Director Meg Richman has tried, as others have tried, to convert a Henry James literary work into a compelling movie, but falls far short, as others have before her (see 'Wings of the Dove,' 'The Bostonians,' 'The Ambassadors,' 'Portrait of a Lady,' and 'Daisy Miller').

James's novels and novellas, based on the late-Victorian age of social suffocation (most often visited upon women yearning to be free), are ponderous and often very depressing examinations of love, deceit, devotion, recklessness, human folly. The list goes on and on. If it's about the strictures of human emotion, James is your man. His great strength in print is his weakness when transmitted to the screen: he conducts painstaking examinations of humanity's inner self, and is a challenge to read. Those who try to adapt his films (and try to be faithful to them) tend to sink under the weight of his relentless psychological questions.

'In the Shadows,' AKA 'Under Heaven' and 'In the Garden,' is at least a two-hankie drama that is based on 'Wings of the Dove.' It is partially effective, but it ultimately becomes basically yet another one of them thar soap opries, replete with hokey dialogue.

If you watch the theatrical trailer for this film, you'd think you were going to watch something entirely different. The trailer suggests a hot-blooded, scandalous examination of secret sex and intrigue. In other words, as so often happens, the distributors must have decided the flick needed more 'juice,' more 'edge' when no such 'juice' or 'edge' existed. We know going in what is going to happen in this movie, and any number of sensation-making trailers will not change things.

Molly Parker as Cynthia and Aden Young as Buck give surprisingly good performances as lovers who are transformed by a series of sad events. But I was really surprised by Joely Richardson's performance. She is a classically trained actor, but she seems to be miscast in this movie. She seems indifferent to her part (for good reason it seems to me), and speaks her lines with a flatness that is almost comical. "This love is strong," she intones to Buck (Young), "stronger than cancer." Embarrassing. (Coincidentally, Richardson's real-life mother, Vanessa Redgrave, who has never given a bad cinematic performance, still had to struggle in the 1985 adaptation of James's 'The Bostonians'. It didn't work: the movie was one boring flop.)

Richman deserves a lot of credit for trying to rework James, to try and give us a 'serious' film amidst all the popcorn crap. But to me it's a pretty lost cause. It's very hard to pull James out of the insufferable parlours of the 19th century.


If anyone has seen Days of Heaven, there's no need to suffer through Under Heaven. The tension and credibility have been drained out of this Wings of the Dove remake. An interesting cast has had all their life and spontaneity removed. Heavy-handed movie-making at its worst because there's talent wasted here.


A revisit to Wings of the Dove. Uneven performances and a sometimes self-indulgent script all in a really cool house. The story is basically the same principle: a young woman get her lover to become the lover of a dying rich woman. None of the characters are really likable, but neither are they nasty enough to hate. They fall right into that "annoying, but if they're your friends, I guess they can come to dinner" category.

Despite all of this, there are points where its manipulative sentimentality actually leaks through. As the young man and Joely Richardson fall in love, you can't help but appreciate the feeling of danger and dread that accompanies it.


This is a bad movie that purports to be an educational film designed to warn America about the menace of teenagers running amok thanks to uninvolved parents. However, like almost all the so-called "educational" films of the 30s and 40s, it was really a shabby little film designed to be snuck past the censors of the Hays Office. In 1934, the major studios all agreed to abide by the dictates of a stronger Production Code--eliminating sex, nudity, cursing and "inappropriate" plots in films (these had actually been relatively common in films in the early 30s). However, in an effort to sneak in smut, small studios created films to shock adults when they learn about terrible social ills, though they were REALLY intended to titillate and slip adult themes past the censors! Such films as MARIJUANA, MAD YOUTH, REEFER MADNESS and SEX MADNESS were all schlocky trash that skirted past the boards because they were supposedly educational. Even though they were laughably bad, they also made money due to low production costs and because they often offered nudity, violence and sordid story lines--all in the name of education!

Unlike many of these films, DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS didn't have nudity, but it sure had lots of sleazy story elements that were sure to titillate. In this film, teens drank, used drugs, committed pointless robberies and assaults and drove like maniacs--all apparently the result of poor parental guidance. And as a result, kids died in this movie--and in the most spectacular ways! The acting and writing were almost universally bad, though the sequence where the judge tells off the parents of these punks actually was amazingly good--too bad everything else was pretty lousy. In fact, one character was so bad, so annoying and so gosh-darn awful, I nominate the ditsy blonde as the most annoying character of the 1940s--she was THAT bad!! Her voice was more grating than Olive Oyl's and she was practically sub-human in her stupidity!


This was on the compilation DVD, Cult Classics. The transfered print was awful. There was a big scratch running through print for about fifteen minutes. About fifteen minutes of the night material was so dark that you might as well be listening to the radio.

What can be seen is quite poorly written. We are talking Ed Wood bad here. A woman pulls a gun on a man. The man says, "What have you got there." She answers, "Something that goes boom, boom, boom!"

Teara Loring is interesting as a real sociopath. She really enjoys lying and stealing. Mary Boward gives a cute performance as a blond airhead, more blond and more airhead than anything in movies until Marilyn Monroe's comic performances.

Fifi D'Orsay is funny as a French woman.

Other than a few interesting performances, the bad dialogue and inane plot make the film difficult to take seriously. It is only redeemable for a few camp moments.


PRC was just about the last studio on poverty row. Expectations for one of its productions were about rock bottom, and for the most part this exploitation quickie lives down to that well-earned reputation. The sets are cheap and few, the script darn near incoherent, the lighting and camera work fit for a bat's cave, and the acting wildly variable. Actually, some of the performances are pretty good-- Dawson and Loring are believable toughies, while Carlson and her swain come across as genuinely nice kids. However, D'Orsay's French accent is about as good as mine, at the same time Bovard's silliness is enough to make you reach for a stick.

One reason to check out a dead-ender like this is for its glimpse of teenagers past, that is, of how Hollywood framed teens during the stressed-out war year of 1944. Note how much of wanton teen behavior is blamed on the parents. Much of that behavior is obviously hyped for exploitation purposes (the gun battle, the stick-up), but the question of responsibility remains valid. What surprises me is that there is no mention of the war that was still raging in 1944. Youth Runs Wild, a more serious RKO teen film from that same year, shed a lot of light on how gas rationing and 24-hour factory shifts, for example, affected young people's behavior. None of that here. These youths and their parents appear to exist in an historical vacuum, and I'm not sure why. Maybe the producers thought war concerns would complicate the titillating plot. Whatever the reason, the only value to scoping out this ultra-cheapie is curiosity for curiosity's sake.


After high schooler Lucille commits suicide, the police arrive on campus and start grilling the squeaky clean teens to find out the whys and wherefores. Good girl June (June Carlson from the long forgotten Fox series of Jones' family comedies) is more than happy to answer their questions, airhead Betty (Mary Bovard) would cooperate if only she could successfully string together more than two or three words to create a coherent sentence, and bad girl Sally (Teala Loring, sister of Debra Paget) won't give them the time of day. Detective Hanahan (Joe Devlin) has the right idea, though, and suspects that local hood Nick Gordon (Jon Dawson) and his moll Mimi (Fifi D'Orsay) are implicated in some way in the girl's death. This low, low budget PRC production is thoroughly predictable in both the story and production departments, with most of the film shot against very poorly lit cardboard interiors. Sinister Cinema's print is in splicy but watchable condition.


So I'm watching the flick, and I start thinking to myself - Good grief, did people actually pay good money to watch stuff like this back in the Forties? Yeah, I know, admission was probably only about a quarter at best, but still, you could have had a couple sodas at the malt shop. Straight out of the exploitation/educational film camp, "Delinquent Daughters" attempts to instruct and admonish parents for the 'Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency' as touted in a newspaper headline quote from J. Edgar Hoover. I have a pretty good idea that none of the genre's films had much impact regarding their intended mission, other than the covert one of titillation and cheap thrills.

As far as this one goes, it's pretty uneven in both the acting and production values. The print I viewed from the Mill Creek Entertainment set of 'Cult Classics' was of questionable quality; it was easy to pick out the night time scenes because they all looked like they were filmed completely in the dark. The story follows the off screen set up of a high school girl suicide, and goes on to explore the antics of various teenagers, none of whom seem to feel any remorse for the dead teen, who one describes as 'a nice girl but no angel'. It would have seemed more appropriate if the picture explored the angst these high schoolers felt over the death of a friend, but it seems she didn't have one.

Hey, how about that Jerry (Jimmy Zahner), all worked up over the gun point robbery he pulled at the grocery store. He got away with $2.80!!! Who wrote this? And you can't beat old Rocky's (Johnny Duncan) logic in trying to convince June (June Carlson) to marry him - Martha Washington was only sixteen when she got married, and she wound up with a president!

I guess the highlight, as a number of other reviewers have pointed out, was old Judge Craig's (Frank McGlynn) speech to gathered teens and parents alike noting that the proper attention and discipline might have prevented all the bad things from happening in their kids' lives. More simplistic than compelling, one comes away with a feeling of 'Yeah, right', just as the scene dissolves into a decade early preview of American Bandstand to provide a happy ending. Not one of the better flicks in the 'Cult Classics' collection, you might want to check out one of their drug, sex or alcohol treatments instead.


1st watched 1/22/2007 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Albert Herman): Mediocre, at best, juvenile teenager drama which starts at the onset of a high school girl killing herself with the authorities trying to find out why. Of course, the kids remaining aren't much help as they were all out partying together the night before and don't want their parents to find out. None of the kids show much sympathy, which appears to be the point of the movie -- if you're a bad girl and party you lose all your sensitivity. Although later in the movie, the tables turn and the parents are shown to blame -- which was a nice turn(with a good scene with the judge helping the parents understand where they were going wrong), but it comes too late in the movie(about ¾ of the way thru). For the most part the acting is pretty bad and the lighting on some scenes is so horrible that you can barely tell what's going on(this may have just been the age of the movie, though). Besides this, the movie tries hard from a story perspective, but turns out to be pretty much a snoozer that you're just waiting on to end.


(Some Spoilers) Straight out of todays-Summer of 1944-newspaper headlines the film "Delinquent Daughters" focus on the epidemic of juvenile crime that's was sweeping the country during the war years in the early and mid 1940's.

We have this local hood and his moll Nick Gordon & Mimi, Jon Dawson & Fifi D'Orsay, running this teenage watering hole, supposedly serving soda pop and milkshakes to its under aged customers, the Merry-Go-Round Cafe. The Merry-Go-Round is instead getting the teenagers both juiced up, on hard liqueur, and doing Nick's and Mimi's dirty work. It's when local high school girl Lucille Dillerton is found drowned and boozed up after she jumped off a pier that the police headed by J.Edger Hoover look-alike Det. Hanahan, Joe Devlin, start to put the screws on Nick & Mimi's joint.

With Nick just too slick to get caught with the goods on him all Det. Hanahan could do is wait for him to make a mistake. That's exactly what happens when Nick starts to make eyes on pretty and well stacked high school girl Sally Higgins, Teala Loring. It's Sally's boyfriend Jerry Syker, Jimmy Zahner,who's been knocking off bars gas stations and groceries for Nick who split the take, 90% for Nick and 10% for Jimmy, with him. Jimmy got the sh*t end of the stick, in the money he robbed, even though he was the one who put his a** on the line doing the robberies and at the same taking an eager, looking for both action and excitement, Sally along with him on his crime spree.

It's when Mimi is brought into police headquarters for questioning that Let. Hanahan drops a bombshell about her cheating boyfriend Nick Gordon planning to drop her for the much younger and sexier Sally Higgins. Sally's boyfriend Jerry had earlier participated in a payroll robbery with Nick where he and a security guard were shot and killed. Now seeing that there's a future, in crime, for her with Nick Sally willingly replaced Mimi as Nick's new squeeze. Mad as hell Mimi not only implicates Nick in the string of robberies including a number of murders, one of a cop, in and around town but confronts her ex-lover Nick and her replacement, Sally, at the Merry-Go-Round-Cafe.

After getting into a vicious eye scratching and hair pulling cat fight with Sally Mimi ends up getting belted by Nick who then together with Sally take off in his car away from the perusing, and now on to Nick & Sally, police headed by Let. Hanahan. The movie ends with teenagers June Tompson and her boyfriend and soon to be husband Rocky Webster, June Carlson & Johnny Duncan, forcing Nick off the road. Nick and his new love Sally end up at the bottom of a cliff crushed and burned to a crisp.

Unlike Jerry and Sally June and Rocky didn't fall for Nick's boastful promises of making them rich and famous, or better yet infamous. The two youngsters not only stayed away from Nick's criminal activities but did what they could to both prevent and put an end to them.

Besides the hooky dialog and bad acting the movie had some of the worst lighting you'll ever see, or not see, in a motion picture! Even in an extremely low budgeted turkey like "Delinquent Daughters". There were a number of scenes in the movie that looked like they were filmed in the bottom of a two mile mine shaft with the miners helmet-lights batteries having gone dead!


I love disaster films, even the bad ones, but this one is completely horrible. From the acting to the special effects this one is crap. The script is laughable and the whole affair is absolutely boring. The "Avalanche" doesn't happen till around the hour mark and all we get till then is totally blinding boredom. Mia and Rock barely have anything to do (god knows why they actually did the movie), Robert Forester is hot but the character is bland, and Jeanette Nolan is under used in the only entertaining role in the flick. The rest of the cast are forgettable and not all that all-star. The action is contrived and "special effects" are for the most part low-budget 70's-ish.

This movie would make a great sleep aid. It's bad, not enjoyably bad, just bad. It's bland and pointless. Skip if at all possible.


I was surprised to see that Avalanche was produced by Roger Corman of all people. I would think that even the skimpy budget that this film had by Irwin Allen standards was not something Roger Corman was used to dealing with.

Corman didn't spend it on big name guest stars for sure. His stars are Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. Hudson is the Donald Trump like owner of a big state of the art ski lodge which is hosting that weekend some winter sporting events. He's been told like William Holden in The Towering Inferno that the lodge is in a bad place and the snow looks like it's about to come a tumbling down.

Tumble down it did during a storm when a plane crashes into the top of a mountain. The Avalanche starts and it buries the whole cast in that white stuff.

This is a disaster film made on the cheap, some winter sports footage mixed with real avalanche footage and some cheesy special effects by seventies standards to bind it together. The plot such as it is, is almost non-existent, the characters are never developed in the slightest, so you don't really care about them.

I guess the lesson to be learned from Avalanche is for Roger Corman not to try to be Irwin Allen.


I remember seeing this on T.V. in the early '80's, and even though I was still kind of young, I thought it was awful.

Rock Hudson should really have been more selective of the scripts he accepted. some of his films are really good, and others like "embryo" and this piece of drek should have been left to the next generation of actors.

now for the scene that I thought was the funniest of the whole movie. it happens at the very end as the camera is pulling away and the screen starts to fade to black. If I remember the scene correctly, a group of people are still in either a wrecked hotel or a cave and some guys wife has just been declared dead. as the camera pulls back you can clearly see the "dead woman" stand up and walk off set.


"AVALANCHE" is definitely one of the weaker entries into the 'disaster' genre that populated the 70's and early 80's. A cast of fading actors and the "who's that?" of Hollywood headline this atrocious production that delivers more laughs than anything.

Following the formula of its preceding disaster foes, "AVALANCHE" combines interwoven plot-lines involving love affairs and the disaster itself. Thrown into this sorry melange are Rock Hudson, Robert Forster, Mia Farrow and 50's silver screen star, Jeanette Nolan.

In "AVALANCHE", Rock Hudson is David Shelby - a well-meaning but extremely foolish ski-resort owner who has ignored all warnings from environmentalists in building a new ski-resort while removing all the trees in the process which spells the perfect recipe for disaster. Robert Forster is the environmentalist who warns Hudson that removing all the trees from the mountain will result in causing deadly avalanches. Mia Farrow is Hudson's ex-wife, new love interest to Forster and Jeanette Nolan is Hudson's flighty mother who likes nothing more than a Bloody Mary to sip on every five minutes.

Also thrown into this sordid tale are further cardboard cut-out characters including a champion skiier who is hell-bent on bedding as many women as he can before the screen credits go up and his jilted lover (wonderfully portrayed by Cathy Paine) who hams it up in a campy performance that involves her threatening to slice his cheating 'ass' with a butter knife before having a cup of milk thrown onto her as she falls to the floor screaming hysterically.

Rock Hudson in his early 50's (his first foray into the 'disaster' genre) appears like a disheveled modern-day version of William Shatner. Spending precious minutes on-screen wearing nothing but turtle-necks and begging Mia Farrow to 'come back' to him, he looks quite ridiculous in a role that was intended for someone in their 30's as Mia Farrow is only about 33 years old at the time this movie was made. Much like "EARTHQUAKE" where Charlton Heston was courting a young Genevieve Bujold and "THE CASSANDRA CROSSING" where Ava Gardner was shagging a youthful Martin Sheen, the love affair in this movie is quite unbelievable.

Robert Forster, fresh off his canceled television stint in the short-lived 1974 "NAKIA", proves a credible character as an environmentalist who foresees the inevitable disaster, yet cannot convince a soul to believe or listen to him. As a result, the second plot line enters and we see him and Mia Farrow sharing a love scene together.

Jeanette Nolan in all of her faded beauty, spends most of her screen time either getting drunk on a Bloody Mary or hamming it up as the 'ever-loving mother' who travels everywhere with her gay companion.

The setting is Hudson's ski resort. Everyone is there for the grand opening which also includes some ridiculous mini Winter-Olympics festivities which has several hundred people either cross-country skiing, down-hill skiing, ski-dooing or watching the skating events and of course, what better day would there be to have a disaster than on this particular day?

The biggest laughs here of course is the disaster itself. In reality, there is nothing the slightest bit amusing about an avalanche, but while watching this movie, you can't for a second take it seriously. A huge snow wedge hangs over the resort, loosely hanging on a snow-capped mountain that is broken off once a small charter plane crashes into it. Once the avalanche starts, the laughter begins. Stock footage of avalanches are spliced onto the film (you can tell by the grainy imagery and the totally different mountain ranges). The snow itself is nothing more than a smoke-machine adjusted to 'fast forward' and huge blocks of styrofoam that are hurled through the air and bounce off the victims as they try to run away.

One particular hilarious scene involves a skater who is still spinning pirouettes on the ice as the avalanche engulfs her and the crowd (like she couldn't hear or see the avalanche coming until it was about one foot away from her?). Another hilarious scene would involve a 'gas' explosion inside the resort that is nothing more than a 'puff of smoke' that sends one chef flying backwards into some shelves and an unlucky female that goes sliding along a counter while knocking off bowls of food onto the floor. But the one scene that really killed me was seeing the 'animated sparks' that flash from the broken gear box that controls the ski-lift. We actually get to see this twice during a climatic scene involving a man and a child dangling from a broken ski-life. Here, rescue workers scramble to rescue the child using a safety net below, yet the man that is left dangling spends about three minutes complaining that he cannot 'let go' and when he finally does (as a result of getting electrocuted), his lifeless body misses the safety net anyway!

Furthermore, back in town as the ambulances and rescue workers are dispatched from their outposts, it just goes to show that if the avalanche didn't kill you, then these silly fools just might. In a totally ridiculous scene, ambulances and fire trucks spin out of control as they skid across the icy roads, causing serious fender-benders and sending one poor by-stander into a store-front window in a shower of shattering glass.

Unfortunately, the person who I felt sorry for the most was Jeanette Nolan. Once she gets trapped inside the hotel resort with her 'companion', it takes her no longer than five minutes to go into hysterics and play the "We're all going to die!" card as she digs at the snow with a chair. Then she starts to lose her mind as she plays the "We go back a long way..." card with her companion as she strikes the keys of a busted up grand piano, warbling a few notes of a song long forgotten. On top of that, she passes out just as Hudson and Forster make their way into the resort from the outside. After she has been resuscitated and placed into the back of an ambulance, she and Mia Farrow are driven to the hospital by some suicidal maniac who insists on doing wheelies on black ice and devastated terrain that results in the ambulance crashing through a bridge and into a chasm, Farrow managing to fall out of the car in time but leaving Nolan and the driver to meet a fiery death as the car explodes at the bottom of the chasm.

The climatic and grand finale scene of the film involves Mia Farrow hanging off the broken bridge railing and Hudson and Forster coming to her rescue. And when the day finally rolls to its end, Hudson and Farrow toast to the past events with a bottle of Champagne!!! Timeless!

If you want to see a scene involving Jeanette Nolan doing her best 'Saturday Night Fever' impression on the dance floor, then this is the movie for you. If you want to see a pandemonium scene involving screaming victims getting hailed with styrofoam blocks, then this is the movie for you. However, if you want to see a half-decent disaster movie, then "AVALANCHE" is not the movie for you. The only thing that really separates "AVALANCHE" from the rest of the disaster entries are the few nude scenes that are thrown in involving a woman baring her breasts and buttocks in a 'steamy' pool scene that really does nothing much for the movie itself.

This has got to be one of the stupidest movies that I have ever seen!

My rating - 2 out of 10


Hey, someone had to die of a little snow in the 70s..it was bound to happen. If whatever hack made this hadn't bothered, Irwin Allen would have..but to give credit where credit is due, Allen would have cast this better. Even if the movie stunk to high heaven (hello, 'The Swarm'), at least there were enough stars to keep you from falling asleep.

Also to give credit where it is due, there is some really beautiful cinematography, especially in outdoor shots of Mia Farrow swimming and another scene of a skier trying to outdistance an avalanche is shot very well.

However, once the cast starts talking, the groans can begin. Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow seem like they wouldn't even converse at a cocktail party; they are from different cinematic solar systems and should not have been paired here at all, even if they are a divorced couple. Robert Forster is semi-interesting as an predictable love interest for Mia and an ecologist who can predict the entire movie in his first scenes if only the screenplay had allowed him.

Impatient action fans - tune in one hour after it started to see the extras get killed. Before that is alot of drama, and after that is the rescue, and that's all, folks.


Avalanche is, quite simply, the WORST movie I've ever seen.

The plot is dreadful, the script horrendous, the acting pathetic.

I remember quite clearly that the patterns on the wall of the cinema were more interesting to look at than this piece of trash.


Though Rock Hudson is my favorite actor, his acting in this film is very amateurish and highly unbelievable. Mia Farrow's performance is also wooden and I have seen better acting in school plays by grammar school students. Of course, the fact that other than a fake avalanche, there is no substance or story line that I could perceive to this film. The only good actor was Robert Forster and he also had the best script. I couldn't believe it was made in 1978 because I felt it probably was one of the training films made by new actors and actresses in order to develop their craft for Mia and Rock. I wouldn't view it again.


I hated this movie. Yes, Ian Holm is a treasure generally but he overacts in this one. The slice of bohemia aspect never comes to the fore. Nor does the erstwhile theme of artistic exploration. Tucci accomplished all he hoped to accomplish here in The Big Night. In that film we had a visceral appreciation for the joy of "creating," in that case great meals. And there were aspects of the interaction of art and commerce there were explored. Here, Tucci returns to some of those themes, but the return is a mess. Why does Gould not write? Why does Tucci's character ultimately stop writing? What does this tell us about the creative process? Beats me.


I read Joseph Mitchell's marvelous collection "Up in the Old Hotel," of which "Joe Gould's Secret" was a part, years ago and have always thought of it as one of my favorite books. I was so grateful that someone like Mitchell had made it his work to go around the city at mid-century and actually talk to people whose experiences of New York went as far back as the turn of the century, providing first-hand accounts of life in our fair city when things weren't so shiny and glossy as they are today. I always thought Mitchell a real hero.

Now after this movie I think negatively of him. Was he really so callous toward this subject, Joe Gould, from the get-go? In the movie he never seems fascinated, but ultimately annoyed -- he seemed patronizing and dismissive from the very first. He wasn't depicted as a probing artist at all -- just a workaday family man doing his job to bring home the bacon. I just don't believe this about Mitchell.

Will someone please make it illegal for actors like Stanley Tucci and Hope Davis to keep appearing in these cloying, precious little indies? I am so sick of them, particularly of her, what was at first her appealing acting style, the same in movie after movie after movie, now makes me want to shoot the screen. To me they seem to make these movies to feel good about themselves, "aren't we cool that we find these interesting subjects and make movies about them," -- not to make the best translation into film form that they possibly can.

Ian Holm was terrific and it was fun to see NYC at that time depicted. The New Yorker editor seemed spot-on. But I'm mad to have my sense of a personal hero sullied by this film of suspect intentions.


Joe Gould comes across as an annoying and irritating character.

Unfortunately, the character has no warmth to it. Instead, it grates on the viewer.

The movie started OK, but as the Gould character came into itself, its shenanigans became too much to bear. The incessant bickering, the tantrums, the mood swings were just too much. At one point, the character was vandalizing a phone booth, and it was just not believable that the barkeeper did not kick his ass out of the establishment.

Also highly irritating is the fake accent employed by Stanley Tucci for his Mitchell character. For some reason, it just doesn't work.

All in all, I pretty much hated this movie, and could not wait for it to end. Some movies are not great, but are serviceable. After about 15 minutes, the Gould character makes this movie completely unwatchable.

Todd


This is the most annoying, if not the worst movie I've ever seen. Miss it if you have low tolerance for annoying actors who overdo it, especially if very fake and inconsistent southern accents drive you batty. Tucci needs to hire a real southerner, or get a voice coach, if he intends to make his character plausible. That's not a Tennessee accent, Stanley, it's from Mississippi (and Mississipians should be insulted by his performance as well). The only decent actors in the movie were everyone BUT Holm and Tucci. (Sorry to disappoint their fans). The movie was so annoying I took an unnecessary bathroom break which I extended by gazing at the clock at the concession stand and looking at the movie posters in the lobby. Finally I plodded back to my date (who was also hating it but was determined to use up the $7) and let myself be tortured for the remaining hour. The only good things about the movie were Susan Sarandon and my box of popcorn.


Badly synchronized audio together with silly lines and mimicking of "foreign speak". I really don't understand how or where money gets raised to make movies like this. A mish-mash of diabolical characters scheming to perform "dastardly deeds". Although the plot is beyond being obvious I won't spoil the joy of any that are courageous enough to see this thing through the end. Be prepared to feel like bursting out laughing when the really "bad guys" pull some dirty tricks (for the benefit of the creative minds of the authors) with their eyes almost popping out of their orbits.

Prague is a truly beautiful city and that is about the only positive aspect of this movie.


A reasonably good start that obscures a really stupid and lame plot, as soon as it starts explaining it you think "can't be serious, can't be SOOOOO absurd!" The story does not stand up a child's mind, the acting is horrendous, the dialog almost non existent, the localization really cheap... the only achievement is to show Prague as a really ugly city, something not so easy.

Really, paying to see this crap seems to be a really nasty way to lose money.

For me, the only possible explanation for all that positive comments is that the people involved in the making of the movie are trying to improve its ratings. Incredible.


I was unfortunate enough to catch a screening of Experiment at the Phoenix Film Festival, although I'll be honored to be the first on IMDb to warn you all of what you'd be getting into if you were to see it.

A woman named Anna (Georgina French) wakes up in the middle of the street in Prague (where I'm assuming it was shot for cost reasons - first bad sign) without knowledge of her identity or even what language she speaks. Somewhere else in the city, a man named Morgan (John Hopkins) does the same. It all appears to be part of an experiment involving Stefan (Andrew Byron - utterly awful, in case I don't get to him later in the review) and Joseph (Nick Simons).

The writing is simply awful, and the film has an awkward, shifty pace that ruins the mystery before it even has a chance to start. Some of the concepts here aren't completely bad - Anna and Morgan struggle with learning their own language in a completely foreign country, although the dialog and performances amount to confused stuttering that drags already unnecessary scenes out. There's an air of cheapness about the whole thing - the leaders of the experiment literally run the project out of somebody's basement (ridiculous when we learn how high up it goes), and in one hilarious moment, an attempted rapist gets up and walks out of the room after being knocked down by Anna. Very nonchalantly.

When the actual plot is revealed in the last half-hour, the film starts to move - too late for those who wisely walked out, although they weren't missing much. Somehow the story shifts to an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister, which has nothing to do with the events that inevitably take place, and only seems to have been added to make the movie seem more epic and important. Instead, it's stupid and kind of funny. There's a predictable twist ending that brings absolutely no closure to the whole mess, and you're left with 90 wasted minutes. Don't let me forget to mention that the film had no lighting. Not low lighting for atmosphere, not dim lighting, but no lighting. At all. It's almost as if the filmmakers wanted to put you to sleep.

If I have anything good to say, David Gant was pleasantly over the top as the mastermind behind the whole project, there's a nice pair of breasts, and the theme that is revealed in about the last fifteen minutes of the movie in a tossed-off manner of the fallacies of love & trust was pretty neat and I'd like to see it implemented in a good movie next time.

Boo.


Dane tries to hard and is to extreme with all of his yelling and going crazy, spilling water on himself and rolling on the floor. To much. Calm down, get yourself together and make us laugh. I didn't quite understand his comparison toward comics and rock stars. Just because there both up on stage or something? He said that every comedian wants to be a rock star. I'm sure Rodney Dangerfield was really into that when he was alive. He had a few good jokes like the Burger King joke where people yell at the drive thru. I also liked the Reese's Pieces joke. If Dane just didn't act so mental he might be funnier and I might have given this a higher rating, as high as maybe an eight.


Mid-eighties grade-Z Indiana Jones knockoff starring David O'Hara as beer swilling tomb raider John Banning who unwittingly awakens an Egyptian sorceress Nefratis (Michelle Bauer) and becomes a pawn in her resurrected plans for world conquest, or something to that effect.

When looking at the cast of actors one might get the impression that with such B-movie royalty like Sybil Danning, John Carradine, and the always entertaining Cameron Mitchell that this movie might not be as bad as it sounds. You would be very wrong on that assumption. While all aforementioned actors try their best to elevate the "talent" level on screen they are collectively in the film for only about ten minutes with Mitchell making up the bulk of that time. Instead you get to watch the "don't quit your day job waiting at Spago's" performance buy the woefully inept Richard Hench who becomes the central character in the film about halfway in to it. The scenes with Hench and his professor sidekick are the visual equivalent of banging your skull off of a concrete wall. David O'Hara's character John Banning is so unlikeable that it's confusing as to why he wasn't rewritten better as the film clearly wants him to be the hero. Michelle Bauer's nudity free Nefratis sleepwalks throughout the movie. If anyone can tell me what the hell actually killed her at the end I would greatly appreciate it as I rewound it many times and failed to see what exactly happened. My word of advice for wary B-movie fans is if it says Olen Ray stay away!


This is not the worst film ever made. I can't think of what that one is at the moment. I'll have to wait for my eyes to stop bleeding.

Actually, there are two mildly redeeming factors. John Carradine, whose two minutes on screen probably comprised half the movie's budget, and Kitten Natividad dancing topless for about thirty seconds total. Yeah, that's it.

Another line. Another line. Another line. Another line. Is that enough for that ridiculously arbitrary ten line rule? Apparently not. Let's keep adding pointless text until this so-called comment meets the minimum requirement for mindless bureaucratic self-aggrandizement. Some suit trying to qualify his or her paycheck came up with this rule, undoubtedly.


Hack director Fred Olen Ray unleashed this loser back in the mid eighties. "Stars" Sybil Danning and John Carradine are in the film for about 5 minutes each, and Cameron Mitchell has the good sense to not show up until about 50 minutes in and then gets killed about 15 minutes later. It's for sure none of these actors listed this on their resumes. As for our lead, David O'Hara, well let's just say he shouldn't have quit his coaching job. And the second male lead, Richard Hench, who doesn't enter the film until it's half over, seems to be reading his lines from cue cards offscreen. At times he appears to be in a trance. Some of the furniture has more life in its performance than he does.

Of course most of the blame falls squarely on the director's shoulders here. Olen Ray can't seem to pace a scene to save his life; they all just drag on and on with the actors taking long, I mean long, pauses between each line of dialog. You can just feel precious seconds of your life slipping away while waiting for them to complete their discussions. Naturally we need some pointless t & a to pad out an already stretched film, and plenty of go nowhere scenes that do nothing to advance the "plot". The best I can say for this garbage is that it is only 84 minutes long.

Skip this film and watch the 1980 flick The Awakening, which covers pretty much the same ground. While not a great movie, it's worlds better than this dreck.


This movie is by far the worst I have ever seen, and coming from a guy that enjoyed Starship Troopers (1!!) that says alot. This one just has it all, it's a complete waste of time. They should put warnings on crap movies like this, honestly. At some point the woman makes a scarab crawl up some dudes "skin" which is CLEARLY and unmistakebly some rubber overlay. This tells me that not only was the budget really low, but the crew were also in a hell of a hurry and nobody could be arsed to tell the director he was really really bad. The make-up artists should be cursed for all eternity and beaten with various sticks. This is me, telling you, not to see this movie, unless you want to have something to talk about.


I remember reading a write up on this film, the standard fare put out by the promotions people. It sounded exciting, horrific, all the things I enjoy about a good mummy movie. Then I got the box home and knew I was in trouble. The cheesy art of the box cover was the first clue. It could just have easily been the cover for "Big Trouble in Little China" which was a much better film, but this was no comedy, at least not intentionally. To begin with the budget on this must have been all of a $1.85 with tax. Then there are the sets. The film was supposed to take place in Egypt, but the sets bore no resemblance whatever. Cameron Mitchell is no actor, no way, never been. I was especially disappointed to see aging horror star John Carradine and Sybil Danning in this as they are both usually in much better quality work. You can safely give this one a miss, unless you are a fan of "Plan 9 From Out Space." This is right down there with it.


This feature is a grim, violent urban saga of a dysfunctional family that plays out amid the decay and ugliness of Harlem. This storied community, long neglected and portrayed as unredeemable, takes another hit as families disintegrate and drug wars are the order of the day. The film has an odd symmetry in that it opens and closes with scenes of drug overdoses which may explain why two impressionable youngsters who should know better get swallowed up drug distribution activities and violent crime. The movie also shows black men in a very poor light as every single character is flawed beyond measure and not one of them has a single redeeming quality. Besides the self-loathing of Harlem and its residents, the film's parallel theme serves up the familiar race war shoot-outs between black hoodlums and Mafia thugs who are determined to hold on to lucrative drug markets uptown. Wesley Snipes headlines a good cast that is sadly wasted in this picture. Michael Wright is very good as the angry, bitter Raynathan but with films like "Super Fly", "New Jack City" and several other films of this type out there, who needs another one?


This film is just a boring load of old tripe.It made me wish I'd rented Snipe's apparently superior New Jack City instead.Wesley Snipes,like Bruce Willis,is an action man and should stick to that.This is just bottom shuffling torture,full of nasty scenes and crass language.Abominable.To be avoided.


A typical Irwin Allen spectacle, this has its moments--the daring publicity stunt involving a tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls is genuinely exciting--but for the most part is just too prosaic and small-minded to be the blockbuster it was undoubtedly intended to be. It would have helped if Victor Mature's shifty circus owner were either less of a jerk or an out-and-out villain, and certainly if Vincent Price (who seems to have been cast as the ringmaster simply because of his moustache) had been given more to do than to stand around in unbecoming leisure outfits. On the other hand, Peter Lorre (whose presence as a clown alienates both Lorre fans who view it as the ultimate insult to that ill-used actor's dignity, and clownophobes who see it as a confirmation of their worst fears) gives the film a heart and humor it wouldn't have had otherwise.


We had high hopes for this movie. They were in vain. This is a classic example of a movie that had almost no thought put into its plot. It is a series of fights, interrupted from time to time with scenes of dialogue that raise more questions than they answer.

The 13th Warrior begins with a scene of Ambassador Ahmet (who existed in real life) headed north after being sent away so he won't fool around with the king's wife. He and his small retinue bump into a passing Viking gang, and for reasons never explained Ahmet must join a band of 13 Vikings in a mission to help a semi-feudal village that is under attack. Even more odd is Ahmet's decision to join the Vikings. He already has a mission, and doesn't seem to be under any duress. Even a throw-away line along the lines of, "I decided to go, so I could learn more about these North People who I will need to understand as ambassador" would have helped.

Along the way Ahmet learns how to speak the Viking language by, apparently, watching the Vikings talk. Never are we shown a Viking saying a word and tying it to an item, so that an observer might be able to attach meaning to the words. Yet somehow our hero learns the language. What are the odds of that?

At this point The 13th Warrior becomes a sort of a Viking "Seven Samauri," with our Viking heroes gathering the village people (the serfs, not the disco group, though if *those* Village People appeared it would not have surprised me) to defend the town against a band of cannibals who are (again) never fully explained.

During the ensuring battle scenes, there is an attempt to show a juxtaposition between the culture of Ahmet the Muslum and Rennaisance Man and that of the crude but effective Vikings. For example, Ahmet has trouble wielding a Viking broadsword but once he has a curved scimitar made to order he is ready to rock (of course, later, when the band sorties on a mission to attack the cannibals, Ahmet has a Viking broadsword tied to his back and the scimitar is nowhere in sight). Also, just before a big battle, Ahmet suddenly drops to his knees to pray as Muslins do five times a day (though we never see him do it at any other time). Anyway, you can *almost* feel the threads of a plot here revolving around Ahmet as an observer of another culture, but it never is clear nor develops (just like the rest of the movie).

There are many instances where events make no sense. The cannibal tribe at one point early on seem to have kicked the Vikings' butts and are burning the village, then withdraw at the sound of a horn for no apparent reason. It just means they have to attack again later, after the village has time to recover a bit. There also seems to be some voodoo involved in that the Vikings (and Ahmet, for a little while) don't know if the cannibals are men or spirits. It's unclear why there is any doubt, since the cannibals look like guys with animal headdresses and fall when they are stabbed. And throughout the movie it appears that the odds are something like 20 or 30 to 1 against the Vikings (and the cannibals are on horses!), yet somehow we have a happy ending.

The movie *tries* to draw on a theme of honor and courage. The Viking leader is noble and fights until he can no longer fight. But that theme is underminded by the numerous ploy holes. Why should we care about these people and what they fight for? Why are there only 13? Why do the cannibals attack? How did this start? Without answers to basic questions (and no clear indication of a moral cause), the idea of honor falls flat.

I cannot believe the average rating for this movie is 6.2. We gave it a 2.


"Crash" had a lot of potential. I feel like I can criticize it harshly because I am a Cronenberg fan and this was nowhere close to his best work. The themes (sexual "deviance," violence, obsession) that Cronenberg was exploring are very relevant to today's post-modern society. However, this film didn't get the message across. Supposedly the book by James Ballard deals more with our obsession with fame and celebrities; that was not dealt with in the film and it should have been. It would have resulted in a more coherent piece of art. As you watch the movie, you feel like a kid watching late-night TV and stumbling upon something "dirty" that you know you aren't supposed to see. That's about it. As an adult, you know that there is supposed to be symbolism, an underlying metaphor or allegory, but the viewer is never really let in on the secret. Instead, we see a lot of strange sex scenes, car crashes and empty dialogue. I wanted to like this film, but it was boring, a little pretentious, and left me wanting more substance.

4 out of 10


J.G. Ballard's perverse, and often coolly humorous, prose works are not really suited to the screen. If anybody could successfully transfer one, the likeliest candidate would have to be David Cronenberg. At least, that is what anyone would have thought before seeing "Crash".

It seems it's best to leave Ballard to unsettle and disturb the printed page alone.


I was forced to see this movie in the theater by my friends. I tought it would be a bad, semi-porn kind of movie. I wish it would have been that. It was actually worse. It is not only grotesque but also boring. The sex scenes (which includes 1 gay) are not at all good, sometimes disgusting. I can't believe that actors like Spader and Hunter acted in this movie.


Crash is an interesting film, it is not the best movie I have ever seen, but it is one worth a watch. It has an odd story, but it is a very sensual film. The film has a wonderful cast, and Hunter, Spader, and Arquette are ok in it.


I am giving the director the benefit of the doubt and assuming he was trying to make some sort of high-minded statement about sexuality, not just trying to revolt me. But the message is extremely muddled.

In showing a ludicrous fetish nobody has ever displayed, maybe the film is trying to satirize sexual obsession. Or maybe it is some sort of commentary about pornography or relationships in modern society. Whatever the case, the point is very obscure.

With the tone of ironic detachment, I felt I was being held at arm's length throughout the film and given no clue as to how I should feel about the characters. Am I supposed to sympathize with them, pity them? It's hard to do since they show about as much emotion as HAL in 2001. For people who are supposedly engulfed by sexual obsession, they sure are torpid.

If I am going to watch extremely graphic sexual perversions, I would prefer them to be in a film that is a little more thoughtful and a lot less pretentious.


A sick, twisted and perverted movie. Displaying penetration where it should not occur and showing what happens when unbalanced people are not brought up correctly. All in all, an interesting affair from Mr. Cronenberg.


I don't know about other people but when I think of car crashes I think of destruction; I think of death; I think of loss; I think of the time and effort that it'll take to rectify not only the situation involving how the hell you're going to get around now the car's gone but also how you're supposed to recover from the shock of it. In David Cronenberg's ridiculous attempt at a film, when the character's think of a car crash, they think of sex and then some more sex and then even more sex after that.

When I watch a film, I like them to have plots and developments and characters I don't spend the whole time despising for one reason or another. Sometimes, hating characters is good and can be done cleverly: disliking an evil character or not liking the ways in which certain characters go about their business can also be good fun but when you see a film that is just a barrage of sex scenes, bizarre characters talking like they're in some sort of drug induced stupor and silly, unbelievable developments; it's very difficult to not only switch your mind off to what's going on but also be tempted to not switch the film off.

Alas, Crash is a film that just wants to shock. It's like an eight year old child that you get in stores or any other public place, begging their parents for more of what they already have and making a really big deal about absolutely nothing for no reason; it's like the attention hungry child who wants everyone to notice them or the co-worker who 'bigs' themselves up to the point where you just don't care because you don't believe what you're hearing  in Crash's case, it's 'hearing'. A film critic or maybe they were a film theorist once said that: "Cinema is a way of looking into other people's lives  people who only exist on screen and have no knowledge of the camera and us." In essence, this is what Crash is: it's a portal into the lives of James Ballard (Spader) his close to constantly naked wife Catherine (Kara Unger) who always talks like she's just had a shot of heroin and they're relationship which breaks up a little when James finds time to hang out with a bunch of equally annoying freaks in the form of Vaughn (Koteas), Gabrielle (Arquette) and a few other dregs whose main turn on are car crashes. This is one portal I wished I hadn't looked through.

Crash just consists of a bunch of random sex scenes between two characters we don't even know in the first third, then consists of sex scenes between two characters we don't even give a damn about in the second third before trying to end up as some sort of tragic, poetic love story about two people who have now discovered what really sexually turns them on. Needless to say, it misses that particular mark by an absolute light year. There is one scene that is constructed and shot in such a way that it could resemble a sex scene in a film even though it's not. It's the scene when James and Vaughn are driving slowly past a crash site as Vaughn takes pictures of various things; getting off over the blood, the death and the way the victims are trapped: the camera shots are close ups of numerous things such as the still bodies, the blood on the door and the way the pliers are applied by the firemen as they crank down and break off the metal framework blocking them from rescuing the victims  this is not only disturbing in the sense it's supposed to be entertaining but odd that the film-makers assume that we even care about what's going on and think we will like these characters.

Crash is a film that fetishises car crashes and glorifies them as if they're as desirable as sex is. In fact, take away most of Vaughn's dialogue and some scenes involving characters talk about nothing in particular and the film would be pornography. Pornography doesn't need to have a plot but when it does, I'm sure it's at a very basic level with minimal character development and talking; again, Crash fits these two descriptions and it's absolutely shocking  Crash is quite easily a wreck of a 'film' and probably one of the worst I've ever seen.


The tag-line of this movie reads: 'The Most Controversial Film You Will Ever See'. Well, not only was it controversial to the extent to which it was subsequently banned in cinemas throughout the UK 11 years ago, but the narrative and plot of the film was as ridiculous as it was distasteful. The idea of people getting turned on by car crashes didn't just sound stupid and lame but also sick. I for one am not the reader of the English newspaper the Daily Mail. I am not even middle class myself and so therefore, my views on this film in no way are based on or influenced by some tabloid press but rather from a personal point of view. Thus, what I dislike most about Crash however is that it has a stupid and inane premise and the fact that it was such a terrible film in itself.

The plot of Crash revolved around a couple whose husband played by Spader ends up paralysed in a car accident. Of course this doesn't stop him and his wife from doing it with each other and even with other people. Spader's character has him having sex with Holly Hunter, in addition to this he even has a homo-erotic encounter with a guy (not that I have anything against homosexuality whatsoever that is). In fact, one of the main problems with Crash is the rather daft plot- its all about sex, sex and sustaining injuries and losing control of their libido by dangerous driving and that its all done in a cheap, tacky, demoralising and distasteful manner. When they have sex, they don't do it out of love for the other person but rather out of sexual arousal, out of desperation and out of weakness. They couldn't really give a toss about the other person's feelings, or the people they hurt. If anything those characters in Crash come across as being selfish, as well as perverse.

Another problem is the actual point of this film- what message is this trying to evoke to its audience? What can the audience themselves take away from this viewing experience? And is there a point to all this? The answers to those questions can only be answered by those able enough to come up with meaningful answers. But unfortunately, they have not been addressed or tackled whatsoever within this movie.

I failed to see how I could empathise with or feel remorse for the main characters. In fact, I utterly despised watching this film, that I was thinking as I was seeing the events take place, 'What the hell was that?'. I'm sorry but getting aroused at the expense of others and endangering others by getting involved in car collisions doesn't make for a good movie. It looked so tacky and on screen, the scenes would've offended those of whom were lucky enough to survive a car accident or two.

There isn't really a moral to this silly story because let's face it, with a complex and controversial subject such as sex, in Crash with car accidents and people having sex with each other and other people, how on earth can there be one, for sure? David Croenberg has come up with some very strange concepts for films- hell, we often watch scenes in TV sitcoms and dramas for instance where the character is a novice at driving the car, or is attempting to drive the car and the other guy says something like 'imagine that this car is a woman and you're in a relationship with her/it' or some silly crap such as that. However, this one takes the biscuit as it has become a step too far.

Crash was a terrible waste of a film and in Spader, Hunter and Arquette- of whom are three undeniably good actors, their talents were virtually unseen in this so-called diabolical 'porn' fest. For me, it was a nonsensical piece of garbage.


as fans stick up for it and say that haters don't understand its aims, I on the otherhand can understand its aims and the context and still think its a pile of rubbish. none of the depth and tales of wisdom that these images are meant to represent come across well enough, they whole movie smells of cheap cologne, its actually pretty boring and you really don't have to watch anymore than an hour of this rubbish as they narrative/story just don't exist. so he uses a car instead of heroine, or we are all to absorbed by technology, whatever, the film doesn't have enough to say to justify the running time of this ultimate fake arty farty rubbish. madonna in that film with the candle wax was more entertaining, and there are hundreds of films about addiction or technology with more panache and substance requiem for a dream, trainspotting, primer, . this should be burnt and just forgotten. i turned it off after 1hr 15. and then wrote this, cos i hate people who think this stuff is some how great, and if you don't like it, its because its just too cool to be appreciated. get over yourself Cronenberg, not saying the topic s not interesting but this is a lame attempt at film making from someone who really should know better.


Yes, it was you, you are closed minded (And I realize the topic name makes no sense)

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A "NORMAL" MOVIE LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE! Also, it's no good for pornography (you'll just feel dirtier) If you didn't understand it or thought it was pornographic, you're probably a "normal" person(and/or haven't seen a good porno), and thats okay. The meaning is explained pretty well by some of the other posts if you need help.

BUT I JUST WANT TO SAY...the people who REALLY GET the movie probably wont be affected by it in the way that the writer intended. Because they would already have so many of their own ideas about American culture. And they would probably say, "Yeah? So?"

Does this make sense?

My Boring story I watched this on Cinnemax and I thought it was the newer movie by the same title, which a friend had recommended to me. If you've seen this movie, you could imagine my surprise. At first I thought my friend had some issues. I soon realized of course, that it was a different movie. Ha ha hmm

I gave it a 2 because I got through the whole thing. Its more captivating than Matrix 3


Adapting JG Ballard's novel might have seemed like a good idea to a director as provocative as David Cronenberg, but if any book screamed un-film-able, it's CRASH. It may be filthy, but it's also extremely boring, which is especially disheartening considering the fact that at least two of Cronenberg's earlier films --- THE BROOD and THE FLY --- are masterpieces of modern horror. CRASH features a typically dull James Spader getting entangled with a group of car crash fetishists and having sex with various people including Holly Hunter and a hobbling Roseanna Arquette. Ballard's book was devoid of narrative and Cronenberg makes the mistake of trying to instill one. He's not successful and unfortunately CRASH is crap.


I am at a distinct disadvantage here. I have not seen the first two movies in this series, although I have seen a lot of Larry Cohen films. Fans of the series seem to think this is a good film. Judging it on it's own, it was pretty boring.

You never get a real good look at the maniac cop's (Robert Z'Dar) face, but what I did see was pretty grim. The death scenes seem to be staged to eat up the most film, not to give any thrills. Maybe if I saw the NC-17 Director's Cut, I may be more impressed.

The ending with the car chase with Z'Dar, Caitlin Dulany, and Robert Davi was pretty intense. best part of the movie.


Matt Cordell is back from the dead for a third go-round, although I'm not sure anyone cared at this point except for rabid MANICA COP fans. Cordell, who died in the last flick, is resurrected through voodoo, and is now hot on the trail of several miscreants involved in the shooting of a fellow officer Cordell is very fond of. I missed part of this early '90s low-budget quickie, but it was pleasing to see Cordell wracking up the body count in various, gruesome ways. Problem is, the overall film is pretty static, and Cordell simply ain't Jason or Freddy. The interest wanes pretty fast, even with that grand B-movie master Robert Forster as a doctor who ends up with his brains scrambled. Stick with the first film in the series, which is funny and scary and exciting, all at the same time.


The supernatural, vengeful police officer is back for a third installment, this time acting as guardian angel for a wrongfully accused female cop. Standard stalk and slash picture, yet well acted and directed, thus making it oddly interesting and watchable, though the violence isn't for the squeamish (especially the director's cut which was originally given an "NC-17" rating).

*1/2 out of ****


Look, it's the third one, so you already know it's bad. And "Maniac Cop" wasn't good enough to warrant the second installment, so you know it's even worse. But how much worse? Awful, approaching God-awful.

When Maniac Cop goes on a killing spree, a reporter exclaims, "What happened here can ONLY be described as a black rainbow of death."

1-- Rainbows are not black, and can never be. 2-- Rainbows are harmless, and can never inflict pain or death. 3-- A news reporter, one valuable to his agency, might find another way to describe the aftermath of a killing spree. "A black rainbow of death" is not the ONLY way to describe the given situation.

This is what you're in for.


This lackluster Errol Flynn oater qualifies as one of his minor efforts. Clocking in at a sheer 73 minutes, "Montana" doesn't waste its time getting down to basics, but the narrative has its lapses. One character shows up and then is gone without an explanation. The performances are good and the Warner Brothers production values are bed-rock. Seasoned western writers such as James R. Webb and Borden Chase penned the screenplay, but they deliver little in the way of memorable dialogue and there are absolutely no surprises in this formulaic horse opera. Some of the situations, like our hero being duped into riding an unbreakable bronco, are old hat.

Basically, Morgan Lane (Errol Flynn of "The Sea Hawk") plunges his flock of sheep into cattle country in 1879 and the cowboys refuse to tolerate these sheep-nanigans. No sooner has Lane and his flock entered cattle country than the cowboys descend on them at night with their guns blazing death. An unarmed, young Mexican shepherd becomes the first casualty with a bullet in the back. The following day Lane and company encounter Papa Otto Schultz (S.Z. Sakall of "Casablanca") who drives his peddler's wagon into their camp. Lane and Papa Otto become partners almost instantly and the two ride into Fort Humboldt to peddle his wares. Initially, Lane receives a chilly reception in the Little Big Horn Saloon where Slim Reeves (Ian MacDonald of "High Noon") goads him into a showdown after he labels Lane a sheep-man. Although he knows that it isn't any of his business, a bearded, leathery-looking Tecumseh Burke (Paul E. Burns of "Son of Paleface") pokes his nose into the confrontation. The older gunman offers Lane the use of his hardware since our hero doesn't pack a pistol. Tecumseh warns Lane that the trigger is tied back and he will have to fan the weapon. Slim shoves the holstered revolver and gun belt at Lane. Everybody clears out of the way so the two can shoot it out. Tecumseh starts the countdown to three, but the bushwhacking skunk that Slim is tries to shuck his six-shooter on two. Lane blows the revolver neatly out of his adversary's fist as easily as he might blow out a candle. The ruffian apologizes because he insists no sheepman could possibly wield a shooting iron with such dexterity.

"Montana" features a romance between the principal players. Predictably, it doesn't take our hero long to meet, greet, and get sweet with cattle queen Maria Singleton (Alexis Smith of "San Antonio"), even though she is engaged to marry rancher Rod Ackroyd. Lane has Maria eating out of his hand after he wagers that he can ride a bronco that nobody else has managed to stay aboard for a full minute. Sneaky Reeves whittles away at the cinch and Lane barely missing staying in the leather long enough. Apparently, the colossal loss of money that Papa sacrificed not only drove him out of his partnership with Lane but also out of the movie. Papa vanishes and is never heard from again. Meanwhile, Maria decides to lease Lane some land to run his steers on since he didn't tame the bronco. At this point, things take a turn for the worse for our protagonist. Inexplicably, Lane's sheep dog Jeanne prances into town that same day that Lane steps outside the bank with Maria with the lease for the land. Reeves and his cohorts expose Lane as a sheepman when the mutt goes to him. Naturally, Maria is furious, but what she doesn't know is that her fiancée has been two-timing her with the lawman's girlfriend. Indeed, the lawman, Sheriff Jake Overby (Lane Chandler of "Samson and Delilah") doesn't know that he, too, is being two-timed.

Meantime, the ornery cattlemen cannot shed their deep-seated prejudice toward the mutton-minded Lane. Lane argues that sheep and cattle can get along together. He has seen it in Mexico, but the cattlemen don't believe him. Gunslinging cattleman Rod Ackroyd (Douglas Kennedy of "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold") leads the charge against Lane and his sheep and bites the dust. The showdown in front street at the end of the action looks like a mild imitation of "Red River" with our colorful heroine shooting the man that she loves. Flynn was looking a mite long in the tooth when he made this oater and the alcohol had robbed him of his spontaneity but not his charm. He looks a little more heavyset than usual. Smith doesn't look like she has changed since their last collaboration on "San Antonio" except that her outfits aren't as flamboyant. Mind you, she is a bit more hard-hearted and tough as a cattle queen who lost her father and brother in the war against the sheep herders.

"Montana" doesn't rank in the same league with Flynn's more prestigious westerns like "Dodge City," "Virginia City," and "They Died With Their Boots On." In fact, "Montana" rates as one of his least appealing westerns. At least the Technicolor makes this modest western look good. Strangely, the peddler that Sakall plays vanishes inexplicably from the action. If you want to see a genuinely entertaining cattle versus sheep western, watch director George Marshall's comedy western "The Sheepman" (1958) with Glenn Ford.


Errol Flynn, as a sheep-herder? Say it ain't sew! No wonder Flynn drank his way through this turgid Western. I'd be pulling the wool over your eyes by saying Flynn doesn't mail it in. Lots of short scenes with many edits plus obvious studio cuts against outdoor backdrops. Flynn's first film in 1950 but the miles and trials were taking a toll on Errol. His eyes were too bloodshot to shoot some scenes.

Nevertheless, the Technicolor cinematography (Calabasas Ranch)is first rate plus production values make up for the drab characters. It's tough to care about anyone except beautiful, flaming redhead, Alexis Smith. I've never seen whiter teeth in my life. Cute little scar on her chin too. Flynn and Smith have some nice scenes plus sing a fun little ditty: Reckon, I'm in love! Seriously, it's not bad! A sheep-herder invades cattle country! If this sounds like a bum steer of a film, you're probably right but it's Flynn in his final decade. He went downhill fast from here but "amoung other things", he still looks good next to Alexis.


I think trashiness is a form of art, seriously. But trashy cinema is the kind of thing that needs to be done by someone who truly understands that this sub-genre requires hard work and great imagination. I'm convinced director Deodato has no clue of what I'm talking about. He wants to shock the audience but he commits a series of unpardonable mistakes that ruin material perfectly suited for what is fondly known as exploitation cinema. "House On The Edge Of The Park" has a strong cult following, but I found the film silly and boring. Sure, there is plenty of gratuitous nudity and violence here, but Deodato forgot a crucial element in the creation of trash: you have to be able to force the viewer to love their own feelings of inadequacy. The film simply never made me feel anything, negative or positive. I think the reason I found this movie so uninteresting is because you are never asked to identify with either the hunters or the prey. It is all so bland, so insipid, and seriously devoid of energy. Even the usually animated cult figure David Hess (who was better utilized by Wes Craven in the sleaze classic "The Last House on the Left"), looks bored. Don't be fooled by its reputation, this film is a big snooze.


I really don't know what I expected going into this movie. After all, it's directed by Ruggero Deodato, the genius behind *Cannibal Holocost*. Here's the story in a nutshell: Hess, a rapist/killer, and Radice, his dimwit buddy, are two low-lifes who crash a high society party, and rape, torture, beat and humiliate everyone there.

This movie really doesn't have much going for it. Hess is very scummy, and Radice...I don't know what his problem is. The rest of the cast, the victims, are fairly unlikeable, and are very difficult to sympathize with. If you're able to sit through 90 minutes of terribly depressing exploitation, you may enjoy the ending, but I suspect your finger will have pressed "stop" long before then. For Masochists Only.


David Hess virtually replays his "Last House on the Left" role in this very bad Italian exploitation movie. He plays a perverted greaseball named Alex who spends his free time raping and strangling women. At the garage where he works, some snotty rich kids pull in to get their car worked on and Alex finds himself drawn to the attractive Lisa (Annie Belle), so he decides to follow them to a party, dragging along his retarded co-worker Ricky (Giavanni Lombardo Radice who frequently uses the Anglacized name John Morghen). Well at the party, it doesn't take long for Alex's bad side to come out as he proceeds to terrorize the people there. Some of the men are beaten, all of the women are stripped naked at one point or another and Alex tries to coerce Ricky into joining in on the fun. During one rape scene, the female "victim" seems like she could care less about it. There is ample opportunity for the party guests to turn the tables on their attackers, but it takes them forever to do so. It's very annoying to watch, but then there's one of those out-of-left-field endings that's supposed to justify why everyone acts brain dead throughout the entire movie. Sorry but I didn't buy it!

I have no clue why this movie has a favorable score and reviews! It's just plain inept! Mostly terrible acting, cringe-worthy dialogue, completely unimaginative directing, almost no plot to speak of and that final twist I mentioned is so contrived and unlikely you'll want to smash the DVD when it's over with. The pluses are the photography is decent, the main theme song is sort of creepy, a couple of the actors were tolerable (namely Christian Borromeo and Lorraine De Selle, the rest of the cast either overacted or acted with all the enthusiasm of a tree stump) and it piles on full nudity and sexual scenes. There is really not much in the way of gore, but a lot of violence or sexually violent scenarios that might make it uncomfortable for some people to watch. I just found is ridiculous and amateurish; too badly made to really be effective or offensive.


As a fan of extreme cinema, I decided to buy Cannibal Holocaust to see how far it truly goes. Although it cost £18.99, I decided to buy it anyway because I heard it also featured Deodato's other film House On The Edge Of The Park, a film which I had heard quite a bit of hype about. Having watched them both, I have to say that by comparison, Cannibal Holocaust felt like an absolute masterpiece. Normally, I can watch B-movies and even enjoy them, but HOTEOTP bored me to death. There is actually nothing of merit. The razor cuts looked like Biro marks. And as for the acting...it was like watching a porn movie without the porn (except for a few scenes...) I was expecting a whole lot but received so little. There seriously is no redeeming quality whatsoever, and I advise fans of shock films, horrors, thrillers or whatever other sub-genre this film has masqueraded as to steer well clear of this faecal abomination.


First of all, let me say that I am just beginning to get my 'Italian Horror' cinema education so I'm still getting used to the unique aspects of the genre. This is my first Ruggero Deodato film (Next on my list to view is his 'Cannibal Holocaust' film). So far, vintage Italian horror has an obviously different tone indeed from vintage and especially new American horror in the way that there's an unnerving sense as one is watching (if you haven't seen the particular film before or many in the genre, like me!) that they're really going to push the envelope. Naw... make that TOTALLY cross the line with depicting extremely explicit violence and gore, breaking many American film taboos. I find many recent American horror films to have a tongue-and-cheek feel to them, making the blood and gore into an almost circus-like show. Villains are comical, shooting off these one-liners as they slay victims or vice versa. Plus, in Italian films, the action is usually accompanied by this bizarre dialogue and/or THAT CRAZY MUSIC. I gotta say, the two songs they use in this movie, especially the disco one, as cheesy-bad as they are, have been haunting me ever since. However, 'House on the Edge of the Park' didn't quite live up to my anxious expectation. I WAS very nervous and fearful throughout the first half of the film in not knowing what to expect after psycho Alex (David Hess) and his friend hit the party. But, surprisingly, it wasn't TOO horrible... not like I had expected anyway. First of all, there wasn't as much violent rape depiction as I thought there would be. I thought there would be women assaulted left and right. But I guess there's only so much harm two hoodlums can do. Aside from the rape at the beginning of the film, the two other sex scenes shown looked downright consensual(!)... even titillating. Lots of female nudity in this one, guys. Yet the scene with Alex and Cindy and his straight razor WAS pretty unsettling. The idea of being randomly sliced at with a razor definitely gives me the Hobie-jeebies. But most creepy to me was the was how the rest of the part guests just stood by and watched this happen to their friend for as long as they did. I thought the blond guy (Tom) was such a wimp! In fact, through most of the scenes at the house, the victimized guests all seem so passive, pretty much just allowing Alex and Ricky do what they wanted to do. To me, they just didn't seem scared or freaked out enough in the beginning when bad stuff started to happen. But I guess that is, again, all part of that unique "tone" with Italian horror that is so disarming.

Perhaps the MOST interesting to me on the unrated DVD that I watched (the 'Shriek Show' edition) were the extras that include an interview with "David Hess and Family." First of all, the interview is filmed very informally at what looks like the Hess home. I have no idea who the interviewer is, but his questions are heard on camera, which is very unusual. Amusingly, some of the interviewer's questions are somewhat pointless and tactless, in my opinion. This is especially evident when the interviewer tries to touch on the subject of David Hess' wife, Karoline Mardeck, also being in the film. Mr. Hess quickly shuts him down and in a somewhat menacing tone tells him something to the effect of, "I thought I told you we weren't going to talk about that..." Weird! After the David Hess interview, when his wife Karoline is being interviewed by herself, the interviewer tries to again bring up the subject of her being in the film and she just looks away uncomfortably saying "I don't want to talk about it." Well, it's no wonder. Karoline Mardeck plays the girl that David Hess' character Alex rapes and kills in her car in the beginning of the film! Her name is Susan in the credits but I'm pretty sure I never heard her name uttered in the film. It's funny, because David Hess casually and openly discusses his relationship and interaction with the other actors in the film, but when it comes to talking about his wife's role in the film, he understandably becomes guarded. It's very awkward how they BOTH become so dismissive about it, like trying to deny it happened. But in a way, I have to say that I respect Mr. Hess for not wanting to talk about this degrading role his wife played in order to protect her/their privacy. I'm not sure if they were married at the time it was filmed, but in listening to Karoline recall during her interview how/when she and David met, it was on a plane to NYC in 1975 so it seems like they at least had been in some type of relationship for several years before this movie was filmed. In any case, I'm sure that's the LAST thing any married couple would want to talk about--how one sexually brutalized the other on film for all posterity. Amid all the sexploitation and violence surrounding this film, that was a humanizing aspect that comforted me in a strange way. What I also got from the interview is that David Hess, although strange, is a pretty deep and real guy with some interesting insights into the characters he's played and the movies he's made. Plus, the fact that he's had a fairly successful career as a musician (even composing songs for his other notorious horror flick, 'Last House on the Left') makes him even more intriguing as an actor and person.

As for 'House on the Edge of the Park,' I only recommend if you are a fan of the Italian horror genre, sexploitation films, and of course, David A. Hess.


To call LA CASA SPERDUTA NEL PARCO (a.k.a. HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK) trash would be an insult to trash. Comparing it to Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT would be an insult to that not-so-great film, as well. Even writing a review of it requires more energy than it deserves, but I'm going to anyway, so potential viewers will be forewarned and forearmed.

"PLOT" SYNOPSIS: The "plot" basically is a synopsis: A pair of thugs are invited to a soiree at the titular abode, and wreak havoc for most of the 91-minute running time, raping, maiming, and just generally being bad buggers.

Leading the circus of bad behaviour is Alex, a boorish garage mechanic whose idea of consensual sex is raping young women at razor's point, and his dopey sidekick Ricky, who meekly follows wherever Alex goes, and does pretty much everything Alex tells him to do. This includes the aforementioned treachery at the party, easily the most unpleasant party ever captured on film, and that's before all the bad stuff happens. There are no characters in this film, only bad actors wearing bad costumes, spewing dialogue so bad it rarely even approaches unintentional comedy (although there are mercifully a few moments of that, as well).

It is clear what the filmmakers were trying to do: shock and disturb the audience. The only thing shocking and disturbing about the film is that it was ever made in the first place. Implausible from the get-go, with wretched dialogue ("It's too late to boogie") and abysmal performances, especially the lead, David A. Hess, who looks like the love child of Tom Jones and Telly Savalas, and who tries to chew the scenery, but only manages to bite. When he tries to be scary, he's almost funny, and when he tries to be funny, he's just scary. His performance wants to be over-the-top, but in the end, just wants. Why anyone would invite him to a party is a good indication of the collective I.Q. of the partiers, who pretty much deserve everything that happens to them, because they clearly outnumber their captors, and have ample opportunities to disarm and even disembowel them, but blithely allow Alex to terrorize them in lots of nasty ways.

*SPOILER* Their acquiescence is explained in easily one of the dumbest "twist" endings you're likely to see. *END SPOILER*

What else can be said about a party no one would want to attend, peopled by characters no one would ever want to meet? To call the film dreary would be too complimentary. It is a waste of celluloid, with all the style and substance of a 70s home movie, ninety minutes you will never get back, and the only thing you may take away from the experience is the dubious pleasure of giving this turkey a vote of 1.


This movie is so bad, but has the right elements to cause a cult following. Two psychopathic garage mechanics, Alex(David Hess)and Ricky(Giovanni Radice), invite themselves to a party of social climbing snobbish types. This 'with-it' crowd, begin taunting and making fun of this low life duo without knowing the mayhem to come. Alex and his mentally challenged friend decide to have their own brand of fun and take everyone hostage and begin humiliating, torturing and raping for their own amusement. But how is it that a group of people are threatened by one straight razor? Alas...there is a twist; the two tormentors don't realize that they have actually been set up as the guest have their own agenda. Other cast members: Annie Belle, Christian Borromeo, Brigitte Petronio and Lorraine De Selle. Redeeming, no way. Worth watching, kinda.


I noticed the IMDB give the title of this movie as EDIE & PEN where as in Britain it`s called DESERT GAMBLE which is a far more exciting title . What does a movie named DESERT GAMBLE conjure up to you ? A war film set in the North African campaign of 1942 ? A heist movie of likable geezers going to Vegas to rip off the mob ? Or perhaps even a disaster movie about a plane crashing into the Sahara . Nothing as exciting as that happens in this film so I guess EDIE & PEN is a more accurate title since it doesn`t really conjure up anything <br /><br />And nothing really happens in the movie either , it`s basically a low concept dialogue driven chick flick about two women who meet in a red neck bar , one of whom has a sort of relationship with a red neck and the two women swap life stories . I guess girls who are not expecting too much might enjoy it and it is very inoffensive but that`s hardly massive praise


I lived in Reno for 18 years and was there when this movie was filmed. I had no idea it was being filmed and believe me Reno is the Biggest Little City in the World, and if a movie is being filmed there it's almost impossible to not know. Yet, I had no idea this was going on. The concept of the story is reasonable, but the concept is all that is delivered. All the fluff story propped up around the concept just is not good. Scott Glen seems to be just about the level of a leering drunk and how Pen "falls" for him is just not apparent. Jennifer Tilly is lovely and carries her part very well, but Scott Glen and Stockard Channing's characters require more script quality before they could be held responsible for the out come. (Bad writing can not be overcome by the best of them.) As I watched I saw them drive from the Hilton to the Airport through downtown and rolled my eyes at the director's ploy to present Reno's bright lights as window dressing. If you don't know Reno, all is OK and the director's trick is well received.


To put it simply: a lack of respect. GAME OF DEATH: THE ROBERT CLOUSE VERSION ranks (in two senses of the word) right alongside Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Clouse and Wood weren't the first graverobbers on the scene, to be sure, but they both came away from the boneyard with unclean hands. Like Burke and Hare, they was just lookin' to pocket some loose change. Which they did. Nor were they alone. Years after the fact, DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (based, we're told, on Clouse's own book) would come along and reopen the old wound(s). Like most Bruce Lee fans, I suffered through the seemingly endless exploitation cycle that began the moment he died. It wasn't easy, because not a single one of the purported bioflix came anywhere near the Truth. DRAGON likewise created its own distorted "reality," with yet another wannabe look-alike choreographed through yet more over-the-top, badly done fight scenes that did nothing more than add yet another layer of tarnish to the memory of a man who deserves better. GAME OF DEATH is an insult to the intelligence. Now that we have BRUCE LEE: A WARRIOR'S JOURNEY, there's no need to even go back and revisit this one.


This was the film Bruce Lee was working on when he died. He had stopped working on this film to work on Enter the Dragon and never had the chance to come back and finish this. The good news is that Lee shot a good 30 minutes worth of footage for Game of Death. The bad news is Robert Clouse came around and tried to make an entire film leading up to the Bruce Lee footage that was shot including Bruce Lee look-a-likes and cardboard cut-outs. The entire film is pretty awful since the story is lame and the acting is over dramatic. I'm surprised Sammo Hung agreed to be a part of this at all. The archived footage of Bruce Lee just seems forced and thrown in to try and make a buck while the actual footage of Lee's funeral just feels tasteless and inconsiderate. Clouse would unfortunately give birth to something that would spawn many films including Bruce Lee clones starring the likes of Bruce Li. The actual Bruce Lee footage is some of his best, but is shown in its entirety in the documentary A Warrior's Journey included in the special edition of Enter the Dragon. If you're a Bruce Lee fan, don't waste your time with this. Stick to the films he actually completed and watch A Warrior's Journey to see the reconstruction of Lee's intended cut of this film.


I think Game of Death shouldn't have went ahead with it's release, Bruce Lee would've been disappointed in it as towards the end of the film after fighting Hikim, you could obviously see that it was no longer Bruce playing the part of Billy Lo and it must've been a kid or someone drunk editing that scene showing Bruce with candles and a punch bag behind him and when it cut to his replacement, there was nothing behind him. The director of this film probably just went ahead with the release to make money and people that are fans of Bruce's work, including his family, must've been left disappointed as well, I certainly was.


I would have preferred that they never made it as it is such a mess. I do wonder though what they could do with todays special effects and computer graphics? If anyone had never seen a Bruce Lee film and then saw this, they would wonder what all the fuss was about. Even some of the footage used was probably not the final scenes Bruce would have used. He was very good at camera angles and editing and this film falls flat on both those counts. There was also much more footage available that never made it into this film, just why I do now know (Check out the documentary called 'Bruce Lee: A Warriors Journey' and you will see more action that was meant for this film.) It would have been better to have never made Game of Death and most Bruce fans have it simply to fast forward to seeing the parts that he was actually in.


A masterwork of exploitation and grave robbery worthy of the late Edward D. Wood Jr. Approximately 11 minutes of footage of the late Bruce Lee, including film of his funeral and his body in his coffin, are used to sell a movie about a supposedly dead actor avenging himself after being killed' for not paying protection to organised crime. There's an uncomfortable echo of the death of Brandon Lee when Lee's character dies' after someone replaces a blank in the gun that shoots him for a stunt sequence with a real bullet. If they'd used all the real footage of Lee either before or after this, the film would have made much more sense: instead, they used alleged look-alikes, their faces sometimes hidden by false beards or motorcycle helmets, intercut with close-ups of the real Lee. If you're a martial arts fan, fast-forward to the climactic fight scenes; if you're not, the only possible reasons to see this movie are (i) Colleen Camp's cleavage and (ii) the sheer ghoulish awfulness of this barely animated corpse.


I recently bought the DVD - Game of Death (Special Edition) which features 3hrs of bonus footage. Release in 93 it features the original film which is poor (I gave it 4/10) but shows 40+ minutes of Bruce Lee in action in the Pagoda.

What is clear from this is that Game of Death as Bruce Lee wanted would have

been a totally different film. Instead of one man (Bruce) fighting his way up the pagoda, there are 3. Bruce demonstrates the versatility of his fighting method against a series of exponents in his unique style. Any fan of martial arts will find this footage riveting. Also on the DVD are interviews with Dan Inosanto, the stick and nunchak

exponent, and George Lazenby, plus bios of the other characters in the pagoda. Dan Inosanto also gives a Jeet Kune Do clinic.


I was very annoyed after watching this film.

I am a huge Bruce Lee fan, and this film would've been the best film ever in my opinion if it wasn't for Bruce Lee's very unfortunate death. The original story line was that Bruce Lee's wife and daughter get kidnapped (his character's wife and daughter), and to rescue them, Bruce Lee would have to fight up a temple - which has five floors - fighting an expert on a particular martial arts form on each floor.

However, this film is very disrespectful, because it shows real footage of Bruce Lee's funeral - including his actual dead body - just to further the plot of the story, which is the lead character (who is meant to be Bruce Lee) faking his death.

This film would have receieved a -10/10 if it was not for Bruce Lee's excellent fight scenes at the end, so this film therefore receives a 3/10. The fight scenes at the end are 10/10 though, just a shame they did not have all the original footage until recently e.g. the knun-chuck fight Bruce Lee has.


Bruce Lee stars as Billy Lo, an action star (of the martial arts variety) who mobsters are trying to force to sign with them, however after taking a couple of beatings and an assassination attempt, Lo fakes his death, has reconstructive surgery and looks to teach the mobsters what the meaning of "No" is. Game Of Death is Bruce Lee's worst movie. This is an obvious truth. In terms of quality Game Of Death is sometimes even lower than Bruce Le or Bruce Li's movies. The sequence where Bruce Lee's face is pasted over the mirror (As others have mentioned) is truly as shoddy as it gets and overall the movie has a few alright action sequences in the beginning but it's all very sub-par stuff. That is until Bruce Lee takes on Danny Inasanto and Kareem Abdoul Jabbar and of course which boosts its rating into low mediocrity. Also of notice (Though it's all blatantly obvious even to those who have never seen a Bruce Lee movie) is the use of a stand in, in which the stand in wears sunglasses, bandage over his face, an old man's costume and of course a hilariously bad fake beard. All of this is laced with Bruce Lee footage from his earlier movies. Usually to a closeup of Lee stock footage then followed by the stunt double's back. In other words this is a very badly made movie but what makes it worth watching at least on a genre level is the climax which is awesome in its crispness and pace. In fact the only thing that leaves an impression on one after watching this, is how much better Lee's original version would've easily been had he lived to complete it because as we know Robert Clouse added 90% new footage and made it into what we got here. Still worth a look for die hard fans (Like me) who will watch anything with Bruce Lee. Because of the awesome climax Game Of Death earns mediocrity the same way an A+ on a test would bring a grade of a D+ up to a C-.

* * out of 4-(Fair)


People whom have called this film "fun" are basically saying that they wouldn't mind if someone ripped apart their final work and turned it into one of the worst movies of all time, only saved by those who enjoy it for being entertaining. I'm sorry to say that this is the most disrespectful work I have ever seen, basically it's liking digging up a corpse and putting it on strings. Maybe I was just to loyal of a fan to the great one, because I can't watch this without turning it off. Those who like it, have somehow found a vehicle to ride where this seems to be entertaining. I picked up the Enter the Dragon 2 DISC DVD, and if you want the fighting footage from GOD, it's in there. So basically this film has no use anymore, and hopefully people stop watching it.

The buzz on this film from my idiot friends continued to tell me that this film was "good", so I believed them. I had seen the four main Lee films (Chinese Connection, Way of the Dragon, Big Boss and Enter the Dragon) a bunch of times, and wondered why this guy hadn't been mentioned to me earlier. I popped it in and was completely struck with a brick of hatred for this piece of crap. Horrible EVERYTHING is the only phrase I knew of this, and how people could take this for entertainment is beyond me.

Bruce is still the greatest martial artist whom has ever lived. His presence alone made him the martial arts genre worldwide, he was truly a man before his time. But to see something like this that just pains me every time I see it, it just shouldn't exist. Anybody who likes this film like a "Mystery Science Theater kind of way" should be destroyed. Hopefully this craptastic waste of time is forgotten and people destroyed for ever liking this film.


Movie tells the story of Billy Lo, a famous Kung fu action star that is being bullied into joining a syndicate. He eventually takes them all out. Game of Death is truly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Bruce Lee was used in this film only for someone to gain profit. He is only in the last 10 to 20 minutes with a few cuts here and there. As others have already mentioned that was all that he had filmed years before and they decided to use stock footage and other actors to fill in the rest of the move....... about 90% of it! Most of the time you have an actor dressed up with hair in his eyes and large glasses like the kind wives where when the get beaten, to cover up that its not Bruce Lee. The fights scenes are laughable garbage, not good, but very funny dew the over dramatic wah ta stuff. Lee's battles at the end are the only redeemable part of this movie and you should skip most of the movie to retain your brain matter. Besides for Lee most of the people in this movie are in poor shape and it surprises me that any of them ever got into any kind of gym whatsoever. Bruce lee is rolling in his grave over this one. 2 out 10 for this bomb.


I rate this movie a 2 out of 10, two points for having a cool ending credits where they show clips of the real Bruce Lee while a sad tune plays in the background. Other than that this movie is pure junk, most of the movie is played by a Bruce Lee double whose moves aren't as graceful as Bruce Lee's. The story and the dialogue seemed like it was written in five days. Another thing that annoyed me is in one scene they pasted a picture of Bruce Lee's face over the Bruce Lee double with the worst editing I have ever seen. This movie will trick you, because the DVD cover has Bruce Lee's picture on it when it's not even a Bruce Lee movie. This movie shouldn't be worth more than five US dollars.