I voted 5 because I didn't want to influence the overall average. I haven't seen the movie but I read the original novel and was sorry to hear the film being savaged so. I would have hoped for a better treatment of the film by its author but apparently, from what other people have said, he was not trying to translate the novel on to the screen so much as he was trying to create a salable product and get a series going. Too bad! The novel was highly readable. It had a rough, crude vitality. Sure, it was unnecessarily violent but it was not the sort of book one picks up to read for its literary qualities. It was the sort of book one buys from a bus station paperback rack. It was fun, and best of all, the main character was memorable. He wasn't believable, he had no redeeming qualities, but he was memorable. Oh, well, another opportunity for good entertainment sacrificed on the altar of the desire for fame and money.
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rptgb6 January 2005For lovers of bad TV and film this really pushes the boundaries of what a human mind can take.
I shall not attempt to describe the full indignity of the film - rather a few select moments, in particular the two 10 minute montages of a silent Highlander Man (adrien Paul?) working out/watching his family dying/stalking the streets (all to a terribly bad, sub-yann hammer synth soundtrack). So bad that by the 6th time you see his wife and daughter get blown up, you wish you had been with them, if only to save the sweet misery of seeing the Owl re-live his dull montage again and again.
Indeed as we cross the half-hour mark, humour turns to revulsion as we realise that this is a serious piece of work, so bad that the director removed their name from his hateful and yet unintentionally hilarious movie.
I mean the central villain 'raps' all of his dialogue for god sake!! How could I sit through this? How will you sit through this? Well, like some horrible accident once you begin to watch it you won't be able to take your eyes from the screen.
However I warn you, the Owl is not for the casual viewer - if it comes on TV and you can survive the full hour then you can consider yourself one of the lucky ones, as many will have fallen where you now stand (probably weeping). -
mj_togher15 March 2002this film was truly awful, it was a mess, I can see why it was credited to Alan Smithee, the fictional name of a director of a film when no one wants to take responsibility for a film.
main character, the Owl, you are subjected th flashbacks which went on for up to 10 minutes, replaying the car explosion that killed his wife and daughter....we got it the first time, yes we know why you're tortured and out for vengeance.
these flashbacks also include scenes of him doing his martial arts training....again they laboured the point.
One of the baddies is a rapping gangster who gets one of his henchmen to play his ghetto blaster so that he can rap his dialogue...and truly awful rapping it was.
And you hardly see the real baddie, except in this repeated flashback scene when he is driving away from the explosion
the little girl...typical american girl....you want her to die...
it went on for way too long...
and you find yourself watching it to see how bad it can get, and it never disappoints you... -
"The Owl" was a proposed pilot that was not picked up by any network. Oddly, the makers of this show did something unique...they released a longer version in theaters in Europe after it bombed with the networks in order to recoup some of their expenses.
'The Owl' is a man who apparently doesn't sleep much and spends his nights dispensing justice as needed. In many ways, he acts like The Equalizer or Renegade or The Saint....but is much less prone to talking and more into punching and kicking. I am glad he didn't talk much, as when others (especially the baddies) did, I felt like tossing my remote at the TV. Yes, the dialog was THAT bad. What was also just horrible was the macho and highly formulaic fight at the end...uggh!
The bottom line is that after watching it, I could see why the series was never made. Had they made the hero less grunty and more like a real human being, it might have worked. And, had they made villains who seemed real in any way, that, too would have helped!
By the way, I learned from this show is that if you have a bullet-proof coat, baddies with machine guns will only shoot the coat...never the unprotected head or hands. Imagine...opening up on him at close range and never once hitting his head! -
Bridget: I was a little kid. I don't even know what I was doing. Yeah they blew up the car that I was in. I remember they had me get in the car and then they were like "now get out of the car" and I did. I remember also, a time when the parents were making out and the sprinklers were on and I had to run around and laugh. I don't know if it was even in the film, I've never seen it. There was also a scene were I was running on the beach and the parents were holding my hands. I don't remember if my character was scared of waves or I was afraid of waves, but every time a wave came they lifted me up. Don't make fun of me. I was just little kid. They just needed a little kid. I remember at the audition, though, I was wearing a white dress. And there were always two girls around, Molly Orr and Lindsay something, who was Village of the Damned... Yep thats my former life... my life until I was seven... Alan Smithee, huh?--I guess that makes sense. Ed.--Bridget did not choose to post her commnent. I did.
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toaster-829 June 2000This film blows donkeys!
It's soooooo soooooo bad! And the ending suggests a possible sequel. Please, god no!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not very good. -
Based on a novel by Bob Forward, this had all the trappings of something interesting. Sadly the movie was poorly executed for reasons I'll go into later, and it is easy to see why it did not get commissioned as a TV series. All the better for its star, Adrian Paul, it seemed. Not long after he was picked up for Duncan Macleod in the extremely successful HIGHLANDER: The Series. You could argue this was a good canvas for Paul's talents and later casting as the Scottish Immortal, if anyone had bothered to see it. I don't know if the Producers of Highlander watched The Owl, but Paul's natural agility and martial arts experience shines through here and was one of the most interesting aspects in the film. With long, drawn out scenes of Paul working out spliced between flashback segments of his former life, the movie is drawn out instead of getting on with the story. What is more, it tells us very little of what we want to know. How did he become The Owl?
A word on the music. Moody and atmospheric, you could say no more from Sylvester Levay (Airwolf)
The cast. I have to say, the Wooden Spoon Award must go to the awful rapping bad guy, Cool Ice. He's just plain silly. His stringy haired henchman are no better. Brian Thompson makes a worthy appearance as Bobby B, the bar keeper of a backstreet bar The Owl frequents. He is L'Hiboux's confident and informant. Patricia Charbonneau plays a cop, and L'Hiboux's on and off girlfriend. Hutchins, played by Alan Scarfe was obviously meant to be the recurring nemesis of The Owl. He seemed like a great foil, but sadly we'll never know what might have become of it.
Bob/Robert Forward wrote two Owl books. I confess I have not read them. What put me off is that they are written in first person, i.e from the character's perspective, which is a good idea to get into the head of the character, but so often doesn't work. I must try them, as reviews of the books are generally very good. Maybe they might throw some light on how L'Hiboux got to be The Owl. The movie makes little attempt. Again, maybe they left this to be revealed as the series progressed. In summary, this movie is worth a shot. It's very hard to get hold of though which doesn't make the job easy. In Australia it was called "Night Owl" -
BandSAboutMovies29 April 2023Alex L'Hiboux (Adrian Paul, Highlander: The Series) - his last name is the owl, get it? - is a vigilante who is known as The Owl because he hasn't slept since his wife and daughter were killed eight years ago. Thanks to a young girl named Lisa (Erika Flores), he takes on a case to find her father and reconnects with the policewoman who helped him on the night of the tragedy that changed his life, Danny Santerre (Patricia Charbonneau).
Originally broadcast as a television pilot on CBS from 10:45 p.m. To 11:45 p.m. On Saturday, August 3, 1991 - this is what we call burning off a pilot - this was a 48-minute episode. When it was released on home video, every single shot ever filmed was reused and padded to make it 84 minutes long. Director and writer Tom Holland asked for his name to be taken off the home video.
Brian Thomson, who plays the bartender who is The Owl's frenemy, was the Night Slasher in Cobra, Bozworth in Fright Night 2 (which Holland did not work on) and Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Oh yeah, speaking of people in Cannon movies, Rick Zumwalt - Bull Hurley from Over the Top, Joshua in Penitentiary III and Boom Boom in Rockula - also shows up. And holy Canadian crap, there's Alan Scarfe, the dad from Cathy's Curse!
You know why people liked the Punisher back before his logo became a Nazi flag for cowards? Because you could have empathy for what he's been through. The Owl seems like such a jerk that it's hard to ever feel anything for him. -
craiglowrie20 January 2006This film was obviously a pilot for a T.V show that never happened. There are several similarities between this and the original Punisher movie from the late 80's (the way his family were killed, knives with owl's heads on them instead of skulls). This movie was based on a book but I still think they've ripped off The Punisher too obviously. This movie is not as good as The Punisher but is still decent. I'm sure the series would have been okay but if it had been made and lasted more than one season, Adrian Paul would not have been able to do the Highlander series, which was one of my favourite shows of the 90's and I thought Adrian was good in it.
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daha643921 November 1998I just saw "The Owl" on TV, and man, what a bad flick. Did we need another vigilante martial artist? Marvel Comics should sue the TV company for plagiarism, the Owl is a dead ringer for The Punisher.
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disposable-329 June 2005I seem to recall taping it the only time it ran on TV - I thought it wasn't a movie but the pilot for a show that was never picked up. I also recall liking it, although if memory serves there was some terrible catchphrase like "Hoot Hoot, dirtbag" that was said when a bad guy got his behind kicked, or something awful like that.
This may have been more apparent in implication than in statement, but I thought that his insomnia was caused not by a pre-existing medical condition but by exposure to an illegal, experimental and highly addictive drug, (possibly at the same time as the trauma of his family's death?) causing the images to sort of "burn" themselves into his brain and immediately wake him up every time he fell deeply enough asleep to dream. The plausibility of this is low, since people who don't sleep go crazy (really crazy. You start seeing things, and not in a good way. Before this came out I once spent a week awake - not a good idea, trust me.)
Anyways, the bit at the end with the bike and the tank of water is.... predictably silly and one of the clichés mocked so rightly by many a movie these days. Other than those flaws I remember liking it a lot. -
This film is real bad, its a real bad film i tells ya. It even stoops to the rapping bad guy level, in fact barring sesame street i cant remember rap being used so effectively. Anyway, Bill Cosby is the rapping bad guy who is trying to kill the owl, other wise known as Alex L'Hiboux. The French name doesnt really explain why the actor playing the role keeps slipping into an English accent. Their are very few things to recommend this film. One of them is Uscar nominated Branscombe Richmond who is at his impeccable best as chief Walks with a Limp, the guy who taught the owl everything he knows. A star turn by Billy "Sly" Williams as gullett also stand's out.
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bob the moo21 March 2002An ex-investigative journalist can't sleep he walks the street as a vigilante, taking on cases. He is driven by the murder of his wife and daughter years before and uses his martial arts skill to fight crime. When he finds a new drug Instant Iron creating crime, he is hired to stop the supply. Coincidentally a young girl hires him to find her father, a chemist, who may have been kidnapped to make more of the drug for criminals does this connect to the man who murdered his wife?
I hate most TVM's. I especially hate those that are only designed to become cheap TV shows. This was clearly one of those th plot sets up all the elements the producers wanted for the series, a love interest, a bar room friend with whom he has a shady past, a revenge story line, a criminal nemesis to wheel out regularly and some sort of semi-super powers. Unfortunately they forgot to add any type of spark this is evident from the credits where we see the director is oh dear Alan Smithee.
The plot is lazy and predictable, the action is worst. The film is dull throughout and it's little wonder no-one picked it up. It's not helped by having cardboard cut out Adrian Paul in the lead role can't he act at all there's nothing funnier in the whole film than seeing him wailing to the sky in despair after the loss of his kid! Brian Thompson (X-files' Alien Bounty Hunter) is OK but the rest are as bad as Paul.
There's nothing to like here, the film is lazy and poor in every area. It's dull and even Adrian Paul seems to think he's better than this and if HE looks down his nose at something then you know it'' gotta stink. -
skidmarxst2 September 2003I saw a bit of this film just once. It has haunted me for a very long time, I have failed in all my attempts to find it. I can identify with the hero since I'm writing this at 5:00 in the morning.
Great hero concept, but since I didn't see the whole thing I can't say more -
Martial arts movie with more than usual absence of any semblance of reality in plot, made distinctive by bad acting and increasing the film/expenditure ratio by repeating the same sequence several times in slow motion. Yet another gem under the Smithee Banner - Bad Movie Night review please...