After a Criswell-like introduction (featuring "Dukey Flyswatter"/Michael D. Sonye, a vet of several notable 80s B movies), the action cuts to Arkham Hall Girls' Dormitory, where some strange things are afoot. A sorority girl and her boyfriend are both killed by zombies; one of whom does a back flip for no apparent reason. Tiffany Shepis then puts in a cameo and manages to make it through a long lesbian scene without losing any of her clothing. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. She and her abusive boyfriend, as well as her friend Jane (Amanda Barnett), are killed by more zombies in a parking garage. After wasting about 15 minutes on basically nothing, the film finally gets to the meat of the story. Two best friends, the more straight-laced "geek" Allison Gellar (Adrianna Eder) and goth vegetarian Sarah Hannigan (Ciara Richards) want to do "something cool" so they go visit a cemetery to do some charcoal tracings of tombstones. Afterward, they encounter Southern fried campus bitch queen Clare Ryan (Jackie Hall), who looks and sounds like a less-talented version of Tara Reid. Yes, that IS possible. All three girls attend science class, where their hunky professor Dr. Xander (ugh, kill it with the "Buffy" references already...) talks about death and claims he has a vial of zombie blood he acquired on a trip to Haiti two years earlier. Clare observes in her monotone voice "Someone's been watching too many crappy movies." Tell me about it, sister. Double billing this flick with POT ZOMBIES tonight has almost turned ME into a zombie.

Well, Sarah is called to the financial aid office and is told her tuition check has bounced and she has three days to come up with 4 thousand dollars. She's kicked out of her dorm room and forced to go to dreaded Arkham Hall, a run-down building used for "charity case students" who have no money. Arkham is also the hot spot for zombie activity since Dr. Xander (Christopher Slade) had already used his blood sample to turn a female student who tried to blackmail him into a zombie. Since then, things have spiraled out of control and the zombie girl has infected several other students (including Ms. Shepis) who lurk around in the house.

Meanwhile, Clare coerces her bimbo friend Julie (Andrea Brooke Owneby, who apparently is "America's Dumbest Stripper" after her IQ score came back near the mental retardation bracket during her appearance on The Howard Stern Show) into helping her break into Dr. Xander's lab to steal his zombie blood. Julie wusses out (and promptly disappears from the rest of the film despite her star billing on the DVD cover), but Clare gets the vial after the doc is killed by zombies. Being the nice girl she is, Clare goes to Arkham Hall and dribbles some of the blood into Sarah's mouth while she's sleeping. That next morning, Sarah awakens in a daze and soon she's feasting on rare meat before graduating to human flesh. It's at this point, nearly an hour into the film, that the films gets slightly better for about ten minutes as Sarah goes on a mild rampage around town. She chews on a dummy head that's supposed to look like Kimberly Lynn Cole and kills the dean's wife. She also hitches a ride from a guy (played by Jim O'Rear) who takes her to a drive-in playing SEE NO EVIL and SILENT HILL. Poor girl. Then it's off to a bar to get back at a drunken Clare, and then to a carnival. There are a few OK metal songs that sounds a lot like White Zombie that play during her feeding frenzies.

Director Donald Farmer is a name somewhat familiar to fans of horrible horror films. He's been making no budget movies like this since the mid 1980s, but sadly doesn't seem to have improved much over the past two decades. DORM was shot on digital and the picture quality is decent for the format. However, it's otherwise full of technical goofs usually attributed to amateur first-time filmmakers. There are tons of continuity errors, it's badly paced, it's padded, the attempts at humor almost always miss the mark and the editing, acting, script, gore fx and sound are all pretty lousy. The Clare character is only seen in close-up and doesn't interact with most of the rest of the cast, which makes it seem like all of her scenes were shot separately. The zombie make-up is almost nonexistent. A little dab of faint green paint and a little blood is all there is to it. There are three instances of T&A in the film, which is basically all it has to offer its target audience.


This is one of the worst low budget movies I have ever seen. The acting is terrible and some of the effects are even worse. Also where is the story line????? The soundtrack however is quite good as the opening song was amazing. However some songs didn't fit the scene very well. Most of the sound effects were repeated.

If you like nude college girls this is definitely the movie for you.

There is a classroom scene which looks like it has been shot in three different locations that have all been thrown into one.

Overall i rate this move very very poor. It comes no where near other zombie films like "Dawn Of The Dead" or "Land Of The Dead".


Le roi danse is easily one of the worst movies that I have ever seen in my entire life. An inner voice kept telling me to get up and leave, but, unfortunately, I didn't listen to it as I kept thinking, "It simply cannot be this bad." Well, it was. Offhand, I can hardly imagine a bigger waste of two hours that this film.


A story of the Sun King told through flashbacks from the mind of his choreographer and court musician Jean-Baptiste Lully. The director didn't want to make an accurate depiction from his life, which is his total right, but freely mixed historical fact with luscious, soap-opera fiction with static characters and overblown baroque settings. It is so boring and pointless you feel the need the vomit all over the rich costumes and make-up, in an uncontrolled reflex of nausea and a deliberate attempt to give all that lifeless material some soul. I am still waiting to see a story from Louis XVI, which is worth seeing.


The director's motto, judging from his body of work so far, seems to be: "You don't like history, kids? No problem, I hate it too! But I have ways of making you watch just the same!" This is a prime example of an over-the-top Mexican telenovela trying to pass for what it's not, i.e. an 'historical' epic. It describes Louis the XIVth's changing allegiances between Molière, the court dramatist, and Lully, the court composer, as a series of off-colour vignettes with a vaguely homosexual subtext. No expense is spared to gross out the spectator at every turn: a plethora of endless scenes involving various body fluids are interspersed between sundry bloody surgical emergencies (a staple of every soap-opera) and scenery-chewing, bodice-ripping drag-queen-on-a-rampage mad scenes. This is truly cinema by hairdressers for hairdressers. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with history. At no point in the whole film is the spectator given to even timidly wonder what makes a prince a king, a dramatist a great playwright and a musician a genius. The events depicted in "Le Roi danse" have been elaborated brilliantly in at least half a dozen films and TV series by directors as diverse as Rossellini and Ariane Mnouchkine during the past 50 years. This is not one of these films. Watch this film, by all means,if you really, really enjoyed the extreme close-up of Haendel squashing a bug with the tip of his walking-stick in "Farinelli". Otherwise, save your money, go for a walk, buy a book, listen to a record, get some culture in. Even "Moulin Rouge!" is marginally less embarrassing than this piece of barocaca!


Merle Oberson, rich San Francisco socialite, goes out for a nightcap at a jazz joint after a classical concert and flips over pianist Dana Andrews in Hoagy Carmichael's combo. Being a rich gal, she usually gets what she wants, but Andrews gives her the air. He's blind so the beautiful Ms. Oberson's charms don't impress him a mite.

She talks it over with Carmichael and our boy Dana is a musical genius, but the blindness has left him bitter. So in order to help him find his muse, she pretends she's blind.

Now if that don't sound like the silliest romantic plot you ever heard, you haven't seen too many old Hollywood classics. Andrews and Oberon looked downright embarrassed as did Ethel Barrymore playing Oberon's aunt.

But the film has the saving grace of the abundantly talented Hoagy Carmichael. The highlight of the film is him singing and playing his song, Who Killed the Black Widow. Now that was muse well worth finding.


This is an awful film as far as passive but discerning viewers are concerned. Oberon, in full histrionic mother-of-Roger-Moore's-left-eyebrow mode, plays a socialite who plays blind in order to woo a contumaciously sightless nightclub pianist.

Cue lots of bordering-on-domestic-violence, but acceptable at the time, altercations; and gauzy close-ups of big tears rolling down Miss Oberon's (facial) cheeks.

But in its favour the film, although potentially offensive in its approach, is sumptuous enough in its production values to wallow in forgivably. Plus, of course, Barrymore's cynical world-beater routine brings back from the edge any film in which it is deployed.


This is a movie of two halves. This movie has been seriously over-rated by some critics. It's not a bad idea but there's not enough here to justify a 90+ minute movie. At best, it would make a fair, maybe hour-long episode of "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits". The tension and confusion at the start well conveys the panic and ignorance of those affected but once action is confined to the house and most of what is going on has been exposed, there is little left to keep the drama going. The over-reactions of characters at times leaves us feeling like we are looking at children rather than adults. In fact, the child in the movie is the only one not to over-react. The twist, when it does come, comes too late. I already hated everyone in the movie and was just waiting and waiting for the death to happen. The fact that the husband rather than the wife initially died really didn't move me. The fact that the wife probably won't die did leave me feeling cheated. She had been close to ground zero and exposed for days so if anyone should die, then she should. For me, there are just too many occurrences that I find implausible.

This is another movie that I will be happy to never watch again.

A basic plot summary follows so you never have to go through the pain of actually watching this movie.

The first half of the story is a tense, feral journey through one man's experiences as bombs, which later turn out to be dirty bombs, explode on the morning commuter crowds streaming into Los Angeles. One of those commuters is his wife and his confusion and panic is increased due to the fact that they are new to the city, that radio reports are patchy and that vital services such as electricity and telecommunications are not working as they should. We follow him around as he desperately tries to track down where his wife is and as he prepares for the worst. Shortly afterward, both he and the Hispanic handyman from next door, who has pleaded to be be given shelter in this man's home as his own is too far away to safely get to safely, finally finish sealing the house, his wife arrives home. She is dusty and bloody and has a bad cough, which is put down to the toxins and microbial pathogens in the dust from the dirty bombs. She is naturally somewhat upset at being locked out but she is not let back into the house despite the difficult emotions and basic instincts involved.

So now comes the awful second half. She then she breaks one of the glass panes with her mobile phone that lands on the floor covered in toxic dust thus breaking the protective seal of the house. The man of the house merely covers this threat with a blanket - implausible act number 1 (and possibly implausible act #2 if you accept that no wife would risk her husband's health in such a way but we'll write that off as panic). Rory Cochrane then repeats his "bug shower" scene from "A Scanner Darkly", but this time with a bottle of bleach, in order to cleanse himself from the toxic dust contact (in fact most of his darting paranoid looks seem to work equally well in both movies). He still leaves the phone and dust covered with a blanket though!! The handyman from next door decides that he has to get home, no matter what the risk, despite his earlier stoicism in the face of this episode - implausible. The wife then finds a child that has come out of a car with its alarm turned on, i.e. the child exits a car in the street, it's alarm goes off - how did he get into it without alarm going off? Who put the alarm on after he got in? - implausible. The wife avoids police, army and helicopter patrols to get to and return from hospital, where the authorities take the kid she's found for treatment but turn her away and let her go. Why then were we shown, in earlier scenes, cops taking people off streets by handcuffing them and bundling them into vans, but now find out that they're ignoring everyone gathered outside the hospitals? - implausible. In the meantime, a specialist group of army technicians and possibly doctors (it's not clear) come to the house, question the sole occupant and take away a sample, for analysis, of the dust that is still just sitting there under the blanket. Wow, it almost sounds action-packed when I type it out. Believe me, it is not. So, we now know there has been widespread contamination outside, we know that the wife was very close to the initial explosions when they happened downtown, we know that she has been exposed to this dust for days and we expect that she must now die. We wait, and wait, and wait for this to happen. Numerous attempts at "moments of emotion" later, the guys in the chem-suits are back. They grab the wife and then .... tell the husband that his non-air-conditioned house has incubated the bomb's organisms and the sealed environment has meant that his house now has a deadly concentration of same. How they can tell the concentration of a virus in the air from a sample of dust on the ground is anyone's guess - implausible! They board up the house, with him still inside, and gas it inside a chemical control tent. The wife is told that she'll probably survive (despite having just coughed up a nice little lump of semi-congealed blood) - implausible. The End!


Yes, this movie is actually retarded.

The idea is good, I will give them credit for that. But the execution is just a boring movie with horrible editing.

First of all, why do we have to watch a minute of 2 people taping up a house??? 10 seconds is fine, we get the point!!! There are more holes in this movie than in a brick of swiss cheese. The dumbest one is the whole "twist". Supposedly some sort of bomb is spreading an illness to anybody who can't seal their home. The symptoms are severe coughing, and at the end the female main character (who's name I don't care about) looks as pale as a ghost. So the twist is the girl who was outside almost the whole movie, who was coughing, turning white and throwing up, was able to be saved. While the guy who sealed his home, and showed absolutely no symptoms (This guy didn't even sneeze!!), was infected beyond saving. Um... What?! If the guy was so infected, why didn't he show even one sign of it? And why was his wife, who was coughing up a lung, able to be rescued and presumably cured. (I say presumably because you never really know if she was cured or not, you just see her getting medical attention and being told she can be saved)

Then there's the hole that the main character taped up his entire house, and won't even let his wife in. But when she throws a cell phone through a window, he just leaves the ash that comes in his home and does nothing about it. This guy is paranoid as hell and willing to let his own wife die, but he somehow doesn't mind a pile of ash sitting in his kitchen? Then we have to believe that this small pile of ash mutates in 3 days, and becomes what they call "airborne".

If the original "ash disease" wasn't airborne, then why was the whole city getting sick? Why was his wife coughing up blood if she wasn't exposed to the "airborne ash"? We have to buy this BS about the ashes magically becoming airborne. It was snowing ash like it was winter in LA, and all of that ash falling down didn't become airborne. But the little pile of ash inside the main character's house mutated for absolutely no reason. (Don't expect them to explain it, like everything else in this movie)

Every character in the movie (other than the 2 main ones) jump in and out of the movie for no reason. This Mexican guy was working next door, but he somehow decides to move in with the main character. Why didn't he stay in the house he was working in? Then, all of a sudden he has to leave to be with his wife, who no one in his family has seen since the explosion. Then there's the little boy Timmy. He's in the movie at the start, and the main character sends him home. Then halfway through, he comes back, and still he has no purpose. Thankfully, the wife takes him to the hospital, and we don't have to see him anymore. Again, that little boy serves absolutely no purpose in the movie. Then there's the wife's friend. He suddenly shows up at their back door (after a "scary" flashlight scene), and the next thing you know, him and the guy's wife leave to go to the hospital. When the wife returns, she says her friend shot a bunch of people and then drove off. What the? What was the point of him being in the movie?

Then there's the 2 main characters. The movie spends way too much time on pointless dialog between them. The wife is completely annoying. Apparently Mary McCormack (the actress who plays the wife) thinks screaming and being a nut is considered acting. Maybe that's why all she can get are low budget movies. The male main character was flat, boring and irrational. He tapes himself and a Mexican stranger inside his house, but lets his wife in and the Mexican guy out. Then when a bunch of ash gets thrown in (cell phone scene), he just leaves it there. He doesn't even seal off that part of his house. And no, he doesn't avoid that room.

And we can't forget the fact that at the beginning of the movie, the male desperately tries to find his wife (who was downtown). But police sealed off all roads leading to the city core. Somehow his wife gets back home. This is never explained, because you can't explain it. If the male can't get into downtown, how can she get out? If the creator of this movie is retarded, then I forgive him. Otherwise there's no excuse for a bad script and plot. Sure this is a low budget movie. But these types of movies are supposed to make up for their lack of funds with stellar dialog & plot. This movie has nothing. No money, bad dialog, and a slow, boring, pointless plot.

If you like dumb movies, this Right At Your Door is for YOU!!!


Well what can i say, i sat down in the cinema not knowing what to expect i'd never heard of the movie and had been convinced by a friend to watch it. as the movie started a terrible boredom set in, the script was unappealing, the camera work at times appalling, and the acting that of some 60's b-movie. now i've got to admit i saw lionsgate and thought oh thats the b-movie company, and i was surprised that they had made a non-horror movie for the cinema. but i gave them the benefit of the doubt. There was one moment throughout the whole movie when it evoked some emotion other then boredom and disgust, and that was when Lexi put her had through the back door and dropped the phone and contaminated ash in the house, i felt anger that she would do that to her husband who she supposedly loved (allthough i got no sense of any connection between her and her husband) i feel bad for the actors it was not there fault they got the parts, in fact i admire that they made the appalling script come to life, its not there fault it was badly written. but they need work, the characters were flat and 1 dimensional, i felt myself wanting to leave the cinema in disgust and demand my money back, but i felt myself thinking they could have an amazing ending and that would make up for hours of painful viewing, but i was wrong. the ending was woefully inadequate. the idea behind the movie was great, but it was pulled off in a amateur way. i've seen £100 budget movies that were better then this. if it had not been for the big screen i might have been able to cut it some slack but alas they even chose the format of release wrong. all in all i would recommend that no one watch this unless you are bored out of your mind and have too much money and not enough sense.


So, the story begins with an average couple, the unemployed musician husband, Brad(Rory Cochrane), is already up, making coffee and running a shower for his wife, Lexi(Mary McCormack). Soon after she leaves for work he hears reports on the radio of multiple explosions in Downtown LA. He tries calling his wife, no answer. So after a bit of walking about the house frantically,causing me to have a headache as the camera was all over the place, he gets in his car to attempt to reach her. He gets a burst tyre and turns into a garage, when he returns to his car the reports now say a dirty bomb was detonated. So he goes back in the garage and gets duct tape to ceil(sp?) the house, then returns home...giving up rather easily on the woman he supposedly loves.

Once home an older Mexican man intrudes on the house and persuades Brad to let him stay. They Ciel the house after waiting a bit to see if Lexi will come home, but, oh dear! She comes home little after they've ceiled the house. Now, again, the woman Brad loves so much, comes home, coughing up blood, covered in smoke etc. Would you not let her in? even if it meant u maybe becoming infected? Considering you want to live and die with this person.

Selfishly she breaks a window, he quickly covers it back up. Later the old Mexican man leaves, to be with his wife..Still Brad isolates his. Lexi goes wandering and sees a small boy, Timmy, who was earlier in the film.

Lexi goes to the hospital with the kid, soldiers in contamination suits come to the house when she's gone and take a sample of ash from when Lexi broke the window. She returns, turned away from the hospitals, and then the two sit there, for a good ten/twenty minutes, talking. The men return and take Lexi away from the house...By this point i couldn't give a damn what happened to the characters, as the acting, story and general presentation of the film has failed to keep me interested or feel for the characters.

The twist. The twist is something that wasn't really a twist, it was in all honesty, as the whole idea of the dirty bomb is to intoxicate all those who encounter it, which the bomb hasn't done. I won't say the twist, but by the time it happens, you won't even care.

Bad story, good initial idea. Mediocre acting, uneventful script, and the camera work was just plain, amateur. I spent £7 to see this film, me and my two friends with whom I saw it with, were very disappointed.

This may have been the worst film I have ever seen, it's certainly in the top 10 worst films. Horrendously poor.


"Right at your door" was a movie conceived on the current terrorism format. From the get go, one settles into believing that this will be man against a more sinister toxic annihilation. We open with a relationship in the bedroom, (Brad & Lexi), that oozes devotion. Brad has doted on Lexi, with candle light dinner. Coffee in bed, He even warms the shower up for her. The affection continues until Lexi leaves for her downtown office & working day. When the explosion is announced, Brad is slowly dragged out of his morning torpor with the horrific realization that Lexi is in the middle of it. He is frantic. Numerous attempts to get to her, with no regard to his own safety, fail. An aging Handyman caught out working on a neighbors house frantically seeks refuge & Brad lets him in. The Handyman has to sit through Brads soul destroying anguish at the realization that Lexi was probably a victim of the explosion. We get 20 minutes of grief, anger, frustration, then mental exhaustion, before he is finally convinced to seal the house against the impending toxic pollution. Then out of the blue, Lexi turns up, & Brad says "You can't come in, you might infect me" SAY WHAT!!! Even when the Handyman explains that it's worth the risk that he be with his wife & leaves, Brad is adamant his skin comes first, but concedes to sealing off a room so Lexi can come in out of the cold. How freaking compassionate!!!! The end comes when the disease police gas the self-centered Brad, who finished up infected anyway, in his own "fort", & Lexi gets a 5 minute paramedic treatment & is told she'll survive. Hooray says everyone,, Now the writers can get back to their crayons. I've seen better plots in a 30 second Ad.


I'm not a film buff of any sort but after seeing 'Right at Your Door' I feel the need to say some things about it. Even though this film deals with a very real threat and demonstrates people under panic moving with pure instinct, as a piece of film, as the story winds on, the viewer finds themselves questioning how much longer the film will go on. In no way am I attempting to belittle the plight that chemical warfare presents. What I am commenting on however is how Gorak seems to drag out the film to make the conclusion all the more effective, and instead of causing surprise as a twist should all the ending does is leave the viewer thinking, 'Is that it?' With bombs being so recently detonated in London and other cities around the world I can see why this film has been made; in order in investigate whether people are ready for such an event, or whether mass panic is an eventuality that cannot be avoided. But as a piece of cinema, 'Right At Your Door' begins to sag as the story is stretched out more and more leading to a very strange twist that in all honesty it could have been better without. I'm not saying that the story didn't work or that I wasn't shocked by the demonstration of how an event such as this could play out. What I am saying is that the story becomes lost in the search for a conclusion, for some semblance of an ending. It could have been a lot better if attention had been focused on the story and the characters rather than a bizarre twist that you end up waiting for, in the hope that the film can regain the energy that it has gradually lost since it began. A promising thriller that swallows itself up.


A film that probably could have been 15 minutes long.

I was expecting an action/disaster movie, instead I got an overlong and often boring human drama played out between a husband and wife. I found it unrealistic - so in love but when she first returns to the house he wouldn't let her in! And as for the 'twist' - I didn't see it coming but it was not so much a twist, more of a cop-out ending.

Very dull and mis-sold on the trailers as some kind of action movie.

Maybe my comment is negative based upon an unrealised expectation, but hey, blame that on those who put together the trailer and marketed this movie.

Plus points could be the acting which was fine, but I often found myself paying more attention to the shaky camera work - why the director decided on this style during even the most heartbreaking scenes is beyond me.


Oh dear. I watched this film because a colleague recommended it. I will have serious words with her next time I see her. Here's why...

A good film can be let down by a moment in the film when you, the viewer, don't believe (or buy) the characters' decisions or actions. This happened in The Wrestler, when the main character 'forgot' to attend the dinner date that he had managed to arrange with his estranged daughter. However, I would say on balance that The Wrestler is a good film, as other aspects of the film compensated for this 'moment'.

Right At Your Door, on the other hand is literally riddled with moments which made me question the characters' actions and decisions to the point that I was saying out loud, phrases beginning with "Why did he just...?" or "Why doesn't she...?" This kind of spoilt the viewing experience for me.

Also, I can't say that on balance, in spite of these numerous confusing/irritating moments, that RAYD is a good film. As many have said, the idea is good, but the script is really weak. The 'twist' at the end of the film left me furious. I really did feel like I had wasted 90 minutes of my life. I wanted all the characters to die of the poison - along with anyone who had anything to do with the relaxation of this cinematic sludge.

And yet, there are people and critics who rate this film quite highly. Perhaps you should see it for yourself, but by no means do that under my recommendation.


this has got to be the worst film i have ever seen! some say its a horror, I've seen more scarier things in my bin, than in this film. there was no suspense, no horror no plot! i had no sympathy for any of the characters,it was bad acting, directing, and writing! so the idea that this could really happen, was plausible, apart from that, there's nothing.

the reviews in the UK said 'the twist is so good you don't see it coming' the fact that they point out there is a twist means that there is no twist, you see it coming a mile away! thats not a twist! please please please save your money, rent it if you want but do not go and pay to see this movie, you will regret it! 2.5 hours of my life i will never get back!


A man is risking his life trying to find his wife after an explosion, seemingly not caring if he dies right along with her. He knows there is toxic waste in the air but when in his house he waits long to seal it off. Shortly afterwards his wife appears at the house BUT THEN HE WON'T LET HER IN! He could have been contaminated himself just anytime of the long time before he sealed the house off but after he made his late decision to seal the house off he won't let his wife in and there is no question anywhere around that he might even consider dying with his wife that he seemed so devoted to just minutes before.

If there is any punishment for horrendous in-consequence and total idiocy then he has surely deserved it. I did not wait to find out if he got his punishment but another reviewer thankfully spoiled the plot and it seems he will get such punishment but probably for other reasons.

Well, so far the movie. The situation the movie depicts, is however interesting. In a society where the scoundrels have the say so - who will then believe authority in a crisis? Who will omit spreading a virus for the sake of humanity, if such a authority of scoundrels tell you to? Could you believe them or, even if you believed them, would you care to save THEM? Interesting consequence of market economy with its business and general skulduggery, in other words. I guess there are many more flaws that may turn up in crisis - evil will not survive for long. Let's just hope that we are wise enough to exterminate it before it exterminates us.


This movie was supposed to be one that disperses life lessons. That is very noble and can bring about group discussions amongst Yuppie Set. However, This film failed on many levels . Where do I start? Lets see a Mexican handyman somehow winds up in Brads house to take cover when he could have stayed at the house he was working. Brad can not use the roads to try and find his lovely bride, but somehow from the midst of ground zero, his wife Lexi, manages to make it home. Brad wont let her in and basically that is where the plot revolves. Questions of self survival vs. marital unity and loyalty. OK , nice move by the writers. I just felt the film was too far-fetched. Mexican man leaves and we never know what became of him. Couple people here and there come and go , including young Timmy... Can anyone say PLOT FILLER. Somehow at the end of the film, Brad is contaminated with no signs of illness , while wife is seemingly going to be OK , while coughing through out , like a smoker that smokes 6 packs a day. Yes again , I understand the irony the film wanted to portray sort of like the hunter being the hunted , blah blah blah. It just did not work with all the holes.


The worst movie I've seen this year and probably the worst I will see for some time. It was that bad that of the 12 people watching, 6 left. Unfortunately I was not one of them as I waited for the "twist you never see coming". I was that embarrassed that I'd actually paid money to watch it that I found myself ducking out of the cinema like some unscrupulous pick pocket making off with his ill gotten gains. I avoided eye contact with the other four poor unfortunates, who probably felt as robbed as we did, for fear of seeing disappointment and disbelief in their eyes that echoed my own. Avoid like the plague. I don't want anyone to feel conned, like we did. I felt like jumping the counter to snatch back my ten pounds and would have done but for the fear of having to explain to my fellow inmates that I was in for watching "Right at my door" or whatever its called. You have been warned!!


I would have given this 1 star, but the acting in it was not that bad, and i don't want this to reflect their performances. It is obvious what the film tried to achieve, a disaster film on a human level without the budget and the bangs, but you get the feeling that this is a failed experiment and should not be reattempted. I watched it with four other guys around the same age (22). 23 minutes into the film and we were asking each other when it was going to start. Maybe this film hits deeply in America because of their fixation with terrorism there. That is the only reason i can see for being taken in by the film. The "twist" does not leave you thinking, wow didn't see that coming, but more, "wow is that it, thank god its over". its a painful watch for the person who chose the film, although with so many positive reviews they cannot be entirely blamed. There are points in the film when you think, "what is the point of filming that", such as when Lexie is on the phone to her brother. you don't care enough about the character to want to hear her talk about nothing to a completely new character. The child; what is the point in that story line. Same goes for the co-worker(?) who comes to take her to the hospital. You just don't care. Please don't waste a night on this film. i will make you so unhappy!


I saw the trailer and thought o this looks like a good film, so i went to the cinema to see it and within the first 10 mins it got straight into it, which was great. Then it were 2hrs of boring chit chat between the 2. People were actually leaving the cinema about 50% the way through, saying it was crap. And yeh the twist was good idea, but for 2 mins then the end, come on ppl that was a let down tbh. When the credits rolled, i was wonderin when this "amazing" "masterpiece" film acclaimed by top movie critics was actually going to start lol !!. What were these guys on man !!.

Overall: Good start, then awful throughout, then a disappointing ending !


That's what this film is. It's a salty doughnut. Imagine, if you will, that it's a nice sunny day, you're at the seaside, and you start to feel peckish. You would love nothing more than a gorgeous sugary doughnut. Your expectations of this doughnut are very high, for you know the delicious flavour of a sugary doughnut very well; and memories of your childhood trips to the seaside come flooding back at the thought of this Godly doughnut. So you go to buy one. You lift it to your mouth. You bite, and slowly, realisation begins to dawn upon you. It's salt. You spit it out in a fit of disgust, stamp it into the ground, and throw the rest of it into the sea. The doughnut leaves you psychologically scarred, and your trip is ruined.

I expected Right At Your Door to be quite good. I thought it would be a refreshingly new break from the norm; a film that didn't overly promote the indomitable spirit of the American citizen, and clog up its minutes with all-too predictable pseudo-patriotic government speeches. To be fair, the film didn't do any of these things. The problem is that it didn't do much of anything at all.

Right At Your Door wastes no time in getting straight to the "action" (I use this term very loosely). The first 10 minutes introduce us to the main characters, a loving married couple living out their quotidian existence in an average house in an average borough of Los Angeles. The woman goes out to work leaving the man alone in the house, when suddenly, SHOCK HORROR!!, a series of so-called "dirty" bombs explode and release a miasma of noxious toxins and lethal micro-organisms unto the unsuspecting and unprepared citizenry of downtown L.A.

For me to go any further would likely result in me being blacklisted for revealing a spoiler, but really, this film is so predictable, that such a term seems to become somewhat redundant. The main characters act as you would expect them to do given the circumstances in which they find themselves. Really, from the time the bombs go off until the last 5 minutes, absolutely nothing of interest happens. The bulk of the film consists primarily of utterly pointless dialogue, both between the main characters and two similarly useless secondary characters who serve no purpose aside from..no..wait..they serve no purpose full stop.

Though the primary characters may be readable, the authorities at first seemed to symbolise spontaneity. Seriously, I was expecting the LAPD or something, but these guys looked and acted more like an ill-equipped SWAT team that were completely indifferent as to the lives of the inhabitants of L.A, which was at first quite intriguing, but eventually got boring and began to suffer from "I know what you're going to do at the end" syndrome.

The acting was dire, as was the script, as was the direction. I dearly hope that the actors in this film fade into insignificance as quickly as is possible, and that everyone associated with the making of this film hastily follows suit. 2/10 is generous for me.


I really don't want to write too much regarding this film, a. because I believe the twist is so over hyped and that I pretty much figured it out 30 mins into the film ..

b. I didn't really believe the acting in the film, I'm not saying it was poor, just that me personally don't think that it was realistic decisions made by the main characters throughout the film given the situation.

c. The film is only 90 minutes but I honestly felt like I was in there forever, If it wasn't for the fact I had my girlfriend with me I would of walked out I was so bored.

But that's my ten pence worth, I could of been more in-depth however I really don't think this film deserves such attention.


This film is just silly and not worth your time. One of the biggest reasons was the wretched decision to cast the 6' tall and blue-gray eyed Burt Lancaster as an American Indian!! Unfortunately, this silly miscasting was common in the 30s-50s, as the likes of Rock Hudson and Kent Smith also played Indians (among MANY others).

Now if you can ignore the silly and racially insensitive casting, you still probably will hate the film because of the horrible writing. The story is supposedly about a real-life Indian ("Massai"), but the story bears little similarity to him. The biggest problem is that Massai is a hero in the film, but according to IMDb he was not just a murderer but a rapist--hardly the stuff of heroes!! Also, the film ends in the most ridiculous fashion. After Massai shoots at least two of his people, only minutes later, those trying to subdue him just let him walk away--yet he just killed two people!!!! Even if you are sympathetic to his cause, why not disarm him or at least give him a strong scolding for the killings!?

If you can ignore the dumb casting, dumb mis-telling of Massai's life and dumb ending, can you enjoy the rest of the film? Well, no...you can't. That's because it purports to be a romance between Massai and Nalinle, it's about the least romantic pairing in film history! For his part, Massai treats Nalinle like dirt and she follows him like a whipped puppy. There is no love or chemistry. But to make it worse, I just wish the couple would have used a few pronouns!! Hearing Nalinle talking to Massai and referring to him as "Massai" (never YOU or even HE), it sounds like a kid in a school play trying to pretend (unconvincingly) that they are Indians.

Dull and dumb--hardly a glowing endorsement!!


Apache started off ok enough with some good action and an interesting story, but after about the midway point it declined into a ridiculous affair. I never really found myself too convinced by Lancaster and an indian and the whole thing just became less believable as it went on. I would just say it's your average fare except for the absurd ending. Without giving anything away I must say that it just didn't make any sense. I later discovered that there may well have been a reason for this: one of the producers insisted on a different kind of ending than the original one that both the director and Lancaster wanted. Either way I can't recommend this one too strongly. I gave it a 4.


Yet another grandiose insult to the Native American people. Only an all-white descendant of European puritans would see it as otherwise. (And even THAT genealogy is widely aware of the grim truth these days.)

There is such a thing as "willing suspension of disbelief" and it is splashed around the movie milieu like mud on pigs  because it NEEDS to be. If it weren't for this imperative facility, we would never buy the innumerable stupidities the fun-makers throw at us: sound in space, life after death, faster-than-light travel, teens investigating pitch-black basements without flashlights. But this movie seems INTENT on trying to subvert that suspension from all angles.

No one needs to BE "sick" to PLAY sick, or be "gay" to play gay, or angry to play angry  that's why it's called "acting". But to cast the uber-red-white-n-blue cowboy Burt Lancaster, splotchily body-painted as an APACHE, egregiously pushes the "suspension of disbelief" envelope way past "racist" and "ignorant" and somewhere into the region of parallel universe. Furthering the surrealism, petite-featured Jean Peters is his blue-eyed Apache Woman (both of them sporting chic Valley Girl Headbands to hold their deplorable jet-black, synthetic-hair wigs in place); both abjectly avoiding any semblance of Apache mannerism or speech inflection (except, of course, for that precious "educated savage" idiosyncrasy of referring to themselves in the third person). To cap it all, Lancaster's every phrase and action that of a theatrical acting student performing Native-American-Warrior-by-way-of-Julliard, rather than that of battle-worn, open-sky-raised Apache. I won't even mention the Central Casting "Generic Indian" extras, who were all Mexican, Spanish and White ("Yeh, Doris - just throw some breechclouts, beads and feathers on 'em, will ya.") - A viewer from an alien culture would never be able to apprehend why the marauding Europeans would want to massacre indigenous American peoples who looked and spoke and behaved and were culturally EXACTLY LIKE THEM!

Even Lancaster's motivation was so milky-white, you could healthily breast-feed your baby with it: victim of the almost Nazi-like racial cleansing of the late 1800s, of the Native American peoples by the Amerikan Military, his aspirations were NOT to challenge the White Eyes over rightful claim to The Land, but rather, to ASSIMILATE into the white community by GROWING CORN alongside his oppressors and raising kids in that enslaved environment. Certain Native American groups *were* farmers, through their own volition  but Lancaster's character implies that in his travels, he encountered a Cherokee group whose truce with their resident Whites was brought about by "learning" how to sow corn. In essence, if you sycophant yourself and husband the land, the White Eyes will "let you live". Consequently, this mission becomes Lancaster's El Dorado.

And the White Slant of the movie makes lowering his standards from "fighting the continental United States" to "sowing a meager rock-strewn plot of land with a model" the noblest thing an Apache could possibly do. In the most unrealistic turn of an altogether unrealistic movie, as Lancaster battles inept soldiers trying to gun him down in the final scene, all animosity is quelled when the soldiers realize that he has staked roots *in this here land of THEIRS* by growing corn and siring a child - and they LEAVE HIM BE!

And I thought *Disney Corp* was the most dangerous of all insidious liars.

The canard that the Amerikan Military has even a shred of respect for peoples whom they are inculcated to believe are alien enough to warrant massacring, is stridently converse to what we now know to be the truth about ANY war situation. "The enemy" have always been regarded as soul-less, god-less, without rights or recourse and deserving of death at His Most Righ-chuss Hand. EVERY side is guilty of advocating this credo.

Simply put: even though he had cowed to the Amerikan Way, the military would NOT have left Lancaster to live in peace in his newly-created outer 'burb of White-Man-Ville. The Amerikan Military was not out to CONVERT Native Americans; it was a much simpler plan - GENOCIDE. Lancaster would have been expediently killed, his cornfield torched, his postpartum wife raped and his newborn disposed of in a manner unfit to describe in this forum.

At this juncture in its spotty history, Amerika is quite self-aware of its many atrocities towards the numerous indigenous tribes of nomads whom they couldn't tell apart through ignorance. We know that the fledgling Amerikan government did not honor ONE SINGLE TREATY that it signed with any Native American; we know of Custer's men using the heads of Native American children as soccer balls; of the regard of these noble peoples as "devils in human shape"  so to be subjected to this fiasco of a movie honeycoating the Apache peoples' plight by portraying how one "proud warrior" can learn to live peaceably amongst his subjugators by ignominiously succumbing to White Culture, simply puts me on the warpath. (Even the oversimplified title "Apache"  a term applied to a number of Southwestern Athapascan Native American groups  is as inelegant as titling a film "White Man", be it about a Canadian, European or Australian.)

The audience is cajoled into believing that the film-makers' sympathies lay with the Native Americans, as the "star" of the movie is (supposedly) portraying an Apache. But once again, history is being written by the winners and Lancaster's laughably inauthentic Native American character is simply a big Cop-Out.

Though it is intimated by Lancaster and ultimately diluted by the film's message of RAMPANT CORN-GROWING, it is never made clear that the Apache peoples were always fighting for the two causes which Amerikans hold most dear as their god-given rights - their homeland and their freedom.

Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it!

(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)


The previous commenter got confused somehow.

There were two devices. The one in Paris healed people but the one in Russia killed people. The men that injured and killed and then stayed so were at the Russian site. I wonder why they didn't bring up this difference when considering which of the devices they should attack, but I suppose that is asking for too much from a movie like this.

Now if the poster wanted to talk about the bad things in the movie he could have brought up the dialog or perhaps the poorly thought out bad guys, or some of the other quick fixes the movie took. The bad guys didn't seem to have much reason for their decisions other than a fear of something different. They also seemed to miss a major plot point after all of their study.

So while the movie isn't that good it did at least stay consistent. I wonder if we will be seeing a third movie in a few years to help further explain/muddy the water.


Hmm, that should sum it up right there, but I'll go into more detail. Okay, the story was pathetic. The Chinese randomly blow up a Russo/American space station and of course the two nations react and come close to a war with China. This somehow causes two alien objects to come up out of the ground, one that heals and one that destroys. When the waves of each of these collide, the earth would be re-terraformed and start over without humans. The only way that these aliens will leave is if they see their son that they got by impregnating Dr. Mason Rand's (David Keith) wife 10 years ago. Of course, they wait till the last couple minutes to bring his son, who also has healing powers and can bring people back to life. The acting was pitiful, I'll go over some huge standouts in a segment I like to call: What I Learned From This Movie:

1. When soldiers are shooting at an armed enemy, they stand out in open space and fire randomly.

2. Soldiers can look intimidating with their guns, but if you get into martial arts moves, they collapse.

3. When shot in the leg, people can keep walking without noticing it for five seconds.

4. Even though the aliens are 2-3 feet tall, the passageways to their structure is conveniently sized for humans to be comfortable.

5. Ex-Special Ops cannot shoot a stationary target.

The acting was pitiful the whole way through though. Keith did not have his best stuff at all. Not even close. It seems as if he tried way too hard to do a crappy job. The directing, to have at least that many noticeable major errors, is awful. He had more than that, those were just the first to come to mind. The visual effects were awful as well. The explosions looked fake, the Toris didn't look convincing at all, and the blood didn't even look real. I picked this up for a free rental because I thought it looked cool; that was a mistake. Avoid this one, you'll want your 90 minutes back.


amateurish space trash.

politically retarded; scientifically inaccurate; religiously barbaric.

and of course, there's the bad story; bad photography; bad editing; laughably inept dialog.

no point talking about the acting here; these 'professional' actors are reciting lines on cue without any sense that the lines might accumulate into meaningful speech - for the simple reason that it is impossible for them to accumulate into some kind of meaningful speech - it is the usual TV-space-trash babble that people in LSD-flashback really admire.

crap.


Wooden acting and a non-sensical plot kill this remake. If you like the first one, skip this. Multiple plot lines all jumble together to no satisfactory conclusions. David Keith, one of my favorites, acts like he never read the script until just before they call "Action".


This came on after some other movie, on TV and it ran for awhile in the background until I got up to look and see, was it really as bad as it sounded? Answer: worse.

The writing is, well, what writing. No actor could make it jump, and Keith did not disappoint in this area. There was no pop, no drama, no NUTTIN' in his voice. I sat through a few mins of it and can only say it is no wonder we are turning into a 3rd class country. We can't write our way out of a paper bag, we do not have actors that can act, preferring to import them from elsewhere, etc etc etc.

This flick is as bad as it gets. I shan't even start in on the visual. All involved with this flick ought to be drummed out of the business and never allowed in the industry again. It is as bad as it gets. Worse.


I'm a fan of the first Epoch. But like most sequels, they wind up being bad. Mainly because they don't have enough ideas for a sequel. That's why I get nervous when I rent a sequel, because I don't know if it's going to be as good as Spider Man 2. Or dumb, Spy Kids fluff. The movie was kind of rushed. Unlike the first Epoch, everything inside the Torus was different. Unlike the Torus in Epoch 1, There weren't any huge rooms with those tanks in it, and no really good CGI effects. And My favorite Character from the first installment died. And oddly, this movie is rated R. Epoch 1 is rated PG-13. I'm gonna have to say this movie is a flop.


Quite literally, this movie was laughable. The acting is atrocious, my friends and I were busting up laughing in every single scene. It was fairly entertaining, actually, it is the sort of movie that will end up on Mystery Science Theatre 4000 in about 20 years. It looks like they blew all of their mid-level budget on the computer effects scenes, which are decent. The rest of the movie takes place in and out of various tents, and the Torus... which looks suspiciously like a laser tag arena that they rented for a few hours one afternoon. The plot is silly and obvious, the religious overtones are blatant to the point of being insulting. If you want to see a melodramatic cheesy sci-fi movie, this one delivers in spades.

The hero looks like the Fat Elvis version of David Hasselhoff. Enough said.


"If you like this title, we also recommend...

Boa vs. Python (2004) (TV)."

There's really not much more to say other than that, but I'll try: Imagine being strapped to a chair while every stupid person who has ever irritated you, wasted your time, or otherwise caused you grief pokes you repeatedly in the face with a rolled-up copy of the National Enquirer while explaining the plot of Jason and the Argonauts to you using no words that contain more than two syllables. That's how much fun you will probably have watching this movie. Cue next anonymous hyperbolic scathing.


Wow...what can I type that will make this seem like it is worth reading? Awful and atrocious sets...even for a low budget.

Plot that stinks worse than week old diapers.

Performanes of wood and not even good wood...rotten wood, full of mildew and mold and worms and stench.

Plot...was there one? Oh yeah...I already made a comment about plot.

Computer graphics...maybe it's time to start drawing stick figures and happy faces. They look better.

Continuity...almost as good as the MUSIC...which is almost as good as garbage, but not so entertaining.

Camera work and editing...the bad part is that it sucked...and the good part is that it sucked.

Plot...oh yeah...none.

The entire movie was just nasty mess of everything that should not ever be made on film.

If there is one piece of advice that you will ever take from a stranger...take this. If you are so desperate to watch this...then count backwards from 5 million and do it while chewing bubblegum and skipping rope, because you will enjoy it ten times more and it will make just as much sense.


I am not in the habit of writing a review for a film that I don't like but I was honestly shocked at how horrible this movie was.

I couldn't tell what was more atrocious. The horrible acting or the laughable script. I love the idea that Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is finally getting a starring vehicle but his performance here made me see why he never took off in Hollywood. It was truly THAT bad.

The writing was wooden and incredible. Normal people don't speak like these guys did. They go from laughing to crying to anger in minutes. Why would you beg a hitchhiker to get back in your car after 20 minutes of driving? Why would you reveal such incriminating details of your life story after knowing someone for an hour? Why would you allow a stranger with a gun in your car?

Horrible. And the camera work didn't help, either. I'm no expert but here's a tip: when showing a gritty, close up scene, try taking the camera off sticks and going hand-held to get an edgier, more nervous feel. I felt like I was watching public access theater for a while there.

Overall, this is a good concept for a film. The execution, however, drowned the story in a sea of amateurish and obvious mistakes that kids in their second month of film school are warned against.

I wish the actors and crew of this film long, fruitful careers in the entertainment industry but you'll need to bury the masters of this stinker for that to occur. Two words: Alan Smithee.


I'm putting this in here not so much for the purposes of explaining or reviewing, but for 1) giving other haters of Guinevere a place to check in, and 2) entertaining those who love to read negative reviews of movies they know they're going to see anyway.

Poor, pathetic Harper, literally hiding in the closet at her sister's wedding, her hair mussed and her bride's-maid dress sagging off her shoulders. "You've obviously mistaken me for someone with potential," she barely manages to squeak to the wedding photographer, in one of the multitudinous lines of on-the-nose dialogue in this self-conscious, overwrought clunker.

Somehow this bright, beautiful 20-year-old has managed to get through her entire life, including four years of college, without once meeting a person who has affirmed her intelligence and her creativity, even though she's smart enough to have been accepted into Harvard Law. Similar ironies occur in real life--the beauty who thinks she's ugly, the overachiever who thinks she's not doing enough--but at some point you lose interest in a character who's either got some serious personality disorder or whose creator (the writer) imagines that weird gestures and speeches can take the place of psychology.

The beautiful, bright girl proves utterly vulnerable to the seducements of the wedding photographer: an older, less-promising, often insolent, and lecherous man who says things to her like "You can do it" and "You must learn to detest the bourgeoisie." Oh, I don't remember if he actually said *those* things, but his utterances are so much hogwash that only an impression of nonsense remains. Harper is introduced to . . . coffee houses! She listens to . . . jazz! Someone actually asks her about her ideas for the first ever time in her whole entire life! To go back to the biographical thing, how did this girl ever get the liberal arts education required to enter Harvard Law without someone at least once eliciting her opinion on something? And probably admiring it? Without ever having a lively conversation with intellectual and creative types? Without ever laughing? Without going through that whole fascinating-older-man thing about ten times? Without getting a glimpse outside the world she came from?

Unlikely, weird scenes get slapped on, one after the other, without any progress in character or conflict. She throws herself on him hungrily. She moves in. He insults her, she runs away, she insults him and then comes back, they insult each other and reunite. When he's at his lowest, she goes into a frenzy of taking his picture, presumably off a roll of film with about 200 exposures on it. Then she gets him into focus and relents with a whimper.

Ultimately, the photog turns out to be every bit as bad as he promises, and perhaps a little better since he's principled enough to send her away when it's at the point where the relationship can do nothing but drag her down. Fast-forward to so many years later and she's giving him the last and only thing she can: her best wishes for a good death. The scene drags on and on, and ends with his dissolution into heavenly white light. Why? Whose story was this? "He was the worst man I ever met. Or the best man I ever met." This ham-fisted summary, I suppose, is supposed to be a specimen of brilliant, tortured, complex ambiguity. To me, it's a failure to make a stand, an excuse for the writer to dump a truckload of contradictions into a character then sneak away without explaining any of it. And why end with him? Again I ask, whose story was this?

Audrey Wells, you're a fraud.


I just saw of this film at the Montreal World Film Festival. Stephen Rea and Sarah Polley were in attendance. You could not ask for two better actors. Rea plays a 45-50ish photographer who seduces 20 yr. old Sarah Polley to give up her law school career and become an artist and his live-in- lover.

The director and writer, Audrey Wells, also directed and wrote The Truth About Cats and Dogs. I intensely disliked that film because it was implausible, not grounded in any reality, and because even the luminous Jeneane Garafalo couldn't save it. Audrey Wells also wrote Inspector Gadget; clearly, her writing leaves something to be desired. In this film she manages to put interesting situations (May-September romance / high vs. low class) forth but whenever they approach any hard edges here comes the soft humour or easy way outs or just plain ambiguously unrealized character motives. Polley's character would get to say one disturbing or strong thing, then have go on acting so obviously well below her & her character's intelligence.

I consistently thought scenes were misdirected and that the writing gave up on itself and fell into cliche, sapping it of any force it had. And with the potential force between these two great actors never realized it was a sad loss. This is no Lolita or Educating Rita. Consider even the ballyhooed scene were Jean Smart, in a good job, takes down Rea's character in front of her daughter (the 'awe' scene.) The camera focusses intently on Smart's malice. Think how much better that little diatribe would be if we were watching *Polley's* reaction while hearing the *mother's* words. That would be a real dislocation. Then we could see the full range of which Polley is absolutely capable.

Also, the soundtrack music was very synthetic and touchy-feely and it worked completely against the (potentially) creepy aspect of the film, until the white-light hogwash of the end. But if you liked all that white-light business in "Kissed" & if you could tolerate the preposterous situation of Cats & Dogs, then maybe you will like this film. As it was, I found it singularly unconvincing, the moreso as it went along.

ps. Sandra Oh is very funny with the two minutes of screen time she gets. Sandra Oh is always excellent. If you want to see a good Sarah Polley & Sandra Oh film, rent "Last Night". It's brilliant. For Stephen Rea, look forward to his next Neil Jordan film.


I've just watched a film so bad, I am visibly shaken, nearly to the point of vomiting. I love Sarah Polley. I find her mesmerizingly beautiful, and I thought she did the best that could be done in this film, under the circumstances.

That said, the 'Connie' character is just gross. And not even gross in a passive sort of way. Gross in a way that leaves you hoping and praying you can forget these memories, scratching to get the images out of your head.

Can anyone tell me what Connie died of? I mean, it doesn't even say, right? Is it cancer, perhaps related to his constant smoking? Or is it something still more disturbing? I'll tell you, what did it for me was the scene where he bites down on some piece of food, and his f*ing teeth fall out. I mean, what the f*$%?!?! I saw that and nearly threw up in my mouth. Then I went straight to the bathroom and brushed my teeth for half an hour.

Poor Sarah Polley. Someone put her in a good movie. I still liked 'Go,' in which Polley completely steals the entire movie from Katie Holmes.


First of all I have to say I saw this movie on video, since it didn't come out here in the cinema. The cast (Rea, Polley) looked good, and I liked 'The truth about cats and dogs', the only film by director Wells I had seen before. But what a terrible miss, this turned out to be. The relationship between "old man" Rea and his muse Polley didn't look believable at all to me, although in one of the first scenes (which turned out to be one of the only likeable ones) they seem to hit it off pretty well. But as the movie carries on, the story loses its promise and gets worse and worse. Towards the end you get more and more annoyed with the main characters and finally you realise you've been watching a terrible movie.


Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley) is a gorgeous and insecure twenty years old woman, dominated by her wealthy family and has just passed to Harvard. In her sister's wedding, she meets the photographer Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), an old, weird, not handsome and very poor man, who tells her that she has a great potential in arts and calls her Guinevere. Harper falls in love with him. She gives up of Harvard, leaves her family and moves to his apartment. Pretty soon, she finds that he has used the same seduction by flattery technique, including the nickname Guinevere, with other girls. But she stays with him, until she is `replaced' by another girl. After four years, Harper becomes a mature woman, totally different from the one in the beginning of the story. This movie is a very weird romance. If the viewer can buy that a beautiful and wealthy girl like Harper could really love a guy like Connie and stay with him, probably he will like this film. That is not my case. Harper is a mature woman in the end of the story, but in the beginning, she would have to move to Harvard, where she certainly would develop herself as a human being. Of course, the experience she has with Connie is great for her formation, but the guy is too much strange and does not really seems to love her. She is just another tasteful laboratory for him. The cynical dialog of Harper's mother with Connie is for me the greatest part of this film, when she says that a looser like him prefers young and naive women to be admired in his completely failure as a man. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): `A Lente do Desejo' (`The Lens of the Desire')


I couldn't believe how awful this movie was. It was virtually free of redeeming features. Poor Sarah Polley desperately tries to save the thing singlehandedly but with lines like that nobody can.

These were some of the things that really grated: Complete absence of likeable characters (he a sad lech, she a dimwitted girlie, her family standard-issue clichZd stiffs, and a pathetic rent-a-bohemian crowd whose role in the movie was decorative (as in house plants) rather than integral).

A plot anyone could have filled in after the first five minutes Dialogue that would have been embarrassing in a 70s movie (the old art vs commerce debate - please!; quaint words like 'capitalism' and 'bourgeoisie'; "I am studying your form" - aaaaargh) Generic feel-good scenes straight out of Newton cigarette ads Cheesy, unironic music Complete ignorance of the principles of photography (photographers do not work like that). Perhaps excusable if it had been made by an older guy - but a woman? Girls, we can do better


Astonishingly horrid, hackneyed drivel. I couldn't believe that the actors and filmmakers--who are ostensibly a part of an artistic community of sorts--would portray "bohemians" in such a cheesy way.

And what the hell was with the cutesy dance scenes with car-commercial music in the background? Did someone tell the director this would look cool? I puked. Every "romantic" scene was equally unbearable (except for the sex scenes which were tasteless and disturbing).

We all know people who think they are sophisticated, intelligent, and avant garde, but are actually vomitous, narcissistic poseurs. They will love this "art film." You should avoid it like the plague.


Guinevere opens with lovely opening credits showing various body part photos. It soon unveils its plot detail of a nearly 30-year age difference between lovers Connie (Rea) and Harper (Polley). The film conveys a quiet suspense, at least until the final act. Will this particular romance break Connie's sad, Rod Stewart-like dating pattern?

Good performances by all, especially the women. No one does tortured indie girl on the inside/ethereal WASP on the outside better than Polley. Jean Smart, as others here have mentioned, is a scene stealer when she gives Connie a piece of her prickly mind. Gina Gershon and Sandra Oh are on too briefly.

Despite these strengths, I had this nagging feeling I was watching something disingenuous. Someone who looks like Harper never got hit on in college, if ever? Was she that wrapped up in herself so as not to observe others? In a scene where Harper is grabbing coffees from a café counter, a young male employee and an older male customer are checking her out, and she knows it. Nothing about her looks different, except for her more frequent grin and a bright blue tank top. I'm assuming that her new confidence is radiating and that's what's catching guys' eyes, but come on.

Big spoiler: Near the end, alcoholism takes its toll on Connie. So, how to prepare for his death? Gather the ex-girlfriends for a pre-memorial, of course! At least he didn't racially discriminate when choosing lovers; it was just the pesky age thing for him. Soon after, he is given an eye roller of a group photo of the exes, and before he dies Harper describes the afterlife (purgatory?) to him -- complete with visuals that rival a cosmetics ad.

A much better story about a photographer in an odd relationship is Proof, starring Hugo Weaving.


I got roped into watching this drivel by my girlfriend. It was On Demand and I had had a couple of beers so I said 'why not'. Well, if you're interested, here's why not: This galling display of perversion is so caustic to the sensibilities of any thinking person that I cannot believe anyone was truly happy with the film when it was completed. The characters are beyond unsympathetic and venture into the realm of embarrassing. Harper is a pathetic and hopeless individual if she made it as far in life as her storyline says she did without the skills she seems to lack. Worse, the life lessons she is supposedly learning clearly aren't sinking in if,after realizing her love interest is nothing but a lecherous, perverted, no talent, broke, lying loser who preys on naive, helpless girls when he exposes his intentions in LA at his former 'collector' friends' house, she happily goes along for the ride with only a little tantrum. Absurd. The collection of similarly abused women at the finale is just gross ("Class of '85!" Good gawwwwwwwd). This film is such a poorly executed self indulgence that it doesn't even live up to irony. Just plain awful. I can't even say that its worth watching for a laugh, because there's nothing funny about. Characters don't develop in any substantiated way. One second people are one thing, the next moment another, for no reason. We are led to believe that harper becomes successful. How? We never see one piece of work. She never gets any connections to dealers or marketers. Suddenly she just appears, wearing a mournful-yet-put-together looking black dress instead of her usual MC hammer style washed out jeans (in the late 90's? San Fran? really?) and tee shirt. Jesus. Where'd that come from? A hopeless attempt at a heartfelt art movie that subverts its own intentions with its meaningless artifice and sloppy, contrived, indulgent imagery. I never post anything on the internet, but this was so bad I couldn't help it. STAY AWAY!!!!


Guinevere, for which I had high hopes, is a disaster. The basic story line (young woman falls in love with older man) is not the problem. The problem is that we are supposed to accept the premise that Harper Sloan (Sarah Polley) is an insecure, naive, helpless young woman. Suspending disbelief is one thing, but swallowing this nonsense is out of the question. We are told to believe that Sarah Polley, at age 20, needs something or someone to appreciate her for what she can become.

Sarah's character, Harper, is a beautiful, wealthy, college-educated resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. There is no way in the world she would still be this uninformed, inexperienced, and helpless. She has done well enough at college to be accepted into Harvard Law School. If we are to believe the film, she is incapable of any intelligent or creative thought or action. From what college did she graduate? Was she asleep for four years? Was she asleep for 20 years?

The only scene with any hint of reality or intelligence was the one in which Harper's mother, played well by Jean Smart, confronts the older man. Sarah Polley is beautiful and talented; she is wasted in this turkey. [For a film in which the director utilizes the talents of a young actor, avoid Guinevere and see Natalie Portman in Anywhere but Here.]


The central point of the movie seemed to be that this woman had great potential and needed this photographer to bring it out. During the whole movie she never showed us even a pinch of talent and the audience was left to wonder if there was any point at all. The whole affair would seem even more horrible and unbelievable if at the end we were left only with a pathetic May/December romance.

Every aspect of the movie was a cliché. Okay, but this created a critical need for some result to advance this film. We were shown rebellion, withdrawal (in a closet no less!), romance, sex, love and the hint of potential (yes,the development of real talent). For all those promises we got nothing and were left holding an empty bag!


Actors with more chemistry might have pulled it off better, but the biggest setbacks were the lack of cleverness in the script and absence of a magic the tale seemed to have been meant to convey. The manipulations were trite and unoriginal, and the idea of the older man being a mentor to a young girl in spite of age and personal problems was fairly unbelievable in this instance. Not enough growth and realization, not enough of a connection was achieved before their time expired. Stephen Rea was almost too cool to be believable as such a screwed up and insecure man. And Sarah Polley never quite seemed to possess the awe and innate beauty her lover was so affected by. However, Jean Smart was perfect as the mother.

Though I believe it could have been magical, and it did begin well, to my disappointment, the journey and end were ultimately rather ridiculous and pretentious.


I bought this movie at a sale, curious and unaware of its potential, the stars or story. This afternoon I had two hours off work, and thought I would relax in the sun and watch it. What a surprise.

It starts with the photos of body parts, which are a little ambiguous, thighs, elbows, curves etc, and I thought, looks interesting. Well it stopped being interesting right there - I should have mowed the lawns! Silly innocuous girl, she kept saying she was nearly 21 but acted around 14, had her head in a bottle - presumably spent the last 4 years at college learning to hold her liquour - at her sister's wedding, in a rather odd bridesmaid's dress, met the man she was to spend the rest of the movie with. I have nothing against age gaps in relationship, although reality has taught me that sooner or later one of you is saggy and baggy and the other gets disillusioned. This guy, this Connie, with a woman's name, had a line as hackneyed and a style as old as the hills. Silly little girl has crush. Where he should have backed off from one who was so self-absorbed and totally boring, he didn't and we all suffered for it. The high spot for me was when she suggested that she look for a flat of her own a few months down the line and he had a tantrum and got well and truly hammered. The good looking older guy with the other blonde in the café looked fine - our girl should have moved in on his party. It just went from bad to worse, giving the Irish, the wedding photographic fraternity and blondes a bad name. Really it was dire. Question - in the scene where she finally walks away, why did she walk through a large puddle? Was that to show us how young and immature she really was? Too late - we knew. Question - don't really wealthy families do 21st birthday parties anymore? So that she got a take away, a Chinese fortune cookie and back into the arms of Mr irresistible. It was all too shallow, as though nobody really wanted to get too heavy. Pity really, it could not have made it any worse.


This is a ninja movie from Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho... For those that don't know the history, These guys made a bunch of ninja movies during the 80's that were created by combining ninja footage (with mostly European actors) into really bad Hong Kong films...

The ninja's usually wore headbands that said "ninja" on them, and in general the movies were incredibly funny. Unfortunately, this one just barely fits in with the rest of them. All the primary actors from the other films are missing (except for the opening credits) and it appears that this one is not really a cut and paste movie... If it's a combination of two movies it's much more difficult to tell than usual and certainly more effort was put into hiding it.. possibly even using some of the same actors from the original movie or finding decent look-alikes... I still get the feeling that there is something not quite right about it, but who can be sure? It could just be constructed very poorly.... It definitely feels that the ninja stuff is out of place somehow, but it's not as obvious as the other films.

Anyway, on the surface, It seems that they were trying to make a real movie this time, but they failed to make it entertaining. It's mostly a softcore sex film with some poorly choreographed martial arts mixed in. There is very little of the charm contained in the other movies and it's generally pretty boring.

The plot makes absolutely no sense, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (you don't expect these films to make sense anyway). There are some very funny lines and a few of the fights are kind of amusing so i wouldn't skip it altogether. Just make sure you aren't expecting the standard Joseph Lai/Godfrey Ho ninja film or you will be disappointed.


Well. Where can one begin? This film is not a film in the conventional sense. By estimate anywhere up to 1/3 or a half of this film is made up of stock footage and sequences from other films. Okay so it was a cheap 1980's crappy action flick but even so! Ed Wood may have gotten away with that sort of thing, but I call shenanigans! The result is a "movie" (in as much as, yes, the pictures on the screen move, but you'll wish they wouldn't!) that seems to be the result of the director/editors throwing random sections of fight scene footage at the screen in much the same way a simian slings it's faeces at its cage wall. The good thing is it is just as amusing to watch as that! It is totally devoid of plot, lacks even vestigal artistic merit, and due to the confusing and totally random nature of how it skips from scene to scene I daresay there are some people out there who think it contains some sort of message or is doing something subtle and Lynch-ian. It isn't. It's a garbled, confusing mess that barely qualifies as a film. This doesn't stop it being utterly hilarious and perfect for watching with a few drinks and mates to rip it to pieces.

The above score is the rating for it as a film. It gets 2 stars because a) it didn't let me put in half marks and b) Nothing is as bad as "The Killing Edge". If you want a rating based on sheer (if unintentional) hilarity then go and tack another 3 stars on the end!


This film is just so... weird. Ever since accidentally buying "Ninja Terminator", I've become somewhat of a fan of Godfrey Ho, because his movies are just so mind blowingly terrible and disjointed they cause hilarity, albeit unintentionally.

According to a short little recap at the start of this film, Gold Ninja Warrior is either the sequel or prequel to "Ninja Terminator" (or maybe a retelling of the same story or anything, it's kinda hard to tell). However, the tale of the titular statue is completely lost in the tale of a sex slave, drug dealing, gun trading ring of gangsters being taken down by a ninja.

Unfortunately, unlike Ninja Terminator, the fight scenes in this film are just terrible. Not only that, but I'm fairly sure that there is actually more time dedicated on screen to watching helpless women being beaten up and raped than there is ninjas fighting. I might be wrong on that, but this film has the only graphic sex scene which I actually felt *wrong* after seeing.

Speaking of the rape scene (and you'll know it immediately), it doesn't even make sense. So a fat business man can rape a ninja? The woman had previously killed about 50 bajillion armed gangsters single handedly, and now she has a small length of rope around her wrists (her legs are fine), she can't fight off an overweight, middle aged, unarmed business man? No. Doesn't make sense.

As the one line summary above suggests, I believe that this film is actually a look into the minds of the creators of this film more than anything else. There is an unnecessarily large amount of time dedicated to seeing nude women being hit, which considering the summary on the back of my DVD box says "...the Red Ninjas intend to steal the statue and send their best Ninja heroine to draw out the Golden Ninjas leader, Max." seems just wrong. Also, none of that blurb actually happens. The only time the statue appears is in the recap of events in "Ninja Terminator" right at the start.

This film just plain sucks, even for a Godfrey Ho film (and he is involved, albeit uncredited, and I'm not 100% convinced that Joseph Lai isn't another pseudonym of him anyway). The fight scenes are just plain boring. The only guy in the film who looks like he has any training only appears for about 2 minutes and then gets lamely knocked over by the lead character. The plot makes no sense and randomly jumps about. The editing is terrible (people will jump off a wall dressed as a ninja and land dressed regularly, then 4 seconds later be a ninja again, and so on).

Go buy Ninja Terminator instead. That is an amusingly bad film with surprisingly good fight scenes (even if Jaguar One is a complete and utter dick for no reason), and doesn't feel you leaving dirty like this film does.


Spoilers.

How can a show that is so desperately trying to be different be so full of cliché and formula? The lead character is supposed to be charming, but he just spouts so much drivel that you get really bored very quickly.

I agree with others. It comes across like the desperate attempts of an unintelligent adolescent to be deep and meaningful.

That brings me to the flashbacks, straight out of Serial Killers for Dummies. and the conversations about killing animals and wanting to kill people Dexter the kid has with his father, HOW RIDICULOUS

It's not just the Monologue that is contrived, so are the sets. In ep1, check out the completely white room with all the blood splatters and red ribbons. There for a visual effect, nothing more. Anyway it failed, it just looks tacky.

All in all a quite amateur attempt to creep people out mixed with a very mediocre cop show.

Not a truly awful attempt but could have done better, Much better.

4/10 for effort.


A Jerry Lewis vehicle that delivers exactly what his fans want while pleasing no one still hoping for a surprise from the comedic actor. Midwestern klutz (guess who?) agrees to act as babysitter to a Hollywood actress and the newborns she has delivered in secret--all three of them! Frank Tashlin-directed chaos isn't very funny, and occasionally verges on ludicrous when it tries passing Lewis off as a sensitive soul (this is no stretch for Jerry, as he manages to turn even his baby lullabies into infantile showstoppers). Pretty Marilyn Maxwell and a teenage Connie Stevens give the movie some pep, but Jerry's performance is full of fake-schmaltz. *1/2 from ****


Even though she was the first runner-up for the New York Film Critics Award, Faye Dunaway disavows her performance as screen icon Joan Crawford because the camp following this 1981 potboiler has developed over the years has probably been overwhelming. To put it mildly, she is certainly watchable. However, every line she utters seems to have an exclamation point, and every gesture feels so grandiose that it's hard to figure out just what empathetic qualities Crawford had to engender her long-standing popularity. The glibly titled 2006 Hollywood Royalty Edition DVD package makes no bones that this is a movie that now caters to its huge gay following. Dunaway's snub in participating (as well as director Frank Perry's death) means having flamboyant director John Waters pinch-hit on the commentary track, and he manages to be both funny and insightful as he shares lots of apocryphal gossip and zingy one-liners to bring a whole new flavor to the execrable film.

Among his many errors in judgment, Perry decided to film the story of Crawford's mid-to-late years (or more appropriately, her adopted daughter Christina's version of it) as if the movie was one of Crawford's own overripe films. The problem with his serious-minded approach is that it veers so unpredictably back and forth between soap opera and pure camp that the only consistency is its artifice. The story begins as the movie star's career is in free fall at MGM in 1939 (when she was forced to film a true atrocity called "Ice Follies of 1939"). Aware of her professional dilemma, Crawford decides to adopt a baby regardless of being a twice-divorced single career woman. With the help of her studio lackey lover Greg Savitt, she adopts a daughter and later a son. Forever the publicity hound, Crawford presents her happy family in the most pretentious manner in front of the Hollywood press, yet hides a streak of cruelty that manifests itself into military-like parenting and savagely violent episodes. Not living up to her mother's exacting standards, Christina is shuttled off to boarding school and then convent school. She grows up to become a struggling young TV actress, as her mother becomes a corporate wife-turned widow slipping deeper into alcoholism.

Perry makes a fundamental mistake in switching the film's narrative perspective from Joan to Christina midway through the film. The consequence is that neither of their stories is fully told with any objectivity, especially what could have happened in Crawford's earlier years that would have led to such excessive behavior. Instead, we are given an endless parade of over-the-top moments  the tree chopping, the tile scrubbing, the wire hangers, the out-of-control strangulation - that the movie is simply too exhausting to keep up with the episodic storyline. With her reasonable resemblance to the movie star in full make-up, Dunaway carries herself confidently within the Crawford public persona and even achieves some remote moments of poignancy in between the shouting matches. Her strenuous efforts at verisimilitude, however, push her into an unsavory, demonic level of commitment to the larger-than-life role. It's too bad that almost everyone else is quite awful by comparison  Diana Scarwid frustratingly wooden as the adult Christina, Rutanya Alda irritatingly earnest in her blind devotion as Crawford's confidante Carol Ann, Steve Forrest looking like aged beef as Savitt and Howard Da Silva merely smarmy as MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer. The one exception is little Mara Hobel, who brings genuine cunning to the younger Christina.

The Hollywood Royalty Edition includes three dishy featurettes. The 14-minute "The Revival of Joan Crawford" shows the genesis of the movie from Christina's red-hot best seller with contributions from Scarwid, Alda and producer Frank Yablans, who speaks candidly about Dunaway's tempestuous perfectionism. The 14-minute "Life With Joan" focuses on Dunaway's total absorption in the part during the stormy production and includes an extended opening sequence that was deleted before release. The 16-minute "Joan Lives On" speaks specifically to the film's cult status with Waters and Crawford impersonator Lypsinka providing particularly comic insight to its gay following. There is also a photo gallery and the original trailer. It's truly for lovers of cinema camp.


I resisted to see "Mommie Dearest" for years but last night I lost a bet and I was forced to sit through it. Surprise. It didn't provoke what I thought it was going to provoke. Nothing personal really. A bad TV movie, cheap in every department, the production design, the hair and make up, the script, oh my God, the script. I never read Christina Crawford's book, maybe it was this amateurishly bad. Anne Bancroft was first going to play Crawford but fortunately she came to her senses. Dunaway has been paying the price ever since. You don't mess around with Crawford, didn't she know that? Other than the outrageous performance by Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid gives her Christina a certain amount of dignity, perhaps more dignity than Christina deserved. The supporting cast seems like a round up of the last resort. Atrocious. So much so that it's not even funny. I bet Joan Crawford is turning in her grave unsure whether to cry or to laugh.


This one actually goes half and half with me so its good and bad (or should I say it's so bad that it's good). I am a living witness (Hallelujah!) that whenever you are feeling down or depressed, watch "Mommie Dearest". But, word to the wise, don't watch it expecting good acting and wonderful relevance to the book, because you surely will not get it. The thing that makes the movie float above the rest of camp classics is the fact that it is based on an informative book by Joan's daughter, Christina. Therefore, it is to be dramatic and realistic like say "Guyana Tragedy" or "The Josephine Baker Story". But this movie is so unrealistic, it is funny. "And if you really want to roll over on the floor and have the mortician come to your house because you died laughing, I would recommend that you watch the whole thing on DVD and with French language (especially the wire hanger sequence). Hell, it doesn't matter if you don't speak the language, Mommie Dearest is like the opera, the emotions and movement will tell all you need to know, without understanding of the language. If I were giving an Oscar to Mommie Dearest, It would be for the beautiful silver dress Faye Dunaway has on... to take Christina's rancid, awful meat to the freezer, just so she can make the little snot eat it the next day. But as for the acting, no way! Faye goes over the top in her hammy performance as Joan, the poster-child for goggle eyed takes, shoulder pads, ankle-strapped shoes, and hypochondriac cleanliness. Diana Scarwid is so bland and uninteresting as Christina. and the rest of the cast... well, they are OK considering the parts they were given. But the only factors that could have made or broke Mommie Dearest were the two main characters therein, Joan and Christina Crawford. Scarwid broke the movie by vice of her apathy to the role she played (I would have thought in all accounts that if a child was abused, they would come out of it with a newfound understanding of their own inner strength and fight like hell to survive, which is what the real Christina did, according to the book. But, Scarwid is so unmotivated. She reminds me of my junior year Biology teacher, inane and in it for the paycheck. I think this performance is what caused Scarwid's Tinseltown demise. On the other hand, Dunaway hams it up and made the picture pass that thin line between drama and camp. Watch the movie. You will not think it Oscar Material but you will not be bored either.


I agree with many of the other commentaries on this page that this is a very hard film to rate. If you are curious who the most freakish character ever put on film is, (Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford puts Hannibal Lecter to shame without even killing one person or eating human flesh) you will certainly find this movie morbidly fascinating.

I haven't read the book upon which this horrible movie is supposedly based, but I have seen the real Christina Crawford on a documentary depicting Joan Crawfords career, and I can imagine her being every bit as vindictive as this movie makes her out to be. It's not all her fault of course, as it must have been a living hell to be Crawford's daughter if a tenth of what's happening in the movie is true. The problem is every character in it are unsympathetic in one way or another. So what does it have on it's mind? Does it wanna trash Crawford and make Christina out to be the hero? If so, it does a poor job. See the closing scene and you will know what I'm talking about. Is it simply that movie stars are unfit parents because they are too wrapped up in themselves? It is impossible to find a culprit based on what is depicted here.

There are too many awful moments to describe here but I do think that Faye Dunaway was very brave to take on this part and make it such a caricature. She must have known that there was no other way to play it since this was doomed to be a turkey.

So if you are interested in seeing this do so without expecting to get any inside information about the life of these people or if you are interested in seeing behind the scenes backstabbing there is the soap opera scene (it is unintentionally hilarious but the one thing that is actually close to the truth). We never really learn anything about the career of Joan Crawford as the subject matter is handled so flimsy. Most of the facts are either left out or tampered with.

My vote is that this movie is awful. It is much too depressing to work as camp and much too unintelligent as to work as art.


I'm not even one of JOAN CRAWFORD's biggest fans, but I think what they've done with the novel MOMMIE DEAREST is totally stupid and unworthy of any sort of detailed film comment. Not that I had any hopes that the screen version would be on a quality level with Masterpiece Theatre. Hardly that. But it certainly trashes the movie star with incidents that seem exaggerated to hold the attention.

FAYE DUNAWAY's Joan Crawford is the sort of caricature that would be more appropriate on the Carol Burnett Show, where famous screen heroines were often ribbed in their award-winning roles. She indulges in a series of poses guaranteed to draw derisive laughter. There are limits to anyone's patience and even for the sake of a few laughs (or chuckles, to be more exact), this is such a poor imitation of the book that it's no wonder Dunaway had any professional reputation after making it. Not that the novel had any real literary merit, but at least it did provide some insight into Crawford's psyche and the reader was free to decide when creative license was taken.

It's all one big clichéd treatment, as glossy and artificial as any Joan Crawford film ever was. Any resemblance between the creature pictured here and reality is purely coincidental...at least that's what the foreword to this film should have warned the audience for the sake of warning the gullible not to believe everything depicted here.

This is schlock of the worst kind, an insult to plain intelligence and too scmaltzy to convince me that it rings of the truth. There is no balance to the treatment. All of it is painted in broad strokes that verge on caricature, more and more so as the film goes on.

Summing up: Worth skipping. Trivial and artificial.


It's disgusting how a fourth-rate, cheap, exploitative soap opera of a movie like this can erase the entire oeuvre of a truly gifted, truly remarkable film star such as Joan Crawford. Written by an envious little brat with no beauty or talent who hated her glamorous mother for having what she could never have, this movie and the book it's based on appeal to the lowest instincts of the human character. We love to hate celebrities, we love it when the powerful and talented fall, we love tawdry stories of abuse perpetrated on helpless victims by the powerful, we love stories about horrible mothers, and especially about horrible WOMEN. Regardless of Joan Crawford's apocryphal flaws as a mother (which are not corroborated by her other children), she was a richly talented star, and anyone can gain a hundred times more entertainment from watching any one of her movies than by watching this dreck. People who blame Dunaway's horrible performance on the fact that she was merely mimicking Joan Crawford herself are dead wrong. One only has to view Crawford on screen or in interviews to clearly see this. Dunaway alone is responsible for her ludicrous scenery-chewing performance, the awfulness of which is the main thing that pulls this film out of oblivion into camp notoriety. I normally wouldn't care enough about such a worthless movie to write about it, except that it has all but ruined Joan Crawford in the eyes of audiences, who often know the star only by this movie. I blame the stupidity of audiences who continue to support this movie as much as the movie itself, Christina's book, the script, the directing, or Dunaway's performance. But of course trash is drawn to trash.


I have seen Mommie Dearest when I was younger, and I have to say it is one of the absolute worst movies ever! Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) is the adoptive mother of Christina, who is telling her side of the story. I have to admit, I'm not sure whose side is true, but in this movie, Joan is nothing but a two-faced (witch) who says she loves her daughter but is just plain horrible to her! I mean, she wants Christina to be perfect. That's why she (spoiler warning!) tries to make her eat raw meat (My mom, sister and I personally like our meat well-done, too!); she has a swimming contest with her daughter than gloats when Christina loses, then Christina says it's not fair so Joan spanks her and locks her up in a pool house. Then (more spoilers!) when she hangs her dresses on wire hangers Joan yells at her and beats her with a hanger (I don't care for wire hangers either, but my goodness!); Joan makes Christina scrub the floor, beats her, chokes her, and fusses at her constantly, expecting her daughter to call her "Mommie Dearest," which sure as flip is not the right name for her. Well, guess what, Miss Crawford? Like it or not, you are this child's mother and you don't show her a part of the love she tries to show you. I hope someday you can live a decent life without wanting to be perfect, but, you know what? Your daughter's not going to be perfect (until she gets to Heaven), and neither are you! Nobody's perfect, so deal with it!!!!! To the viewers: If you like this movie, good for you. Whoever doesn't, I don't blame you.


Pretty bad. Faye Dunaway, like an anaconda, not only chews the scenery, she vomits it up and eats it again. Her performance as Joan Crawford has to be some sort of actor's lesson in what not to do...EVER. Based on Christina Crawford's "memoir," MOMMIE DEAREST focuses primarily on Crawford in the 1940s when she adopted a few children and was, at least briefly, considered a good actress. For some reason Dunaway looks and acts like the Crawford of the 1960s --- think NIGHT GALLERY, TROG, BERSERK! Frank Perry, a previously classy director, clearly had no control over Dunaway. She runs amok and soundly dwarfs the rest of the cast including Mara Hobel as young Christina, Howard da Silva as Louis B. Mayer and the always unusual Diana Scarwid as the adult Christina. Steve Forrest appears as Dunaway's lawyer/lover/confidant. The film's become a camp classic, but it's actually just dull and awkwardly made for the first hour or so. It does reach a certain level of hysteria in the second half particularly when the 50-something Dunaway/Crawford replaces her ill 20-something daughter on a soap opera.