(aka: WHO SAW HER DIE?)

Not as good as SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS, the giallo film Aldo Lado did the year before, which I also happened to see the same time as this one.

I HATE the Morricone soundtrack. It's surprising to say that, but it's true. It's nothing more than an annoying children's choir that grates on one's nerves after awhile. Blah...I never knew a Morricone score could be this annoying.

Venice is rocked by the murder of children. The child murderess is always dressed in black with a big veil draped over her head. George Lazenby's daughter is found dead in one of Venice's canals and it is now up to him to find the killer. There's a convoluted sub-plot involving art dealers protecting someone, that's a real mess.

Then a woman Lazenby is supposed to meet in a theater is strangled by the killer and nobody else in the theater notices it until Lazenby sits down next to her. It's not even very dark in the theater so how come nobody noticed it? Sloppy and unbelievable.

Jeez, Argento did this kind of thing so much better while Lado makes it look a unconvincing cliché, here. In no way did I sense any tension or suspense with what looked like scenes of someone just going through the motions.

The kid getting murdered at the beginning looked fake, too. It obviously looked like a small mannequin with a red wig. Clumsy and sloppy, done on the cheap which the DVD makes even more apparent. Plus no motive is ever given as to why the killer only picks little red-haired girls to murder. The voices are also poorly dubbed with the children having adult voices, sounding like children. George Lazenby's daughter sounds older than he does as being one prime example. This is really bad, making the script sound even more amateurish than it should be.

And speaking of Lazenby, he looks like he lost a lot of weight here compared to his 007 days from a couple of years earlier. He looks like a long-haired junkie or someone ill with some kind of disease. Clearly not his usual, healthy-looking self.

The ending isn't surprising at all since it falls under the standard giallo cliché of copying Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s. If you see enough of these films, you'll know what I'm talking about. I knew who the killer was a half an hour into the film, so you'll just have to see it for yourself.

The Anchor Bay DVD is up to their usual high standards with an 11 minute extra commentary by the director himself. A very pristine, wide-screen print is used. Plus we get to see beautiful Venice locations as part of the deal.

Get's a 3 out of 10 for boredom and annoyance


I consider myself a relatively big fan of the giallo genre, though I haven't seen nearly as many as some that I talk too - but I figure at this point I've seen enough to separate the notable entries from the weaker ones - and WHO SAW HER DIE? is honestly about the lamest that I've seen so far. It started off well enough and held interest until about the halfway point, and then pretty much completely dropped the ball after that...

A famous sculptor's young daughter comes from her home in London to visit him in Venice. She is murdered while on her holiday, and the sculptor spends the rest of the film running around Venice trying to find clues to his daughter's murder...

Honestly - WHO SAW HER DIE? fails on pretty much all levels. The storyline gets confused and redundant after the daughter's murder, characters are introduced who are thinly explained, and the "resolution" is dumb and forced as though the director couldn't find an adequate way to tie the film together. Scenes of the father running from one locale to the next are dull and repetitive. Even the few murders in the film are pretty weak and uninteresting. As to the couple of minor "good" points - the Venecian setting is nice and adds a bit of atmosphere to the film, and sexy genre favorite Anita Strindberg gets nekkid a few times. That's about all that's going for this one. Not a completely horrible film, but definitely sub-par for the genre, and I would consider this one either for giallo completists only, or a skip altogether...4/10


Venice is a gorgeous city full of canals, garish colors and stunning architecture. Setting a film in this city is always a plus because you are guaranteed an interesting backdrop. Unfortunately, when the city itself turns out to be the best part of the entire movie, you know you are in trouble. Even more disheartening, CHI L'HA VISTA MORIRE (known to English-speaking audiences as WHO SAW HER DIE?) is cynical enough to use Venice as a distraction technique to keep people from realizing that this is simply just another tepid, poorly paced, clichéd-to-the-max murder mystery we've seen dozens of times before. Only slower. Very, very slow. I'm talking moving at the speed of a tortoise with three broken legs slow. I guess it takes a special kind of director to make a film about a serial killer of children this devoid of emotion, this bland and this uninvolving. Aldo Lado is not helped any by a cast of non-actors who sleepwalk through their respective parts, but he is especially not helped at all by his own uninspired direction.

One of the key shots in the film is a killer's POV shot. At first, the shot is effective at building up the creepy, off-screen menace getting ready to strike out. The shot looks through a thin black veil (presumably that of an old woman), watching victims as the Ennio Morricone music (an increasingly annoying children's choir) slowly starts to creep in. But then this same exact shot with the same exact music keeps being repeated over and over and over again for almost all of the horror related scenes. To make matters worse, the shot is used pointlessly on multiple occasions where nothing even happens. A common technique used in horror films is the "cheap scare." You know, like a cat jumping out of a closet to startle a character, and the viewer. In this film, the veil scenes are simply "cheap suspense" because the script fails to create any honest suspenseful/horrific scenarios based on the storyline, plot, characters or dialogue.

Another major problem are the characters. They are poorly developed, shallow and completely unsympathetic, and the actors portraying them seem disinterested in the material. You could care less about them or what happens to them. George Lazenby never once comes off as as impassioned or driven, which is important to the believability of his vengeance-seeking father character. Just like him, this film is cold, clinical, technical, by the numbers; basically just going through the motions in a completely lifeless manner. Sure, this film could have been cold in a calculating, disturbing way, but it's not. It's just cold in an off-putting, blasé kind of way. And the ending reeks of desperate, lazy film-making and writing. The identity of the killer is supposed to be a surprise, but it's not a surprise in context of the script, it's a supposed surprise based on an occupation; a costume.


All in all, "Who Saw Her Die?" is a very well-done giallo, but those of us who have seen more than a few of these kind of films can pretty much see the ending from five miles away. I don't want to rag on it too much; the soundtrack is fairly decent, the acting is okay, the story makes sense and the script is well-penned. It just fails to shock us or to make us think.

A psychopath randomly offs a young, red-haired girl in the 60's. Fast forward to the 70's, it happens again. The murders are tied together. The neglecting, mournful father tries to find the killer and is successful in the end. Not much else really happens. It turns out to be a typical Hitchcockesque twist that will have you nodding your head, saying to yourself 'gee I didn't see that coming...' I'd recommend at least a dozen giallos before this one. Check out "The House With Laughing Windows" for a magnificent example of the genre.

4 out of 10, kids.


"The Naked Cage" is a textbook anthology of "Women-In-Prison Drama" cliches (innocent heroine, sadistic warden, lesbianism, catfights, stabbings, riots, etc.). Watching it, you feel as if you're wallowing in a cesspool, and the fact that leading actress Shari Shattuck is not believable for a minute certainly doesn't help matters. At least Christina Whitaker is spirited and fun as the "wild" Rita. (*1/2)


The movie is utterly predictable. The story is black and white, good guys vs. bad guys, no in between. ALL the cliches have been used in this movie, cheesy lines and all...

It's like they took some of the best lines of good classic american action movies, and made the actors recite them, one after the other... I mean, there's a scene where they're in the middle of enemy fire, and yet they stop to deliver an exchange of like 4-5 lines that completely useless to the story line, but i guess some writer thought it was "cool".

I'm surprised they didn't include the lines "I'll be back" or "Yippi-ka-yeah!", they put all the others...

and of course, all the storyline cliches were there... The woman that shows up in a squadron of men, they make fun because she's a woman, she proves herself to be just as worthy, one of the guys falls in love with her. And at the end, she even goes to rescue the guy and messes up and so our hero has to rescue her back... UGH!!

and not to forget the shot of the chopper flying home with the bright red sunset behind it and the fuel smoldering in the sun...

then the chopper returns home and they are greeted by all their army buddies, just like in Top Gun...

but then, they start chanting "USA! USA!" what was that????? i mean, even in the best, most patriotic movies they don't do that, especially since this wasn't even a WAR where the USA won against another country... They went to bust a drug lord's cartel!!! How is that a victory for the USA???? and who goes around chanting "USA! USA!", rather than hugging and shaking hands with your friends that have just come back from a dangerous mission!!!


I rented this DVD for $1 as a weekly, and I still feel ripped off. I cannot imagine the production company made a profit from this film? I hope DEJ productions make a better film next time.

Also, it looks bad when they use poor computer animation for some of their helicopter scenes.

There seemed to be a lacking of logic in the way the soldiers and pilots carried out their missions. Poor editing too, probably just rushed. But what can I expect for $1.

You may be able to get a refund on your money, but that is 95 minutes of your life you will never see again.


the worst "war movie" I have ever seen - the script was corny to say the least and the USA USA chanting made me vomit (maybe Americans love this stuff???) I am glad that I saw this at a friend's house on a 75 cent bootleg DVD bought here in China as it would be shame to have spent $5 to go to see it at the movies!


I love bad movies, and the moment the babe bad-ass pilot arrived, with a nickname like "Charlie", I smelled a pearl.

The stock shots from old Pentagon tapes don't mix with the scenery, the Americans act like lapdogs the the "Petrovian" military commander... "I give the orders, you obey" but I can understand. The guy is a cheap Dr Strangelove, wheelchair and cigarettes included.

Also highly-trained, expensively-trained pilots join ground missions, and if someone says no the bad-ass babe pilot says "If you don't allow me I'll ask my father, General whatever". Yeah, right. US Army, just like Junior High.

The hero, of course, takes a Rocky Balboa-grade beating, but is ready to beat the two main villains, with his bare hands. Oh, they do that in a cage, in the middle of their Evil Compound, but NOBODY is watching. Of course the hero does not kill the villain, who killed his brother (great and original plot device) and flees.

Best part is: The hero is escaping, after a few "let's blow the villain's drug stash" and "let's blow the villain American dollars stash". Yes, now I know the "writer" watched Lethal Weapon. He shots a few thousand henchmen, direct from Imperial Troopers Marksman School. After the last two, he run out of bullets. He IGNORES the 1644 guns dropped around the massacre area, pulls a biiiig fracking machete, and starts to slaughter the other 544 remaining henchmen. Those are helpful enough to simply run towards the hero, holding their Ak-47s. I know, even the things that grown in my bellybutton would simply stay away and hose down the guy with hot lead, but he's the hero, come on.

Did I told you the hot bad-ass babe pilot goes to his rescue and of course is captured by the villain #2, in a split-second...

Oh, the villain killed HER brother too.

After a Mexican stand-off between a guy holding a hot bad-ass babe pilot (and a pistol) and a guy 10 meters away holding a big knife, the villain #2 makes the hero drop the knife. He does, but holds a small cute kitchen knife on his back. The villain #2 (oh, surprise!) points the gun towards the hero, who throws the knife, carving it from, well, 100feet right in the villain #2 forehead (apply directly to the forehead! apply directly to the forehead! Now I know what it means).

The villain #1 arrives, shoots the hero and goes away. Yes, he wanted the guy pretty dead, but could not point the gun to the hot bad-ass babe pilot and waste her, too. Also he never wondered about... flak vests. Neither did she, because the hot bad-ass babe pilot forgot about the guy who killed her brother, and started to sob and cry and yell "don't die please don't die I need you you can't be dead don't die!" The villain #1 flees, and think as a real mastermind: "the area is surrounded by US Army choppers, I'm in a forest, that I know like the back of my hand. Should I simply use one of my 332 safehouses and wait things cool down or should I jump into my tiny little cheap chopper bought on an Airwolf surplus sale" Meanwhile...

A big Apache chopper lands, near the hero and the babe pilot. The Apache pilot does what every single pilot loves to do: Handles his 40 gazillion dollars chopper to the couple.

I don't need to mention that the villain #1 is also a bad-ass pilot.

And the little thing makes turns around the Apache.

They only manage to kill the guy when they decide to use ANOTHER useful resource: The Angry Rant While Firing.

The hero says "that's for killing my brother Sam!!" and fires the canon The babe says "that's for killing MY brother Jim!" and press the trigger, showing another Apache firing the rockets, a kind of gun with 0% of chance of downing another helicopter unless it's parked and marked with a big "aim here to blow this thing".

The best part is when they arrive at the base. The extras surround them, and start a chant "USA! USA!". It's not only cheesy, it's hilarious.

I'm not American (d'oh!) but I don't mind American patriotism when it's part of the plot. I've got goosebumps from the President's speech in Independence Day (go ahead, sue me) but hey, COME ON. Even Rambo never chanted "USA! USA!". Not even Chuck Norris. (But he could, of course) Oh, the couple of heroes start to french-kiss and talk about their honeymoon, while the extras chant their patriotic mantra.

The film is so wrong, is so bad, I only recommend it if you're really into trash movies. Otherwise stay away. Really. As a friend, I beg you.


I believe this is a major accomplishment by Hollywood. The first widely distributed commercial movie directed and written entirely by 12 year olds.

The clichés are overwhelming, the editing seems to have been done by a lazy slob - especially apparent during a scene where top army brass watch a helicopter goes down on his monitor screen - who the heck was the stupid jerk holding a camera 50 feet from a battle helicopter in a jungle during combat?

Last words: if Americans really do act the way they are portrayed in this movie, it is no wonder that many hate them so much.


This movie is absolutely incredible. It essentially includes every crap and cliché about "badass Americans" (Go! Go! Go! Shoot! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!) Approximately 1/3 of the movie takes part in pubs in meaningless macho pilots discussions "who had bigger balls", "who has bigger balls" or "who will have bigger balls" (including pretty blonde - which is actually pretty intelligent - and she is general's daughter too - and she is amazing female Apache pilot - of course with some stress syndrome which makes her somehow less usable than real U-S-A macho pilot). Approximately 1/3 of movie scenes do have BIG U-S-A FLAGS in background with big U-S-A talks in foreground ("terorists" making fun from "flag-wavers", letters of dead soldiers pathetically read by officer and such patriotic-anger inducing crap). The last 1/3 of the movie consists of explosions and poorly animated Apache sequences. It is very strange for such hyper patriotic movie but it seems to be pretty anti-patriotic sometimes as officers do smoke Havana cigars (isn't it still illegal in US?). The pilots seem to be pretty inept too, because multiple Apaches are shot down with RPG-7 which is actually anti tank-short range weapon. It is pretty hard to hit helicopter with something like this, essentially the target must not maneuver at all and shooter must be very good too. These "U-S-A" ace pilots do fly like sitting ducks and are constantly shot down with bunch of guys with wool hats, AK-47s and RPGs. Let's hope these terrorists never get hands over actual anti air weapons, or the "U-S-A" is doomed I think... Well this movie seems to be parody of itself. I think it was written by some anti-American leftist propaganda intellectual, as it is really poor, stupid and technically complete inept. No, I do believe no American is actually so stupid and inept as these "U-S-A heroes". I do hope that filmmakers have been used as practice targets because this is really an incredibly huge insult to Apache pilots.


Recap: A small US force of some rangers and attack helicopters (apaches) is sent to the east European country of Petrovia (? -if I remember correctly) to aid the government in their battle against drug-lord/terrorist Ivan and his militia. A first strike against a drug convoy results in two apaches hit and three pilots dead. To replace them a retired ace is brought in, and a daughter of a general turns up. But before the unit can plan next strike, Ivan takes revenge, striking against a bank and the American mess hall. Now, it is personal...

Comments: I think that somewhere before they started to make this movie someone thought: "Hm, I sure do got a lot of fireworks, what to do? I know, lets make a movie! And hey, aren't those American helicopters cool?" Anyway, that it is how it seems. The one thing that is of good quality and done well are the explosions. No money spared there, and hence everything in sight blows up, for one reason or another, and blows up big. There are lot of huge fireballs. The apaches seem to have been a little harder to come by. So a lot of sequences of the helicopters are animated (poorly), and others seem to be to taken from some kind of commercial or technical video. The few scenes of real apaches I'm pretty sure are taken from the American mid west, although the movie is set in Europe.

The plot and story is bad, cheesy and predictable. Our helicopter hero is worse than Rambo, even when fighting on the ground. His magazines are unlimited and he is impossible to hit (which is in fact stated in the movie, he is simply charmed). On the other hand, the evil and supposedly well-trained militia acts and fights worse than kindergarten kids with water-rifles. I don't know what to think of the acting. To be fair they do not have much material to work with. But the acting do not elevate the average at all, so it is rather poor too.

Still, much of the impression a movie makes is about expectations. And this movie delivers about what I expected. I expected a simple movie with little story and much action. I got most of it. But they could have put a little more effort in it, and it would have been so much better.

3/10


Sometimes movies about the military are so bad it makes me want to put on a turban, this is one of them. Air Strike is a story of how a US Air Force team loses two great pilots on a mission and spends the rest of the movie bombing the shyt out of the drug cartel responsible.

Every cliché you can think of is in this movie. Guy's brother dies so he comes out of retirement to take his place (even though he hasn't flown in years and can just simply hop a plane) and avenge him, female pilot gets heckled for being a female and calls them on it, guy falls in love with female and everyone sees it coming, and my favorite....guy breaks out of prison and proceeds to take out 30 guys single handedly armed with barely anything.

The movie has some decent flight patterns from the different type of planes, but the overall part is so horrible that not even the actual air strikes within the movie could wake the crowd up. Lastly, I din't know knocking off drug cartels was a major accomplishment, so why did they chant USA! USA! at the end? I don't see police officers chanting USA after giving someone a speeding ticket. That mission was purely personal and no one was going to read about it so why make it seemed like they dropped the A bomb on Hiroshima?

There are no highlights to this movie, that's how bad it is....1 out of 10


This is a TERRIBLE film, one of the worst Shakespeare adaptations ever made in the history of the world. It manages to bore FROM THE FIRST FIVE SECONDS, and to watch the entire three hours is an appalling prospect. Made with no imagination at all, and on a budget of 57 pence, it has only one (boring) set, and an array of famous actor giving boring, boring performances. Even the comic pastoral scenes are slow, clumsy and lumpen. Poor Shakespeare. Poor students forced to watch this film. When you die and go to Hell, this will be the in-flight movie.


This is really not a very good comedy. Although I have enjoyed watching Corolla as a comedian and on such Comedy Central shows as "The Man Show", this is a poorly assembled, no-surprise comedy.

I guess the real benchmark in a comedy is whether it makes you laugh or not. This one doesn't have much that even made the group I was watching it with laugh...or even grin.

There's no chemistry at all between Corolla and the female lead. A long, long, long scene at the La Brea Tar Pits just feels like the Woody Allen scene with Diane Keaton in the planetarium from "Manhattan". Redone.

I did enjoy the actor playing the Nicaraguan sidekick, but its not enough to recommend you wasting 91 minutes of time on this.

Sad to say I bought it from a clearance table at a video store. Something should have told me it was a turkey seeing the large stack of them for sale at $6.

You're funnier than this, Adam...I expected more.

One star.


I was in two minds about buying this. I mean, an 80's fantasy flick in the vein of Conan sounds interesting doesn't it? At least thats what I thought. So I decided to buy this, and now I sort of regret it.

Let me summarise the story:

A "holy" warrior, Kain (David Carradine) comes across this little village that is dominated by two tyrants. Each of these have their little following of people, and both of them are arch-enemies. Basically, they're both locked in a struggle for control of the village well which is (conveniently) situated right in between their encampments. Cue our Hold Warrior, who plays the sides off against each other, to collect the rewards for doing so, but he also has his eye on a captive sorceress (Maria Socas). I suppose you can guess where the story is going from here - he tries to free the sorceress while staying alive and then there's a whole army of traders to contend with, most of which are quite angry as they were massacred before.

Its a very simple plot, but there's just something that doesn't hit it off. The action is slow, and in between the few and far between fights, there are some quite tedious and boring places. I don't have a problem with the acting as such - I've seen much worse (but also much better) but Carradine seems a bit wooden throughout. Violence is nearly non-existent. The only blood you see is on a sword blade, and I mean, the ONLY place. The swords must be made of plastic or wood or something, because when they fight, it looks like they're fighting with stick, whacking each other over the head with not a drop of blood in sight. Maria Socas (the sorceress) goes about topless the whole movie, as you've probably heard by now. And along with the 4 breasted erotic dancer (no, its not that good) its a veritable display of female nudity. If you're after the nudity, there's far better in just about every other movie, so there's no way you should buy this just on that.

Its a way to spend a mindless hour or so, at 77 minutes (I think) its not that long, but you'd probably be better off randomly switching on the TV. There are worse films, but this is pretty bad.


A epic masterpiece of barbarous drivel that (un)respectfully tries to tip its hat to both Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone. Yes, THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS is as much a western (just listen to the score if you don't see it right away) or a samurai film as it is Swords & Sorcery flick... Come to think of it, there's not too much sorcery in this one... The only magic this film has, is the magic of movie-making. Wonderfully realistic cardboard sets. Several fine jump-cuts during editing as the result of things they couldn't accomplish in one take while shooting the scene. Delicious special make-up effects, like that one thing that first appears to be a talking lizard (the equivalent of a rubber sock-puppet) but then later revealed to be a midget in a rubber lizard costume. I could go on, but let's just skip to the best part of the film...

...A gorgeous looking naked babe with four boobs. Yes, not two, but four tits. And it gets even better. She dances, all naked, climbs up a table at which David Carradine is enjoying his meal. And while she distracts him by rubbing her four breasts in his face, suddenly there comes a tentacle shooting out of her vagina - no, don't laugh, I'm serious - injecting some sort of venom in David Carradine that drugs him, so it'll be easier for the bad guys to beat him up. If I would not have seen this film myself, I'd be convinced any movie containing a scene like that, couldn't possibly go wrong even if it tried.

The basic premise... We've got a well, the only source of water for miles around. We've got a settlement on the right, lead by a cunningly fat Overlord and his midget lizard mutant adviser. And a settlement on the left, helmed by what appears to be Matthew Lillard's father (honestly, Luke Askew looks like he could be Matthew's daddy). Stuck between all this, is David Carradine as a loner sword fighter who goes by the name of Kain, but the villagers seem to dub him Dark One. Now, why's that? Simply because he wears a black hooded robe. You'd think that someone going by that name, would at least hail from the upper regions of the Dark Side of the Force, but no, in this film's universe all one needs to be dubbed The Dark One is a black, dusty piece of cloth.

The most clever aspects of the plot, are all about David Carradine's various ways to gain profit out of the situation he has gotten himself into. He pretends to be a sword for hire, but basically ends up repeatedly fooling the two overlords, tricking them into giving him all their money and eventually playing them out against one another. David Carradine is the man. He has always been, God rest his soul.

Other than David Carradine, who really shines in this movie and walks through it like it's a piece of cake (has he ever done otherwise, I wonder?), the main attraction is Maria Socas. She has a lot of scenes in this film, and not one of them required her to put her cloths on. I guess that's just what hot-looking sorceresses do in this hot-climate universe: They walk around topless, wearing nothing but a tight g-string to cover their private parts. Probably to keep possible venom-spewing tentacles in check down there. That's just speculation on my behalf, though. Also, she's supposed to be the titular sorceress, but explains pretty early on in the movie she has lost all her powers. How's that for an angle? A sorceress that isn't a sorceress anymore in a Swords & Sorcery flick. No magic. No special effects. Cheap movie. David Carradine gets all the money. I can see how that works.

A fantastically exciting scene has David Carradine rescuing half-naked Maria Socas out of a dungeon. While being held captive behind bars in that dungeon, Maria is guarded by a being called The Protector. I cannot fully grasp the name given to it, but the creature really is a vile and vicious abomination. It's some sort of giant, sharp-teethed mutant-frog with countless tentacles reaching out throughout the whole dungeon. Who am I kidding here...? This movie is great!

Anthony De Longis plays Matthew Lillard's dad's right hand swordsman (I think Daddy Lillard, who's actually Luke Askew in disguise, is called Zeg in this movie), and serves absolutely no purpose except for sword-battling David Carradine to the death at the end of the movie. His death, of course, not Carradine's. Usually, the naked ladies are presented as sex-slaves or for the mere purpose of providing full frontal nude shots and being drowned in a basin of water, for Zeg's entertainment (while the rest of the village is in desperate need for water, mind you). There's Burgo The Slayer, and his motley crew of mutant turd warriors (seriously, their faces look like dried up bat excrement), who also serve no purpose except for getting all poisoned and dead, which gets Burgo very angry. I kind of forgot what happened next. I think this all leads to a climactic end battle at the well. Couldn't really tell who was who. People just showed up swinging swords and stuff. There's also an old dude with grey hair. Don't know what he was doing in this film, but he seemed to know Maria Socas. Heck, I'd act like if I knew her too, if she'd come to me topless. Can't blame a man for trying.

And... to wrap things up: The ending packs a surprise. Dig this: David Carradine gets the water but refuses the (topless) girl by saying "I travel alone!". Every now and then, Mr. Carradine, Swinger of Swords, does work in mysterious ways. It's either that, or they payed him a whole lot of extra money to make him say that line.


Whenever I get into a discussion with someone about the worst movie ever, this turkey comes to mind. Every woman in this movie is nude but it's beyond gratuitous...there's no point. This isn't a feminist diatribe...I live with an artist who does figure work. It is the outcry of an affronted sensibility. This movie simply fails in everything that makes a movie worth seeing. The acting is atrocious, the story is nonexistent, the sets are cheesy and the plot convoluted and uninteresting.

David Carradine should be ashamed of himself for giving this offal an excuse for being made. It's been 15 years since I saw this movie yet it lingers in my mind like the taste of spoiled milk glibly drunk in the middle of the night right out of the carton. If there were a negative score, I would have marked it lower.


Get this -- an opinionated, imperious, upper-class Italian woman is confronted with an equally opinionated, earthy, lower-class Italian male. The result is political argument, sexual passion, male dominance and female submission. Sounds like that great Lina Wertmuller film, Swept Away . . . . True, but that is also the plot of this mediocre Lina Wertmuller film, Summer Night with Greek Profile, etc., as well as the plot of that other mediocre Lina Wertmuller film, the remake of Swept Away. The first Swept Away was terrific. There was never any need to redo it.

The mechanism employed by Summer Night to bring the rich lady and the man of the people together is ridiculous and contrived. And this rich lady is less interesting, being more one-dimensional, than the one appearing in Swept Away, even though both were played by the same fine actress, Mariangela Melato. Summer Night's working class male, Michele Placido, is excellent, but it is impossible to watch this film without feeling disappointed that he is not the great Giancarlo Giannini, who played his counterpart in Swept Away.

Really can't figure why La Wertmuller made this flick, or the Swept Away remake, unless she is trying to relive what may have been her finest hour. Skip this and see Swept Away again. Or try one of her other fine movies that don't involve the rich woman/working man theme.


The film is a very convoluted tale of a strange rich woman who kidnaps a Sicilian mobster and holds him for ransom. Again and again, what occurred in the film made very little sense and the plot gave me a headache.

First, why she exactly kidnapped this pig of a man is uncertain. Supposedly a syndicate of rich folks backed her efforts because they wanted revenge for all this the kidnappings this mobster did to them. This made sense. However, on the DVD case, it mentioned that the lady was interested in "ecological preservation", and although she briefly mentioned something about this in the film, it was as if this HAD been part of the film but most of it had been excised--leaving a lot of loose ends. Was it about revenge or punishing an eco-terrorist? I think it was just about revenge and the other aspect was barely mentioned.

Second, while the plan made sense at first, having the man taken from a secure cell where he was chained and putting him in a giant luxury tent made my head hurt. Why, why, why???!!! And for the good plan to suddenly be tossed aside so this seemingly smart lady can talk, talk, talk to her "victim" made no sense. Was she smart or an idiot--the film didn't seem sure.

Third, you kidnap an evil man and feed him caviar and get him prostitutes--even after he shows no submission and most kidnappers would have just worked him over with a rubber hose or applied some electric shocks to various and sundry parts of his body. Hmmmm...now the caviar and whores--THAT'S a clever plan.

Fourth, and this is the worst part for me, is that the film just seemed like a rehash and reworking of director Wertmüller's previous success, SWEPT AWAY. While Giancarlo Giannini was not in the film, the man filling this role looked a heck of a lot like him--complete with the beard and pig-like manners. And, of course, Mariangela Melato (who was in SWEPT AWAY) is back playing much the same role--a spoiled rich idiot who is eventually conquered by the power of lower class animalistic sex. It's supposed to be a metaphor for the struggle between the rich and the proletariat, though the comparison is stupid--the "worker" is a mafioso--hardly a man of the people. And, if the rich were all like Melato, then it's impossible to imagine how they all came to power, given they are idiots. As a result, her message was certainly not subtle nor was it particularly convincing.

If you insist on watching a Wertmüller film, try SWEPT AWAY--it was much more original and seemed to have an excellent message. Oh, and by the way, this is an EXTREMELY sexual movie--don't let the kiddies see it!


Trash. This thing is even worse than Demon Under Glass, a product of the producers. The plot is beyond amateurish, the writing lame, the acting so mediocre it hurts, the photography lousy. There's just nothing there and it just goes nowhere. The fact that they got an actor from Star Trek only goes to show how busy he wasn't. The poor guy really must've needed the bucks. And apparently, other than a VERY small cult, nobody cares. Maybe it's time Warner and Cunningham, who know how to whip up hype then deliver nothing at all, stop torturing people and admit to themselves they need to be in a field other than film or TV. Politics, maybe? Lotta false hype there.


I watched this paired with the very stylish and mainstream "Kamakazi Girls (Shimotsuma monogatari)." In addition to the similar names, they come from a similar place.

What happens if you are in the sixties, and you know that women's roles are messed up? Well, you start a powerful enlightened social movement to change it, right? On the sides are the crazies, mostly religious nuts screaming that wimmen is wimmen and God made them soft and subservient.

Now flash forward and see where we are. Perhaps there has been no progress made, we've just shifted from one set of stories to another with the same balance of empowerment and constraint. Perhaps there's just something hardwired into us that prevents us ever from wholesale equivalence of souls. Perhaps Muslim women don't want to be "free," because the alternative is no better and has the additional negative of being unfamiliar.

Here's what we have. In "Kamakazi Girls," the two conflicting roles were explicit in the two characters: a supergirlie girl, in frills and flowers, and a tough girl. Now this tough girl is new in the last couple decades. It a feminized male hoodlum stereotype, coming from the Marlin Brando/James dean mode of cool and tough. Cool here means that you don't care what the world thinks or says, you'll stick it in their eye simply on principle.

It means you want to demonstrate your lack of convention. Since we live in a more cinematic age now, you'll do it with appearance in addition to attitude. In fact, the appearance drives the attitude.

But what about the dual self problem? Girls want to be sexy, but what if they also want to be cool? Okay, here's a path: be a suicide girl. You get to alter your appearance on your skin, which helps in both ways because that way you get to be sexy too. In fact, why not combine the two all the way and do very sexually oriented acts while maintaining your tough cool? You get it both ways, skin being the text for both.

This is as sad as burkhas, and just as deterministically constraining, self-constraining.

Like so many exploitation films, the idea behind it is more interesting than the experience itself. Its odd, because if you go to the website, you can find some characters there who successfully weave a story of intelligence and independence. That may be a fiction, but surely there ARE women out there that are sexy, demonstrable and real. But the women we see here are simple losers. Maybe these are the only ones who would go "on tour."

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.


You shouldn't come into this DVD expecting any kind of real documentary whatsoever. If you're watching for the T&A, OK, it's got that in spades so you can probably not bother reading the rest. Personally my girlfriend and I were hoping for an actual focus on the the burlesque show itself, being fans of the genre, even if the SGs loosely interpret it. There is very little of their performance shown and it's only in brief teaser clips mostly. Almost all the behind the scenes stuff was either interviews that just felt like advertisements for the Suicide Girls website or was just more nudity for the sake of the camera.

So basically it's a softcore nudie flick and an advertisement masquerading as something else. This is not surprising given the self-promoting character of the man behind the girls. Just know that if you want naked girls, this is probably fine for you, but if you're looking for some actual documentation, skip it.


The Suicide Girls have had a website going for quite some time with huge success. The premise for the website is simple  pin-up pictures of girls who look kind of Gothic, with lots of tattoos and piercings. The DVD documents their first tour. What do they do on this tour? Two things  act like absolute bitches and perform strip shows. The shows are very similar to what you would see at an upper class strip joint, except the girls act punk. The drink on stage, spit on the crowd, yell abuse and give everyone the finger. They fight the "traditional model image", so some of them are not so pretty. Some are very attractive (personalities aside) however. You also see some of the porn photo shoots for the website.

It's the interviews that really make this DVD so terrible. The girls are terribly behaved animals. They are extremely self-righteous about the pornography they produce. They claim it includes real women of all shapes and sizes and makes them feel good about being women. There is a notable exclusion of any black women or fat women, however, and it really is porn just the same as playboy or hustler. They brag about how alternative they are and naively believe they do not conform to any sort of image when they clearly do. The interviews are also cut together terribly. The jump cuts used are poorly done and film school students would do a much better job. The stage footage looks like home video footage.

The girls are very nasty, angry, confused beings who you would not want to be friends with. This is made most obvious in a sickening scene in which one girl recounts a sexual experience she had. In this she seduced a shy guy and then preceded to assault him, biting his chest so that he required hospitilisation and stitches. She explains this giggling and excitedly and as if we are to think it is cool. Imagine if this was a man talking about such an assault on a woman...

Some of the music on the DVD is really fantastic. It is the saving grace of the film. One of the extras on the DVD is the Probot video for "Shake Your Blood". This features the hottest of the Suicide Girls and is a great video for a great song. There are some outtakes from the interviews which are dull. There are some clips of the girls playing "practical jokes"  being nasty, horrible people again. There is also a "no talking" feature which allows you to watch the movie without the interviews, which would be better, although if that's your bag, just get a Gothic porno.

I gave this two stars instead of one as it was visually interesting for about 5 minutes and the music was great. The fact that this is seen as "the new face of feminism" is truly disturbing and dangerously incorrect.


This might have been called Lost Girls...or Bratz Dolls: The Movie!

If any single phenomenon might symbolize the death of romance & heterosexuality it could be the Suicide Girls. Their name says it all. They seem about as estranged from the organic sense of their bodies as anyone on earth could possibly be. They seem to regard their bodies like drum majorettes regard their bodies or pompom girls their skirts.

They are little forlorn islands of desolation & despair. They make Gummo play like Singing in the Rain.

The occasional individual insights are pathetically revealing. The one who calls herself Reagan (Reagan? Nixon? Is all this a political statement? - I don't think so...) says that she really appreciates being forced to mingle with the public in the companionship of her "sisters" because otherwise she might have become an antisocial person who watches TV or sits in a corner & reads books.

Books!! Egads! What a concept.

On & on it runs.

Great if your want to get turned off to sex or just get generally DEPRESSED!


A passable but essentially hum-drum action movie. Usually a title like this indicates that we will be able to view a fabulous collection of Chinese knick-knacks or see a group of our favourite uncredited Chinese actors and actresses milling around on a sound-stage, but, alas, "Shadows of the Orient" features only a short Chinese gambling sequence (fascinating but brief) and the ho-hum assortment of items in a rich man's collecion of orientalia, none of which are clearly seen on camera. After that it is bi-planes to Mexico and a lot of fighting and shooting by sturdy immigration and border patrol types, all Caucasian, with the brief exception of James B. Leong, looking quite dashing as a Chinese immigrant-smuggler.


(This may contain a few spoilers) Socialite who likes to gamble gets mixed up with gangsters smuggling Chinese over the border from Mexico.

Jaw droppingly inept this is a movie that even bad movie lovers will have a hard time sitting through. The problem is not that its so bad as to be bad, rather its because its so badly paced that its really really dull.

Filled with fake sets, fake facial hair, racist attitudes, bizarre actions and dialog with a high "huh?" factor, this is a movie that bad movie lovers can sit and watch and make fun of, assuming they can stay awake. Rarely have I seen a movie where I mumbled "I can't believe they did that" over and over again. It begins almost at the outset where a police patrol plane begins to strafe the smugglers plane with machine gun fire even though it suspects it has people hidden in it, continues as the smuggling pilot remedies the situation and then goes on from there.

What were these people thinking? A unique viewing experience certainly, but not one I need to repeat or one I can recommend. If you like bad movies give it a shot, but be warned you may not make it to the end with out snoozing.

3 out of 10


A disappointingly dull 'actioner' here, that tells of evil Chinese smugglers (which, interestingly enough, are being stashed over the border in Mexico. All of this of course, is controlled by gangsters. A blonde socialite is soon caught up in all of this by getting wooed by the head honcho of this enterprise, who decides to use her for his own means. Luckily, the hotshot police detective hired to the case also has the hots for her.. I was actually surprised at how incompetent this movie was. Filled with boring dialogue, inane fight sequences, and gun fight sequences taken right out of the 'Police Squad' book of crimefighting,. But at least the beginning (where a pilot has a hilarious, and unexpected way to deal with unwanted cargo), and the ending, with it's plane chase (but not the ridiculous plane chase before it, where a plane with a machine gun can't shoot a plane down that's 10 feet in front of it) is interesting, but the rest is an unmitigated bore.


I'm a fan of B-movies, but this Poverty Row film is so bad, I'm tempted not to bother reviewing it, but that cool title is what suckered me into watching it, so maybe my review will save others who might be equally tempted. This begins with a good scene that was duplicated in a later (and much better) Ronald Reagan B-movie, SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR, in which a pilot, smuggling a Chinese family of illegal aliens, dumps them out in mid-air to their deaths when he's attacked by another plane. The pilot, angry when his boss won't pay him for the aborted delivery, calls the Feds and offers to give them the goods on the smuggling ring, but is shot to death just before the agents raid the Chinese restaurant which is the front for the gang. The leader, Sidney Blackmer, gets away, but agent Regis Toomey, his older sidekick (J. Farrell McDonald), and a prominent judge's daughter (Esther Ralston) try to infiltrate the gang, only to wind up in danger. The 70-minute movie is filled with inept photography, bad sets, and flubbed lines left in, and the lack of any background music at all only accentuates the sheer boredom of the proceedings. Even the promise of a moderately exciting air chase at the end goes nowhere. The actors, all pros who have done good B-film work elsewhere, are left at sea by bad direction and zero production values. Blackmer gets one nicely slimy, almost campy line, when he says, "Orientals have a peculiar irresistible fascination for me," but despite the promise of the melodramatic title, this one will hold no one's interest.


First we have a young man who has recently come to a village and is an officer there but is dissatisfied and wants to go to America.

No dissolution of his story or whether or not he reaches his goal is ever revealed in the film.

It took him thirty minutes just to leave the village after he decided to go.

Next we're on the road with this young man and soon we meet up with other travelers who are afoot. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly interesting.

A monk, who is one of the travelers, tells a story. Basically it is very similar to the old story of a young man gets lost in the mountains and comes to the farmer's house and asks if he can stay the night. The farmer, of course, has a beautiful young daughter. In this story the old farmer has a beautiful, young wife.

The expected result comes about but we never are given a conclusion to the story as to what happens to the young wife and her older husband, or even what the point of the story is.

The only possible reasons to watch this film is if one is a lover of all foreign films, has a particular interest in this country, or an incredibly bad case of insomnia.

2 stars


There is no point discussing bad films but to save other innocent viewers from the agony of senseless torture it is better if some enterprising reviews are written.This is a righteous attempt in that direction.Travellers and Magicians is a very bad film for many reasons. In Buddhism it is taught that lust for sexual relationships is a very bad sin but in Travellers and Magicians there are steamy scenes of lust.So the filmmaker is not practicing what he has been preaching to his followers.Khyntse Norbu worked with Bertolucci on his film "The Last Emperorer".It is only on that basis and nothing else that he is seeking fame.What a selfish act of pretentiousness.The worst thing about this film is that it is unable to stand on its own save for the crutches of exoticism.If we remove these scenes from this film than it would be nothing more than a visual story book.This film can only be liked by people who are fed up of their own lives, own circumstances and own religion.


I felt as though I had been hoodwinked about fifteen minutes into this movie. The trailer made it look like it might be funny and charming, which it was not. Men dancing in a silly way and men wearing silly hats are highly suggestive of comedy, warmth, and charm. That and nice scenery (inherent in Asain cinema) were what I was expecting. Instead I got a sermon told through the stories of completely flat characters. When I used to work at Cheddar's, I was the world's worst waiter for about two weeks, but it wasn't entirely my fault. One of the things I got in trouble for was constantly spilling Margaritas. However, the management at Cheddar's had selected Margarita glasses that were much more like plates with stems than anything meant to hold a beverage. I would come to the bar with wet sleeves and ask for more over and over again. The customers got angrier, my sleeves got drunker, and eventually I quit, preempting being fired. These characters were like those Margarita glasses. This was a shabby, preachy fable, which could have been told more artfully with my nipple hair directing and my toenail clippings as actors. Shame on everyone for giving this a high rating. I fear I have fallen victim to the because it's foreign and independent it must be good and I'm a filthy commoner if I don't enjoy it crowd. Don't do the same.


This movie was a bit of a bore. I walked in rather neutral with my expectations, and after the first 10 minutes realized that this ball of cheese was not for me. I sat through it all, for the sake of the company I was with.

Mandy Moore and John Krasinski are cute, but very flat characters. There is little or no character development in this film. Robin Williams as Reverend Frank tries to save the show with his humorous antics, but was unfortunately cliché in his attempts. The little boy, Josh Flitter, does an excellent job as the annoyingly forthright "minister in training", as do the other children playing minor roles, but the overall attempt was bland.

The movie neither humorously avoids morals, nor does it end with moral enlightenment. The "lesson" in the end is weak and predictable.

If you're looking for something heartwarming, inspiring, or thought-provoking, turn elsewhere. If you'd like a few cheap laughs with a weak storyline, this could be your film.

I rate it a 2 out of 10.


This movie was terrible.

I was more than a little tempted to just get up and walk out early in the movie, when it just wasn't funny. I thought maybe it would pick up and really get going soon, it didn't. It tries to be a romantic comedy, and what little chemistry exists between the couple is ruined by Robin Williams trying to be funny while doing unfunny things. Instead he comes off as a creepy, sadistic voyeur with a phony veneer of humor (and a minister having a prepubescent boy sidekick with him at apparently all times day and night is more than a little creepy in it's own right).

There isn't a single funny joke in the film that's not in the trailer, not one. There are a lot of gags that fall flat though.

The whole thing made me miss the time when Robin Williams in a movie was a sign it was going to be a great film.

In retrospect, I should have gone with my hunch and just walked out early, and saved myself the time.


I'm going to say something that no one in License to Wed has the guts (or the brains) to say - Reverend Frank belongs behind bars. Frank is supposed to be a goofy and likable guy who grows on us despite his unorthodox methods toward couples coaching. Unfortunately, the movie goes to such extremes that we are not so much charmed by Frank, rather we are terrified by him. The man is a menace, and the fact that nobody seems to realize it except for one character makes everyone in this movie come across as completely oblivious.

Young lovers Ben Murphy (John Krasinski) and Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore) have just made plans to take their relationship to the next level and get married. It's always been Sadie's dream to be married at the family church with Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) doing the ceremony. Before they can get married, however, Frank forces the young lovers into a bizarre program where they will have to pass a series of tests to see if they are right for each other. Frank, along with his young student (Josh Flitter), sets up a series of challenges and simulations that are supposed to represent the difficulties that the couple will face in the future together. While it sounds reasonable enough in theory, the Reverend goes so far as to invading their private lives, even bugging Ben and Sadie's apartment with concealed recording equipment, letting him hear everything that happens when he's not around. Ben's patience with Frank's extreme program starts to wear thin, and the young couple start to contemplate if things are as compatible between them as they initially thought.

There's nothing really wrong with License to Wed whenever Reverend Frank is not on the screen. During those times, it's a perfectly ordinary romantic comedy that plays by the rules. Unfortunately, Frank is a major character, and the movie devotes too much time to him. He's an evil, manipulative man, and we're supposed to laugh at him, because he's played by Robin Williams, and he's constantly shooting off zippy one-liners. If this character had been played straight, I have no doubt believing his Reverend Frank would be right up there with his "deranged" performances in Insomnia and One Hour Photo. At one point, he has a 10-year-old kid break into the couple's apartment while they're away at a session, and conceal a wire tap in their home. The character of Frank comes across as someone who enjoys tormenting young couples who just want to get married, and is not below employing children to do his dirty work so that he remains off the hook. If this sounds like a jovial, comical character to you, I highly suggest counseling.

My question is why does nobody else in this movie but Ben realize just how evil this guy is? And when Ben discovers the wire tap, why doesn't he make a bigger deal about it? More importantly, why doesn't Sadie? When Ben finally does tell her about the hidden recording equipment, Sadie doesn't even react to this revelation, nor does she even act offended. Are we to believe this woman doesn't even care that this man has been violating their privacy? If I seem to be putting too much stock in one character, I can't help it. He is what makes this entire movie go wrong. The character hangs over the movie like a black shadow, and causes everyone to become incredibly stupid, because no one can admit to themselves that this man is wrong. Even Ben, who distrusts him from the moment he lays eyes on Frank, winds up liking the guy before the movie's over.

It's hard to get behind a cast when they're forced to play clueless morons for the sake of the plot. Mandy Moore, once again finds herself playing a woman who refuses to even look at the obvious until the screenplay feels its convenient for her to do so. After Because I Said So and now this, I'm starting to wonder if she has some kind of bizarre fascination with women who make bad decisions for no reason other than to move the plot along. John Krasinski is passable, but not much more than that. He seems to kind of be playing a Ben Stiller-type character, only without Stiller's enthusiasm. The rest of the cast spend most of the time in the background, not contributing much of anything. That's because Reverend Frank keeps on hijacking the movie at every conceivable opportunity. It gets to the point we start wondering if we're watching a movie, or if we're watching one of Williams' lesser improv performances.

License to Wed is a movie that goes so extremely off course, and it's all because of one man. If he had just been written a different way, the film could have been salvaged. As it is, he drags the entire movie down with him. It's amazing how the wrong lead character can affect everyone and everything around them. When the movie came to its predetermined happy ending, I didn't feel joy. I felt sorry for this couple that this guy was still a part of their lives, and imagined what hell awaited them in the future. I'm sure we'll hear all about it if we're unfortunate enough to get a sequel.


"License to Wed" might as well have been called "Meet the Minister," since all the film does is to recycle the nightmare-before-marriage scenario from "Meet the Parents" - albeit with one crucial deviation. Needless to say, lightning rarely strikes twice when it comes to Hollywood happenings and "License to Wed" is no "Meet the Parents." Not by a long shot.

Ben Murphy and Sadie Jones are a young Chicago couple who agree to undergo an intense pre-marital "training course" conducted by an obnoxious local reverend in exchange for being allowed to hold their nuptials at the church Sadie's dearly departed grandfather helped to build. To pass the course, the couple must agree to be abstinent until the wedding night, take care of two fully operational and anatomically correct mechanical infants, and undergo various forms of trauma that even Sigmund Freud himself would have trouble undoing after years of reparative analysis.

As a "Meet the Parents" wannabe, "License to Wed" stumbles right out of the starting gate in that one can imagine suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous humiliation and abuse in order to win the favor of a prospective spouse's PARENTS, but to go through all that just to placate her MINISTER? I don't think so. In no time flat, the laughter turns to frustration as we find ourselves wondering why Ben doesn't just tell the dear old Reverend to go take a hike - or worse - and then seek out some religious establishment with less stringent requirements for walking down the aisle.

And let's face it, there's something more than a trifle off-putting and creepy about an unwed man-of-the-cloth running around with a young boy as his personal protégé and sidekick, planting listening devices in young couple's bedrooms. Even for an alleged comic fantasy such as this one, that may be just a bridge farther than most people will be willing to go in the queasiness department.

John Krasinski and Mandy Moore make an appealing enough couple, and it isn't really their fault that they've been handed a screenplay - written by no fewer than three writers, a sure sign of trouble - filled with cornball humor, heavy-handed slapstick and unappetizing secondary characters. In the role of Reverend Frank, Robin Williams, all cutesy mannerisms and third-rate mugging, hits a new low in teeth-grinding unctuousness, although one likes to believe that, if director Ken Kwapis could have gotten the actor to dial back his performance even a little, this might have been at least a tolerable movie. As it is, though, "License to Wed" is a painful experience that you will have no trouble leaving stranded at the altar.


Disappointing to say the least. Where is the old Robin, I sure miss him, and I sure as hell am not the only one. Clichéd wedding movie with Robin as a crazy pastor who takes soon-to-be married couples through grueling challenges to see if they are worthy enough to be married in his church. Basically, an unfunny script is all the writers could muster, as the only funny bits are but two and both of them are shown in the trailers. John Krasinski is horrible in this movie, which is a shame (after seeing this movie, I almost immediately played The Office on my Tivo to forget his embarrassing and crappy performance). Mandy Moore is still Mandy Moore: Beautiful and talentless when working with lazy scripts. And Robin, poor Robin; stop appearing in these types of movies! We love you, but we hate it when you waste your talent on crap such as this. In the end, don't bother with this bland and unfunny movie, a 3/10, avoid!


I really really wanted to like this movie, in theory, it has all the right elements for a strong comedy, but I was very disappointed.

I went to see this movie today at a 12:30 p.m. showing. The audience was a good mix of older couples, young marrieds, teenage girls, a few stray singles, a family or two--a well-rounded audience, let's say. That well-rounded audience spent an hour and a half with Robin Williams, god of comedy, with not a single good laugh. There were a handful of mild chuckles over things like poop jokes and a man getting smacked in the face with a baseball, but that was all we could muster.

Mandy Moore was luminous (but not given much to do, I wish she'd pick better roles, I really want to like her), her fiancé utterly and instantly forgettable in every way, the rest of the very talented cast (The best man was delightful, his relationship with his wife hilarious, and he was given all of 4 minutes of screen time) hopelessly misused, and Robin Williams as unfunny as the man can possibly get. The "plot", so to speak, consisted of Robin Williams as a minister conspiring to make the future marriage of Mandy Moore and the other one strong by torturing them at every turn and doing such charming things as bugging their apartment to ensure they were not having forbidden premarital sex. It was creepy and disturbing and predictable and boring, and, the worst sin of all for a supposed comedy, not funny.


License to Wed

For quite a long time now, I've begun to think that I've become an easy-going critic about the movies I watch. But now I realize simply that I have been watching good movies, and "License to Wed" is a healthy reminder to myself that I can still recognize the sight of horrid cinema when it veers before my eyes.

John Krasinksi as Ben Murphy, and Mandy Moore as Sadi, are an engaged couple, preparing for marriage. But unluckily for them, in their church community, they have to pass a "marriage course" before they can wed. And that course is run by priest-from-hell (if there ever was such a thing) Reverend Frank (Robin Williams). That's all you need to, or want to, know about this movie.

The most awful part of "License to Wed", as with many Robin Williams, it is not funny at all. I didn't laugh once through its entire run, nor even come close to cracking a smile. The jokes were either all ready used, just not funny, or so predictable they made me want to leave the theater. But the horrible writing continues; Reverend Frank is absolutely insane, not a likable quirky man at all. He is a psychopath, make no mistake; bugging peoples houses, training a poor kid to do anything he said, and turning loved ones into worst enemies. The many scenarios that the characters are put into, make no sense at all (I'm sure Ben would start insulting family members in a game for no reason; they could have left those fake babies at home) and neither do the Reverend's tests (what the hell does driving have to do with marriage?). And at the end, why exactly are Ben and Sadi thankful for what Frank did?

Mandy Moore stays in a perpetual state of perkiness, Robin Williams tries so hard to be quirky but he's really just scary, and John Krasinski gains my sympathy for having to put up with it all (not that he's any better).

The only good part in this movie for me was when the Reverend got punched out by Ben. I thanked God. 1/10 (but I'd like to give it a zero)


This movie was just plain bad. But since I'm bothering to write this, I should go into more detail than that, right? This movie was tacky and offensive, all the more tragic because of the hilarity potential of Robin Williams and the likability potential of Mandy Moore and Jon Krasinski. Synopsis: Two cuties get together. (Aw, sweet.) Then comes the messed up marital counselling of Moore's bizarro pastor, played by Robin Williams. Williams, in all his ridiculous antics, is aided and abetted by a creepy little kid (sorry, no offense meant to the child actor playing the kid -- I'm sure the creepiness was all in the role) who tries to be cutely precocious, but basically comes off as an annoying, know-it-all, creepy, snot-nosed little brat. I only watched half an hour into the movie because it was so cringe-inducing, distasteful, unfunny and insulting to relationships. I walked out and caught the last half of The Brave One. Unless you are amused by bathroom humour, skip it. You will thank me.


If you like religious comedy, then here is the movie for you. This couple is getting married after being together for six entire months. Wow. I was with my husband for 5 and a half years before we got married. I think that the couple in this movie should have just stayed apart or fart. There were some really lame fart jokes in this movie and the baby robots were super ugly. I wish everyone who wants to get married after six months should go through this guys program and then not get married. Maybe Frank can pencil you in after two years. I didn't get all the religious jokes either. I am not religious person and that poor child who was in training needed to get out of the church and go to the playground with children his own age. Who on earth practices carrying the bride across the threshold? There were so many things wrong with this movie. It made me want to hurl my lunch. Don't see this movie if you want to get married because it will ruin your marriage.


LICENSE TO WED (2007) * Robin Williams, Many Moore, John Krasinski, Eric Christian Olsen, Christine Taylor, Josh Flitter, DeRay Davis, Peter Strauss, Roxanne Hart, Grace Zabriskie, Mindy Kaling, Angela Kinsey, Rachael Harris, Brian Baumgartner, Bob Balaban. Vapid, sit- com-y high concept comedy about a young couple's nuptials being put to the test by the bride-to-be's family minister (a surprisingly sedate Williams) who proves to be a holy terror in the process. Woefully unfunny screenplay by Ken Barker, Tim Rasmussen, Vince Di Meglio and Wayne Lloyd and underwhelming direction by Ken Kwapis (who has collaborated with Krasinski and his THE OFFICE cronies  many submitted to this mess to boot  previously, with such higher hilarious results).


LICENSE TO WED is a sophomoric and offensive "romantic comedy" that centers around Ben Murphy and Sadie Jones (THE OFFICE's John Krasinski and Mandy Moore), a recently engaged couple who, prior to taking their vows, agree to take a course on marriage being conducted by Jones family friend, Father Frank (Robin Williams), which includes things like classes on carrying the bridge across the thresh hold, role playing, animatronic babies, and blindfolded driving lessons. Pedestrian direction and a screenplay that offends at every turn provide further twists of the knife in this childish and predictable comedy that is an embarrassment to all involved. They lost me when Father Frank actually planted electronic listening devices in Ben and Sadie's home and it just goes downhill from there. John Krasinki's easy going charm almost makes the film worth sitting through, but not quite. Even Williams looks embarrassed to be trapped in this debacle.


I wanted to like this, really. But Robin Williams' character is just TOO unlikeable and completely over-the-top. Sometimes this works for characters but it just doesn't work here. (I'm not religious, but I felt uncomfortable with the Reverend Frank character's antics...what with the healing the bloody nose business and rules and such. I know this is a movie and thus not a real depiction of any reverend, but still...it was very discerning to watch. ) I absolutely adore Mandy Moore, John Krasinski, and Robin Williams but this - I don't know who's to blame- script? director? - is just horrid. I couldn't finish watching this movie. And what was with the choir boy? Very very creepy to make a "mini-me" of an already unlikeable character. I just think it's a shame because I feel all the actors could do so much better work....Two stars go to Mandy and John because they did an okay job in this movie. But everything else just drops flat. Too over-the-top.


No wonder Mandy Moore hasn't made a film in a year and a half. Because I Said So and License To Wed, her last two films, were both misfires. License To Wed tells the many times told story of a young couple deciding to get married and then facing all the potential obstacles along the way. It's primarily Robin Williams' film, but he's so obnoxious and never believable as a reverend for one minute. As another reviewer said, why does every character turn into a moron in these movies? John Krasinski was the only one who thought the reverend was over the top with his antics, and the script made it obvious that Krasinski was a fool for saying this. I fell asleep in the middle of the day watching this nonsense. Most of the supporting cast is wasted in roles beneath their talents. Only the young sidekick "reverend in training" comes off as interesting, and his character should have been developed more. Watch the DVD extra about choirboy, and viewers will see what I mean. This was a teen choice award nominee for best chick flick, and it shows. It's a bubble-headed movie with a bad script and little substance. Moore's career is sinking fast. * of 4 stars.


A couple soon going to be married has to complete a Marriage preparation course made compulsory by a Reverend Frank for 100% guaranteed successful marriage & it's not an easy ride. They have to follow wedding vows, attend the classes regularly & get abstain from sex, handle robotic infant twins etc.etc.during the course. Robin Williams is one of prominent comedian of Hollywood but if you don't have humor in script, even God can't save it. In film like situational fix there's lot of room for funny incidents & that's what is missing in the film. Mandy Moore just looks like a girl next door & she is the only one who tried to act here apart of Robin. Film has just a few funny moments to explore. It's not every time that American humor makes Indian laugh & this is good example of it. Below average.

Ratings- 4.5/10


Robin Williams is one of the funniest people of all time. All time! When he's being interviewed, I cry with laughter. And he's made some excellent comedies over the years, such as "Good Morning, Vietnam." What's he doing in this junk? For that matter, what about the other actors? John Krasinki is great in "The Office," and Mandy Moore has proved that she's good too, in her films. Likewise the supporting cast in the film is solid.

So what happened? We have a lot of talented people making an absolute stinker. I guess a couple of Williams' one liners are moderately funny, but nothing like as funny as the lines he whips off without a moment's thought on the "Tonight" show or other things. It's sad.

I suppose I should mention some specific things about the plot. Sadie (Moore) and Ben (Krasinki) want to get married by Sadie's family minister. He has a "marriage course" he wants them to take, which basically involves them doing a lot of foolish and in some cases dangerous things, like driving blindfolded while the other gives directions, or caring for 2 fake babies while they are supposed to be taking care of Ben's friend's actual children.

I guess a rule of thumb is that whenever you find yourself in a comedy where the joke involves a fake baby making green poo, you're probably not in a very good film.

The only thing that makes me give this 3 rather than 1 star is that I like the actors.


This film is an exercise in masochism on the part of the film makers. Comedy isn't just murdered on screen, but murdered, buried, dug up and murdered again. A storyline exists, but plot points are lost in layers of cheese so thick you'd walk out constipated, and probably half-way through. I would consider this film one of the worst I've ever seen. The character of the Reverend comes across as evil, creepy, disjointed and manipulative. The trouble with the this character is symbolic of the entire problem with this film. It IS good for one thing, though. If you took a date to see it and they liked it, be worried.

In a word - Awful.


The jokes came and went within the first 10 minutes.

This got boring quickly and lost my interest.

What gets me is that costs $35 million to produce yet there is no huge cast or no over costly effects.

The locations are all over North America from Mexico, Jamaica, Chicago, L.A. and Vancouver and that makes no sense.

I saw this being filmed in Vancouver...and there is nothing anywhere else that really had to be filmed in another part of the country.

Even the beach scenes could have been filmed in or around Vancouver.

Why was so much expense put into filming in so many locations? It didn't add to the story...it didn't take away or develop the plot.

All scenes could have been basically shot in 1 city - whether it was Vancouver or Jamaico r Mexico...but hauling the crew and equipment all over the pace was retarded and useless.

It's not an overly funny movie, it's not a boring movie but it lacks the polish...and for a budget of this script, there could have been 5 more movies made that are just as entertaining.


I thought Robin Williams was careful on how he picked a film role, but sometimes even the best can make mistakes. This movie was a huge mistake, although Robin Williams managed to slip by with a few chuckles, but I realized his humor only works if he plays off other interesting characters around him. License to Wed does not have any. The story starts with Sadie(Mandy Moore) and Ben(John Krasinski), a couple who are so much in love, and really want to get married, but Reverned Frank(Robin Williams) wants to put them through series of crazy tests, in order to prove there love for another. The big problem for me is, it was not funny one bit, with the exception of Robin Williams, the rest of the film was kind of depressing. Mainly because of the Sadie and Ben character, there a little bit funny in the beginning, but there humor just quickly vanishes. The poor Ben character just comes across a likable schmo, who takes it, but when he dishes it, everybody looks at him like he shouldn't have done that. And the Sadie character is annoying cause spends the most of the movie belittling Ben, and she doesn't even realize she's doing it. Wasn't American Dreamz(2006) enough of a humiliation for Mandy Moore. Only Robin Williams makes this movie memorable.


I've lost a great deal of respect for Robin Williams after seeing this movie. The only thing that saves the movie from a 1/10 is that there were points where Robin Williams and Mandy Moore were off-screen, leaving John Krasinski to do a decent job in their absence.

The movie is not only poorly written, but watching it is frustrating. The characters are written as a bunch of self-centered fools that seem oblivious to the reality around them.

Rev. Frank's character comes off as a psychopath. Even the child "pastor in training" that accompanies him the entire movie is unbelievably creepy.

The plot feels like a Sunday school lesson taken to a morbid extreme. Frank spouts out-dated marriage concepts throughout the movie and subjects the couples in his charge to near-abusive activities. On top of this, Frank pokes fun at one of his pupil's gay parents and seems to delight in embarrassing, harassing and stalking Ben. If he was intentionally trying to come off as a seems-normal-but-secretly-unhinged pastor, I could have handled it. He's handled that role well in previous movies. Instead, I feel like I'm watching Fred Phelps.

Mr. Williams, please clear these half-baked comedies off your schedule. You are far, far better than this. I'd rather see you retire than flush the rest of your career down the tubes.


The romantic comedy genre usually proves a precarious balance between attempting to recapture the genuine passion, spark, and often hilarity of a budding romance while simultaneously doing so in a fashion unique from its many predecessors - more often than not with less than limited success. With that in mind, it still never fails to stupefy that in an industry of such excruciating rehashes, Hollywood can still churn out a film which exemplifies the above conventions and still manage to up the ante in terms of sheer lack of quality and coherence. Such a film is License to Wed, an alleged comedy in which one would be hard pressed to discern even a painstaking scrap of anything comedic, or any real merit whatsoever.

Put generously, the film can be described as nothing more than an abysmal, painful re-treat of just about the worst possible amalgamation of romantic comedy clichés and failed slapstick gags which consistently fall flat. The entire plot can be summed up as essentially a pitiful attempt to bank of the success of Meet the Parents while throwing in the occasional crack at religion to no comedic effect whatsoever, as the relationship of engaged young lovers Ben (Krasinski) and Sadie (Moore) is put to the test by a series of gruelling relationship tests by a deranged priest (Williams) attempting to determine whether or not they are fit to be married in his church. But this one joke premise wears thin almost immediately, and with shoddy, uninspired directing and an embarrassingly hackneyed screenplay, complete with paper thin characters characters and a complete lack of originality in any shape or form, one is baffled by the concept of how the filmmakers could have ever expected this sordid mess to result as anything remotely enjoyable. Even on the comedy front the film fails miserably, as the slapstick schtick is painfully monotonous, and the excruciatingly heavy handed "moral" at the film's end is a wince-worthy throwback to early Disney films, let alone an allegedly "edgy" comedy - and the word is used here in the loosest of senses.

Increasingly disenchanting is the sight of so many talented performers descending to such an excruciatingly embarrassing level. Continuing a pattern of painful sell-out performances, Robin Williams generates what can hardly be considered a performance as opposed to simply a slew of irritating, allegedly comedic mannerisms as the borderline psychotic minister - some of Williams' routine may have actually proved funny had he not exercised such pseudo-comedic tribe years ago in previous autopilot performances. The normally reliable John Krasinski (familiar to viewers of TV's "The Office") aims at endearing, but instead comes across as uncomfortable sour, saddled with a weak rehash of the typical Ben Stiller "uncomfortable boyfriend" role. While he escapes with more dignity than others concerned, it is still nothing less than a shame to see a promising upcoming talent reduced to such a point. Similarly, Mandy Moore seems to have never fully realized she was in fact on the set of a movie, as she seems firmly distant from the picture throughout, never once generating what could even be considered a facsimile of emotion. The non-existent chemistry between her and Krasinski makes for a rather redundant romance, as neither fails to captivate the audience or capture their sympathies in the slightest. Christine Taylor comes away the least shamefully as Moore's sardonic sister, but even she is given no real opportunity to generate laughs.

A minute amount of charm generated by an otherwise syrupy climax is not enough this pitiful mistake from the dredges of banal commercial monotony. License to Wed alternates between being patronizing, astonishingly ignorant and just plain poorly made - in fact, anything but funny or charming, as it aimed to accomplish. While small glimmers of enjoyment might be discerned by viewers with non-existent expectations, those anticipating any more should avoid License to Wed like a rash, as it often boasts the same results: painful, persistent and never funny.

-2/10


Robin Williams has a few stinkers in his otherwise distinguished career: TOYS and DEATH TO SMOOCHY are chief among them. But, this piece of crap is un-funnier than 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN and LADYKILLERS put together. Both of which I walked out in the middle of...just as I did with this one.

I mean, something must be terribly wrong if I can sit through forty-minutes of Robin Williams' one-liners and literally not laugh, even once! Those butt-ugly Cabbage Patch robots, I can understand. Social studies teachers use the same technique, in real life, among high school students. Although, the dolls they hand out probably don't resemble bald versions of "Chuckie" from CHILD'S PLAY.

Yet, illegally bugging the engaged couple's apartment, with the help of an adolescent Gomez Addams, after innovatively teaching some other kids about the Ten Commandments? Correct me if I wrong. But, I think the official term for that is "contributing to the delinquency of a minor." And, cops can arrest one for that!

So, even if this review gets voted as "zero-out-of-a-hundred found it useful," I'm still urging my fellow movie-goers to boycott this movie, and spend their money on a full-fledged vacation. Preferably, in Amish Country, Pennysylvania, where's there guaranteed to be no movie theaters showing this!!!


Sadie (Moore) and Ben (Krasinski) want to get married, but Reverend Frank (Williams) wants to put them thru some tests to see if they are really suited for each other.

I don't know if I have ever subscribed to a Worst Movie list, but this one will be in the top-10 for sure. Bad script, bad acting, bad direction and no one noticed? Well, I did. Gone are the days I would run to a Robin Williams movie. Gone. Gone. Gone. Either he was scripted or is just losing it, and I don't feel he is an actor who can be scripted. What does that leave? Huh?

Nothing funny happened, no good or clever lines, just a constant stream of nothingness. I could go on and on how horrible this was, but that would be pointless and boring.

Violence: No, Sex:No,Nudity:No, Language: No


John Krasinski alone, cannot save this movie from being one of the worst of the year. It also reassures me that Mandy Moore can't act and Robin Williams can't seem to stop being an annoying asshole in every role he plays.

In Linsence To Wed, Ben and Sadie (Krasinski and Moore) plan to get married at her childhood church. Before they can get married there, they have to complete a series of tests. This movie is just another predictable, stupid, and a hardly funny comedy.

Also, the only humour in this movie is either slapstick or plain stupid jokes. Basically, this movie is a bust, don't see it, you'll be very disappointed, its just another horrible excuse for a romantic comedy. I did not enjoy this movie at all.


This is another ghost story from Japan. Mariko investigates about the suicide of her sister who lived in this Apartment 1303... and do you want to know all the rest? Everything in this movie is obvious and after 5 minutes from the begin, we easily know what it will happen in the rest of the movie. It doesn't scare too much, maybe because i begin to be tired of these ghost Japanese children... Innovation is finished some years ago and there is nothing much to save about this plot: maybe just the last minutes of the movie give some "scare" . At least, the actors are decent. My vote is 4 and as you can guess, I don't recommend it.


When her sister apparently kills herself, Mariko refuses to believe that it was suicide and decides to investigate further. Her search for answers begins and ends at her sister's new apartment - number 1303 situated on the 13th floor of the building. It is here that Mariko discovers a dark history in which every female who moves into the apartment ends up throwing themselves from the balcony...

The problem with "Apartment 1303" is that it's all so painfully derivative.

The writer has obviously seen Shimizu's "The Grudge" movies and has attempted to pen his own version, but the resulting movie is nowhere near as good. Some of the scenes in "Apartment 1303" even fully replicate (or perhaps I should say 'steal from') "The Grudge" but are less effective in every way (for example, the scene in "The Grudge 2" where victims are attacked by the ghost's hair also appears here in much the same way). I'm actually amazed that the makers of "Apartment 1303" weren't sued when this film came out!

Quite early in the movie, a character is telling a ghost story about a demonic woman with no eyes. As she tells it, you see flashes of the monster and I found myself hoping that this would be the evil spirit plaguing the apartment. Alas, once the telling of the story concluded we did not see this monster anymore. The reason I'm mentioning this is because the monster we saw for two or so minutes in this scene was far more interesting than the real ghosts of the movie (and, it seems that the people who packaged the DVD realised it too, because the monster appears on the back cover)!

The tension of this movie is further decreased by the fact that every death follows the same pattern. The victim sees something horrible off-screen and then the next scene shows them falling off the balcony. At least with "The Grudge" you never quite knew how the next victim would perish.

All in all, this is a mediocre movie. If you've never seen an Asian horror movie then you might find it interesting but most people will watch it whilst thinking "Haven't I already seen this before somewhere?"


Sayaka is the new tenant of the fated Apartment 1303. After moving into her new apartment-which she got at a discounted price (sound familiar?), Sayaka kicks things off with a party. After visiting the "Tatami room," she entertains her guests by eating dog food off the floor and donning a motorcycle helmet(?), she then leaps off the thirteen floor, plunging to her death.

Sayaka's sister Mariko (Noriko Nakagoshi), is puzzled by her sisters sudden suicide. After some extremely long grieving scenes, Mariko decides to do some detective work. She quickly finds out that Sayaka was the fifth woman to die in the apartment, all of who died under similar circumstances. Her journey leads her to the apartment as well as a detective (Arata Furuta) who-for once-believes Mariko's story. Independently, the two set out to unravel the mystery of Apartment 1303 while trying not to become it's next victims.

After watching the first few opening scenes in this movie, I thought this might be good. It seemed as if the director was doing kind of a parody of J-Horror. The death of Sayaka seemed to be ringed with campy overtones. From the goofy faces the characters made to the way things were overacted just a bit, to the weird death scene. Alas, it was not to be, besides the opening and a few scenes toward the end (which kind of reminded of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2... in style only) 1303 then degenerates into the typical J-horror flick, riddled with genre cliché's.

Yes, this film has them all; scary dreams, phone calls from dead girls, a grudge type curse, a long haired vengeful ghost, and of course, the obligatory creepy little girl. Everything in this film is a mix of previous Asian horror films as Director Ataru Oikawa brings nothing new to the genre. I wish he would have followed the goofy beginning to it's logical next step (A spoof movie of Asian horror would be great if done right) but Oikawa instead elects to follow paths already forged out in J-Horror.

Bottom Line- For genre fans only. Same old song and dance.


This movie is not really all that scary. Sure it had a couple of moments where have you at the edge of the seat, but if just fails to bring you all the way over the edge.

Being a traditional Asian horror movie in every way, this movie offers very little that haven't been seen in other movies in the same genre. Sure it provides adequate entertainment the first time you watch it, but this movie is not the kind you pick up to watch again a second time. The problem might be that there are numerous horror movies being pumped out of Asia, so they all struggle to stand out in the genre. Apartment 1303 certainly failed to stand out.

The acting and cast in the movie is alright, though some of the dialogue is a bit weak. The setting? Well not overly scary, could have used some extra touches, but not a bottomscraper in any way though.

If you want to be scared and have good thrills, you might want to pick up another title, as this one is just a lukewarm experience. You might want to go for titles like "Ringu", "Phone", "The Eye" and such titles. If you are a native Asian, you might just find the movie scary, but for westerners there is very little to scare us in this movie.

I would recommend this movie for an early evening appetizer leading up for a better and scarier horror movie following after. Let this be a lead up to something more scare in its wake, no need to bring out the pillows while watching this one though.


it sucks. I suppose this movie is a good knee-slapper for a late night with nothing to do but honestly, what was the director thinking? Two people are dead within the first 10 minutes of the movie, one, this Yuka character never has any significance ever again in the film. The sister keeps coming back for no reason and the Mariko(?) never showed any reaction to all the crazy things that were happening. Detective Sakurai despite being a famous actor did absolutely nothing! Who were the little girl and her mom? What was everything? What happened to all the people? Why is the big question I'm left with. Also, what's up with Sayaka appearing in the end just in time to do NOTHING??? Yet another pointless, I don't even know what to call it. Oh yeah, and the spider man thing is because the daughter for no good reason had spider hair.


A criminal called "The Bat" roams around the mansion house of Cornelia (Grayce Hampton) looking for a secret room with hidden money. We have seen that he has no problem in killing anyone that comes in his way at the beginning of the film but we don't know his identity. A cast of characters appear at the mansion and the story is a "who-dunnit" mystery............. so, who is "The Bat"..?....

The film starts well but unfortunately, it goes downhill when the action switches to the mansion house. This is largely due to the overbearingly dreadful maid Lizzie (Maude Eburne) who plays everything for humour and just never succeeds. She is VERY irritating. Of course, one irritating unfunny character isn't enough so we are introduced to 2 more! A butler/house-keeper type who also plays for humour and fails and a detective (Chance Ward) who is also very annoying and very unfunny. These 3 characters are a big part of the reason why this film is rubbish. The other is the story which is dull and complicated and I found myself watching a totally confusing mess. The only good things about the film are some of the camera shots and Grace Hampton who plays her role well.

They stick an epilogue on at the end of the film which is really tacky. This film is not good.


Truly awful early talkie, which plays like something out of an amateur dramatics society.

The story revolves around a masked super criminal who terrorises an isolated mansion in the search for some stolen money.

The action and script are virtually incomprehensible, and the multitude of characters seem to make things up as they go along, hamming it up as and when they like.

Film does have a point of interest in its use of miniature sets, allowing the camera to make some impressive sweeps. This technical achievement must have taken up all of the film crew and directors efforts however, allowing the cast to run amok. Has the audacity at the end to ask the audience not to reveal the Bat's identity, so others can enjoy the film as we have. ZZzzzzzzz...

BEST SCENE - the aforementioned camera sweep over the miniature model of the mansion.


This is a movie about a Afghan woman seeking asylum in the US before 9/11. The story is about an allegedly brutal legal system that she must navigate to get asylum. In fact, what it shows is a that it is an efficient legal system which prevents abuses of our immigration system which immigrants often abuse to avoid national quotas. The movie has only one purpose and that is to gain sympathy for illegal immigrants. It is an extremely liberal propaganda movie.

What the writers have done is take a true story which is atypical of the asylum process in which the Afghan woman is deserving of asylum but she is unable to satisfy the safeguards that have erected to prevent illegals from entering the country. She has no identification. She cannot prove who she is and cannot find anyone to vouch for her. For all the immigration officials know she could be a terrorist attempting to sneak into this country.

In each decision the INS makes the right decision based on the facts before it.

The Afghan woman, played superbly by Layla Alizada,gets representation by a pro-bono lawyer from a big law firm who mucks through the case. Unfortunately, the lawyer is played by Juliette Harris, who as usual does a miserable job of acting. She is a zany and serious acting is far beyond her capability.

This is a movie for dummies and sob sisters. It's only redeeming value is the acting of Layla Alizada.


I have a bad feeling that this started out as a serious indictment of man's destruction of the Earth's environment. Unfortunately it was treated no better by it's American distributors than any other Toho daikaiju epic. The dubbing is as bad as ever, the pan and scan transfer makes the film almost unwatchable, and there are lengthy (dull) expository passages that probably played better in Japanese. I'd like to see a widescreen print with subtitles. Good music by Tomita, at least!


Okay,I admit,I do like silly movies.Let's see,I sat and giggled, through "Esupai"(ESPY).I grinned at "Dakaiju Baran".Yes,I also sat smiling throughout "Godzilla vs. Hedora".But "Nostradamus' Fearful Prediction" is Toho's biggest,most fattest folly since "Godzilla's Leverage".

Here is why:

Most of the warfare scenes are stock footage from other war films.

Corny as I will get English dubbing.

Characters are "trying" to be actors,but even the decent actors (Tetsoro Tanbah) look like they would love to do anything but star in such a cheeseball.

The mutant creature designs are sooooooo goofy.Flesh eating slugs?Giant plants and flowers that swallow anything?Mutant bat props that are thrown onto the scene?Giant Leeches?Two words:GET REAL!!!The mutant humans(which are mostly kids becoming expired from too much pollution),look more like living jelly doughnuts,no thanks to the poor make-up.

Toho Studios,Toshio Masuda,Yoshimitsu Banno,and poor Pomoyuki Tanaka.Tsk-tsk.

I felt so sorry for you guys when you did this "Turkey of a doomsday movie".


We can expect more IMDb user coverage on LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH, and tons more that fall into the "schlock" category. And for a good reason! This one is about as bad as, say PLAN 9, and may just be the worst science fiction production imported from Japan. Why science fiction? Is it because Earth is under peril from natural and man-made disasters that is described in the prophecies of Nostradamus? This is a classic example of a plot used heavily in these movies, minus the seer's words. In fact, you can always expect ANYTHING to happen, making EVERYTHING go wrong in the plot without a trace. It all ends up as an in-depth documentary that focuses on the stages of mankind's existence in the final days, spoken by an overpaid voice actor who needs his lips glued with Mucilage. Read the Weekly World News and you'll soon find out that feeding on fear is such a silly idea after all. Anybody else want to comment?


Ummmmmmmmmmm, may I ask why this, THIS "movie" got over the 5 rating? This movie is preachy and laughable bunk!

I read reviews on it, it either was good or bad.I got confused,so I watched it late at night one day.

GOD,DID THAT MOVIE REEK! They have so much stock-footage from war films or from "National Geographic" specials.Yes, I have also seen the Japanese version too.It's not any better,they too sound like they are reading the scripts STILL.

I don't think this is a movie at all.This is a big waste of stock-footage.Nothing more.