Yeah when I first saw the commercials for this movie I was like. Oh God this movie will be boring. I was right. It starts out with four college students. (All who look like they are in there late 20's) driving down the road obviously fast forwarded listening to awful music. They break into a park and run over a baby bear. Soon they are followed by its mother. Every time she kills someone animated blots of blood splatter. And I don't even want to comment on the car which over heats, flips, and amazingly enough still runs.

The acting was so bad I rooted for the bear the entire time. I can't even believe that they made and aired this junk.

Rating 1 out of 10


Saw this on cable and the information page said something about a "mutant bear", so immediately I knew I had to watch it. Turns out, no mutants, no over the top insane events, just a disappointing movie.

Featured and filmed in Manitoba, Canada (the scenery might be the best part of the film), four kids out of high school live it up as they go joyriding in the wilderness. When they run over a bear cub, things get hairy, as mama bear wants revenge! And of course, they HAVE to run into all sorts of additional car troubles and other hand-wringing episodes.

Overall, a trashy movie with terrible acting. Worth watching if you find bad movies hilarious. Kate Todd, young notable Canadian actor, is the only character that stands out...and only for her looks.


On behalf of all people in Manitoba, I would like to apologize for this film! Maybe it was a tax right off for someone.....someone forgot to tell the director/actors that it was not supposed to be a comedy..... somehow someway some film student (who obviously failed horribly) got his "final exam" on the TV by accident...I don't know.

Manitoba has a thriving movie industry - though you would never know it from watching this 90 minute waste of time. Please excuse us for putting out this trash (Kate Todd is pretty cute though!).

I started watching this horrible movie because it was so bad it made me laugh. Then I looked at the license plate and said "hey, the movie was made in Manitoba". According to the credits the movie was made is a local park 5 minutes outside the city. One person said it looked like it was all filmed within a 50ft radius.....close - probably more like 2KM.

There is not enough space here to write everything that is wrong with this film. I'll instead close by writing everything that is good about this film........

Thankfully it didn't waste any more of our lives then 90 minutes.


...make sure you don't kill any bear cubs. That's right. Grizzly Rage is the tale of a group of teenagers who embark upon one of those supremely misguided road-trips, and, for whatever reason, decide to trespass into a wooded quarry, and cheese off a local grizzly bear. What follows is the loosest collection of cobbled-together events I've seen attempting to pass as a film.

What little plot exists is just awfully paced. Within the first quarter of an hour, they get lost, attacked, and one of the happy-go-lucky teens dies. Which really leaves me wondering what the other seventy-five minutes of my life is going to spent watching. After that, we're presented with various pointless scenes of the actors pushing their car up a hill, or walking around in the same damn empty hut for at least ten minutes, all without dialogue. These people also sustain some incredible injuries, such as falling on a bear trap, which are quickly ignored when things need to move on. This also allows a character to run a considerable distance on what appears to be a broken leg.

The main star, the bear, is obviously appearing either from stock-footage, or a stage-hand wearing bear gloves. Watch out for the point where the guy is literally dragged by his feet back to be attacked some more. I can't go on anymore, this film is just so bad. It is redeemed by the fact that you may find some solace in ripping your teeth into the many, many flaws you will no doubt find. But even then, I predict even that fun would be drained by the terrible ending. Literally, they all die, and then the credits roll.


This movie is brutal from start to finish. Obviously the writer/director don't necessarily believe in the old adage of "anything worth doing is worth doing well". The director has no knowledge of bear behavior or safety. Which you should have if your going to make a movie with a bear. First of all you cant just hide around a tree/corner from a bear, cause bear's have a keen sense of smell. Second, the amplified bear sounds and the shots of the bear at least initially were horrible. The night scenes...you cant hardly see anything, not to mention some of the other camera work. And the ending is brutal...well why would it be any different than the rest of the movie. I cant believe that this movie made it past the editing phase.


I don't get what everyone is complaining about. This flick has something for everyone: cute, sweet blond chick (Kate Todd) for the guys; undressed male hunk (Tyler Hoechlin) for the girls; grizzly wins (for the tree huggers); and a really, really stupid bunch of characters (not the cast) for Darwin!

It starts with four new high school grads, one maybe the valedictorian, who set out on a summer excursion, but change their planned destination by a vote of three to one. We start thinking maybe this is going to be a parody on blond jokes since the sweetie is the only one for sticking to the plan.

But no, off they go to break into a restricted area. Then racing down an unfamiliar curvy, dirt road at 60 mph, the driver hits a bear cub and rams a tree, sticking a limb trough the radiator. Gosh, no water and momma bear is ticked.

Two of the crew get busted up by the bear while trying to find water, the initial driver terminally, and the other three scarper in the truck (apparently the radiator is self healing). Then the injured mate (ah, los amigos... is this LA or Manitoba?) decides they can't leave their dead buddy and wrestles with the driver until they wreck.

The driver then starts on a 20 klick run (in flip-flops no less) for help, but momma bear has him for porridge. After several other unbelievable misadventures the girl and the male stripper trap the bear in a building and stand around congratulating themselves (the innate blondness finally comes through), until the bear breaks down the door and comes out to eat them.

Darwin rules!


I started to watch Grizzly Rage (titled Off Road in TV guide) on TV last night but it was so bad I had to turn it off after 30 minutes. The plot was paper thin, the characters unbelievable. Four graduates head "off road" and kill a bear cub in a restricted area. When the mother bear begins to stalk them, they start doing the dumbest things - (1) two of them head off in different directions - alone! - to look for water for their overheated vehicle engine (2) with one guy already killed by the bear, a second guy goes wacky inside the car and causes the driver to go over an embankment! It's just the type of movie that gives Canadian films a bad reputation...


WOW! This movie is absolutely terrible; the directors took a dumpy, low-budget film WAY too seriously. I mean, c'mon, with all the misplaced CGI blood, horrible acting (the best performance came from the bear) and continuity errors, you'd swear this was done to give you a good laugh...

Mind you, I did miss the very start of the movie, however once I was involved, I also took notes of things throughout the movie (mainly pertaining to survival given the circumstances) and figured I may as well post them. I'll leave out any that have already been covered.

(to be continued below)


A woeful script - if indeed there was one - combined with the worst comedy-special-effects known to mankind, make this film possibly the worst I've ever seen. And I've seen a few ...

The long list of credits disproves my theory that it was in fact, concocted over a drunken weekend by a bunch of bored, penniless students. What exactly did all those people contribute to this 'movie'? I refuse to believe there was a script, a director, or a budget. I could find enough rubbish under my bed to accurately re-create the 'special effects'. The location appears to be a garbage tip in a wood, and the entire film was shot within a radius of about 50 feet.

All this, and a plot based on the premise that the victims all choose to run around in the open to escape the wooden bear, rather than take refuge on the first floor of the empty house.

Some of the camera shots are actually quite artistic - possibly evidence that they could only afford to hire a professional for one hour. I feel sorry for the young actors, who have probably had their careers set back 20 years. Some may say that's no bad thing, but I think there is a glimmer of talent there, particularly in Kate Todd.

One only hopes they are able to look back and laugh at this in 20 years' time.


This film is about when 4 teens (Wes, Shaun, Ritch and Lauren) go wild after they graduate from high school, brake into private property, and kill a grizzly cub whose mother goes on rage to kill them. The film includes bad actors, goofs, and the toxic junk shouldn't even be in it. I gave it two because I gave it a little credit and at least all the bad actors died! I wish I could go back in time and never watched this rip-off. I mean, bears don't live in that territory, 3 branches will not hold a car, and fake blood splatters isn't going to make it better. Plus, at least a woman got a contraption in her back for bad acting! Plus, this is the first movie I've seen that before the credits, it says the title again. My rating: D- So don't waste your life on this junk like I did, it is also possibly the top ten boringest film I have ever seen! Plus, the dialog is boring and pointless. Don't watch this boring junk.


First a Grizzly as large as the one in this film would need a large hunting ground but yet seemed to be in a fairly small one around a blocked of toxic waste dump and has never been noticed by anyone . Second is the waste dump it self why so many shots of it when they never bothered to say why, was it the reason the bear was so aggressive/seemingly intelligent, was the bear put there to guard the dump, where did the dump come from, why has it not affected the trees and ground water to get noticed by rangers and or nearby communities as from the rusty barrels it has been there for many years. Intelligence on the people, a tire iron is not going to do much against a adult bear, going off alone over and over when as a group they would stand a better chance, not trying to make weapons such as spears at nigh they sit around 2 flash lights instead of building a large a fire as they can for light to give warning of the bear but also to use as protection not to mention to maybe signal someone that at least they were in a no trespassing area to get rangers interested. The cabin seemed to be set up as a defensible position but they don't use it or get any of the weapons from it, also who built it when and what happened to them and when, as recent chicken remains are shown but the cabin it self look long deserted. They trap the bear in the barn but they already see it is getting lose but they just walk away with out trying to reinforce the trap or kill the bear that escapes and kills them leaving no one left alive. Alas your left just siting there going what just happened and why did a watch this.


I watched this because I had a free movie pass. Even for free I felt cheated by this lousy excuse for a scary movie. The bear is the best actor in the film and there are not any decent gore shots. The dialogue is dumb and the story line is pretty unbelievable. I don't know if this is going to be on SciFi (like all sucky movies are) but don't watch it unless you are uber bored. I can usually sit through some pretty inane movies but this one was really bad. The ending is probably the biggest losing part of the story. You have been warned. I just hope others don't waste their time like I did on this piece of crap. I probably shouldn't blame the actors. This kinda reminded me of one of those "revenge of the ..." movies that got popular back in the 80's and that we all overdosed on.


Why should detritus like this have to have so many lines to get a review on IMDb? Other reviewers voted for the bear, I was hoping my liver would leap out of my body and thrust itself down my throat cutting off oxygen to my lungs and hence my brain. This was wrong not on "so many levels" but on all levels. This movie as far as I could bear (pun intended) to watch it stank. OK, let's start. One girl going off with three guys? not nice... Maybe if they'ld been Church-going types. Even then it's wrong. (Is this actually what the USA is like?) Moving on, they fool around in their 4wd kill a bear cub and then get hunted by the oh so predictable toxically challenged bear mom. The formulaic crash later sees them looking to repair that steamy thing at the front of the car. Not only do they bring a cooler full of empty "evian" bottles, but they don't seem to realize a 4wd means four-wheel-drive, so the "dude, our tyres spinning" line makes the idiots look like they belong in kindergarten, as they and the "people" who made this do. The bear was laughable, no, that's not true, I cried it was that bad. Did the director, producer etc put their names at the start of this? I can't remember. I'm betting they only put it at the end knowing only teenagers intent on scoring might make it to the cringing finish (sorry teenagers, but hey, if it gets you where you're going who cares! right!).

Finally, even the scenery was lame.


The movie seems to start out with the makings of a good Sci-Fi Channel creature flick - average acting, questionable plot, teenagers in the middle of nowhere, and a mutant bear. How did it go so wrong? (I mean that seriously.)

I am of the persuasion that if you don't want to see a bad movie, you would not be watching (or even looking up) a movie with "Grizzly" in the title. Hence it is not fair to hold the movie's own lousiness against it - you should have known that, expected that, and indeed -hoped- for that going in. So disregard anyone giving this movie a 1 right off the bat - if you were looking for a masterpiece, and picked this to watch, you aren't too bright yourself.

But here's a review for the -rest- of the crowd, people who wanted something crummy, low-budget, with mediocre acting and bad special effects - something comparable to all the other Sci-Fi channel movies. I -love- those movies, and appreciate the fact that their crumminess is part of their charm. But I think what the writers here failed to realize is that there's a difference between eating a delicious steak a few bites at a time, and having 72 ounces crammed down your throat at once. (Maybe comparing a delicious steak to a movie's crumminess isn't the best metaphor, but it's the best I could come up with). The point is there's just too much awfulness to take in, and it's just unpleasant.

The first maybe 30 minutes or so are actually pretty decent, but after that the movie just sort of meanders around and nothing happens (I don't mean in terms of plot - no plot is fine, but no action? Come on.) In hindsight, I should have expected this - after all, how much can really happen between 4 teens and a bear? So although special effects, acting, etc are more or less on par with other Sci-Fi Channel movies, this movie fails in the one place a lousy movie never should - it fails to entertain. And without any entertainment value, all the other weaknesses begin to shine through, and you realize just how bad it really is.

So - I'd recommend pretty much anything else. If you have your heart set on the bears-attack genre, "Grizzly Park" was not too bad. If you want a decent Sci-Fi Channel movie, "Aztec Rex" was pretty awesome. If all else fails, I guess watch this, but maybe consider doing your taxes during the middle hour to throw in some excitement.


I desperately try to not watch one single David DeCoteau movie every year, yet for some reason I always seem to end up watching one of them every single year. This has been going on for some years now. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

So what about GRIZZLY RAGE? Well, the bear was good, wasn't he? The bear was a beautiful specimen. The bear was nice. Watch him roar. Watch him run. Watch him do not much else, really. I have no idea where DeCoteau got the bear footage from, as it was obviously shot on another day, somewhere else and with none of the actors & crew around. That's called stock footage. And if not, then it's lousy film-making.

Once again, DeCoteau manages to poop out a movie that has absolutely nothing to offer. He gives us nothing but endlessly padded scenes with no content. Not a single remotely interesting thing is going on in this movie. Three guys and one girl in some woods with a bear out for revenge after them. Seriously, the bear wants revenge. Get even. Up close and personal. Why? Because the youngsters killed Mommy Bear's Baby Bear in a hit-and-run accident. And since Mommy Bear is a law-abiding specimen, she wants justice. So, in a way, this film is like DEATHWISH set in some forest and with a bear replacing Charles Bronson.

It might also be a spin on THE TOXIC AVENGER, as the bear apparently had been drinking water polluted by toxic waste. However, that part of the plot was completely lost on me, until I read about it in another user-comment on here. It made me remember there were indeed a few barrels of toxic waste in some shots. I think this film made me very stupid all of the sudden, because I completely failed to link those toxic waste barrels to the bear. And it didn't help things that the bear just looks plain normal. It's a big one. And a beautiful one. Yes. But normal and furry. No Mutant Bear Avenger. I want to re-watch PROPHECY now.

What about the killings? Well, we sometimes see a fake bear's claw hitting nothing but thin air really. And then an actor flies through the air. Then cut back to the bear going "rooaaarrr" and some CGI blood splatters on the camera-lens, and... that's it, basically. This stunt gets repeated a couple of times. Oh yes, something else: I wanted to see a crappy CGI bear and I didn't get any. Color me disappointed.

Another funny thing. Why on earth did that one actor have to run around through the woods at night in his underwear? Was it because he felt like Tarzan? Or did he feel like going back to nature to go barbaric on the bear's ass? No, of course not. He was starring in a David DeCoteau movie, and that requires any hot-looking male actor to take his cloths off at some point. He ran around in his underwear, climbed up a tree and just sat there for a while. Really a profound sequence that was.

What? There's no boobs in this movie? Now I'm getting mad.

Forgive me if I'm not even going into the movie's plot or other details. Other people have given it their best shot already on here. But I'd like to share one more thought about this film that involves a truly puzzling aspect. Have you ever noticed in certain movies (especially cheap B-horror movies) whenever there's supposed to be a storm going on outside, those light-guys are just a tad bit too eager to push the buttons on their strobe lighting effects? A 5-minutes-long scene might have for instance like 20 lightning flashes in it. While in real life, you're even lucky if you catch about two lightning flashes during a whole rainy night. Now DeCoteau really goes way beyond this. Not just a few steps too far, but so ridiculously beyond this, that he's just gone. The last 30 minutes or so of GRIZZLY RAGE take place at night, during a storm (they actually didn't have the budget to produce rain effects either, but whatever). Now, about every 3-5 seconds, those lightning strobe-effects come on. For about 30 minutes straight, relentless and persistent. You'll be flashed out of your mind, I tell you. Seriously, I'm pretty sure DeCoteau was not at all simulating a nightly storm. I'm convinced he wanted to show audiences he had a stroboscope on the set by simply making it part of the scenery. Part of the story even. Like, "Hey look, there's pulsating lights in the woods. They just grow there. Ain't that cool?".

Some movies just eat the cake, and GRIZZLY RAGE is one of them. Now, I could swear I will never watch a David DeCoteau movie again in my entire life. But chances are if someone would throw DEMON SPEED or LEECHES! at me, I'd just pop it in and watch it anyway. But not this year, I guarantee you. Next year, maybe.


this is by far THE WORST movie i have ever seen ... it is so bad ... the bear is completely horrendous ... the acting is worse than an elementary school play ... i almost vomited at the dialogue .... oh my god it was so bad i even called the company who made it and told them how bad it was ...the only 2 hours of my life i truly regret ... no one should ever watch this pile of trash.. was this a horror or a real bad comedy ... what was the story ... a bear cub gets killed and its mother takes revenge on the teens who killed it ..... who wrote that ... a bunch of monkeys on meth .... i and my wife have never and will never see such an empty abismul movie again .... time to give the raspberry of the century award to this waste of time. i have no more to say .... bring on grizzly rage 2 .... NOT ... lmao


Grizzly Rage starts as four young high school friends Lauren (Kate Todd), Wes (Tyler Hoechlin), Sean (Graham Kosakoski) & Rich (Brody harms) embark on a celebratory 4x4 off road drive through some woods but decide to do their thing on private property. While racing around the woods in their 4x4 jeep they accidentally hit & kill a young Grizzly Bear cub & crash their jeep in the process, idiots. Lauren is gutted about the Grizzly Bear but what the hell, then suddenly the four friends find out that the young (dead) Bear's mother is around & very angry at the four friends for killing her kid & sets out to kill them all in a Grizzly rage...

Apparently also known as Off Road in Canada this awful Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' was directed by the generally untalented low budget film auteur David DeCoteau (despite having nearly 80 directorial credits to his name you can count his good films on one hand) & is as bad as all the IMDb user comments & the low 2.5 IMDb user rating would suggest. Part of the 'Man Eater' series my heart sank as soon as I saw Robert Halmi Sr. & Jr.'s names on the credits as they are responsible for many an awful tame made-for-telly creature feature of the most routine kind. Grizzly Rage lacks any excitement, pace, tension or decent set-pieces & the four main character's are all idiots. There's one scene in particular that stunned me, it's just after the first attack when Rich is killed & as Wes drives the jeep away next to a sheer drop & Sean grabs the steering wheel & they have a struggle which sends the jeep over the edge of the small cliff & causing themselves all sorts of problems. It's just such a stupid scene that makes no sense & after Wes & Sean don't even argue about it, no offense but I would have killed Sean myself. Then there's the ending which feels like it has five minutes missing & a plot that doesn't make any sense with the main character's splitting up (when Sean decides to run for help why didn't all three just go?) & at the end when they have the killer Bear trapped they hold hands & walk away very, very slowly (running would be a good idea at that point, no?) & for some strange reason a local lake is full of toxic waste barrels which is mentioned & seen but never comes to anything & is totally forgotten about almost as soon as they are introduced. At 85 odd minutes Grizzly Rage is a real chore to sit through & some of the dialogue is awful too with Lauren's confession about hitting a neighbour's car both funny & somewhat pointless. The list of things wrong with Grizzly Rage is never ending & it's the sort of film you could pick holes in all day long, as bad as Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Features' go & believe me they can be bad.

Another huge problem with Grizzly Rage is that the suppose threat just comes across as really tame, the Bear never really does anything other than stand on it's hind legs & there's this obviously dubbed roaring noise even though you can clearly see the Bear is just not angry or aggressive. When it attacks Lauren & Wes in the jeep instead of turning it over why doesn't it stick it's arms inside the clearly broken windows & slash them with it's claws? The film introduces a random run down house (character's in these types of films always find a random run down house don't they?) that looks like it belongs in Wrong Turn (2003) or something & since DeCoteau like to fill his films with homo-erotic vibes (out of four main character's three of them are young fit blokes & only one lady) the leading man at the end takes all his clothes off expect his boxer shorts for reasons that are flimsy at best. There's zero gore either, there are a few CGI blood splatters but nothing else. Talking of CGI Grizzly rage is maybe the only modern 'Creature Feature' I have seen not to use any for it's main threat, in this case either a real Bear was used or a guy in a bad Bear suit.

With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 I can't see where the money went, shot on location in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada the music is awful as is the whole production. The acting is pretty bad, the cast try but they just come across as looking silly.

Grizzly rage is the sort of Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' that typifies everything bad about the genre, this is just awful in every regard really & the overall negative comments from people here on the IMDb are wholly justified here. Watch the original killer Grizzly Bear flick Grizzly (1976) instead.


What would life be like without an occasional rotten movie? The title tells all in this weak variation of the vintage 1977 killer whale movie "Orca" about a whale that wreaks vengeance on the fishermen that destroyed its mate and baby. In the lackluster "Grizzly Rage," four obnoxious teenagers recklessly careening through the woods strike a grizzly bear cub accidentally and kill the little fellow. No, the filmmakers don't show the cub getting clipped. Only after they have smashed headlong into a tree and done permanent damage to their 4X4 Jeep Cherokee do they discover the critter. Surprise, surprise, the cute girl, Lauren Findley(Kate Todd of "Saving God")cannot get a strong enough signal on her cell phone to summon help. Actually, she objected to their thoughtless plans. Specifically, the guys used the winch to break a chain and trespass onto private property deep in the middle of nowhere littered with ominous looking barrels that would appear more appropriate in a toxic waste dump. The producers never connect the dots here about the toxic waste dump and the bear. Suddenly, an angry momma bear emerges and comes after them. I gave this movie one star because they rely on the old, stand-by suspense scene where the vehicle refuses to crank until the last second.

Director David Decoteau, who has helmed such low-budget schlock as "Sorority Babes in the Slimball Bowl-O-Rama" as well as "Frankenstein & The Werewolf Reborn," is up to his usual nonsense. Basically, this rarely scary horror chiller boasts three dudes, a sexy babe and a hulking she-bear (a male named Koda) in the forest. Decoteau shows the bear howling, walking on all fours and then rearing up on its back legs, but you rarely see anything but the wrecked vehicle in the same shot with the critter. When the bear is merely stalking her prey, Decoteau provides us with a slightly wide-angled 'bear cam' perspective like they do for the human killer in a stalker movie. When the momma bear does attack, all we see are its paws and claws in close-up. Nevertheless, you know that those belong to a man in a bear costume.

Not only do these teenagers lack a shred of sympathy, but they also have no common sense. After their Jeep overheats, they separate and wander off into the woods searching for water to cool their vehicle off. Meanwhile, you find yourself rooting for the bear. Unfortunately, this carnivorous bear takes its time showing up and possesses little personality. Of course, the momma bear eats them all. The first casualty--Ritch Petroski (Brody Harms of "Adam & Evil")occurs about 20 minutes into the action, and the shook-up survivors tear off in their Jeep and then have second thoughts about leaving their poor mauled friend behind. They wreck their Jeep again, rolling it down an incline, but manage to recover despite some injuries to themselves. One of them decides to pull on his jogging shoes and run for help. Guess who he runs into? Guess what you'll get watching this half-baked epic? No, no bears or bear cubs were harmed in the making of this forgettable film. Where was Daniel Boone when these kids needed him?


While watching the DVD of this film, I kept going back to the same thought, "This looks like something that would air on the Sci-Fi Channel." Darned if I wasn't right! "Produced in association with Sci-Fi Pictures" appears prominently in the end credits, and it certainly explains the dreky parts of the movie. The current score on IMDb is exactly right! (2.3 when I submitted this.)

As the DVD box explains, "teenagers" head out into the woods, only to encounter repeated attacks by a mammoth bear. Sorry folks, but most of the cast looks like their high school years were quite a long time ago. A quick fact-check indicates that the cast was between 19 and 24 when making the film, and there's a huge difference between high school and college age.

Anyway, the movie suffers from a serious case of Idiot Plot Syndrome which, according to Roger Ebert, the problems in the film would have been solved within a few minutes if all the characters weren't idiots. Film's low budget doesn't helpnotice that in each scene the bear never appears in the same shot with the actors! A typical set up is a shot of bear growling, cut to a shot of a terrified actor, then another shot of bear growling again. This bear growls and growls and growls (hey, those are the money shots, right?)

Characters behave so stupidly you can't help but feel they deserve their fate. Found myself mostly looking at my watch wondering when the bear would finally just eat them all and be done with it. That and the fact that Kate Todd is smoking hot! Even when she's covered in dirt and grime she looks great and is the only reason I sat through this thing. Let's hope she moves on to other (and better) things.

Plot devices are introduced but then immediately discarded. Barrels of toxic waste near a body of water are shown then immediately forgotten about. They do not tie into the movie at all. A creepy old cabin provides a safe hiding place for our heroes, but do they use it? Of course not, because by then the damn bear would have moved on and the movie would have ended with their eventual rescue.

Despite the "not rated" message on the box, this film would be hard-pressed to obtain a PG13 rating. Some effects are so cheap, animated blood is spattered on the screen during various bear attacks! Honest to God! People, you need to spend money to make money.

Long time B-movie specialist David DeCoteau cranked this one out. I'm not at all surprised that given his output it was made on the cheap, but c'mon man! Believable characters, motivation and logic don't cost a thing.


If you're watching for the purpose of learning how not to make a movie, or how to make a movie for less than the cost of one episode of Trailer Park Boys. I watched because I had an inkling that Kate Todd might actually be able to act, but even if she was an Oscar winner, she couldn't have made this good. Just too low budget to be worth it. If my sister, and her friends made it, I would be surprised, but only because I'd wonder how the f they got a bear to not eat them. Funny, for about 10 seconds, then it is an absolute waste of time. You'll spend a lot of the movie not paying attention, maybe flipping to other channels, as I did, and coming back and saying, didn't something happen that would stop that person from completely walking? Why is that person OK now? Or something? I doesn't make any sense at all. It makes about as much sense as Doctor Seuss having a tea party with Frasier Crane and Peter Griffin, All while on LSD and talking about the recent downturn in the economy of slippers.


While Expendableman covered most of the salient aspects of this fine bit of cinematography he missed one item. The vehicle is not a Land Rover it is a Jeep Cherokee. Expendableman covered the aspects of the movie which require you to suspend your rational mind or at least douse it with alcohol. However, that a Jeep could be beat up by a mutant genius bear bent on revenge, rolled down a hill and still drive for miles is absolutely believable. Please feel free to drop by the North American XJ Association (NAXJA) web site to discuss the finer aspects of this fine vehicle. Oh, and, in spite of the name, we welcome participation from wherever Jeep Cherokees are in use around the world.


Like most made for tv movies, this potentially moving film about the plight of a very brave disabled little girl is hi-jacked by a script that always sticks to the obvious, dialogue which is painful in its banality and a patronising, simplistic attitude to the issues that it raises. If this film got advice from doctors specialising in this condition behind the scenes it certainly doesn't show, she might as well be Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man for all the film tells us about her. Also for my money the narrator who is assigned in the film to "voice" her thoughts is an extremely insulting touch, how on earth can she think up more wisecracks than Mikey from "Look Who's Talking" when we already know she has the maturity of a 2 year old?! I could go on about the sexist undercurrent running through the film which paints every man as a child-beating loser or an uneducated dope, not to mention the pathetic ending which cheats by giving us hope only to throw it back in our faces, but I think I've made my point. Fact is, TV movies aren't exactly an art form and if you're looking for authenticity and the truth about sufferers of this terrible genetic disease and the effect that it has on the people around them, you'd be much better off down the library doing research then subjecting yourself to the tabloid treatment that this film reduces it to.


Last night Canada's CBC television network aired Society's Child. Although names were changed, the film, originally released in 2002, takes pains to let the audience know that it is based on a true story of Katie Lynn Baker who had Rett syndrome and was starved to death by her mother in 1996.

It's difficult to know why the CBC chose to re-air the film now. Perhaps during the tense weeks of Terry Schiavo's starvation, CBC execs got the idea to insert Canada's very on "feeding-tube-and-starvation" melodrama into the line-up.

This film provides the most biased and unapologetic endorsement for killing children with disabilities of any ever produced.It should not and cannot be appropriately be compared with the so-called Nazi euthanasia films of the 1930s, such as Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Ich klage an (I accuse) (1941), which was shown at the War Crimes Trials after World War II. As Liebeniner points out, his film was "rejected as evidence because it had 'nothing to do with the crimes (euthanasia program) on the indictment... The film's purpose was to test whether public opinion would approve of a law sanctioning death on demand with certain medical and legal safeguards." (quote from Liebeniner letter, 1965). This film cannot be compared with Liebeneiner's work because it goes much further openly endorsing the actions of the mother who killed her child, and suggesting that she was merely carrying out the clearly communicated wishes of her daughter, while condemning all those who questioned the right of a mother to kill her child.

Make no mistake, the killing of Katie Lynn Baker was an important episode in Canadian History. If Canada goes down the road to euthanasia, the Katie Lynn Baker case may rightly been considered as an important step in decriminalizing homicide of children with disabilities. It is important to remember that the inquest after Katie Lynn Baker's death ruled that she died as a result of homicide but that the BC crown simply decided not to prosecute because "there is no likelihood of conviction" (BC Ministry of the Attorney General, 2 December 1999). This was not based on a lack of evidence of the cause of death or who was responsible, but rather the notion that Canada as a society felt okay about mothers killing their 10-year-old daughters, under the right circumstances. In this case the right circumstances mean "when the child has a severe disability." Of course the made-for-TV drama conveniently leaves out that the death was ruled a homicide. Not surprisingly, they leave out most of the facts that did not fit with their unabashed celebration of the killing of a ten- year-old child. In general, this movie is based on the real case in the same way that a film about America's victory in Viet Nam is based in reality.

However, if they have left out the facts they have added lots of delusions to take their place. They take pains to make it clear that this child had a severe physical disability but no cognitive disability and to show her clearly and independently communicating her choice to be starved to death. In fact, no one but her mother claimed that Katie made such a communication. Most experts claimed she was physically and probably mentally unable to make such an independent communication and her primary caregiver claimed that that Katie was communicating and pleading to live, not be killed. Most disturbingly, the film uses a cheap voice over narration device to tell the story from the perspective of the child who is killed. This allows the story to be told celebrating killing as the right thing to do.

This device of putting words in the mouth of the victim to celebrate the perpetrator is pretty cheap and might be applied to any homicide victim to provide ringing endorsements of their killers. Perhaps sometime in the future, the CBC will bring us stories narrated by Andera Yates', Clfford Olson's or Paul Bernardo's victims celebrating the people who killed them and revealing that these child killers were really determined and altruistic advocates for children. I hope not. Of course, the CBC could say they are not really endorsing this or they could say that the opinions of Dennis Foon, who wrote this, Buffalo Gal Productions, and Sienna Pictures are not necessarily their opinions just because they ran the film, but that would not be consistent with their program description on their website. They characterize the film as "a story of unconditional love."


My hunch is that the buzz surrounding this film is largely due to the fact that it OUGHT to be good. The idea is a good one. It's been made into a film, so far as I can tell, exactly once: no other film in history that I'm aware of is a remake, a foreshadowing, a knock-off, a parody or a faithful homage. There's really nothing better (or worse) to compare it to. Coppola made the film, between "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II", two films which are widely, if incorrectly, regarded as among the best of all time, with a talented crew and without any obvious mistakes. However few (or many) positive virtues it may have it has few positive failings. On balance it's probably okay, and certainly worth watching once.

Spoilers follow...

But surely even the film's champions can see how painfully boring most of it is. It's depressing, all right, because it's always depressing to spend two hours in the company of someone or something with no energy, no life and not very many thoughts; and I'm not referring to Harry Caul here (although I could be), but to the film itself. Coppoloa is as obsessive about getting down every little uninteresting detail about people and events he doesn't understand the significance of, as his protagonist is; if the process of watching the minutae of bugging is SOMETIMES involving (as in the opening scene, where we see how the title conversation was recorded in the first place; or the sequence in which Caul patiently and methodically sifts through what sound like random crackles in order to pull out complete, comprehensible sentences; or even the trade show, where matters of moment look as though they might be under discussion), this is because it's sometimes going somewhere. But Coppola doesn't know how to build. When the key sentence "He'd kill us if he got the chance" leaps out of the soundtrack at us, it's an arresting moment, but only because we suspect that the sentence means something. Only gradually does it dawn on us that we're never going to be told what it means; nor will we be given any further evidence, not even the thinnest little sliver, that might help us work it out. Nor does this sentence move the story forward in any way. Harry gets more paranoid as a result of hearing the sentence but while he moves around more frantically he doesn't seem to be going in any particular direction.

Another writer calls Coppola's film "a great paranoid character study disguised as a thriller", and goes on to say that it works well on either level. This view could not be more wrong. If "The Conversation" worked well as a thriller, we wouldn't need to invoke the central character's madness, and the fact that any particular thing we see may not really be happening at all, simply to make sense of the story; and if it worked as a paranoid character study, we wouldn't need to think that some of Harry's delusions may not be delusions at all in order to be interested in them. This leaves open the possibility that the film works as a COMBINATION of paranoid character study and thriller; but for that to be the case it would have to be less tedious.

The "ambiguous" ending is a simple cop-out, which is why the final shot of Harry's smashed-to-bits rooms, which OUGHT to be shocking and creepy, carry almost no charge whatever. Ambiguous endings only work when there is at least one satisfying disambiguation in there somewhere. There's none to be had here. This is the best I can come up with: Harry has been had by is colleagues again, just as he was at the trade show. The device he thought was fake, the one which would purportedly a distant wiretapper to turn any telephone receiver anywhere in the world into a live microphone, in fact WORKED, and Harry destroyed everything in his flat looking for newly-planted bug when the only bug present was the one that had been there all along.

The murder, or would-be-murder, or imagined murder (whichever it was), is, on this theory, little more than a red herring. I don't like this, but don't blame me if the film doesn't know what it's about.


Everybody who stays awake until the end of this picture deserves a prize. It has no plot, no dialog, no interesting characters. It's like an entire film made from the discards that hit the cutting room floor from another, more interesting movie.


If you are one of those who watch with child-like eyes and accept what you see without really demanding believable acting, stunts, story and script, then this movie is for you. The message of the movie was delivered, but it's been delivered many times before and much better. It left me wondering how a good-looking policewoman would get involved with a vagrant? He dresses, acts and lives like a loser and yet--unlike her colleagues who are rightfully wary of him--she becomes involved with him. All of this after a totally unbelievable scene where she is rescued by him after he comes out of nowhere to overpower an armed and dangerous killer who was about to blow her away...I didn't believe it any more than I believed her manhandling several 6 foot 2 inch 200 lb thugs throwing them against the car and handcuffing them like they were match sticks. Boy is she strong!! This movie is not worthy of taking up theatre time and space. 4 out of 10


My friend and i went to see "Angel Eyes" last night, at my insistence - we were the only people in the theater!! The film didn't hold my attention at all but i couldn't stop counting the amount of times the microphones came into shot!!! I cant believe the director let this happen - in nearly every indoor shot a green and red mike popped into scene and on the outdoor ones it was the big fuzzy one!! I have read the other reviews of this movie and can't believe no one else found this unbearably distracting! I wish i had gone to see the other film playing at my cinema and i certainly don't recommend "Angel Eyes". Weak characters, weak story and unsuitable music.


SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!! SLOW DOWN NOW!!!!! The trailers for this movie made it look like a suspensful mystery/thriller, but it sure as hell wasn't that. This film had the plot similar to that of a movie of the week, and that exactly what I felt like I was watching. When I think about it, there was no way to market this film, it just is so flat and un-interesting. Talent was wasted, so was money. This same movie could have been made for 3 million without doubt. It simply is trash, I was sucked in by previews promising a suspense ride. Cheap Hollywood trick to bring in the money, it is Hollywood trash.


If this movie was the only thing on TV I wouldn't watch it. Pay movie theater price for it? I want my money back. Bad ass female police officer with abusive father falls in love with mysterious heroic stranger. What a thriller. Was this movie about Jennifer Lopez's character or about the recovering accident victim? I kept thinking "Catch" was going to be a serial killer or something of that sort. Unfortunately, we had to be dragged down this melodramatic movie like a bad soap opera. This movie should have been called "Touched by an Angel," not Angel Eyes.


I can't tell you how many times I have seen the C.N Tower in this movie. Even thought this movie was shot in Toronto, it was taking place in Chicago. I think editing was horrible. Viewers see "Toronto Sun" newspaper boxes, and there was a scene with a Canadian flag draped over a park, and my gosh, the downtown Toronto skyline is very noticable in some scenes. To top things off the acting was horrific. Jennifer Lopez should stay away from scripts as she possibally can. She deserves a razzy award.


ANGEL EYES

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound formats: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS

Though not terribly convincing as an experienced Chicago cop, hardened to the world's excesses, singer-actress Jennifer Lopez gives an otherwise finely-judged performance in this atypical romantic drama, directed with great sensitivity by Luis Mandoki (WHITE PALACE). Here, Lopez' empty life is changed forever when she's rescued from a near-fatal confrontation with an armed criminal by handsome stranger Jim Caviezel ("The Passion of the Christ"), who seems to come out of nowhere. Grateful for his intervention, Lopez is unable to resist their subsequent friendship, which quickly blossoms into something deeper, until she discovers they have met before under very different circumstances...

Both central characters are blighted by past misfortunes (Lopez is at odds with her family over an incident which occurred ten years previously) and both are wary of romantic involvement, which leads to the inevitable complications: Lopez' hard-bitten cop is unwilling to lower her defences, while Caviezel is the angelic loner whose refusal to confront the past renders his life meaningless. There are no melodramatics and no great visual statements, and the ending swaps bombast for sentiment at every turn; Caviezel's climactic graveside soliloquy is an acting tour de force. Sonia Braga and Shirley Knight play small but crucial supporting roles.


Ther are silly films,really silly films,and there is "Angel eyes". It is way too long,there is no performance strong enough to anchor it,there are very few believable characters.The exception being Mr Victor Argot as Miss Lopez's father,a small role with little dialogue but a first class example of how good actors can do "less is more". Miss Lopez herself is far from convincing as a Chicago cop I'm afraid. Too physically flawless to resemble a real human being,she would not survive ten minutes in the blisteringly macho world of the real thing. Mr Jim Cazaviel with doe eyes and designer stubble seems to have persuaded a lot of people that he has given a performance of great sensitivity,but I am not amongst them.He is not traumatised,rather he is catatonic. No one was more surprised than I when he sat in at a jazz club and played a version of "Nature Boy" that Jack Sheldon would have been proud of. The various sub - plots about domestic violence and guilt transference don't work and are merely tedious. Quite what the title refers to I am at a loss to explain.I thought originally it might be to the 1950s Matt Dennis song of that name but I was to be sadly disappointed. If you want to watch a movie about two miserable people who walk around with faces as long as a wet week in Southend "Angel Eyes" will hit the spot.It will make a change from listening to your Leonard Cohen CDs.


"Angel Eyes" is the opposite of "Casablanca," when what happens to two little people is worth more than a hill of beans than the rest of the world.

I went in expecting an erotic film noir, and was surprised that instead it's the intersecting story of two damaged people in dysfunctional family situations surrounded by our violent society who learn to work through it by leaning on each other. (I'm quite sure there were a couple of sexy shots in the trailer that got edited out of the final, along with an explanation of the title.)

Though you never forget it's Hollywood -- Jim Cavaziel, the primary reason I went to see it, has the saddest face since Emmett Kelly, so when he suddenly smiles you think "Gosh, what a beautiful smile!" and a second later J. Lo's character says "You have a beautiful smile!" (My dad the dental historian says the perfect smile is an American conceit that's being exported around the world now as a status symbol.)

The camera adores Lopez as much as it did Garbo and just when you're thinking for the zillionth time "Gosh, she's beautiful" Sonia Braga as her mother leans into her and says "You're so beautiful!" I also thought it about time that since "Selena" Lopez is finally playing a character with Latina roots.

Not that there's any Latin music; the blues and jazz choices are nice, but make the inconsistent use of pop jarring.

The movie probably would have worked better as a small indie, and with a lot less uses of the F-word.

(originally written 5/20/2001)


Sahara is a good enough movie. Very clichéd. A little too symbolic with the good guys being just too varied a mixture of nationalities. But the story holds your interest. The question though, is who needs it? It's a remake of the classic Humphrey Bogert "Sahara" of 1943. Bogart had a mesmerizing screen presence whenever he was on film. There's no explanation for it, but he did indeed have it. Maybe it was that voice. Or that cool "I'll kick your butt if I need to" attitude he always seemed to convey. But Bogart was impossible to ignore. And he made Sahara in the midst of WWII. No one knew how the war would turn out in 1943. So it was essentially a propaganda film, encouraging the audience with the bravery and never-say-die attitude of the Americans and their allies (hence the convenient mixture of nationalities in Bogart's little group of fighting men). The film served a purpose in 1943 to entertain as well as to give hope to a country involved in a world war.

If the movie was to be remade, it should have been with an all-star cast or at least with a major star in the Bogart role. Or maybe to enhance the film with modern film-making techniques. Instead, what we got was practically a carbon copy of the original with a "B" movie actor (James Belushi) in the Bogart role. America needed this movie in 1943. But not in 1991. And for those who still like to watch it, the remake did nothing more than colorize it and substitute a decidedly less gifted actor in the lead role. The rest of the parts were all played by unknowns (at least to this reviewer). At least the original had quality costars in Bruce Bennett, Dan Duryea, Lloyd Bridges and J. Carrol Naish.

So if Belushi's Sahara was the one and only version, it would be a decent enough movie. But since it is a cheap, lower quality version of the original classic, why bother?


This is an awful remake. They follow the script almost line for line. But they have not an actor who can act. Belushi tries to be Humphrey Bogart and he doesn't even know how to be a soldier. His pot-belly sticking out, he really is bad. The British doctor is such a shell of a character. He is almost plastic. Skip this one and watch the original. As you watch you see the lack of knowledge of World War II. It doesn't seem that the director of this film understand the reason the original film was made. The reason for some many different nationalities was to show the strength in the United Nations. In this film it seems ludicrous.


This film makes one wonder why the Americans hadn't made it to Berlin by the end of 1941. A loudmouthed NCO and a few other Allied soldiers fight off hundreds of German crack troops at a desert well. How on earth did Rommel get to El Alamein? The original, starring Humphrey Bogart, was bad enough, although considering that it was made during the war, it probably served its purpose as a propaganda piece. To do a re-make (and do it thus badly) is simply inexcusable. If Americans learn about the war by watching movies like this one they will fail to understand why it took so long to defeat Hitler. And why should an Australian captain take orders from an American sergeant? It just doesn't make sense. I can well picture a US NCO TRYING to bully a commissioned Australian (or British) officer around - what I can't imagine in my wildest dreams is the officer taking the orders. I suppose the only reason Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo was that he didn't have an American sergeant by his side who'd have given him the right orders. What a load of rubbish this film is!


A completely pointless remake of the 1942 film "The Tank" starring Humphrey Bogart. The Bogart film at least had some propaganda value in inaccurately depicting US troops in the Battle for Tobruk, which was an almost an entirely Australian affair. The overblown portrayal of all Germans as nasty, fanatical Nazis was frankly laughable. The only believable acting was of James Belushi as a typical loudmouthed American, or was he just playing himself? Surely 50 years after the event we can have some intelligent films about the Second World War.


Talking about success of 36 China Town is also talking about repeated success of its directors duo Abbas Mustan who started off as directors in Hindi films more than 15 years ago with a flop Agneekaal (1990). Such a high success rate that is increasingly getting rare in the Hindi film industry is a miracle in itself. The reason that I can think of is with each of their film they reinvented themselves. Therefore, in this musical masala thriller flick, their audience not just getting a taste of a regular Abbas-Mustan stuff but something extra and therefore that bit of surprise element is always there. Like always, their scripts are very ordinary and plot quite common, but their presentation, treatment and handling make all the difference. In this flick for example, they crafted a thriller that is the core but as usual is not great and neither is their suspense but surely this is not a genre film and therefore they bring the elements of comedy (the highlight of the film), Romance, Foot-tapping Music as well as sufficient skin show make all the difference. Therefore we have Kareena, Payal Rohatgai, Tanushree Dutta, Ishaa Koppikar, Sambhavana Sheth all displaying either their legs or their cleavage, the male counterpart is taken care of solely by the model-turned-actor Upen Patel (a confident debut though need to work hard on his dialog accent). Also, direction flaws are galore-How can a body of a 6" female be fitted into a luggage of 3"?, How can the same luggage thrown inside the A/C. compartment of a running train that too from the train's window?, how can two people see that a tunnel is approaching while traveling in the same train? and how come police not able to find passport of Kareena Kapoor at the murder site when someone has dropped it there. But come on, how many of us really care for such silly logics? Dialogues by Anurag Prapanna & Jitendra Parmar definitely tickle your funny bone at places. Himesh Reshammiya is rocking here too with another hit soundtrack under his belt. Editing by AM's Bhai is crisp as usual. Imagine, a whodunit flick which is treated in a lighter vein, with lot of drama but no melodrama plus hardly any action, is what makes this fare, a surprising watchable stuff, is all can be said about the film..


They can be an awful film more then this? I saw the promos i was interested especially the first promo but the last few promos gave away and i hoped the film won't be as bad but the film is worst

Abbas-Mustan tried to make a commercial potboiler instead just to appeal to the masses who like such nonsense films

The film starts off okay, 2 songs at the start itself and then slowly each characters are introduced but then the film gets boring because All characters are jerks

Paresh Rawal- Johny scenes are stupid and too loud and crass Shahid- Kareena scenes are worthless and boring They is little hope when Isha is murdered but the director is too involved with comedy, romance and nothing makes sense in the end

The Johny- Tanaaz finding a dead body in the briefcase is too childish and then the entire investigating scenes are not that great

But the end takes the cake, one of the worst climaxes ever Even the CID episodes have better culmination

Abbas-Mustan give their worst ever film Music is good

Shahid and Kareena who were a pair that time are truly wasted Shahid just keeps making big eyes trying to look funny and make weird noises while Kareena irritates Akshaye imitates his dad Vinod Khanna at places and is the only actor worth mentioning here Tanaaz and Johny overact Paresh Rawal overacts too while Payal Rohatgi and Isha are dismissal Upen Patel with a dubbed voice is painful rest are poor


SHAREENA. Shahid and Kareena Kapoor that is. This overwrought over-zealous over-polished Faux attempt at the famed British whodunit genre would have swept the house at Hollywood's Razi awards but since it's Bollywood, an industry that does not (well at least at the time of this review) have an award show that gives out accolades for the worst performances like Hollywood does the night before the Oscars.

36 Chinatown weaves the tale of a missing child, his murdered mother, two gold digging teenyboppers, a handsome playboy and two other couples in circles around one another as drawn by a police inspector (Akshaye Khanna in one of his most dashing and sinful hot roles yet). Khanna takes the cake, I mean honestly if only they could have edited Shareena out of the picture, the film might have been a masterpiece lead by the very confident and professional Khanna. Not to mention supported by the very hilarious Johnny Lever & Paresh Rawal who turn in decent performances. Oh! and what's up with Piggy Chops? Priyanka Chopra that is? She seems to be doing a lot of cameos lately. Blink and you'll miss her appearance as Khanna's very sexy wife. Upen Patel makes his Bollywood debut as the heart breaker Rocky. Apart from the songs, you might want to skip this Chinatown.


This is a classic Bad British Movie. Stalwarts of British comedy acting then and later, plus George Sanders, fight manfully against one of the stupidest plots imaginable - about a government-sponsored brothel for the gentry in late 19th century London. Basically, it was an excuse to have a lot of young women prancing about in lingerie, maid's uniforms, pretty frocks, while baring the occasional boob.

The plot, such as it is, is mainly advanced by extraordinarily implausible coincidences and bizarre happenings, and it's about as silly as you can get.

It's a formula movie, and it sucks. Unfortunately, it isn't quite awful enough to be 'so bad it's good'. It's just excruciating.

However, it was written by Denis Norden, who may have no idea about plot or character, but is a fantastic quip-writer. There are scores of literary and historical jokes: one- and two-liners, many of them screamingly funny if you're familiar with the works of Wilde, Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Tennyson et al, and with historical people like Emmeline Pankhurst and Dr Livingstone. Jokes as good as these are wasted on this awful film.


After his role in Antonioni's "Blow-Up" in 1966, David Hemmings was regarded, together with Michael Caine, Alan Bates and Terence Stamp, as one of the rising young male stars of the British cinema. He never, however, seemed to live up to his early promise, and "The Best House in London", made only three years later, perhaps represents an early stage in the decline of his career.

The film is a comedy about a proposal to set up a government-sponsored brothel in Victorian London and the resistance to that proposal led by Lady Josephine Pacefoot, an anti-prostitution campaigner. Hemmings plays two characters, Walter Leybourne, the instigator of the scheme, and Benjamin Oakes, an idealistic young journalist who gets involved in Lady Josephine's campaign. The physical similarity between the two men is explained when they turn out to be long-lost half-brothers; both (implausibly, given Hemmings's blond looks) are illegitimate sons of the Chinese Ambassador.

The film is some time during the reign of Queen Victoria, although it is impossible to be more precise than that. The fact that Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning are courting but not yet married would suggest that the action takes place around 1845. (They married in 1846). The presence of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, who first met in 1891, coupled with references to Jack the Ripper (1888) and the Eiffel Tower (1889), would however suggest a date nearly fifty years later. The writer Denis Norden stuffed the script with references to events such as the Opium Wars and the Indian Mutiny and there are walk-on appearances by various other Victorian celebrities, such as Dickens and Tennyson. Norden seems to have deliberately ignored the fact that, as Victoria ruled for over sixty years, many people whom we think of as "Victorians" were far from exact contemporaries of one another.

I was surprised to see reviews on this board comparing the film to Monty Python, as it seems to me to have little to do with the Pythonesque or Goonish tradition of surreal humour, despite the presence of a pre-Python John Cleese in a minor role. Rather, it derives from a quite different strand of British humour, the bawdy tradition of the "Carry On" films. This tradition was already strong in the late sixties, and was to become the dominant one in the British cinema (although fortunately not on television) during the seventies. The film has also been described as satirical, although it contains little satire worthy of the name; it is hardly cutting-edge humour to satirise the ways of a hundred years ago. As for the suggestion that Josephine Pacefoot is a satirical portrait of Dame Josephine Butler, I cannot for the life of me see why Norden might have wanted to satirise someone who had been dead for more than sixty years when the film was made and who the great majority of his audience would never have heard of.

What the film does contain is a good deal of semi-nudity and innuendo-laden humour. Most sixties sex comedies today seem about as offensive as a seaside postcard, and a lot of the material in "The Best House in London" today seems bland and harmless, if not particularly funny. Nevertheless, some scenes actually seem worse today than they probably did forty years ago. At one point we hear a suggestive song about "my pussy". Had this song been performed by an adult woman, it would today provoke nothing more than a sigh of "Oh no! Not that old joke again!" (Even in the sixties jokes playing on the fact that the same word can mean both "cat" and "vagina" must have seemed pretty corny). As, however, it is sung by a young child, it comes across today as an unpleasant, even sinister, piece of humour.

Although the film does not tell us much about the age in which it is ostensibly set, it does perhaps inadvertently tell us something about the age in which it was made. It is essentially a two-joke film. The first joke is that, behind a mask of piety and respectability, Victorian men were in fact all incredibly randy. The second joke is that Victorian women were mostly at heart prostitutes; the saintly Lady Josephine's endeavours to save women from a life of degradation are constantly thwarted by the fact that they do not want to be saved and would much prefer to continue to prostitute themselves.

The first of these jokes is perhaps based upon a half-truth; social disapproval of vice and prostitution has never, in the Victorian age or any other, prevented it from flourishing. Behind the laughter, however, one can detect the uneasiness which the advocates of sixties permissiveness felt about Victorian values; the film never tackles nineteenth-century objections to prostitution head on but evades them by suggesting that they were never anything more than a hypocritical façade. As for the second joke, that is surely rooted in some very strange and distorted attitudes towards women. The wonder is that forty years ago such attitudes were put forward as being somehow progressive. Neither joke ever succeeds in raising many laughs. 4/10


TV crap before its time. I really hated watching this show, and movie. I could never watch more that half a show an be able to digest it. At least the A team was meant to be unbelievable and half acted intentionally. The acting is just horrible, along with the scripts. Not to rain on anyones praid, but the lead actress is always a b actress, and on the annoying side. At least police women was athletic and looked like she could run, to add realism to the show. There was to much personal baggage which dragged down the story's plot. I remember the guilty kid with the family story and she new the kid would phone, but when the add the personal bagged which takes away from the plot the creators lose the audience. A mortal sin in writing. Mid-life trouble and police work do not mix. One has to be spliced or intertwined the concept or the story drags. Make's the lead protagonist look unprofessional, and hurts what the character is about. The female lead in Hunter was hard as nails, and professional which gave realism to the show. There is no such inter play or humor with the lead actress with this movie.


Wow. This movie is so gosh-darn awful I'm not sure where to begin. Production costs must have soared into the thousands, from the look of this cheap-by-1978-movie-of-the-week-Aaron-Spelling-standards. If you are even a modest fan of pop culture history, you will notice horrible gaffs all over this thing (The Ideal Toy Company segment of the movie, wherein toys not yet available until the end of the 70's are on display in 1971), the ages of his children in the 60's sequences, all kinds of dopey crap. This movie purports to be more of a true portrayal of Evel's life than the George Hamilton flick from the early 1970's. It was not half as entertaining as the Hamilton movie and fairly glossed over and skewed in so far as depicting Evel's actual career. The jump shots remind me of some of the really cheap stuff you might have seen on Happy Days, where we get to see the Fonz's view of a jump as he sails over it. The History Channel has an excellent documentary hosted by Mathew McConaughey. It's loaded with actual Evel interviews and tons of footage of jumps that I hadn't seen since they aired in the 70's. Please rent/go see this documentary. Shows every aspect of Evel. Or, rent the Hamilton movie for its camp and fun value. Bypass this ridiculous piece of @#$%. Jeff Graham-Tulsa, OK.


Documentary about Sam Shepard and the star studded production of Shepard's play the Late Henry Moss.

This was one of the choices on IFC in Theaters cable service and since I'm a huge theater fan as well as a fan of most of the people involved I figured I would give the film a shot. While its great to see how play is rehearsed and put together I found it all very disjointed and ultimately a mess. I know part of my problem going in was that I was completely unfamiliar with the play. Now having seen this film I feel I'm considerably less so. I'm sure that had I had some clue as to what the play was about the scenes we see being worked on might have had some resonance, instead of just seeming to be random.Many people have compared this to Looking For Richard, Al Pacino's film about Richard the Third, while that film had what seemed like random scenes, the play is part of our cultural heritage and so the plot is known by most people. Also that earlier film deals with Shakepeare and interpreting the Bard, things are put into a context. Thats not the case here. Here we have a good many talking heads talking about the production, Shepard, and Shepard's plays, and the autobiographical nature of what Shepard writes (and biographical stories). Its a jumbled mess that never really seemed to come together. Half an hour in I started to fast forward. It just never grabbed me or made me know what I was watching.

A miss.


This is a hard film to review because basically it was nothing more than a documentary reviewing the performances and story of Shepard's new play. It was a huge review that showcased the talents of the artist and the director while also giving us a backstage pass to a play many of us probably never heard of. It was our chance to see art in progress without having to leave the comfort of our couches. This was sad to see because we as people should be getting out of our seats and spending more time in museums, theaters, and galleries, but for those that do not wish to do so we have this film to enjoy. We get to see one side of the story with good emotional moments torn out to allow for more of Shepard trying to show us that this play is not about his life, but instead just a work of fiction.

While I am sure that this comment will anger some, I felt that this documentary was too commercial. I say this because I am not really sure what the purpose of making this film was. By the end of the film, I am excited to see that Shepard's work paid of well for him, but I never really saw him struggling. I guess that I am brought up in the MTV generation where "reality programs" have that constant theme of emotional turbulence, but there was nothing in this feature that came close to that. There was honestly no real direction that director Michael Almereyda gave to his film. Were we to see that Shepard was a bastard in real life because of the influence of his father? Maybe, but it was never shown. There was the one scene where Shepard tells Nolte to forget that his mother just died because he has a job to fulfill, a job that basically highlights the death of his own father. I thought that this was rude of Shepard, and I felt some unknown sympathy for Nolte. Outside of this Shepard was never really mean to his actors nor did he ever really blow a fuse. His emotional level was non-existent as he wandered through this documentary. Perhaps this film was to show how the actors stressed emotionally and physically to Shepard's style of directing? I would have to say I never saw this either. The actors did their job (well, maybe not Woody) and they listened to what Shepard had to say. He was respected and everyone gave him the respect that he deserved. This was a flawless performance and development that I thought Almereyda was trying to create. I thought he was the catalyst in this film, only causing more trouble than actually showing the play itself. It almost felt as if he was digging his nose into other people's business, and they were not receptive to it. I remember one scene where Penn literally ran away when he saw the camera. I don't think anyone was overly excited about this guy filming their work.

Overall, I was not impressed with this film. I have seen documentaries come and go that better showcase the trials or honesty of a production than this film did. I felt at times the documentary felt scripted and forced to both us the viewers and the actors. Shepard was a pit of lies as he attempted to push the idea that this was not about his life, but instead a "father/son" themed performance, when in actuality there was documented proof that Henry Moss was a very close representation of his father. I wanted honesty with everyone, and I found none of it. I had trouble seeing what the purpose of this documentary. If it was to show how Hollywood hitters go back to their roots and learn acting 101, then so be it  but it had to be longer. The time of 89 minutes just didn't give me enough meat and potatoes to fully appreciate the work. We were jumbled around between the direction, the acting, and the sub-stories that ultimately plagued this film, but not the production of the play. There was no reason for this film and I think that Almereyda was really grabbing and hoping that he would uncover something, yet he never did. I was unhappy with the final cut of this film and do not suggest it to anyone. Skip it; there are better ones out there!

Grade: * out of *****


Well if the Disney studio couldn't have gotten any worse back then well check out this piece of work! Clearing running out of ideas, Walt Disney clangs two classic novels together and turn them into a brand, new piece of storytelling the Disney way (similar to Fun and Fancy Free's "Mickey and the Beanstalk") but this whole movie lacks the heart, movement and the ordeal than all the other Disney adaptations. Like in "Sleepy Hollow" why do they turn Ichabod Crane into a long-nosed, clueless moron who is frightened of his own shadow? And in "The Wind in the Willows" how is it that Toad's horse-pulled caravan can easily jump over rivers? ANSWER THAT ONE! The animation is below Disney standard of the time and the voice-overs are so lame that they make you want to vomit but with the expection of Eric Blore who makes a brilliant Toad. Bing Crosby and Basil Rathbone are brilliant narrators. Overall, this Disney movie stinks and I'm not putting it in my favourite movies league in a hurry!

1/10


I caught this flick before it was released and had no idea what it was about. The title instantly gives you a bad feeling all over. Is it really one of those franchise " ______ Movie". Is it really as bad as those films? The answer is no.

It is incredibly worse.

Ladies and gentlemen this flick has cracked my top ten on the list of the worst movies ever made. It is truly that terrible.

The film, if you can even call it that, has no virtually no story or plot. It is honest to god, a bunch of sketches. Something off of SNL or Mad TV, but for raunchy. There is one character that runs throughout the entire film and he tries to get the girl. Nothing new, original or funny there.

The "film" for some reason has recognizable names. Stars like Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, Frankie Muniz and Michael Cera. This "film" is an embarrassment for all involved and should be locked away with films like Belly or Carnivore.

Non of the sketches are funny. We've seen all these things before. It tries to be edgy, but comes off as juvenile. A woman gets her cellphone stuck in her vagina and it constantly goes off, pleasuring her at the most inappropriate times. A kid buys a sex toy, a life like vagina and the entire skit is his relationship with it, it becomes jealous and kills itself. Matthew Lillard some unknown reason inter cuts the sketches with unoriginal jokes that your father probably knows.

The only tolerable bit was Cera, and it's only because he sells it, not the writing.

For the love of god and all that is good, never watch this trash.


From the offset this film tries so hard to pull off a 1999 teen comedy spoof, though it fails cringefully. The movie is just one incoherent skit to another - all involving different characters, with flashes to an awful 'Street confessions' mock TV show and film editing transitions of white noise, how windows 95. Also talent wise Frankie Muniz headlines the movie, which for an out of work child actor doesn't say a lot. Big name Michael Cera looks embarrassed through trying to bounce off other wooden 'actors' (I doubt they were even that) involved a small role in an equally unfunny scenario. And the porn scene... I think it's safe to say SAG have no idea where those artistes were hired from. The writers also embarrassed themselves implementing poor, poor imitation scenes from Weird Science, Girl Next Door and Not Another Teen Movie, so much it ruins the original.

Overall I felt hurt I had wasted my time watching this film, the very least they could have done was edit it so it all stories were linked and thus gave somewhat correlated chronology of events, instead of mind wobbling mess of themes. There was a main plot of the film nestled inbetween the separate dire toilet humour gags, though it was underdeveloped and poor.


This film is about a bunch of teenagers' encounter with sex in their school and outside school.

"Extreme Movie" is delivered in several segments, each unrelated to another. Hence, there is no coherent storyline, but just episodes of events that filmmakers think are fun to film. The film is adequate to slightly entertain, but do not expect anything very funny. The jokes do not really work either. It is quite a disappointment considering the number of big name actors in this film.

Putting things into perspective, "Extreme Movie" is way better than the recent spoofs such as "Disaster Movie". At least I did not feel bored or waiting for "Extreme Movie" to end.


I watched this movie because I'm pretty big Michael Cera fan and really nothing he's been in so far has been terrible... however, this movie looks like it was begging not to be watched. With a title like Extreme Movie, an embarrassing cover, and the fact that it's a Blockbuster Exclusive, honestly doesn't give it very much appeal. However, the cast seemed pretty good, the directors made a hilarious spoof movie (I loved Not Another Teen Movie), and the writers were impressive, many big name Saturday Night Live writers.

Even with all that hidden talent though, the movie turns out to be exactly how the DVD case made it seem... embarrassing. For the most part very, very low brow humor with not very spectacular timing or very good taste. The movie for some reason plays like a typical American Pie storyline with sketches randomly thrown in. Some of these sketches made me chuckle, but for the most part, every sketch went on way, way too long.

Michael Cera's sketch though actually had me laughing for a few hours after I had already watched the movie. It might seemed a little biased because he was the reason I watching the movie, but really his sketch was the only one that was casted perfectly. He's only in the movie for maybe ten minutes, if even that, and the first couple of minutes really nothing happened. However, if you're not sick of Michael Cera's awkwardness yet, then it's used perfectly here.

Other than that, Jamie Kennedy's sketch made me went to take a shower after watching it. Really disgusting. Thought I was watching porn... actually the majority of the movie kind of feels that way... Matthew Lillard's portions of the film were incredibly unfunny. He basically just sits in a chair and throws at you the old sex advice jokes you've heard from so many standups in the past. Honestly, this isn't a movie I would recommend. If you've been enjoying the movies Michael Cera has been putting out... then probably skip this one. It's really not worth waiting forty minutes from him to appear only to disappear moments later.


Its been a long and painful viewing experience for audiences and fans of the scary movie series as the recent bunch of spoof-movies (date,epic,disaster movie and meet the spartans) have been quite horrible. And then along comes this movie. I watched this movie hoping that it just might be good. But alas, what starts out as a hilarious opening scene quickly gives way to an utterly disappointing movie with some really awkward scenes.The movie itself is about teens going through the usual issues with sex and maturity (well just sex actually) and plays in the form of small episodes.The only probable reason to even watch this movie would be for its few good funny scenes,namely - the opening scene with Frankie Munitz,the misplaced cell phone,the mistaken room,the scene with the prostitute and the intermittent commentary scenes with Matthew Lillard.In fact,the most hilarious scenes are those with Matthew Lillard and are worth watching (but only these scenes).

All in all this movie which starts out promising is just another sad excuse for an attempt at comedy,which contains mostly awkward but un-funny scenes and pretty women (surprisingly enough), with the only good part being Matthew Lillard's jokes. Ultimately in the end not worth the effort or your precious time.What still amazes me though, is how in hell did IMDb give this movie a 7 out of 10???.


Dimension have done it again..

Epic Movie was epically terrible, Disaster Movie was a disaster, and Date Movie.. I won't even go there. But no film has soiled the once funny 'spoof' format as much as Extreme Movie has.

I haven't enjoyed any of the films along this route apart from the original few Scary Movies. However, I was quite looking forward to watching this film, but now wish I hadn't bothered. Not once did Extreme Movie refer to a successful box office movie I have seen before, and I have seen a fair few 'teenage sex comedies'.

I wish I could say one good thing about this film but I'm struggling to do so. With no real storyline at all, this film really is ridiculous.. and the ending proves that. Not once did it make me laugh, and not once did I think the film would get any better.

The only reason I have given it a 2 is because of the one or two nudity scenes. Even those are pretty crap.


Recap: It is soon prom night and every teenager, boys and girls alike, think about sex. Some have more or less disturbing small adventures, shown in short episodes, all about one kind of sex or other.

Comments: A comedy split in small episodes, each with a little different story only loosely connected with each other. What they got in common is that at least one person in each episode is a teen who is attending the local high school.

The jokes is only focused on sex, and actually even more crude and low than they use to be in a teen comedy. Some is so bad it is only embarrassing, but then again, there are a few jokes which are still pretty bad, but where I couldn't help myself and laugh a little. Otherwise, perhaps the best part of the movie is that it is only 73 minutes long and over quickly.

What is a little surprising is that the they got such a big cast to agree to this, and surprisingly a few known actors and actresses. But as a movie, there are lot better comedies to choose from, there are even a lot better teen comedies to choose from.

3/10


This is probably one of the stupidest movies i've ever seen. After seeing Scary Movie, which I thought was great. I thought anything that ended with the word "movie" would be good. I was VERY mistaken.

Now where do I start, well I know comedy movies can be disgusting and gross like in Scary Movie and it can still be funny, but not with this movie. Extreme Movie could be funny but it just ended up taking the sick jokes way too far and actually started to really annoy me.

I mean, comedies can be as disgusting as they want as long as they have a story behind it and at least one normal character that can lead us through it. Extreme Movie had neither, it was just a bundle of jokes that started to get annoying quickly, 12 year old kids playing with sex toys, just about every character was some sex addict, and it was just horrible. It was a waste of money and time and the character you think may be the normal character I was talking about hardly ever comes up or does anything the rest of the movie is just about stupid people doing stupid stuff that gets on your nerves after a while.

I could probably best describe this as a deranged orgasm in the form of a movie, if that makes sense, because I'm telling you now this movie doesn't. See my vote to see what I really think it's worth!


In one word the movie is PATHETIC!!!. It seems director had some wild weird kiddish imagination which he portrayed in this awful film. The script is very weak and the sense of humor was very cheap and bad . The movie was suppose to be in the same genre as that of euro trip or American pie but alas! it lacks the slightest of the humor when it comes to comparison with them!. Extreme movie is extreme waste of time. By the time movie ends you will realize you hardly laughed anywhere. The acting was o.k. Ryan Pinkston did fine but then movie is too bad to be covered up by the acting only. It has one use for sure .if you have an enemy gift him the DVD of this movie and you wont regret it!


i live in Ireland and had been looking forward seeing this for up to a year. i thought it was a so called "movie" movie but it wasn't so i kept looking into it and thought it would be funny and entertaining

and then when watching it recently i was excited and then watching it i was shocked by its stupidity

boring jokes, unfunny views and Andy Milonokas. it was crap

i loved (most of) the cast and thought they would make it, not even funny per se but entertaining.

the only good bits were with Matthew Lillard

i would not recommend this film to anyone with as brain or pulse and it was a waist of 75 minutes and 29 seconds of mi life

1*/10*: unbelievably poor


My suggestion to anyone who is going to see this movie: Expect it to SUCK! The movie will in fact turn out a lot better if you keep that thought in mind. I actually to some extent enjoyed this movie, it was a perfect way to waste some unneeded time. And it most certainly was MUCH BETTER than Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, and I thought it was going to be worse since it was a Direct-to-DVD. It had its moments, some funny bits, many Stupid scenes, and it kind of gave me a Kentucky Fried Movie or Robot Chicken feel, but definitely not as good as either.

Remember to think negatively and the movie isn't as bad as you think.


I wish as we looked through the new releases that I'd known this was the bad made for tv movie that I saw on USA network (cable). Had I known this wasnt' your typical cheesy snake flick, I wouldn't have rented it. while part of the acting is fine, and the snakes are semi believable (not outragiously huge) the speed with which the victims die is too exagerated, and it is almost identical to the old movie "Rattler" that is now makign the rounds of network tv movie filler during reruns seasons.


When I first saw this movie, I only caught the first half hour of it, but it was enough. I had seen enough of these formulaic, made-for-TV movies to know how it was going to end. Two months later, the curiosity of the accuracy of my predictions got the best of me, so I rented the movie and finished it this time. And I can say that with my guesstimation abilities, movie companies should hire me to write formulaic, made-for-TV movies. Everything happened that I anticipated: the progression of the plot, the introduction and killing off of characters, the role each character plays in the movie, it all was there.

If you've seen one of these movies, you've seen them all. Movies like this one, Marabunta, The Fury Within, Nightscream, Burial of the Rats, they are all the same. Watch one movie, replace the aggressive animal with a different animal, and enjoy.

Scott says: For a movie of silent rattlesnakes, the snakes sure broke script a lot.


This is standard movie fare done extremely bad. Big rattlesnakes kill people, and the people who know how dangerous the snakes are can't get anyone to listen. The writers and director try to use every cliché to further their careers. The pity is that this usually works. We're also inundated with the all American look of every man having dark hair and every woman having blonde hair, a neo-Nazi trend used to glorify the Hitler Nazi machine by many movie makers. Again, there are so many rich neo-Nazis who insist upon this being "classic", that directors and writers who use this technique go rewarded with bigger and bigger budgets. And don't be fooled. This is a big budget movie. This is expensive work. Don't ever let someone tell you some of these movies are low budget, because they aren't. You couldn't get this much capital to make a movie, unless you are rich yourself. There just isn't anything good about this movie.


Like many other sci-fi movies from that glorious decade -- the 1950s -- this one begins with some promise. A team of astronauts flying past Mars is suddenly caught in a time-warp which sends them hurtling into ... Well, the set-up is much better than the pay-off which involves the usual futuristic women in short skirts and padded shoulders walking around in front of cheap sets mouthing banal dialog. Rod Taylor bares his chest for a I've-just-come-out-of-the-shower scene which easily qualifies as the best bit of "beefcake" in this entire genre.


What is there to like about this movie? Some bumbling incompetent astronauts blunder their way 500 years into the future. Once there they notice that civilization has been all but destroyed in a nuclear war caused by the warlike suspicious tendencies prevalent in the 20th century world they left. They have no moral authority to lecture the survivors about anything, but they do just that. They accuse the (understandably) pacifist survivors of complacency when they refuse to take up once again the weapons that destroyed their world, to wage an unjustified eugenic war of extermination against the deformed (but obviously human) surface dwellers. "World Without End" is a sorry piece of Cold War propaganda, combining a justification of aggression with a dismissal of the danger of nuclear holocaust. It is really quite immoral in its own way, and if it weren't so crudely and cheaply done, it would make me even madder.


Had Stanley Kubrick never gone on to become a famous director, three of his early films would never have been packaged together for sale on a DVD. That's because these films are cheap shorts made by an eager and unknown director--hardly works of art. They show none of the director's expert touches--they are just standard short films you might have seen in the early 1950s.

THE FLYING PADRE is not a bad film nor can you really blame Kubrick for it not being all that interesting. It tells the story of a priest who covers a huge region in New Mexico by plane! It's from a long series of "Screenliner" shorts from RKO and were intended as filler when people went to the theater to see a feature. As such, this film is pretty typical of this style of film and nothing more.

If you really want to see one of Kubrick's early seminal films, try KILLER'S KISS or THE KILLING.


This is beyond a doubt the worst detective show to appear on television. Don Johnson must have had an ironclad no - cancellation clause in his contract because the show was mired in the bottom of the Nielsens. The show was muddled, to say the least. The sets were confusing. Cool-guy Don naturally lived in a penthouse/loft hybrid of a place with bricks appearing here and there in the decor. His ex-wife and daughters kept cropping up to add deadweight to a dead show. By the way, did you know that Don was shagging the 17-year old girl who played his daughter (Jody O'Keefe)? I read it in the Enquirer, and most of that stuff, believe it or not, is true. The supporting cast was composed of boring character actors, not the least being Cheech Marin. The balding, pudgy actor was a mere shadow of the funnyman of the 70's and 80's. He was a humorless, bland, chubby, depressed-looking guy. So when this 5'1" dynamo married a sexy Swedish bombshell on the show, credibility took another hit. And what about the police station or city hall or whatever it was? It was always under construction, it seemed. Another annoying detail. Don Johnson was cool in Miami Vice. Here, he just wore a sweater-vest and sportcoat and acted bored. That 1971 Challenger he rode around in was yellow with a white interior(yuck!). It, too, seemed bored.


To call Tom Cruise and "actor" is generous at best. He appears in movies, and because he is pretty, people watch. He doesn't have enough talent to occupy minor character roles, and if he weren't so pretty, we would never have heard his name. But he is, and here he is, without enough horsepower to drive Ann Rice's seminal character, Lestat.

But, as bad as Cruise is, he is Olivier compared to Pitt, the other megastar pretty boy non-actor. Pitt can't act his way out of a paper bag, and frankly, if you watch the plastic bag scene in American Beauty, you'll see a bag doing a better job at acting than Pitt will ever do.

Neil Jordan decided to downplay the homosexual aspect of Rice's decadent vampires. Given the meager talent of the two leads, there isn't much left. Cruise and Pitt preen and pose through endless costume scenes and the obligatory vampire touchstones like fangs and blood, and it is mediocre beyond belief.

Thank god for Kirsten Dunst. She is spectacular as Claudia, the young vampire denied the chance to grow up physically, but who becomes more wise and mature than any human adult. Without her, there would be nothing but air. Even Stephen Rea and Antonio Banderas are cardboard cutouts propped up in the scenery compared to her.

Ann Rice has publicly said she approved of this presentation of her immensely popular book, but one can't help but wonder if she wasn't a bit disappointed, if the truth were told. I don't hate this movie, but I hate how it is diminished by relying on marquee names instead of talent.


Interview' has been a long time for me one of those movies you keep meaning to see until you finally do, years later. Now that I have, I can only express my disappointment. I don't think the slightest attempt was made to capture the romance, the passion, and the pure ambience of the story. Now I do concede, as has been said many times, that if a novel is good enough to be made into a movie, it's probably not even worth it. It's old news that the book is always better than the movie. I grant this, but much more still could have been done with it. This movie should have been an homage to the novel, but it was in fact a disgrace.

However, as a film it did have some redeeming qualities. The cinematography was beautiful, the acting superb. Tom Cruise is in his element here (larger-than-life characters) and they don't get much larger than the Vampire Lestat. I cannot envision anyone else take on the role the way he did. Pitt I was surprised and impressed with, though I was doubtful at first of his being cast. Kirsten Dunst shows amazing talent. I have a common gripe  Banderas as Armand. Though, incredibly, he does some acting, he's a terrible choice for the part. And I would have liked to hear them all adopt a French accent.

The ending was horrendous, the worst possible example of creative license I have ever seen, and gave an awful impression of the real story.

Definitely read the books; don't bother with the movie if you're looking for more than performance. It is truly not worth it.


Interview with the Vampire opens with a great helicopter shot of the San Francisco Ferry Building and zooms up Market St. After that, everything is wrong. Christian Slater as a journalist? You're supposed to believe him in that role because he wears glasses and chain smokes. Brad Pitt was so-so as a disillusioned vampire, but looked so gorgeous in his fake teeth, who cares? But Tom Cruise was simply ludicrous as Lestat, delivering lines like, "I give you everlasting life and you fritter it away on the blood of poodles." Probably the book, which I found impossible to read, was every bit as bad as the film, but there must have been a way to film this garbage. After all, the sets and costumes were quite good, and the homoeroticism strongly emphasized, probably to Tom's intense annoyance. Seeing him with his mouth full of incisors pretending to be a bored with eternal life fop was more than anyone should be expected to bear. There may be some roles he can perform (Jerry McGuire), but god knows why anyone would believe him as a vampire. I tried to watch this twice, but the whole catastrophe was too embarrassing, not to mention dull.


Jeff Speakman never really made it beyond the lowest ranks of martial-artists-turned-actors (lower than Don "The Dragon" Wilson, for example), and with vehicles like "The Expert", you can see why. There are three major problems with this movie: 1) The plot - or should I say plots - are all over the place, there are some characters who get a lot of screen time but serve little purpose, 2) There are only 4 fight scenes in total, some of them completely unrelated to the main plot and some taking place in the dark, 3) The music score is overzealous and overbearing. Strange as it may seem, this is really the most annoying thing about this film: the score persistently tries to convince you that you're watching some sort of grand epic, instead of the low-budget limited-action film you are indeed watching. With all that said, at least there's James Brolin around to lend a touch of credibility. *1/2 out of 4.


Oh, well I thought it should be a good action, but it was not. Although Jeff Speakman stars there is nothing to watch.Only two fight for almost 1,5 hours, yak.A lot of talking and everything is so artificial that you could not believe it. The plot is clear from the beginning. If you want good action don't rent this movie.