Problem: This review is like what?
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- negative
- positive

Review:Forest of the Damned starts out as five young friends, brother & sister Emilio (Richard Cambridge) & Ally (Sophie Holland) along with Judd (Daniel Maclagan), Molly (Nicole Petty) & Andrew (David Hood), set off on a week long holiday 'in the middle of nowhere', their words not mine. Anyway, before they know it they're deep in a forest & Emilio clumsily runs over a woman (Frances Da Costa), along with a badly injured person to add to their problems the van they're travelling in won't start & they can't get any signals on their mobile phones. They need to find help quickly so Molly & Judd wander off in the hope of finding a house, as time goes by & darkness begins to fall it becomes clear that they are not alone & that there is something nasty lurking in the woods...

This English production was written & directed by Johannes Roberts & having looked over several other comments & reviews both here on the IMDb & across the internet Forest of the Damned seems to divide opinion with some liking it & other's not, personally it didn't do much for at all. The script is credited on screen to Roberts but here on the IMDb it lists Joseph London with 'additional screenplay material' whatever that means, the film is your basic backwoods slasher type thing like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) with your basic stranded faceless teenage victims being bumped off but uses the interesting concept of fallen angels who roam the forest & kill people for reason that are never explained to any great deal of satisfaction. Then there's Stephen, played by the ever fantastic Tom Savini, who is never given any sort of justification for what he does. Is he there to get victims for the angels? If so why did he kill Andrew by bashing his head in? The story is very loose, it never felt like a proper film. The character's are poor, the dialogue not much better & the lack of any significant story makes it hard to get into it or care about anything that's going on. Having said that it moves along at a reasonable pace & there are a couple of decent scenes here.

Director Johannes doesn't do anything special, it's not a particularly stylish or flash film to look at. There's a few decent horror scenes & the Tom Savini character is great whenever he's on screen (although why didn't he hear Judd breaking the door down with an axe while escaping with Molly?) & it's a shame when he gets killed off. There are a couple of decent gore scenes here, someone has their head bashed in, there's a decapitation, someone gets shotgun blasted, someone throat is bitten out, someones lips are bitten off & someone is ripped in half. There is also a fair amount of full frontal female nudity, not that it helps much.

Technically Forest of the Damned is OK, it's reasonably well made but nothing overly special or eye-catching. This was shot in England & Wales & it's quite odd to see an English setting for a very American themed backwards horror. The acting is generally pretty poor save for Savini who deserves to be in better than this. Horror author Shaun Hutson has an embarrassing cameo at the end & proves he should stick to writing rather than acting.

Forest of the Damned was a pretty poor horror film, it seems to have fans out there so maybe I'm missing something but it's not a film I have much fondness for. Apart from one or two decent moments there's not much here to recommend.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?
OPTIONS:
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Review:I'm a big fan of B5, having caught on only at the end of season three. I faithfully watched all the previous seasons when it was syndicated, concluding that it was one of the most well-thought out story arcs to ever hit television. Even the filler episodes were interesting. The movies, also, were well produced and as entertaining as anything to hit the theaters.

Which brings us to 'River of Souls'. Naturally, after seeing everything else, I had high expectations. Martin Sheen appears to be acting in an Ed Wood movie rather than a serious Sci-Fi story. The story itself, might have looked good in outline form, even made it to the story board. However, it suffers obviously when it came time to filling this notion out into a two hour movie. There are no special effects to keep us entertained in the total absence of a compelling story. There are places where they were obviously short of time and just improvised the dialog to fill the story out. Had this made the regular season, it would have rated among the worst of the episodes.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?
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Review:So often with Stephen King adaptations, you just get a collection of characters reciting dialogue from the books. This really captures the heart of the book. Maybe because they DON'T use large chunks of text straight from the book, but it's a bit more of an improv of the events in the story. A big part of its success is Miko Hughes as baby Gage. Dale Midkiff and Denise "Tasha Yar" Crosby really act like his parents. There's a scene where Louis is cuddling Gage, and they are very natural together. Fred Gwynne is WONDERFUL. He nails the Maine accent perfectly without lapsing into parody, and is wise and warm just like Jud should be. (8 out of 10)
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?
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- positive

Review:I remember watching "Lost Missile" (actually throwing a fit until my brother and several cousins at whose home I was an overnight guest agreed to watch it with me - I was, from time to time, the Eric Cartman of the 1960s - sorry, guys) and being somewhat embarrassed when the sustained wave of million-degree heat emerged as a plot device - even as a second-grader I knew that a mere missile just couldn't carry the energy around for that much heat or devastation over more than the duration and limited radius of a nuclear detonation.

My inflicting that turkey on loving relatives was a self-punishing crime.

The film's production values were very good. The acting isn't bad (apart from the Shatnerism of the actor who played governor's aide that someone else here mentioned).

But the idea of a missile Easy-Baking the surface of the Earth by means of the heat of its exhaust... no.

How'd the people at "Mystery Science Theater 3000" miss "The Lost Missile," anyway?

It's a great classic of unintentional comedy - watch it if you want something to drink beer to some weekend.
+++++++++
A:
negative