Review – See No Evil (2006)

And while you’re at it, don’t see this movie either. You can learn everything you need to know about this picture in the first flash of the production company credit for the WWE. A psycho – not surprisingly played by a guy who appears to be a wrestler – ends up in the same run-down hotel with a clean-up crew from the local penitentiary. Gory high jinks ensue. I’m assuming Syfy cut a chunk out of it, because the ad breaks were extra long to make up for the truncated running time. However, I have a hard time imagining that more gore and un-blurred boob shots would have transformed this into a more worthwhile viewing experience. The closest it ever comes to clever is a Friday the 13th-ish twist at the end. Otherwise it’s just brutish and predictable. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Salome

Leave it to Hollywood in 1953 to suck all the sexuality right out of one of the racier parts of the Bible. Rita Hayworth in all her blondeness stars as the title character, which is scarcely the most egregious liberty taken with the story. Indeed, by the end the whole thing was so thoroughly upside down that I was starting to wonder if John the Baptist was even going to be executed. I don’t mind a little tinkering here and there, especially if it’s just additional back-story. But this goes too far. Further, I was surprised that a production that didn’t wince at rewriting scripture suddenly turned timid when approaching the erotic elements of the tale. In particular, Hayworth’s performance of the legendary dance looks better suited for a gymnastics competition than for a royal seduction. Even by the standards of the day, this is weak stuff. See if desperate

Review – Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home

This is the most “trekky” of all the Star Trek movies. Though they’re all laced with at least some inside jokes, this one’s less of a chocolate chip cookie and more of a big brick of waxy chocolate. As our heroes prepare to return to headquarters to face justice for their shenanigans in number three, the Earth is besieged by a probe that apparently speaks the language of long-extinct humpback whales. So using the time travel slingshot nonsense from “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” they journey back to 1986 to snatch a couple of pre-extinction whales and return with them to the future. Almost all of the rest of the movie is a string of bargain basement culture shock gags as our heroes struggle to avoid seeming too weird in their new environment. Thank goodness they end up in San Francisco, where they have a little less trouble blending in. Large chunks of the picture are strings of mediocre jokes that you won’t get unless you’re familiar with the series characters and their personal quirks. So don’t make this your point of entry into the Star Trek universe. At least it isn’t quite as pointless as the last one. Mildly amusing

Review – Berlin Express

The shambles of Germany in the wake of World War Two provides the background for this spy mystery. An international (British, French, German, Russian and of course American) group ends up stuck together when a dead body turns up in their railroad car. The ad hoc squad must put their differences aside and cooperate to figure out what’s going on and expose a plot by unreformed Nazis. The story is one of those twisting, turning, don’t-let-your-attention-drift-or-you’ll-miss-something espionage pieces. However, my favorite parts were the exteriors, which were shot amidst the rubble of bomb-damaged Frankfurt and Berlin in 1948. Mildly amusing

Review – The Sword of Doom

Finally, a swordfighting movie with some swordfighting in it. Ace swordsman Ryunosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) lives for the kill. It brings a creepy little smile to his otherwise emotionless face every time he slices someone up. Which is frequently. Even the gory showdown at the end doesn’t play at all like one would expect. If you’re a fan of kenjitsu or kendo, then you’re certainly in the right place. And beyond that, Ryunosuke is a delightfully evil character. Lighting, cinematography and editing all compliment the action. Yeah, it drags in spots. But overall this should thoroughly entertain anyone who likes this sort of thing. Worth seeing

Review – Alien Hunter

Despite a title that implies some stupid crap made for the Sci Fi Channel, this actually turned out to be better than I thought it would be. To be sure, any movie about alien invaders dug out of the ice in Antarctica is going to invite comparison to The Thing, especially when it “borrows” a little incidental footage from the Carpenter classic. And I didn’t care for the squishy CE3K ending. However, it had a good moment or two before it got there. James Spader plays a communications expert summoned to an Antarctic research station after the team there discovers a radio-signal-emitting pod. Mildly amusing

Review – Zathura

Let me lead with the obvious: this is Jumanji in outer space. Kids start playing a board game that upsets reality and turns their world into an outer space adventure. Along the way they learn some good lessons. The production sports a load of expensive effects. Chris Van Allsburg wrote the source story. If you liked this the first time around, odds are you’ll get a kick out of this as well. Mildly amusing

Review – They Come Back

This is the closest I’ve ever seen anyone come to making a happy ghost story (at least this side of Casper). After her parents are killed in a car crash, a girl is beset by ghostly visitations. So her guardian hires a shrink to figure out what’s going on. The whole thing was low-key, with few scares of any kind. So the experience was comfortable but a bit dull. Mildly amusing

Review - Fear House

Several 20-somethings join their writer friend/relative for a weekend in her creepy country estate. Evil forces in the house imprison them inside and then slowly drive them all blah blah blah. Truth be told, I lost interest in this around 15 minutes in and then worked on something else while it ran in the background. Some semi-eerie ghost effects drew me back in now and again, but mostly it was easy to ignore. See if desperate

Review – The Sand Pebbles

Steve McQueen stars as a plays-by-his-own-rules engineer on the San Pueblo, an American gunboat stuck in Chinese waters during the unrest of the mid-1920s. Any picture that tips the scales at well over three hours is going to have a dull spot or two, but in general this is an even mix of military machismo, political history, awkward race relations and occasional romance. If you’ve got the patience to sit through it, overall the experience is rewarding. Mildly amusing

Review – Dante's Inferno

This has got to be one of the weirdest rags-to-riches stories ever made. Spencer Tracy plays a penniless carny who goes to work for a side show attraction based on the title poem. Through a series of ruthless and occasionally illegal business dealings, he expands the cabinet of curiosities into a vast entertainment empire. But in the finest morality play tradition, his schemes begin to unravel themselves. The fun here is mostly to be had in the strange set work in the super-sized Inferno exhibit. I also enjoyed the flow-disrupting tour of Hell that takes place around midway through. Otherwise this is Scarface with less swearing and murder. Mildly amusing

Review – Birth

This is one of those laconically-paced little art movies that seem to attract big-name stars in search of a laconically-paced little art movie to bolster their acting cred. An example of what I'm talking about: one shot of Nicole Kidman’s face runs for nearly two whole minutes. Just her face and dramatic music. No kidding. With stunts like that abounding, even a neophyte film student would have little trouble cutting this feature-length stinker down to a 22-minute Twilight Zone episode. Kidman plays a newly-engaged woman approached by a ten-year-old kid (Danny Huston) who claims to be her dead husband. So it might actually have been an okay TZ (assuming the icky Kidman/Huston sexuality joined the endless, vacant staring on the cutting room floor). It just isn’t a good movie. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Like the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol, this is the version I think of when Victor Hugo’s classic tale comes to mind. Though the plot is a mixture of soap opera and Enlightenment propaganda, the production is nonetheless worth it for Charles Laughton’s performance in the title role. He does a fair amount of overacting, which is understandable given the nature of the character and the amount of makeup he had to don to do the part. But every once in awhile he actually manages an emotional subtlety from somewhere deep beneath the rubber appliances. Mildly amusing

Review – The Octagon

Jeez, Chuck. Just shut up and fight. Some of the martial arts sequences in this old Chuck Norris flick are okay – especially the big show-down in the end – but they’re too few and far between. The rest of the picture sports some of the worst dialogue and voice-overs ever recorded on film. So before you sit through the whole thing, check to see if some altruistic soul hasn’t perhaps cut this down to nothing but ninja battles and posted it on Youtube. That’ll save you more than an hour, not to mention considerable wear and tear on your nerves. Mildly amusing

Review – Stealth

All concept, no follow-through. The idea here is that the Navy has a smart computer that can actually fly a souped-up jet in combat. The trouble with computers is that they execute their orders whether it’s a good idea or not. And of course if they break down (hit by lightning in this case), they start executing some crazy permutation of their orders, which in this case involved a lot of execution. Three ace pilots who had been flying with the thing now have to shoot it down. That brings you up to the midway point in the movie. Most of the rest of it is an almost unbroken parade of dogfights and other special effects. The result is expensive and slick but almost completely without substance. Mildly amusing

Review – The Bible

Thank goodness they only make it through Genesis (and even so only as far as the Abraham and Isaac sacrifice). If Dino DeLaurentiis and John Huston had actually tried to do the whole book, they’d probably still be shooting it. The Noah’s Ark sequence alone seems like it takes the full 40 days and 40 nights to unfold (plus Huston plays both Noah and the voice of God, so he ends up talking to himself). In a way it’s fun to see some long-familiar stories given epic Hollywood treatment. On the other hand, the original print versions are generally more edifying. Mildly amusing

Review – Action in the North Atlantic

Here’s a rarity: a World War Two era propaganda picture extolling the virtues of something besides the armed forces. Our heroes here are members of the Merchant Marine, valiantly sailing their Liberty Ship into the deadly hunting ground of Hitler’s U-boat wolfpacks and Luftwaffe in order to bring badly-needed supplies to Russia. Despite the tendency toward cliché anti-Nazi sermonizing, the script is reasonably good, and the cast – helmed by Humphrey Bogart – does a reasonably good job with it. Mildly amusing.

Genre: Action

Subgenre: War
Date reviewed: 7/26/2009

Review – Thor: Hammer of the Gods

Imagine Darkon vs. Altered Beast and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in store for you here. A band of Norsemen run into a pack of werewolves. They fight. It takes a long time. It turns out that a computer-animated wolf god with mouth movement that makes it look like a cheap ventriloquist’s dummy is guarding Thor’s hammer, coincidentally the only thing that can kill it. And so on. The acting is pretty much straight out of the Renaissance Festival, and the rest of the production is right on par. See if desperate

Review – Circle of Deception

How rare it is to see premise and execution intersect like this. A secret agent (Bradford Dillman) gets dropped into occupied France in 1944. The trick is that he doesn’t know his superiors are deliberately sending him in to get captured, hoping that he’ll be tortured and eventually reveal the fake plans they’ve given him. The drama is well paced, with adequate time given to the set up (particularly the romance between our hero and a woman who knows what’s going to happen but can’t tell him), the evasion and capture, and the interrogation. Some of the torture sequences are particularly graphic, especially for 1961. Worth seeing

Review – This Is Not a Test (2008)

Carl has marital problems. And not the usual infidelity, money woes and whatever. He’s wrecking his marriage because he’s completely obsessed with surviving a nuclear attack. His wife gets madder and madder as he gets crazier and crazier. Then in the ambiguous end he turns out to be right. Tom Arnold puts in an appearance as Tom Arnold, which should serve as a good indication of the humor level throughout this picture. See if desperate

Review – They Wait

Despite the generic title, this actually turns out to be a good horror movie. If nothing else, it’s nice to see a picture along the lines of The Ring and its rip-off progeny actually acknowledge its roots in Asian folk traditions. During the Chinese equivalent of the Day of the Dead, restless ghosts snatch the spirit of a young couple’s son. As the tyke teeters on the brink of death, his mom seeks the help of an herbalist to figure out how to lay the ghosts to rest. The villains turn out to be plenty loathsome – perhaps excessively so – which contributes considerably to the drama. And on top of everything else, we get some spooky stuff that really works, including a few effective jump scares. Worth seeing

Review – The Chairman

With a radio transmitter surgically implanted in his skull, a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist (Gregory Peck) journeys to China to meet Mao and try to steal some agricultural enzyme secrets. For the most part, “agricultural enzyme secrets” tells you what you need to know about the dullness level of the picture. It has a few exciting bits and a clever twist here and there. The scenery is pretty. But with some judicious editing it could have been at least 25% shorter. Mildly amusing

Review – The Secret Agent

I can’t quite decide if this is a great movie with a lot of boring parts or a boring movie with some great parts. So I’ll give it a three-star compromise. Bob Hoskins plays the lead in this adaptation of a story by Joseph Conrad about an agent provocateur working for the Russians in London in the 1880s. After a bomb plot goes awry, the picture turns into a pathos-heavy tale of the ruin of the protagonist’s personal life. Before, after and during this, however, we get some prime dialogue delivered by Eddie Izzard and (of all people) Robin Williams. However hard the sentimental nonsense is to take, it’s worth it for the good parts. Worth seeing

Review – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Movie Boring with Bill Murray is more like it. Despite an impressive cast, the production is 100% Murronic. If you like the guy’s special brand of deadpan, wish-I-was-Andy-Kauffman humor, then boy are you in for a treat. However, this just left me with a profound and constant sense of “oh, was that supposed to be funny?” Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The She Creature (1956)

It came from the golden age of crappy horror movies! In this entry, a hypnotist mesmerizes his assistant, regresses her to a prehistoric, sea monster state and sends her spirit out to murder people. Though the monster suit would have made a better Halloween costume than convincing, scary sea creature, it’s still fun to look at. Plus you can tell it’s a girl because it has long, stringy hair. Otherwise this is standard cheap 50s horror fare. Mildly amusing

Review – Berlin Correspondent

Between September 1939 and December 1941, Europe was fighting a war that the United States wasn’t formally a part of. This spy picture takes advantage of the awkward state of affairs faced by American journalists working in Germany at the time. Though not officially at war, the hostility between the two countries and their respective ideologies was clear. As our hero tries his best to secretly incorporate the truth into his heavily-censored broadcasts, the Gestapo is hot on the trail of his information sources. In keeping with the spirit of 1942 when the picture came out, the drama is corny and the preachy propaganda gets laid on thick. But in a way it’s kinda comforting to know from the outset that truth and justice are going to prevail and the bad guys are going to get what’s coming to them in the end. Mildly amusing

Review – The Russia House

If you’re expecting this to be James Bond exciting because Sean Connery’s in it or sexy because Michelle Pfeiffer’s in it, then get ready for a big disappointment. Instead, what you get is a John Le Carré waning-days-of-the-Cold-War talk-heavy tale of double-crossing secret agents. Connery plays a British book publisher contacted by a Soviet intelligence operative looking to publish his memoirs. By the end we’ve gotten a taste of the dregs from every spy movie from Hopscotch to From Russia with Love, but none of it amounts to much. Some of the sequences showing spycraft at work are marginally entertaining, and some of the location shots are pretty. Otherwise it’s just pretty dull. Mildly amusing

Review – Hellhounds

Craphounds is more like it. This is a pinch of Greek mythology stirred into a vat of computer-game-esque nonsense. After his fiancée is poisoned by a jilted suitor, a Greek hero must journey to the underworld to free her soul from voodoo-looking Hades and his collection of cheap CGI pets. Whatever chance this production had to not suck was immediately squandered on a terrible script and equally dreadful acting. It isn’t even fun in a stupid movie kind of way. See if desperate

Review – Dick Tracy

I don’t know why I watched this again. Maybe I wasn’t entirely convinced that this movie – or any movie – could be as stupid as I remembered it being. Um, yes it is. Indeed, it stands out as one of those rare pictures in which just about every element in the whole picture is uniformly terrible. If I had to pick one thing that stood out the most, it would have to be the cast. Listing every major Hollywood star in this production would more than double the size of this review, and they’re all awful. All of them. Warren Beatty stands out, but only because he played the title role as well as directing this stinker. I have to give it one point simply because it’s such an impressive train wreck of a movie. See if desperate

Review – The Curse of the Fly

Though those wacky scientists have managed to extract all the literal insects from the system, they still haven’t managed to work all the bugs out of their teleportation chamber. The system now stretches from England to Canada (shades of Marconi’s early experiments with long distance wireless), but it’s still a tad unreliable. And of course by “a tad unreliable” I mean that people put through it tend to come out mutilated on the other end. The plot twists, turns and eventually grinds to a halt. See if desperate

Noun: That's what’s happening

As part of our effort to chronicle the ongoing death of the English language, we need to recognize a disturbing – or at least annoying – trend: forcing nouns to do awkward double duty as verbs.

My attention was drawn afresh to this phenomenon a few days ago when I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt promoting his church with the phrase “Come fellowship with us.” My first thought in response to this offer was “Nah, I’d rather Bible on my own.” Okay, actually my first response was “While we’re fellowshipping, can we ice cream?”

For the longest time I fought the valiant fight as best I could against the use of “impact” as a verb. This was particularly sticky because “impact” actually can be used as a verb. However, the verb form is much narrower than the noun form. For example, the “No, it just impacted on the surface” line toward the end of Star Wars is correct. But “The President’s speech impacted public opinion” is not.

This problem is due in part to a somewhat understandable discomfort with the distinction between “affect” and “effect” that can make the two terms hard to use. I’m less clear on why “influence” is an unacceptable substitute in most situations. But the point is moot. The misuse of “impact” has become so widespread that it’s probably not a misuse anymore (language sometimes works that way). I’ll still correct it on student writing assignments, especially if I’m in a cranky mood when I’m grading (which is most of the time). But otherwise it’s time to cede the field on this one.

On the other hand, I can think of at least one line from which no retreat may be allowed: the use of “beer” as a verb. At the moment this one appears to be limited to Neanderthals who order their beverage of choice by instructing the barkeep to “Beer me.” But if this trend spreads, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll get phrases like “Sorry, I can’t beer tonight. I have to car.”

Review – 49th Parallel

The setting alone makes this an odd piece of propaganda from the early days of World War Two. Usually when Canadians show up in these things at all it’s because a character needs to be a member of the British military but he’s being played by an actor from the United States who can’t manage an English accent. Here, however, the whole thing is set in Canada. The crew of a U-boat gets stranded on the east coast, and the evil Huns proceed to murder their way across the continent. Along the way they encounter the likes of Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard, Glynis Johns, and Raymond Massey, all playing characters who in one way or another extol the virtues of democratic society in the face of the fascist menace from abroad. Howard’s part is especially bizarre. He plays a college professor living in the wilderness while working on some research. When he unknowingly invites the evil krauts into his tepee for a spot of tea, he shows off the paintings by Picasso and Matisse and the first edition Thomas Mann he’s brought along to preserve the comforts of home. Oh lucky Nazi swine! There’s a campfire right there in the middle of the tent. Most of the action and dialogue are similarly ham-handed. But overall this picture is strange enough to make it entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – High and Low

The beginning of this non-samurai Kurosawa picture poses a fascinating moral dilemma. A businessman (Toshiro Mifune) risks everything he owns on a desperate attempt to keep rivals from taking over the shoe factory where he works. But no sooner has he converted all his assets to cash in order to make a big stock purchase than his son is seized by a kidnapper who wants an exorbitant 30 million yen. As he’s preparing to ruin himself by paying the ransom, it turns out that the kidnapper goofed up and made off with his chauffeur’s kid instead. Now the protagonist must decide if he’s willing to give up life as he knows it to rescue the child of a servant. This conflict keeps things rolling nicely for the first hour or so. Unfortunately, once it’s resolved the rest of the picture becomes a standard crime drama. It’s still good stuff. It just isn’t as gripping as the set-up. Worth seeing

Review – Primer

I went back and forth on this indie picture about a group of Office Space tech nerds who invent a time machine. Sometimes it seemed clever, or at least quirky in an amusing way. Other times it just seemed amateurish and dull. Ultimately it turned into a paranoid fantasy along the lines of Pi, and that I could have done without. Mildly amusing

Review – Furnace

For a movie with Michael Pare, Ja Rule and Tom Sizemore, this could have been a great deal worse. The furnace room at an old prison is haunted by evil spirits, and anyone who accidentally ventures in ends up suffering a fiery doom. Some of the spooky stuff is actually spooky, but beyond that the story is fairly dull. Mildly amusing

Review – Ladyhawke

This started out with a really good concept, at least for a fantasy movie. A knight (Rutger Hauer) and his lady fair (Michelle Pfeiffer) suffer a curse in which she becomes a hawk during the day and he transforms into a wolf at night. Which of course puts quite a cramp in their relationship. Unfortunately, director Richard Donner does nothing useful with the premise. The couple befriends a ne’er-do-well (Matthew Broderick), and the trio goes on to have a series of mediocre adventures. Even if they’d gotten a good story going, the production would still have been assassinated by a perfectly dreadful score by Alan Parsons. So perhaps it’s for the best that it turned out to be as boring as it was. Mildly amusing

Review – A Fish Called Wanda

Back in the days of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the show was occasionally interrupted by Graham Chapman dressed as an army officer, proclaiming that a particular skit had to stop because it had become “too silly.” It’s a good thing for this movie that Chapman – unlike fellow Python vets Michael Palin and actor/screenwriter John Cleese – didn’t make it into the cast, because otherwise the movie would have to have been halted once every ten minutes or so. This is an exceptionally silly screwball comedy about a group of robbers who steal some … well, let’s just say that by the end we’ve gotten a stuttering, animal-loving crook (Palin), a stuffy lawyer (Cleese), a woman who uses her sexual wiles on just about every man in the entire picture (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a neurotic, Nietzsche-misquoting hitman (Kevin Kline). Oh, and of course the title fish. Though this isn’t a finest-hour for anyone involved, it’s a suitably frivolous bit of fluff if that’s what you’re in the mood for. Mildly amusing

Review – Zombie Town

Oh won’t you take me to (duh dah duh) zombie tooooown! Oh won’t you take me to (duh dah duh) zombie town! Or hey, better yet, don’t. Leech-like parasites invade a small town and start turning the locals into zombies (so it’s really a zombie town, not just a catchy title), and it’s up to … oh, who am I kidding? If you like endless parades of bargain-basement gore, this picture should satisfy your craving. And if you’re in it for plot, acting, production quality, or really anything other than cheap gore, seek elsewhere. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Panic in Year Zero

Ray Miland stars in and directs this tale of post-apocalyptic survival. Our hero and his family are on their way to do some camping when a nuclear sneak attack takes out Los Angeles. The population swiftly devolves in to pre-civilized savagery, stealing, raping and killing. As a portrait of human behavior tossed headfirst into a state of nature, this isn’t too bad. A bit preachy – sort of like Leave it to Beaver meets Lord of the Flies – but still fun. Mildly amusing

Review – Panic in the Streets

Elia Kazan – in his pre-HUAC-rat days – directed this little piece of paranoia about possible plague carrier loose on the streets of New Orleans. Members of the Public Health Service don’t get as much screen time as the armed forces, but here the officer in charge is certainly the hero. He has to find some criminals who mugged and killed an illegal immigrant who would likely have died anyway from the plague. Though the premise is interesting enough, the plot turns out to be a long parade of dead ends. The supporting cast includes Jack Palance and Zero Mostel. Mildly amusing

Review – Escape in the Fog

This spy picture from 1945 has a strange twist: the secret agent’s love interest has a premonition about enemy operatives attacking him in the fog on the Golden Gate Bridge. Trouble is, the premonition subplot plays out well before the halfway mark, and after that it turns into yet another witless anti-Axis propaganda piece. Some of the black-and-white fog scenes supplied some entertaining atmosphere, but they did little to make up for the mediocre script and uninspired acting. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wind and the Lion

This starts out as a brain-dead Lawrence of Arabia wannabe and goes downhill from there. An American woman (Candice Bergen) visiting Morocco in the early 20th century is kidnapped by a local outlaw (Sean Connery). While Teddy Roosevelt (Brian Keith) dithers about what to do, our heroine Stockholms with her captor. Though Connery does about as good a Moroccan as John Wayne does as a Mongolian, none of the rest of the cast fares much better. Some of the epic battle stuff works in an epic battle sort of way, but otherwise this is missable fare. Mildly amusing

Review – The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

Add “Across the 8th Dimension” to the end of the title if you’re so inclined (though that serves to distinguish it from a sequel that was never made). Though I’ve seen this movie a couple of times before, this is a first for me for two reasons. First, this is the first time I’ve ever watched it from beginning to end without interruption. Second – and more important – this is the first time I watched it on my own, without being in the company of someone else who was absolutely convinced that it was the greatest movie ever made and absolutely convinced that I had to agree. Absent the pressure, I’m able to determine that it is in fact not the greatest movie ever made. It’s all kinds of 80s silly, and a lot of the dialogue is delivered in that mumbling nonsense cadence Popeye used to use in the old Max Fleischer cartoons. However, as long as you’re not expecting the greatest movie ever made, you should be able to derive at least some entertainment from this sci fi action comedy send-up of old serial adventure yarns (particularly Doc Savage). Mildly amusing

Review – The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Few films have ever managed to make human survival look like such a loathsome prospect. Here the lives of the survivors of a plane crash depend on their ability to cobble the wreckage into a new, improvised craft that will fly them out of the desert. Or to be more precise, their lives depend on their ability to stop bickering with one another for five minutes at a time. Honestly, by midway through I was hoping for the death of just about everyone involved. Jimmy Stewart heads an all-semi-star cast. Mildly amusing

Review – Where Have All the People Gone?

So this is like “where have all the flowers gone?” only with people instead of flowers. Or flowers instead of people, depending on how you look at it. A mystery calamity wipes out the majority of the human race, leaving isolated groups alive. Unfortunately, the only logic any of the catastrophe follows is the dictates of the plot. For example, family groups survive whether or not they were out in the open when disaster struck. They also survive whether or not they’re genetically related, so it can’t be some kind of freak biological attack. Animals survive, but all the dogs go crazy. Furthermore … but now this review is doing the same thing the movie itself does: become so obsessed with spelling out the parameters of the problem that there isn’t much room for anything else. Mildly amusing

Review – The Flesh and the Fiends

By now I expect most folks are familiar with the story of homicidal body snatchers Burke and Hare (if not, do a search on them and get yourself caught up). The attractions of this version of the tale lie primarily in the cast: a young Donald Pleasance plays one of the killers, and Dr. Knox is played by Peter Cushing. His performance is particularly interesting, because he comes across as an arrogant jerk with a lazy eye who still emerges as a sympathetic character. Also, the production plays things fairly straight. It’s not absolutely historically accurate, but it doesn’t turn the killings into anything they weren’t. Mildly amusing

Review – Ice Queen

An ice woman gets thawed out, wakes up, probably not in the best of moods. Unfortunately she also turns into a blue-faced, sharp-toothed hag intent on freezing or having sex with everyone she meets. If only a group of unfortunate 20-somethings hadn’t gotten buried with her in a ski resort covered by an avalanche. The script stands out as particularly dreadful, devoted to Springer-esque interpersonal relationships and dialogue that might be entertaining to an especially dim-witted 12-year-old. Further, I assume some sex was cut out of the edited-for-TV version I saw, though I can’t imagine its inclusion making much of a difference in my opinion of the picture. See if desperate

Review – I Am Omega

The title implies that this is a low-budget mash of The Omega Man and I Am Legend. And in fact it starts out as exactly that: a cheap knock-off of Richard Matheson’s source novel. But then it turns out he isn’t the last living man in a world filled with zombies. The new twists and turns are not an improvement. The lead is played by the guy who plays The Chairman on the American version of Iron Chef, and he does an acceptable job. But whatever small welcome the picture amasses is undone by the repulsive, pointless sexual assault at the end of the movie. See if desperate

Review – Snowbeast

This is a brazen and highly unsuccessful attempt to relocate Jaws to a ski resort using an abominable snowman in place of the shark. It was so obviously made for TV that the spots where the commercials would have gone bring the production to a temporary screeching halt once every 10 to 15 minutes. See if desperate

Review – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Here we have a picture undone by its own budget. The story required a considerable outlay of cash to get the likes of Brad Pitt to appear and to special-effect him up to play the lead. With all the money two different studios spent on it, the picture comes across as an epic that demands to be taken seriously. However, it’s a lot easier to enjoy if you don’t take it at face value. The story is simple enough: a child is born as an old man and then ages backward. Of course he falls in love, meeting his beloved somewhere in the middle and then ending up as a baby cared for by an old woman. And it goes without saying that along the way he has no end of quirky adventures. In a smaller, more art-house picture this would have been an entertaining, sometimes even genuinely touching, contemplation of aging and human relationships. It’s just too odd a tale for the award-show-candidate blockbuster that marketing necessarily turned it into. Mildly amusing

Review – Broken Arrow

Though this scrupulously follows the John Woo formula – two men pitted against each other in an action movie with plenty of macho stand-offs and explosions – I expect the director’s fans may find themselves at least somewhat disappointed. It’s just not as stylish or clever as some of the movies he made on the other side of the Pacific. The story’s simple enough: the bad guy (John Travolta) steals a pair of nukes, and it’s up to his young protégé (Christian Slater) to chase him around the desert trying to get them back and then hide them once they’re recovered. Travolta seems to genuinely enjoy playing villains, so it’s too bad he sucks at it. His version of “dangerous psycho” comes across as a cranky version of Danny from Grease. Overall if you like watching stuff blow up then you’re in the right place. Mildly amusing

Review – Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return

The child actor who played the delightfully creepy Isaac returns – so it’s not just a catchy title – as an adult to once again fire up the cult killing business. This one has a little more of the giving-kids-up-for-adoption-to-save-them-from-the-monster theme, and in exchange we actually get fewer eerie cult kids. Otherwise this is yet another entry in a fairly standard series. Nancy Allen and Stacy Keach temporarily find work. Mildly amusing

Review – Children of the Corn 5: Fields of Terror

This is as terrible as I figured the last one was going to be. A group of city teens get stranded in a small town with a Children of the Corn problem. This one emphasizes the creepy religious cult aspect a bit more than some other entries in the series, but otherwise it’s standard stuff. The only recognizable face in the cast is David Carradine, who puts in a brief appearance as the cult leader. See if desperate

Review – Children of the Corn 4: The Gathering

At the outset I should admit that as of this writing I haven’t seen the second and third installments in this set, so if either of them included anything essential I haven’t seen it yet. A woman (Naomi Watts early in her career) returns to the family farm to help out when her mom (Karen Black later in hers) suffers a mental breakdown. Shortly thereafter every kid in town comes down with a mysterious illness. They recover, but then they go all children-of-the-corny. Bad gore and low-grade suspense ensue. Mildly amusing

Review – In the Spider’s Web

So is it even possible for an expedition of 20-something “scientists” to go into a rainforest without being slaughtered by giant snakes or rabid monkeys or in this case the omnipresent tarantulas? This fear-of-foreign-environments picture brings our heroes to India in search of … y’know, I don’t remember what they were searching for. I hope it was poisonous spiders, because that’s sure as heck what they found. Lance Henriksen puts in an appearance as villain/jungle doctor/spider cult leader/organ harvester. The Sci Fi Channel – or Syfy, as I guess it wants to be known now – strikes again. See if desperate

Review – North by Northwest

I’m not enough of a Hitchcock connoisseur to say for certain, but for my taste this isn’t the director’s finest hour. To be sure, it’s a classy picture that stays interesting throughout. He even gets his cameo out of the way early so you don’t have to keep looking for it. However, the picture has a couple of serious flaws. Cary Grant is far too flippant to play the lead in a spy picture. I’m sure the idea here was that his “clever” banter would lighten up what otherwise might have been an oppressively grim drama. But often his little drunken jabs detract rather than merely distract. Perhaps they seemed more clever back when the movie first came out. But beyond Grant, the big problem here is that the picture is too big. Spies are more fun when they lead subtle, almost ordinary lives. Nothing like that here. We start off with the typical Hitchcock “wrong man” scenario, and by the time we’re done the hero has been chased by a biplane, suspended off the edge of Mt. Rushmore, and had no end of other equally implausible adventures. The biplane sequence is typical of the experience. It’s good suspense. It looks great. It’s a legendary moment in movie history. It’s also one of the all-time most ridiculous ways to kill a guy (so small wonder when it fails). That’s sadly typical of the whole overblown production. Mildly amusing

Review – Bad Taste

So honestly, is there any point to reviewing a movie called “Bad Taste”? I mean, you get exactly what you pay for. This is like drinking a beverage labeled Can o’ Shit and then getting mad when it tastes like poop. Early in Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson’s career, he specialized in movies such as Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles and this, pictures that appeal almost exclusively to some people’s infantile need to have their noses rubbed in stupidity and filth. The plot is some moronic nonsense about commandos stumbling across a nest of zombie aliens. But honestly the story is beside the point. If you didn’t come for brain-squishing, puke-drinking, chain-sawing absurdity, then just keep walking. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Automaton

I don’t know. I thought Robovision and Monstervision were both good, but somehow combining them into Robo-Monstervision just didn’t work. Seriously though, this is an awful, pseudo-artistic mess about a dystopian future in which small pockets of armageddon-surviving humanity battle on using robot soldiers. Really slow moving robot soldiers. Between robo-battles, the protagonist plays videos of her father (Angus “The Tall Man” Scrimm) droning on and on about the drama’s apocalyptic back story. Two technical points: first, the battle sequences look about the same when played at double speed (and of course take only half the time). Second, the DVD errored out at around an hour and nine minutes in. Because we were unable to restart it, I’m going to give the picture a benefit-of-the-doubt point based on the questionable theory that something radically better might have happened in the last 15 minutes. See if desperate

Review – Agony

If this movie is any ground on which to judge, Eisenstein would hide his head in shame if he saw what became of Soviet film after his death. This 1975 epic about Rasputin is one of the most inept pieces of propaganda I’ve ever seen. A chunk of the blame falls on the head of the actor playing the lead role. This guy must be Russia’s answer to Val Kilmer. He plays Rasputin as an awkward combination of Charles Manson and The Dude from The Big Lebowsky. Though this is clearly part of the long line of pictures designed to justify the Russian Revolution by making the Romanovs look bad, the worst they seem to do here is possibly boring peasants (not to mention the audience) to death. Further, the translation is odd in places. It’s hard to say if the lines are some kind of Russian idiom that doesn’t make much sense to foreign audiences or if the characters are genuinely intended to spout nonsense. In either event, the bizarre dialogue is just another cog in a highly ineffective machine. And in another fine Soviet tradition, the picture is awfully hard on the animals. CHLITM rating: 30 minutes. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Third Man

This is one of those movies that’s too good to wrap up in a paragraph. Cold War drama? Film noir mystery? Meditation on the nature of good and evil (especially the latter)? Then there’s the camerawork, the editing, the script, the acting, the music. The whole thing is worth it just for the sewer sequence at the end. Heck, the whole thing is worth it for Orson Welles’s line about the difference between Italy and Switzerland. What a refreshing break from the ordinary. Buy the disc

Review – The Attic

One advantage to doppelganger movies is that they save at least some money that low-budget producers have to spend on their casts. They also appear to have saved some money on the script. The story sets up with a mentally-unstable woman who thinks she sees the ghost of her long-dead twin sister. Nobody believes her. She keeps seeing the ghost. Everybody keeps not believing. Do I even have to say that this gets boring after awhile? Also, either this was a short movie or Chiller cut a chunk out of it, because the ad breaks were epic (close to six minutes each). See if desperate

Review – Jack the Ripper

I think black and white actually contributes something to the Ripper thing. This movie and Man in the Attic both have a certain quality that fancier productions miss, though I imagine that’s due as much to the script-instead-of-effects aspect as it is to the film stock. So here we have another theory about the identity of England’s most famous serial killer. This time the finger points at the medical profession, not a bad guess considering the nature of some of the crimes. For some never-clearly-explained reason, Scotland Yard is being assisted by an American detective. Otherwise this is standard Ripper fare with all the traditional ingredients and garnishes. Mildly amusing

Review – Battle of the Bulge

This thing is nearly twice as long as a normal war movie. Unfortunately, it’s not twice as good. What we get here is one of those ensemble war pictures that follow several different characters during the course of one of the key battles of World War Two. Robert Shaw’s performance as a stereotypical SS tank commander stands out, but the rest of the celebs are fairly interchangeable. Clearly they spent a lot of money on the production, because it’s loaded with tanks (and this was back in the day before such things could be easily generated by computers, so they actually had to go out and get the real thing). So it’s an epic movie about an epic battle, but not much more. Mildly amusing

My eight favorite (and least favorite) “Cold War Hysteria” movies

Thank goodness for Mill Creek. These kind folks search vaults, closets, back rooms and heaven knows where else to dig up copyright-free movies that can be stuffed into multi-disc sets and sold on the cheap. Often the collections offer pictures that’ll eventually be on late night TV if one just waits long enough.

But not the “Cold War Hysteria” collection. If not for Mill Creek (or some similar operation), these things would have been buried back in the 1950s and never unearthed again. After all, the demise of the Soviet Union substantially reduced the dread people used to feel about the end of the world.

That isn’t to say that it couldn’t still happen. But if it does, it likely won’t look much like it does in these movies. Their quaintness tends to make them either hysterically funny or intensely boring. Thus of the 43 pictures included on the three-disc set, the following are the eight best and worst just to save you a little time.

Let’s start with the fun stuff:

Duck and Cover – The classics never die. Actually, if you’ve seen The Atomic Café then you’ve seen most of this one. And if you haven’t seen The Atomic Café, track it down and watch it before you see any of the pictures on this list. It provides some essential cultural context, particularly for those not "lucky" enough to have lived through this craziness first-hand.

Management of Mass Casualties – The Air Force supplies this handy guide to properly sorting the different levels of battlefield casualties a medic might expect in the wake of a nuclear strike on a military unit. My particular favorite part was the placement of tags on head cases to make them easily identifiable. The only thing missing was instructions for the proper extraction of little yellow cowards from a tent full of brave men wounded in battle.

Red Chinese Battle Plan – Most of the focus of Cold War stuff tends to be on the undeclared war against the Soviet Union. Even when the enemy went unnamed, it was still clearly implied that we were talking about the Russians. But here we pause to send props out to Communist China. For the most part it’s standard Red Menace screed, but some of the footage is interesting.

A Day Called X – Unlike most of the entries in this set, this one was produced by CBS – a reputable news organization at the time – rather than the government or the likes of Encyclopedia Britannica. Glenn Ford narrates as Portland is mock attacked by the Russkies. Every once in awhile the screen sports a super that says “An attack is not taking place,” no doubt in an effort to keep from War-of-the-Worlds-ing the viewing public.

The Challenge of Ideas – Edward R. Murrow, John Wayne and others lend their voices of authority to this explanation of the Soviets’ three-pronged attack on truth, justice and the American Way. As a snapshot explanation of the Cold War, this one’s hard to beat.

Medic: Flash of Darkness – This is one of many shorts in which actors perform scenes from nuclear attack scenarios. The draw here is the thorough explanation of triage practices for the victims of an atomic bomb blast. Good times!

Atomic Alert – EB, the folks who made all those science movies we had to watch in high school – supplies the “Elementary Version” of nuclear annihilation. As the kids square away the family’s basement bomb shelter, big brother remarks “Suzie, this stuff would come in handy on a camping trip.” Fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all this, too.

The House in the Middle – Of all the productions included in this collection, this one’s my favorite. It was created by The National Clean Up - Paint Up - Fix Up Bureau. So if you think your job is tough, imagine being required to introduce yourself as an agent of CU-PU-FU. But the real fun here is the footage from bomb tests proving that untidy houses with stacks of books and magazines, clothes drying on lines and unpainted fences were more likely to burn down during an atomic strike. Though never explicitly stated, there’s a strong racist component that’s hard to ignore. God bless taxpayer-supported scientific research.

A fine line separates the wheat from the chaff in this collection. For the most part they’re all trying to accomplish the same goal. The bad ones just go about it the wrong way.

Operation Ivy – Ugh. How can explosions this big be this boring? A pipe-smoking Murrow look-alike takes us through more than an hour’s worth of detail about one of the Pacific atoll bomb tests. And when I say “detail” I mean it. Footage of planning meetings (or at least recreations of planning meetings). Footage of trucks being unloaded from ships. Footage of trenches being dug for pipes. Footage of dials being calibrated. If you’re obsessed with literally every aspect of the bomb testing process, this should give you no end of pleasure. Personally, I’d far rather cut straight to the earth-shattering kaboom.

Anything else starting with “Operation” – Though Ivy is by far the longest and dullest, just about all the rest of the movies devoted to particular tests are long on the tech specs and short on the fireballs.

Our Cities Must Fight – Though conservative paranoia runs like a river through most of these pictures, it reaches a ranting fever pitch in this one. The thesis here is that anyone who lives in a major urban area and tries to flee in the face of an imminent nuclear strike is a traitor. Good Americans are apparently expected to stand fast and fry.

Bombproof – This short movie produced by The Burroughs Corporation extols the virtues of transferring business records to microfilm to increase the chances that they’ll survive a nuclear attack. Any guesses about what The Burroughs Corporation manufactures? The best part of this entry is the cranky employee who keeps fretting about getting his paychecks on time after we get nuked. Where the hell are you going to spend all that money, genius?

Tale of Two Cities – Most of the rest of the pictures in this set – good and bad – are funny in a crazy sort of way. This examination of the aftereffects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just depressing. It’s also creepy how much emphasis is placed on structural damage to buildings with relatively little time devoted to the human cost of the attacks.

Occupying a Public Shelter – The idea behind lessons from Civil Defense is to prepare the population to survive World War Three. Unfortunately, this one has the exact opposite effect on me. Am I really being offered a choice between instant death and a long (weeks? months? years?) stretch in a fallout shelter with obnoxious strangers? Even assuming that it would be possible to wait out nuclear winter without running out of water, food and air, I’d still just as soon spread a blanket out in my front yard and prepare for the ultimate tan than be subjected to such an extended, uninterrupted dose of my fellow citizens. The same criticism applies to “Information Program within Public Shelters.”

A New Look at the H-Bomb – This is the usual parade of unconvincing arguments about the survivability of a nuclear strike. However, the blather is accompanied by extraordinarily bad art. The least they can do is sugar-coat their crap with some decent animation, dramatizations of happy-looking people living comfortable lives in their basements, or professional-looking guys assuring us that despite all appearances we really are going to be alright. The narrator here doesn’t even look like he believes his own nonsense.

This Is Not a Test – For starters, this one doesn’t even belong with the rest. It’s a feature-length narrative drama, not a training film, documentary or docudrama. And as already noted in the movie review, it’s a thing of immense dreadfulness.

Review – Sink the Bismarck!

If you’re a fan of Second World War naval battles, then you’re in the right place. This is one of those rare war pictures that focus almost exclusively on the battle itself rather than devoting a bunch of screen time to character and back story. Sure, the British officer in charge of the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck gets a little bit of character development, but otherwise it’s pretty much straight history. I’ve read a thing or two about the battle, so I had a pretty good idea how it turned out. Still, it was fun to see it acted out. Mildly amusing

Review – Lost Voyage

I think I’ve passed up several chances to record this movie because the descriptions make it hard to tell the difference between this one and The Triangle. Even after watching it, I’m more struck by the similarities than the differences. A ship turns up years after disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle, and a small group of folks fly out to investigate. Of course once they get there strange stuff starts happening. Some of the giant, menacing storm cloud effects were kinda cool, even though there wasn’t much to them. Otherwise this is standard stuff. Mildly amusing

Review – Ghost Rig

This low-budget British horror flick gets off to a reasonably good start. Environmentalists occupy an abandoned oil rig in order to keep it from being demolished and dumped into the sea. Unfortunately for them, the rig is haunted by an evil force that sets about possessing and/or killing them one by one. And unfortunately for us, after the demonic ball gets rolling the picture swiftly devolves into a parade of arguments between the characters and plot twists “borrowed” from other pictures. Mildly amusing

Review – Danton

Who knew the French Revolution was so boring? Director Andrzej Wajda puts together a fairly prosaic tale of the fussin’ and feudin’ between Georges Danton (Gerard Depardieu) and Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak), eventually leading to the arrest, trial and execution of the former. When something is actually happening, this is an interesting picture. Unfortunately, the bulk of the screen time is devoted to arguments over obscure revolutionary principles. Mildly amusing

Review – Wild at Heart

This movie would make a good double feature with Natural Born Killers. And by “good” I mean “apt,” not “pleasant” or “well directed.” Both pictures feature a young couple on a cross-country crime spree. Both feature a ton of gratuitous sex and violence. And both are the work of vastly overrated directors (Oliver Stone in the case of Killers and David Lynch here). Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play Sailor and Lula, two crazy kids who run away together. So mama (Diane Ladd) sends a hitman after them, and off we go. The picture features a load of the art school weirdness that made Lynch famous. Otherwise, however, it’s dumb and dull. See if desperate

Review – Stealing Beauty

This movie mostly just proves things that we already know. Bernardo Bertolucci is capable of directing a pretty but dull picture. Liv Tyler has some good angles, some bad angles, and generally not a lot of talent. And Jeremy Irons doesn’t mind playing an old guy with an inappropriate relationship with a young girl. This tedious production about a teenager’s coming of age in an artist’s villa in the Italian countryside is notable primarily because it’s old enough that Joseph Fiennes was willing to play a minor role and Rachel Weisz was willing to go topless for a scene. See if desperate

Review – Horror Express

This shares some plot elements with The Thing and some actors with classic Hammer productions, but that’s as close as this gets to being good. Christopher Lee plays a scientist who digs up an ancient, semi-human “fossil” (looks more like a partially mummified corpse) and crates it up for shipment to England. Unfortunately, thanks to some meddling from a rival scientist (Peter Cushing), in a baggage car along the Trans-Siberian Railway the thing wakes up and goes on a rampage. Turns out it’s actually an alien that can move from body to body, leaving a trail of blank-eyed, brain-absorbed corpses in its wake. Though it occasionally manages to border on spooky, for the most part it wears out its welcome long before it departs. Mildly amusing

Review – The House of the Dead (1980)

Fleeing a torrential rainstorm, a guy enters a seedy business. The place turns out to be a mortuary with a creepy undertaker and four closed coffins. Do I even need to tell you that it turns into a horror anthology piece? Evil children attack a crabby teacher, a serial killer films his crimes, two investigators vie for the title of world’s best detective, and a guy is tortured for no apparent reason. The fourth segment was in some ways the forerunner of torture porn, but it didn’t have anywhere near enough gore to qualify as a direct ancestor. Though I usually get a kick out of vignette movies like this, for some reason (cheap production? bad script? lame stories?) this one didn’t do much for me. Mildly amusing

Review – Oasis of the Zombies

Some oasis. Very few zombies. The thing that stood out the most about this picture was the soundtrack music. It sounded like it was being performed by an unsupervised eight year old at the Wurlitzer organ store at the mall. A British officer survives a fierce fight that kills all his men as well as the treasure-toting Nazis they ambushed at an oasis. Years later the officer’s son leads an expedition of his lame-brained friends to find the six mil in gold that should still be there. Unfortunately for them (not to mention a film crew and a band of crooks), the place is bigger on the walking dead than it is on the bullion bricks. The make-up for some of the briefly-appearing zombies is a little ahead of its time, but otherwise this is strictly amateur hour. See if desperate

Review – Pippi in the South Seas

Sweden’s most famous superhuman brat is off on another adventure with her two sidekicks and menagerie in tow. This time she’s learned that her long-lost father is being held prisoner by pirates. After journeying across the sea and kicking much pirate ass, our heroine is reunited with papa and on her way back home. The ludicrous story and dreadful voice-overs are in perfect keeping with the other movies in the series, so if you liked them then odds are you’ll like this one too. Mildly amusing

Review – A Shot in the Dark

This is the only Inspector Clouseau movie that technically isn’t a Pink Panther picture. And though it’s not officially part of the set, it has all the elements. The physical comedy here is great stuff, which is a good thing because the picture depends heavily on it. Peter Sellers does his usual terrific job as the bumbling detective, this time trying to prove that an attractive woman is innocent of murder despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Mildly amusing

Review – The Fly 2

This is much more of a standard horror movie than its predecessor. The kid Geena Davis’s character was pregnant with at the end of the first one is born and immediately “adopted” by an egomaniacal corporate executive who ensconces him in a lab. Eventually daddy’s turning-into-a-fly curse begins to overtake him, sending him scrambling to find a cure. Because this movie predates the fancy computer graphics they would doubtless have used had they been available, it ends up depending heavily on latex puppets that don’t always hold up, especially in close-ups. Otherwise, however, it’s standard movie monster fare with just enough anti-animal-testing rhetoric stirred in to make it worthwhile. Mildly amusing

Review – Lust for Life

This filmed version of Irving Stone’s biography of Vincent Van Gogh is both far less grandiose and far more depressing than the tale of Michelangelo painting of the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel. Kirk Douglas plays the tormented painter, receiving the role based either on his superficial resemblance to the artist or to his eager desire to overact every single scene. A lot of the drama focuses on the relationship between Van Gogh and Gaugin (Anthony Quinn), which means that much of the dialogue is devoted to arguments about the finer points of painting. The life story of anyone this crazy should have made a much more interesting movie. Mildly amusing