HSauer

MONDO MAGIC will make you lose your lunch. After spending considerable time with a filthy African tribe, the "producers" cross the water to find another equally filthy South American tribe. Animals are slaughtered, prepared and eaten by hand; bodily fluids and excreta are glorified and liberally distributed across the screen; nearly everybody is naked, nearly all the time.

The narrator says this is all tied in with "magic," but MONDO MAGIC is hardly a serious study of primitive magic or religion. It's more like a montage of disgusting scenes that are probably 100% authentic. (Circumcised African tribesmen don't shock me since the rite is ancient and originated in Africa, whence came the Israelites).

The Intermedia DVD version I saw this evening was "re-edited," and clocks in at 84 minutes -- the "sex magic" seems to have been cut from the film. Crude anatomy lessons are plentiful, however.

A mildly laughable anti-marijuana picture, ASSASSIN OF YOUTH has some things going for it. The cast of ASSASSIN OF YOUTH is solidly capable for a roadshow production, and several actors have opportunities to shine in comic roles (in particular, the judge, the old checker-playing codger and the Margaret Hamilton "wicked witch" look-alike). Luana Walters is an appealing heroine, and a talented actress. (Her biography at IMDb suggests that Luana might have been better off with marijuana as her drug of choice.)

Today the old drug-scare films are played for laughs, but ASSASSIN OF YOUTH is an exceptionally competent production. The irony here is that truly terrible dope-soaps like REEFER MADNESS and MARIHUANA are much more entertaining, because they don't waste time with dramatic niceties.

The most notorious anti-drug movies of the 1930s were made by private entrepreneurs like Dwain Esper and Elmer Clifton, not by the U.S. Government. These gentlemen capitalized on the Government's anti-drug publicity, but they were not bound by any political agenda of the day. Their aim was to supply the public what the Hollywood studios could not provide under the Production Code - flashes of T&A, and graphic depictions of vice.

A couple of clarifying comments are in order. Herschell Gordon Lewis contributed a brief introduction to the video release of DOCTOR GORE (aka THE BODY SHOP), wherein he touched upon his collaborative efforts with J.G. "Pat" Patterson, director and star of DOCTOR GORE. Patterson concocted the "gore effects" for THE GRUESOME TWOSOME and a few other Lewis movies in the late 60s. Lewis remarks that whereas 2,000 MANIACS was a "five gallon" film (referring to the amount of stage blood required), the Lewis-Patterson productions were "fifteen gallon" pictures. Lewis does not describe DOCTOR GORE as a "fifteen gallon" film -- he's only talking about the films he & Patterson made together. Lewis has confessed (elsewhere) that his introduction to DOCTOR GORE was improvised before he'd even seen Patterson's film! So take it with a grain of salt.

This may be an "unfinished" film, but like some unfinished novels it does have an "ending." It's just missing some connective tissue.

Patterson has definite stage presence & a dry sense of humor, helping to make this simplistic show somewhat more watchable than it should be. There's an extremely bare-bones plot -- even BLOOD FEAST is more complex -- and a gratingly repetitive musical score by William Girdler. A bit of nudity & lots of skin. The entire middle section of the film involves the construction of a "perfect woman;" this is concentrated gore for the bloodthirsty, and laughable.

Patterson the director is in way over his head, but he tries hard to tell his story creatively, if it's possible to use Frankenstein clichés creatively. But the best reason to see this film (on Something Weird's DVD, if possible) is that it features a perfect Nashville weeper, Bill Hicks' "A Heart Dies Every Minute." Ain't it the truth!

Actually filmed in 1971 for theatrical release, this is a late-60s time capsule of counter-cultural themes. It shares some traits with EASY RIDER, being a "road movie" with a graphically depicted acid trip, a cemetery seen through a distorting lens, hippie communes, drugs, and evil murderous rednecks. There's a familiar-sounding (obligatory) rock music soundtrack.

The main character is a priest who "drops out" and hits the road to find himself, or get away from it all, or something like that. ELECTRIC SHADES OF GREY (the title) refers to moral & ethical ambiguities that complicate our lives and undercut easy idealism and efforts to be "good." The priest resolves his personal crisis in a surprise (?) ending that reinforces the theme of ambiguity.

When Lyndon Baines Johnson launched his War On Poverty in the 1960s, he sought to stamp out the vibrant & vital culture depicted in this 1975 rural-romantic masterwork, PIGKEEPER'S DAUGHTER.

The Swiners were born to be pigkeepers, and their blooming daughter Moonbeam was born to be a piglovin' princess. Alone with her cracker thoughts, voluptuous Moonbeam fantasizes about her Prince Charming, substituting her prize porker, Lord Hamilton, for the old fairy tale's feckless frog. Lord Hamilton, in his turn, fairly wallows in his role as a kept creature, true blue to Moonbeam through every twist and turn of this cinematic hayride. Meanwhile, Mrs. Swiner gets pitched by a traveling salesman, and Little Patty, the girl next door, learns the hard facts of life from hillbilly stud Jasper. Get the picture?

I found this DVD in the "Learning" category at Borders Books, Music & Video. May you be so lucky.

This is a silent film with a heavy overlay of narration, provided by several of its fictional characters, and a cool musical soundtrack illegally swiped from LPs. A short list of composers whose works are featured in 4-D WITCH includes: Mussorgsky ("Night on Bald Mountain"), Wagner (the finale of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, scored for piano and orchestra), Rimsky-Korsakov ("Scheherazade"), and Pink Floyd (the 1968 studio version of "Saucerful of Secrets").

Basically, 4-D WITCH is just a series of erotic events strung together by narrators. I enjoyed the narration of "Cindy," the central character whose flirtation with sexual witchcraft gives the movie its focus. Whoever provided her voice did a great job characterizing Cindy as a "game young innocent." Dial enough 1-900 numbers and you may get to speak with her yourself.

Visually, 4-D WITCH is a mess, with psychedelic light shows, bizarre superimposed images of masks and frightening faces, and occasional straight shots of the characters that serve as "establishing shots" for the special effects. Everybody seems caught up in a psychic whirlpool, from which the only way out is down, down, down.

Despite its interesting and amusing elements, the film's amateurish editing, the incoherence of the "plot" and the random/shuffle nature of the soundtrack all help 4-D WITCH to overstay its welcome long before the final reel starts rolling. The abrupt, unresolved ending would be confusing, were it not a great relief! Someone should convert 4-D WITCH into a "loop" and send it to Abu Ghraib, where it can be put to its best possible use.

MONDO MOD is aptly described by its trailer as "the film that took a trip and never came back!!!" It attempts to document the hip "mod" scene of the mid-60s and focuses solely on southern California. As a result, the film offers a very distorted look at the "youth culture" of that era. The most popular "mod" activities are, according to MONDO MOD: surfing, rioting, martial arts, Go-Karting, dancing, smoking pot and taking LSD, and riding motorcycles. The Vietnam War is never mentioned. A thirty-something acidhead and the young, very "mod"-stylish owner of a fashion boutique are interviewed. In my favorite scene the acidhead, wearing a mod-ified (no pun intended) executioner's mask to hide his identity, talks about his dozen LSD trips while he is purportedly tripping, and his interlocutor repeatedly turns to the camera to dispense a frightening anti-drug message that utterly contradicts the acidhead's statements. There are a few extended sequences with hot chicks dancing and systematically (not to say "semiprofessionally") disrobing. On the Something Weird Video DVD of MONDO MOD you can see two 7 minute reels of "alternate footage" from the film (with nudity excised from the theatrical release) and the ridiculously over-the-top trailer, plus a whole slew of other hippie-exploitation material.

This film fully deserves its place in the Bottom 100. SPACE MUTINY is a high-school turf war set on a city-sized ship in deep space. When a space-epic's MacGuffin (Hitchcock's term for a plot element that motivates the characters but doesn't interest the audience) is a plot to alter the ship's course into the next constellation, Corona Borealis, you know the film is not only earth-bound but worthy of quick burial. (Constellations are two-dimensional patterns of stars, as seen from Earth; you can't navigate in deep space by going from one constellation to another, because space is three-dimensional. But you knew that... after seeing SPACE MUTINY I'm afraid to assume that anyone knows anything in particular!!!)

Other comments have amply described the characters and absurdities of the story. Most of this "space" movie takes place in a boiler room, more primitive than futuristic even by 20th century standards. All of the attempted futuristic innovations in the film -- ray guns, Enforcers (quasi-Zamboni machines for scooting around the big boiler room), computers and video-telephones -- are obviously taken from comic books, other space movies, or "real life" circa 1988. They just look silly and inappropriate in their environment. The characters are dumb, their lives are without purpose, and their ship is going nowhere. The dialogue is lame, but not inappropriately so. SPACE MUTINY has no redeeming qualities; it's worse than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, brilliant special effects and an eerie, powerful musical score carry this film. The story is timeless, though some characterizations and specific details are dated. In 1950, for instance, "the scientists" had some political influence. Like the U.N., the scientific community is an international organization, and people hoped they might be both wise and "above politics" -- a little like Klaatu is supposed to be in this film. The Red Scare was underway; people lived in fear of atomic warfare, and it seemed there would never be peace on earth. These concerns are on display in every frame of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it was a timely film in 1951.

Klaatu does America the honor of landing in Washington, D.C. When Klaatu refuses to divulge his message to America alone, viewers are surprised and maybe a little insulted. But Klaatu's really can't entrust his message to any one nation -- that would reek of favoritism and jeopardize the success of his mission.

If The Day the Earth Stood Still were remade, Klaatu would probably still land in Washington (after all, it's an American film), but people's reactions would be depicted a little differently. Jerry Falwell might demand to know whether Klaatu is Christian. Liberals would brand him a menace to individual freedom. Conservatives would denounce his "cultural relativism." There would be UFO cults and groupies all over the Mall, and TV crews on 24 hour watch. Klaatu would still be above all the controversy, still impatient with stupidity and fear.

Putting aside its "message," The Day the Earth Stood Still is probably the most suspenseful and credible of all science fiction films wherein a humanoid robot shoots deadly beams of light from his head. Gort's presence helps to make this a classic SF film. Without Gort, the film would teeter dangerously close to religious allegory, with undue emphasis placed on Klaatu's status as a messenger from heaven. Seeing is believing, and Gort is a very impressive sight. And Klaatu is seen as just a guy from outer space, with something very important to tell us.

Funny, predictable melodrama about a pop group and the manager who hijacks their career. An inferior pop band ("The Big Blast!") sells its collective soul to heartless, manipulative preppy Boojie Baker, who owns their name, their suits, their equipment -- and their girls! (The Blast-Off Girls are useful to the plot but too frequently offscreen.) Vocals and instrumentals are uniformly off-key and undistinguished, the band members have no distinct "look," and the record execs & promoters don't care, because "all bands sound the same anyway." Will The Big Blast submit to contractual enslavement and every indignity known to man? See the film to find out. For Lewis fans, there are small pleasures here -- the guy who played "Lang" in SCUM OF THE EARTH plays a similar, though more epicurean character here; Ray Sager from JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT and WIZARD OF GORE is Boojie's sidekick; Big Blast members had parts in THE ALLEY TRAMP (!), YEAR OF THE YAHOO, et. al. All in all, a fun film, but hampered by its cheapness and simplicity.

KONGA begs to be compared with KING KONG. Konga, according to AIP, is more terrifying than King Kong! That may be so, if the average moviegoer is more terrified by paunchy guys in gorilla suits than by realistic miniatures (i.e. Kong). But seriously, KONGA is not terrifying. Konga himself, the "monster," is a confused, overgrown chimp who follows a mad doctor's orders until the film's climax, when Konga quadruples in size, breaks out of his cage (and out of his house, via the front wall) and starts throwing people around like they're nothing more than Ken & Barbie dolls. He kills the mad doctor and the doctor's assistant, then basically gives himself up to the British police, who call in the armed forces and gun the gorilla down. Big Ben stands behind Konga during this scene, to indicate his (Konga's) enormous size. The "love theme" from KONGA plays while the giant collapses and reverts, in death, to the little chimp he was at the start of the movie, before mad Dr. Decker began experimenting with him. [END SPOILER ALERT]

Michael Gough gives an overdone performance as Decker and, indeed, the story focuses on him nearly always. KONGA can be good fun for people who enjoy watching how mad doctors work through their strange problems. For anyone else, especially for lovers of giant gorilla movies, KONGA is an inept, tedious, insulting, illogical and under-budgeted chunk of merde. To be avoided, generally, but it is entertaining if viewed with complete detachment.

The Intruder was shot on location somewhere in the Deep South. Racist star/villain Shatner, clean-cut and clad in a white suit, uses and abuses the people of Caxton to advance his own career in "social reform." Around this time Shatner also appeared in Judgment at Nuremberg and The Brothers Karamazov, where his tendency to overact was held largely in check. Here he's permitted, even compelled, to go over the top, and although he's sometimes unconvincing as a Southern Man, he's very good as a heel. Most of the lead roles are convincingly played, but the lead African-American student literally walks through his part and this drags down the film a little bit. Apart from the main white characters, the heroes and villains are one-dimensional. The story whips along, however; there's sex and violence aplenty, and every scene has a clear function in the overall plan. Shatner's "town hall" lecture from the courthouse steps, his cross-burning escapades (with Klansmen in full regalia) and his tasteless seductions of a teenager and a middle-aged nymphomaniac are not to be missed, particularly by Kirkaholics.

This might have been an intriguing, memorable film about the usefulness of a vivid imagination. The storyline is so confusing that there's virtually no plot development or drama. The best way to get through this picture is to read 1984 (by Orwell) or see a film version of that anti-utopian novel, and then pretend that this film is somehow related to Orwell's classic. The main idea of a "dreamer" living in a futuristic/totalitarian society with "thought police" and institutionalized brainwashing therapy was Orwell's; Overdrawn, Etc. adds computers and "virtual reality" hijinx, and that's about it... It's obscene even to mention the film Casablanca while discussing Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, but it's necessary to do so. More I won't say on that score. I haven't seen this film anywhere except in conjunction with Mystery Science Theater 3000, where it's treated with all due respect.

I just caught this this morning. Pop Gear is a British film recapping some pop hits of 1964 with staged performances by bands such as The Spencer Davis Group, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, and many others. Concert footage of the Beatles (singing She Loves You and Twist and Shout) opens and closes the film. The producer assumes familiarity, an intimacy between performers and audience, to the extent that the Master of Ceremonies (whose hair resembles a worn-out blond mop) never bothers to introduce himself, nor does he bother to introduce many of the pop groups by name. This is irksome for a lay cultural historian like myself, but that's the way it was, baby. There's a lot of good music and the songs are generally rather brief - 2 minutes on average. A cinematic, widescreen variety show, with more hits than misses. Recommended for fans of 60s radio pop.

This is a classic documentary of 60s rock, captured live before all the hype and hoopla of hippiedom sank most of these acts (and many others). The Monterey Pop Festival kicked off the Summer of Love and remains the prime event of that epoch. The film should be seen by anyone who claims a passing interest in "Woodstock" or "the 60s." I give it 10 stars.

This Island Earth is one of the better science fiction films I've seen. Its strong points far outnumber its flaws. The vivid color photography is both dated and beautiful; this is a great-looking film. The plot, about aliens recruiting Earthling scientists to assist in their obscure war effort, is interesting and relevant to circumstances in our own world. 2 and a half years in the making, the special effects are visually stunning, even if they aren't "realistic." How realistic can the inside of a Metalunan spaceship be, anyhow? Who's ever seen one? Who can say that Metalunans, when we meet them, won't look like Exeter, et. al.? The effects and sets are quite imaginative, better than the 1950s competition and still entertaining.

Critics who say the film is dated should bear in mind that everything made in the early 1950s is "dated" today - except perhaps the hydrogen bomb. Calling an old movie "old" is not criticism; calling a film "old" or "dated" to demonstrate that it is an inferior film is simply prejudicial and thoughtless. I'd recommend This Island Earth to anyone who has an open mind and appreciates fine work, done with care and attention to detail.

I think MST3K used this film for their own stab at cinematic greatness precisely because it's a good film that would (theoretically) draw crowds of the uninitiated into the theater, while it's so obviously from the 1950s that it puts today's sci-fi moviegoers in a mood for nostalgia and good fun. They needed a watchable "popular" film, not an excruciatingly bad one like Manos: The Hands of Fate. Surely MST3K, which is more intelligent than its audience, doesn't believe This Island Earth is a genuinely bad film that inspires contempt and deserves ridicule.

I am a fan of Ken Burns films, but "Thomas Jefferson" is probably the nadir of the talking-head living-history documentary style he favors. In many respects "Thomas Jefferson" is a beautiful film, and it is clearly the work of intelligent people. Ultimately it inspires me to visit Monticello, which is admirably photographed. It fails to answer the question it poses at the outset - whether Jefferson the lover of Liberty can be reconciled with Jefferson the Master of Slaves - and by default suggests that raising this question is the film's chief contribution to Jeffersonian discourse. It's a timely question, but it isn't new. The mood of the film is outrageously depressive, a sedate musical score of American chestnuts underscoring lethargic readings from Jefferson's writings, and images of Monticello, slaves, Jefferson (portrait), historically significant parchments, John Adams (portrait), George Washington (portrait), etc. If this film is anything specific, it is a memorial service for the myth of Jefferson. I don't like it, but I appreciate the film maker's effort and the contributions of scholars involved in the project. A related Ken Burns biographical film, "Lewis and Clark," is similar in tone but less confused and more forthright in its storytelling. See it.

I love this movie. It is direct, powerful, funny and sad and uplifting, and, I think, perfectly proportioned. Nevertheless, I can understand why Kesey allegedly won't watch the movie. The man imagined the whole story and wrote the book, and he told the story the way he believed it should be told. In his tale, a shock-shopworn lunatic lives with McMurphy in the hospital and, through his influence, learns the meaning of freedom. Or something like that. Kesey's novel is written in first-person by the lunatic, Chief Bromden - the deaf, dumb, crazy Indian. In the book, Bromden is observant, imaginative, smart, and at least a little daffy, especially in the first half. Readers enjoy the progress of Bromden toward functional sanity and appreciate more fully how McMurphy's example of "free living" affected the entire ward. The movie works much better than it should, because it doesn't even try to capture the flavor of the book. It retells the key events of Kesey's novel, as though the book were nothing but a plot with dialogue. Fortunately the plot is strong enough to survive simplification, compression, and pragmatic alterations (e.g. keeping a character who commits suicide midway through the book alive all through the film, apparently to keep the tragedies to a bare dramatic minimum). The ending of the film, with Jack Nizsche's uplifting "Native American" theme, is a knockout. If there is anyone who has neither seen this film nor read the book, I'd recommend seeing the film before plunging into the book. That way, both can be enjoyed to the fullest extent.

I enjoyed this film although it wasn't entirely satisfying. The plot centers around old Beethoven's fixation on the welfare of his nephew, for whom he fought a lengthy custody battle against his brother's former wife. Beethoven thought she was a bad influence on the boy. Sadly, the nephew isn't receptive to Beethoven's "overtures," pardon me, and resents his boorish uncle's efforts on his behalf. The nephew is a complete nonentity, lacking in both interest and talent. He seems to wish only to be left alone. One excellent scene has pug-faced Beethoven frantically trying to rescue his nephew from the clutches of a maidservant, charging down a hallway, huffing and puffing, with mounted antlers passing by overhead as he approaches the bedroom where his nephew lies. The whole film portrays Beethoven as we don't like to imagine him.

This powerful narrative of Mozart's adult career in Vienna - largely devoted to his operatic work, as befits a theatrical event - runs about 30 minutes longer than it might have, and has the power to put attentive viewers to sleep, or into a sort of hypnotic funk. Mozart's last days are stretched out inordinately. Nevertheless, this film has depth, humor, and one of the greatest soundtracks you'll ever hear. The historical facts are inseparable from the fantasy that forms the basis of the plot, so beware of citing Amadeus as an authority on the lives of Mozart & Salieri. Mozart was not so unworldly in real life, nor was Salieri so obsessed with his colleague, at least while both were alive. Mozart's music was very popular throughout Europe, though he didn't earn as much money from his compositions as he deserved. While Mozart didn't die entirely forsaken, as the movie implies, he was a victim of bad health exacerbated by overwork. Consider that modern "recording artists" like Michael Jackson, et. al. release a dozen new compositions every 4 or 5 years, while Mozart composed two full-length operas and the bulk of a Requiem mass, among other things - several hours of classic music - in a few months, while he was dying. Anyway, about the movie - see it and fall in love with Mozart's music!

It seems that many people hate this film and/or find it ridiculous. I think it's a great story, the execution of which may falter in spots (particularly in the wardrobe department), but not so as to detract from the overall effect.

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER] Viewers who find "holes" in the plot frankly do not understand what is happening to Sgt. Howie and what the islanders are doing. The Sgt. is extremely important to the islanders and they can devote all their energy and guile towards seeing him carry out Lord Summerisle's design. They have nothing better to do; perhaps nothing else to do. The Sgt., for his part, has been invited to Summerisle, and believes it's his part to solve a mystery presented to him. There's no way he can get "search warrants" before May Day, and the islanders are offering more and more evidence of complicity in a shocking crime he must prevent, if possible. So the Sgt.'s professional improprieties must be weighed against the need for him to act fast, as well as alone.

Everything that seems ironic or too coincidental for belief (another criticism of the film) is explained by the fact that the islanders have a plan for Sgt. Howie. He needs to be led - pulled along by the nose - to a specific conclusion in a short time. In sum, the plot makes perfect sense and proceeds in a deliberate way to its horrifying conclusion. Lord Summerisle is a swine, of course, and manipulates everyone to save his own skin. It can't happen here? Maybe not.

The pagan elements are particularized so that the film shouldn't offend "pagans" in general; the Summerisle theology is a patchwork of ideas culled from thousands of years of non-Christian history, presumably to include those notions most profitable to Lord Summerisle and the locality. We don't know how the islanders behave when Sgt. Howie isn't around. Perhaps everything - family names & relationships on Summerisle, for instance - are put-on for his benefit (certainly the film involves enough paranoia to suggest such a fact). Who could believe that Britt Ekland is really the landlord's daughter, after seeing the two of them together? The social structure of the island may have been cobbled together in a few hours by a drunken Lord Summerisle and his lovely schoolteacher/friend, and put in place just in time for the Sgt.'s arrival.

What makes the film so much fun is that we learn the Sgt.'s fate before he does, without learning exactly how the story will be resolved. So there's a conspiracy - what's the point of the conspiracy? The answer we learn in the final fifteen minutes, which are utterly perfect!

Citizen Kane will never be popular with the general public because it asks too much of the viewer: namely, that he sit still and pay attention, and periodically use his brain to process the information. There are no wasted scenes in this film, consequently no boring scenes. Years of potentially interesting material are covered in minutes, sometimes seconds, so that we see only what the writer & director deem most relevant to their story. The audience is not told what to think about Kane; opinions expressed by the characters are not necessarily those of the film makers. A man's life is too complex to be neatly packaged and turned into a formula. Kane evidently wanted love, not money, but he equated love with money and material possessions - or maybe he didn't, but didn't know how else to love and be loved - and [POSSIBLE SPOILER] as it turns out, he had the long-lost "Rosebud" in a crate, in a warehouse, without being aware of that fact. Would Kane have been a different man if he'd found Rosebud in middle-age, say? Was the missing sled his real ailment in life? Certainly not, if material possessions aren't bearers of love. Be wary of the "easy answers" - Citizen Kane is a wonderful work of art, much deeper than any of its parts.

Hitchcock bragged that The Birds was pure fantasy, with no connection to real life (as we know it). I've seen this movie a few times and I still wonder what it "means," if it has a specific meaning. It might just be a horror film about preternatural killer birds, but I humbly suggest that it might, in a sense, be an allegory about the Nuclear Paranoia of the era. Not an exact allegory like "Pilgrim's Progress," but perhaps a parable, or a fable if you like, with the birds standing in for all those forces ready to kill innocent people for no good reason. "The Birds" is so richly suggestive that there's an Oedipal theme as well, and some hints that Mitch isn't a very admirable guy, and so on... very Kubrickian, but predating "2001" by 4 or 5 years. It's a film that can simply entertain, or frighten, or hold one's interest, without begging for interpretation. But it's fun to wonder what the writer and director were thinking, and how much the actors/actresses knew of the artistic intent of the filmmakers. It's interesting too that after "Psycho," with its classic musical score, Hitchcock made "The Birds" a 2-hour film with no music - except the squawks, clucks and cries of The Birds. Wonderful picture.

With a great performance from Christopher Lee as Rasputin, and a rather red-hot (and elegant) Barbara Shelley, it's hard to imagine not liking this movie. But the script is very thin on historical fact - time and place in particular are vague - and the characterization of the villain Rasputin is two-dimensional. If this story is true, then Rasputin was not merely mad, but also magical and literally demonic. Consequently, an interesting historical character becomes the stuff of fiction, and the film fails to educate the viewer. The presence of Lee and Shelley make it worth watching anyhow.

This incredibly cheap film is not without its entertaining moments. While America is being invaded by The Enemy, the President appears on television to assure the nation that the US military is exacting vengeance on Russia - for every atom bomb dropped on the US, three are being dropped on Russia! While this sounds comforting, it merely proves the key to Russia's success, since the Russians have already transported everything they'll need to win the war. By devoting so much energy to attacking the Russians on their own soil, the US fails to defend itself against the invading Russian army. Apparently national "defense" is an alien concept, for a nation accustomed to fighting its wars overseas.