One eyed blob monster, a product of the usual toxic waste dumping(..as mayor José Ferrer put it so adequately, Pottsville was chosen by Industrial governmental scientist Martin Landau as "the most sophisticated dump site in the country."), with slobbery sharp teeth and terribly sensitive to light, attack the locals by wrapping it's lizard tongue around their throats, whisking them out of the camera frame. Sheriff Bill Osco, who dresses like a truck driver, even when at the town station, is to the rescue, ready to kill the monster if he doesn't bore him to death first with his non-performance and monotone voice. The blob monster could very well be the son of a haggard Dorothy Malone. Meanwhile Mayor Ferrer's wife Ruth Buzzi is having Easter egg hunts with the children, holding rallies against the new massage parlor coming to town supposedly advocating an arrival of filth to the community, and holding an opera within her home for a gathering of town folk. Marianne Gordon, who seems to escape the embarrassment in a low-key performance as a waitress and possible love-interest to Osco(..why she'd even be interested in someone as lively as a block of wood is anyone's guess), will be the woman in peril who would eventually walk Malone home and never be seen in the film again.

Now, to take a moment to talk about Landau. I think we can use "The Being" as an educational tool on how a prominent actor, at the very bottom of his career starring in this cinematic equivalent of a toilet bowl with fresh smelly turds, can rise from the ashes like a Phoenix thanks to two directors, Woody Allen(..in probably the finest performance of his career, "Crimes and Misdemeanors")& Tim Burton("Ed Wood"). I actually think Ferrer, last seen in this film driving off, quite wasted and frightened after seeing the blob monster, plays his role a bit tongue-in-cheek as a constantly annoyed Mayor who just wants to grow his potatoes and make his little town a wealthy place to earn a spot in Washington. Buzzi, is and always will be, Buzzi..she is the busybody always organizing something, and is aggravating as ever. I imagine that those still populating drive-ins as this flick came out(..I'm guessing, temporarily)probably cheered when Buzzi was on her way out of the picture. I think Dorothy Malone is a sex icon thanks to her work with Douglas Sirk, specifically her delicious nymphomaniac in "Written in the Wind", but is handed a terribly thankless(..practically meaningless, if the script hadn't made her son the one effected by the toxic waste) role in this steaming pile.

On Jackie Kong's directorial decisions come a narrative voice at the opening after a radio DJ tells us about rain showers and thunderstorms moving into the area, prophetically announces doom to the little town of Pottsville, Idaho. She also gives us a run-down at what the surviving characters did with their lives after the incident at Pottsville is over. The climactic showdown between the hilarious monster and Osco should earn some good laughs. This hunk of excrement will probably work the best for fans of rancid schlock. I did find the drive-in sequence near the beginning pretty fun..the movie playing equals "The Being" in quality which I find irony in. There's an attack scene where the monster, in gelatinous form, oozes from the air conditioning vents and radio to somehow kill a couple making out. It also puts an arm through a deputy holding his heart. Most victims, though, are pulled away by the thing. Best kill is probably the poor kid who tries to escape the monster getting his head removed.


A film so bad, I'm not sure even MST3K could save it. Every time you think "This is the worst--it can't get any stupider than this," it does. I finally left at the cat-slaughtering scene.


This is truly a very horrible film simply about a big glob of green mess that creates all kinds of problems for all kinds of people in a small town of Idaho where Jose Ferrer, (Major Gordon Lane) runs a big potato processing plant. We also have Martin Landau, (Garson Jones)who is a scientist studying nuclear experiments which he is very upset about. Dorothy Malone, (Marge Smith) is a woman who has lost her son and wanders all around this Idaho town and never seems to find a final conclusion. This is a film with great actors who are becoming elderly and looking for a pay check and it is great to see these great veteran actors performing and at the same time it is rather sad to see at what steps they all take to make a buck. Horrible film and a big waste of your time or money. Avoid.


Terrible! The movie is better that Armaggedon. How can do thing so bad! Don´t Look! Never!


Almost eleven years ago, I saw the movie 'The Being". Beginning, story, end, plot ? None of these were present in the movie. I remember that at the beginning you couldn't hear or see the players. But I noticed very soon that it wasn't worth to watch this movie any further. So, I stopped the movie after +/- 50 minutes. This was enough !!! Was this a movie from the early 80's , CAN'T BE, I THOUGHT. It seems it was more a movie from the early 50's or 60's. By the way, it's more like a humor-movie. PLS DON'T BEGIN TO WATCH THIS LIKE A GOOD HORROR-MOVIE, BUT ACCEPT IT AS A HUMOR-MOVIE. IT'S FOR SURE THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE !!!!!!!


You saw DNA and you think it is the worst movie on Earth? Believe it or not, The Being is worse than DNA! I don't know if this one's a joke but I know that it was very funny...when it was supposed to be scary. Actors are so bad, the scenario is so stupid and what about the special effects( if you can call this special effects!!!). I give it 0 out of*****.


This one was pretty bad, I bought it simply because of the names of Ruth Buzzy and Martin Landau, I could just see a cheesy horror movie being made of these two and becoming more funny like a cheap William Shattner movie or something but what this movie turned out to be was one big bomb. First of all, Buzzy's character was more like annoying than ever and the short role that she did play as a charismatic church lady I was glad when she was finally killed off in this film. And Landau with his short lived role as a bio-scientist trying to discover whatever it was that was stalking the town and why it kills he barely was even in this film and failed to try and be serious in the fast shortly killed off role that he did play. And the rest of the characters were just all over the place and the whole movie just did not make any sense at all and the film ended with an abrupt ending and I was just sitting there thinking about how much I wasted my money with all the other cooler videos I could have bought at that video store. Don't watch this one please, if you do, you'll be sitting there hoping that the being with finish you off before this horrible film does, I'm serious!


Although I'm always careful to avoid others' opinions before I see a film and make up my mind about it, I often look at what others have to say after I've reached a conclusion. I'm regularly flabbergasted by opinions on films such as Sixteen Tongues--which I thought was horrible--because they are often somewhat favorable. It especially confounds me in light of the consistently negative reviews received by films such as, say, Boogeyman (2005) or Gothika (2003), which I don't think are masterpieces, but they're well made. If reviewers are using anything even remotely resembling my criteria for film criticism, I have a difficult time understanding anyone thinking that a film like Sixteen Tongues is great while they also think that films like Boogeyman or Gothika are horrible.

My current theory is that people are championing certain cultural facts. They're celebrating the simple existence of independent films made on extremely low budgets, which are marketed as being somewhat "underground", and in which filmmakers are trying to do something different artistically while they deal with at least some controversial subject matter. An attendant anti-"Hollywood", anti-commercial, anti-big budget attitude tends to go hand in hand with the above.

From my point of view, I'm critiquing the films only. I'm not critiquing any cultural facts, and I'm not giving any extra points or alternatively subtracting points for cultural situations that I'm in favor of or against, respectively. I think films should be viewed as if they exist in cultural vacuums. A movie is good or not only for what appears on your screen and comes out of your speakers. No other facts have a bearing on whether a film is good or not. Regardless of whether crap was produced for only ten dollars or ten million dollars, it's still crap. And Sixteen Tongues is crap.

There are some potentially interesting things about the premise, on the "forest" level. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future. The characters live in a run-down hotel/apartment building. They have to pay for water with their credit cards. They also have to pay to shut off the television, which otherwise continually plays porno commercials similar to those for 900 numbers that run at the beginning of porno VHS tapes. The government is now building robots, including prostitution robots, combat robots and so on. For some strange reason, an ability to surf the Internet is a rare skill in the film, so a character possessing the ability is depended on and looked up to. Most of these facts have to be pieced together by the viewer over the course of the film, and they all read 100 times more interesting than they play in the film.

More pragmatically, Sixteen Tongues centers on three unattractive characters in two spartan settings. Although there is almost constant nudity, and there are a couple violent scenes, the vast majority of screen time is taken up with incessant talking and relatively inactive shots of these three characters while they provide narration. The story just isn't that interesting or well developed. The talking and narration are both very pretentious. And if they don't lean towards gobbledy-gook, they lean towards blandness.

The male character, Adrian Torque (Crawford James), was killed during the last war and then brought back to life. He required skin grafts, and for some reason that either wasn't stated or was too garbled to understand (the sound mix is pretty bad, and characters tend to mumble and can't enunciate very well) the skin grafts were done with 16 tongues. From what I could tell, they were supposed to be human tongues, but they're sizeable enough and have characteristics more like giant lizard tongues. Maybe dinosaurs exist in the film's world. Supposedly the tongue grafts still work like tongues, as Torque says he can taste things through them. The idea is ridiculous and in a better film could have been campy and funny (it's too absurd to work seriously, which is the attempt here). It seems to just be an excuse for an easy way to use the title "Sixteen Tongues".

The other two characters are Asian women who, despite being naked most of the time, are made to look as unattractive as possible. Ginny Chin-Chin's (Jane Chase) head has been shaven, which doesn't suit her, if it would suit any woman, and Alik Silens (Alice Liu) is made to look dorky--like those token male dweebs in teen comedies. It might seem like complaining about the women's attractiveness is trivial, but as the majority of the film is these two women rambling on and on in a hotel room with crappy production design and crappier cinematography, nudity is about the only possible attractor. Plus, Ginny, at least, is supposed to be sexy. Usually there's nothing I like more than seeing naked Asian women, but in this case, not really.

For some, the attraction here is probably the "daring" subject matter. The nudity in the film is full frontal. There is simulated oral sex (on a male) and simulated hand manipulation (again on a male). The television keeps showing a crappily-filmed-but-graphic porno commercial, and the walls are papered with crappily-designed-(and too often repeated)-but-graphic porno advertisements. I'm a big fan of putting taboo-breaking material like this in films, but here, it doesn't work. It seems like director Scooter McCrae included it just because it's usually taboo. That's not sufficient to make a good film.

I can't really think of a scene that wasn't poorly shot, poorly lit, poorly blocked and poorly set. I can't think of any aspect of the script that I liked. I can't think of any scene that even slightly drew me into the film. I can't think of any aspect of the performances I liked. I didn't get any aesthetic or philosophic value from the film. I've only given an extra point because the premise has a smidgen of potential and the film is somewhat coherent.


This is a vile movie, one that I can't wait to take to the trade-in store. Good thing I got it cheap at the flea market. So how do I describe this (besides vile?) Science fiction porno? Certainly there were many things in this NOT left to the imagination and I definitely didn't need to see them. I guess this is sort of a no-budget Blade Runner in a cheap adult motel instead of a fantastic futuristic city. Because there are robots that look like people. There's this one chick that's a computer hacker and her 'pleasure model' girlfriend that has orgasms when she blinks, she says. There's a rogue cop who was killed in an accident and then "Robo-copped" together to be a killing machine, and he has sixteen tongues grafted onto his body to replace his burned skin, so as you can imagine he doesn't look very "GQ". There are tons of "adult movie" themes trotted out for your viewing displeasure, all quite disgusting. Good taste is never a factor in what's included in this movie, and while that generally is no deterrent for me, there are some places where I just have to draw the line. And this is supposedly from the folks that did "Shatter Dead" which I liked a lot? What in the hell were they thinking? Bleah.....2 out of 10 stars.


I'll admit up front that I have serious reservations about some of Minelli's films, beautifully shot though they are. 'Meet Me In St. Louis', possibly the dreariest movie musical ever made and drowning in contrivance and sentiment, is a case in point. I saw 'Father's Little Dividend' without realising he was the director, and although there are obvious parallels - both family comedies set over a number of months -'Father's Little Dividend' lacks Minelli's great strength - the extraordinary beauty of his cinematography. Perhaps colour makes the difference. It also lacks the real saving grace of 'Meet Me In St. Louis', which was an extraordinarily potent central performance from Judy Garland - the scene in which she sings 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas', the one truly worthy song in the film (Don't talk to me about the Trolly Song...), justifies the entire film. Nobody in 'Father's Little Dividend' is really firing on all cylinders in that way.

What the film does have is Spencer Tracy's nicely dry performance as Stanley, a man having to adjust to the fact that both he and his daughter are getting older. Joan Bennett, a long way from 'Scarlet Street', is likable in the underwritten role of his wife, and a young Elizabeth Taylor is serviceable as his daughter. No one really shines, although Billie Burke, as the paternal grandmother, keeps threatening to burst out with a real comic performance. Her curtailed screen time prevents her.

None of the comic sequences really work, because they never build into anything. Bennett terrifying Tracy with a desperate drive across the city to the hospital (for the birth of their grandchild) comes closest to actually being funny, but there's no capper, no punchline, and Bennett's calmness doesn't seem comically incongruent, but merely inappropriate, as though she doesn't know what sequence they're filming. Only Tracy gets any laughs, and those are few enough (his frozen reaction to learning that he's going to be a grandfather is particularly good).

Funnily enough, the most effective sequence springs from the most tedious dramatic device - the apparent break up of Taylor and her husband. When he comes to get her from Stanley's house, she refuses and insists on staying in a room her father will make up for her. Accepting this, he proceeds to reel off to Stanley all the things she needs, both of them growing more and more tearful, until by the end he is helping her to remove her shoes whilst Stanley simply looks on. It's the best played scene in the film, tipping from comedy to genuinely heartfelt emotion (as opposed to Hollywood sentiment), although it's almost spoilt by the reconciliation, when they fall into a typical movie clinch.

Nothing else in the film really stays with you - it's pure filler, particularly the last minute he's-lost-the-baby gambit. It's a nice attempt to reflect on common experiences - just as 'Father of the Bride' was - and certainly some of the observations are accurate enough, but ultimately it's just a little bit too nice, too safe, too soft, and it isn't executed well enough to be memorable.


This miserable picture is a prime candidate for the award of "THE Worst Movie of All Time."

The production was OK; and most of the performances were not bad, given the ridiculous characters and situations the actors were required to portray.

The script and plot, however, defined new depths of "abominable," even by Hollywood standards.

The way the prospective grandparents took over the "production" of bringing forth the offspring, was bad enough, but the way the writers treated Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracey, one of my favorite actors} was nothing short of sadistic.

Here's this well-off, virile "young" (at 51 or so) man, who has just retired and looking forward to a blissful life with time and money to travel, and (whatever) with a gorgeous and (formerly) loving wife (Joan Bennett), and he's not only neglected and pushed into insignificance by the arrival of the new grandchild, but is actually kicked out of the bedroom! Is this hilarious or what?

Skipping over the rest of the mistreatment the poor man suffers, the scripters have the gall actually to have him LOSE the baby in a public park. Having the whole town involved in a frantic search for a "kidnapped" child is considered the funniest thing ever! "Funny as a crutch" is the popular cliche.

In the end, Stanley is so naive that he is bought off by having the kid named after him, as though a businessman who has achieved enough success for early retirement is stupid enough to accept this as ample compensation for months of degradation, belittling, rejection, financial draining, and every other kind of mistreatment they could think of.

I'm often embarrassed by being forced to laugh at some little incident in an otherwise atrocious movie. This one, fortunately, spared me to that humiliation. I never cracked a smile. It was sheer torture all the way through -- a worthy sequel to "Father of the Bride" which it promoted to Second Worst.


This was a less-than-mediocre sequel to a good movie. The nun choir songs were nowhere near as polished as the first movie. The kids were very much more interesting, However, the plot-line was on an extremely thin edge between being totally laughable and improbable.

It was still a feel-good movie. You have to ignore your disbelief, or maybe have a little faith. Perhaps that was the entire point...


Fairly desperate sequel to 1992's "Sister Act" has one-time lounge singer Whoopi Goldberg now a big attraction in Las Vegas, but called back to the convent by those kooky nuns to help bring order to a school full of rebellious teenagers. Poorly constructed script just begs for a lighter touch, but everything is hammered home. James Coburn looks appropriately puzzled as the proverbial villain of the piece (he wants to shut the school down, and after meeting the students, any audience may come to sympathize with him). Goldberg's mere presence brings a smile, but this is hand-me-down material (much more so than the cookie-cutter first installment) and is completely without merit. *1/2 from ****


I hate sequels, but I still watch them in hopes that there will be one that actually is as good or better than the original.

Some are ("Star Wars" sequels, James Bond films, "Godfather" films") but ones like "Sister Act II" are not. It's bad all right, but not in any normal sense. This is bad in its own unique way.

Whereas the original had a sense, style, clarity and humorous thrust all its own, "Sister Act II" goes on a completely different tangent than the original. It abandons the old neighborhood from the first movie, adds a bunch of characters that are introduced then forgotten, there are no references to the cop (Nunn) that helped out Whoopi in the original and aside from Sister Mary Patrick (Najimy, always good for a laugh), everyone looks bored beyond belief.

The sisters are back, there's a lot of music but they had to add a bunch of sitcom kids that would have been more at home on an episode of "Growing Pains" or something produced by Bill Cosby. Even with the palpable talent of Lauryn Hill, singing and acting her heart out, there is little support and little to no laughs.

And Whoopi: I guess any "Sister Act" sequel would have to have her in it by design, but she just seems so weary by the whole idea that she wants to scrunch down into her habit and hide from everybody.

I can't blame her. And there isn't even a Witness Protection program here to help her.

One good line ("We haven't the balls for that!") does not a movie make. And in spite of the high spirits exuded in the END CREDITS (???!?!), it doesn't do too much for a movie that spends its running time taking a nap.

"Sister Act II: Back in the Habit". Not a prayer.

Two stars. One for seeing the nuns again and that end credit number. I think some contrition is in order here.


I have to admit I truly enjoyed the original Sister Act. Perhaps it is my religious upbringing, but the sight of the nuns being coached by Whoopi Goldberg to integrate do-wop and Motown into their choir music never fails to tickle my funny bone. So it was with great pleasure that I looked forward to the sequel. Unfortunately, there is nary a laugh to be found. The original mined the material of watching the unlikely combination of a sassy Las Vegas wannabe singer inspire the zany cloistered nuns to irreverence. The sequel brings Goldberg back to the fold in a highly unlikely development and in place of the singing nuns we get...singing teens in another stale 'let's put on a show and save the day' scenario. Wow! How original and clever! This story was threadbare in 1930 and there is nothing funny about the kids in question. In fact, they are about as funny as an amputation. Overlooking the fact that there is literally no credible reason for the Goldberg character to leave behind being a Las Vegas headliner to help at a floundering inner city school, one could easily see some comedy being mined from Goldberg tackling the disrespectful teens. Instead, she plays straight man to a gaggle of unfunny kids. There are no classic Whoopi moments and she looks terribly bored. Also, why is she required to go "undercover" to teach these kids and keep her real identity from the male members of the teaching staff? It makes no sense. Nor does the fact that the world in this film seems to have undergone collective amnesia. Despite her character being on the cover of magazines and having entertained the pope in a media event, not only do none of the teens recognize her, but neither do any of the adults nor the male contingencies of the teaching staff. The film does come briefly to life when the nuns from the first film do a cameo number, but the main returnees such as Maggie Smith (I hope she was paid well), Kathy Najimy and Wendy Makkena are irrelevant. Even worse, when the lame-brained singing competition caps the film, you know the show is in trouble when ALL of the competitors seem better than the group you are supposed to be rooting for to win. A total mess akin to having dental surgery without Novacaine.


As with many sequels, this doesn't measure up to the original. In fact, I found this film - as opposed to the first one - very offensive. Of course, my beliefs had changed since first viewing "Sister Act." However, this film definitely irreverent.

There are many irreverent remarks made throughout this film made by a number of people who just take the credibility of a real Believer to task. Yeah, the nuns are still "good guys," but don't fool yourself: there's a lot of secular bias in this script. Nobody in here, including all the Catholics, takes Christianity with an seriousness. Hey, if Hollywood takes it as a joke, it wants everyone to do the same. That seems to be the message of this movie.

Also, as in many sequels they took a part of something that worked, and then overdid it the second time. In this case, it's Kathy Nijimy's role. She was cute and bubbly in a minor role in the original, got recognized for her performance and now has much bigger part. Unfortunately, they overdid all that giggling to the point where the woman is downright annoying.


What is it that people think are so funny about nuns? I don't care who is playing the part and why nuns can't in my view be seen as funny. Now ina serious drama like Doubt I can see but not a comedy. Whoopi Goldberg,although a good actress and is funny, is dull in this film as a woman who is again asked to don the nun's drab to teach choir to a bunch ofmis-fit run of the mill clichéd kids at a Catholic school. Clichéd I mean we have seen these types of characters before in other films. For example, The gifted student who doubts himself, the shy kid who can really sign, the white kid who acts like he from the hood, the parent who does not want his/her kid TO perform till they arrive late and see their child performing and change their mind and the run down old school they all belong too.....YAWN!! Oh yeah and the old run down school was also about to be closed till it was saved. Sound familiar?


I see some folks liked this film, but I truly hated it. Saw it in the theater and would have left if I was there by myself, was bored almost to tears. It's in my worst ten, but I don't go to the movies much, and if something stinks on video I turn it off as soon as the determination is made. That was all I had to say but gotta make 10 lines so: Pros of Sister Act 2 1: Completely predictable ; You won't risk hurting your think-bone. 2: You can use the time to contemplate what exactly Ted Danson was thinking when he decided to get with Whoopi. 3: It will show you everything you'll be missing when you go to one of those "good" movies. It was so bad , I'm posting this now, because the memory has never left me some 12? years later.


John Ritter did a terrific job portraying L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz books. It was a moving portrait of an imaginative man and a wonder to watch. Roger Baum (grandson of L. Frank) told me he thought the movie was to be re-released, but I haven't been able to get it, unfortunately.


I had actauly written a negative review of this one on imdb only a few days ago. By sheer coincidence I saw this movie again about 24 hours after I wrote the review(purely coincidental)

I had seen this when it first came out and then seen part of it again and did not like it AT ALL. My main problem was that it seemed contrived, I mean actually the movie kind of made me bewildered, I didn't understand the humer in it.

Well, I saw it again, the person I saw it with told me it was based on a true story, this was confirmed by imdb user comments. Knowing that, it changes my views on the movie. I honestly had no idea an incredible event like this ACTUALLY happened and knowing that can view the film differently and understand why so many loved it.

I love you to death will never be my favoroite movie but knowing what I do now I can say it's an interesting one(I just wish I'd known the true facts when I saw this years ago).


This movie was not funny because of its poor treatment of the subject matter.

It would be difficult to make a funny movie about the KKK and, without trivializing the evil of the KKK, romantic obsessions have killed a lot more people. Better movies like Strangers on a Train succeed at depicting killing your spouse because comic moments are balanced with an authentic appreciation of the horror.

Also horrifying, is the number of people who think this movie had a positive message and think the real life couple enjoyed a happy ending. Trying to kill someone is not a sign of love but of selfish attachment. As Gloria Steinem said: love is wanting the best for another person, romance is just wanting the other person.


Not filma making's finest hour. I felt this movie was just to obviously silly. Nothing really memorable or interesting about it, in an odd way it reminded me of "Weekend at Bernie's". I think the movie tried to be funny in a very obvious,contrived way. Not the worst film ever made but certainly not one that makes it's mark in any way, shape or form.


Sometimes it's better to leave things alone. Whereas the original 48 Hours was a well written and acted version of the "buddy-cop" films, the sequel is uninspired and drawn out version of the first. The audience soon loses interest in the characters that they have come to watch. Murphy and Nolte do not add any depth or growth to the characters that once made them famous. It appears to be a film where the cast & crew walked through the motions of production and collected a hefty paycheck at the end. Unfortunately the audience discovers after paying the price of admission, that if you want another 48 Hours, watch the original.


POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

"Another 48 Hours" is a waste of time, talent and space.

Why?

Because ANYONE who saw the first film could see the plot holes. Plot holes that are big enough to fall through, along with 10 other people.

Apparently, Jack Cates (A tired looking Nick Nolte)is obsessed with The Iceman, a drug dealer. During a deal gone bad that may cause Cates to lose his job and end up in prison, he finds Reggie Hammond's (A bored looking Eddie Murphy)picture. It seems that Hammond, who is STILL in jail, is now a target. There are 2 biker guys, one of them is the brother of the bad guy from the previous film, that want to see him dead.

There is too many cooks trying to cook this sad excuse of soup. Many things are not explained. For example, the identity of The Iceman. When you do find out who it is, you will scratch your head and wondered what the hell is going on! I'm not going to reveal WHO it is to those who haven't seen it. I only want to say four words:

IT MADE NO SENSE!!!!!

For those who haven't seen the film, for God's sake, don't rent it, because you'll want your money back. Catch it on TV (It's ALWAYS on!)and save your cash.


Before 'Another 48 Hours' was released, things were already in an uproar. Nick Nolte and others involved with the movie, vowed never to work with Eddie Murphy again. There were constant spats on the set with the biggest complaint that Murphy would arrive three hours late for filming while everyone would have to set around and wait for him to show up. If the above was true, Murphy is not the one to blame for the movies failure. 'Another 48 Hours' offers no surprises, originality and a "plot" that has been recycled over and over again.

Co-written by the director of the first installment, Walter Hill, (who had years to come up with something good) gives the fans of the original a HUGE letdown. The opening scene has three bikers cruising all over the country blowing innocent people away and apparently they work for a major drug dealer known as Iceman that Jack Cates (Nick Nolte)has been trying to track down for years. The Iceman wants Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) dead for reasons that go unexplained throughout most of the movie.

Cates job goes on the line when he kills a suspect who's gun cannot be found after the shooting. The suspect is burned to a crisp in a gasoline fire but the one important clue is unbelievably sparred.

So Cate calls on Murphy to assist in saving the day and while the chemistry between the two was so good in the original '48 Hours,' something is now wrong. Nolte and Murphy don't seem to be enjoying themselves. They are not having fun. And either am I.

The routine plot becomes more routine as the writers seem to know that the movie is not funny and try their best to distract the audience with endless car chases, shootouts, and the likes. One unintentional laugh I got was watching a bus roll over a dozen times at 50 miles an hour with Murphy in it but later seeing him walk away without a scratch. And the so called surprise when the identity of the Iceman is revealed is about as believable as Frosty The Snowman. (Perhaps the Iceman would be a better bad guy in Spider Man 3).

Eddie, come back to us. We miss you.


This sequel gets off to a fairly good start as three bikers from hell meet in a deserted bar . Boy are these guys scary , they're the reason why you don't want to go to an American jail . On deeper reflection they're the reason you don't want to go to America period . Unfortunately having established these bikers are ruthless violent criminals the screenwriters inject a piece of violent action which is totally unnecessary and which draws attention to their actions iun the context of the movie

If truth be told these bikers could have been amongst the best screen villains of the 1990s but the cast are let down by the screenplay , it's both very contrived while failing to explain some things . Bikers are right wing aren't they ? and these " Western Brotherhood " guys confirm this by stating they're like the old pioneers before America became a god forsaken melting pot , so what are they doing hanging around with a black crimelord ? That's because it sets up the sequel featuring Reggie and Jack , like I said contrived . It does explain how Reggie is involved but it's rather throwaway and unconvincing , the script would have been much better if it concentrated on niggling little things like how can characters be abducted from a supermarket and brought into a busy nightclub without anyone calling the cops

If you loved the original then you might enjoy this sequel but it was spoiled by a very clumsy script


As fresh in a tired genre as the original 48 Hours was, this movie really sucks. Is a top-five exhibit for the contention that Hollywood's standard for enjoyable and believable scripts is (inexplicably) far lower for sequels to successful movies. Some of the worst movies in Hollywood history are sequels to some of its best films - start with this and include Halloween II(may be the worst major movie ever made), Jurassic Park II(ditto), the Beverly Hills Cop rehashes(shiver), Caddyshack II. Yecchhh.


Another 48 Hours: 3 out of 10: If you want a synopsis of what was wrong with many movies in the 1980’s (and why the decade has such a bad cinematic rap despite some great films) Another 48 Hours provides a great starting point. (Despite being made in 1990).

The first 48 Hours was a bonafide hit that started and/or influenced the cop buddy film genre for years to come. It was Eddie Murphy’s first film and along with Trading Places made him a star. It combined comedy with intense straight up action and still works today despite having its conventions replicated in a thousand films since 1982.

Another 48 Hours came on the scene at a different time. Eddie Murphy had just had some high profile cinematic bombs and people were anxious for his next great hit. (Little did we know at the time, how great a wait people would have.) Nothing that worked in the first film works here. Eddie Murphy sleepwalks through his role and the film simply is not funny.

The action scenes are not much better. The villains look like a Klingon Biker Gang. There is a muddled story with a reveal at the end that could not make less sense if they tried. The direction by Walter Hill is pedestrian and the jazzy soundtrack practically assaults the audience.

There are a few positives. Nick Nolte seems game throughout much of the film despite the ridiculous script and some of the action set pieces are decent. Over-all the film is a clear miss and an example of why sequels got such a bad name back in the Eighties (Okay early Nineties).

Overall the film is not worth ten minutes of your time let alone another 48 Hours.


The original Scooby Doo cartoons were silly and predictable but had a certain charm and colour which has endeared them to a generation of kids. A later series added Scrappy who was the most irritating cartoon character before the intentionally irritating Poochie in the Simpsons. Scrappy's contribution to this shocker is him pointlessly urinating on Thelma (obviously no one house trained him) at which point this tiresome character is dropped out of the mystery machine.

Don't worry though there's plenty more tiresome characters where he came from.

Extremely juvenile comedy with a lot of knowing postmodern irony topped off with over the top cgi monsters. The original poorly drawn cartoon looks positively sublime and subtle by comparison.

Avoid.


Forget the HYPE, this movie stinks! It doesn't know which audience to play for 3 year olds or adults. It also doesn't know whether it should be campy or cartoonish. It's a jumbled mess that only did well because of the Very LARGE and VERY EXPENSIVE marketing. If you want something to keep the kids busy, spend the money on a new toy and watch the cartoon! My rating 1...HORRIBLE DESPITE HYPE!


Lame. Shockingly lame. Lame beyond belief.

And cynical, too - Hollywood at its most exploitative and greedy.

The original cartoons were no great shakes, but this... this really lowers the bar for TV nostalgia cash-ins.

And to think that Rowan Atkinson used to be funny.


As far as cartoons go, Scooby Doo is one of the weaker, sillier offerings, so why anyone thought they could make a 2 hour movie out of it is beyond me. What material did they think they were working with?

Anyway, I would never have watched this movie in my wildest dreams, (even with Rowan Atkinson in it!) but my 5 year old son got the DVD. The script is stupid, the acting from Sarah-Michelle Gellar and Freddy Prinze Jr insultingly lackluster and the sexual innuendo ever-present and offensive. For example, at one stage, Daphne (Gellar) makes it safely through a dangerous tunnel and starts half-moaning 'Oh yeah! Oh yeah!' If you closed your eyes you could be listening to 'Debbie Does Dallas'! I'm not the sort of puritanical parent that flips out if my kid accidentally sees someone's bum on screen or something, but one thing I am getting sick of is Hollywood making kids cartoons into teen/adult soft porn. Kids go to these movies expecting to see a big screen version of the cartoons they like and instead are presented with sticky adult material. My guess is that the producers know there isn't much genuine material to work with, so they just go for the sex card. This may work for the 18 year old guys, but as the parent of a small child it is incredibly annoying.

Overall, the movie was shocking! Badly directed, horrendously scripted and nothing but a vehicle for Gellar and Prinze Junior's US teen appeal. When Sarah-Michelle Gellar came to Australia's Gold Coast to make this movie she complained about the food in the area. Well Sarah-Michelle, I've eaten Gold Coast food and seen your movie, and I know which one I prefer to do!!

Forget this film if you care about not offending yourself!!

I rate it 0/10!


This movie should never have been made. I love the shows, the cartoon movies, lots of "Scooby" stuff, but this just sucks. They made Fred and Daphne self absorbed idiots, Scrappy a total pain in the butt and Velma a Mega-geek. The only things they did right were (beside the fact that it's under 90 minutes long) Scooby and Shaggy, knowing that they could make a fortune off of screwing up the other four and not Scoob and Shag (knowing whoever wrote the script, that would have made the movie better[note the sarcasm]). I would give this stinker a no-star rating, but I had to give it at least one.

* out of *****.


Do Not see this film! Apologies if you are hopping, surfing or whatever the word is for reading this page to give this a glorious 2 thumbs up or a 10/10 mark this review is not for you!

However if like me the bile that has built up inside you, days after the accursed event has reached boiling point and you feel that you must reach out to the world and cry "SCOOOOOBYYY DON'T" then this might be slightly more your cup of tea.

First I would just like to point out that this film has NO FUN in it whatso ever.It is unfunny, horribly acted, bad plot and just about the only good thing that happened was that it ended. Oh and that it was half as long as Lord of the Rings.

In fact the only fun that might be even dared to be thought up in conjunction with this unspeakable waste of life is tricking your mate into wasting however long (S)he can stand to remain inside a dark,dank grottoesque hellhole surrounded by hordes of no-longer screaming pre pubescent little horrors, who bored out of their witt's end rely on drinking far too much cola in order that they can leave whichever (soon to be ex best mate's great party idea it was to take his friends to see a once proud and noble cartoon, the stalwart of the cartoon network portrayed like a picasso, lude crude and nothing like the original) that they may spend a blessed few minutes relieving themselves before the ordeal starts again

After some father/Mother dragged a kid to see this epic of rectal proportions I can fully understand the idea of parental divorce.

Thank you for reading and may your life be blessed with the hope that you may never encounter such a villainous waste of £5.50.

I am off to ritually cleanse myself by watching Battlefield Earth and Tomb Raider so that my memories may no longer be tainted by such things as Sara Michelle Gellar trying to be anything other than Buffy.. or that nice pretty young thing she played in Cruel Intentions.


Hanna and Barbera are probably rolling in their graves. First of all, let me say that I'm a 25 year old guy (with bad taste) who's been a fan of Scooby Doo since I was born. I've anxiously been awaiting this film since Mike Myers began working on scripts for it years back. I wanna know what the hell happened to his scripts. Although I can't see him as Shaggy (Matt Lillard was perfect in the role), perhaps if they had stuck to Myers' script, the film would have been good instead of the PoS it turned out to be. I promised my sisters' kids I would take them to see it, but after some of the stuff I had heard, I wanted to preview it before taking them (I figured I'd wanna see it again anyway - boy was I wrong!). Turns out it was no worse than the kids' endless viewings of "Dumb and Dumber" on TBS, so I had to sit through this piece of crap twice....what a waste of 3 hours of my life.

First of all, the good things about the film. Matthew Lillard was phenomenal as Shaggy - the movie's only saving grace. The woman who played Velma was also well-cast, though she didn't quite command the same presence Lillard has. Rowan Atkins also gives a good, but small, performance as the owner of the amusement park. The special FX ranged from excellent to abysmally computerized, though Scooby was better animated than I initially expected. And the scene in the castle was beautifully filmed, with a roller-coaster ride of good effects (and one of the only jokes I found amusing - about drinking out of the toilet). The only other joke that I found great amusement in (which flies over the heads of children) is a reference early on to Shaggy being the stoner that everyone's always assumed he is. That's about it for the good qualities, so on to the bad (which I could write a book about).

I could say that Gellar and Prinze were miscast, but after two viewings, I don't think that was the problem. The problem was that they were both badly written/directed. Prinze's Freddy went from being the self-assured leader he was in the show to an ego-maniacal buffoon. Gellar's Daphne became far whinier and self-involved than the character ever was (with the exception of "A Pup Named SD"), which made her far less sympathetic than she should have been. The addition of Scrappy to the cast was a forced and unfunny cop-out. The fact that he's probably the most hated cartoon character of all-time didn't justify using him the way they did (and I'm among his haters).

The script is awful. Bad jokes sporadically thrown throughout the film, which were vulgar and tasteless, made me consider walking out the first time I saw it - and I've never considered walking out on any film I've seen, no matter how bad it was. The farting/belching/peeing scenes were what both audiences laughed most at, though for the life of me, I can't understand why. For them to go to such juvenile lengths to draw laughs, it should prove how bad the script was. And it's a sad commentary on America's sense of humor...the majority of people in both audiences appeared to be around my age.

And then there was the profanity. Daphne utters a line about opening "a can of whoop-ass." Freddy says something about a "byotch." And the villain says he would've gotten away with it "if it weren't for you meddling sons of..." (at which point he's cut off). I use profanity every day of my life so I wasn't offended, but it had no place in this film (and the kids left reciting Daphne's line).

The music is atrocious. With the exception of the David Newman score and around three songs (Simple Plan's "Grow Up," Allstars' "Bump in the Night," and MXPX's "SD, Where Are You?" cover) plus a clever cameo by Sugar Ray (who are far underused), the majority of the songs are insufferable rap songs. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against rap when you can understand what they're saying. But the rap songs here are garbled garbage. Where's Will Smith when you need him (doing the deplorable, almost-as-bad-as-this MIB II...)? Even the clever lyrics of Outkast's "Land of a Million Drums" (which plays over the end credits) can't justify the intolerable rapping. It also seems odd with their appearance in the film that Sugar Ray didn't write an original song, instead recycling a song off of a 9 month old album (though the song was probably new when they began filming, but still...).

It's really sad that a generation of kids are being exposed to THIS variation of Scooby, rather than any of the classic cartoons - even Scooby and Scrappy-Doo (the most deplorable of all the series) was better than this. And it's sad that such a talented cast was wasted. It's sad that as a hardcore SD fan, I'd give this a two out of ten score (solely based on Shaggy and Velma's performances, otherwise it would be none out of ten). But the saddest thing of all is that they'll probably go on to do more sequels of this caliber...


Shockingly bad. I mean, I knew it was going to be poor, but this bad? Dragged along by my seven year old daughter, who is entranced by thirty year old re-runs on Cartoon Network (and they haven't aged well, speaking as someone who used to rush home from school to watch it), I didn't expect the cynical, set-piece laden exercise in making money which was served up. The good bits: any time Scooby (and therefore Shaggy, who Matthew Lilliard gets to a 'T') is on screen (and it isn't as much as you'd think it would be, couldn't they afford the computer time?). The bad bits: the rest, boy does it draaaaaaaaagggggg. The plot is weak, isn't explained very well and is thus confusing, but never mind because here comes another set piece that has absolutely nothing to do with advancing the plot. Why does Velma change from dowdy and homely into sex vamp, and back again? Why is Sarah Michelle Geller completely unbelievable as Daphne - she's a fine actress, but she sure does need to get away from playing Buffy clones? Why did I want to punch Freddy Prinze Jr. every time he appeared?

A cynical lazy Hollywood pic, lowest common denominator stuff, recycling ideas that weren't really that good in the first place and should have been left well alone. Already setting up the sequel at the end as well. Please, don't do it.

Within an hour of the film ending, my daughter was struggling to remember ANYTHING she liked about the film, bar -surprise- the fart scene. She was more entranced by the fast food she'd had afterwards.


All the reviews said this film was crap. "Reviewers have been wrong before", I thought. So, with the hope of a wallow in childhood nostalgia, I went to see the film. Wrong move. The critics were right. Don't see it. Not unless your under 10 years of age.


This was a pretty good movie for the younger generation. I thought that they went a little overboard when Daphny was fighting like Buffy the vampire slayer, And the worst part was Fred. It in no way reflected the Fred from the cartoon. This scripting of Fred was doomed. But the movie had a decent story line, and had it's moment's. I just expected more. I probably would have had a better time if Daphny and Fred had been scripted better.


A good movie to watch when you're stuck at home in a blizzard, there's nothing else on TV, and you've seen everything else in your collection. The dialogue is bad, the plot unbelievable, and the ending beyond comprehension, but other than that, it's not bad.


Canadian-filmed television western which fails to make the most of its lush location and attractive cast. In Kansas, hunky young Tony Addabbo (as Matt Everett) visits a girlfriend; there, in self-defense, he shoots the man he finds in her boudoir. Unfortunately, the lass happens to be the sheriff's daughter, which contributes to Mr. Addabbo's becoming the outlaw known as "The Kansas Kid". Soon, he is joined by brother Art Hindle (as Cole Everett) and cousin Reiner Schoene (as Dutch Everett). The Everett Gang's main adversary is gravitas-lending veteran George Kennedy (as Deke Turner). Addabbo and duplicitous pal Howard Kruschke (as Jake Morant) lead the players in having excellent hair days.


From the onset, this film was bent on destruction. Even in one's wildest imagination, Kansas doesn't come close to resembling the scenery in the film. When this much liberty is taken with the scenery, one might also wonder how it fared with the plot. Weaker than the cast. I fell asleep 3 times before I finally gave in and put on another movie.


I give it a three. This movie is very unoriginal.

Spoiler alert.

The supposedly artistic scenes are unoriginal and seem like they are supposed to freak you out, but makes you yawn. Bodies struggling behind a sheet of plastic has been done over and over. Many unoriginal aspects in this movie.

I am not drawn into the characters. It does not make me actually care what happened to Hanna.

Vince Canlas's (Cain) acting was especially bad. Oz's last scene was really corny.

What's that? You meet your sweetheart in heaven in the end? Yawn.

Couple good things: Nathan Mobley's(Samuel North) acting wasn't bad.

The scene in the junk yard: The actor that plays the first body out of the hearse looks like Johnny Depp. Yum.


The problem with the movie is it *looks* too much like a film school project. And so the only people who like it are the crew, friends, relatives, and suckers who want to "support the industry" by being positive... not unlike the support you give a 3 year old child who vomits in your lap.

Some improvements could have been made on the editing front. The hell visions in the beginning... overdone. The uninteresting scenarios such as the creep giving those girls at the café a hard time. Come on! It's not that hard to create better, more dynamic and curious scenes than this!

And just when I thought the bar was as low as it could go, Cory Rouse stepped on the set and opened his mouth. His material wasn't great to begin with, but his delivery was worse.

Not bad for $15,000, but then again... it's quite bad.

It seems the next generation of good filmmakers are not exactly bursting out of the film schools are they.


i just watched this film, and although it's received some rave reviews on here which piqued my curiosity initially, i was thoroughly disappointed by this horrible, horrible movie.

ignoring the poor production value, The Other Side still totally blew. the acting, special effects, dialog, and plot were all cheesy and sub par. so i really can't understand why there are people giving this film such high ratings or raving on about it with blatant over exaggerations about the performance by the cast and the directing.

this film is not the least bit original, the plot is unimaginative, and the film makers show no signs of talent and little creativity. Hollywood already has an overabundance of derivative action movies if that is what you're looking for (nothing wrong with that, i love many of them too). there is just absolutely nothing exceptional about this cinematic failure.

good films can indeed be made on a low budget. Population 436 for instance is a good example of how good writing, acting talent, and good directing can make a great movie without a huge budget or even exceptional production value. however, The Other Side does not deserve the same kind if praise and will no doubt be relegated to the $.99 bin at a discount video store.

save yourself the time and money and skip this film. this movie gives indie films a bad name. don't be deceived by the mouth-frothing astroturfers giving rave reviews that are full of stock quotes paying lip service to the film and comparing the director to the likes of Robert Rodriguez--pfft... yea right. it's these types of film industry sycophants that turn film criticism into simply adverts or marketing mouthpieces for the movie studios.

it seems that no matter how bad a film is, studios can always find some hack to give them positive reviews to quote on the DVD. this is unsurprising, but the way this trend has infected IMDb lately is somewhat disturbing.

i predict the IMDb rating to drop from 7.7 as of right now to well below 5 as more people seeing the film and give their honest ratings.


Well I see another film has made it to the over rated list, however this film is to unknown to be over rated. Other than fill 90 minutes before bed, it offered poor, very dry humor with a whole cast of overacting, underacting with a cherry on top.

Maybe I'm being to hash given that this is a low budget film, however a lot of corny dialog and the worst ending I've seen with no thought put into it, I was surprised I finished watching it.

It seems to me they director tried to make this movie something like The Matrix, with agents from hell chasing, shooting, slicing, dicing their victims with perfect precision but whenever the main character was shot at they just seemed to....miss (maybe divine intervention I don't know). This seems to be typical step for any action movie these days.

Well as I stated in my title, I am very confused how this movie got over a 7, it has been my understanding that this is a pretty high score for IMDb. Maybe I under appreciate this movie or miss understood its greatness but I know what I like and I didn't like this.


This movie can be summed up in one simple word - 'garbage'! The acting was some of the worst I have ever seen. I could have sworn I was watching a high school rendition of some poorly written script. Aside from the 'Coronation Street' style of acting (actually it was worse than that) the plot was disjointed and the only other thing it catered to was to introduce the viewer to an attempt to pull you in and keep you captive 'action movie' style via a full on gun fest and a massive body count!

Guns, guns and more guns. The only thing missing was an RPG. Oh wait.... there *was* a grenade - just not rocket propelled. I don't mind a good action flick with some gun work but not at the expense of the story line.

If poor storyline, poor acting and 'loads' of bullets flying around is your scene then this is the movie for you. Failing that - give this one a wide berth.


I've been reading about Brian Cleveland's "Fingerprints" ever since late 2005, but due to continuous release push-backs, I hadn't had the opportunity to actually check it out. That is, until now. The movie has just come to a close, and I'm sad to say, the flick didn't exactly impress. I mean, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. Which is a little unfortunate because... I was feeling very optimistic about this little horror/mystery movie.

Straight out of rehab, Melanie (Leah Pipes) moves back home with her parents and sister, Crystal (played by "Laguna Beach" star Kristin Cavallari), and soon finds herself caught up in an old tragedy that plagues the town. As the story goes, back in 1957, there was a horrible accident between a school bus and a train, due to a problem in a railroad crossing gate, which resulted in death. Now, in the present day, there is an urban legend that if you put your car in neutral at the same spot the disaster took place, the ghosts of the dead school children will push the car and their fingerprints will be printed on the car bumper.

The legend is actually quite refreshing for the horror genre, and it was presented well, but more than a quarter way into the film, the plot suddenly splits, and instead we get a double dose; with the outcome creating conflict. Not only is "Fingerprints" a supernatural tale, but it's also a slasher movie. Whilst the spooky happenings are going on, there is also a masked killer on the loose. This is where I lost interest. The film starts to lose its grip on the story, and it eventually becomes a sloppy "free for all," which then presents major plot holes. It's as though they had two ideas, and instead of deciding on one, they just included both. Which, in my opinion, didn't work.

The flick started off well, better than I expected, but as the minutes went on, it started to frazzle. The acting was... good, for the most part. Leah Pipes did a good job with her portrayal, albeit a little overacted at times, but she held her own throughout. Kristin Cavallari, reality-TV star turned actress, impressed me for the first half of the movie; her acting seemed genuine and she was rather charismatic on screen. But I couldn't help but notice when the flick started to dive into its "serious territory," it was becoming more and more apparent that this wasn't her forte. But, you know, this was her first movie, so i'll cut her a break. Andrew Lawrence (Mitch) did a great job at portraying the typical "class clown/hooligan." It's ironic: his character was a total pig, yet there's something very engaging about the actor that makes you warm to him. The rest of the cast, Josh Henderson (Penn), Lou Diamond Phillips (Doug) and Geoffrey Lewis (Keeler), all did a decent job with their parts. However, Melanie's mother, Bethany (Ginger Gilmartin), handed in a lackluster performance. Almost robotic.

The special effects were surprisingly effective for a low budget horror movie; job well done on that specific aspect.

In conclusion, "Fingerprints" is one of those sub-par horror movies that you stumble upon at 3am whilst browsing through late night television. Only with this one you are most likely to stick around for the final act.

It's a time waster; and that goes both ways.


I don't suggest watching this movie even when you have much time to kill. It's full of clichés, its plot is beyond predictable and there are major logical flaws. The killing scenes are stupid and funny. The sexy actors and sexual material don't help much. The abusive mother,goofy,affectionate father, the hot sister and the problematic daughter constitute the family. Then there is the friendly teacher, the abusive- psychopathic guy who happens to be very handsome, the good and handsome boyfriend-to-be and the silly and slutty cheerleaders. So there's everything needed to constitute the teen-slasher scary movie, but it just doesn't happen. I advise you to sit and watch The Urban Legends again, rather than watching Fingerprints. The only thing i liked about the movie was Leah Pipes, whose performance was worth much superior movies.


There are some okay sections of this piece, but then we have characters acting and reacting to things in ways that make no sense at all. I lived in San Antonio for a few years in college, so I was familiar with the famous "Ghost Tracks" that are on the south side of SA. On a road called "Shane," I believe, that is sandwiched between two huge burial parks(Fitting). Anyway, it was good to see an attempt at writing something based on that area and story, but there were just too many places with characters doing things that make no sense at all. There is some bad acting in this film too. An overall good attempt at making a film, it just needed some work to the script and to the directing in parts.


I always try to support or fight for low budget or independent film and from what I understand this is a low budget one, and for that it should be commended. To be fair it's not overly obvious that money was tight. However that's not the reason I didn't like this film.

The plot in a nutshell is troubled teenager fresh out of rehab rejoins family in a new town. Cue an urban legend about a school bus stopping on the railroad tracks and a train smashing into it and killing all involved. Legend has it that if you put your car in neutral on the tracks the ghosts of the dead children will move your car off leaving behind fingerprints that you can see if you cover your car with talc beforehand.......yawn! Then there's a twist that's so blatant you want to shout at the scriptwriter, and a dark figure killing people all of a sudden. So there's nothing original in the story, it's cliché ridden, but acted okay...so far so average.

The problem I had with the film was there wasn't a nice person in it, I couldn't have cared less about any of them including the heroine. I found myself refusing to give up on the film in case some good came of it, but desperately clock watching and wishing it would finish. It drags, it treats you like you're stupid, and you want them all to die.

I wouldn't recommend it but it's not bad enough to say avoid like the plague.


I agree with the other reviewers on here- not terrible, and it started OFF strong, but fizzled and became extremely sloppy.

I have mainly questions, which addresses said sloppiness, rather than a re-hash of the plot you can already find here: 1.) If indeed the kids were killed by the conductor, why would they push cars to safety? They weren't actually hit by a train, and when they were abducted, they were in a stopped and safe position by the tracks.

2.) I actually suspected Penn of being the killer for a while- so right away, I didn't question why/how he was at the Depot- then after he was killed, I now wonder how/why he was there.

3.) How did the cops know she was in the cemetery? Also, when did Melanie find out that there were none of the other kids buried there? 4.) The Mayor- this is sort of silly- but the guy would have been at LEAST in his 80's- he looked to be maybe in his early 70's...was this just an attempt to get a semi-known actor (Geoffrey Lewis, actually 73) in the movie? Just a few things wrong- otherwise it got kind of boring. But at least they tried to make something original.


Horror movies shot on video were once a genre for the scrappy independents. I now believe that part of horror history to be over. This was not shot like a horror film. It uses shaky camera motions and cutaways instead of real technique or any inspired moves. The fast motion shots are very obviously sped-up footage. The lighting does nothing but expose the flaws of the production. They look wacky and gimmicky. The horror SFX are lacking in believability. The good performances and a good script were wasted. I looked up the production company so I would be sure not to watch any more of their films. The Movie Channel should have found a find better cheaply-made horror film than "Fingerprints."


What can I say. Silly plot, bad acting with teens that look closer to mid twenties or maybe thirty. Boy friends who start up sex on a moments notice and look way to pumped up.

A absolutely absurd plot that contains some paranormal elements and a real world slayer, or mad butcher who could never be believed.

I only ask, who watches and pays for this trash? The Mom of the main heroin acted as if she needed to be in a padded cell.

I am amazed by the absolute trash that gets produced and eventually ends up on DVD for unsuspecting viewers to laugh at.

The mad slasher part could have been done away with and perhaps given this very bad flick a better rating by moderately intelligent viewers.


I admit that some notorious criminals may hold a certain fascination to viewers of reality shows. I am even sufficiently endowed with a huge circle of friends of many 'preferences in entertainment' to grant you that even minor criminals (still murderous but less stylish, say) can grab your attention for a few episodes. I am far more dubious about people whose only claim to notoriety is being the wife / daughter / grandson of some petty hit-man. It's not their ignorance, cursing, rudeness or immense self-indulgence that puts me off. I can endure that if the people in question display ANY kind of talent, interesting quirkiness or even clinical schizophrenia. I cannot endure it for more than the 15 minutes I was exposed to by a not-all-that-well-meaning friend when it's a case of "Watch us! See how brainless AND rich we are. Look how it's possible to live on Blood Money and no talent whatsoever in modern America". It is idiotic but not in a funny way. And creepy but in a way that diminishes the humanity of the God knows how many victims these people founded their money, vulgarity and tastelessness upon. As a half-Italian good old fashioned communist girl I took particular offense at the implied witless remarks suggesting Italy is still ruled by the Mafia. That is only the South, so kudos for getting Naples right and Tuscany wrong. And general shame on you as to the cable A&E or "Bio." channel I saw this on. You used to be better. Not by any means good (except when borrowing British whodunits) but so much better than this purposeless, offensive yet somewhat strangely impossible-to-make-compelling farce.


I don't think I've ever seen a show suck so hard! She might be a single mother, but a mother with a lot of money thanks to her dead husband John Gotti who you can't say ever had an actual job... I mean when you're a mobster you really don't need a job at the local supermarket to put food on the table.

So we have this millionaire widow who's bank account is full of money they don't deserve and who can't keep her kids under control while spoon feeding them... and after all of that whacking it on TV so that the rest of the people on planet Earth know our lives will always be more meaningful...

Although I still don't know what's more painful.. watching this show or having the mob after you...


Reality TV hit a new low with this offensive crap of a show. Why anyone thought the Gotti family should be treated like stars is beyond me. They are nothing but a bunch of scumbags who came from an even bigger scumbag John Gotti. John Gotti got what he deserved and should have gotten the gallows but at least he was taken off the streets and put in a cage like the wild animal he was. So to make this show is not about Victoria Gotti and her 3 punk kids but rather its a form of a celebration of John Gotti's life. I mean hey look at the nice home Victoria has. That all came from blood money on the hands of her scumbag of a father. Is she willing to give that up after knowing this? I don't think so because she is in a sense a gangster herself. The producers of this show should offer an apology.


I'd like to say that it is but that just simply wouldn't be the truth because God knows there are a lot of other t.v./reality shows out there that are ten times worse than "Growing Up Gotti" by far! Though, "Growing Up Gotti" has got to be the WORST show that A&E has ever aired which in all honesty is saying quite a lot when you compare it to the asinine and mind-numbing fodder that is "Dog: The Bounty Hunter" and "Airline"! Smacking of other successful, but just as stupid, unfunny, uninteresting and ultimately pointless garbage, as "The Osbournes", this show was also set-up as an all-access and occasionally would-be tongue-in-cheek insight into the day-to-day life of one Victoria Gotti, the younger of late notorious Mafia Don John Gotti's two daughters, who is apparently a plastic-surgery obsessed socialite/gossip columnist/author/newly divorced single-mother of three loud, spoiled, lazy, and profane teenage sons. After catching the first two episodes of this show and then taking a gander at this site's message board, it's pretty apparent that it is the teenage girls, and sadly a handful of grown women who are attracted to the so-called "Hotti-Gotti" boys as they've been dubbed who continue to watch with regularity and keep this pitiful and wretched excuse for entertainment (which can be likened to a type of mental Novocaine if you ask me) afloat just enough to cause A&E to run a second season or so I've been told anyway. Overall, as I've said this show and others like it such as "DOG: The Bount Hunter" and "Airline" are without a doubt new lows in A&E's programming! And to think there was a time when the channel used to be tops in classy, intelligent programming that showcased the better side of American culture, not anymore unfortunately.


I was morbidly fascinated by this film and only watched it to the end to see how much worse it could get. By the culmination, I could definitely understand why the parents of rich kids are wary of having their erstwhile whelps discuss their wealth. It's probably got a lot to do with not wanting anyone to see what sleeze they've raised. Overwhelmingly unattractive, obnoxious, and virtually illiterate (because why go to class when there are handbags to be bought and hangovers to be overcome), the majority of these kids have absolutely NOTHING going for them but their riches. I'm not surprised to hear that they worry about losing their money- they know that they've cultivated little else of worth in their pitiable existences.

P.S. It's also mildly intriguing to watch them and know that richness does not protect you from acne, bizarre speech impediments, herpes or yellow tooth syndrome but it does seem to give one the impression that one is immensely attractive and shaggable despite these disgusting attributes.


It seems that the intent of this movie was to make you feel bad for these "poor" rich kids. All it made me do was think how ridiculous they are. If they want a normal life or whatever they can have one. They can go to school meet a woman get married and have kids and not take any of their families money. They are capable of doing whatever they want but all they can do is feel sorry for themselves. I also didnt like how the Director didn't remind us who the people are. There were so many rich kids I couldn't keep track.


This is poorly done, not funny really, and just not that well put together. But, when viewing this sort of thing, I think its important to keep two things in mind ... #1: The film industry was new and inexperienced. It was a treat for most folks just to see images thrown up on a screen. #2: Chaplin was also new and inexperienced. He had not yet grown into that lovable Little Tramp. This was a period of learning via experimentation. Given all of that, this is worth watching once if you're a Chaplin fan just because it is such an early example of his work. If, on the other hand, you're not really into Chaplin so much but just a fan of flicks before the "talkies" fad came along, well, you can safely pass on this one and not miss much.


This is Chaplin's film debut. If it wasn't for that, there's a pretty good chance that this would be totally forgotten by today. Chaplin, in a pre-Tramp role, shows some of the things that would eventually make him one of the most recognizable figures in the world, such as keeping an opponent away from him by using his cane during a fight). There's very little (ok, no) plot development.

This is a Keystone short, so there is quite a bit of slapstick humor. Perhaps it's due to this movie being over 90 years old when I saw this, but I could not tell what exactly happened between Chaplin and the reporter (played by director Henry Lehrman). There are a few interesting parts.

If you are a fan of Chaplin and can't get enough of his work or a fan of silent slapstick comedies, this might be worth a look. Then again, it's only about 8 or 9 minutes long, so if you don't like it, you haven't wasted much of your time.


Charles Chaplin made his film debut in Making A Living, minus the recognizability we would come to know later. Other than his cane, Chaplin is not dressed as the tramp. Chaplin is dressed as an Englishman who appears to first propose to a young lady and then must find work. Chaplin's idea of finding work is to usurp the effort of a fellow reporter who snaps pictures of the aftermath of an auto accident. The film is quickly paced but poorly edited, although it may simply be the age of the print. Many of the scenes just do not flow well in progression as a result. Chaplin holding an opponent at bay with his cane is very funny and foreshadows his use of the tactic in later films. It's clear audiences must have taken to a lot of fighting in films then, but the repeated scrapes come off as pure silliness. The best scene comes at the end with the streetcar, which would have been performed by stunt men today. Most of these films were ad-libbed then, which explains the relative disjointedness on film. However, it is still historical of course to see Chaplin in his first film, even though he is not honed. *1/2 of 4 stars.


In 1914, Charlie Chaplin began making pictures. These were made for Mack Sennett (also known as "Keystone Studios") and were literally churned out in very rapid succession. The short comedies had very little structure and were completely ad libbed. As a result, the films, though popular in their day, were just awful by today's standards. Many of them bear a strong similarity to home movies featuring obnoxious relatives mugging for the camera. Many others show the characters wander in front of the camera and do pretty much nothing. And, regardless of the outcome, Keystone sent them straight to theaters. My assumption is that all movies at this time must have been pretty bad, as the Keystone films with Chaplin were very successful.

The Charlie Chaplin we know and love today only began to evolve later in Chaplin's career with Keystone. By 1915, he signed a new lucrative contract with Essenay Studios and the films improved dramatically with Chaplin as director. However, at times these films were still very rough and not especially memorable. No, Chaplin as the cute Little Tramp was still evolving. In 1916, when he switched to Mutual Studios, his films once again improved and he became the more recognizable nice guy--in many of the previous films he was just a jerk (either getting drunk a lot, beating up women, provoking fights with innocent people, etc.). The final evolution of his Little Tramp to classic status occurred in the 1920s as a result of his full-length films.

This review, then, is based on Chaplin's earliest films. They were, by and large, terrible. However, as I have seen a major portion of the available output for Chaplin, I found myself still wanting to see all his films--even the bad ones! This movie is a stand out because it's about as early a Chaplin film as you'll find. Plus, unlike most other films, even of this era, there is no semblance of any plot. Instead, the film looks like the splicing together of unrelated outtakes. Chaplin is difficult to notice, as he looks nothing like the Little Tramp--instead sporting a monocle and fancy duds. Unless you are a nut like me, don't waste your time with this short.


This was the second Wallander film I've seen. In the first one (Mannen som log), Rolf Lassgård did an admirable job of portraying Wallander, but I was mildly irritated when the film ended in the complete opposite way: the villain got away!

So I was hoping that the new project with 13 films would be more true to the books, but Noooo.

In this film (Innan frosten, eng. Before the frost) - why does the director or script writer change the story so radically, and add stuff that wasn't in Mankell's book? The "new" material is so bad, almost to the point of embarrassing.

I'd be hard pushed to see another one in this series.


This is the first movie in the new Wallanderseries and is based on the book with the same name. And it went completely wrong.The policemen/woman in this film behaves like morons and I can't understand how they did make it trough police academy. Embarrassing mistakes and on top of it all a ridiculous plot aiming to please some minorities in society (they can'not have gained anything by this) I don't blame the actors or the photo - but everything else stinks! I feel also there is a lack of flow in this picture that easily could have been avoided by lengthening/cutting i the right places. Next episodes must be far superior if Í'm going to watch this series.


This Swedish police movie contains everything that is bad in the genre and runs it once again, but in an almost amateurish way. If I say that the superintendent's daughter, with a fresh exam from the Police Academy, arrives at her father's police station, you know the rest. There are conflicts and cliché on cliché on cliché. After less than half an hour you know who've done the bad things and who will do it in the future. If you get frightened of the jump scenes, this must be your first action movie.

Krister Henriksson is far from the level of his predecessor in these films, Rolf Lassgård. Johanna Sällström fights hard against the script, but doesn't win the fight.

I thought Henning Mankell, the man behind the books about this superintendent working in a small Swedish town, was radical but he seems to be just "radical chic". Let's hope he gets a lot of money for lending his copper to this crap.


I've read the book and despite knowing that the it's way too comprehensive to fit into 90 minutes of film, I gave it a shot. If you've read the book and want to watch the movie - don't! I finished the book in about two days, I couldn't put it down. It was exciting and upsetting. The movie is something else, in quality it's not as good as for example the Beck-movies, but still an okay movie. I guess that people who haven't read the book can enjoy this one as a quite good thriller.

So in my personal opinion it would have been a 1, if I hadn't read the book it would have been a 5, so I landed in between.


Hm well. I'm a big fan of Mankell. I've read most of his books and seen the movies. I haven't read "Innan Frosten" thou but I cant believe its as bad as this movie. It was utterly crap. No depth, no characters, no plot, no dialog and the actors, my God, are they really pros? That Sällström girl, shes not in my book, but some regard her as quite an actress but this?! Please give me a break. The directors willingness to shoot her mostly from behind dressed in her tight jeans, I am sad to say, saved this movie from getting a 2 from me. Now I just have to read the book so I can determine if its as bad as the movie. People, save yourself from wasting a good hour and a half, do something else, sew, make pottery I don't care, just leave this be.


Hangmen Also Die is an OK sort of film, fatally marred by the fact that it is pure propaganda, obviously slanted towards a wartime audience. The plot, involving an elaborate scheme to incriminate a Czech, who is both a businessman and Nazi informer is a complete fiction! One is left with the idea that the real assassin simply got away with it! The real facts were generally available at this time, and I'm amazed that Lang and the others involved here got away with this! The real story is a bit less upbeat: Heydrich was killed by not one, but two Czechs, who fired at him and finally killed him by lobbing a bomb at his vehicle. The two hid out in a church and were hunted down and killed just shortly thereafter. Sadly, not all the Czechs were as loyal to the resistance as those shown in this film. Someone informed on the killers, which led to their speedy demise. This is the incident which triggered the famous reprisal, carried out by the Nazis: for revenge for the murder of Heydrich they destroyed an entire Czech town, Lidice, the locale chosen at random. Since this is very famous part of wartime history, I am sad that so many viewers don't know what the real story was. The theme of Nazi reprisal is worked in very well, but the film steers clear of the much more shocking and ugly truth. A pity-for the real story would have been a much clearer picture of the true brutality of the Nazis. I guess 1940s audiences weren't considered mature enough to handle the truth! Again this gross distortion of the facts here is a fatal flaw. Sad, since I think the director, with more accurate material could have produced a great film...tragedies such as these were more his forte.


I must say, this is one of the all-time worst sitcoms that I have ever viewed. It ranks right up there with Curb Your Enthusiasm as first rate letdowns. I went into this show really wanting to like it, but it gave me no reason whatsoever to become an avid viewer of the show. I gave it a two episode trial and didn't laugh at a single "joke" that was presented in this lifeless, flat sitcom. This show gives "dry-humor" a whole new meaning.

Having sat through the two episodes at my brother's house, since I can't bring myself to pay for USA's Monk - the only watchable show on television today - I can breath easy, knowing that I am not missing anything worthwhile on the tube. Brent Butt, who seems to be lauded as a Canadian Jerry Seinfled, is the most colorless, lifeless lead I've ever seen in a sitcom. The writing for this show is clearly done by people lacking even a working knowledge of the word "funny." The similarities to Seinfeld end with the basis of the plot - both shows being about nothing. Where Seinfeld was witty and had spontaneous jokes, Corner Gas builds up their jokes at such an excessive degree that you see them coming, ruining their value. A joke with an obvious punchline is dead-on-arrival, folks - just like this show.


With all the hype around this show and its being heralded as a great Canadian sitcom, I have tried to like this show. Oh, have I tried. But I just can't. Am I missing something? The acting is not good, the jokes are bad, the humour is dumb. I actually amuse myself by playing the "3 joke game" when I happen to flip across Corner Gas. The "3 joke game" involves enduring the show for 3 jokes, and seeing if I find any one of them remotely funny. I never have. I just find the whole thing unbearably dumb. There is nothing smart or edgy about it - it basically goes for silly, safe, cheesy humour. Maybe that's why it has such broad appeal.


Corner Gas is one of the worst sitcoms I've ever seen. It's simply not funny. All of the characters wait for their turns to speak only to make some lame pun or unfunny, witty remark. The actors have very bad comic timing, mostly due to the poor writing.

To make a show about nothing funny, you really need a strong cast, individualized characters, and good writing. Corner Gas has none of these.

And what's with the yellow-red camera lens? The show looks like it's been heavily filtered, which makes light play weirdly and things look unreal. This effect is distracting and unnecessary.

Corner Gas would be much better if the actors would improvise more often a la The Office. Forget about plot lines and trying to get a complete story across. Just be funny from the beginning of the show until the end. That's all people want from sitcoms.


I seriously don't think that this movie deserves an overall rating of 8/10 (average), compared to the movie which in terms of storyline and theory it would have been going for in my opinion, the Butterfly Effect. Though keep in mind, this is coming from someone who expects a lot out of movies that are acclaimed... (an 8/10 on IMDb is decent, though Butterfly Effect has ~100k votes as opposed to around 4-5k votes on this movie) Sure, the movie has great eye candy and is nicely animated. But the characters are deliberately made to be very dim-witted and it's obvious to someone like myself, or someone who's mature enough to tell. The way the characters are so flawed (seemingly deliberately, just to fill a plot that can't fill itself if you know what I mean) remind me so much of how characters from like, 7th Heaven (the American TV show with a bajillion adopted kids in a family). I feel that this is a way for writers to cut corners -- just give the movie some sort of scaffolding just to give the animators something to animate.

I can go on and on about the things that really bugged me about the storyline, the characters... lots of the dialogue felt way too much like extremely artificial, meaningless filler to me. The way Makoto was thinking after Chiaki made his confession was very irrational and stupid... and she never really sat down to think and just leaped through time whenever she felt like it, even if in the end she leaped for Chiaki... it just feels like the characters never learned anything fundamental. even after exploring that aspect, there are many other issues brought up that makes this movie so incredibly incomplete as a story -- deliberately vague just to desperately fill up a storyline, like cheating on a long term paper in order to make your essay an extra page long by increasing the font size of the period at the end of a paragraph or something.

Very nice animation, but very disappointing story... I only watched this movie because a friend asked me to. Lately I've been kind of avoiding anime because I expect way too much out of story lines, dialogues, character development and just... everything that makes you think and question.

if makoto made an entry on fmylife.com during the middle of the movie, I feel that most people would have voted "you totally deserved it." if most people voted "I agree, your life sucks" then it probably would have been because of her aunt who just never told her the right stuff (again, just for the sake of driving the storyline someplace...)

Good for a younger age group and eye-candy or if you want to just sit back and not think too much -- don't watch it if you expect something remotely profound, witty, smart or innovative out of the storyline.


Overall a very poor documentary. If you're looking for any sense of balance, you won't find it here. Try the PBS documentary if you're looking for a less biased background of the conflict (though that still has some significant omissions).

This documentary is consistently misleading on the background of the conflict, and accurate knowledge of the populations of both communities is extremely important in understanding why Arabs refused the British and later U.N. partition of Palestine. This documentary makes indirect suggestions of a significant Jewish population in Palestine prior to the 1900s, while the fact that the territory was colonized by Jews of foreign origin is shrugged off. There are also numerous mentions of Palestine being the "ancestral home" to Jews, but little mention of the significant Arab majority for centuries. There are suggestions that Palestinian refugees all "fled" Palestine when many were forced in fact forced out by Zionist militias and/or terrorism.

I think it is significant to bring up the words of Gandhi regarding the colonization of Palestine: "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. [...] If they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. [...] As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them."

Of course, typical to most pro-Israel media, there is no comparison of casualty rates which are and always have been dramatically higher on the Palestinian side. This documentary focuses almost entirely on Israeli civilian deaths, with nearly no mention at all of the Palestinian deaths (which in recent times have average 3-4 times as many). There is no discussion on Israeli human rights abuses, the numerous terrorist attacks carried out by Zionists in the decades prior to Israel's foundation, the attacks by Israeli extremists since then (such as the massacre of dozens of worshipers at Hebron's mosque by a Jewish settler), the routine killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli snipers, etc. There is insufficient mention of the significance of settlements and no mention of the extremism of the settlers and their history of violence against Palestinian civilians.

This documentary focus a lot on the extremist views sometimes preached in sermons (which of course are deplorable), but there is no mention of Kach and similar Israeli organizations that call for forced removal of Arabs from Israeli controlled territories (or in some more extreme cases the conquering of additional Arab lands), or the militancy of settlers such as those in Hebron who routinely attack and harass Arab civilians. The documentary would have you believe that average Israelis harbor no hatred towards Arabs, which is extremely far from the truth. Israelis are often openly racist against Arabs and this deserves mention.

There is mention of the murders of Palestinians (by Palestinians) viewed as being collaborators with Israel, but no mention of the practices the Israeli military employs to force Palestinians to act as informants for them, often threatening them and their family into complying.

There is a lot of criticism of the views that Palestinian children develop towards Israel and Jews and blame is placed solely on the Palestinian Authority. There is little mention of life under the Israeli occupation: the economic hardships, the curfews, the roadblocks and checkpoints, the military raids, the shootings, or the daily humiliation and frequent harassment that Palestinians face. There are also the typical poor and misleading Arabic- English translations, such as "jihad" being translated to "holy war" rather than "struggle", and a dehumanization of Palestinians who believe in their right to the whole of the country.

This documentary acts as though Israel was making a major concession at Oslo to negotiate any Palestinian state at all, giving up "its land" (meaning the West Bank and Gaza), but there is no mention that the Palestinians were officially giving up claim to 78% of the country. It discusses how small Israel is in contrast to the Arab countries surrounding it, as if this is proper justification for denying Arab people the land they've lived on for centuries.

In relation to the Oslo negotiations, it discusses how Israel gave up control of 42% of the West Bank as if this was a major commitment by Israel, failing to explain that control of the remaining 58% enabled them to completely control the movements of Palestinians from town to town and village to village. Extreme exaggerations as to the "generosity" of the Israeli offers at Camp David (debunked here: http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/115.shtml ). It talks a lot about the Israel's concerns about it's own security in the case of the founding of a Palestinian state, but no mention of the Palestinian's concerns that it be a viable state.

80% of the interviews are from Israelis or individuals clearly aligned to Israel (such as Daniel Pipes). There is only one Palestinian interviewed, and he certainly isn't very eloquent.

This is certainly from the Israeli perspective. It shouldn't be completely dismissed, but needs to be balanced with such documentaries as John Pilger's "Palestine Is Still the Issue", "Gaza Strip", "Death in Gaza", and the Israeli-produced "Checkpoint"... or a bit of reading of Edward Said. Unfortunately I've yet to see a documentary that covers the history of the conflict and the various negotiations from a Palestinian perspective in detail.


Almost the entire movie takes place in the cockpit of a 1954 Jaguar XK120 roadster, a stunningly beautiful car in its day, and still highly admired by classic sports car enthusiasts, who will be the main audience for this movie.

The story line is a snoozer, the acting is amateurish, Ireland has only one facial expression, the grimace, which gets tiresome after 30 seconds, and the only interesting character in this turkey is the diner waitress. The opening scene is a truck crashing, but we don't find out what this has to do with anything else until halfway through the movie.

The real star of the picture is the car, and the clips from open road sports car racing in the early 1950's, before they moved to closed tracks. We get glimpses of some more Jaguars, MG's, Triumphs, Austin-Healeys, Nash-Healeys, Porsches, Allards, Jowetts, Aston-Martins, Oscas and Ferraris, some pre-WW1 speedsters in a vintage race, and a bit of the Pebble Beach Concours with a Rolls-Royce that has nothing to do with the plot.

If you know anybody with an old British sports car, buy this one for them at the dollar store. That's what I paid.

Goofs

There are continuity goofs galore in this turkey, mainly in the racing clips repeated and sometimes reversed, so you get car numbers backwards. Look for the sign in front of the marshal's stand that reads backwards.

At one point Ireland hot wires this strange car, in the dark, with absolutely nothing, in only a few seconds. Come on!

When the star car starts the race it is with white wire wheels, full width bumpers and without a front license plate, then at the first turn the plate appears, then the front bumpers disappear and become little bumperettes, then they reappear, the wheels change from white to dark and back again, and so on throughout the race. The pursuing car is also a Jaguar XK120, usually dark color with a full folded down light colored top, but at the road block it is light with a dark top, and in some shots it becomes an open roadster with a different style windshield. Short clips from other races are thrown in from time to time (gotta have some crashes). When the race is half over, the girl back at the starting line jumps into an Allard and somehow catches up to the Jags, by which time the Allard has changed color twice, and gained a spare tire on first the right side, then the left, then the right again, and now it has portholes in the side, definitely not the same Allard she started with.


C.H.U.D is a bit more higher budget than your regular 80's horror flick, but not necessarily much better. It's interesting enough to watch but not particularly great or unique. The best scene is where a woman is taking a shower and blood sprays out of the plug-hole all over her. The story is mildly interesting and the C.H.U.Ds themselves are sort of humanoid monsters with glowing eyes.

I can't really say much more as there was little in this film that grabbed me - it's an OK time waster, and that's about it. I don't really understand why everyone else rates it so highly.

4/10.


One of the opening images in "C.H.U.D" is a full-on shot of a truck banner reading "Slow Moving Vehicle." That's the most valid image in the whole movie.

Under Manhattan, mysterious creatures terrorize the homeless who live in the sewers, and begin striking those who walk the streets as well. When one disappearance involves a precinct captain's wife, the captain starts investigating the situation by asking around a neighborhood soup kitchen.

The captain, Bosch, is played by Christopher Curry, a here-and-gone Martin Mull lookalike whose casual handling of his wife's disappearance would come off as absurd if we hadn't previously gotten a load of what she looks like. While Curry is the main actor, two better-known names have key supporting roles, Daniel Stern as the grimy soup kitchen director (only the destitute would accept a meal from him) and John Heard as a photographer.

Heard's character has little to do with the story, and the way he's brought in is lazy and forced. He has some photos of streetpeople, and one homeless woman calls him for bail. He takes a photo of a gored leg that shows something sinister is going on, though all I saw was bad make-up. Through most of the film, we see him blow off deadlines and interact unaffectionately with his live-in girlfriend, played by Kim Griest. Heard here is smug and charmless, yet we are supposed to be impressed by him because he's played by the great John Heard.

The torpor and aimlessness of "C.H.U.D." amaze me. Sewer creatures rising up in the big city is not a bad concept, but not only does the film fail to do anything with it, we get a lot of inert moments where people trade cliché-ridden dialogue like: "Keep a lid on it." "Nothing, huh? Sounds interesting." "Watch your step, Bosch, remember you don't belong here." "I don't believe you! What are you trying to hide?"

There's a stonewalling government official played by George Martin who bulges his eyes and sneers at every question and gives us an obvious central villain since the budget is too cheap to show us much of the monsters. The creatures are meant to horrify but merely look like inept Halloween window displays, while the unbearable synthesized score sounds like a seven-year-old toying with a department-store display organ. Then you get goofy sequences like the one where Griest is in a shower, gets drenched in blood, and is next seen dry and unfazed. Must have set the showers controls on "Bobby Ewing."

The whole movie is like that, jumping from effect to effect, hitting us with little shock moments here and there, not tying anything in. This is not scary, just annoying.

It's true I didn't see the director's cut, which is a bit longer and shows one C.H.U.D. attack in the middle rather than at the end of the film, where it makes less sense. But whatever the editing, the product on screen is deadly dull, and surprisingly unfunny given its enduring cult reputation. "C.H.U.D" gets mentioned as an askew satire, but just isn't in the same class as "Tremors" or "Return of the Living Dead," let alone an Evil Dead film. To recite another cliché: You have been warned.


CHUD only good point is the idea behind the plot. Monsters in the subway is a somewhat underplayed B-movie idea that could use some more cinematic tries. -- The movie drags a bit, and is somewhat mundane in its approach and execution, but is worth watching none the less. I only gave it a "4" though, maybe because the middle of the movie dragged, and I was expecting better special effects than the movie could deliver.