Kelly G.

Look, it was the 70s. Everything had to come alive eventually.

So, here's this TV movie about big gruff workers terrorized by a large bulldozer that's taken on a life of its own after it touches a steely meteor half buried in the ground.

Laugh if you will, but the film at least has the conviction to take itself VERY seriously. A great cast helps, lending the film a tone of square-jawed SOB's who slowly start to reveal their soft, sensitive sides once they start dying.

The dozer itself is treated like the shark in Jaws, as it prowls around their campsite just out of earshot until they try to put a plan together, at which point it roars out of nowhere to squish someone.

As good as Duel? No. Better than The Car? Who knows. I haven't seen that one yet.

And no, I'm not THE Clint Walker.

OK, there's this serial killer with dry hair who absolutely MUST be nude when he kills.

Why? Leave it to the keen detective skills of Charles Bronson (who acts like every other actor in the film is just there to annoy him while he earns his check) who gives us this trenchant insight: (read in Bronson-voice)..."His Knife is his penis." Or was it, "His Penis is his knife." I can't remember.

The entire second act is a lot of dull cop drama stuff that makes the mistake in thinking we care at all about Bronson's relationship with his daughter, or that we care if his beefcakey partner ever hooks up with her.

Just stick to the opening thirty and the last twenty, which gives you what you want: A lot of naked knifings, bare breasts, and blood spatters.

Consumer Note: At no point in the film is it ever ten to midnight.

...in a vehicle with no headlights.

Here's the story. In a future time when the government won't let you own private modes of transportation, a former race car driver (Majors) who now has to give commercial lectures on just how great it is in a world with no cars, gets fed up, rebuilds his Porsche, and hits the long abandoned highways to reach "free" California.

A film nowhere near as good as its wonderfully daft premise suggests, the problem with it is that you can tell it's just playing it way too safe. I'm not saying it had to turn into Death Race 3000 or anything, but there are parts where you can tell cuts have been made (the very brief glimpse at some kind of sex club) to get it a PG rating, and, besides one poor old man getting shot in the chest during a raid, the encounters with the government are handled in a pretty silly fashion.

Still, the concept is fun as far as B films go, and when this does allow itself to just be what it wants to be (Major's barrel-chested macho rebel act in the first twenty minutes) it almost gets by.

That Porche is a pretty lousy choice for a cross-country escape too as, again, it has no headlights, no storage compartments for food that I could see, and an open cockpit so he can freeze to death in the mountains.

Like several people here, I too saw this in the wee hours of the morning on TCM, where yes folks, it ran with no introductory info, and NO TITLES. It simply ended and faded into nothingness where TCM switched back to some old Black and While film suitable for Gramma like it never happened. Maybe it didn't.

Plot: It's one of those "woman fights for her life versus redneck" films that were around a lot in the 70s. This one has an African-American singer getting stuck in the rural south where she stays at a run down inn/bar while she waits for her car to get fixed.

Meanwhile, the dashing bar owner falls in love with her, which results in the expected rape scene, this one rendered even more distasteful by the inter-cutting of shots of local mouthbreathers watching dogs screw.

She goes almost catatonic from that point forward, and every person she turns to for help just leads her deeper into a maze of grotesque public officials who don't really want to help. It's like Kafka rolled around in batter and deep-fried.

It's all so off-putting, the result is less one of bloody revenge than it is of confusion...that something so odd could have ever existed, or actually been shown on late-night television on a channel that so many people get.

Be aware film fans...reruns of this could be lurking around your next sleepless night. Try to get some sleep.

I saw this film in an English class way back in Junior High. Even back then, my critical instincts told me I hated it because I thought the "you make up your own ending" stuff was a cop out.

To this day, I feel like if you write a story and if you can't make up your own ending, you shouldn't have started writing in the first place. But I understand in retrospect that this story is told to younger kids in order to develop their instincts in critical debate and analysis. Entire college classes are given over to spending weeks on end dissecting one story or novel; The lady or the tiger? is a good place to give younger students a starting off point into such things.

But the film, dear lord, the film! The story is told through narration, and is fashioned out of odd quasi-futuristic visuals that took this story from the era of knights and kings and stuff into the world of fascistic rulers. It kind of reminded me of what Julie Taymor did with her adaptation of Titus, or George Lucas' original student film version of THX 1138. The visuals and disquieting music all collide together to form a grim tone poem of sorts.

Considering the time this film was made, it's a pretty daring depiction of a simple story. But, then again, I just saw this story referenced on a Simpsons rerun (the one where Bart and his buddies sneak into Shelbyville), so maybe the story is more influential than I thought.

I don't know how or where this movie exists anymore. I'm sure it languishes deep in some educational film vault somewhere. In an era when just about anything warrants a DVD re release, I suppose it could see the light of day again on some kind of compilation. I wonder if I'll ever see it again.

It's been a very loooong time since I've seen this; 12 years or so, I think. It was screened in my very first real writing class in High School.

The actual name of the class was "Term Paper" I think, meaning by the end of the semester we were going to have to compile a seven page or so report on a topic of our choice, with annotated notes and references and what not. Now, even back then, I knew that reading and writing were my strong points as a student, but I still wasn't really looking forward to the final assignment. Now, looking back after college, I would KILL to write a paper as short as seven pages, but back then, that was quite a lot to a kid who was just about to get his driver's license.

Now, I can't remember the exact reason why the teacher showed us this one. It's possible it was just to give us a break, or maybe inspire us. For whatever reason, my initial reaction wasn't exactly thrilled. After all, it was awfully hot in those classrooms, and as I remember I was madly in love with the girl who sat three rows ahead of me, and one seat to the left (she always twitched her nose as she wrote), so needless to say, paying attention to some moldy, out of date, production of a short story that I had never heard of didn't exactly make me want to leap to attention.

The film was an adaptation of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, a story I'm going to assume you've read or at least know about if you've read this, so I won't really go into the plot.

But needless to day, I was drawn in instantly. And although we didn't know what was going to happen in the film, we could all sense that something wasn't right. Why were these people drawing paper from a box? Why didn't some people really look happy about it? What was with that scary old man talking about the "old days." Well, when the ending played out, we were pretty horrified, and rightly so. Like I said, I don't know what lesson teacher was trying to teach us besides the usual comments about the tyranny of tradition and the danger of mob mentality, but I always assumed that what she was trying to impress upon us was not to judge a story before it's been told, and that good writers can suck a reader in before laying in the killing blow.

Personally, as a writer, and as a just for fun critic of horror movies, I took from this adaptation the power of an image unexplained, of a tone of detachment from reality. What made this film so strong was how it just seemed so off kilter from common sense. Sure, growing up in the midwest, me and my fellow students all were very familiar with the images in this film; the fields, the friendly small town folk and their soft patter of "how ya doing" banter, the undercurrent of stab your neighbor in the back gossip, and the commonness of "do this because your dad and his dad did it too" tradition.

But yet, the film doesn't feel "familiar." Maybe it's because so much is left open and unexplained until the horrifying conclusion, but watching the town gather to participate in the lottery, the feeling is one of isolation. Not just from your fellow townsfolk, although I can understand this (sometimes it's just as easier to feel lonely in a small town as it is a big one), but from the outside world. As this film went on, and I started to realize the truth, I just couldn't help but wonder where this town was. Truth is, it may be the only town left on the planet for all I know, surrounded on all sides by endless fields of corn swaying in the breeze. I imagined what I would do if I were there. Could I get away? Could I duck behind a building, and take off running away from town square while everyone else was drawing slips from a box until i reached a road. Would I find anything else? What about the next town over? Is their yearly ritual even more hellish? It's those questions that haunted me most about the story and this presentation of it. I'm continually drawn to movies that take place in a world of their own where all you want to do as a viewer is escape what you see on the screen. Not because of gore of violence or anything so simplistic, but because you just can't bare to see a reality that's too harsh to believe, but too realistic to ignore completely.

I don't know if schools still show films like this anymore. It's possible though. All the thousands of educational films probably will be very slow to get DVD updates, and I'm sure that most school districts will be stuck with VCR's for a long time.

Heck, even as a senior in the mid-90's we were STILL seeing educational films on FILMSTRIPS (the ones where you turned the frames by HAND when you heard the beep), such as one we saw in economics class produced in the early 70's about a girl named LuLu who was learning to save her money to either buy a pink dune buggy, or to blow away on little things (like a KING CRIMSON album, I kid you not!).

So, I hope that somewhere out there this adaptation of The Lottery is still being shown. It captures the desolation, the strangeness, and the tragic sadness of life in a situation where reality becomes unhinged, and all you can do is scream at people to stop, even though they don't listen.

Some movies haunt me for long after I see them. In the case of Eyes of Fire, this isn't because the movie is all that hot, but because I haven't been able to get the darn thing out of my brain since I saw it.

Plot: It's been a while, but right off the top of my head, Eyes of Fire is set during days of early American life. A "wicked" polygamist dude is kicked out of his village for his ways, so he packs up his stuff, and leaves town, taking his flock of naive followers with him.

He promises to find them a new place to live where they can all start a new society of sorts where they can live their lives the way they want to. But he ignores his Native American tourguide, and chooses to set up shop in a spooky, foreboding area of the woods which is supposedly cursed by evil spirits.

After that, I can't really remember too much about the plot, other than that it dissolves into nothingness, and in its place we get quite a bit nightmarish images of ghosts, slime, and spectral zap rays, all backed with a lot of screaming.

I tend to remain fascinated with movies that seem to exist in their own world of reality, where our rules of logic don't always apply. If the world of movies were a giant city, these films would be brief snapshots of dangerous streets you don't want to drive down. These don't always have to be horror movies; Over the years I can think of several examples of these kind of films; Gummo, Elephant, The Toolbox Murders (the 70's one), and Impulse (the meg tilly one) all come to mind off hand. These movies all have a worldview that depressed me enough that I just cant shake the characters and their environment afterwards.

Eyes of Fire is like that, really. I don't recall one character, actor, or line of dialog. Nor am I really sure I've got the story down right. But the memory of being totally freaked out by it has stuck with me ever since.

I liked both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones in spite of their obvious flaws. But even knowing that chances are I was probably going to like Revenge of the Sith, or at least give it more of a lighter critical touch, I had to shake my head and laugh at all the people who thought Lucas was finally going to put the naysayers to rest with this one.

Yea, right.

Just like I predicted, after an initial wave of accolades and applause, the haters are back in full force, chopping away at this film with every thing they've got, almost thrilled that they get the chance to make sure everyone in the universe who has an internet connection gets to see that they hate the movie, hate lucas, hate computer special effects, hate hayden christensen, hate, hate, hate, hate, haaaaaaaaaate. Just like they did with Episodes I and II, The Matrix sequels, The Two Towers, Hulk, Daredevil, Fantastic 4, X-Men, Narnia, King Kong, Land of the Dead, and on and on and on forever.

That's the problem with fanboys; they all think they are writers, or that the movies they see should be made to their exact specifications. And if they aren't, well you didn't just disappoint them, but you ruined their life.

On a long enough timeline, fanboys will tear down any empire they have a hand in building up. It's just their nature. Let me put it this way; A director or a writer who creates a fandom is like a god who creates his own society of worshipers willing to give praise at whatever he or she created. But when that god decides to take a break and leave his creation alone by stepping away and closing the lid on his little ant farm of fans, he doesn't realize that while he's gone, those fans in the dark have no new product to feed off of, so they turn on each other, cannibalizing the movies they are left with for food, and their fellow fans who don't agree with them.

So someday, when their happy god comes back with a NEW creation to drop in their midst, they find after they lift the lid that the once happy little worshipers are now feral mutants so changed from lack of attention that anything you feed them now will be spit back up in their god's face.

Now this may be a stretch to believe, but search your feelings. deep down, you know this to be true. You've no doubt taken a spin across the Internet and read the tons of pure hatred that these "fans" have for any number of product that doesn't fulfill them. Could any movie have made them happy? I suppose so, after all, Peter Jackson seemed to have survived this psycho ant farm phenomenon with Lord of the Rings (although just wait for what happens when King Kong comes out).

But please, scroll down through some of the user comments here. Page after page of one star invectives, with the writers almost THRILLED that they get to report that Star Wars is finally "Dead" or whatever else.

Obviously these people weren't going to like ANY Star Wars movie unless we pried Irvin Kirsner out of this little hole and broke out all the puppets, and had ILM spend millions of dollars building the greatest plastic models you've ever seen on screen.

That's not to say that ROTS is perfect; It isn't. Actually, it suffers from the same problems that the previous episodes did. But geez, don't trust the fanboy venom any more than you'd trust a slobbering 10/10 review either.

So, the film itself. Well, it is the best of the three prequels. It's certainly the most passionate, with moments of real fun and genuine emotion being on display.

Yes, there's lots of CG (check your calender, it's 2005), yes the talking droids are silly, yes the plot be-bops around a lot, yes the dialog flubs a little, but for some reason, none of this really bothered me that much, or at least not enough to shake my general impression of the movie as a whopping dose of space opera action. One that makes a connection to the original trilogy much better than even I could have expected.

I don't know how episode III will fare as the years go by, if it will be placed with the originals or spat on like episode I and II. But I like it, and despite what you may read from some fat naked guy on his computer with dogeared copies of Starlog and Fangoria around him, most people (and critics) agree with me.

The only review of this one I really read was one on Ain't it Cool news (a site I'm trying to break the habit of visiting) where the guy simply repeated the words "sucked" over and over again.

While I kept that in mind as i rented this one, you should keep something else in mind before you read this.

1. I love zombie movies. Yes, I'm one of those guys. Zombie films like Dawn of the Dead and Lucio Fulci's Zombie were part of my initial education of the horror genra back in 1997. It's a genra that apart from a few hiccups, had been dormant since the mid-80's.

2. And this is the kicker: I actually kind of like movies based off of video games. Well, I should change that too: I'll give movies based off of video games a chance. Maybe it's because I grew up in the age of the original Nintendo (and the age of the Atari, now that I think about it, although I was so young then that I had to ask my dad to hook it up everytime I wanted to play it), but I think it's possible to make a video game based movie as long as the film captures the spirit of the game. It's been done before: Both Tomb Raider films are kind of nifty; Mortal Kombat was fun in a Saturday afternoon way; And Resident Evil was OK, I suppose. But it's also been done really poorly: Wing Commander (does anyone even remember that game?); Double Dragon; Street Fighter all come to mind.

So, here we are with House of the Dead, an adaptation of the Sega arcade game (I'm guessing it was available on other platforms, but I'm only familer with the ardade version).

It was one of those first person games where the player used a lightgun to fire at zombies and such that lurched towards them. It was pretty cool, I suppose. And did a fairly good job of recreating the vibe of a 70's zombie flick. So, I actually thought it made a lot of sense to make a movie based off of it.

The Plot: A handful of young adults get a ferry ride to an island where an allnight rave is being held. They arrive only to find the place deserted, except for the legions of zombies being raised by the spirit of a tortured Spanish scientist from the 14th century or something.

Thrown into the mix are a crusty sea smuggler, and an undercover police officer.

The first twenty minutes or so of this is more bland than it is bad. But when the zombies start popping up, House of the Dead reaches an apex of sorts in what its trying to do. Let's just say that when the protagonists launch their big offensive against the dead, the story gives way to what seems like nearly 25 minutes of uninterrupted bloody action.

Bullets fly, heads go exploding, limbs get munched. All to the tune of a heavy metal song that I actually kind of liked. Well, I didn't like it so much as I thought it fit the scene real well. Maybe it's that part of me that grew up in the era of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, but it's kind of nice to have heavy metal reclassified as "devil music" instead of "I'm mad at my mommy for bringing home a stepdaddy music."

Yes, it's silly. Yes, the constant screen shots from the video game are a bit much. Yes, like i said, the big battle really does occupy nearly a third of the film's running time. All of these criticisms are valid, I suppose.

Still, the movie worked for me. 2003 and 2004 found horror coming back to life in a way. New directors were going back to the past for inspiration, and bringing back new takes on old stories. Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever" drew from cyncical portraits of human cruelty like "Last House on the Left." Marcus Nispel's redux of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" did the same, only with a nearly apocalyptic visual sense. Heck, even the 2004 take of "Dawn of the Dead" showed new audiences a hint of the cerebral horror of George Romero.

It's amazing how quickly we lose our perspective on the genra. "House of the Dead", as far as im concerned, is the best, heck, the only, attempt at bringing the gritty, sloppy, rotten, zombie experience of Fulci back to life. Something I thought I'd never see playing at my local cineplex.

Don't believe me? Well maybe I should give you some perspective. I told myself a long time ago that I wasn't going to complain anymore about "Scream" and wave of films passing themselves off as horror through the late 90's, since that genra has pretty much died out now, and that by doing so I was really starting to sound like one of those Fangoria dweebs. But honestly, what would you rather sit through when you go to the movies? "Valentine" or "House of the Dead?" "Urban Legends" or "House of the Dead?" "I know what you did last summer" or "House of the Dead?"

Yea, I thought so.

In the era of the DVD, when video stores already pressed for space now find themselves in the position of having to clear out mucho shelf space to make room for both VHS and DVD copies of the newest Kate Hudson film, many odd and obscure VHS films that have sat for ages are now disappearing.

Sure, many of these films will probably be refurbished on DVD someday, but will these releases trickle down to the rental market? The answer to such a question could really hurt the horror industry in the long run.

For instance, how many people would buy a DVD special edition of "Screams of a Winter Night" if they haven't paid 99 cents to rent it first? If the answer to that is zero, like i think it is, than distributors who dare to spend lots of money attaining the rights to obscure films like this will end up taking a bath when no one buys them.

So, I guess it all comes down to the rental outlet. Which is where my interest in this movie began. One of my local video haunts is a semi-major chain, at least in my area. And it's one that has the biggest rep for stocking odd and offbeat VHS films. But I had noticed that within the last few months, many of these films were being sold off to make room for DVD's like I mentioned earlier. So, in and effort to see as many of these "targeted for deletion" movies before they were gone, I started renting them A through Z.

By the time I reached "Screams," most of these movies were already gone, either bought by geeky film dweebs like myself, or just carried away by the staff.

"Screams" caught my eye thanks to it's thick black clamshell VHS box (an increasing rarity) and odd picture of an indistinct monster trudging through the woods. The title of the film was written in a jagged font that remined me of those off beat comics from the 70's like Marvel's "Man-Thing" or DC's "House of Mystery." The text on the back promised an anthology film, and since I have always had a weak spot for those, I gave it a chance.

I'm glad I did. Over the course of around 90 minutes, I knew I had found that dusty, out of print VHS rarity: The nugget of gold amongst the dirtpan.

The Plot: A group of college students about to graduate travel to a woodland cabin for some R and R. Once there, many of the girls start to feel uncomfortable (something which I'll come back to) after which the guys start telling "true" horror stories they heard from someone who heard them from someone else.

The three tales include:

1. A couple taking a late night drive start hearing scratching noises on the roof of their car. 2. The best of the bunch, and oddly enough, the one people rag on the most, has three frat pledges fufilling their dare to spend the night in an abandoned hospital with a rep for having a haunted second floor. 3. A quiet and shy college girl turns out to be a psychopath, much to the surprise of her roommate.

What surprised me the most was the material in between the stories. There's something really unsettling about this gathering, and the way they all interact with each other. Has anyone out there ever been to a party of some kind where you could just tell the vibe wasn't right? Well, that's what this is like. From the way the girls seem to be uncomfortable around the guys, to the way that the guys seem to be divided into little sub-groups, there's just a feeling that their little trip wasn't going to go well even if evil, supernatural things didn't happen.

As for the stories, yes, that first one is real moldy by today's standards. But you have to keep in mind, that while talk of "urban legends" are pretty commonplace today, back in the late 70's, these legends were just that: Legends, not the stuff of Discovery Channel debunking programs, or community college courses.

It's the second one that really got me. Dark and dingy, with the characters pretty much spending the whole telling cowering near the stairway to the second floor, there's a real feeling of danger as each one of them goes upstairs and dosent come back. The director could have easily copped out and just not showed what the evil green light was, but he did. And while the revelation of the light is a common snickering point among reviewers, I have to admit, something about the unexplainable nature of the explanation has stayed with me to this day.

Add some colorful touches such as the opening sequence: A dark screen backed with increasinly nightmarish sound effects that follow a linear pattern (something which has been done recently in movies like Cabin Fever and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and an impressive finale where chaos breaks out.

I've seen movies that try to scare by cranking up the wind machine and having the cast yell before. "Screams" is just about the only one where I really felt fear for the characters. These actors may have been amateurs, but when called upon, they really do make the ending of this one sing with apocalyptic passion. I almost expected at least one person to survive only to throw open the cabin door only to find a yawning black abyss.

"Screams" is no four star classic, don't get me wrong. But it is proof that not all zero budget cheapies are made equal. I can see I'm not alone on this one. The call for a DVD release here is small, but definitely there. Hopefully, we'll get what we want someday.

As for the copy I rented, I hovered over it for months, waiting for a "sale" sticker to appear on it. I showed up one day, and it was already gone. Oh well, I hope it found a good home.

As long as it didn't get bought by the same jerk who snatched "Her Summer Vacation" out from under me too. I'll probably never see that film again, no matter how popular DVD's become.

That's another story though.

I remember reading a review of this in one of those phone book sized movie guides you can get at a book store. They gave it their lowest rating, saying that it looked like it was all improvised in a series of motel room and apartments.

Yea, I can kind of see it.

Anyways, Wild Side is an OK noir film of sorts about a bank worker by day, high class prostitute by night (Heche) who gets involved with a crime boss (Walken) and his sexy girlfriend (Chen). Heche and Chen end up falling in love, and concoct a plan of sorts to get away.

The film probably would have faded away if it wasn't for the scorcher of a love scene between Heche and Chen. With an agonizingly erotic set up (a long dinner date between the two, followed by a first kiss in the womens bathroom), the actual love scene is allowed to play out nice and slow, in a big bedroom with the summer light and breeze blowing in. Seriously guys (and girls, I guess) this is everything you could want in a scene like this.

I wish I could say the movie around it was memorable enough to live up to that kind of glory, but it really doesn't. I'm sure Donald Cammell was a great director, and it's probably real sad that the film was chopped up before he could finish it to it's satisfaction. But I've got a feeling that whatever state this movie was supposed to in, it would have turned out the same.

Eroticism aside, the lesbian scene is asthetically like a breath of fresh air. It's bright, and wide open in the way it plays out across the screen. Compared to that, the rest of the movie really does play too dark; It really is kind of like sitting with your legs crossed on the floor in the corners of dark apartments while listening to other people talk. Dreary, in other words.

By the way, check out the Canadian video cover for this one compared to the static "3 portraits" cover we got in America. A classic example of how just how puritanical our culture can be sometimes.

Raw Courage is good. Actually, when you compare it to the kind of dusty old VHS tapes slowly making their way into the trash bins in the dawn of the DVD era, it's REALLY good.

It's from that "fight for your life" subgenra of horror film, where everyday guys find themselves trapped somewhere away from civilizaion while being hunted by some kind of maniacs.

In this film, the victims are three cross country runners who have planned a trek through the desert. Eventually, they run across a squad of militia men who end up hunting them down after some taunting goes bad. As is the case with most films of this ilk, the hunted are used to symbolize different sides of Man's psychie. Ronny Cox is the slightly nebbish husband who dosent know what to do. While the other guy is an aggressive alpha mail, and the other other guy is a whiny brat who just wants to hide.

I suppose what I liked best about the film was that it always seemed probable. The protagonists never do anything outlandish like rig up a brilliant death trap out of rocks and sand. Their ways of fighting back are the same kind of simple things that you or I would probably think of if we were in the situation. And because of this, many of the scenes are quite thrilling since some of their plans don't always work (their attempt at stealing a horse).

The villians are pretty silly, and never really rise above the level of stock; While the film's literal "finish line" pushed my good will to the breaking point. But overall, I was happy I saw this one.

As for that opening scene: Fade in to a close up of Cox's waxy, brown foot, as his fingers dip into a creamy vat of Petroleum Jelly with a disgusting squish. Followed by about a good twenty seconds or so of him lovingly smearing and caressing the goop inbetween his stubby toes.

It's probably the most disgusting minutes of film I've ever seen.

I actually used to watch this program a few years ago, from say, about early 2000 to 2001. And you know, I actually kind of liked it, even though I rarely agreed with what he said, mostly because it was nice seeing normally namby-pamby politicans actually answer a question once in a while.

But as time has gone by the show has changed quite a bit, and the reason why is actually pretty simple: Bill's head has become so overinflated, I'm surprised his neck can support it.

So now that Bill has the ratings, the show has practically become an hour long rant that goes beyond news analysis, and at best has become an endless trip inside his need to make himself feel important, and at worst is like listening to the old man in the diner booth next to you complain about how everything he cant find has been stolen by some punk kid.

Now as much as I want to, I wont get into the whole "conservative" thing in regards to Bill or Fox News channel, even though I really, REALLY want to. Let's face it people, this dude is as whacked out republican as any blowhard talk radio twit. Oh, wait a minute....Bill has a radio show during the day, dosent he? Hmmmm.....

Actually, I'll just keep my comments to his show. Listening to Bill yap and yap and point his fingers at the guests (and at the viewer) just got real old, REAL fast. To call him a TV bully almost sounds too easy, and in someways he's more like a 19 year old who overcompensates in heated conversations by yelling due to a percieved lack of anyone ever listening to him. This is probably the reason why he'll spend segment after segment calling anyone who wont go on his show a "coward." Deep down this guy just cant belive that someone wouldnt go on his top rated show. It's actually kind of cute, really, even though he's seemed to become angrier and angrier over the last year.

There's a story on TakeBacktheMedia.com about how a guest from "Not in Our name" (an anti-Iraq war group comprised of relitives of 9-11 victims) not only had his microphone cut, but was told off air by an enraged Bill that he was going to "----ing destroy" him.

I'm sure that if you are a fan of Bill's, then you are pumping your fist in the air with approval. Id like to think that there are plenty of people like me who are nearing the breaking point in regards to shows like this. But since, according to conservative types, "no one wants to listen to liberals with TV or radio shows," people like me may be in for a long haul.

But I believe that this goes beyond what side of the political fence you lie on. This is about a big bawl-baby who dosen't know when to quit flapping his jaw, and unfortunatly has three cameras recording every word that comes out of his mouth.

And really, is anyone really afraid of the guy? C'mon, he's no different from anyone's dad.

When I saw Jason X and I told people afterwards that I thought it sucked on ice, people usually say back, "Geez, what did you expect?" Well, like I said above I expected it to be good.

There is a school of thought in horror fan circles that the Friday the 13th series is all crap; Horror of the lowest common demoniator. That's probably true, but there are fun moments to be had here in there over the course of the series's run. Parts 1-3 make a good little trilogy. With Parts 6, 8, and 9 all having their moments.

Frankly, I was looking forward to seeing Jason X since it was the first of the series since the Scream movies made all things with slashers ironic. This could have been a good chance to make a straightforward, bloody, trashy film; A kind of celebration for a franchise that has lasted ten chapters.

Instead, the movie just kind of limps along with not much to do. I will be probably the only person the world who won't fault the movie for it's admittidly stupid space concept (Anyone remember Hellraiser: Bloodline? Well, I liked that one). And I even thought the way they managed to get Jason into the future was ok. But once he got up and started walking around, the movie just didn't go for me. I think it had something to do with the AWFUL set designs which reminded me of the MST3K classic "Space Mutiny," where the railing and walkway filled sets made it impossible to tell where any character was in relationship to any of the others. Here, endless time is spend while victims stumbled around in search of things to point their guns or breasts at. And that throwaway joke at the end about the holographic campers made me chuckle at the time, but now seems kind of like a cheap shot.

What did I like? Kane Hodder is menacing as Jason; The part where the girl gets her face shattered is a corker; The "screwed" moment is OK; The "enhanced" Jason was a nice try; And I liked the gun-toting android woman (She's the only actress here who seems to get the point).

But the rest of Jason X is just thrown together slop that doesn't do enough to suck up to people like me, who have stood up for this series in it's lamest moments.

It's hard to express sometimes just how bad a motion picture is. I mean after all, haven't we ALL had someone come up to us and say, "It's the WORST motion picture I've ever seen?" After a while, the term really doesn't have much meaning anymore.

While I can't quite say that this is the worst horror film I've ever seen (after seeing literally thousands of them, that honor I give to "Rat Man" with "Beast in the Cellar" ranking a close runner up), it certainly does rank up there in the top bracket of lameness which I usually reserve for older films (for some reason I expect modern day direct-to-video horror movies to suck).

So what's wrong with it? Well, first of all it fails a usually sturdy horror movie concept (self-reliant woman fights for her life in an isolated rural setting against one or multiple assilaints). Here we get an endless 100 minutes of an unappealing actor trying to hide he's a psychopath (a character as supposedly smart as the woman in this movie should have been able to tell after her first conversation with him, but like the rest of the movie, she remains stone still with a concerned look on her face while he has any number of freak outs), mixed with clumsily directed murder scenes, and an ridiculously repetitive and drawn-out final twenty minutes.

oh yeah, and there's some stuff about this guy being a shape shifting, mind-reading serial killer who may be possessed by the spirit of some kind of dead prospector who has cursed the valley. Oh man...

For better entries in this sub-genera (I'm picking more obscure ones) try, "Death Weekend," "Fortress," or even "Rituals" even though that last one is more of a "Deliverance" copy than anything else.

Tell me if this dosen't sound like the perfect film. A fustrated wife strikes up a lesbian affair with a free spirited photogapher. In that one sentece is a recipe for all sorts of soft core fun, but while My Wife's Lover (as it's called here in the US) has all you might expect with leering sex scenes of all kinds (there's one lady who REALLY appears to like potato chips), the movie lacks joy, and frankly the characters are all either nerotic or cheaters.

The movie dosn't have the goofy weirdness of other Asian Catagory III films (the equilvilant of the NC-17 rating), it's might be worth seeing once for those who are intrested in this kind of thing.

Whatever the title of this one is (the copy i saw was titled "Swamp of the lost monster," and had a video print that looked like it's film stock had been soaked in urine and scraped by steel wool) it's a pretty bad little Z grade horror/mystery/western about a fey looking cowboy who rides into town with his seemingly indestructable comic sidekick and stumbles onto a mystery involving an insurance scam, bandits, horse dancing, and a goofy looking monster who emerges from some of sickest, most opaque "water" I've ever seen. Seriously, the dude who wore that suit better have recieved some kind of shots after filming, because I'll bet a thimble full of that stuff would have given you digestive problems for quite some time.

I've always found that making fun or heaping scorn on one of these zipper monster movies is just too easy, and kind of a waste of time. I mean sure the movie is bad, but, aren't all examples of this particular subgenera of horror lame?

So once again, it's bad. But you should have been able to tell that even before you handed over your rental card.

I wasn't really old enough to care about what the critics were saying about the original trilogy. Nor did I have access to sites like this where mass amounts of reviews from print critics as well as from Joe-punchclock are tallied up, indexed, pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, and numbered.

I shouldn't care now, and to be honest, I still dont. But it still kind of smarts to read some of the avalanche of bad reviews. Not that I'm unaware of the fact that no movie gets complete acceptance, especially not a sci-fi fantasy film, and even more especially one that's a sequel to a series that so many people love. But wow, why are some of these reviews so bitter? Why are so many people acting like someone poured sugar in their mom's gas tank while watching this? Deep down, I know the reason why, ever since Empire, people began assuming that it wasn't Lucas' series to control, and that it was in his best interest to let other people write and or direct further chapters.

This is a sentiment I dont agree with. Heck, I liked Empire too but I wouldn't want to sit through four more episodes just like it. I might as well just watch the Star Trek movies if that's what I was looking for.

To me, what's good about Star Wars is how every film is the same concept filtered through slightly different lenses. In my mind (and sometimes I get the feeling like I'm alone on this one) I DONT EXPECT EACH EPISODE TO LOOK AND PLAY LIKE THE OTHER ONES!!! I've always seen the individual episodes as chapters of a comic book where either the writers and/or artists differ from month to month. Things may look different, and plotlines may seem altered, but the title of the book (um..movie) stays the same and the overall concept remains because of Lucas.

When I came out of The Phantom Menace on it's first night, I noted that it wasnt what I was expecting, but I liked it. The first thing I said to my friends when we got to the car was that I would be happy if each of the new episodes was completely different from each other. And after seeing ATOC I was pretty happy to see that's exactly what Lucas is trying to do. See how each film differs....

Episode 1: A glossy comic book full of kid-oriented action and humor, where a young boy gets the chance to be more than what fate has handed him, with action scenes that rarely involve the death of human characters. While in the background, misty complex conspiracies begin to form.

Episode II: A meditation on what can happen when a gifted person uses his or her abilities go to misuse through greed and or unchecked ambition, or let themselves be manipulated by people with different agendas. Also, the first inkling of long held institutions realizing that the principles they once stood for are being eroded away.

Episode IV: The Template; A young man with no future gets a chance at being more than he is, or if you like, is thrust into an adventure that he was always fated to take part in. Meanwhile, the issues of governmental corruption get laid to rest as The Empire makes that corruption The Rule.

Episode V: A Pausing; Good characters get routed early on, and flee to safe areas, only to meet defeat at every turn despite their best efforts. Kind of like watching a basketball team suffer a heartbreaking loss in overtime. Like ATOC, what makes it good is that it's protagonists (who usually appear as a fighting unit) go though long portions of the film separated from each other.

Episode IV; A slam-bang conclusion where beat down and taxed out rebels make a desperate attack, and a hero must make a choice between his past and future, while a former hero must make a choice between his "father" and son. Slammed for not really advancing the plot, this is the end of the series; Where are you going to advance the plot to?

Long winded dissertation aside, I'm getting to my MAIN POINT. I took my girlfriend to see this film (yes, a star wars fan can have a girlfriend) and was quite nervous about what she would think. She's a more old-school fan who loves the original Star Wars, thinks Empire is genius, and dismisses ROTJ as one lone battle scene. As for The Phantom Menace, she didn't care for it at first, but she's come around a bit after seeing it a few more times.

To me, she represents a lot of SW fans; the kind who don't go to conventions, will call a spade a spade, and slightly distrust Lucas's intentions for the saga. I was delightfully surprised when after the credits started rolling her eyes lit up and she admitted that it's one of the best so far!

She was even impressed by the expected battle at the end, noting the strange irony of watching Yoda ride to the rescue with a horde of stormtroopers at his back.

As for Yoda fighting, yeah it's a bit cheezy, but HUGE portions of the saga so far have been slightly corny anyway. It's kind of funny reading some reviewers (especially Roger Ebert, who it should be noted disliked ATOC for the same reasons he liked TPM) bending themselves over backwards to not just go with it and enjoy the scene, babbling some weird theory about how CG making the unreal real dampens the imagination. Whatever. Watching Yoda battle Christopher Lee has to be a landmark of some kind in the minds of long time Horror/sci-fi fans who have spent years respecting both characters and actors in the scenario.

And the melancholic ending nails that confused "uh, we won..didn't we? Right?" confusion that Empire was praised for so many years ago.

Sure the acting and dialogue is a bit iffy at time, but it's certainly not bad enough to ruin the film. People who send in reviews posting line by line the dialouge that they didn't care for really need to get lives. And hey, at least there are lines to remember, good or bad. Not like Lord of the Rings, where months after seeing it me and my friends still don't know the difference between "big guy with beard" or "effeminate dude with arrows", let alone anything they might have said.

Ahhh. sorry. I was going to try to get though this without revealing myself as a LOTR non fan (God, it was long and pretentious, wasn't it?)

So, in closing, I'd like to bring it back to the girlfriend thing. If you are a casual fan like her who likes ATOC (or even more so, liked TPM) and is feeling guilty about it; Take care, there are plenty of non-freaky SW fans who like the prequel trilogy so far, and are more than willing to place it in with the originals.

After scanning the user comments, it certainly seems that they are almost all written by people who are familiar with the books. I mean VERY familiar. And before I say anything else, I will point out that I'm a pretty big fan of Star Wars, so it's not like any one hasn't called me an over-obsessed fan before.

The theater was packed full on opening night for this one, and these people were obviously already clued in on what was going to happen. The girls sitting across the aisle from me were the type of fanatical fantasy fan who instantly remind people of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Good God, they were practically setting up gamemaster screens and rolling for Frodo's hit points during every scene.

Now I'm not putting down fans of the film, I'm only mentioning this because I think the only people we are hearing from at this early stage in the film's release are the inner circle of Ring devotees. But for people who have never read a word of the novels, and dont really plan to, Fellowship is certinly a great film, full of imagination and love for it's source material; But it's also a film sandbagged by its own history. With the exception of a few startling moments (the opening battle scene, and any moments with the great Christopher Lee), I found this to be a rather joyless experience that made me feel like I was on the outside looking in.

I think Peter Jackson spent so much time and energy into pleasing the fans of the book, who will practically fill a sock full of 20-sided dice as weapons to defend their love of the series, that he made this seem not like a fantastical journey, and more like a audio/visual lecture on what us laypeople should have been reading all these years.

Watching this, I could easily see a tight and lean motion picture here. And before anyone starts flaming me, I certinly don't mean it should be edited down to anything under 90 minutes. I understand part of what's good about the series is the richness of it's characters and situations. But this could have been trimmed down to about two and a half hours, and been an absolute juggernaut. As it is now, it seems like a sloppy love note to the fans.

I hear you Ring fans, before you even start. But all of the characters who are introduced (with little or no characterization) that screech the movie to a halt are important to you because you have a dog-eared copy of the book in every room of your house. But as for me and my friends, walking out of this one we started talking about the characters and belive it or not, outside of Frodo and Gandalf, we couldn't think of one of their names (we settled on "guy with the arrows" or "the dwarf with the beard",) and dont even get us started about the needless baffoonery antics of the extra hobbits thrown into the mix.

And the ending? I felt angry enough to shout down every hand clapping in the theatre with a boo large enough to knock the screen down. Just stopping the film with no resolution WHATSOEVER may be faithful to the book, and it will please fans who already plan on seeing the rest of the series sight unseen, but for those of us just stopping by to see what the fuss is all about, it's an awfully arrogant way to end your picture. A trilogy that forces the viewer to fork over more money for part two, while not offering a nugget of closure in its opening segment, or at least trying to make the parts enjoyable separately, seems awfully smug to me. Further evidence that this is intended for fans, none of whom seemed to blink twice as the screen faded to black. Whatever.

Ring is a good film. I enjoy it more in retrospect than I did in the theatre. It's got more imagination and passion in fifteen minutes than overcooked crud like Armageddon, although both it and this film suffer from a lack of assertive female characters (say what you want, Tyler and Blanchett exist here only to look like pretty porcelain figurines in midst of the woods).

I had fun watching this, and saw a wonderfully creative film from one of my favorite directors. But for whatever reason, it just didn't connect with me the same way it is with everyone else. It will be interesting to see just what happens to the film after the hype dies down and the Burger King light-up goblets start collecting dust. I have a feeling it will do what every other blockbuster will do; Slowly descend down the charts, and shuffle to a lifetime on DVD sales. Frankly, I'll wait until they are all available for home viewing before watching them.

Does anyone know when Attack of the Clones comes out? I'll see you there.

Wow. What a lonely page. It seems to me like nobody has seen this stinker. Well, I suppose I should say something, after all, the great Bill Rebane put so much work into this, it would be a shame to not raise my hand and say, "Yes, I am a loser who will rent anything with a bloody woman on the box cover."

Nine characters (Geez, that's a lot now that I think about it) are invited to a mansion where three screwloose millionares run a game involving deep fears, with a prize of 1,000,000 dollars.

There's actually a strange similarity between this concept and the current reality-TV boom, but beyond that The Game is pieced together hackwork, although it is admittedly better than some or Rebane's other films such as The Giant Spider Invasion (which I suppose one could enjoy as a lark) or Invasion from Inner Earth (where red light represented alien life). The Game still has that feel of the producers just making a movie tailored to fit whatever props and settings they had at their disposal. Which in the case of this film, would include a cabin, the live rig from some motel lounge band, a prop gun, a card table, and a monster hand puppet.

During the last fifteen minutes the "plot" gives way entirely, and the whole thing almost turns freeform, with the folksy narrator admitting that even he doesn't know what's going on. To prevent being deluged by letters and E-mail from millions of fans about the meaning of it all, the movie concludes with no end credits. But hey, at least the movie ended.

Upon taking a final cursory glance at the dusty back shelves of a semi-local video store going out of business, already with an armful of moldy oldies such as "House on the Edge of the Park" and "Slime City" (at five bucks a piece), I caught sight of this long out of print study in Oedipal politics set on a jungle island where a young boy, taught to obey the rules of the wild, discovers that his only sexual partner is his sexy mother. So it's a battle of wills between he and his father to decide who, as Lou Reed said, can "bag their beloved Big Bird."

It's not anywhere near as kinky as it sounds; Mostly this takes the high dramatic road, and pulls it off reasonably well, although much of it's intentions are dampened by George C. Scott's inert direction.

On a final note, I would like to point out that I put down an original video copy of Larry Cohen's "It's Alive" to buy this one. Think I made the right choice?

Yeah I thought so.

I was expecting to love this movie, as almost all the reviews I read for it were positive. But overall I felt it was such a wonderous idea held back by a dark and dreary look, as well as unlikeable characters. I can't stand it when a movie presents you with a protagonist that you start out rooting for, before the screenplay turns him into a jerk. As for the story, I certinly got it's meaning, and did laugh a few times ("Maybe even Gary Sinese!"), but after it was over I just felt...well, depressed. I guess imagination can do that to you.

I wanted some time to go by before I commented on this one. Probably because I knew that my humble opinion would have been buried underneath hordes of others. So now that both the sound and the fury of marketing have died down, I'll speak my peace.

Of course it's hard to look at this film in the final analysis because the entire cycle hasn't been completed yet, but to me the film feels like an overture of sorts, where the orchestra strikes up a loud and bombastic fanfare so that you know what's in store for the rest of the show, and so you feel good that you spent so much money to get in.

With my lame simile out of the way, I'll deal with the two major problems other people seem to have had with the movie.

#1 The Acting. Yeah, it does feel kind of stiff; but Lucas has always been a much better director of ideas than of people. Although the mannered feel of the dialogue really did hurt the story in a few parts (Any scene with Annikin), I was able to overlook it.

#2 Jar Jar. I agree. He's lame. Although I did chuckle when Que-Gon grabs his tounge at the dinner table. And I do have to admit that I'll give Lucas credit for having guts if he decides to bring the character back.

So what did I like about it? Well, it was just fun. Now I know that special effects alone can't make a movie good (Armegeddon and Starship Troopers come to my mind), but the breathtaking special effects used here work because they are used in tandem with a rich tapesty of mythology that Lucas has constructed.

By the way, if anyone knows what the heck I meant by that, please let me know.

Other parts I enjoyed:

#1 All the robots.

#2 The political double dealing (There was just enough of this for nice flavoring, but not enough to clog up the works)

#3 Queen Amidala. Already my favorite character, although I don't know why. I thinks it's because she seems so sad, especially during the confrontation with the senate. She's cute as a button, too.

#4 That three-way lightsaber fight. Man, I could watch two whole hours of that.

About a month after this was released, I felt kind of lousy because I felt that it was going to be regarded as a failure. But after looking at some recent reviews, I see that maybe viewers will be able to overlook the insurmountable expectations this had to live up to, and just enjoy it as the fun space trip it is.

I haven't come close to saying what I really wanted to say about the film, but this will do, I guess.

I'm not going to spend a great deal of time trying to argue the point, but I like this film.

I'm too young to remember the original series all that well, but I do recall watching it in reruns when I was a little guy. And let me ask you, what young kid, on the cusp of manhood, wouldn't have dropped their jaws at the original Emma Peel?

Unfortunaly, I don't think that many other people my age feel the same way I do about the series, so I can understand why this bombed in theatrical release. But thanks to video, I hope this film will catch on as a cult hit.

What did I like about it? Well, I thought the campy tone fit the silly feel of the original series quite well; Also, the idea of an unbrella as a weapon of destruction just seems cool to me; Plus, Uma Thurman certinaly isin't Diana Rigg, but she's not exactly hard on the eyes either.

Please don't listen to the critics on this one. If you like Austin Powers or are just discovering the joys of the old spy flicks, you'll enjoy this one.

Just remember to try to find episodes of the original series as well.

Since my comment will be buried under hundreds of others within weeks of it's posting, I'll keep it very brief.

First of all, it's a classic. It met almost all of my expectations that the last three months of underground hype built up. Seeing this, I felt exhilarated that I was watching horror movie history unfold. It was kind of the equivalent of taking Mr. Peabody's Way-Back machine to the 60's to see the original "Psycho", or to the 70's to see "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

I only had two, VERY MINOR, problems.

#1. The sound level. I know the directors wanted this to seem very real, and that digitizing the sound would have ruined the realism. But the movie was so quiet, I felt they lost an opportunity to utilize the sophisticated sound systems that most theatres have. The low volume also makes it possible to hear what other moviegoers are saying. I saw the movie in a packed house at midnight, and unfortunatly just a few jerk-off screen talkers who kept laughing at inappropriate moments almost totally ruined the vibe of the film. That's why I wanted it louder, I wanted something to drown them out.

#2. I wanted a bit more back story. I knew that the web site to the film had lots of neat information about the town history of massacres, and how the tapes were found. To my surprise, almost none of that was in the film. Now I know that part of what makes this so scary is it's self-contained ambiguity. But I still wanted a little more near the beginning about the history of the town. The fact that the producers leaned too hard on the website for details was the one element of it's promotion I didn't care for.

But as I said above, these are very minor quibbles that didn't keep me from enjoying what, ten years from now, will be considered to be a classic.