Review – Batman: Under the Red Hood

After a college roommate did a thorough job of exposing me to high-quality animation from Japan, I've never been able to go back to the produced-on-the-cheap stuff made for the American market. As this picture is no exception, I mostly just turned it on for background noise while I worked on something else. Oh, and I initially thought it was a different movie. Still, taking it for what it is and not expecting it to be anything else, I guess it wasn't too bad. Batman runs up against a new enemy – the mysterious Red Hood – who appears to simultaneously be killing off Gotham's drug criminals and setting himself up as their overlord. Mildly amusing

Review – The Burning Bed

Farah Fawcett turns in one of the first "if I de-glamor myself will you take me seriously as an actress?" performances in this at-the-time-groundbreaking drama about domestic violence. She plays Francine Hughes, a lower-class woman from Mississippi stuck in a long-term relationship with an abusive man (Paul Le Mat). When family, friends and authorities all fail to help her escape the rising tide of violence in her home, she takes matters into her own hands and sets fire to the guy while he's asleep. Her subsequent murder trial (not to mention this movie and the book it's based on) did a lot to draw national attention to a serious problem. Unfortunately, that makes it a bit of a creature of its own time, important in 1984 but now at least a little dated. Mildly amusing

Review – World’s Greatest Dad

Director Bobcat Goldthwait really seems to love movies based on awkward situations. This time around, a middle-aged high school teacher (Robin Williams) spends all of "act one" dealing with rejected manuscripts, a slipping-away girlfriend and – worst of all – his creepy asshole son. But when the kid dies from autoerotic asphyxiation, dad rearranges the scene and types a note so the misadventure looks like a simple suicide. When the note is published in the school paper, our hero suddenly finds himself the "ghost writer" recipient of the praise and adulation his actual writing never merited. Though the ending went where I hoped it wouldn't, I concede that it made a thought-provoking point or two about the need for validation from people whose opinions are invalid. Oh, and I should note that all three 8sails staff members who watched this movie (even part of it) had high-school-related nightmares afterward. Weird. Mildly amusing

Review – Slices

One of the Netflix user reviews of this magnum opus began with "You'll love this movie if you're related to someone who's in this movie." To which I have little to add. Five guys direct five horror vignettes, each vying for the title of "worst of the set." I could get into specifics, such as "if you're going to make a zombie western, at least shell out the bucks to rent a horse or two." But what would be the point? Ultimately all this thing proves is that five talentless morons with camcorders don't make a production any better than – or honestly different from – a movie made by one talentless moron with a camcorder. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Rite

It's been awhile since I saw an exorcism movie that even tried to be serious, let alone scary. So on that point this was a refreshing change. It even starts out with an element of doubt, an "is this demonic possession or merely mental illness and/or parlor tricks?" reminiscent of William Peter Blatty's famous novel (though not the movie based thereon). Sadly, Hollywood simply can't resist the temptation to abandon ambiguity and dive into the pool of gnarly devil effects. A young priest-to-be (Colin O'Donoghue) with doubts about the validity of his chosen profession gets sent to Rome for exorcism training. There he's paired with a crusty old practitioner of the art (Anthony Hopkins) who takes his own approach to the practice, performing the job like a blend between a family dentist and one of those sleight-of-hand guys who bother people at Applebees. I watched this because I was in the mood for a horror movie that someone actually spent some money to make, and on that count it did a reasonable job. Mildly amusing

Review – Dead of Night (1977)

Awhile back we watched a 1945 English movie of the same name based on the recommendations of respected film folk (including Martin Scorcese). I put this one in the Netflix queue based on the chance (the hope!) that they actually meant this picture rather than the older stinker. Nope. This one was even worse than the English production. Screenwriter Richard Matheson cooks up a good Twilight-Zone-esque intro speech, but the three stories that follow are little more than an obvious attempt by Dan Curtis to pilot another horror TV series. The first is some time travel nonsense about an old car, twaddle that even Ray Bradbury would have found excessively sentimental. The remaining two – a vampire whodunit and a monkey's paw – are a little better but still not anything that would ever have become a going concern. And to make the attempt even more pathetic, the disc's special features include a shot-on-video episode of a DOA TV series that looked like it was supposed to turn into some kind of half-assed live action Scooby Doo (minus Shaggy and Scooby). See if desperate

Review – X-Men: First Class

I liked this better than I thought I would, at least in part because it wasn't as grandiose as the original three or the Wolverine backstory. Though Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) are still the stars of the show, this prequel works more on establishing character and less on Hugh Jackman being a bad boy (indeed, he's only in it for 15 seconds or so as an in-joke). The whle X-Men thing still doesn't do much for me, but this was still easier to swallow than the productions that assume I care about the characters. I think you'd probably have to have seen the rest of the movies (or at least know a bit about the story), but if this is familiar territory for you then you should have a reasonably good time with it. Mildly amusing

Review – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I actually liked this a little better than the third one. Having pressed the reset button (except for Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and a few supporting cast members), they can stop trying to dream up ways to keep the old lame plots going and come up with entirely new lame plots. This time around it's a four- or five-way chase to find the Fountain of Youth, and along the way we get the usual parade of sword fights, chases and other miscellaneous pirate nonsense. We also get the King of England, mermaids and Blackbeard. It's that last character that drew me to the theater despite swearing off the series after the last entry. I wanted to see what Ian McShane would do with the role, and his performance turned out to include just enough Al Swearengen to make it entertaining. Otherwise the movie was missable. Mildly amusing

Review – Clonus

Clones of the power elite live on a clone farm unwittingly awaiting the opportunity to become organ donors for their wealthy originals. Most of them have been lobotomized, so they don't make much trouble. But their scientist creators – suffering from Scientist's Syndrome (the pathological inability to avoid tinkering with things) – leave a few of them un-pithed. And of course one of them wises up to the operation, escapes from the farm and journeys into the real world in search of his progenitor. Despite the dated look-and-feel and a few plot holes here and there, this is a reasonably entertaining tale. As a compromise between director and distributor, it was originally released as Parts: The Clonus Horror. Mildly amusing

Review – Scary Movie 2

If you liked the first one, then ... well, to be honest I don't know how you'd react to this one. The first go-around was a parody of Scream and similar slasher movies. This one takes on The Haunting and a handful of other ghost stories. So if you're unfamiliar with the movies being parodied, then the only thing you'll get out of this is the endless barrage of crude, stupid jokes about sex, drugs and other adolescent obsessions. However, if you like this sort of thing to begin with then perhaps that's enough for you. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005)

Though this picture is way more concept than actual movie, it's still an intriguing concept. Working exclusively on a green screen set, the cast and crew recreate Robert Wiene 's silent classic only this time with sound. They even use some of the backdrops digitally captured and directly imported from the original. Needless to say, this doesn't exactly break much new ground. But it is fun to watch (not to mention listen to). Mildly amusing

Review – Cold Heaven

Director Nicolas Roeg manages to muster all the dullness of productions such as The Man Who Fell to Earth without including any of the stylish visuals or occasional interesting twists. A woman (Theresa Russell) contemplates killing her husband (Mark Harmon) so she doesn't have to sneak around behind his back anymore. But then he dies all on his own in a boating accident. But then the body disappears from the morgue, and things just turn into a boring parade of what's-really-going-on dreams and hallucinations from there. See if desperate

Eight crappy bands with cool names

Because sometimes the picture on the label turns out to be way better than what's in the can.

 

The Foo Fighters

The Name: Back in World War Two, bomber crews often flew long missions during which they were strapped immobile in their seats for hours and hours. Such prolonged sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, particularly the false image of blobs of light flying around the aircraft. Nicknamed "foo fighters" by the crews, the phenomenon drew serious attention from military intelligence until they determined that the blobs were imaginary and not some kind of top secret, high speed enemy aircraft.

The Band: After Nirvana broke up, drummer Dave Grohl (not exactly the group's talent powerhouse) founded Foo Fighters. Their big claim to fame (other than Grohl's battles with Courtney Love over Nirvana song royalties) was a video exploiting/parodying uber-dork ads for Mentos.

 

White Zombie

The Name: Back before George Romero was even born, Bela Lugosi played the bad guy in White Zombie, considered the first feature-length zombie movie and a watershed moment in the development of the sub-genre.

The Band: Oh Rob Zombie, you just suck. Seriously, even the good stuff this guy does immediately turns to crap thanks to the adulation of his crap-loving fans.

 

Steely Dan

The Name: At one point in William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, one of the characters employs a strap-on sex toy called Steely Dan III.

The Band: Then several years later a couple of jazz fusion dildos formed a band of the same name. [Though the joke was kinda obvious, I should admit that I didn't come up with it. If I remember the original source, I'll add a cite here.]

 

Uriah Heep

The Name: As a Dickens bad guy, Uriah Heep isn't bad. He's snaky, greedy, ugly, everything you'd want in a Victorian villain. David Copperfield wouldn't be the same without him.

The Band: So why name a group after such a creep? Only this band knows for sure. They're credited along with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin with pioneering the kind of music played by such bands. If you view that as a good thing, likely you won't agree with me about this entry.

 

Styx

The Name: As most folks learn sometime before graduating from high school, the River Styx was the divider between the land of the living and Hades (the realm of the dead) in Greek mythology.

The Band: To be fair, Styx was no crappier than any other band from the arena rock era. At least until Dennis DeYoung talked his bandmates into inflicting "Kilroy Was Here" (cool name for a crappy album) on the world. "Mister Roboto" fans please contemplate the meaning of "guilty pleasure."

 

Pure Prairie League

The Name: In the old Western Dodge City, the Pure Prairie League was a cinematic stand-in for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, a group of fanatic teetotalers known throughout the Old West for trashing saloons.

The Band: If Carrie Nation had lived long enough to hear these monsters of lite rock from the last gasps of music on AM, she would no doubt have turned her hatchets on radios everywhere in the name of protecting helpless youth from painfully mediocre music.

 

Tree of Woe

The Name: In one of the more philosophical moments in Conan the Barbarian, bad guy Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) gives the title character (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a lecture about the principle of "mind over matter." Concluding that the barbarian is too simple and selfish to understand the concept, Doom wraps up with the observation that "People have no grasp of what they do." Then he suggests that Conan "Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe." [It's traditional at this point for everyone in the room to shout "Whoa!"] The next shot finds our hero enjoying the recommended "think time" while nailed to a tree.

The Band: To be honest, for all I know these guys could be the next Velvet Underground. However, their web site makes them look like they're probably pretty familiar with venues that include pool tables, arm wrestling competitions and a host of other "audience distractions." Besides, even a good band would have trouble living up to the coolness of their name.

 

Sucking Chest Wound

The Name: A sucking chest wound is a traumatic injury that opens the chest cavity and draws air in through the hole when the victim inhales. You can tell when you have one because of the sucking, hissing sound it makes. That and the agonizing pain.

The Band: Okay, this one's a cheat. If the 8sails staff had ever formed our own garage band, this is what we would have called it. But despite our kick-ass name, we probably would have justified only the first word.

Review – Seamless

This was sort of like watching Project Runway without all the reality show bullshit. Unfortunately, it was also sort of like watching Project Runway without the designs. Instead, this documentary focuses on the not-particularly-interesting personalities behind three of the finalist efforts in a Vogue up-and-coming designer competition. Though I valued the absence of Heidi Klum as much as the next person, I would have appreciated a little more screen time for the designs and a little less for the designers. Mildly amusing

Review – Possession (2002)

So apparently the answer to the question "Can you make romantic comedies for intellectuals?" is "No." The thesis here is that a couple of professional academics (Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart) discover a trail of letters that romantically link a famous and supposedly happily married poet and a "spinster" (which must have been the 19th century's euphemism for "lesbian"). Their quest to uncover the details of the relationship could have been a clever bit of fun, but weaknesses in the script swiftly slay the promising premise. For starters, I found myself annoyed by the protagonists' willingness to steal documents. Does nobody have a camera phone? Was 2002 really that long ago? But more than that, the awkward dialogue kills any chance that the characters will come across as sympathetic or even human. With an extensive rewrite this might have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Picture Perfect

So let me get this straight. A single woman who devotes all her time to her job can't get promoted because she isn't married and spending time with her family? I guess I don't remember 1997 all that well. In any event, the protagonist (Jennifer Aniston) breaks through this peculiar glass ceiling by inventing a relationship with a wedding videographer (Jay Mohr) she doesn't actually know at all. So when a wacky set of circumstances force her to actually date her fake boyfriend ... well, imagine all the least imaginative directions the plot could go from there, and you can picture the rest of the picture without actually sitting through it. See if desperate

Review – Wild Bill

Plays adapted as movies sometimes come across as too "theatrical," and wow is that ever the case here. The life and death of Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Bridges) shouldn't have been anywhere near this boring, and a big part of the blame can be placed on the "everything has to take place within the four corners of a single room" approach taken by the filmmakers. Sure, it uses more than one location. And it features some elements – particularly an explicit and historically-inaccurate sexual relationship between the protagonist and Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin) – that would have been awkward in front of a live audience. But overall the piece is stage play stiff, especially toward the end when Hickok squares off against would-be assassin Jack McCall (helped neither by the motive they assign to McCall's hatred nor the decision to cast David Arquette in the role). Such a production was a particular surprise coming from director Walter Hill, famous for fast-paced-if-slow-witted action pictures. See if desperate

Review – Let Me In

Though I hate to be the umpty-thousandth reviewer to make this observation, this is a largely pointless remake of a much better Swedish vampire movie. I thought the whole point of American versions of ponderous European movies was that they were supposed to be “pepped up” a bit for U.S. audiences. But this production heartily indulges in pace-killing, lethargic sequences in which characters just stare at each other as if each is waiting for the other to say something. Further, some of the more shocking elements – particularly the vampire's gender issue – were excised from this adaptation, presumably because American audiences would have been too freaked out. I guess the occasional nods to U.S. popular culture (Now and Laters, a KISS T-shirt and so on) made me feel a little more at home, but otherwise I would have been just as happy in Norway. See if desperate

Review – Sea of Fear

The only thing that saved this from the abandoned movie list was that I was soldering a complicated bit of wiring at the time and thus was too preoccupied to take the time to get rid of it. And thank goodness I didn't, because wow, were all those fake endings ever worth it. "Didn't see that one coming, did you? Oh you did? Well how about this twist, then? That was predictable, too? Then here's another. And another. And another." The problem with this approach is that if you don't spend the first 80 minutes of the movie coming up with characters the audience cares about and a plot that keeps us interested, your stupid rug-yanking exercises in the last ten minutes don't make any difference one way or another. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Hole (2001)

It takes guts to make a movie with a title so obviously mock-worthy. Not brains, but guts. A nerdy prep school kid (Thora Birch), her pretty-girl friend (Keira Knightley) and a couple of boys (nobody I recognized) get themselves stuck in an abandoned bomb shelter (and a palatial-if-dusty one at that), and things go wrong from there. The tale is told a la Rashomon, though more than one of the versions come from the protagonist's perspective. So we wade through several iterations of the story, each less pleasant and more pathetic than the last. See if desperate

Tommy's Holiday Camp

Once again I've a small bone to pick with Mental Floss. The last time I got a whole column out of it, but this time the gripe is a bit smaller.

Just about every issue the magazine includes the latest entry in its list of "101 Masterpieces." In the July-August issue the masterpiece being celebrated is The Who's Tommy.

I don't begrudge it a spot on the list. Though the work is a little uneven, it stands on its own as a legitimate work of art. The problem is the notion that it spawned other art works that contributed significantly to the world.

Here's the list of albums and shows that, according to writer Bill DeMain, owe a huge debt to Tommy:

• Pink Floyd's The Wall
• Green Day's American Idiot
• Evita
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch 

To which let me add at least two more:

• Kilroy Was Here
• Trapped in the Closet

Yeah, thanks guys. Western civilization marches on.


---


As does computer repair. I've got Dreamweaver reinstalled and the site downloaded. So now I just need to busy myself with getting caught up.

Review – Edge of Sanity

The next time I fall for the Anthony-Perkins-is-in-this-so-maybe-it-will-be-good trap, I need to remember Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion. Here we get yet another twist on the Jekyll and Hyde tale. This time around the good doctor is accidentally exposed to an experimental, cocaine-based anesthetic that brings out his childhood sexual trauma, but otherwise the only difference between this go-around and most of the earlier versions is that the rough sex is a bit more explicit. See if desperate

Bean there, done that

A few days ago I was watching Black Death, a singularly non-entertaining piece of crud about misery in the Middle Ages. So sort of like making a movie about white people in coffee shops or wheat in Kansas.

Bored and in need of distraction, I noted that one of the stars was Sean Bean. Though I'm sure he's a perfectly good actor, I've had trouble taking him seriously ever since his appearance in Patriot Games many years ago. The problem didn't arise from the movie itself or his performance in it. Rather, it cropped up during the opening credits.

While we were watching the credits, Bean's name appeared (naturally enough, as he's the lead bad guy in the movie). Someone in the group (I'm looking at you, Ms. Rauber) was temporarily puzzled by the spellings of his first and last names. "Sean Bean?" she asked.

It isn't odd at all if you pronounce his first name "Shawn." But because of the similarity to his last name, she read his first as sounding like "Scene." And of course that made it funny.

What made it even funnier is when we started coming up with relatives for him, such as his grumpy grandpa Mean Bean. His creepy uncle Obscene Bean. His eco-friendly niece Green Bean (try making it through grade school with that one).

Did I mention that this was years ago?

---

In site news, guess what? Another massive hard drive crash! This time it was the desktop computer from which I do almost all my work.

Thus this crash took just about everything I've created for my classes for the past 13 years. Oh, and a big chunk of the preliminary work for my sabbatical project. At the moment the dead hard drive awaits more expert attention than I can give it.

Sigh.

Fortunately just about all the content for 8sails was already uploaded to the ISP. And having at least partially learned my lesson from the laptop crash a few months ago, I've been doing a lot of my work "in the cloud" using the 8sails wiki.

So if you absolutely can't stand to wait a couple of days for me to set things right, you can toddle off to the wiki and read the drafts before they're officially made part of the site. Otherwise just give me a bit and I'll recover from this mess and get back on track.

Abandoned – Witch's Sabbath

Because "Stripper's Sabbath" would have made less sense, though it would have been more honest. This was shaping up to be the most spectacularly boring use of bare boobs since Orgy of the Dead. Ten minutes

Review – Bloodlock

This is one of those movies that I forget almost literally as soon as they're over. It's a guy-with-a-video-camera-and-some-friends-who-can-kinda-act production about a not-happily-married young couple who move into a house with a vampire locked in the basement. See if desperate

Review – Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia

It came from the crappy action movie box and went straight to video. American commandos are abandoned in Columbia (so it isn't just a catchy title), framed for an assassination attempt on drug lords and military officials. If you find yourself entertained by plot-free gunfights in the 4:3 aspect ratio, then prepare to be entertained. See if desperate

Review – Eight Men Out

John Sayles turns his ever-so-slightly-too-artistic eye on the notorious "Black Sox" scandal from the 1919 World Series. He works with a solid cast of familiar faces to tell the no-winners tale of how desperately underpayed ballplayers fell under the sway of petty crooks bankrolled by a big-time mobster looking to fix the White Sox's looks-like-a-sure-thing win over the Reds. Though I could have done with a trifle less filter work, the production does a solid job both as a crime movie and a baseball picture. Oh, and a quick side-note to Pete Rose (whom I'm sure reads 8sails all the time): if it was up to me, you'd go into the Hall of Fame right after Shoeless Joe (i.e. never). Worth seeing

Review – Black Death

This is one of those movies that left me wondering why they even bothered to make it. I watched it because it looked like they spent some money on it and the Netflix description identified it as a horror movie. The former was correct. The latter, on the other hand ... maybe it's just that "horror" and "horrible" sound alike. The central thesis here seems to be that life sucked during the Middle Ages, especially after the Bubonic Plague broke out in the 14th century. Sean Bean heads an ensemble of grimy witchfinders in search of a village that has magically been spared from the disease ravaging the rest of the peasantry. Before the end everyone (witchfinders, peasants, innocent young protagonist, etc.) manages to deftly avoid either a literal or a moral victory. So thanks, people who made this, for bringing a little pointless misery into my life. See if desperate

Review – The Sleeping Car

The Sleeping Audience. At this point (1990), David Naughton appears to have resigned himself to the fate of cheesy horror movie actor, the result of starring in An American Werewolf in London years earlier. Here he plays a recently-divorced journalist who's trying to rebuild his life by going back to school. His financial situation forces him into the only digs he can afford to rent: an old sleeping car (so it isn't just a catchy title) possessed by the evil spirit of a train engineer who really really hates people who have sex. Fortunately for the ghost (and unfortunately for the rest of us), our hero and his guests take frequent sex breaks. Even if I was easily impressed by cheap nudity, I still would have hated this picture based solely on the wretched dialogue. All the characters communicate exclusively in a painful series of sophomoric "snappy quips" too stupid to entertain the average sophomore. Jeff Conaway's delivery is particularly galling, as he adds a pathetic taste of Kenickie to the already-miserable writing. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Resident Evil: Afterlife

They should call the next one Resident Evil: Unnecessary. Actually, for what it's worth, they could have bestowed that title on this one. Honestly, if you dropped me randomly into the middle of any of the Resident Evil pictures, my best guess about which one I was watching would be based almost exclusively on Mila Jovovich's apparent age. Otherwise they're thoroughly interchangeable. Cranky zombies. Evil corporation. Elaborate fight scenes. If the zombie apocalypse were done, when tis done, t'were well it were done quickly. Not sequel and sequel and sequel. See if desperate

Review – Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde

In this bizarre twist on Stephenson's classic, the good doctor turns into an attractive-yet-evil woman rather than a brute. Oh, and s/he is also Jack the Ripper. Oh, and s/he is also in league with Burke and Hare. It almost goes without saying that the errors in chronology and geography aren't exactly the worst part of the production. That distinction belongs to the complete lack of context or purpose for the gender-swapping variation. We get a brief (and somewhat less than plausible) explanation for why the Hyde formula turns its drinker into a woman. But beyond that, she might just as well have been any other Hyde. Oh, well. Any excuse for building some female partial frontal nudity into a Hammer production. Mildly amusing

Review – Deranged

As movie versions of the Ed Gein story go, this one isn't too terrible. They play a little fast and loose with the facts. And the production is also saddled with some annoying conventions, such as changing the killer's name to "Ezra Cobb" and plugging in a journalist narrator who infests the first half of the movie at oddly awkward moments and then vanishes almost entirely once the murders get underway. And of course the victims are young, attractive women rather than the middle-aged "mother" types Gein actually preferred. But the parts that show a little respect for the true story are entertaining enough. Mildly amusing

Review – Fragile

As ghost stories go, this one isn't too terrible. A handful of kids stuck in a soon-to-be-closed hospital are menaced by a malevolent spirit, and the new night nurse (Calista Flockhart) tries to get to the bottom of things. Though the story is serviceable enough, Flockhart undoes a lot of the picture's potential by playing her character as distant and emotionally dead (hard to tell if she did it on purpose or just lacked the range to do anything else). Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Bram Stoker's: To Die For

Because if Dracula was a woman and she lived in Los Angeles, that would definitely be original. Definitely. I made it 20 minutes or so before determining that the oddly-placed colon in the title wasn't going to be the movie's worst trespass against intelligence. And I should note that both this one and The Lost City were "quit" for us by Netflix, which took them off the instant view list before we could get around to finishing them.

Abandoned – The Lost City

Oh, Andy Garcia. The world barely needs the David Mamet we already have. We don't need you to ape his "style" with a star-infested version of the fall of Havana. 60 minutes

Review – The Public Eye

A real biography of Weegee would have been a lot more interesting. Instead we get a tabloid crime photographer (Joe Pesci) with coffee table art book aspirations, but we're stuck watching helplessly as he wends his way through a spectacularly uninteresting, Chinatown-esque murder mystery. Every once in awhile a line or two will hint that this was originally intended to be a better movie. However, the intelligent stuff is buried deep under fake noir nonsense. Mildly amusing

Review – De Sade

This movie has no excuse for being as terrible as it is. The cast is solid enough, with Keir Dullea and John Huston heading a squad of capable actors. Richard Matheson's script isn't his finest hour, but it's passable. The big problem is that this movie came along at the exact wrong moment in film history to make a picture about the title pervert. Mores in 1969 allowed enough nudity to excuse the filmmakers from clever innuendo, but depravity on the Marquis's level was still a bit too much. The result is awkward at best, employing camera tricks such as bad focus and red filters whenever the action gets heavy. And worst of all, this is the umpteenth production to seize on De Sade's flair for theatre as an excuse to make something stiff and over-arty. Mildly amusing

Review – The Possession of David O’Reilly

This indie picture starts out with some interesting visuals that suggest some scary potential. Unfortunately, once the plot – loser is dogged by evil presence, inflicts himself and his haints on a couple of friends – is set in motion, it never really goes anywhere. Mildly amusing