I am not a fan of movies about people who live their lives in a pointless way, and when given the options to act sit like zombies and let the river of life float them downstream. People like this-our main character-are as interesting to me as those pieces of flotsam.

I gather the Director is trying to say something deep about loneliness and isolation, but this movie is nihilistic garbage. What are we supposed to make of a man who, when given options to change his situation, simply sits and waits for the inevitable to happen? Whatever the movie is trying to say is lost in the aimless vapidity of the story, the long pointless scenes, the stilted dialog are all reminiscent of Robert Bresson's work, and he leaves me cold as well, as does Samuel Beckett.

I'll let the artsy fartsy crowd giggle and moan and dissect this piece of crap.


This movie sucked. I cannot say anything good about this Finlandia movie. If the style was not done intentionally the director, Aki Kaurismaki, needs to be prevented from ever making another film in his life. And if his kids ever want to make a movie they should be prevented as well just on the principle of who their father is. All through this, thankfully, short movie I kept wondering if this was being done on purpose. It wasn't sure if he wasn't trying to be funny. I'm almost interested in finding a few other Finnish movies to see if this is the norm. I've heard that Finland has the most depressed people with the highest suicide rate. Watch this movie and you'll want to kill yourself too.


When you get experienced enough as a filmmaker and you learned most of the tricks of the trade, you realise that the best thing to do for an art-house director is to stick mindlessly to whatever made you successful with the festival-going crowd and the film critics earlier. Never mind that you have no new ideas and that the most your film does is deliver the 'good old feeling' everyone expects.

That's a fate Kaurismaki seems not to have been able to avoid with his Lights in the Dusk. Totally devoid of ANY new or creative ideas with respect to what we have seen from him before, Kaurismaki's feature recycles his lately trademark - and otherwise very appealing - darkish, yet basically cheerful coloured backgrounds and surroundings behind and around the actors. But the story is the most feeble ever... No real suspense, only mindless clichés about a totally hapless main character (no, this is not irony on the film's part, guys, this is just the 'good-old-Kaurismaki-feeling' we yearn for and it only seems to work because his other films were enjoyable on their own). Plus some sentimental music tossed in (who would have expected that from Kaurismaki? ;), without the real possibility for the viewer to relate to the characters (you feel no sorry, no empathy, only anger at most about how incapable they are).

And finally, even at about 75 minutes, this movie is waaaay longer than it should be: another sign of running out of fresh ideas. Hey Aki, you'd better take a rest and come back with something that's more up to your standards. And my advice for the potential viewer: watch the other parts of the trilogy (The Man Without a Past, 2002; Drifting Clouds, 1996), and skip this one.


Aki Kaurismäki's trilogy about Finnish depression and it's results began with Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat, dealing with unemployment, and continued with Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä, about homelessness. Both are exceptional works. Now, the ending chapter is out in the form of Laitakaupungin Valot, a story of loneliness, betrayal and sacrifice.

I read the script of this film when it was going to production, and saw the result at the Finnish premiere last night. As much as I'd like to tell you otherwise, Laitakaupungin Valot is not a good film. The growth needed between the script and the final film just never came to pass here. The end result is shallow and unfinished, despite all its potential.

The story is straightforward enough: a security man, lonely and bullied, meets a femme fatale, who sets him up for his gullibility and loyalty. The course of the story is clear from the beginning to the inevitable end; indeed, Kaurismäki reveals the whole story in his synopsis of the film.

The femme fatale, a central figure and most controversial character, remains shallow despite her potential. Why does she do what she does, does she feel regret or pity towards the man she's cheating? How does she feel about the man, perfectly aware of her betrayal, going down for her? That's problem number one: None of the characters develop during the film, and we are not aware of their motives. They end as they begin, as does the story; everything is as it seems. The story does not suffer from it, but without anything to chew on the experience remains shallow.

Also the choices of the security guard do not make the audience care one bit about what happens to him. He knows the woman is betraying her, but allows it to happen. We're led to believe it's because he has fallen in love with her. But that does not really hold; he's not in love with her, merely an image of some kind of a dream woman. It's pride that leads him to prison; he's not trying to protect her, but himself from admitting he's been tricked. In the end, his fate is his own doing; his pride, his problem. That's problem number two: The audience does not care about the characters. None of them have any good qualities, there's nothing to grasp and like, or even understand.

The third problem is the world Kaurismäki paints: his image of Finland, stylistic fifties, the one through which audiences abroad have learned to see us. But this story is not timeless, it's very much attached to today and today's problems, and fifties cars and radios simply do not fit in with the glass and metal scenery of Ruoholahti. They stand out and detach from the realism of the story, eats away its credibility. How much more powerful would it have been, if the security man's basement apartment would have looked like a crude, concrete basement and not been carefully styled with antique cupboards, radios and painted walls? On the other hand, nostalgia works very well musically here; Melrose's live performance rocks and rises above anything else in the film.

Laitakaupungin Valot has all the potential, but does nothing to achieve any. The story is fine - it wouldn't need twists and turns to work. It compares well with Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves; both have a main character sacrificing themselves completely for petty reasons. Both also pace their story with still, calm images of scenery, Ruoholahti or Scotland. Von Trier manages to pull it off for two reasons as I can see it; he takes the tragedy far further, taking it on to another level, and mirrors the audience's response with the main character's sister-in-law, in whom is all the growth and compassion compressed. Laitakaupungin Valot could have gone so much further. It's a shame, and we're all wondering what the hell happened.


This feature length episode is - apart from the equally dreadful "The Last Vampyre" - the worst adaption of a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One really wonders what was going on in the producer's mind wasting Jeremy Brett's rapidly diminishing energy and life-span for this crude story, especially after having been so faithful to the spirit of Doyle's works before. The theme of Holmes' dreams depicting exactly the events to come stands in stark contrast to his previously stated belief in rationality, facts and logical deduction. One can't help feeling the scriptwriters took to Holmes' former vice of drug abuse. Sad and unworthy of Jeremy Brett's talents.


This episode of the Jeremy Brett "Sherlock Holmes" series was the worst in terms of being a bloated two hour reconstructed story. Despite good work by Brett, Edward Hardwicke, and Simon Callow, it again demonstrates how the writers of a screenplay can wreck the work of a better writer.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR appears in the first collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. The story details how Holmes and Watson get involved with tracing the whereabouts of a young American woman, the daughter of mining millionaire, who was about to marry one Lord Robert St. Simon, a man of impeccable breeding and background - one of the most available high profile aristocrats in the marriage market. The young woman (Alice Doran) disappeared at the chapel where the marriage was about to commence. The police (Lestrade in charge again) are suspicious of the antics of a former girlfriend of Lord Robert, who may have threatened the missing bride. And then there is also a mysterious man who was seen near her hotel on several occasions. Holmes, in the end, is able to figure out what exactly happened, although it does not please his client.

Now Lord St. Simon appears to be a well-mannered, self-important jerk in the story, but he gives no indications of being the conniving monster that was created by the scriptwriters. They turn him into a violent version of Edward Rochester, with a still living wife hidden in the ancestral house, in squalor (similar to Bertha Mason Rochester in the attic in JANE EYRE). He is a fortune hunter who marries and gets rid of wives (so why not the first one?). The conclusion of this film is about as far off base as one could get from the short story, which ends on a friendly note.

When he wrote THE NOBLE BACHELOR, Conan Doyle was making subtle comments about a trend of his time.

SPOILER COMING UP:

Alice turns out to have been reunited with one Francis (Frank) Hay Moulton, a young American who prospected near her father in California, but had no luck. Mr. Doran (when he struck it rich) would have nothing of Moulton, pulled Alice away to Europe, and decided to buy a title for his daughter. It was very common in the "Gilded Age" for multi-millionaires in America to marry into French or British aristocracy. The best recalled marriages were of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marleborough, and of Jennie Jerome to Lord Randolph Churchill (the latter producing Winston Churchill). Anne Gould married Count Boni de Castlelaine. The trend continues to this day (Jackie Kennedy Onassis' sister Lee Bouvier becoming Princess Radziwell of Hungary). But it was at it's height in the 1890s - 1920s.

Conan Doyle was poking fun at this ridiculous right of passage of a new snobbish American aristocracy, and showed that Lord St. Simon really was not worth the trouble (when he learns the truth St. Simon will not congratulate the Moulton's on their marriage). Conan Doyle ends the story with Holmes demonstrating a better approach to good international relationships, in a memorable comment suggesting that one day the memories of the idiots who caused the American Revolution will fade and Britain and the U.S. may yet be reunited again.

As I have said before, Conan Doyle could write the heads off of some screenplay writers.


One of the things that supposedly led Jeremy Brett to take on the mantle of Holmes was the fact that Granada wanted to do something that no other film or television producer had done before, namely, do the Doyle stories as they were written. And for the most part, they did. It seems that towards the end of Brett's life, when he was at his weakest, they gave him the weirdest, melodramatic and nonsensical adaptations to showcase his talents. Even if I didn't know the story The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, "The Eligible Bachelor" would've had me confused, since it is just all over the place. We start out with the upcoming nuptials of Hattie Doran and Lord Robert St. Simon (along the lines of the original story). Then we veer into a very strange subplot with Sherlock Holmes being unable to sleep because he's having a recurring nightmare (which he sketches). Throw in an old estate with jungle animals, a maimed veiled lady (possibly borrowed from The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger)a murderous husband, a wife driven mad and all other sorts of wackiness that not only was never in the original story, but which just makes the whole piece unwieldy and a mess. I've appreciated other episodes where the writers were able to dramatize some elements of "backstory" but in this case, they just added in all sorts of things that made for an over-the-top piece of melodrama that probably has Conan Doyle spinning.


How this movie won a prestigious prize at Cannes is utterly beyond me. Call me a dolt, but I utterly did not "get" it. And, I stayed for the whole screening--a lot of people, truth be told, left during the show. The movie was far too gauzy--no character development, too many false starts/blind alleys, and far too little serious message other than "Sri Lankan army = kind of creepy." Please. I can't even accuse the movie of navel-gazing--that would be a significant step up. The older-guy's foot ailment goes nowhere, the army trucks' little dance is left unexplained (other than, perhaps, army = creepy time-wasters), the little girl remains a complete cipher, and the potentially appealing character of the police-man (if that's what he is) remains largely unknown (other than the compellingly original message that bludgeoning a stranger to death is not a nice idea).


Sri Lankan cinema is largely known by the works of its grand old man Lester James Peries. This new film by Vimukti Jayasundara was made with the availability of foreign funds. This is the reason why there are many non sri lankan themes. There are certain films which are praised by critics for reasons unknown to the general public. This is precisely the case with this film. It has elements which one rarely sees in a Sri Lankan film. The depiction of war is so imaginary, completely different from the actual reality in contemporary Sri Lanka. This is something which has angered many natives of Sri Lanka. They accused the filmmaker of supporting the enemies of the nation. I had the misfortune of meeting this film's creator at a film festival. He had problems expressing his ideas. This can be the reason why he chose to have few sounds in his film. Watch it if you have nothing better to do in life.


A couple of years ago I did manage to speak to writer/director Merlin Ward who like nearly every British screenwriter was having problems getting money for his projects and was suffering the heart breaking experience of seeing his screenplays sitting on a shelf gathering dust , so when I heard one of his projects was finally going into production I felt happy for the guy . Alas after seeing OUT OF BOUNDS I found myself asking couldn't one of Merlin's other scripts have been more deserving of funding ?

Some people haver mentioned that the look of the film is at fault and the whole feel of the movie has that made for television look similar to one of those feature length plays found on ITV during 9pm on a Sunday night . This is certainly true but it's the screenplay that's at fault . The story starts with an art teacher at an all girls school having sex with Louise one of the pupils . It should be pointed that Louise is 18 and well above the age of consent but I couldn't help thinking this doesn't make it all right in anyway and I watched this the same day as a certain Scottish football team revealed that their new coach was someone who spent time in jail for having sex with a 15 year old so sure as heck I wasn't going to empathise with the characters

Problem number one: I couldn't empathise with the characters but that's not the major problem with the script which lies in its contrived over complicated nature in the last third . Rmember when you saw RETURN OF THE KING in cinemas ? Remember everyone started reaching for their jackets and handbags half an hour before the final credits ? We have a whole series of similar false endings here where you think the mystery has been cleared up then BANG Mr Ward decides an already over cluttered screenplay isn't complicated enough so he adds yet another plot twist which makes the story more and more ridiculous as it trundles along

Merlin I hope you make a success of your career but remember one thing - Less is more


This is the worst english language movie I've ever seen ("Zombie Doom", a German "film" is worse). Considering I've seen pretty much everything that's won a raspberry award, that's saying something.

I was expecting something bad after realizing I'd been ripped off and had spent 5 bucks on "Campfire Stories" rather than "Campfire Tales" (a good anthology horror film). But I was expecting something that was low-budget but had production values of at least ten dollars along the lines of tales from the hood or the dozen other direct to video titles in the genre (which I enjoyed). I figured well it has some b/c-list actors so maybe it will be OK (it wasn't like the cast is all unknowns). I'd say it's fair to say Jamie-Lynn Singler's film career has jumped the shark after watching this "film".

First off, it's shot on video. It looks like something that would air on public access TV. The direction is utterly awful, the editing is worse. The script is generic, cliched, disjointed and just plain bad, like Plan 9 from Outer Space bad. Most of the acting is abominable (which is probably mostly the director's fault in all honesty). The worst thing of all is the "cinematography". Awful. It's like they gave a drunk 10 year old a camera.

I enjoy bad movies, and I thought this movie was barely watchable, despite being unintentionally hilarious. It's just so bad. This movie is quite possibly the Plan 9 from Outer Space of the 21st century. If you like really really bad movies or are a masochist, it might be worth a rent, other than that - avoid like the plague.

Terrible. Not Recommended at all.


The computer animated skull was the cheesiest, dumbest, most retarded thing I have seen in a long time. I couldn't even hear what it was saying. I just assumed that it was the normal crypt-keeper rip-off crap. Not that the Crypt Keeper was good.

Then we are introduced to the story of two guys with a broken down car who meet a random girl, and then, respectively, a Southern Deputy. That is the overarching plot, but it doesn't matter. It takes up less time then the sub-stories. I also was unable to hear what the zany deputy was saying throughout his five hour long idiotic rambling.

The first sub story was just unimaginative. We listen to repetitive punk rock for ten minutes before the story actually begins. A guy kills people at a mental institution that performs hideous experiments on it's charges. Then the story REALLY takes off with a bunch of jock teen kids molesting a gardener. BUT WAS HE FROM THE MENTAL INSTITUTION??? WE DON'T KNOW!!!! Well, they know that he's unstable, saying that he killed his family, and then unburied them and "killed them again." Oh, what a card that psychopathic gardener is! Then they are hanging out in a large inexplicable vacant lot with various sport equipment. The gardener then kills all the kids who are too ****ing dumb to use the golf clubs they have to bludgeon the killer from a distance OR to stick together so he couldn't possibly stand a chance since he, like this movie, sucks really bad. Oh, and he stuffs all his victims.

It warrants special attention that in this particular story, the lead teen jerk has a fake ear for half the sub-story. Not a good fake ear, one that doesn't have an ear hole. It looks like it's falling off every time he falls down. I mean, nothing actually happens to his ear after it is originally attacked, and it isn't even a fake bloody ear. Just a regular flesh colored, hole-less ear. I hate this movie for that.

Next is the story of some kids who steal a Native American's pot, have a bad trip and become old. I need say no more, as my IQ score drops in a negative exponential curve each second I think about this story.

The last is a whole bunch-o-fun! This girl is making out in the car, okay? We'll call her No Name, since I don't know or care what her name is. Now get this, she is afraid of some guy stalking her! Got that, 'cause that actually almost matters. Now her girlfriend starts talking about revenge on their boyfriends, because the boyfriends taped them having intercourse without their permission. MORE SUSPENSE!!!! And then a deputy who is southern (even though nobody else in the scene is) agrees to investigate the stalker for No Name. And then the stalker is forgotten in lieu of a fake teen sex scene. See, the girl's plans are to get the guys drunk so they can films the guys doing stuff. Then they all get killed except No Name, WHO IS ALSO THE KILLER!!!!!! o_0 OMGWTFBBQ????!!!!1!!!! It also shows the fakest kill ever, as No Name kills her girlfriend by playfully tapping her in side of the head with a poker. Not with the sharp part, the dull part. Hitting her at .0000000000000000000000000000000001 attometers per mega second! Her girlfriend keels over like drunken decapitated moose who gave up on life. Did I mention how much I hate hate hate hate hate this movie?

Oh, And in the over arching plot, the random girl they find is evil. We don't know why, but she is. And all the people from the stories come back and kill the two guys from the broken down car. No reason is given for why any of this happens or why this movie made me want put my foot in blender, but hey, that's CAMPFIRE STORIES!!!!


When two guys are driving in, yes you guessed it, the woods they have to hit the breaks, a girl appear saying her car's broken down. But by hitting the breaks they have a flat tire so a ranger takes care of them telling campfire stories. The existing of campfire stories is to frighten people, well here they never do. Only the last story is the best. The second one is so stupid and never frightening and even doesn't contain blood. The acting is okay, especially the ranger knowing that he is the lead singer of The New York Dolls. The only positive thing is the appearance of The Misfits, but i noticed that they mostly do a performance in bad movies. Couldn't say it better.


I didn't have much faith in this movie when I bought the dvd, but it was cheap and I figured it had to contain at least a couple of scares. After the first few minutes I thought I was wrong, this movie was going to suck but as it progressed it did get better.

The wrap around story is easily the worst of the bunch, the acting and production is amateurish at times. While it does contain some humor David Johansens hammy acting takes away any suspense that could possibly be being produced. The whole plot of the wrap around story is pretty flimsy as well and seems very forced, as if the producers just needed to get the film to the point where the stories are told. The resolution that comes at the end is just as forced and is pretty pathetic.

The first story, about a group of jocks picking on a school handyman, doesn't fair much better in it's acting or production values. Once it gets going there is a level of creepiness to it but the whole set up before the climax is so poorly done that you find yourself caring very little about what happens.

Aside from some poor special effects (well good in a high school class project sort of way) the second story involving three troublemakers looking to profit from the murder of a native man, fails to really grab the viewer. There isn't much wrong with the story it just doesn't do much until the twist ending. At that point everything registers and the story makes sense, unfortunately it's not much fun getting to that point.

The final, and best, story is a nice little "who-done-it". While the story, of four friends getting together for a night of "passion" which ends in murder, doesn't really set itself up as well as it could, it does contain the most suspense of the 4 stories. This entry contains the best of everything in the movie, best story, acting and suspense. The topper is that is also contains the best ending as you continue to guess who the culpret is.

I could almost recommend this movie if it had a better wrap around story to hold the rest of the movie together. Also, if you want a professional type horror movie it is best to stay clear of Campfire Stories. I realize I'm probably going very easy on this film but I did like it much more then I thought I would, it's a guilty pleasure that's worth 90 minutes of mindless enjoyment if you can find it for the right (read VERY LOW) price. Mind you, I would recommend 1997's Campfire Tales over this film any day. Campfire Stories rates a 4 out of 10.


OK, by the title screen of any of these thrown-together-DVDs for horror, you should know that the movie is gonna be crap. This movie was entirely. Buster Poindexter (I can't even think of the guy's name, because that's all he ever plays is that "character") plays a ranger in the woods (who wears a boy scout leader uniform) who helps pass the time in a creepy fashion along with 2 guys and a girl who both have very poor maintenance of their cars. They stick around for his stories (why? I dunno...at the end it kinda reveals why, though) starring horribly contrived characters and too many twists for your head to remember.

I enjoyed seeing the Misfits play at the end, even though the camera was flying about all the time so you couldn't quite get a grasp on them being there. And the movie altogether was light-hearted, making some of the longer sequences with nothing but music in the back of these montages of killing or whatever a little bit watchable. Overall though, the movie is trying to show you that there was a comic book put out called Campfire Stories and here is the movie based on these stories. The ranger was annoying, the actors are all annoying and not convincing, and you wanna smack the director in the head for telling the camera to go closer towards the wall in many shots (in the 1st story). All in all, watch it if somebody owns it and you don't have to pay money to rent it.


My story: I was in the video store, trying desperately to find something to rent, so I could just get home and end what was probably a miserable day. (It's been a long week. Don't ask.) As I've found myself so many times before, I was standing in front of the "horror" section. I thought it might be fun to rent a bad scary movie to laugh at.

Now see, the trick to renting a "good" bad scary movie is in finding one that's just good enough to almost justify watching. There is nothing better than finding a horror movie that walks that thin line between being at least redeemingly scary and laughably stupid. I repeat: nothing better. Not fresh baked brownies. Not sex. Not puppy breath. Nothing.

Problem with this film is my review thus far is just as frightening as the entire movie. It wasn't even good enough for me to waste my time laughing at. I saw better acting at my brother's second grade Christmas pageant. The special effects were comparable to sock puppets. And there were plot holes big enough to throw Ranger Bill's big stupid hat through. It's like the writers thought up the twists at the end and convinced themselves they didn't need to go along with the actual stories themselves. It's the film equivalent of someone tearing out the last few pages of The Grapes of Wrath and writing in "Rosasharn kills them all" in crayon on the back cover. I fell asleep for the beginning of the third story and didn't even bother rewinding it, because by that time I'd learned that seeing the whole thing still wouldn't make it make any more sense.

If you're looking for a glorious trainwreck of a movie . . . this one is not for you. However, if you're looking for a movie that drags itself along like a half-dead chipmunk, searching hopelessly for even a modicum of redemption before finally fading into a painful death that couldn't have come soon enough, maybe you should check it out.

If not, give it to someone you hate to kill them a little inside.


and by ever I mean of the last 10-12 years. this movie makes jack frost look good. Believe the nay sayers. but then, if you actually are browsing these reviews to consider this movie, you probably have some semblance of what makes a good movie.

Don't rent it- you will be compelled to demand another free rental in lieu of the time & $$$ you wasted. just don't watch it. ok it says I gotta write more. ON that skull thing at the beginning: I can make better computer animations with MS paint. Go evesdrop on a random neighbor's conversation- it will provide more interesting dialouge than is in this movie.

This movie has the fake-est southern accent I have ever had the sheer chalkboard-against-fingernails repulsion to experience. The villians in the 2nd story I could have beat up in my sleep. those 3 were about as evil as marshmellow peeps.


Not good. This movie is not cool at all. I barely gave this a 4- rating. I was thinking maybe 2 or 3, but no. 4 is better because the first story was awesome, at least better than some episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, unlike the rest of the stories. The first story actually had gore, which I didn't expect much of. Now, I'll tell you a little bit about the stories.

The first one is OK. Unlike the others, I got into this one, and watched the whole thing without twiddling my thumbs, or eating out of bordism. If I rated this one individually, I'd give it a 6 with generosity. I thought this was cool how the old guy was getting pounded on, then broke that punk kid's arm, then destroyed the mess out of the kid's ear. After that, he was taken away and... OK, I'll stop there.

The second story sucks. It's a 2 on my rating scale. A lot like the second story in Creepshow 2. I won't tell you about it, because I honestly didn't pay any attention. So get a move on.

The third story is kinda cool. It seemed like an 80's horror film, and you know, some of those are the best horror movies. But for 2001? My thumbs are down. I hated this one in a way, but i also kinda liked it. Well, whatever, watch the movie and have your own opinion. All I know is that this movie wasn't that great, but what do you expect? It's based off a comic book!


I have no idea why people think they can make a good anthology film on a 10 dollar budget. This was awful. It had three stories. The first was perhaps the most pointless and is about a man escaping from the insane asylum. Later he works as a janitor at a school, kids make fun of him so he kills them. The second story is about some mean teens killing an Indian for no reason at all and stealing his peace pipe and getting high off of it. They have hallucinations, one of which is a REEEAALLLYY poorly computer animated snake. The third is just about some girls messing with these guys trying to scare them. It's all surrounded by this random guy named Rick, played by "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie's" James Remar. The opening to the film is a poorly animated skull that looks pathetic. The end is absolutely ridiculous.

My rating: 1/2 out of ****. 92 mins. Rated R for sex and violence and language


Two unfortunate college males, heading for a shin-dig with girls, flatten their tire when coming close to hitting a hitcher(Jamie-Lynn Sigler of "Sopranos" fame)on some highway surrounded by woods. She leads them into the woods "to find help" and they meet a forest-ranger named Bill(David Johansen)around a camp fire who tells them "scary" stories supposedly teaching them lessons about life.

The first is about what occurs to some idiot, scumbag jocks who mess around with a school janitor who just happens to be an escaped convict who was able to flee his asylum by murdering the psychotic doctor performing "pain threshold experiments" on him. They get in over their heads when the boys "chase" him into the woods and truly realize just who their up against.

Three criminals, leather-jacket punks, and their equally repellent chick that hangs with them, attack and rob a powerful motorcycle-riding(!) Indian with a magic bag. They start smoking his stash of wacky weed and suffer horrifying hallucinations which will effect them physically as it does mentally.

Two young couples stay at a country-house for the night for a little game of "truth and dare", drinking, and sex while a killer begins to pick them off one by one while filming the action on video camera.

Poorly produced, gore-less, and about as scary as a Sesame Street episode. The violence almost completely takes place off-screen and it is apparently(because the whole film seems shot on someone's camcorder)because of a zero budget. Each story within the film is yawn-inducing instead of gripping and the entire cast elicit little sympathy from the viewer. The second story has horrendous computer effects during the hallucination sequences. David Johansen as the story-teller Ranger Bill is laughable. Jamie-Lynn Sigler as Natalie the hitch-hiker barely registers.


The whole reason I picked up this movie in the first place is that I just adore low budget made horror movies because in my opinion they normally turn out to be better than the big budget horror films (examples: "Campfire Tales" and "Dead End"). This movie just gives ALL low budget films a bad name. Many people before me have talked about how horrible it is, but it was just so bad I can't resist to write about it.

Where do I even begin? The acting. Wow. Just plain out HORRIBLE. Even Jamie Lynn's performance made me sick and from what I hear she's supposed to be good. But just, wow. I am just blown about how horrible it was. Then, there's the "special effects", my saying is, "if its not good don't even bother with them". I mean, the background of a full moon in the second story didn't even look real at all. Next, the cameras. Whatever type of cameras they used just made the movie worse. It looked like I was watching a documentary at times because it was so horrible.

The plot line wasn't even that good. The only story that even made me a little creeped out was the third one. Thats only cause I put myself in the girl's position. And even that one had a thousand plot holes. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that if you like watching horrible acting, filmed with horrible cameras, with horrible effects, about a horrible plot line this is will be your new favorite movie.


"Campfire Stories" was pretty lame,in my opinion.the opening sequence,with the so called flaming skull,looked like it was made on the cheap,to be polite.normally,i try to be diplomatic about bad acting in movies,but that would be hard in this case,so i won't say any more about that.aside from that,i didn't find it scary.i guess it's supposed to be something like "Tales From the Crypt" or "Creepshow",but it certainly doesn't measure up to either of those anthology series.i don't know what else to say.i guess i could talk about the lack of suspense,or even tension in the movie.or the fact that is not much gore for you gore hounds.to be fair, i didn't watch the whole thing.i didn't even watch all of the first episode.i fell asleep,but I'm fairly certain the rest of the anthology is no better.most people would likely be bored by this one.my advice is to avoid "Campfire Stories" and look elsewhere to satisfy your entertainment needs.I'll give this movie 3/10,at most.


I'd like to start off as saying that I, like so many horror film buffs, enjoy the cheap laughs to be acquired from B-grade trash. The film "Campfire Stories," however, isn't even amusing accidentally. I'd love to know how badly Jamie-Lynn DiScala, David Johansen, and the Misfits needed money to partake in this utter waste of celluloid. I knew this one was going to be trouble when I saw a talking skull engulfed in flames at the beginning. From there on in, we have two annoying young men who can't tell a joke correctly get lost in the woods with a beautiful "Sopranos" girl, where they come across Ranger Bill, Buster Poindexter's evil alter-ego. He proceeds to bore them to death with three generic horror tales with relentlessly inane twists at the end of each. The first tale is of a nameless lunatic who escapes the Corbin Bernsen Institute of Dentistry, reestablishes himself as a Catholic high school janitor, and takes out four of the young men they randomly pulled off the street to play the most annoying bullies I've ever seen. The second tale involves three career criminals who rob a Native American spiritualist, smoke his peace pipe, and are tormented by legions of computer animations created by first-year graphic arts majors from a community college. The third tale involves a homicidal maniac whose identity you'll probably figure out long before it's "revealed." After sitting through these three sessions of ungodly torment, we're finally punished with a "surprise ending" which tries to tie everything together but fails miserably along with everything preceding it. "Campfire Stories" has no scares, no humor, and over all, no redeeming value whatsoever. If you want a real scare, light up a campfire and tell your own stories; they'll be a hundred times scarier than this waste of film.


There were 2 American tragedies in 2001: the first being 9/11 the other being the release of this film. A harbinger of this film was while renting it, the women at the register couldn't get the security seal off. Buster Poindexter, I mean David Johansen, is the story teller of these three tales from the crypt, sorry , tales from the crap. I'll go as far as saying it's the best, no, only, anamorphic widescreen film ever made! There are many life lessons learned in this film however: 1. Don't ever get high off a Indian's bong, especially after you just killed him and are using his trailer. 2. Don't pretend to have a "broken" arm when its clear your "acting" and if your going to enlist the help of your friends to kill a mentally retarded handyman, don't have your weapons of choice be a croquet mallet, lacrosse stick, and a hockey stick. Your going to go kill a man, not the country club. Also, make sure they clear time in their schedule so they don't have to squeeze this in before their orthodontists appointment/ band practice. 3. Don't fake a lesbian kiss.4. Don't pick up people a mile away from their car and you never saw one. They are probably lying. Other than that, I found this movie quite enjoyable. Honest to God, I liked it more then Schindler's List, Titanic, and Saving Private Ryan combined. Those films ain't got sh*t on Campire "motherfu****'" Stories!


Well, I'm not quite sure if this is the film I watched, I mean, I thought that this movie was done in 1985, but as I clearly see, it wasn't. Even if I was rating the wrong movie, this could be the remake of a terrible movie, imagine that.

Well, were to begin, I was changing the channels to see if there was something good on TV. Suddenly I saw a guy tied to a chair that screamed "Hey you, !@#$%^". That got a bit my attention, so I began to watch the movie. I was probably the worst hour with a few minutes of all my life, first, the actors didn't knew how to act, then, the stories were so stupid that I couldn't believe that someone could listen to them, to worse the things, three silly boys were hearing to a drugged ranger, you think that could be a good movie? Obviously not.

I began to watch the movie after a guy cuts the head to another one, the next story was of an Indian and three idiots that want to kill him. Well, in the scene were they are in the car, one of those guys was laughing like crazy, then, why would someone like to kill a person that hasn't done nothing to you, and to worse the thing, those guys couldn't act good, not even the Indian when is dying.

The other story was of a woman that felt that someone was looking at her, the Ranger of that story couldn't even laugh good, and the story was so stupid that I couldn't believe that I was like 40 minutes watching at that crap.

PLEASE, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE, EXCEPT IF YOU WANT TO SLEEP, 'CAUSE IT'S SO BORING THAT YOU'LL FALL ASLEEP JUST WATCHING IT.


Not as bad as "Carnivore", this low budget film is still sh*t, but I have more respect for it then I have for "The Worst Movie Ever, Carnivore". Anyways...Two teens on their way to a backwoods party come across a beautiful young woman (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) having car trouble, so they go into the woods to find campers she said she saw, they run into Ranger Bill, and he starts telling them these campfire stories. There are 3 stories, one involves a lunatic killer, the other a haunted Indian/weed pipe and the last one is yet another killer story. Personally I liked the last story the best, but that is not saying much. I mistakenly bought Carnivore in a 5 dollar bin at Wal mart, I got this at Christmas. There was a deal if you buy one movie, you get another one, my mom picked it while she was getting the "Awesome" Dog Soldiers.

The acting is mostly high school level and the music is really lame. The worst performance is "Ranger Bill" played by David Johansen, he really sinks this movie. I will admit, at the beginning I had hopes for it, it was going alright, then they meet up with Bill and it goes downhill from there. Now the acting is as bad as Carnivore (I'll be making lots of references to it) but it is worse than Evil Dead. So you get the idea, the best performance is from a guy who has 2 lines it, the escaped lunatic mental killer in the first story.

The first story, about a group of jocks picking on a school handyman, doesn't fair much better in it's acting or production values. Once it gets going there is a level of creepiness to it but the whole set up before the climax is so poorly done that you find yourself caring very little about what happens.

Aside from some poor special effects (well good in a high school class project sort of way) the second story involving three troublemakers looking to profit from the murder of a native man, fails to really grab the viewer. There isn't much wrong with the story it just doesn't do much until the twist ending. At that point everything registers and the story makes sense, unfortunately it's not much fun getting to that point.

The final, and best, story is a nice little "who-done-it". While the story, of four friends getting together for a night of "passion" which ends in murder, doesn't really set itself up as well as it could, it does contain the most suspense of the 4 stories. This entry contains the best of everything in the movie, best story, acting and suspense. The topper is that is also contains the best ending as you continue to guess who the culprit is.

If you are the kind of fan who likes low budget campy kind of stuff, then be my guest. If you thought carnivore was at the very least okay, then give this one a try, it has a lot of of screen gore, like chainsaw scene in Scarface. For instance, the lead jock's neck and a saw come to meet, but all you see is the blood drip onto his chest. There's no nudity, hardly any language this movie doesn't feel like a real horror movie to me, just some kind of thriller, with one or two horror elements thrown in.


This is a totally inept movie. I cannot believe that it was released. It is eerie in its own horrible way. The girl is who plays the lead character is very cute - but where´s the horror? Where´s the humour? This is such an insult both to the genre and to any decent viewer.


I found this movie at WalMart in the $5.88 section. I had heard mostly bad things about it but decided to give it a try anyway. After viewing it, i'm sorry that i didn't spend my money on better things. It isn't the worst movie i've ever seen, but it's pretty bad. The acting is mostly high school level and the music is really lame. The worst performance is "Ranger Bill" played by David Johansen, he really sinks this movie before it has any chance to be anything although the other actors are not much better. The three campfire stories range from boring to bad to average at best. If you're looking for a real horror/suspense type of movie, do NOT look here, i'm sorry i did.


For the most part the acting was poorly done (especially on part of the Park Ranger), and the stories were anything but scary. Predictable and rather poorly shot, even if there was a low budget. The idea for this movie was a good one, it just wasn't pulled off.


this movie looked so good so i rented it and it was so stupid, fake, dumb, cheap. It was the worst of the worst. When critics saw the movie they hated it. * of **********. Why did they make such a stupid movie? Did you like this piece of junk? <b>WARNING: <b/> DONT RENT OR BUY THIS CHEAP MOVIE!


This was a terrible movie. The stories are over-dramatized and what is supposed to be scary just ends up being lame. The sound effects are too loud too, so it's hard to hear the actors sometimes and you miss parts of the story. I don't even know what to say about the visual effects, except this looks like a home movie made by children. Additionally, if you need a story line even remotely realistic, you're not going to find one here. There is just no way to rationalize any of it. Once you think you've made sense of it, something happens that contradicts everything and the facts never come together.


Let's start with the way this pile of garbage was shot-VIDEO. They didn't even use digital video or filmlook or anything. They didn't even attempt to make this horrible movie look like film. Second, I wasn't scared for a minute. My 7 year old watched it with me and SHE wasn't scared for a minute! ALL of the three stories sucked! Horrible acting and script. Even worse make up effects. They never showed any of the wounds being inflicted and the stage blood looked REALLY fake. I've seen "goosebumps" episodes that were scarier than this horrid home video footage. About the only good thing in the whole thing is at the end when the credits roll. No I'll take that back, The Misfits (a legendary punk rock group) were in it towards the very un-scary climactic ending. That's about the only good thing in this video. It's a wonder what the hell Jamie Lynn Sigler was doing in this thing when she's on THE SOPRANOS. Trust me, DO NOT RENT THIS GARBAGE OF A VIDEO! If you do, remember this: I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I should have known better. But I rented this and soon found myself watching. Everything is utterly wrong in this film - the dialouge, the cast (especially David Johansen) and plots of these little, insignificant stories. Getting back to David Johansen. Why him and why The (new) Misfits? Is this film an ode to long gone punk rock stars? Well, I can tolerate that but I thought this was a little like Creep Show. But it's even more stupid than that. The first two stories are told clumsily and hurried so we can all sit back and watch the final story which takes up far, far too much of the total playing time of an hour and a half. Everything about this is horrible and I didn't even have a laugh like I usually do when a watch things like these. 2 out of 10. And that's only because the cgi effects are so corny that they made me smile for a second or two.


Four or Five stories (Guess the number)! Normally I like these mini-stories, but this one stinks, BAD!! Major rip-off of "The Twilight Zone". My summary says it best! Unless you just like to see mortal mutilation and nudity, this movie has nothing to offer!


I saw this "film" the first time when I was a teenager, late at night, on broadcast television. Wow, wow, wow!! Susan George was the ideal older woman to a 70s-era kid: sun-bleached blonde, jiggling halter top, and loose! Peter Fonda was uber-cool, and we all aspired to his élan. The ending was an object lesson on the upper limit of "too cool", so we tempered our stride.

But then a funny thing happened. I grew older. I learned to appreciate dialogue in movies. I learned that "cool" doesn't pay bills, and that there's a lot of women whose entire net worth is bottled up inside their jiggling halter top.

I saw this again a few weeks ago on a satellite movie station, on a Sunday afternoon.

Teenagers are idiots. I can say this unequivocally because I liked this movie when I was a teenager. The only reason I'm grading this 4/10 is because I'm taking the average of my two ratings. It got 10 stars a few decades ago. Do the math.


Out of the internet cartoon craze that exploded in the early 2000s, Queer Duck was one of my favorites. While not particularly clever, it managed to have an odd charm to it that kept me tuning in every time a new episode was released online. As the internet animation boom died down a few years ago, one would expect that there would be no continuations of such series as Booty Call, Lil' Pimp, and Queer Duck. All three series have now been turned into movies, none of which have been given a theatrical release. I was unimpressed with the Lil' Pimp movie, unable to find a screening of the Booty Call movie, and was only so-so with this feature length outing (pun intended) of Queer Duck and his pals. The charm of the web cartoons is present, though being much longer in running time, the hit and miss ratio is more uneven. About 60% of the jokes in QUEER DUCK: THE MOVIE hit, but when jokes bomb, they bomb big time. It doesn't help that gay humor isn't as shocking or original when the series came out in 1999. Slightly recommended to fans and the gay community only. 4/10


You would think, with the voice talent in this movie, that it would be at least a little funny. 90% of this cast has made me laugh out loud at least once. Maybe, MAYBE it's funnier if you're gay but I like to think that gay people have better sense of humor than this. It's full of silly puns, old messages and tired stereotype jokes. South Park has done more credit to people who are homosexual.

I have considered that if someone has a different sexual orientation, maybe they also have a different comic orientation but I don't think this is a case of humor being different, as if written in a language other than my "straight" tongue. I get the jokes, Michael Jackson looks like an old woman, Judy Garland is Queen of the Gays and Cher is just an endless source of fabulous humor. How many Evil Christian Preacher characters have we seen before? I've just heard it all before and it was funnier and better said the first time. I mean, look at the movie "But I'm a Cheerleader" about a girl who goes off to a straight reprogramming camp. Same theme but funny!


I would have given this movie a much lower rating; but, the fact is, I sat through the whole thing and was never terribly annoyed with it. However, the film came very close to crossing that line.

The movie faithfully follows the animation and comedy style of the shorts it is based on, which can be found free for the taking all over the Web. I think those shorts have a huge advantage over this movie: they are short.

The problem is not that the quality of the humor in this movie ever dips lower than that of the shorts, it's that the jokes are endless, and you get tired of grunting out a half-hearted laugh after a while.

The plot, and I use that word loosely, is about Queer Duck questioning being gay. Is this all there is to life: endless parties, drugs, and sex? We know that Queer Duck parties and likely uses drugs, but we also get the impression he is in a committed relationship with Openly Gator. For the sake of a laugh, this impression is ostensibly proved incorrect in an early scene, but knowing the true nature of Queer Duck and Openly Gator, we know they are committed to each other. If they were not, Openly Gator wouldn't be so upset when Queer Duck tries to live life as a straight duck and marries an old buzzard akin to our world's Liza Minelli.

But, this is where the plot is lost. The film shows Queer Duck having a wonderful relationship with Madame Buzzard, but when she dies, it never shows why Queer Duck wants Openly Gator back so badly, except that perhaps he is lonely. We are supposed to believe that Queer Duck really accepts being gay because his wife dies. But the beginning of the film doesn't show us Openly Gator and Queer Duck's really bonding; however, the film does convincingly show the bond between Queer Duck and the buzzard. We understand that Openly Gator is heart broken, and we can assume why, but the movie never shows us why. It never shows that spark between Openly Gator and Queer Duck, even though we know they had been in a committed relationship for some time.

I would have liked to have seen Oscar Wildcat play a bigger part in this movie. His dry banter provides a welcome respite from the other, louder jokes that play throughout.

This movie is recommended if you can't find anything else at the video store and don't want to leave empty-handed. It's a step above that C-level-romantic-comedy you know you don't want to see, in that I think you are less likely to turn this off.


I literally signed up at this site just to knock this lame duck out of the water. I'm almost positive the person who wrote the review "Queer Duck Rules" had some hand in the production of this film, because this was just junk. I checked it out because I saw that it was written by a former Simpsons writer, and had Conan as a guest voice...how could that not be funny? But this film just completely lacked the flow of a proper comedy. There were a couple of decent jokes in the mess though, but I didn't actually laugh at any of them. I just kind of acknowledged that they were jokes in a "well, that's not bad" type of way. Nothing worth spending money on.

In addition, the film kept on using sound effects after each joke...like a drummer in a nightclub. I guess to ensure that the audience understood which lines were jokes, and just about everyone came off looking bad. On top of all of this, the musical numbers were drawn out and tedious, which made them feel like nothing more than filler.

This cartoon runs at about seventy-two minutes. I turned it off at about fifty minutes, and I actually felt ashamed that I wasted fifty minutes on it. That should tell you all you need to know right there.


I read the positive review(s) above and am absolutely astounded that a theater full of people could watch this and think it was funny. Or clever. Mass hysteria? Stoned out of their gourds? Straight?

On a message board, a poster notes that on the DVD extras the Queer Duck creator says that all the participants except one were straight. I don't know if that's true, but it might explain the quality of this film. It feels like some doofus-hipster straight guy's idea of what he thinks is funny about gay life.

Very young children might find this film funny, but it would be inappropriate and they wouldn't understand that it's supposed to be satirical. It would only reinforce whatever stereotypes they've already picked up from the media. Anyone above age 12 or with an IQ over 70--gay or straight--should avoid Queer Duck like the plague.

If the man who made this is gay, I'd say it's an exercise in self-loathing. If he's straight, he's got a bad-, bad-, bad-sitcom sense of humor and a very superficial idea of what it means to be gay.

Gay life can be wickedly, screamingly funny, and it's ripe for laugh-exploitation. How a satire on gay life could be this lame--that's the only word for it--is utterly baffling. This is one of the worst films I've ever seen and undoubtedly the worst animated feature I've ever seen.


This film is not particularly noteworthy in itself, but as a benchmark in the development of science-fiction on the big screen. It marks one of the last gasps of the low-budget, hardware-driven (Rockets and Rayguns, if you like) school of sci-fi and falls well short of its contemporary "Marooned", much less merit any comparison with "2001" and other later high concept films. Altman's direction is sufficient to keep the picture moving along and the overlapping dialogue is a refreshingly sophisticated stuff. The ego clashes of the two pilot candidates for the moon flight seems a bit stilted (Duvall seems at home in the role, but Caan's not up to it), the anti-Soviet rhetoric is a bit grating at times and the female roles are essentially throw-aways. When it's time to put together a retrospective on the sci-fi genre (as has been done for war films) this one might get 15 seconds during the moonshot segment; it hardly deserves more. This film's biggest problem was (apparently) budget -- it's rare to see a film depict the props and procedures of its own era so poorly.


This movie was released in 1968. By then, NASA had concrete plans on how they would put a man on the moon and bring them back safely to Earth. The screenplay of this movie completely ignored known facts at that time.

1. Instead of using the Apollo space capsule to send the three men to the moon, the movie used a Gemini capsule. 2. The Gemini capsule was actually designed to carry 2 men. However, in this movie, only used one astronaut. I guess to save money, the director decided to only use 1 actor to sit in this Gemini capsule to go to the moon. 3. The Soviets beat the Americans to the moon; however, see how the first Soviet is found dead. Did he know he was going to die which is why he opened his visor to quicken the outcome?

Two real great actors were used in this movie, James Caan and Robert Duval. However these two actors were so young during the filming of this movie they were actually unrecognizable. But, this would not explain why only 1 astronaut was used to go. These 2 actors were so new to Hollywood that they could not possibly command a high salary.

I could write more but you probably will never see this movie.

Chow...


I saw it yesterday at a local movie theater. As a turk, I think it is a depiction of anti-americanism run amok in turkey. The main reason behind this attitude is the thought that if we don't stand in solidarity with our neighbor (Saddam's Iraq) we would be the next to be hit. In addition to this came the economical damage caused by 1991 gulf war and America's prospects of establishing a kurdish state in the oil rich areas of Iraq where also many turcomen are deported from their villages. These prospects are explained in detail in the movie.

In reflecting the personalities of people from a different culture, this movie is very much like "midnight express". In midnight express each and every one of the turks in the movie was a sadistic villain. Likewise, Kurtlar Vadisi depicts all of the Americans as plain villains. Additionaly, the sight of American soldiers driving a Mercedes army truck from 60's is just hilarious. Also my personal belief is that the organ trading cannot be done officially, as is depicted in the movie. With Gary Busey and Billy Zane starring it is easy to see that it could only be a B-movie.

I hate this movie as much as I hate midnight express because it does not serve a useful purpose except for making it harder for different cultures to know each other and get along.

Some quotes from the movie: Doctor: You just can't treat those prisoners like that. They are people, not animals. Sam's assistant: I have more respect for animals than I have for those iraqis, sir.


I must say that I find refuge in foreign films. I tend to watch Korean, Japanese, Spanish, etc. movies because since they do not have the budget for big explosions and special effects, they spend time making movies that make you think, movies with soul, movies worth watching and remembering.

Sadly, this Valley of the Wolves - Iraq could have been a chance for Turkey to make an excellent movie from their perspective. We do not have to agree that the United States of America is always going to be portrayed as the hero or the champion. We are a country like many others with people from all walks of life serving in the armed forces of our nation. With this, come intelligence, wisdom, stupidity and ignorance, and the complete range in between.

Turkey decided to make a movie that would sell tickets, not portray the truth. We as a nation have committed many mistakes. We mistreated prisoners, we disrespected customs and traditions, and we could have made a heck of a lot better job that what we have done up until now.

And the Turkish public has a right to the fantasy that is being sold by this movie. They have the right to be isolated from the EU, by not accepting the Armenian Genocide, and they have the right to not allow us use of their ports to invade a country that has most of the strategic oil that we need as a superpower to survive. They have the right to insert Turkish Special Forces and be confused with irregular forces from Iraq. They have the right to fight against the Kurdish Separatist Movement that is so prevalent in Northern Iraq.

They have the right to make a pathetic movie that stirs emotions and does not portray the United States Military for what it really is. We do this in Hollywood all the time.

So congratulations to Turkey, for making a crass, sensational movie. Hopefully in 20 to 50 years, they will join the real world and make movies that stir the heart, not the penis.

Respectfully, a US Soldier who saw the reality in Iraq, and it is nothing like this sad pathetic movie.

The Turkish


Sorry Serdar Akar but you are no Kubrick, Spielberg, Aronofsky, Joel OR Ethan Coen, Oliver Stone, or any other of the thousand more talented Jewish directors.This is a B movie. The cinematography is stale, the acting is weak, and the action scenes are sleepers by Hollywood standards. Why go through the trouble of getting a couple of American actors to star in a Turkish movie, if you going to get Busey and Zane? Akar, you are adding to the B movie stereotype of countries like Turkery by nabbing B movie American stars. Just when I think Hollywood is utterly stupid, I see a movie like this and realize how good we have it in America. I am hoping for Turkeys sake they have better movies. This was their highest costing movie of all time, so maybe it is their equivalent to America's Waterworld.


Awful, is unfortunately all I can say about this movie. It is an interesting object to look at the problem in the conflict in Iraq/Kurdistan from another perspective but when this perspective is from a fascistic point of view, (Turks superior compare to Kurds) and seeks no dialog or a message about understanding the problem there, makes the viewer to leave the theater as soon as possible to go home and feel sorry for a director with so many hate within his chest! maybe you could think " does not matter, I just want to see an action movie!" Well this movie is far from a good action. Really bad special effects, bad acting and not so fancy technique used in this movie. So if the only reason to watch this movie is to see some action, watch something else!


This movie focus the war from a religious point of view, and it shows the Muslims as the good guys and Christian and Jewish as the bad ones. I won't say if they are right about Muslim and Jewish beliefs, but about Christian I can assure they are 100% wrong. An assassin, and American military chief, is portrayed as fervent Christian believer, and I can say that it can't be true at all. The Bible doesn't encourage war at all, as they want to show in the movie, that's a terrible lie, and no more than Muslim propaganda. That man was not a Christian believer at all, in fact, he could be an atheist or any other thing, but not Christian as they pretend to show in the movie. On the other hand, the movie is really well done, and shows the war from a Turkish point of view. I can imagine the pain of these people, but please don't put Christianity and the Bible on it because it has nothing to do with the Bible.


The film is based on an actual incident in northern Iraq on July 4, 2003: US soldiers arrested 11 Turkish officers and pulled bags over their heads before taking them away. The images were an insult to Turkish nationalists and anyone concerned with the country's honor. Many Turks also suspected the US was taking revenge for the Turkish parliament's refusal to allow the US to move troops through Turkey into Iraq during the 2003 Iraq war.

The main theme of the movie is revenge (and maybe even the reason for the movie itself). The film follows a Turkish intelligence agent as he seeks to avenge the officers and restore their honor. This wouldn't be so bad if the film didn't portray the opponents of Turks and Muslims so brutally -- the bad guys in this black and white world are the Americans, the Kurds, the Christians and the Jews.

It was very obvious that this movie was a cheap low budget propaganda, i mean if you want to lie at least do it properly! People aren't that shallow when it comes to politics! Not to mention the goofs and the inconsistencies and the illogical sketches, the dialog was cheesy and so on could go forever.

If you want to watch it you won't have my blessing, but hey; that's just me!


I don't have any problem with them making this movie and if people enjoy it, that's great! The problem is the morons that take a movie that has bits and pieces of reality and they assume that it is real. Movies are fiction, pure and simple. From Michael Moore to JFK, they can say it is reality, but the very act of making a movie changes reality, even if they have good intentions. This movie, like most others, was made for entertainment purposes. The people who made it were very clever to capitalize on what are hot controversies in their part of the world, but it is still just fiction. The truth doesn't sell, that is why we are seeing a disturbing trend of "based on a true story" movies that really have very little to do with what actually happened. Go see this movie if you want, and you might enjoy it, but please remember IT IS ONLY A MOVIE!


I have always loved this story - the hopeful theme, the excellent characters and Dickens' realistic and meticulous descriptions. So when this was aired, all my friends told me to watch it, because it was really good. So I did. And I enjoyed it. It didn't stick to the book too often, and Mr Bumble and Fagin weren't that Dickensian, but Monks was brilliant and there were some ingenious moments of direction. Then I watched the final episode, and was so disappointed. Someone else said they were almost in tears by the end. I was too - it was so poor. It was as though the scriptwriter skimmed through the book and made the rest up. It was rushed, especially during Sikes' escape, and as a result lacked any feeling to it. The only feeling was in the one place it shouldn't have been - Sikes. Dickens wrote him as an unfeeling, brutal character. If at any point he loved Nancy, he would never have said so, least of all to Fagin. That one line, "I loved her, Fagin" ruined everything the film had going for it. Unbeliveable. Which describes Fagin. Pathetic. Alec Guinness was so much better - he was realistic. As was Frances L. Sullivan. I don't think that guy who played Mr Bumble realised that the character was a poke of fun at the parish beadles. As well as the dodger... if Dickens wrote that he was around Oliver's age, do you think the dodger was MEANT to be around Oliver's age? On the other hand, as well as Monks' superb acting, Rose Maylie (sorry, Fleming) was pretty good, as was Nancy, except she didn't show any love for Bill. They must have got the two mixed up. I much prefer Lean's 1948 version. It may be abriged, but it's better than the expanded attempt at Dickens.


I thought that this was quite a good take on the dickens classic apart some of the acting. Julie Walters as always amazing bUT some of the main characters were terrible espessialy oliver played by sam smith the casting was bad if he was the best child for the job he was awful he can not act to save his life i hope never to see him on screen or stage again but he was quite amusing he was so bad but apart from him it was good


When a bunch of Nazis come calling on Jon Hall at his print shop in New York City, they seem to know all about him and the background he has tried to hide. Seems as though an ancestor of his was none other than Claude Rains who as John Griffin invented that invisibility formula that had the entire United Kingdom on edge. Hall barely escapes from the agents who include Cedric Hardwicke for the Nazis and Peter Lorre as a visiting ally from Japan.

Right after Pearl Harbor like Wonder Woman, Hall decides his talents are best put to use in the Allied Cause. His condition is that he alone will be given the invisibility drug, mindful of the bad side effects it has including causing the madness that killed Claude Rains back in the day.

Hall finds out some vital information, like the day the Axis is going to invade the USA and who their agents are in America. He has the help of the beautiful Ilona Massey, but he's not quite sure what side of the fence she's playing.

The Nazis are stupid, even more stupid than usual in these films, but they've also got a lot of intrigues going among each other, between Cedric Hardwicke and J. Edward Bromberg to see who will be top dog under Himmler in the S.S. And Peter Lorre does not think terribly much of German efficiency and with these two around who could blame him. Maybe the Japanese ought to gain the secret of invisibility and they might be calling the tune in the Axis.

It all makes for one horrific wartime propaganda flick that would be hooted off the screen by some and would offend others. Peter Lorre who was Jewish Hungarian, gets to do his Mr. Moto act with malevolence saying such things as you occidentals have this really big fetish about your white women and Hall coming back that he can't tell any of you monkeys apart.

To be fare to Hardwicke, Lorre, and Bromberg, it's not easy dealing with an invisible man. Too bad they were at war with the British or they could find out how Claude Rains ultimately met his end.


I wonder why this film has a 6.0 rating on IMDb. Is it possible people saw this bad film and actually thought it was good?! The world is a strange place, indeed.

Now I started watching this film strongly predisposed to liking it. After all, I adore the Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s and the Invisible Man series is among the best. Plus, the idea of the Allies using the invisibility formula to infiltrate Nazi territory to do some spying is an inspired plot idea. Yet, almost miraculously, the Universal folks produced a very bad film.

Most of the problem is that unlike most other horror films of the time, this one was very often played for laughs. Considering that the guy is supposed to get important information and get out, his sticking around to play tricks on the incredibly stupid Nazis was really dumb--and not in a good way! Plus, after a while, it was obvious that there was an invisible guy running about--talk about a great way to maintain your cover! Additionally, instead of the usual conniving and evil Nazis like you'd see in an American wartime propaganda film, here they are complete morons--almost like what you'd see in a Three Stooges film. If it were a Stooges film that would be great...but not in a horror film. Making it a straight drama would have improved the film tremendously.

Additionally, it's obvious Universal simply didn't care when they made this film. Even for a B-movie, it is cheap and has a slapped together look. The models used for airplanes for the film were pathetically unrealistic and it was obvious they were bad models. Also, having Peter Lorre (whose heritage in reality was German) playing a Japanese man was ridiculous. In fact, it wasn't until later in the film that you even realized he was supposed to be Japanese! Now I understand that Lorre played the lead in the Mr. Moto films (where he was supposed to be Japanese), but here he didn't even try to look or sound Asian. Mantan Moreland would have been just as fitting an actor to play this role. Finally, throw in an unimportant and ridiculous love story that comes out of no where and you have the ingredients for a truly awful film.

Exceptionally poor writing, indifferent direction and actors who couldn't have possibly made this material work and you have INVISIBLE AGENT in a nut shell. Don't say I didn't warn you! Fortunately, the next film in the series (THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE) is quite a bit better.


Easily the worst of the Universal "Invisible" series, this barely qualifies as horror. Mostly, it's a lot of embarrassing buffoonery about winning the war that must have lowered morale in theaters all over Allied territory. "You Naszty Spy" and "I'll Never Heil Again" look like Lubitsch in comparison.


OK, first off there may be a SPOILER here since i don't know what constitutes giving out too much information. My subject line says it all but surely people will want to know WHY it's so stupid.

First off, this film follows a bunch of Yuppies as they go to a sports game in Chicago but wind up taking the wrong exit and winding up in the ghetto. Scary, huh? Well, first of all, Emilio is driving everyone in the world's most overblown RV/Winnebago, tricked out with satellite dishes and crap like that on it. So these guys are GOING to a sports game (i forget which, though likely the Bulls or the White Sox since they're near the oh-so-scary ghetto), yet they can't even make it down the freeway without having an onboard viewing command center that would put ESPN to shame. Yet they're smart enough to earn livings that would pay for the stuff, but are such sports fans that they don't even know which exit to get off at on their way to the game they so love.

I gave up on the movie within a half hour after that, but the reasons were plentiful. They wind up IN THE GHETTO, yet their main danger to their existence is DENIS LEARY. A WHITE GUY. I'm no racist, but COME ON. In anything RESEMBLING reality - and this film WAS trying to be an urban nightmare - Denis Leary would not be trying to kill Emilio Estevez, he'd be hitching a ride to get the f*** out of Dodge himself!!!

This is easily one of the dumbest movies ever created, although I'm not familiar with much of the rest of the world's cinema. If MST3K were still on, they surely would have devoted an episode to this one.


Lucky guy, this Eric Brown.

First, he gets de-flowered by Sylvia Kristel (Emmannuelle herself) in "Private Lessons", and then is floored by the charms of Sybil Danning in this movie.

Talk about being born under a lucky sign.

Observant people will tell you that only Danning's scenes give this flick any merit. And they're right: as predatory as ever, Danning exudes sex and sensuality as a college professor (only in Hollywood) who tricks student Brown into killing a relative so she and he can run off with her inheritance. Of course, someone else is knocking off everybody left and right....

I'm sorry, you care about the plot? Well, don't. This is not a plot-driven story, as if you haven't figured that out already. If you can't figure out who is doing the killing, get a new hobby. Or better yet, just concentrate on Sybil.

Maybe even think about how lucky that Eric Brown guy is.

One star. Anyone who is a Sybil Danning fan will tell you: fast-forward through everything else but her in "They're Playing with Fire". Otherwise, you'll get burned.


Sybil Danning is an extremely stunning sight to behold when she's wearing just a smile, sure, but there's only so much so can do when saddled with an abysmal script (and that's 90% of her career's work). There's no question that she makes unwatchable films watchable. This time around she plays Diane. a teacher who wants her husband's parents money, but that won't happen until his mom and aunt are either dead or declared incompetent (the latter is kinda like the makers of this film). Enter Private Lessons' Eric Brown as Jay, a college student who's more gullible than a fifth grader (if that) and plans to scare the old women, but there's a 'mystery' serial killer at work. As I said before Danning is the ONLY reason for someone to watch this (and even then only when it's on cable, as it's not worth renting). The character's lack any kind of spark, the plot is very weak, and for a thriller, it's not in the least bit thrilling. Also the powers that be seemed to openly want to sabotage the film as with the amount of chances to get Sybil fully nude, they go to great lengths to not show her fourth acting talent, her tits and ass being the first three, so you know where I'm going with that one. Stick with a better Sybil film such as Chained Heat or Malibu Express instead

Eye Candy: Sybil Danning shows T&A multiple times, Suzanne Kennedy'shows her right breast briefly

My Grade: D


Nearly 23 years later, my sister and I still have nightmares of this movie. I vaguely remember the sex. We were so afraid watching this slasher flick, that the very words in the title still bring chills to both of us. I've only seen one other movie in my lifetime that evokes that kind of creeped-out fear. It took us both years to face the Christmas holiday time without being terrorized by Santa (see the movie and you'll know what I mean!) Morbid curiosity kept out TV set on, but mental pictures have kept the movie with us. Even after seeing all the Scream movies, I still haven't experienced that level of terror. Eric Brown will forever be remembered synonymously with fear and killing!


This movie is complete garbage. I would have turned it off less than halfway through, but I thought I would indulge Jamie Kennedy who I sometimes find amusing. However, after the first 15-20 minutes the film no longer deals with the topic of hecklers at all. Instead, Kennedy goes off on a whining tantrum where he confronts his critics asking them why they didn't like his movies. Instead of accepting the fact that he has made some pretty terrible movies (Malibu's Most Wanted, Son of the Mask) he confronts his critics and makes them explain why they said the things they said. What he should have done was turn the tables and explain to the public why he makes such shitty movies. Honestly, he made hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars for those movies. Criticism comes with the territory. Suck it up, stop whining, and make some movies that are entertaining. I honestly wish he would come interview me for "Hecklers 2", but we all know that nobody who watched the first one would ever green light a sequel.

Just an absolutely 100% self indulgent piece of garbage that should be avoided at all costs.


Unfortunately, the definition of "documentary" seems to be changing. These days it is what we used to call propaganda. (See: any Michael Moore movie.) No attempt at balance, just a totally one-sided, biased point of view passing as fact. Heckler is the latest example. Actually, it starts out as a whine about hecklers, quickly turning into the same complaint about critics. It does teach a serious lesson: celebrities (especially comics) are gods and deserve to be worshipped at all times and anyone who doesn't like them should be deprived of their right to an opinion, or at least the right to make it public.

There are some good points made: you get drunks and a-holes disrupting performances for no apparent reason other than to call attention to themselves. As someone who paid to watch the performer, I really don't appreciate that in principle, but I have to admit that some of the funniest moments I've ever experienced at comedy clubs were when the performer responded to the heckler. Sometimes I wonder if they purposely plant hecklers just so they can lay into them. And some (maybe most) critics are way over the top in their reviews, but that's one way these days to make your opinions stand out from the ever-growing crowd.

Occasionally I can sympathize with a heckler. If you've paid good money for a performance that was not as advertised and you can't get your money back (let alone your time), you can get pretty frustrated. That's what happened at the Barbra Streisand concert where she swore at a heckler. What the movie purposely failed to tell you provoked the heckler was that, instead of singing, she had gone into a political rant - probably not what the audience had paid big bucks to see. It also happened to me at a no-refunds Willie Nelson show where he was clearly drunk and/or stoned.

It's true that no one ever put up a statue to a critic, but they do have their place. You just need to find one whose opinions and tastes are similar to your own and thus s/he will provide you with valuable guidance. As for the others, ignore them. As should the performers, rather than trying to suppress them.

This argument that the heckler/critic couldn't do as good a job really shows you how shallow the movie's thought process is. If a dentist, driveway paver, plumber, tax preparer, etc. does a bad job, are they justified in telling you not to complain because they're still better than you? While there were plenty of celebrities, where were the ordinary people? You know, those who buy the tickets, enabling these celebrities to make a living. Why not ask some of them after a comedy show what they thought of the hecklers? Do they think people buying tickets should be told clearly that hecklers are not welcome and will be thrown out without a refund? Do they think people should be able, within a reasonable time, to ask for and get a refund if they don't like the performance? Do they pay any attention to critics and change their choices as a result? That's what a real documentary would do.


Admittedly i watched this because i was expecting from the reviews a funny movie/documentary,so is probably my own fault for expecting something its (presumably) not trying to be.

From what i can tell it is in fact a documentary made to somehow make us feel sorry for comedians etc for the heckles they get,and i went into it expecting it to be more about showing how comedians handle the hecklers and turn a heckle into the funniest part of their shows (which if handled correctly is often the case),but alas its not.

If you want to sit through an hour n half of Jamie Kennedy moaning about fact that a lot of people don't find him funny and getting others to moan about hecklers then sure,pay to see it,but if (like i was),your looking for a few laffs this is not for you.(this is NOT by the way a criticism of the movie,its just a comment in the hope that someone else does not assume like i did that its intentionally supposed to be funny-least i hope its not,because it is'nt lol)


The only funny parts of this movie are when someone is actually heckling, or when Kennedy actually interviews his "hecklers", and critics. The hunter becomes the hunted in pretty much all of these interviews, and you find out just how much of an unfunny douche-bag Kennedy really is. This guy makes Dane Cook look like Bill Murray.

Pretty much all of the "comics" involved in this film are unfunny and bitter about it.......period. Andrew Dice Clay has a pretty funny scene, and Tom Green has a couple of interesting things to say, but everything else is just pretty inane and very lame. Jamie Kennedy is the "star" (lol) of this film and spends most of it pondering why people think he sucks, basically. Then he gets a bunch of his comedian and other showbiz cronies on to give him some cred. Some (and I use that term very liberally) are funny and interesting, but most of them are just obnoxious, ego whoreing, whiny babys.

It's really no wonder the guy gets heckled a lot. I actually found myself wanting to heckle the frigging TV watching this tripe. It's just like, make me laugh or stfu clown. You have nothing interesting to say.

Here is how a typical scene in this movie goes (so I can save you an hour and a half of your life, I wish someone had saved it for me):

Scene begins: A clip is shown of Kennedy doing some god awful standup routine as he gets heckled. It goes something like this: "Stop me if you've heard this one folks! You ever hear that there country music with them there guys talking about I lost my dog I lost my wife aherherherherher........(it's bad, painfully bad, I'm wondering if this is an Andy Kaufman thing where he is purposely being terrible just so he can later make a documentary about why people think he's terrible. It's shear genius! I start to think. Then I remember Kaufman did some legitimately funny stuff at some point in his life and Kennedy.........not so much.

We cut to Kennedy sitting in a room with one of his douche-bag comedian buddies across from one or two of his hecklers/critics.

Kennedy: Why do you hate me? Guest: because you are not funny, and never have been, yet you insist on telling people you are hilarious and that "The Mask 2" was not this generation's "Ishtar".

Kennedy: How could you say that? Guest: because everything you've ever done is painful to watch, and just basically sucks on ice.

Kennedy: Well what would you do then? Guest: instead of running around telling everyone how funny and talented I am, I would actually try to do something funny, or something that required talent. And if everyone told me I was lame and sucked ass, I'd probably just deliver pizzas or something.

Kennedy: You're a jerk man, you're an evil evil jerk. I hate myself, I know I suck, all my comedian friends keep me around to make themselves look funny, booohhoooohoooohooooo.

Guest: I'm just being honest man. Maybe if someone was honest with you early in your career I would have never had the extreme displeasure of running into one of your woeful movies on late night basic cable.

Kennedy: I get crazy blowjobs man! Hah! I mean crazy blowjobs! And not by men either man! (lol) I mean women man! women actually put their mouth on my penis man, i swear to god it's true! Guest: (has puzzled, sad look on his face, like he's looking at a retarded baby midget with lesions all over it that's crying in pain. Like.... it would be wrong to kill something like that.....right?..........) End scene.

Thanks for another piece of absolute trash Jamie. You should have at least played that rollin' with Bob Saget video on there, that was mildly amusing at some point. Oh, and way to include Carrot Top in one of many sad attempts to make yourself look funny. It didn't work, rofl.


Documentary about celebrities who utilize hyperboles (like they should die in a fire while eating a sand hamburger) to describe their critics so you feel sorry for them. The point of this documentary is for you to feel sorry for a celebrity. You should feel sorry. Very sorry. You friggin' sinner. You should go to hell. Maybe not. Still, you should be ashamed of yourself. How could you? Celebrities are like saints and they have feelings. They cry. They complain. They complain a lot. I mean, they complain until the cows come home. Even those who look really, really tough, like they could beat you up, cry and moan. You should know, they would never, and I mean never, criticize you (e.g. they would never criticize your cooking). In conclusion, celebrities are not hypocrites.


Jamie Kennedy sucked in the movie! the movie was actually pretty funny but all Kennedy talked about the whole movie was about how much he sucked. in every seen he was either reading a movie review that said he sucked or interviewing someone that said he sucked...his doctor even said he sucked! Jamie Kennedy Sucks! you showed a clip of you making fun of country music and then showed a clip of people falling asleep during your show, and then you get mad when the teenagers say you suck. i cant tell you how much you suck. the movie was cool when he wasn't in it but when he was all he was doing was telling the world he sucks at comedy. How do you get mad at hecklers you interview? you ask people you obviously know are gonna talk trash about your show and when they do you get offended. way to set a double standard. If i ever go to one of your shows its gonna be to throw a tomato at you. whenever someone asks me about this movie i tell them its a bad ass movie but all the parts with Jamie Kenedy suck so fast forward threw it.


ok, let's start with the premise. Twin body builders, baby-sitting twin spoiled brats. Still wanna see it? You might like to know that 3 others sets of twins join up with the body builders to fight a terrorist/business/oil giant/whatever. i counted 5 sets of twins in all, how many can you spot?

more seriously now, this is truly one of the worst films ever.1/2*


What a stupid,non-funny comedy! The twins are bad in their characters and the jokes are stupid and vulgar. When starting watching a near movie, you don't have great expectations. But at the end of the movie, you think you were dreaming during the whole time...about two losers who are the twin's bodyguards. That is the story...what about the actors...They are bad too. With only one child, it would be a bit less stupid, but for this one two times more bad jokes. I give it 0out of *****.


if you want to see a film that is really bad then see this now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nothing is funny, nothing is good.I don´t think that you could make a film that is worse than this one.

RATING: 5/5,just kidding:0/5


Probably the worst of the 104 episodes aired during the four year run of the series; if not actually the worst it is a worthy contender. In many ways a recycling of the first season's "The Night of the Glowing Corpse" but without an interesting villain like "Ironfoot".

Also inexplicably missing is any female eye candy, a device that could at least be counted on to serve as a pleasant distraction during other sub-par episodes of the series. Of course the series had incorporated an increasingly gay orientation by the final season.

It's more diplomatic intrigue, this time a conspiring European embassy official; an underplaying Harvey Korman in a straight role with a sometimes Germanic sometimes Slavic accent. The idea is to embarrass President Grant with a faked Kinescope showing him signing a treaty with a Fu Manchu like character.

Almost zero parody and an extremely lame and illogical collection of devices. These include the above-mentioned Kinescope, silhouettes of West and Gordon mounted on a moving toy train, the old moving wall and sloping floor trap, and the embassy's "safe" which is too silly to even bother describing.


Don't bother watching the movie. The trailer is the best part. The rest is just filler party and bar scenes and little dialog. Don't even bother to turn on subtitles because most of the dialog is just "heh baby" or "heh sweetheart".

The only suspense in this movie was wondering if Dr Shanley has a cleaning service. There was vomit on the bed linens when he went to the ER. When he returned home the rumpled bed linens were the same but the vomit was gone.

The film could have been condensed to 30minutes are less. I suppose this isn't the worst film I've seen--since I did stay with it till the end, but it ranks pretty low.


A self-centered, wholly contemptible heart surgeon does everything in his power to ruin his life and to hurt the two women who are self-destructive enough to believe they love him.

He is, of course, highly successful, and subsequently suffers enough to become a better person.

Unfortunately, by this time I had developed such an intense dislike for this cretin that the only ending that would have been satisfying to me would have been to see him choke to death on his own vomit. No such luck.

Somehow, he manages to suck down tons of drugs from an apparently uninventoried hospital dispensary, bring an OD case into the hospital without ever being questioned by hospital staff about his role in the incident, and even collapse in the middle of heart surgery, without immediate consequences. Whether any or all of these incidents has anything to do with his later suspension from said hospital is a mystery, they never pick any one reason for the suspension.

Even if this were a good movie, it would be damn near ruined by the too-loud and uninspired soundtrack, alternating with scenes where the barely-talented leads mumble their lines in an evocation of intimacy...if you turn it up at such junctures, prepare to be blasted by bad orchestrations with the next scene change.

I got sucked into watching this crud by the other reviewers here at IMDb. I have since checked their posting history, and none of them have much background - each of them wrote one to three reviews total, each was active as a "reviewer" for a single day. Don't get hyped!

=========================

This review has been voted down as "not useful" by 18 of 27. If you look at my other reviews on IMDb, *nowhere else* will you see 27 people interested enough in my review to vote. I can only presume that this mob is the same hypesters at work who gave this execrable piece of dreck such glowing reviews.


I like the movie but I does NOT do the book justice. I actually saw the movie before I read the book. THere is SO MUCH the movie runs together and leaves out at the same time. It is TOO obvious that this movie was "made for TV". It would be better if the director took the time to read the book and actually "see" the layout of 'remember house'. The movie is good, if you have already read the book and have an inkling to what is going on in the first place. It is an awesome book! I have read a few of Mary's books, and they are great. Bu this version to be transformed into a movie... Not such a good choice with so LITTLE detail. This movie was made for people who have read the book, and then they still need a little help. The movie is in my opinion a POOR rendition of the book, although I would LOVE to know where the house is that it was filmed at. That is the ONLY thing that serves my imagination from reading the book (outside only of course).


I sadly to say go with the latter. I only recently became interested in Haneke's work after viewing Funny Games, being completely hypnotized and blown away by the magnificent work. "Cache" was enjoyable to me but I was hoping for more, I've seen plenty of European cinema, hundreds, but the ending was just too disappointing.

I made it an effort to see every Haneke film on DVD possible, starting in chronological order I watched this film and was just utterly taken aback by it instantly. I think to really comment on cinema one needs to be objective and know history of films similar to this type of intense plodding character (in this case family) study. To put it simply if it wasn't for being able to fast forward with subtitles still on I would have stopped this film within 30 minutes. The die-hard film lover in me pressed on expecting something important from this.

Let it be said, I never heard the hype surrounding this film nor did I view this IMDb page until AFTER I saw it. Complete 100% unbiased opinion and I thought it was trash. I fully understand someone can argue the idea it was so plodding and boring is because it's a film detailing how monotonous a life in the 21st century can get. To me, he easily could have shortened the film down, hell this could have been a short film reeling no more than 30 minutes and get the point across. After scene after scene it becomes obvious to the viewer the style he is going for, eventually turning predictable. You get where he's going with the film and just want the pay off already. It comes and in my case I was left wondering what a waste of time.

Film in the past has done a better and more remarkable job getting across the point of alienation humans can feel in modern society. Better pacing, establishing reason and emotions for characters, not over-indulging in film techniques. Instead this film displayed trite and mind-numbingly boring imagery. One of the worst art house films I've ever seen. A shame real fish had to die or suffer for this film. Haneke is clearly an auteur and I can only hope his films get better with each successor.


This is the third Haneke film I've seen (Funny Games and Cache being the others), and it is pretty obvious to me that it is the first one he made. The cinematography and atmosphere were there, but the story and character development were not. Bleak, emotionally dead people (seriously some of the lamest, unsympathetic characters I have ever seen) commit suicide because the boring, repetitive motions of their daily lives that the director chooses to show us are boring and repetitive. All allusions and foreshadowing are heavy handed, and Haneke uses extended black screen cuts repeatedly to slow the pace even further. All of this leads to a film that bores the viewer to the point where the characters' suicides relieve the viewer's desire to terminate the film. Now, creating an audience response like that is not an easy thing to do, and Haneke did go on to become a brilliant filmmaker, but The Seventh Continent seemed to me a stylish, empty exercise in morbidity.


I put a question mark after spoiler alert because the fact that they off themselves in the end wasn't particularly shocking. I am quite shocked with the positive reviews this film received. I did not find it particularly disturbing or all that depressing, what I mostly found it was boring. There was no real character development, nor narrative development. I think their suicide speaks to inner torment of people who are equally sad and bored in their life, sadly I'm relatively happy, so I means little to me. The acting performances did not solicit any emotion from me, which I don't think is the fault of the actors, but I think it is what the director asked for in the piece. It was very absurd, but there is humor at the heart of absurdity, not torment. Why,simply because absurdity lacks the ability to solicit emotions from others in a vacuum of characters. when someone crushes a milk carton you don't grieve the milk carton unless you can anthropomorphize (msp) it in some way and these characters weren't; they were empty. There was no conflict. the sole redeeming quality I enjoyed about the film is the way it removed the veneer of eroticism and beauty from violence, and made it trite, which it is. This movie, however, stands far below Cache and Code Unknown in the haneke repertoire.