones of their own.

Universally, all were woefully inferior to the original in pretty much every way and yet, one can't deny that there was a certain (cheesy) charm to many of them such as Joe D'Amato's, 'Ator The Fighting Eagle' starring one time Tarzan, Miles O'Keeffe.

Sadly Sword Of The Barbarians, whilst not totally without its merits, is hardly a particularly memorable entry in the genre.

There are all the usual trappings to be found here as in the other films of it's ilk i.e. topless maidens, torture and violent battle scenes (some of which are pleasantly gory) but overall this film feels distinctly lifeless.

It's a sad reflection in fact, that whilst watching this I found myself continuously looking at the video counter to see just how much more running time was actually left, as I was becoming increasingly bored with the unfolding on screen events.

Even the climatic battle between the hero and the main villain was handled in a rather hopelessly lacklustre manner.

Still, if you're a fellow fan of the Sword & Sorcery genre, then you'll no doubt want to see this and make up your own mind.

It's certainly not exactly a complete stinker of a movie (in fact it's quite amusing in a B-Movie sort of way), but it certainly doesn't warrant repeated viewings.


Phew, I watched this film last weekend and boy, it was pretty awful, but still, perhaps it was awful in a funny way. Last time I had seen this film was in the 80's and I thought it would be kind of nostalgia trip. I didn't expect anything great, but still it was a kind of disappointment! I remembered this film was pretty violent, but there wasn't even a hint of blood showing when the barbarians slewed one another. And their swords were pretty much like toys!! Fighting scenes were hilarious but not in a good way. Well, the final battle between two men was okay. Of course, acting was horrible, but I didn't expect anything else. But it was fun to watch and it took me back to my childhood for a hour and a half so I guess it is always positive thing.

But for those who seek no nostalgia, don't watch this!!


This movie stunk. The English dubbing was horribly amateur, like some video company wanting a release in North America hired a bunch of high-school teachers to dub the film and did it in one try to save money at the recording studio. Ignoring the dubbing, the acting was completely off-key. Sometimes the characters looked like they were trying to get their lines over with after practicing a dozen times in front of the mirror, other times they were over-acting, it was the typical acting style you see in high-school dramas.

The choreography was a joke, not only can you tell it's totally fake with the lack blood and the bad acting, but what makes it funny is that they try to make it look real by moving the camera angles in such a way to hide the fact that they thrust the sword to the side of the opponent or to cover up the fakeness. The directing and photography is equally bad, the camera work is shaky, sloppy, and even out-of-focus at times.

The film shots were poorly set-up. They were at bad angles, frames, and positions. I'm sure the director knew this during editing, but they probably were operating on a miniscule budget, so they couldn't afford enough film and decent filming equipment. You can tell the budget is so small by the fact that they lacked enough decent props and backdrops, didn't have any special effects besides camera tricks, and had micro "villages" and settings that had the camera always close-up to hide this fact. Lastly, the music was completely cheesy, like it was made and composed for an electronic keyboard.

To sum things up, this movie is a completely forgettable, straight from film to VHS, watch-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-when-nothing-else-is-on-TV flick.


Cross-pollination of "Stand and Deliver" with "Dirty Dancing" is jaw-droppingly misguided. Beverly Hills math teacher, who struts his stuff at night in a barrio club, gets involved with under-privileged kids and gives them lessons on how to Lambada--a hot new Latin dance! Moronic junk is almost endearingly bad...almost. It features uncharismatic leads, soapy melodrama, generic club music, and teeth-gnashing dialogue. It does attempt an offbeat approach to a formula plot, but that is the only positive thing one can really say about it.

* from ****


Don't let the credits mislead you, Jennifer Lopez only has a small supporting role (a dozen lines at best), and the "no-name" stars give performances which justify their subsequent demise on the Hollywood movie scene. Bad acting, unbelievably implausible plot lines, and second rate dialogue are only accentuated by cookie cutter characterizations. If I'm ever stuck in a bad-ass L.A. Latino neighbourhood, I hope I'm lucky enough to run into this movie's gang members; at worst my car would get a new paint job. The predictable happy ending is capped off by yet another forgettable dance sequence, making one yearn for the comparably energetic, stylish excellence of "Footloose" or "Dirty Dancing". If you choose to spend a few hours watching this drivel, be sure to do some housework as well so it's not a complete waste of your time.


I was lucky enough to witness this amazingly entertaining movie while laying hung over on a couch while vacationing in Mexico. We were about to turn the channel but then the amazing acting and dialog caught our attention. Dean is the most hilarious character I have ever witnessed in a film. His facial expressions are priceless. And Sandy's short cropped hair is so hot! The teacher who goes by the name "Blade" at night is hardcore. That little blade earring he wore makes me want to go out and buy one for myself. I was intrigued though with the "greaser" conversation he had with his little boy. His son had no idea they were half Mexican? hmmm. Ramone was probably the meanest hard ass ever. I had no idea why he hated Blade so badly through out this movie though. Ricochet was the worst fake stutterer in the history of film. Go Galaxy High! My lord I could go on and on, but I'll just end by saying that this movie kept my sides splitting with laughter, and for the rest of my vacation in Mexico "Lambada" was our inspiration!


This movie was one of the most surprisingly entertaining movies I have ever seen. The dialogue was just not grossly disengaging, but the gawdy dance choreography couldn't help but make me laugh. This movie reminded me of West Side Story, except as if directed and choreographed by a blind, mentally challenged individual.

The storyline, if you can call it that was so terrible. While watching the movie you know it is so mentally abusing to do so, but like a train wreck, can't help but keep your eyes fixated on its amazement.

Definite must see, if you and your friends want to have a great laugh, or if you are just feeling self-destructive.


This movie was terrible in so many ways. I can't believe that the writers and directors got away with churning out this crap. What started as a love story between teacher and student turns suddenly and painfully towards a stay-in-school moral. Not bad if perhaps you were forced to watch this in school instead of studying, but not even worth watching on TV.

But the music was filled with some decent typical 80s moments... especially whenever the music took over. And although you might think that JLo was in this movie after seeing it, you won't find her anywhere in the movie or in the credits.


You come to Lambada for the passion, the awesome music, the cool clothes, and the constant flashes of g-string under ruffled skirts that intrigued you from the TV commercial. You leave with a trig lesson that just BLEW YOUR MIND!!!

This film is so uncannily like my own high school years, I was half convinced it was a straight up documentary for the first ten or twenty seconds.

What gave it away was the fact that the actors cast as high school students looked WAY too young (they only looked 23-25, when we were in school, we all looked at least 29). The second thing that was highly suspect was the fact that there was only ONE spontaneous group dance number (during a computer class). Give me a break!!! There is a particularly nuanced supporting roll performed with aplomb by a young upstart actress who never quite flew so high in her later years; Jennifer Lopez as Booker.


What is a Sky Pilot? That's a nickname for a preacher. John Bowers stars as a missionary to a rural area filled with rough cowboys who mock religion. He has trouble converting the area, aside from one friend and a beautiful girl (Colleen Moore) that he falls in love with.

For the most part, nothing much happens in this film. It is short, but hardly sweet. There is a lot of time spent waiting for the characters to do something. The romantic relationship is hardly developed, and the real attraction to this movie, Moore, is barely in the movie.

If you like westerns or early, somewhat primitive films, this one is for you. If you're a Moore collector, grab this one, but don't stress over it. It probably will never be a favorite.


Heavy-handed but well-mounted, this early King Vidor film would have us believe that all that is needed to bring Christianity to cattle rustlers is to win their respect. Vidor mixes sentimentality and excitement a little ham-handedly, as when Colleen Moore regains the use of her legs so she can drag the unconscious John Bowers from the burning church. On the other hand, some of the scenes -- as when John Bowers stands off a herd of stampeding cattle so they won't trample the obvious dummy standing in for Colleen Moore stand up very well. David Butler, later to be a major director of musical comedies, has the second lead and Miss Moore never looked lovelier.


This being Bergmans first effort as a film director, it has been criticized for being overly melodramatic. First, melodrama is an utterly underrated way of telling stories, second, it was very much a sign of the times, as most films during that times tended to be overly melodramatic by themselves, and as a whole. So, it's not that much Bergmans fault, he just went away and made a film in the way most films was made at that time.

The acting is very good, Inga Landgé is so very beautiful as the young ingénue, and Stig Olin makes a very impressionable performance as the two-bit hustler/pimp. Above all, all the small parts are done almost to perfection. And Bergman has some hilarious dialogue, like the old lady at the train, comforting Ingeborg when she wakes up after a bad dream:

"You must've eaten something unsuitable. I usually dream about a big negro biting my toes off when I have eaten something unsuitable. Whatever that may mean..."

If there was a memorable quotes section here for this film, that line would be there. In the end, this film is not done to perfection, it's not faultless and diamond sharp as Bergmans later efforts. But it is nice craftsmanship, good acting, and an enjoyable experience. A well done first try in film-making.


I missed this tour in 1991. Two years later I saw Paul in St. Louis and the show was fantastic. Several of my friends that saw the first tour said it was good, but when they saw the next tour they felt that the Get Back Tour was just a rehearsal for the one in 1993.

Paul hadn't toured in thirteen years and when you watch the DVD it really shows. I'm really glad that I own this DVD because it feels like a bootleg of a practice gig. There are great moments, but it feels like McCarney is trying too hard to compete with Duran Duran. It must have been a little embarrassing to have 40,000 people show up every night for a practice gig.

As for Richard Lester's directing; shame! It is awful. Remember those terrible 80's videos where they just edited in stock footage of silly things that didn't really go with the music? This is a concert video with that awful gimmick. They even use footage of the Beatles. This video goes on my shelf next to "Give my Regards to Broadstreet". It is a nice reminder that Paul is great but not perfect.


It's quite tragic when a fresh idea gets thrown out in the form of a horrific film, but this movie delivers just that. While the underlying plot is actually quite intriguing and original, the movie is simply so poorly made that one cannot forgive the creators. The opening dialogoue between the two main characters is a perfect example of what you're getting into when you view this film. You can't even understand what the two men are saying. The picture quality is worse than a fifty year old second-hand camera. The acting is horrible, the scripting is horrible, the camera work is horrible.. The movie is horrible. Don't waste your time, money, or eyesight.


Poor production values and a plot that is stretched way too thin to support a feature length film (even one with a tight running time of 72 minutes) undermine some interesting ideas and sometimes effective direction from independent writer/directors Don Adams and Harry James Picardi.

Their one dimensional story of a teen possessed by the vengeful ghosts of a murdered family plays out in a far too predictable fashion and provides too few answers to some burning questions (Why have the ghosts waited so long to seek revenge? What is the relevance of the spoon?), and any genuine moments of originality and inventiveness are overwhelmed by risible dialogue, shoddy video effects and amateurish acting.

A creepy moment early on, involving the ghost of a little girl on a swing, proves that the guys can create atmosphere and deliver an effective scare when necessary, and a delightfully twisted scene in which a pervy old man spies on his granddaughter in the shower earns them points for being willing to push the envelope, but to really do their ideas justice in future, Adams and Picardi really need to drum up some more cash for that professional finish and get themselves a decent cast.


You're not lucky if you watch this film. Incredibly stupid comedy really stars Edward Tsang (in his stupid mode)and Anita Mui.It has something to do with an accident giving one of two brothers the ability to go into peoples dreams. Somehow Chow Yun Fat figures into the mess as a cop investigating a murder that he really committed and wants to keep covered up. Its awful, even by Hong Kong low grade humor standards with Tsang's mugging bringing everything down lower than it all ready is. Think sub low rent (homeless?) Lou Costello. Trust me you're better off not seeing Tsang dressed as a robot in the hopes of seeing girls naked. Avid this film


This is not only a dreadful movie, it is confusing, and has the feel of several movies stitched together sloppily. I watched it at 1.5 speed and still the pain did not end quickly enough.

What was real? What was dream-state? I still don't know; worse, I don't care.

I don't know and cannot imagine why Chow Yun-fat made this movie (he does not appear until more than 50 minutes into it) because he was successful already...he should have done commercials and sold floor wash or denture cleaners, done anything except this movie.

If someone offers to give you this movie, decline politely.


Ugh. I hate this movie. I hate the fact Chow Yun-Fat is in this movie. If there is one film I wish I could obliterate from my consciousness, this would be a Top Ten candidate.

In a rip-off of a number of Hollywood movies, Miu Kiu Wai plays a guy who has the ability to enter the dreams of others. This is how he twigs to the fact that there is a crooked cop on the force. While mucking about in other peoples' dreams he encounters vampires, monsters and just general stupidity.

Eric Tsang, surely one of the most annoying individuals ever born, portrays the trouble-magnet buddy as well as a salacious robot. He looks like a demented Tele-Tubby.

Chow Yun-Fat plays the cop. Anita Mui plays a reporter with a boyfriend who should know not to eat birthday cake with a hunting knife. Emily Chu Bo-Yee plays a piece of wood. Well, it just seems that way.

Terrible, awful and good only for making fun of at parties, this film is solidly in my list of CYF's Bottom Five movies. If you must see this one, try and get a friend to spring for the disc so you won't feel bad about wasting your own money on it.


After 25 minutes, I said enough was too much. The leading male character is a borderline psychopath - he's obviously a domestic tragedy waiting to happen. All right, so he hasn't gotten violent towards his ex-wife yet. On the other hand he just walks up and belts her new fiancé without provocation, but clearly feeling justified (and the film-makers clearly agree with him, which is the sickest thing about it). By the way, did I mention that she's his EX-wife? That makes everything he does in those first 25 minutes absolutely illegal - stalking; breaking and entering, assault, harassment.

"Hey, it's only a movie!" Yes, and it's a movie with a message - "boys, you too can grow-up and get abusive to your wives;" and "girls, if he treats you like crap you probably deserved it 'cause he's quite a guy!" and "Children, even if your dad does desert you, you should love him and let him abuse your mom! He's still your dad." Oh, please! This is truly depraved.

What the ex-wife should have done is shoved a carving knife down his throat - a decent lawyer could get her off easy. In any event, in the real world, the ex-husband's behavior doesn't get rewarded, it gets him tossed into jail - where he belongs.

Technically speaking, everything else about this movie covers a part of the spectrum - the part spanning from scorchingly awful to mediocre-at-best. And just by the way, Sissy Spacek is about 10 years too old to play her part, and seems to know she's caught in turkey-land, but, hey, a paycheck is a paycheck.

A real bomb.


One can always count on the IMDb - no matter how bad, how awful a film is, there will be four or five people who invariably give it ten stars and say it's a great film. I mean, I have yet to find the film listed where this does not happen.

Hard Promises does not have one laugh, one real moment, one near-touching scene (even the young daughter's scenes - and I'm a sucker for emotional scenes between parents and children) - the dialog is terrible, the film has not one iota of charm, the direction is blander than bland. The actors all do what they can, but there is nothing to do but work hard to try and make something out of nothing.

Of course, when one does a little further research, one finds that the film was universally panned by just about everyone, and, in its one week engagement at actual movie theaters, it became one of the lowest grossing films in history - a whopping $360,000 or thereabouts. Not many films achieve THAT kind of gross. Great film? No. Good film? No. Bad film? Yes. But, there are obviously four or five people for whom this worked - so, that's something.


When I saw "The Doughgirls" was coming on TV, I re-read the comments of the critics, and somehow could not believe that they could find anything comical or clever about it. Let me start with the dialogue, without a shadow of a doubt, it had to be the worst heard in any , supposedly, A movie for years.

For stars such as Ann Sheridan and Alexis Smith to have to utter the crap served up to them must have been repulsive to them - while Ann overacts as she has never done before or after. Everything Jane Wyman said was typical of the kind of roles that Warners served up to her in many movies for years, and Jack Carson was his usual goof. As for the role played by one of my Favourites, Eve Arden - I felt embarrassed watching it. Truly, most of the cast deserved so much better. This film was a stinkeroo of the worst kind!


I have just seen "Hear and Now" on HBO. I regret to say that my comments cannot be positive because anyone seeing this documentary would be profoundly discouraged about the possibility of a successful cochlear implant. It did not work for the couple in the film for a variety of reasons, none of which is discussed. It is much too easy for people to become discouraged because of this kind of movie. Here are a couple of experiences that have occurred that do not project the discouraging outlook of the people in the film.

(1) One and one-half years (2006) ago one of my first cousins who had been profoundly deaf for at least 25 years had a cochlear implant. Her four sons tell me they are overjoyed that they can now carry on a conversation with their mother.

(2) After my cousin's successful implant, I then told one of my best friends about the implant surgery. This friend had been unable to converse with others even with the most powerful hearing aids available. She and her husband had been misinformed by an audiologist about her eligibility for surgery. When she went to the hearing institute in the city we live in, physicians not only said she was eligible, but performed the procedure September 2007. This week-end my friend was at two parties given for one of my sons and she was able to engage in give and take conversation with all of the guests. She is now going to have an implant in the other ear.

If I had seen this film and was eligible for an implant, I would have been terribly discouraged.

The film did not present a balanced view.


The very first thing that turns me off from documentaries are biased perspectives. The second turn-off is overly emotional displays meant to endear the viewer to the character. Unfortunately, this documentary uses generous amounts of both.

The fact the director is the daughter of couple probably wasn't a good idea to begin with. I felt that she was enthralled with her mother's sensitivity and she was fixated on filming her tantrums and tears. I personally found all the moodiness repugnant and hated her by the end. I was more interested in the father and his scientific accomplishments, but was disappointed by the director's passing reference to him. Instead I was fed more mommy tears and wailing.

The was the Sundance audience award winner for documentary, and I thought it wasn't a good reflection on their taste. Awful, awful, awful!!!


I don't really have anything new to say about this film.... all the other negative reviews say the same as I thought during watching it; I just felt it has far too many positive reviews, and that just isn't right. I really can't remember the last time I saw such an infuriatingly stupid, bad film. The only reason I came across this film was because it was likened to "haunting in Connecticut" (which I found to be a relatively entertaining no-brainer)here on IMDb! I am in no rush to check out any of the director's other masterpieces. This was SO unrealistic. If it would have gone for a magic realism approach from a director like Julio Madem or Kim Ki Duk, or a surreal approach from someone like David Lynch, then maybe, just maybe it could have got away with the unacceptable events taking place in this film. I mean, come on. Setting up theatre IN THE HOUSE (!), performing some serious kind of operation there(there would be some serious scarring and everything), and then just putting her back to bed and leaving? Apparently she was all better though. And leaving the schizophrenic son to hide out in his room, after nearly poisoning his mother to death... no one, not even his father, seem to check up on him, or even know exactly where he had got to. Then both incidents involving the knife... Jesus! As already mentioned, Julian Donkeyboy, Memento and The Machinist have all dealt with mental illness, disorientation and guilt in much better ways. They should not even be a comparison. And then there was the film making itself. The terrible house music, speeding up of cameras (to depict the characters "crazy" outlook on things), the dream sequences ("scared scarred"!),and dialogue from earlier in the film overlapping inside someone's head with extra reverb all just stank of mid-nineties college movie to me. The whole thing left me seething. Hence the review. I never normally write them, I tend to hate critics cause they don't usually get where the creator is coming from, and they don't create themselves, they just complain about how they could never do it better themselves. I am certainly no film maker, but I think even I could have done a better job of this one, which would include re plotting, re writing, re scripting, and re shooting. And being a musician I'd redo all the music. The score was actually OK though (just not the boom boom stuff), and the acting was all fine, sometimes quite impressive. I was pleased to see Trigger from only fools and horses pop up. But had this film contained Johnny Depp, Robert Deniro and Mickey Rourke (as the mother), it would have played no better than it would with Keanu Reeves, George Bush and Gerry Halliwell under this director and writer. Sorry mate. Try harder.