input: A strange role for Eddie Murphy to take at the height of his career. While there is a lot of the "Eddie Murphy character," he plays a truly decent person. The rest of the cast is good, particularly the lovely Charlotte Lewis. Her character's beauty and serenity held the tone of the film from getting to be too much Murphy.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: to be honest, i didn't watch all of the original 'howling', but those scenes i saw made it obvious that the first howling was a great movie. so great, that seven horrible sequels had to be made. they started off with "Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf". i got this movie on VHS from my uncle sometime ago when he was giving away a bunch of old movies he bought back when Atari was brand new. i just watched it last night, and it wasn't really BAD, it was just weird. i mean, the whole thing with Sybil Danning going three-way with two of her werewolf minions was just out of place and quite disturbing (but kinda hot), Christopher lee about to stab a dead karen as if she's a vampire, etc. actually, this movie was actually like some sort of mish-mash of Dracula and The Lost Boys...except with werewolves, because everything Christopher Lee (whom played Dracula himself) was saying about werewolves pretty much ripped off from every other vampire movie (stake in the heart, garlic, the creature of the night must die AT NIGHT, and the ruler of werewolves lives in TRANSYLVANIA). not much for the acting, but the worst of it came from Annie McEnroe. i swear, at some point in the film i found myself rooting for the werewolves to rip her throat out, because that damn throat always had to say SOMETHING. Anyway, the plot is pretty silly and cliched, so there's no real point in telling you, you could just read about it on Wikipedia. By the way, the thing that really makes me nauseous about this movie is the fact that it's the ONLY film out of all the seven sequels thats related in any way to the original (not counting Howling IV (1988), which was a remake of the original, or in other words, a sequel based on the same novel). so don't see this movie. there's no real horror, hardly any werewolves, and just horrible special fx. 3/10

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: This movie was one of the worst I've ever seen. Pure drivel. How anyone could develop a connection with the heroine, or have empathy for her, is beyond me. I felt I was watching a case history of a schizoid individual with borderline personality disorder. Just terrible.

In its most generous light, this can be seen as an attempt at producing and "art" film - except I could not, for the life of me, find any art in it at all.

If this woman had lived in todays' world, she would have been whisked off to a mental institution and given a couple of days treatment with anti-psychotic medications. That, or simply allowed to roam the streets and become a bag woman. Why other characters in this movie found anything redeeming in her - and tried to aid her in her quest to become an actress - speaks more to their pathology than any convincing characteristics she had that made her worth that effort.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Perhaps the most gripping and intelligent of crooked cop movies is Otto Preminger's 'Where the Sidewalks Ends,' from a really excellent script by Ben Hecht based on the novel 'Night Cry' by Frank Rosenberg...

Dana Andrews is the honest, tough New York policeman, always in trouble with his superiors because he likes his own strong-arm methods as much as he detests crooks... When he hit someone, his knuckles hurt... And the man he wants to hit is a smooth villain (Gary Merrill) who points up the title. 'Why are you always trying to push me in the gutter?' he asks Andrews. 'I have as much right on the sidewalk as you.'

Dana Andrew's obsession and neurosis are implanted in his hidden, painful discovery that he is the son of a thief... His deep hatred of criminals led him to use their own illegal methods to destroy them, and the pursuit of justice became spoiled in private vendetta...

By a twist of irony unique to the film itself, Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney of 'Laura' are united once more, and Andrews now seems to be playing the same detective a few years later, but no longer the romantic, beaten down by his job, by the cheap crooks... This time, he goes too far, and accidentally kills a suspect... The killing is accidental, the victim worthless, yet it is a crime that he knows can break him or send him to jail...

Using his knowledge of police procedure, he covers up his part in the crime, plants false clues, and tries to implicate a gang leader, but cannot avoid investigating the case himself... The double tension of following the larger case through to its conclusion without implicating himself in the murder, is beautifully maintained and the final solution is both logical, satisfying, and in no way a compromise...

The film is one of the best detective films of the 50's, with curious moral values, also one of Preminger's best...

Preminger uses a powerful storytelling technique, projecting pretentious camera angles and peculiar touches of the bizarre in order to externalize his suspense in realism...

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pos/neg ans:
positive