Sorry, that should read *MINUS SEVERAL STARS* but they don't give me that option.

I detest Custer and all he did post-Civil War. I'll start with that. I've been to the Custer Battlefield near Garryowen at least twice and feel that it is Holy Ground ... but not owing to the 7th Cavalry. Here ended the career of the man who would have been President, had his ambitions come to fruition. He would have also been remembered as the American Hitler.

I've read historical accounts and military histories of the battle, National Geographic articles on the fascinating forensic examination archaeologists were able to make of the battlefield after grass fires swept away much of the overgrowth. And I've always been fond of saying that I can't watch him die on film enough times.

((When he finally sent for Benteen and Reno, he had already charged into the trap: his message was (in part) "Bring rounds! P.S. BRING ROUNDS!" They were similarly ensnared in well-planned traps and could do little to help, however, not sitting on their hands protesting their sobriety in the shade of pleasant riverbank trees, let alone to each other: they were not together.))

Well, I just checked this stinker out from the local library, and I take my fond saying back. I've just seen him die one too many times. Or more accurately, I've seen *somebody* flog himself around on screen and *claim* to be Custer. I have no idea where he's flogging around, it certainly doesn't look like the Custer Battlefield -- not even remotely.

Benteen is played in one of the worst performances I've ever seen from late and talented Jeffrey Hunter as a simultaneously wooden and spineless gopher; Reno as an incompetent and insubordinate drunken lout. The families of these competent (but overwhelmed) heroic officers should have legal recourse to sue director Siodmak for their portrayals in this travesty.

Historically, geographically, politically, this movie crosses the line from "creative interpretation" to blatant twisting and reversal of anything resembling facts. Even Custer's portrayal in the wonderful farce, "Little Big Man", came much closer to the truth, and the California terrain that stood in for the Little Big Horn region in an old B&W "Twilight Zone" time-travel episode was more accurate than this.

The whole film seems to have been concocted to give the Cinerama audiences a few roller-coaster moments (a runaway wagon ride, a log flume ride, there were a few forgettable others) and even these went on *long* after they'd already proved their point.

A truly awful film. I'm taking it back to the library tomorrow first thing: it's drawing too many flies. I also want my 2 hours and 21 minutes back.


This is the first time, the VERY FIRST TIME, I've ever, EVER, given a movie I've reviewed here a 1. Hopefully, it won't be the last. But this movie, this abomination of politically correct claptrap, won't be remade any time soon. Custer of the West tells the highly fictionalized story of Lt. Col., Brvt. Maj, Gen. George Armstrong Custer, (Robert Shaw,) who comes to the conclusion that our treaties with the Indians are a sham. Nobody cared how we treated the Indians in the 19th century. By 1876, the era of Lewis and Clark was long over, and the attitude of the American people had changed. They wanted the Indians off their land. (Funny, because the Indians, the Sioux, and Northern Cheyenne, thought that the land was theirs, and that we were the intruders.) Maybe we were, Land, religion, and a clash of cultures, have always fueled, or caused, wars. The movie was the worst movie I'd ever seen, and I saw it back in 1974.


Bigfoot movies can be fun. This one is terrible. The acting is atrocious (except for Sue Lynn Sanchez), and the script is a mess. Probably the most absurd scene takes place in a "newspaper office" (obviously a high school), where an editor patiently explains to a young reporter why mass killings by an unknown animal are of no interest to readers. We're to also believe that this thing is running around, abducting women and ripping people apart, and the state police never arrive and no media circus ensues. Apparently, the families of the women abducted and the people killed just forget the whole thing. The ending is also absurd. Why would a babe like Talla want to spend any time with a loser like the reporter? I won't even get in to how absurd the sasquatch looks, except to point out that the monster is supposed to be a male, since he sexually assaults women -- so why does the costume have breasts? I've given this mess two stars only because of Sue Lynn Sanchez, who is gorgeous and puts in a spirited performance despite her horrible lines. Hopefully she'll get some real roles soon.

Stay away from this film. It's not a fun B-movie. It's just a typical, low-budget blood fest with no new ideas. It's terrible.


An interestingly boring film which I managed to watch all the way through. I don't know how I did though. The acting was appalling and the story line was mediocre.

A story of a man who was taken from his family as a baby and turned into to a human telepathic machine where he can move anything with his mind. He escapes and finds his sister and they run form the army and a select few special ops officers.

Only watch if you like bad acting.

I mean that!!

My rating - 3/10


Well, it was a dark gloomy November night. I was sitting in my sofa thinking what shall I do. The clock's pendulum just made hands align on 1am. I reclined back, wondering whether by watching this movie, I become excitedly thrilled with action or my heart would throb with fear of the unknown powers of human mind.

None of these expectations fulfilled. First 20 minutes of the movie I spend figuring out whether it is screenwright's, director's, actors' or componist's fault. I guess it was a bit - sorry - a LOT of all. The screenplay - I can't talk about a story as there ain't a hint of story to this movie - is horribly shallow, purposefully missing all good hooks that could send a shiver down your spine. Even such a straightforward moment as a mortal duel between two best friends passes without the viewer barely noticing anything happened. Actors were - well, matching the screenplay's standards. They walked, talked, breathed to not to suffocate, but that was it. One could expect more at least from J. Reinhold. Regarding the guy behind the camera - I hesitate to call that one a Director of Photography - he could shoot nice sunsets or party pictures. Not a movie. Too many static shots, too many mistakes in picture composition. And the music - I am sorry. There was none. Just some two beats sampled off some stoned DJ's houseparty, pretending to accompany the movie.

I managed to watch this tragical attempt, but I'm still considering claiming a health damage insurance. Sleeping, I'd make better use of the time.


Have a hammer? Crack yourself good across the knuckles a few dozen times - that would be less painful that watching this stinker.

Don't believe me? Well imagine a movie with video game special effects and you would have, yeah! Mindstorm.

I mean bad is bad but did they have to make a messiah out of this turkey? Aaahhh, God let it end, let it end!

Really they did make this up as they went along, no one could actually script this stuff, could they?

Did I mention...God let it end, let it end!

In case you forget - God let it end, let it end!


Until "Alien Abduction" there was a considerable unbridged distance between your basic high-end "soft core" movie and your basic poorly written/generally unwatchable feature (insert "Zoolander" here). "Alien Abduction" successfully links the two categories. Whether that is a good thing is up to the viewer.

How I ended up watching this thing is more interesting than anything in the movie. Since the movie failed to attract much of an audience when released, its title was changed. The original title of "Alien Abduction: Intimate Secrets" was prefixed with "Forbidden Zone" which causes it to be confused with Susan Tyrell's cult classic "Forbidden Zone". Even the IMDb is confused and when you click the Amazon VHS link for "Forbidden Zone" you end up with "Alien Abduction". So trusting souls like myself end up owning a copy of something unlikely to ever be considered a cult classic.

Not that it is a total loss, the missing link thing is kind of interesting and it is also interesting that this was pretty much an acting career killer for the five very attractive women featured in this film. Not that they exhibited much acting talent. Former Playboy centerfold Pia Reyes is probably the best to the lot. Meredyth Holmes gets the most screen time and has one of those strange faces that looks gorgeous when framed by a hat and rather ordinary otherwise (maybe her horrible haircut and dye job). Darcy Demoss has a lot more mileage on her than the other four and you wonder what she is doing in this thing. This was the last movie appearance for several of them and the remaining ones were out of the business a couple years later.

The story is totally uninteresting which is unfortunate because the women are attractive and non-plastic. They spend most of their time in a sauna (shot in Romania) engaged in girl banter with towels wrapped around them. They describe passionate fantasies to each other that somehow fail to be passionate when cut in as flashbacks. It would have been nice if something sexy or erotic took place in these sequences but it doesn't. There is some amusement value in the fact that these sequences are staged on sets that were obviously created for other movies (the budget must have all gone for salaries). There is an alien subplot but no one should care much about it because even the characters treat it listlessly.

At least Pia Reyes' fans will enjoy watching her.


Soft core movie from Full Moon's Twilight division. Basically Meredyth Holmes thinks there is more to life than sex but then thanks to an alien visitor (who of course is a studly guy) she realises she might have been wrong. Fairly entertaining, good production and score (by Reg Powell). Largely well acted and Holmes is much prettier than the the usual cast of such fare though her main erotic scene is a long way coming - largely due to the fact that all her friends have to recount their own sexual adventures and escapades in order to get her in the mood. These short tales are a little tedious but each is different with a western scene, some bondage and various other things.


First off let me just state that I am a video store clerk. So I have seen my share of movies, good, bad, and horrendous. This movie falls under the last category. I first picked up this movie purely because of the cover. It was sitting in the Sci-Fi section, and I wanted to see if it belonged in the mature, well it doesn't belong in either. It's not a sci-fi flick, and it's too scatterbrained even for soft-core. How bad is it? It is so bad that my friend and I, couldn't decide how to even begin to catogorize this film Thus forth I have created a new category, "What the hell?" {A side note, the composer for this movie is Danny Elfman. Another reason for this movie to be in this category.} Now on with the plot, a group of women swap sex stories in a sauna. That's pretty much it, with who , I can't tell you without giving away the twist, which sufice is to say the only twist in this movie is with a slice of lemon. This movie is great if you like random nudity, and alien abductions, oh crap gave away the twist. Oh well at least you have the lemon.


As I watched this (actually half watched, half fast forwarded), I couldn't help but think it had to be written by a woman. Five attractive females, in various stages of undress, sitting in a (Romanian) sauna discussing sexual fantasies. Sounds like a winner but never got off the ground.

Women discussing there experiences being ravaged by aliens could have been extremely hot, but its all too "chicky". Too much time spent talking about their "feelings", and so-called "erotic" scenes that play too soft - a lot of cutting away on the good parts, nothing explicit, no pink, not even much "boobage" (disappointing, as the actresses are well-endowed and not the standard plastic b-movie chicks), not enough skin, not enough heat (save one half-a** solo scene, they never get it on in the sauna!), too much talking and nothing went anywhere. Imagine scenes with them being examined, nude, on stainless steel tables, or forced to breed, or being fondled and probed. Alas, we got none of that, just some cheesy Harlequine romance-type female blathering.

The movie could/should have been half as long. Any coincidence most of these actresses, despite looking good, never made another movie? Check it out only if you get it dirt cheap.


Had you asked me in 1998 would this show been still running in 2006 I would have said definitely not. I would have said that the critic's constant criticism of the script and the acting would have been enough for Damon Quinn, Tim McGarry and Michael McDowell to fold their tents. But to my surprise the three writers who make up half of the Hole in the wall gang are still going strong.

Set in Belfast it documents the lives of two northern Irish families each representing the loyalist and republican sides. The republican family consists of Sinn Fein members Da & Cal, the long-suffering Ma and voluptuous daughters Dymphna & Emer. The loyalist side is made up of the P.S.N.I Officer (formerly R.U.C) Billy and his loyalist mad uncle called Andy. One day the police raid the republican household and Protestant policeman Billy falls in love with Roman Catholic Emer and they marry. This sets the scene for one of Northern Irelands most dysfunctional mixed marriages ever.

I will first point out that I do not go out of my way to watch this show but when I do sit down and watch I find it quite enjoyable and at times very funny. But I also find certain areas of this show very tedious which has lead to me developing a love hate relationship with the show. The loyalist characters like Uncle Andy, Big Mervyn and Red Hand Luke make me laugh till my sides are sore, simply because there is extra thought incorporated into all their characterizations. From how they speak right down to what they wear and how they walk has me stitches. The walk in particular is my favorite. It is a combination of a strut and a march. This is the side of the show I like and it is always a delight too watch. This is because they rarely need to name check politicians or continuously remind us that they are loyalists. When we see them we know outright where their political beliefs lie. But seldom do they ever play the political angle and their main comedy source is their ignorance to what is different. This invariably leads to them having better story lines and when they do get a great story line none of the actors involved of making the plot work.

The side I hate of the show manifests itself with the republican characters whose antics are just simply annoying. The scripts never change. The actors who play the characters, with the exception of Ma, are terrible and their characterizations when compared to their loyalist counterparts I consider to be very lazy. They constantly sell the nationalist/republican side and although I am catholic and from Ireland I find it really annoying because it is nothing we haven't heard or spoofed before. There is very little entertainment in it for me. Some would argue that the loyalist characters suffer from the same problems. Yes they are stereotypical but it is evident that they do it better.

Yes it is stereotypical and two dimensional but this show still has a large fan base throughout Ireland. It's inoffensive and full of daft story lines to keep the fans entertained. The critics hate it but the public can't get enough. I personally won't be making a note in my TV diary to watch it, but if push come to shove and there is nothing else on I could do a lot worse. 4 out of 10


Take a gray-haired Harrison Ford, place him in a business suit and then have him fight someone conveniently wearing all black, and you'd swear you were watching any number of movies from the last fifteen years. Name Ford's character Jack, and you'd think that would narrow it down to a good one. Then again you could just be suckered into seeing "Firewall" which borrows and doesn't add from the Ford post-Jones collection.

In a play-it-safe campaign to show the world that he isn't too old, Harrison Ford is pushed into "Firewall". It's been fourteen years since, "Patriot Games", in which Ford played a man that seemed over the hill then, and here he is today in the same situations. To jog your memory, Ford has been making a living playing essentially the same character in similar situations for years, thanks to the aforementioned "Patriot Games", "The Fugitive", and "Air Force One".

"Firewall", directed by Richard Loncraine, concerns the tale of Jack Stanfield, played by Harrison Ford, being forced through the methods of Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), into electronically stealing from the bank he keeps hackers out of on a daily basis. Cox has a bargaining chip, the Stanfield family. Eventually Cox and his team baby-sit the hostages and circumvent there own success. Jack then hunts them down, and none of this comes as a surprise due to the formulaic structure of the picture.

Some may find "Firewall" a difficult film to dislike because it plays all the clichés. It isn't artistic but rather commercial film-making. Borrowing from every film mentioned above, it uses elements from what worked and safely combines them in a coherent, yet unexciting manner. The action scenes don't come till the end of the picture, and those five minutes offer little more than stunt work put on by actors half Ford's age. This is a vehicle for Ford and as the audience we are supposed to subconsciously see this as a practice run at a fourth Indiana Jones film. With such blatant disregard for a plot and even unique action, you can view this movie as the precursor to "Indiana Jones and the Gated Community".

There is an element that seems realistic and that is the acceptable number of henchmen who are employed by the leader. If they are trying to steal money, then having less people to divvy up the bounty would result in a greater payday. Cox has a modest four men working with him. Unfortunate for both him and the viewer, their lack of common sense is staggering. For example, the family dog Rusty, plays a prominent role when the bumbling fools take him hostage. There should be a logical reason for taking Rusty. With his family already held captive in an unknown locale; I'm sure Jack Stanfield was ready to walk away from them and start a new life. But wait, Rusty is missing too, now I have to comply with their demands. This ultimately destroys the credibility of the screenplay.

Performances in the film are convincing. Virginia Madsen is good as the relaxed wife considering the situation her character is put through. My favorite role was of Paul Bettany as a sometimes caring villain that flips a mean pancake. Despite this, director Richard Loncraine has crafted a film that is best described as what a computer would spit out if the command was: thriller. Everything functions to drive the story on its merry way. Lacking character nuances, rich emotions, and beautiful scenery is OK for a suspense film about robbing a bank. Where "Firewall" betrays the genre is in not providing twists, originality, or an intriguing story.


As someone with an interest in computers, I was looking forward to the release of this movie for quite a while. Seeing Harrsion Ford in the cast of a movie typically guarantees at least a minimum standard of quality. I couldn't help feeling somewhat underwhelmed by it's progression.

The movie has some positive points that I should highlight first. I had hoped a movie titled "Firewall" would portray accurate use of technology where other computer genre movies such as "Hackers" missed the boat. And for the most part it does, we see VPN, unix terminals, and other real technology set up to deliver what could have been an intriguing story about a techno-heist. There are a few glaring flaws, but generally accurate enough to draw me into a believable and entertaining story.

If the movie had kept with the technology theme for the remainder of it's run, I think it could have been a hit (at least with the IT sect). But it devolves into another mindless chase movie.

If they had fixed the bugs and not applied the 'action flick' patch, this film might have staved off obsolence and had a place in the server room.


I'm very upset about the shoddy quality of this movie. It is, without a doubt, the worst that Harrison Ford has ever starred in. Every thing about it is lame, especially the premise itself. This plot (or similar) has been done so many times before that is't tiresome and boring in and of itself. There are two types of movies that I swear from this day forth I will never waste my time watching again. One is the plot where a high school or college basketball coach is enlisted to rejuvenate a losing team, and the other is one in which a CEO or other high level person has their family kidnapped for some kind of favor. We've seen all of these we need. Every subtlety and twist and trick been used, and used again, and overused, so the only possible result for a movie of this theme, if it IS released, is to be boring, predictable, and mundane, which "Firewall" achieves in spades. Please don't waste either your time of money on this disaster.


Some big spoilers coming......

Let me start with I have been a HUGE fan of Harrison Ford's most of my life but I have been dreading this one - especially after the bad Hollywood Homicide. I just never thought I would leave the theater laughing at one of his films!

I expected the usual sneering, "leave my family alone" performance and I got it, but with each film he makes he just looks worse and the acting gets just a bit hammier. There is also this plot - with holes you can drive a truck through - starting with the "mastermind" criminals. Yes, they are thorough - they staked out Harrison's house, know the family's routines, planned and executed a perfect home invasion - it's all quite smooth until....THE PHONE RINGS! No one knows what to do when the kid answers that dreaded telephone so they all flip out, point weapons and look scared. Unbelievable.

Then there is the bank heist - again these seemingly prepared criminals somehow overlooked the fact that Harrison's bank just completed a merger. Oops - the computer terminal needed to actually steal the money is now gone and housed in Wisconsin at the new bank headquarters. In true Macguyver style, Harrison still manages to steal the dough using part of a fax machine and his daughter's iPod!

The exposition in this film is so obvious - like the family dog who appears in the beginning of the film and is gone again until about 1/3 through when the mom seemingly needlessly points out the dog's special GPS tracking collar. The son tries to remove it and the mom tells him not to - even though they are held captive in their own home and I'm not sure how the dog would run away to need a GPS tracker anyway. But of course this bit of exposition sure does pay off in the end when the kidnappers take off with family in tow. Harrison overhears the dog barking during a cell phone call. Yes, these evil thugs would give a peanut butter cookie to a peanut allergic boy but they are not so heartless as to leave the family pet behind while abducting the family cross country!

So, in his desperate attempt to reclaim his family from these brutes, he breaks into the home of the secretary he had recently fired and convinces her to assist him in his quest to rescue his loved ones. Conveniently they have a laptop along for the ride and Washington State has such a strong wi-fi computer signal that they can track that GPS tracker on the dog practically to the kidnappers doorstep IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

A very physical battle ensues between 65 year old Ford and a man half his age but Indiana Jones triumphed again and his family was saved. Unfortunately Virgina Madsen is totally wasted in her follow up to Sideways and Paul Bettany puts in a pretty standard bad guy performance.

If you are a big HF fan then you need to see this but it was hard to watch him try to keep up his action hero persona as he actually stumbles and falls in some of the scenes. I am not sure if this was intended but it made me wince. I wish he could do another film like Witness and be a little more picky about the scripts he chooses.

Just my 2 cents for all that is worth!


Entirely predictable. Full of clichés. Not even one clever line to alleviate the monotony. Harrison makes another few mill. (yawn) Don't bother.

Shameless product endorsements galore.... "Buy a Dell with Windows XP, they were featured in Harrison's last crap film!!"

It's a shame to see such obvious pandering to a mass audience. The title should have given it away. Firewall? What did this movie have to do with technology? The movie was clichéd, shallow and lacking in creativity, humor or cleverness.

Characters are all one dimensional. It tries, lamely, to suck you in with slick visuals like the nice house, office, cars, etc... then delivers nothing by way of plot that you haven't seen 10,000 times before.

It's a real shame Hollywood makes crap like this so often. I know that sounds elitist, but I'm not. Hollywood keeps going for the sure bet, easy money stuff like this. No creativity whatsoever...


I like Harrison Ford. He was fun to watch as Indiana Jones and Han Solo. Even his Jack Ryan films were, for the most part, watchable. (They were certainly easier to sit through than that piece of nonsense starring Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan, that's for sure.) But as Ford ages, he really should work on playing more character roles. He's played Jack Stanfield-like roles so many times that there is nothing more or new he can bring to his performances.

He's also not the most diversely-ranged actor. He pretty much runs the gamut of emotions from highly enraged to enraged when he plays these roles, be they in "Frantic" (1998), "Patriot Games" (1992) or "Air Force One" (1997), all of which I enjoyed far more than "Firewall." Once again, Ford plays someone who has to rescue his family from danger and get the bad guys at the same time. Even ignoring the one gigantic plot hole in this film - Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) meticulously plans his dastardly deed after seemingly months of research, but then is ignorant of one incredibly crucial point - the film sputters along without much energy.

There certainly are very few thrills in this thriller. And for a thriller that is meant to be taut, this one's awfully loose and riddled with coincidences, no more so than in the climax. The manner in which Stanfield finds the bad guys is truly laughable.

Virginia Madsen got a well-deserved boost from "Sideways" (2004). And if her filmography is any indication, it seems she has attached herself to some interesting films. However, as brilliant as she was in "Sideways," she thoroughly wasted in "Firewall," serving merely as a decoration for Ford. Substitute Anne Archer from the Jack Ryan films or Wendy Crewson from "Air Force One" and you'll know what I mean.

The infuriating thing about watching "Firewall" is knowing that, considering the cast, its above-the-line costs alone were in the millions of dollars. Throw production and publicity costs in and you're talking a good fortune.

Now, just imagine how many wonderful $3-million-to-$5-million, or less, pictures could have been made instead of this rubbish.


It's remarkable that there is no end to the machinations that the old plot-driving chestnut; the kidnapped wife and/or kid(s) can put into play. Way too many filmmakers have milked this plot line (Ron Howard, Mel Gibson, Schwartzenggar) to exhaustion, since it's fresh debut in DeathWish (way back in the 1700s) and it's become the action-adventure genre's tiresome, defacto plot line: and judging from the success of these look-alike products, apparently it's the only volition straight audiences can fathom. I wish Hitchcock knew what would follow when he dreamt up this ruse for The Man who knew too Much (1934).

Now in this movie entitled "Harrison Ford Cashes a Paycheck" the actor who has played constipated tight-asses for 20 years throws another one on the fire. It seems that his only requirement for accepting a script is that his character is trying to find his family and wears a suit. Ford has a loooooooooooong, boring resume of playing dull bourgeois men who are attempting to locate their misplaced wives, or prove they didn't kill someone; Presumed Innocent, Frantic, The Fugitive, this. Occasionally when he's stretching artistically a script lets him do both! The result is he has no range and no variety. To spice things up, he's interspersed three or four Republican national defense thrillers. His emotional range is limited to 'angry' and 'slightly more angry.' Yes, we get it already Harrison, you're embarrassed over being an actor after being a construction worker.

It is now time for the makers of "Scary Movie" to make "Harrison Ford Movie" in which for two thrilling hours Ford can't find his family because they're standing directly behind him. It really should include a shot of Harrison Ford taking a dump... while wearing a suit.


As dismaying as it is disheartening, "Firewall" is one of the least original, least interesting and least necessary films I have seen in ages. This is the umpteenth version of that old chestnut about a bank executive whose family is held hostage while he is forced to assist the kidnappers in robbing the bank. However, as this is the 21st Century, the modus operandi of these criminals involves not guns and masks but coded passwords and computerized money transfers. One would have to be the biggest computer geek going to understand even half of what the characters are doing at any given time in this film, though it scarcely matters since the story itself is so distressingly hackneyed that one is already watching the screen with an eye half-cocked to one's watch anyway.

Poor Harrison Ford, looking like he hasn't slept in days (and this is BEFORE his family is kidnapped), seems to sense that he is indeed at the nadir of his career and thus turns in a performance that is so lacking in energy and interest that he seems more bored with the material than we are. Paul Bettany has some effective moments as the smarmy criminal ringleader, but none of the other actors is given even a fighting chance with this wretched excuse for a screenplay. The only truly pressing question raised by "Firewall" is why anyone even bothered to make this film in the first place.


"Firewall" puts Harrison Ford between a rock and a hard place. Here's a man who's a power-player in his field forced to sabotage his career by money-hungry men with no regard for his profession. These men wear suits and inhabit the boardrooms of the biggest studios in Hollywood. But what about the movie?

In this second-rate action flick, Ford plays computer security specialist Jack Stanfield, a loyal bank executive and serious family man who lives in a stunning house with wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and two kids. But a bigger company is about to buy out Jack's bank and, as a result, his company is under more surveillance than usual.

We learn early on that Jack's family is being watched also. The film opens nicely with footage of the Stanfield family going about their daily business  and it's footage obviously shot in secret from a distance. After the montage is over, however, the voyeuristic thrill of stalking an unwitting target is never again recaptured. Instead, we are treated to the achingly slow process of Jack being introduced to and later cornered by villain Bill Cox (Paul Bettany).

Cox is a straight-faced criminal plotting to use Jack's technological know-how to break the codes and circumvent the firewalls built to protect Landrock Pacific Bank's millions. He and a group of young gun-toting mercenaries barge into Jack's life and take the family hostage - a persuasive tactic, one would think, but it takes Jack a surprisingly long time to understand the gravity of this threat and take appropriate action.

Cox's crack team doesn't exactly have a lot of "crack" left in its whip. These amateur goons are obnoxious and bumble around not at all invested in what they're doing. Much of the movie shows them cloistered in the Stanfield household, eating food and watching TV while their prisoners wander around more or less undisturbed and certainly not imprisoned.

In fact, nobody seems to care about the situation  not the kids, not Jack, not Beth. So why should director Richard Loncraine expect us to care either? Madsen was brilliant in "Sideways," but in "Firewall" her performance is lacking. There are no hysterics, no tears and no signs of any inner emotional struggle when strangers threaten her with guns. Instead, Beth is calm, which, in the context of an action-thriller, is a counterintuitive choice for the actress to make. Nevertheless, it's Harrison Ford who seems to be making most of the bad choices these days.

As I watched Jack sit on the couch in one scene, the deep crags in his face twitching as he tries to figure out how to get out of this situation, I wondered if what I was really witnessing was the actor behind the character trying to figure out a way to get out of this movie. Ford's effort is admirable, but, unfortunately, the half-baked script and meager direction undermines any positives brought to the table.

It's a shame, too, because "Firewall" also features the talents of veterans such as Robert Forster ("Jackie Brown"), Alan Arkin ("Slums of Beverly Hills") and Robert Patrick ("Terminator 2: Judgment Day"). Mary Lynn Rajskub of "24" fame also stars, reprising her role as the only girl you can trust at the office. Stick to Jack Bauer, Mary, and I'll stick to television when I want a good thriller.

Incidentally, guess what's up next for Keifer Sutherland: action-thriller "The Sentinel," with old-timer Michael Douglas in the lead. It just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

Copyright (c) 2006 by Lauren Simpson


Computer Bank Security man Harrison Ford is stuck in an unfortunate decision as his company is about to merge with another whose boss is Robert Patrick. That unfortunate situation is a group of thuggish criminals whose leader is Paul Bettany who holds Ford's family(including wife Virginia Madsen)hostage forcing him to encrypt moneys from his bank's wealthiest clients into a Caymen account or else suffer the consequences. Ford will have to find a way to match wits with Bettany and this film shows the cat and mouse game that ensues.

Pedestrian, by-the-numbers thriller is about a predictable as they come following right in line with the same types of thrillers Hollywood churns out add nauseum. The cast doesn't have a chance to freshen not-very-ripe material. The uninspired story which tries hard to be slick, but comes off as improbable asking us to believe that Ford could be able to successfully do what he does. Madsen tries to bring life to the typical mother role she's saddled with and Ford tries to muster of his old mojo, but this film is just too ordinary. Bettany just passes time as his talent is squandered on a second-rate villain. Disappointing, unfullfilling thriller.


Harrison Ford painfully goes out of his way to be clumsy and a non-action hero throughout all but the last 5 minutes of the movie. But then he's President Ford again, dropping bad guys and saving families! Wine girl does a good job in annoying the boy kidnappers and looking like the most unmatronly Mom in any Hollywood movie of late. Paul Bettany the "bad" guy mopes about and looks like an slightly updated Anthony Michael-Hall on steroids the whole time and gives the family a series of empty threats and vicious looks. Most miscast though is the young and aloof secretary, a "Tess Trueheart," who looks like someone peed in her cornflakes in almost every scene she's in. The bank is so insecure that the bad guys slip in and out unnoticed and PC anywhere appears to work without even an installation. I don't get why the bad guys need Ford other than to act frantic and have him rescue his family for the last 80 minutes of the movie. Go rent "Blade Runner" or "Master and Commander" or even "Sideways" for better films starring the three leads. Or get drunk on wine or beer and shut the TV off after "Firewall's" opening credits and you're in for a better night. Dare I say, the worst Ford movie ever made. An F. 1 star. 4 out of 10.


This movie had all of the makings of a great movie....the beginning action pulls you in, interesting plot....you relate to Harrison Ford's character and his surroundings asap...the villains are unlikeable heavy's...then mid way through the movie, the pace of the film changes and comes across as something that seemed as though it was being added to as the movie was made..or not enough was deleted and cut out of the film...in some cases, the "Jack Ryan" and "Fugitive" resemblances start peeking in...but Harrison Ford is such a great actor,you cannot help but like his ability to play anger and frustration...and this movie plays on that... Overall, you have a good cast, a good idea on the story...but a foolish twist that only leads to a far fetched ending.... my recommendation is: worth watching one time...


Jack Stansfield (Harrison Ford), a family man who runs the computer security at a major multinational bank, finds himself having to hack his own system to help a high-tech bank robber (Paul Bettany) who has kidnapped Jack's family.

The story is rather old yet this type of movie can still make for a good popcorn film. Some action, thrills and humor with a little substance can equal a good time at the movies. However, Firewall doesn't fit this description. It is a dull, empty and generic thriller that offers very little. The first forty five minutes move very slowly and nothing really happens. The characters are all one dimensional and boring and the story is just too straightforward and unoriginal. The second half of the movie is a bit more exciting. The film even manages to produce some exciting scenes though they are few and far in between.

The only reason why this film went to theaters instead of video is because of the cast. Most of the actors give pretty good performances which saves the film from being really bad. Harrison Ford is over 60 years old yet he's still a better action star than some people in their 30s. He gives a decent performance as Jack but he doesn't really seem to be trying. Virginia Madsen plays his wife and she offers a good performance. It's easy to see why they want her in the next Indiana Jones movie. Paul Bettany plays the villain and he gives a good performance even though his character is a little weak and not very scary. The worst performance in the movie goes to Mary Lynn Rajskub who plays Janet. Her performance is really bad and she doesn't even seem to be trying. She carries the same expression and tone throughout the entire movie. It is scary that she manages to get work. The kids in the movie are okay and they are tolerable.

If you do give the movie a try, then don't take it too seriously. It is not realistic at all which is obvious but sometimes people forget that when they watch this type of movie. It is also very easy to see where things are going so if you want something that will test you, then don't watch it. They try to build up suspense with loud music but it doesn't work very well. Richard Loncraine did a good job with Wimbledon but he does a poor job here. Maybe the problem is the script which could have been written by a nine-year old. Joe Forte is a rookie writer and that's pretty obvious. He fills the script with a bunch of clichés and they're all a bit tiring and old. Honestly, Firewall isn't far from a television film and it isn't really worth watching in theaters. In the end, Firewall is just another generic thriller that's not really worth watching. Rating 3/10


The lead security specialist at a bank is forced into robbing the bank he works for: his family is held hostage and the ruthless villains threaten to kill everyone.

Now.. This could be the base for a very worthy thriller. There's been a number of films around this topic that do work out after all. All added together there are the standard parts for a thriller: a villain that wants a lot of money/power/whatever, a victim that is to help him, and a number of victims that are used to make the other victim help the villain. Then there is the bits where the villains don't get what they want and threaten some more, the bits where the unwilling working victim finds a way to work against the villain and so on.

But there you have it. All the parts, added together, make for a normal thirteen in a dozen thriller that has a number of things in it that are so damn odd that it doesn't work out. It's a shame. It wasn't played out half bad and it wasn't irritating either, but it wasn't good, it wasn't fully enjoyable.

Add to that the fact that the things they do to computers are just utterly ludicrous. I, as a software designer, cannot handle that. Not at all.

Too damn bad. 4 out of 10 standard mistakes.


FIREWALL plays out like an abbreviaton of every Harrison Ford thriller ever made. It's a criminal waste of talent, especially Virginia Madsen, Robert Patrick and Ford himself. The dialogue is hackneyed, the supporting characters are clichéd... Paul Bettany is slumming it here with a stock bad guy role. You won't believe how this movie builds him up as a super a**hole only to have absolutely no payoff! The characters are so cardboard, there's no sense of immediacy and whatever threat level it attempts to build simply flatlines. A huge step backwards for Ford, you can almost see him and the supporting cast clocking out at 5:00, cashing their checks and heading off to the fairway. A-List junk.


Don't let the somewhat all-star cast in this movie fool you into thinking it's any good. Not that it's all their fault. I believe most of the blame needs to be placed on the awful writing and directing. Not once during this movie did I feel any empathy for any of the actors and good lord the action was so predictable. The title is even unimaginative and pretty meaningless. Bettany, although great in other roles, has a hard time convincing me he could kill someone. I have a hard time believing Ford gave a crap about this movie, when he can't even convey that he cares about his wife or family. I love the line where he's trying to find his family and says "I'm going to find my dog". The humor is flat and timing is awkward.

Please don't waste your time with this horrible film.


The only thing this film had going for it was it's ability to shock me with it's incredulous dialogue, storyline and casting.

Firstly, I think casting directors aren't so concerned with reality anymore. The opportunity to have HArrison Ford on board for this vehicle was obviously paramount. I am sure that there are many 40-somthing actors who would have been better suited to this role. It is almost sad watching someone in his 60's hobbling about trying to save his family before being beaten up by someone less than half his age. Anyway, so Harrison is too old to be the father of a 7 yr old, the husband of Virginia MAsden, and the hero of this movie. If anyone really expects us to believe that he would be able to see out the heavies in the way he does, it makes you wonder what audience they are appealing to. There is no denying that Ford is a terrific actor. However the performance was on autopilot and the monotone with which his character speaks sent me to sleep on a number of occasions. Well, that and the clunky script which limped from one incredulous scene to another. There was no spark between husband and wife, and the only subtle, understated and therefore standout performance, was that of the role of Janet the secretary. Unfortunately with the dialogue these actors were given, it would have taken a miracle to pass it off as true. Bettany put in a career worse as the bad guy and his decisions to scare Harrison Ford by eliminating a few of his own gang members, thus putting Ford's character in a stronger position, almost had me laughing.

By the time the show staggered to it's predictable, banal conclusion, I was almost transfixed to the screen. Ford is so picky and methodological when picking scripts it makes you wonder how this ever appealed to him.


Propaganda is another failed attempt by Sinan Cetin to make decent, above-average movie. The experience and talent of the cast list seems to give him a head-start in Propaganda, but he squanders this credit with usual sloppiness and lack of imagination. Even so, Propaganda is not as unwatchable as his older movies.

Sinan Cetin is a spoiled, pretentious, unimaginative demagogue with no decent story-telling skills, and he generally builds his movies around empty, overly-populist, lumpen, pseudo-critiques of the 'system'. He is a consistently bad director, and his movies must be avoided at all costs.

Propaganda, fails miserably especially at the finale, where Cetin once again plays his cheap demagogical tune with a 'rally around the flag' trick with no subtlety, no wit, and certainly with no success.

To be honest, Propaganda is Cetin's best work (which is sad). So if you really need to have an idea of him, watch this one.


I am amazed at the number of things this director must have thought he could get away with. The events in the movie just cannot take place the way they are portrayed, and there are too many of them. The basic plot is an impossible one: I can understand a town being divided geographically by the new border, but not the story that some of its people would be left on the other side (and by force). The love story in the movie smells Hollywood, it just does not belong in a Southeastern Anatolian town. The ending is totally ridiculous. There are several "inside" jokes in the movie that for example a foreign spectator would not get, and their presence makes you think the director was not serious at all. The ambitious and job-conscious civil servant character is drawn in a heavy handed manner and disturbs as to the motivation of the director. Propaganda made me think that its director is a half-intellectual opportunist who has no respect for his own work. This movie is a total waste of time.


As one character says, "This sounds pretty hokey to me," which is a good description of this overlong, overwrought, pretentious diatribe on reincarnation.

This might, I say, might, have made a middling episode of a TV series like 'Tales from the Darkside' or 'Tales from the Crypt' but as a film it's far too slow and dull. Nothing really happens until the final part of the film and before that it's just talk and more talk. Nothing wrong with that but it's static and too much time is taken with endless shots of the leads looking at each other and explaining the plot.

More a drama than an actual horror film but lacking any tension or suspense. You can see the end coming from the start and it's just a matter of waiting till it happens....eventually.

The style of acting reminds me of amateur dramatics at the local Church hall, very intense and earnest but quite boring for the audience.

This type of stuff has been done far better in other films with a reincarnation theme. This is one that I don't want to come back again to watch!

Plus it also has one of the worst closing credits song I have ever heard!


Yep, here it is.. the worst movie I've ever reviewed on this site. I will give an opinion on Practical Magic one day, but not in the near future. Anyhoo, what is this film about? That my friend is a complete mystery, and not one I care to unravel. Looking at the front cover, it obviously fancies itself as a horror flick. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless the prospect of 90 minutes of boring, meaningless talk fills you with dread, in which case it is absolutely terrifying.

The plot, something about a bloke with a month to live, a promising young sculptor and his virgin girlfriend he is being forced to sacrifice is utter piffle and does not make one jot of sense. At least in most bad 'scary' movies like this, there are some cheesy special effects to laugh at or extremely fake blood and guts spilt. Not a bit of that here though.. just tedious characters flitting from one droning conversation to another, with no break for scares, killings or anything else that even resembles fun. Wait a sec.. occasionally we do get a sight of a rather loud moggy (SPOOKY!), but his role in the final production is quite arbitrarily. In fact, he looks like he has been edited in from another film.

What is the director's game here? Did he start out with a ton of gory scenes, but then cut them out because he was aiming for a PG? Could the inexplicable 18 rating this has in the UK be for that never-been-seen-before version? Who cares, the missing footage isn't really going to go down with the ones from 'The Magnificent Ambersons' in national importance. Either way, the fact remains that someone actually financed this tripe after reading the script, actors thought it was worth reciting this awful dialogue and somebody had the brains to release it on video when the negative should have been quietly thrown in a nearby dumpster. The mind boggles.

Anyway, I repeat: this is by some distance the most snoozeworthy, waste of space of a film I have seen in many a moon.. so take advantage of it's rarity by steering clear of it like a landmine on the motorway. Thank you, and good night.. 0/10 (DUH)


Echoing narration informs us about the "diabolical" new threat of voodoo on the island of "Korbai" near Haiti and a laughing, sneering midget in sunglasses cuts the head off a (real) chicken. Then Anabella (played by Julissa), a member of the International Anti-Saloon League informs some soldiers that, "Modern science has proved that alcohol is responsible for 99.2% of all the worlds sins!" She arrives on the island with others to visit her uncle Carl von Molder (Boris Karloff or his masked double).

Meanwhile, blue-faced zombies are overrunning the island. Voodoo cultists kill soldiers with a blowgun, strangulation and machete and regularly resurrect the dead with the help of the dwarf (who whips them). Rabid zombie women eat a man and one soldier adopts one as his girlfriend to scratch his back and fan him. ("Imagine a beautiful woman that can't talk. Every man's dream!") The niece has an extremely bizarre dream of her evil double suggestively sucking on a (real, live) snake before kissing her (?)

Little of this movie makes sense and the ending stinks, but it has some weird, senseless stuff to recommend. It's one of four much-hated movies Karloff did in 1968 before his death, constituting his final film work.


I Bought this film on DVD a couple of days ago not expecting much, and my intuitions were correct. Very slow with dialog that goes all over the place. We never get a grasp of where the film is taking place, who are these people and why anyone is doing what they do. Master horror icon Boris Karloff is basically exploited for name recognition (something that would happen quite frequently in the later stages of his career)and has little if anything to do. His relationship to the cult and how it evolves is never explained. The only reason I finished this sleep enhancer is the sexy dancing of Mexican actress (and exotic dancer) Yolanda Montes billed here as Tongolele. Nearly forty years old at the time it was made, Tongolele still possessed a knockout figure and sexy aura. Her two dance sequences are the only thing that will keep you awake while trying to finish off this turkey.


Just before he died Boris Karloff shot back to back footage for four poverty row horror flicks. Additional scenes were later shot in Mexico - with mostly different actors! - to bring each of them up to feature length.

This is the first and most coherent of this unfortunate quartet of pictures. It's also the dullest. Boris is a plantation owner on an island threatened by a curious voodoo cult that throws in cannibalism and snake worship with the usual business plan of raising of the dead to work in the fields.

The story is bereft of any new ideas and the phallic imagery is rather puerile. Still, we do get some lively snake dancing and the matching of the two sets of footage is not that bad, although Karloff's foreman appears in one scene with a beard and the next scene without!

If only the great man had stopped here!


"La Muerte Viviente" aka. "Isle Of The Living Dead" aka. "Snake People" of 1971, is an extremely trashy and unintentionally hilarious movie, and one of the last movies of the great horror icon Boris Karloff. I have utmost respect for director Jack Hill for movies like his great blaxploitation classic "Coffy" starring Pam Grier. "Snake People", directed by Hill and Juan Ibanez, however, is one of these movies that are so bad they're actually pretty good. I'm a big fan of trashy B-horror flicks, but the only two reasons why I enjoyed "Snake People" were Boris Karloff, who plays a rather small role in this, and the movie's unintentional fun value.

The tropical island "Korbai" is reigned by a bizarre voodoo cult. The cult's unholy priests, amongst them a creepy midget and a scary snake dancer, sacrifice beautiful local girls to their occult deity "Damballah". The girls, who volunteer as sacrifices in order to achieve eternal life, are then resurrected from the dead as mindless zombies. Determined to put an end, to these rituals, that are ignored by the local police, Captain Pierre Labesch comes to the island. He asks the islands richest landowner, Carl Van Molder (Boris Karloff) for help. In the meanwhile, Van Molder's niece, who came to the island to fight alcoholism, befriends a local police lieutenant.

As a horror movie, "Snake People " fails entirely. As an unintentional comedy, however, it is hilarious. The dialogue is extremely poor (and therefore extremely hilarious) and apart from Karloff, the acting is really bad too. The locations are amateurish, the plot has huge holes and many logical errors. While Captain Labesch, for example, is obviously French, and came to the island sent by 'the government', other law enforcement officers of this government have English names. I laughed a lot when I saw this movie the first time, and I will definitely watch it again. Don't expect any suspense, but watch this as the unintentional comedy it is and entertainment will be guaranteed. 3/10


Yes, I put poople on purpose. I will admit that I was finishing an "art" project for the first fifteen minutes or so, but even then, when I wasn't really paying attention, I could tell that this was going to be a terrible movie. First off, I'd like to say that I truly feel sorry for Boris and Bela. During their later years, not only did they do awful films, they did films that are considered the worst of all time. That's okay, though. Karloff is barely even in this shipwreck. The dubbing was terrible. I don't even think that was Karloff's real voice. Most everything else was deplorable as well, including a painfully slow pace. I will say this about the film. The odd dream sequence brings the old "Making out with oneself" gag to an entirely different level. Other than that and a few exotic dance scenes,it really has nothing going for it. I haven't been through such cinematic agony since my attempt to watch an uncut version of "Manos the Hands of Fate".


Yet another lame voodoo flick. Following the resurrection of a dead native girl, a french police officer from the mainland arrives to the island and takes an immediate disliking as to the place's condition. This is mainly pertaining to the strange rituals conducted by the natives who often sacrifice their own. Boris Karloff, in nearly his last film, plays a plantation owner who is experimenting with telekinetic manipulation and is involved in a skinny white guy and his midget friend's enslaving of native girls, via voodoo... I'm getting bored just thinking about this movie. Hell, I think that was what was going on... Maybe I missed the films point entirely. Or maybe there was no point! There was also a lot of snake fondling and a jiggly hipped belly dancer. Karloff does nothing of any great importance in here and the characters are all flat and tiring to look at after a while. Just a visually and mentally unenjoyable film.


I liked Boris Karloff in the Mummy, and Frankenstien, but like all actors reaching their peak they decide to take whatever they can give them... and this was one in which Boris took. Whether it was for money, boredom, you be the judge, but he did the movie and now I will probably be the judge of how it looks.

Visual and colorful, that's about all I liked. And the nice dancing.

But the acting is as poor as any B-movie fan or non-fan can pretty much see. Stale, plain, and unintentionally funny comedy arises from a movie that would have been better off shelved forever. There are moments that are pretty gruesome, but the midget... yes, him, is actually cute as he outshines Boris more than ever. I remembered him over Boris Karloff, and wondered why he doesn't appears for more than a few scenes. Why doesn't he? Oh well.


We start the movie off with a midget pimp in a top hat and coattails digging a hole while laughing maniacally....that was about the only good thing about the whole movie for I watched this sober and nearly fell asleep.

On an island dominated by Mexican voodoo practitioners, the local police is stumped to a recent rash of rituals and bodies showing up.

I'd love to go into detail but the idea is making my head very dizzy. Its titled Snake People but its really a weird zombie movie more than anything. It really makes no sense at all, better off watching it high or something

The highlight of the movie is the midget, haha always are funny

3 out of 10


I had a funny feeling that this film was going to be rubbish, and rather unsurprisingly; I was absolutely right. The Snake People is cheap and nasty; and not nasty in the good sense of the word, I mean nasty as in fiendishly boring and devoid of any reason for watching. The plot is highly unoriginal and focuses on something to do with voodoo and snakes. Many a good horror film has been based on a plot like this; but The Snake People makes no attempt to make the proceedings interesting, and consequently we end up with a dull, plodding film that made me wish I hadn't started watching it. Of course, the only reason this film is even remembered at all these days is down to the fact that it stars the late great Boris Karloff. Apparently, Karloff died before this was released and it's probably a good job too, as I'm sure the great horror master would not have been too fussed with how he's used here! Sometimes with crap films like this, you can expect some consolation from things like blood and nudity; but The Snake People doesn't even provide that small pittance. Overall, this is one of a (thankfully) small number of films that I really wish I hadn't bothered with - give this one a miss!


What a waste of perfectly good celluloid. There are times when I thought this was a comedy. The dwarf's scenes are really campy. I wish he had had a little more to do. Visually, it's a whole lot of silly images going nowhere. The girl is pretty in a sort of maternal way. The natives are attractive and dance well. Voodoo people are very hard on chickens, always have been. Other than finding out what is going on, we aren't very privy to what is going on. Once the young woman arrives, we know that if there is going to be a sacrifice, she's going to be it. She is disappointing in that she comes on so strong at the beginning and then lets go of her whole temperance thing. We have the buffoonish police captain whom no one takes seriously. Anyway, there are some cool snakes, a few dances, some drums. Instead of this, watch some of those old Lugosi movies and their ilk. They really created the zombie which we have grown to love.


I just recently purchased this movie Snake People, and when finished I was just as confused as at the beginning. Snakes were used for shock value, but after six or more times it sorta lost its punch. I hope poor Karloff was paid well for this gig. I can't complain too much, I got a double feature, "SABAKA" being the other, almost as bad for a buck.

The young lieutenant swaggered around with his uniform tunic unbuttoned with the supposedly spit and polish colonel never saying a word to him about it. All in all it was pretty bad,but the color was great.The dubbing was fair at best, but Karloff carried his part very well. I'm sure he was glad he could wear a mask through a lot of the movie. His role was almost comical rather than scary. I managed to sleep very well that night unlike some of his movies.


Snakes. A midget with a flower painted on his bald head. An aging Boris Karloff in full-on "Colonel Sanders" mode. An inane plot (that's neither funny nor so-bad-it's-funny) intercut with backlot, Roger Corman-style voodoo ceremony scenes. Bad dubbing trying to pull all the disparate elements together.

This South-of-the-Border horror quickie (scripted by Jack Hill, of "Spider Baby" fame) is one of two films that spliced in separately-shot footage of Karloff near the end of his life to make the lousy thing marketable. "The Snake People" is just a dull, charmlessly inept piece of junk--director Juan Ibanez makes Ed Wood look like Scorsese.


The Harley-Davidsonesque graphics on the video box are the best thing about this film. Oh - and the jiggly cut-out credits at the end of the film. You will rarely get the chance to see acting as bad as this. So slow it took me 3 days to watch all 90 minutes as there were so many more exciting things going on, like the phone ringing, dogs barking, taps dripping...


The film is almost worth it for one scene: A dead woman is to be made a zombie; the ritual goes like this: a dwarf in sunglasses and love-beads, top-hat and tux (over a tie-dye tee-shirt) whips the back of a native girl kneeling before him. She gets sexually excited (although fully dressed) and has orgasm. Then a goat is brought in. The dwarf licks the whip he has been using to beat the girl, and then he takes a tuft of goat hair and licks that. A white guy kisses the dead woman, who comes to "life". Later we find that the girl who has been whipped to death has died as a human sacrifice, although it's not clear how, since the blood on her dead face has nothing to do with the whipping. Maybe it was just the ecstasy, it was too much for her.

Oh, Boris Karloff is said to star in this film I think he's on about five minutes of film here, but I may be overestimating; there's also a Karloff stand-in who's too tall, too thin, and otherwise doesn't look anything like him.

The rest of the film just sucks.


It almost looks like Boris Karloff eventually became the embodiment of the horrific monsters he played for a period of approximately 50 years. Why? Because even for several years after his death, he kept on appearing in tiny horror productions like as if he was still amongst the living. In reality, however, these movies were completed since years already but they never got released immediately for whatever reason. In fact, Boris himself never got the see the four last films on his own repertoire ("Island of the Snake People", "Cauldron of Blood", "The Fear Chamber" and "The Incredible Invasion") and that's probably a GOOD thing, considering the quality of these films. They're all uninspired and dull films, cheaply produced with foreign money and directed without the slightest sense of professionalism. Jack Hill, creator such cool movies like "Spider Baby" and blaxploitation-classic "Foxy Brown", is credited as co-director but his influence is barely noticeable, to say the least. This movie features an incredibly overlong opening scene in which a freaky midget resurrects a dead girl from her coffin. The sacrifice of one single chicken and a crazy voodoo-dance apparently suffice for that. The only point of this intro is to make clear that the events take place on an island where the natives still practice the voodoo religion and that they're capable to do supernatural things. Boris Karloff's character is somewhat the patriarch of this island, and he certainly doesn't like it when an ambitious police lieutenant arrives to clean up the place. "Island of the Snake People" is a very slow and tame movie, despite the premise of resurrected corpses and ancient voodoo rituals. The zombies look deader than when they actually dead, so certainly don't expect any brain-devouring monsters that hunt down everything that moves. The concept is actually similar to such films as Jacques Tourneur's "I walked with a Zombie" or "White Zombie", since the living dead serve as slaves to work in the fields. Naturally this movie lacks the style and frightening atmosphere of the aforementioned titles and even the make-up effects are poorer, despite being made over 30 years later. Boris Karloff is great as always, but he can't carry the whole movie by himself. Instead of letting him run crazy snake cults, they should have allowed him to enjoy a quiet and peaceful last couple of years. Poor Boris. If it's any consolation, you'll be remembered for earlier films a lot more.


Nadja is hands-down one of the worst films I've ever had the misfortune of sitting through. The film is basically a different take on the classic vampire story. It's shot in black and white and features a contemporary soundtrack. Director Michael Almereyda obviously thought all this was very cool; but in reality it's extremely dull. The plot actually makes the film sound like it might be worth watching and focuses on Dracula's death, and the resulting plight of his dysfunctional family, who are also being hunted by Dracula's nemesis, Van Helsing. The film reminded me of something that could have been directed by Jim Jarmusch, although it's only a cheap imitation. The plot runs really slowly and it wasn't long before I was starting to get bored with it. It's all very arty, though unfortunately the artiness isn't used in the best way possible. Sure, there are a few memorable images; but not enough considering what the film was trying to achieve. The director shows his experimental side by shooting some of the film with a Fisher Price Pixelvision camera, but to me it just came off as arrogant and pointless. Overall, Nadja is a very disappointing and boring attempt at a vampire film and I'd recommend everyone avoids it.


There are some people who try to reclaim 'Nadja' - along with Abel Ferrera's 'The Addiction' the most stultifyingly pretentious film ever made, bludgeoning the audience with Wim Wenders-like globs of pseudo-philosophical gabble and supposedly 'arty' screes of visual incoherence - by suggesting it is comic. But laughing at what, exactly? Horror films? You have to know what horror films do before you can mock them, and director Almedeyra hasn't a clue. American indie films? Probably, but it replicates that mind-numbing mindset so faithfully, it forgets to be funny about it. Students, whose existential angst and elevated notions of 'beauty' find expression in My Bloody Valentine records? Definitely. Elena Lowenstein as Dracula's Daughter (and Breton's Nadja?) is so gorgeous in her designer Grim Reaper cape, she may even replace Death from 'The Seventh Seal' as my iconic nightmare of choice.


"Nadja" is a woefully pretentious music-video style gloss on the early Universal vampire films (it's even photographed in black-and-white) crossed with modern-day nihilism and a more-hip-than-thou attitude that's painful to watch. An experienced cast of indie-film veterans (including Martin Donovan and Peter Fonda) and David Lynch in the executive-producer's chair does little to help what is, at heart, a stylish yet poorly calculated gloss on an ages-old premise. The use of black-and-white film stock, combined with the utterly random inclusion of pixellated images, does nothing but accentuate "Nadja"'s shallow, showy pretentiousness.


" Derek Jarman meets David Lynch " is how presenter Bill Bailey described NADJA . If I was a presenter I would have described as a big pile of art house crap but " Derek Jarman meets David Lynch " is the same difference . I've nothing against art house horror , I thought THE ADDICTION was okay while I loved the visual style of THE KEEP but there has to be a limit and NADJA goes way beyond that limit and ends up unwatchable for those of us who aren't obsessed with pretentious nonsense

The story follows eponymous vampire Nadja who steps foot in America in a bizarre remake of DRACULA'S DAUGHTER . Everything in the narrative is sacrificed for the visual style and more often than not it's impossible to understand what the hell is going on since the picture fades to pixellated shots that are out of focus , cross fades , slow motion sound fade outs and other directorial tricks from Michael Almereyda . No doubt the director thought he was being clever but it makes the story unfathomable and isn't helped by some very poor performances indeed . It's impossible to believe that any of the cast - Including Peter Fonda - are professional actors

A very poor film that will only appeal to art house junkies and if it wasn't for the great soundtrack by Portishead , My Bloody Valentine and The Verve this steaming pile of ostentatious excrement would have received even less than three out of ten


I became interested in watching the film because David Lynch had produced it. Unfortunately, it is a terrible film, not worthy of Lynch's talents. It is an unofficial remake of the 1936 movie "Dracula's Daughter." Many scenes are mere recreations of the 1930s classic, but once the movie deviates from the older film, the story ceases to make any sense. Despite its artsy attitude, I don't think the film was trying to do or say anything meaningful. Half of the movie was shot (in b/w) with a fisher price camera, but I never understood what the director expected to get from this technique; it adds nothing to the story. In fact, these sequences are so grainy that I could not tell what was going on (what's the point of a technique that prevents the viewer from watching a film?). The movie's saving grace is Peter Fonda, who plays an updated version of Van Helsing. He is fun to watch because he is clearly enjoying himself. Sadly, it does not work as a horror film, or as a black comedy. Pretty lame effort.


Really, this is a sleeper.

I was drinking all the coffee I had in the house just to try to stay awake and it wasn't working.

This movie is bad and boring.

Many users have given the film rave reviews for its story, its look, and it philosophical script. These are likely the same people who understood and loved "Lost Highways".

You see, when Wes Craven includes a character named Van Helsing, it can be a bit of a gas. It is funny, mildly relevant, a bit respectful, and ultimately lost in the wake when the film provides some genuinely frightening moments. When this movie puts Peter Fonda on the screen as the drunken, acid-laced Van Helsing, you want to laugh. But, the movie takes itself so seriously that funny is not a viable option. And the fact is, there is not one sequence in the film that can elevate the pulse above comatose, let alone frighten.

The story is a mess. The wonderfully philosophical script may be thought provoking for some, provided they do not possess anything more than a third grade education. For those of you who were unfortunate enough to have manage you way into the fourth grade, look not to this film for intellectual stimulation. Fans of Anne Rice's vampires may not mind that the monsters are written as more fascinating than frightening. However, these vampires are just plain confusing. Is Nadja's brother a vampire? Who knows? He never drinks blood. Is Nadja's slave a vampire? Who cares, he's a compete bore.

Rarely do I feel the need to really trash a film. However, I actually bought this video based on the high ratings given by IMDB user comments, and hope that these words may save someone else the same fate.

Read a vampire story. Watch Buffy re-runs. Twiddle your thumbs and count the cracks on the wall. Do what you will, but avoid this movie.


I like a good vampire film as much, if not more so, than the next person so imagine how I felt when I had the misfortune to see this so called 'artistic' effort. Out of focus passages and pretentious dialogue doesn't make something arty, it just serves to make it so boring as to be a complete waste of film. It brings nothing new to the genre in fact it only seems to repeat the same stale old clichés that have already been done to death - I mean female vampire as lesbian seducer? Now where have I seen that before? Oh just about every vampire film since the early 1970's!

In one word - AVOID!


Did I see the same movie as the positive reviewers, below?

I didn't know a Dracula film could be this boring. I needed 10 cups of coffee just to stay awake for 90 minutes. This film makes Abel Ferrara's THE ADDICTION (1995) look like unmitigated horror classic, and that's not saying much since I almost slept through that one, too.

I can put up with a b/w film for 1994, but watching this with the pixelvision camera parts is enough to make one go blind. There's also a lot of philosophical, boring talk about the meaning of life, but do I really give a sh#t?

It meanders on and on and on...

2 out of 10


Nadja starts in New York one night as a Vampire named Nadja (Elina Lowensohn) talks to a man (Nic Ratner) in a bar & explains that she & her slave Renfield (Karl Geary) have travelled to New York from her homeland of Transylvania because her Father Count Dracula (Peter Fonda) is dead & that it is hard to find good food in New York after 10 O'Clock. Shortly after in a car Nadja drinks his blood. Meanwhile Van Helsing (Peter Fonda again) is tracking Nadja down with the intention of killing her & he enlists the help of his friend Jim (Martin Donovan) to aide him. Jim's wife Lucy (Galaxy Craze, yeah right that has to be a false name) has met Nadja & taken her back to her apartment where Nadja & Lucy engage in a bit of lesbianism & blood drinking. Van Helsing & Jim become aware that Lucy is under the control of Nadja & in another bizarre coincidence Van Helsing's Sister Cassandra (Suzy Amis) is looking after Nadja's ill Brother Edgar (Jared Harris) who Nadja intends to visit, both Van Helsing's & Jim's desperation to kill Nadja becomes even greater as the people they care for the most are in danger because of Nadja's blood drinking activities...

Written & directed by Michael Almereyda I hated just about every second of this supposed film. The script is slow & boring, nothing memorable really happens & is a bit of a chore to sit through. There are only a few character's in the film & I didn't care one bit for any of them, I've heard of minimalist but this is just ridiculous. As a whole Nadja doesn't make a lot of sense & just didn't grip, engage or entertain me in any way whatsoever. So the story & character's are crap can the film deliver in other areas, well no because Nadja is one of the worst looking films I've sat through. If black and white is your thing then fine & I have no problem watching black and white films but Nadja just looks so dark, bland & uninteresting. Then there's the shots which look like they were shot on a faulty camcorder, I'm sorry but they are incredibly annoying as the screen becomes an absolute mess of pixelation & blocks. To add insult to injury director Almereyda uses various irritating techniques to try & convince the viewer that their watching 'art' like soft focus, blurring, slow motion, shots where the background action runs at a different speed to the foreground, jerkiness, skipping frames & bizarre scene transitions. I hated how Nadja looks & was literary praying it would finish within the first 30 minutes but never let it be said I don't give a film a chance & I (just about) stuck it out to the end which was also crap. With a pretty reasonable budget of about $1,000,000 Nadja is a poor show, very few character's, no effects & a cheap feel throughout & I have to ask myself where all the money went exactly. There is no atmosphere, scares or tension & while I accept some people may like this black and white art-house nonsense I don't & that's all that matters to me, I simply cannot see how anyone could gain any sort of viewing pleasure from such a film as this & I certainly didn't. There is not one single aspect of Nadja that I can say I enjoyed apart from the central performance by Romanian actress Lowensohn who makes for a striking & seductive female Vampire. Fonda just looks stupid sporting long hair & reflective shades. Forget about any special effects or any proper blood or gore. If you like this sort of bizarre boring, black and white art-house stuff then Nadja is probably right up your street so I can recommend it to you but if your looking for a proper film with decent horror & an actual story then avoid this piece of crap like the plague, that's just my opinion & I'm sure there is an audience out there for a film like Nadja but it's not for me.


What was the purpose of this gibberish unless to aggravate all lovers of vampire film. Amateur hour performances, exhausted dialogue, totally ridiculous use of the camera, and then there was the big finale [a concoction as stale as last week's salad]. Two fangs down to this empty casket.


I love the "Masters of Horror" series and the opportunity it creates for experimental "little movies" for we who love horror and for the directors in question. This series has spawned several complaints about the "Masters" in the title. Maybe they could have chosen a better word for the world's retentive but in a society riddled with hype, I took the "Masters" with a grain of salt. I'd like to see a series of "Unknowns". I like the way different directors bring different nuances (and wild opposites)to the idea of a horror film.

Which brings me to "Fair Haired Child". I know IMDb has lifted this one above the 5.0 middle but, you know what ... it didn't work for me. I couldn't get in the saddle. I loathed "Fear.Com" because it wasted an opportunity, I own "House on Haunted Hill" because of ... the house, not the tale. For tale, I also own the original B&W. I don't mean to pound Malone because I genuinely believe something is stirring there and maybe his "Parasomnia" will let it loose. I felt "FHC" tried to insert "art" into the movie. Horror films can go "art" but it is a syncronicity or "aftermath". Do the horror first. Time and audience (not critics)will determine if a horror film made the "art" level. It's a wobbly distinction at best. Trying to force it into a film is nearly a warranty that it ain't gonna happen. It's an afterward, not a strategy. Unless, of course, you genuinely are a "master" of horror. There aren't many. After riding the clichéd story to the revelation of the FHC, I said aloud "Oh, &*^%" because it was just a tremendous letdown. So, so buildup and way the wrong direction for FHC. All the above with a very pedestrian wrap up ... I wanted to but just couldn't.


This film was not scary or creepy. It was a pathetic version of "chuckie", yet shorter. If you are looking for a decent horror movie, your not in the right area.It was an alright episode, but not if your looking for scary. It was unrealistic, more supernatural. Also quite bad acting if i must say. I would recommend, 'The haunting in Kenetticut'. Its scary, mind-controlling. It is far more advanced then this excuse of a horror. I watched it with a group of friend, you'll be looking round corners, closing curtains and leaving lights on. I leaves you with nightmares. I really think you should consider this as an alternative.


C'mon people, i really don¡t understand why some of you says that this is a good movie. Trust me, i have seen a lot of horror movies, and this is one of the worst, not the WORST (beacause "The Brink" wons that tittle years ago) but this is on my top 10 of bad-bad horror movies of all the time.

Bad Effects. Bad History. No blood. No gore. No Horror.

and ... this is a horror movie right?

So, please people. Don't See this movie. Its Crap, like a millions other. Just don't waste your time in this, save your money, or whatever.


Not worthy of any more than one star didn't like it never will and I can't see why anyone would enjoy this movie. anyone out there who hasn't seen it i recommend you do that way if you ever see another bad movie you can say "hey at least it wasn't as bad as the fair haired child" It's worse than that movie Darkness I saw with that girl who played rogue from x-men god that movie was almost as bad as this one. I'm hungry I think I'm gonna make a pizza. Shoot all out OK well Grilled cheese should do me. Ow silly me I'm still typing. Well ya so I spoke my mind and it's up to you the people if you want to listen to my negative criticism. Go on now.


This was simply awful. The production values were fresh out of 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'. The casting of an aging Linda Purl with young children was ill-advised. The dialog was contrived and the story itself had too many lapses in logic.

What were these writers trying to convey? There is the environmental angle. There is the heartless hospital administrator. There is the greedy capitalist willing to risk lives for money. There is the ringing endorsement for organ donation. There is the dedicated doctor trading patient billing for patient care, ala HMOs. There is the clueless and narcissistic TV journalist. Oh, I forgot, the rock climbing young GIRL (we must erase the stereotype of the weak female).

Please avoid this movie, it's awful.


There are a few positive elements to mention here... Nicole Paggi is completely hot. Nicole Paggi and Myles Jeffrey play brother and sister, and in real life they look alike enough to make playing brother and sister seem fairly realistic. Last, the older actors do a very good job with what they have to work with.

Unfortunately, there are many negative aspects to mention. Very poor production values -- the special effects and the hospital ER/operating room sets were very weak. The editing was poor. At times there is a lack of continuity between cuts.

Myles Jeffrey can't act yet, and his eye movements during times when other actors are feeding him lines are distracting.

There is a Georgia accent, a Long Island accent, a Left Coast accent... but no Vermont accents.

The story and plot come with more holes than Swiss cheese. Annoyingly, each of the many brief periods of hail falling is paired with a character spontaneously confessing some deep dark secret to whoever is near. Hail attack / confession, hail attack / confession, repeat five or six times, etc.

Watch this expecting it to be a small town high school play production, and you might not seem all that bad.


Well, if you have nothing yo do... you can rent this movie and watch it for fun. This movie is one of those movies that we heard in jokes, it's so bad that in the end is funny. The "special effects" are not what they called, the story is too predictable and the actors... well, you may see it. I saw this movie in video club, I rented and my first thought was: "oh, this must be a special edition in DVD of an old movie" and then you check the box of it and it says that this movie was made in 2003. If you see the clothes, cars and the TERRIBLE (in both senses) snow that seems more like spheres made of paper; you think that if I were the director I'd prefer to do no movie, instead of make this thing. But after all, I must admit it, I have a lot of fun watching it, I suggest that the genre Comedy appears on this screen.


"Frozen Impact" is typical of many TV movies that deal with the weather. It is a safe film for the family, which is quite an accomplishment these days, but it lacks in other areas. It has the typical plot of a family juggling work, health, and relationship concerns while a fierce hail storm named "Medusa" rolls through town. The hail storm is way overdone, as baseball sized hailstones fall intermittenly on a town in Vermont. The hail is unrealistic. Though the main focus of the movie is the weather, there doesn't seem to be much knowledge about how the weather works among the producers, directors, and writers of this film. I ended up losing patience with the film. But for those eternal optimists, there is a happy ending. I rate this movie 2 out of 10.


This film really misses the mark on most fronts. The accents are laughably weak, the acting amateurish and the comedy weak at best.

They've got a great idea, it could have been particularly enjoyable but for the reasons mentioned above.

The writer seems to think by putting the word f*ck into every sentence it'll make it funnier and the main character just seems to try a little too hard. He's no Brick top thats for sure.

Next time at least get a cast that can keep the accent for the whole film.

It's a crime to compare this to films like The Business, Lock Stock and Snatch.


I've sat through less painful operations than the time I spent watching this film.

If you give it a try thinking it's going to be something in the vein of a Guy Ritchie flick.....Think again! The production, dialogue, acting, script , film work and plot were about the worst I've ever seen in a film. My fave part in all honesty was the closing credits. In all the history of cinema has there never been a better excuse for turning off the TV and going out and doing something better with your life.

Have root canal work done rather than wasting your time and money on this!


The film moves along quite well but the acting, direction and editing leave a lot to be desired. The characters are mostly lifted from other films and the Vinnie Jones lookalike is straight out of Gone in 50 Seconds. The comedy gangster movie is a genre that should have lots of contrast, the stupid dealers in Lock Stock and the shoot out that leaves everyone dead. You should never really know whether to laugh or just sit there in shock. This movie had the right elements but it is too easy to sit there like a person knitting and tut at the small details that should have been fixed somewhere along the line and once belief has been unsuspended one just become increasingly critical. A pity cos it was a brave attempt and although Clint Eastwood is famous for saying that'll be OK for a scene, he puts the work in before he shoots and he is Clint Eastwood. Here a bit more imagination with the camera and and a bit more coaching and rehearsal for the delivery of the lines would have made a big difference.


Words almost fail me to describe how terrible this Irish vanity project (funded by Canadian taxpayers - both federal and Albertan) really is.

There's a sudden appearance by a nice looking Canadian woman (Kathy Ranheim) who in real life was a star athlete in Alberta, for no other reason to ensure Canadian content. Credits also indicate that certain Calgary pubs were of assistance.

Everything here is poorly filmed and at least third-hand (chunks of poorly digested Trainspotting, Lock Stock, Snatch and Reservoir Dogs are the most obvious steals). Avoid like the plague unless you fancy one of those campy "so bad it's almost funny" nights in front of your telly.


The Lion King is a great film and the whole family was keen when I rented Simba's Pride. We thought this could match the first. But we were wrong. The story was so predictable and instead of develop the father-daughter concept the crew choose to develop the dull and typical authority father - rebel teen thing. Simba character was completely changed. Nala's too. Simba was carefree, funny, spirited, gentle and was changed into a mean and authority dictator who does not know anything about love. Nala was strong, disobedient, loyal, provocative and was changed into the typical quiet, calm mother who is blindly loyal to her husband and doesn't say nothing at all. Her character is useless in the film. Their love doesn't exist. Their daughter is stupid, spoiled and just cares about herself. Her love scenes with that idiot are just a cheap copy of her parents beautiful and innocent love scenes from the first film. The design and sets are so poor. Nala seems to be wearing contacts and Simba turned fat and orange. Timon and Pumbaa are not funny in this. Some actors had been replaced. The soundtrack is awful (Hans Zimmer is not in this) and the songs are just a copy of the ones from the previous film. And bad copy! (Elton and Tim are missing too). The whole story is just a bad try to imitate the first one. There is a fire, a big fight at the end, a stampede, same dialog, same scenes, even Kiara saying "Ewwww gross!" to grubs just like Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Some aspects aren't clarified and I hope they don't make a follow-up to this with the stupid Kiara who disrespects her own parents and don't has punishment. This film is pathetic and a way of stealing money from Disney fans pockets and just a waste of time. Disney should be ashamed.


I saw this movie for about one month ago, and i thought it was the worst rubbish i've ever seen. If you it compare with the masterpiece "The lion king" this movie isn't eaven worth to be called a follow up. I want to believe that this is different movie, which has nothing to do with the first.In my opinion the film was probably made because of money, nothing else.The kids like it perhaps, because they often like all kind of cartoons, either it is rubbish or not. The story is almost the same.Bad music and boring. Maybe some funny jokes, but that's all.


It seems to be the case these days that successful movies require a sequel. Unfortunately, the sequel is never as good, and quite often spoils the original to an extent. This is better than some sequels, but it just can't compare to the original. The biggest problem is the songs: unlike the original, they seem unnecessary, detracting rather than enhancing the film; every song they played, I was just waiting for it to finish. The only point of the songs in this one is to emphasise a point and there were far too many. Another surprise for me was hearing of Simba's daughter; I seem to recall him having a son at the end of the Lion King I, based on the assumption that 'he' was gold and all the lionesses were brown.

Pumbaa and Timon were fooled too! This is not so bad as it allows for a different plot from the first.

Another matter I can't understand is, where did the outlanders come from? In the LK1, Scar was certainly alone with only the hyenas to support him; if the outlanders had existed then, wouldn't they have helped him too? I guess they needed new characters to liven things up, and true, they did generate some interest. The plot was OK, I suppose. But I've no great desire to watch it again. 4/10


Here we go again. Just as it happened with Aladdin, the Disney studios has taken advantage of the massive box-office appeal of one of their feature length animated films. And just as it happened with Aladdin, it is awful and a downright waste of time. If you want to be reunited with Simba and the others, buy the original.


I didn't like it but it's a good kids movie and you can buy it for like a 1.50 (VHS) off ebay, so it'd be worth it. It has some pretty cool people in it: Neve Campbell, Matthew Broderick, and Andy Dick. So anyway, Simba and Nala kind of take over from their parents and Simba's really proud. The same basic characters as in the first one are in it, like Timon and Pumpa. There's still lots of conflict like Simba's daughter gets into trouble and stuff. It's all much better to watch when you're a kid, though. I think it's worth 1.50 and no more but I'm kids and some other people would actually like it. It's just that I love the first one so much that this one just doesn't compare at all. It also doesn't have the same emotional feel that the first had (with the father dying and such). The first one always made me cry even when I was older plus the music and visuals were cool so it made it a really good film but this one isn't. I just wish they hadn't made a sequel. There are so many movies out there that really shouldn't have had sequels, cause they were bad, same case as Aladdin.


The straight to video sequel is pretty good in the story department, it is just some of the script that could have been a bit better. Simba (Matthew Broderick, again) is now The Lion King and has wife Nala and a new daughter Kiara to be Queen, she is voiced by Scream's Neve Campbell when she is older. Basically while exploring the kingdom with Timon (Nathan Lane, again) and Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella, again) she meets Kovu, a lion from the bad part of the kingdom. Unfortunately they fall in love, this is bad for both Simba and the villain who has taken over from Scar, Zira (Suzanne Pleshette). Also starring James Earl Jones as Mufasa, again. The people missing are Rowan Atkinson as Zazu and Whoopi Goldberg as the female hyena. Adequate!


I only watched Lion King II because I taped it from TV. I watched it twice and still wondering if it's made by the same group that did the first movie.

It's quite a disappointment. The characters are not interesting any more. Their facial expression has too many changes in one second it's not natural. And I'm hoping it's just me, I found Kiara very annoying, probably because of her sometimes-nasal voice (that always gives me a fake-cry impression). Besides, unlike Simba, she wasn't given the chance to mature. She was the same spoiled little girl from the beginning to end. It's a good thing they want to have a princess instead of a prince, but it's easy to tell the plot is still highly underneath Kovu. It's strange to talk about character chemistry in an animated movie, but I found Lion King II lack the kind of chemistry the first one had. Probably the director's fault.

The plot did mature a lot, though. During a great length of the movie I thought Zira was to live. She's not really a villain, just some poor old thing stuck in the thoughts of revenge for too long. But I guess little kids won't understand it that way, so Kira dies at the end. Given a plot like this, it's pretty hard to screw up the characters due to lack of complicity, but they did.


My favourite part of this sequel is when Kiara & Kovu are playing together. Imagine my dismay when their cruel parents separated them. If that wasn't bad enough, suddenly they're grown up and have lost all their charm & personality. The rest of the film seems like a rehash of Lion King & Pocahontas. Apart from "He Lives In You", the soundtrack is terrible. I missed the hyenas. Kovu's siblings weren't half as funny. Zazu wasn't funny at all. I hated Simba. Whenever Disney characters reach adulthood these days they become either obnoxious or just plain boring. (In older films like Bambi & The Fox & the Hound they're not only young for longer, they also grow up to be likeable.) Disney are losing their magic touch. 4/10


**SPOILERS** Highly confusing and extremely muddled made for TV suspense/thriller that has two stories that come across as if they were two independent films playing together on the same screen at the same time.

The movie "A Kiss so Deadly"starts off with Catherine Deese, Dedee Pfeiffer, and her collage room-mate Amanda Blake, Charlotte Ross, leaving a party late one night. Walking to Amanda's car their followed by this creepy-looking guy Yule Werb, Scott Simpson. The two girls later realize that their being followed by car and lose Yule in traffic.

As were readying ourselves to see a movie about a crazed stalker on the looses all of a sudden the movie changes course with Catherine's father Tom, Charles Shaughnessy, popping up in her apartment the next day. Tom become smitten with her sexy and experienced room-mate Amanda, the poor man's hooked as soon as he laid eyes on her.

Going to the Marlin Bay Club the next evening with some of his friends Tom spots Amanda there as a waitress and you can see that he's addicted to her and that he'll end up going down the tubes if he continues to try to get it on with Amanda. We have both Tom and the creepy Yule compete to who's the sleaziest one of all in the movie. With Yule slinking around the white sands beach, dressed all in black, and Catherine's apartment watching the girls, Catherine and her two room-mates Amanda and June(Noelle Parker),with binoculars and taking their pictures. At the same time Tom is making a complete fool of himself trying to get into Amanda's, after having a one-night fling with him, pants as well as taking advantage of poor and introverted June; this after Amanda was no longer available to him.

You first get the impression that Yule has something to do with Tom and their acting, secretly, as some kind of tag-team of sleaze-balls and later feel that there's a falling out between the two. With Yule blackmailing Tom since he has the most to loose between the two, his wife Patty, Kerrie Kane, and his textile business.

We also get confused signals to just what happened to Amanda when she's later murdered in her parked car outside the Marlin Bay Club. Since just the scene before she was waiting for a male friend, the bartender and bouncer in the club, to walk her to her car because Yule was there and eying her. You figured that she must have been with the bartender, off camera when she walked to her car? Why then go by herself when Amanda was so terrified to leave the club with Yule snooping around outside?

The movie gets even more confusing when the off-the-wall Yule after threatening Tom, by phone, at the textile factory is later shot to death by the police as they catch him trying to break into the Deese's house. The film tries to put everything together at the end but falls sadly apart with the killer exposing himself with nobody watching really caring who he is by then. The Killer Insainly induces himself to get shot by the cops, suicide by police, as he pulls out what looks like a cap-pistol that he must have gotten as a prize out of a Cracker-Jack box.

"A Kiss so Deadly" is only worth your time watching it because it's just too bad to be true and at the same time too good for bad-movie fans, in a cheesy and unintentionally funny sort of way, to be bad.


My room mate and I ended watching this movie by accident and right off the bat, we thought that we were in for a good time. The music swelled and the mood was set for a scary movie. Unfortunately, we were so put off by the thought of sleeping with each others' father that we were slightly disturbed and nothing happened to keep up the scary pretenses. The plot seemed to take unnecessary twists at the end and the 'steamy love scenes' weren't as much steamy as ridiculous. The lead actors and actresses do a good job at holding up the absurd plot line, but the supporting actors need to pull their own weight as well. This is a good movie if you want to laugh your butt off at the dialogue and plot, but if you are looking for a 'thriller' you need to avoid this film, for it will not fulfill your requirements whatsoever: the only thrills in this movie are sexual ones, and even they aren't that thrilling, just sick and twisted.