input: If you're a fan of Gothic horror, then you're definitely absolutely guaranteed to LOVE this wondrous Italian 60's film "Castle of Blood". We're really talking about creepily creaking doors, eerie portraits that appear to be moving, spontaneously dying candles although there's no wind and smoke coming from underneath heavy wooden chamber doors. Speaking in terms of atmosphere and style, this masterful piece of Gothic film-making is one of the best out there; just one tiny league below landmarks such as "Black Sunday", "The Three Faces of Fear" and "Curse of the Crying Woman". The prominent directors duo Sergio Corbucci ("The Great Silence", "Django") and Antonio Margheriti ("Cannibal Apocalypse", "Killer Fish") are successful in all areas, including a powerful plot (one that is genuinely nightmare inducing), ultra-sinister scenery and filming locations, stylish black and white photography, spine-chilling music and a brilliant gathering of talented performers. Barbara Steele, starlet of the aforementioned "Black Sunday" and Italian goth-muse number one, shines brightly again as a spiritually tormented character and she's literally surrounded by excellent co-players. One of them, Silvano Tranquilli, even gives away a fairly credential depiction of author Edgar Allan Poe. The story involves him and another wealthy visitor of a countryside tavern challenging a brutal young journalist to accept a morbid wager. If he Alan Foster would survive spending one night in the infamous Blackwood Castle, he receives the astonishing reward of $10 and a newspaper interview with Poe. Needless to say the ordeal is much more dangerous than it sounds, even for somebody like Alan Foster who's a firm non-believer in ghosts and vampires. The night starts out great for him, as he even meets up with the stunningly beautiful woman of his dreams, but gradually he learns that Blackwood Castle is a hellish place where the ghosts of the previously deceased visitors are trapped for all eternity. I don't know about you, but this is seriously one of my favorite horror movie premises of all time. Co-director Antonio Margheriti clearly was proud of this film as well, because he remade it himself a couple of years later as "Web of the Spider". That movie had a handful of trumps, like for example the casting of no less than Klaus Kinski in the role of Edgar Allan Poe, but in general this original is vastly superior. "Castle of Blood" literally oozes with atmosphere and maintains a thoroughly unsettling ambiance throughout. This truly is one of the rare films that can make the hair on your arms and back of the neck rise with fear if you watch it in the right circumstances. Watch it late at night, preferably alone and in a candle lit room, and you'll get an idea about the true definition of horror.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: To those who say that this movie deserves anything below the unflaunting grace that it showed, I disagree. This is an amazing documentary about a shocking day.

IMDB asks us to rate this movie. I beg you to consider the fact that the documentary was made. The courage that it took to shoot this film is most notable. We find that the two brothers are split up when that moment happened. They continue to document the bravest of the brave without knowing about their own and eachother's safety. To judge whether it's nobler to shoot a video of that tragedy or to save the lives as those amazing, amazing firefighters did is not mine to answer. I just know that in 30 years, a class full of children will not know one without the other.

I submit a wholehearted 10. This is why the art of filming was created! To capture the natural emotion that real life offers. You can keep your kung-fu junk. Romance is cute. Action will never reach this level. This movie, 9/11, will be timeless in that it did not glorify itself. It didn't have a sneak-peek. It didn't have all of the blatant vanities that a lion's share of the many movies on the many screens blare. It had class, composure, substance, and it had a record of the day that changed the modern face of America and even the world. It spoke of things inescapable to the eye of the camera. Please consider this movie, as it itself proclaims, a stirring tribute to all of those who fell because of the free, beautiful name of America.

How can you give anything less to a movie that shows, not embellishes, the natural bravery of real people acting in unreal times. I love "The Godfather" but "9/11" is forever a different kind of movie as this is now a different kind of world. It is art without question or questions.

jf

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: I could name plenty of funny movies. There are comedies that set out to be funny, and are. Some movies, like a Gymkata for example, try to be serious but end up funny. The Ladies Man is a film that is desperately trying to be funny, but could not be less funny if it was about a guy who got a lot of chicks in the middle of the wreckage of a nuclear holocaust. It's anti-funny.

I don't think I laughed harder than a chuckle at anything in this movie. It's simply unfunny. It's boring, stupid, inane, annoying, mind-bogglingly bad, but not funny. I don't particularly care for Tim Meadows, or this character from SNL, but I expected better than this.

The movie is completely lacking logic or common sense. It's like the script writer had a bag over his head while he was typing and he couldn't see which keys he was hitting. They tell the "origin" of the Ladies Man, but fail to include a motivation for his bizarre fascination with acting like it's still the seventies. The movie tries to get humor out of a man who appears to pleasuring himself to porn, shortly after he tried to hang himself. This is comedy? I like to consider myself having a pretty keen sense of humor (Spending a lot of time writing comedy as I do), but maybe I'm just not quite bright enough for this film.

Lee Evans, so funny as Tucker in There's Something About Mary, is outrageously bad here. I was pleading with him in my head to shut up.

By the end I was pounding on my chair, muttering under my breath, and had the film gone on any longer, would probably have attempted suicide. This film might not be as bad as Battlefield Earth, but it's the first movie I've seen that's come close.

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pos/neg ans:
negative