pv71989

SAHARA is an excellent war film and a very good portrayal of the kind of friendship and diversity the Allies needed to defeat the Afrika Korps in North Africa.

Humphrey Bogart plays Sergeant Joe Gunn, commander of a Grant/Lee Tank, also known as an M-3. The M-3s were superior to every British tank and were on par with the Germans' Mark IV Panzer. A slight flaw is that, outside of this movie, no subsequent film or documentary mentions any Americans being with the British 8th Army at Tobruk. Supposedly, the M-3s were shipped to Malta, the British base in the Mediterranean. By then, the Brits were well-versed in how to run it. Doubtless, any ship sailing straight from America to Egypt would have been blown to pieces by a U-Boat, the Luftwaffe or the Kriegsmarine.

Anyway, Bogart and his crewmates Bruce Bennett (aka Herman "Tarzan" Brix) and Dan Duryea are alone in the Libyan desert after the fall of Tobruk. Being 1943 and that this film was a feel-good piece of Allied propaganda, no mention is made of how the British wasted the incredibly gallant stand by the Free French at Bir Hacheim and let the Germans outflank them while they literally drank tea.

Bogart and crew head south to regroup, trying to coax as many miles out of Lulubelle, the name of the tank. They come up a diverse band of Allied soldiers from many nationalities -- English, Irish, Australian, South African and French. Together they head for the nearest well as they are desperately in need of water. Along the way, they pick up a Sudanese sergeant major named Tambul (excellently portrayed by Rex Ingram) and his Italian prisoner (the always reliable Irish-born J. Carrol Naish). It was a rare thing to see a black character portrayed as an equal with whites, but Ingram pulled it off seamlessly. Look for his scene in the well with Bennett when he is asked about the Islamic custom of having more than one wife. Anyway, Tambul leads them to a well, but it's dry, so he takes them to a second well where they find only a trickle of water.

During the trip they lose Lloyd Bridges in probably the briefest acting portrayal for a man billed fourth on the cast list. A Luftwaffe fighter pilot (Kurt Kreuger) strafes the tank, but is shot down when he is lulled into making one pass too many and flies within gun range of Lulubelle and Sgt. Gunn. Kreuger's role will become extremely important later, especially when he tries to force his reluctant Italian ally to show respect for Hitler and help Kreuger escape.

The plot gets even more interesting when Bogart persuades the men to stay at the well instead of taking all the water they can carry and leaving. The purpose was really for propaganda purposes, to show that the diverse allied soldiers could work well together and be willing to sacrifice their lives for each other against a common enemy -- a somewhat stereotypical, but well-played enemy led by veteran actor John Wengraf.

Other reviewers have noted that the battle was needless since the tank crew and allies could have taken the water and left the well, driving to the nearest British position. First of all, that would have defeated the propaganda appeal of the film. Secondly, the tank only had 150 miles, at best, of fuel. Sixty miles' worth was used to the first well, then another 50 to the second well. The tank could very well have been stuck in the desert, out of gas, waiting for the Luftwaffe to swoop down with a bomb. They don't mention it in the film, but for us viewers, hindsight is always 20/20.

Besides, all the fine acting of the first-rate cast would have gone unnoticed, including Louis Mercier as Frenchie LeBeau. His scene of how life in his village was as simple as cutting slices of cheese and washing them down with fine wine before the Nazis came in and killed everybody is excellent.

I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that most of the actors don't make it to the end. Each dies a heroic death, including Tambul who takes care of a certain Luftwaffe pilot who throws racial slurs around way too easily while showing his Italian "ally" how ruthless a Nazi can be. The battle scenes are good, except way too many German soldiers stay on their feet even when explosions go off right next to them. Kreuger's role is good as he and Bogart square off in a classic battle of psychological warfare. Whose will will break first -- courageous allies fighting evil or disciplined, cold-blooded men desperate for water?

In another nod to a WWII ally, the film was adapted from a Soviet play that originally had 13 Soviet nationalities coming together to fight the Nazis at Moscow.

As I said before, the film was made in 1943 and was a "feel-good" film made for the American public and our allies. Bogart holds up his end well, although he gets a bit too preachy at times. Bruce Bennett is a little too stiff and bland, but then again, he wasn't the most fluid Tarzan either.

The main flaw is that the German fighter plane was a painted-over American fighter. A lot of people in the 1943 viewings picked that out right away. But, it can be overlooked because the Luftwaffe wasn't giving up its planes without a fight.

All in all, a first-rate film. A lot of people overlook this gem when putting together a library of Bogart films. It easily holds up with "The Maltese Falcon," "The African Queen" and "Casablanca."

It's hard to imagine why this little gem of a flick was unavailable for 50 years. Actually, the original 82-minute length with its brief references to a missed opportunity involving a radar that picked up the Japanese attack force was banned by Chief of Staff George C. Marshall as inflammatory. Cinematographer Gregg Toland had filmed most of it on a Hollywood lot, but producer John Ford had to come in and edit in down a 34-minute film. Amazingingly, it won Ford his fourth Oscar -- as a documentary.

You have to get the full 82-minute version. The first 15 minutes are blatantly racist and jingoistic. Walter Huston plays the embodiment of Uncle Sam, which is pacifist, as America was in 1941, despite the war in Europe. Harry Davenport plays Mr. C, Uncle Sam's conscience. The two begin a dialogue where, despite Uncle Sam's best efforts to portray Japanese-Americans as loyal, Mr. C picks apart the defense and sells our own citizens are being ripe for recruitment by the Imperial Japanese military. It's done so covertly as to leave the impression that any Japanese-American could be a spy. It even uses Korean actor Philip Ahn as a smiling Shinto priest to malign that religion and say that any religion other than Christianity is immoral.

Amazingly, Nazi spies show up to "aid" the Japanese spies, who are always smiling. Toland shows Nazi spies listening to the conversations of sailors and civilians who spill military secrets like slippery glasses of milk. Oddly enough, the scenes of Americans freely spilling secrets and Nazis spies walking around Hawaii pretty as they pleased should have been more of a security concern than Japanese-Americans who taught their kids about their ancestry and culture.

The action shifts (finally) to December 7th. The radar scene is featured prominently, then the Japanese planes attack. I have to say that Toland may have thought his special effects were something in 1943, but now they look just plain cheesy. Paper-mache ships explode in showers of sparks, instead of flames. You can clearly see the strings holding up the Japanese planes. Despite being riddled by .30- and .50-caliber bullets from the Japanese planes, American sailors take the time to stop, drop and die gracefully.

What's most galling is the inaccuracies. Toland shows the battleship Nevada underway (which really happened), but then shows Japanese torpedoes blowing her into a mass of flaming wreckage. In reality, about 25 Japanese bombs wrecked her decks as the Nipponese pilots desperately tried to sink her to bottle up the entrance to Pearl Harbor.

Also, the movie shows mock-ups of the battleship Pennsylvania, as well as the destroyers Cassin and Downes. All three are in dry dock. Suddenly, a slew of bombs rips the Pennsylvania apart. The destroyers follow suit. In reality, a crane operator used his crane boom to thwart attacks on the Pennsylvania and she suffered one superficial bomb hit. The missed bombs, however, did pummel Cassin and Downes in junk that boxed the battleship in for weeks.

Also, the narrator "cleverly" points out that the Japanese pilots calmly fly across Hawaii, confident that their attack is a complete surprise, but they many hundreds of Japanese-Americans-turned-spies have lulled America to sleep. The pilots know they are about to deal a blow to the ships that lay at anchor because they have been specifically targetting those same ships in practice. Also, the two Japanese ambassadors in Washington talking to Henry Hull, are called sneaky and bland, knowing the attack is imminent.

In truth, the attacking pilots were afraid that they would be met by American fighters and anti-aircraft fire all the way in. When they broke into the skies above the anchorage with no American the wiser, only then did squadron leaders issue the code word that meant they had achieved complete surprise. The pilots had been after the American carriers all along, not the battleships, but only learned the carriers were not in port just a short time before take-off. Fuel concerns and fears of American submarines prompted them to launch the attack rather than wait a day or so to see if the carriers appeared. Finally, the Japanese ambassadors in Washington had no idea an attack was to occur. Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo had sent them a confusing message that made no hint of war. Tojo knew the ambassadors were fond of America and didn't want them giving out any warnings.

The movie shows the three Japanese midget submarines that were captured after the attack and says they were all captured. In reality, three were captured, but two were sunk, along with the mother submarine that had carried them all. Curiously, one sub was sunk as it entered the harbor prior to the attack, but the report somehow never made it to the right people. That was a more glaring error than the radar foul-up, but some poor Army Air Force lieutenant incurs Toland's wrath rather than the captains and admirals who screwed up the submarine report.

Also, the narrator (George O'Brien) triumphantly remarks that 200 Japanese planes attacked and 50 were shot down. The movie shows the second wave of Japanese planes being shredded and driven off by our brave gunners. In truth, only 29 planes and 55 Japanese fligth crewmen were lost (along with 25 guys on the submarines, including the ones on the captured midget subs who committed suicide). Here were have America's first instance of enemy casualty rates.

The film ends with the narrator pointing out some of the sailors and Marines who died. Toland and Ford are smart enough to include all races -- black, white and Hispanic. The parents of the deceased potrayed themselves. The movie ends with a patriotic speech between the narrator and the ghost of an American sailor, played by Dana Andrews. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I was ready to puke by this point.

Back in 1942 when this film was first shot, the inaccuracies and racism were overlooked because they got Americans' blood boiling. After the war when the facts of Pearl Harbor slowly came out, the film looked more and more fake, ultimately becoming as much a novelty as those stupid government education films of the 50's and 60's that warned of Communists around every corner and of marijuana destroying the country.

All in all, December the 7th is worth a look just to see how America portrayed itself and its enemies during the war. The Japanese did the same thing with a film called "I Bombed Pearl Harbor," which was a hit in Japan until the Imperial Navy went down in flames at Midway.

If you want to know what really happened at Pearl Harbor, buy the war classic "Tora, Tora, Tora."

I wish I knew what goes on in producers' heads when they make films like this. All the actors of the world complaining about not getting funding to star in or make credible films, yet there's always have enough money for Pauly Shore, Tom Green or films like "Tentacoli" (aka "Tentacles").

Basically, a giant octopus sets up shop near a place called Ocean Beach. In short order, it kills several people, including a baby in a stroller on a pathway near an estuary (how no one sees a giant tentacle coming out of the water or how the thick tentacle manages to get the baby without taking the stroller as well is a mystery).

There's the usually schlock plot lines about corrupt businessmen, like Henry Fonda, who might have done something to the octopus' original habitat to drive it to Ocean Beach. We also get to see typical Hollywood-style caricatures like the corrupt sheriff (this time played by Claude "Sheriff Lobo" Akins). And we also get Bo Hopkins as the man who espouses that we should all love and respect nature, but, of course, no one's listening (if it sounds like Dennis Quaid in "Day After Tomorrow," you're right). Hopkins is a aqua marine scientist who has some killer whales in captivity.

A promising plot that had real potential. Instead, we get a completely awful film. It reportedly had a budget of $750,000, which was a lot back then. But, it looks like only a few hundred bucks or lira were spent on the octopus special effects. We rarely see the entire beast and most of the time the underwater photography is so murky, it's hard to see anything.

The acting is wooden, which is astonishing given the star power this film had. It's as if the actors knew they were making a dog of a film and couldn't get up the chutzpah to do the lines with some zeal. Shelley Winters and John Huston are completely wasted and I still can't figure out what role Huston's character was supposed to have. Huston was known to act so he could use the money to fund film projects, but it's hard to imagine him lowering himself to the level of this production to get seed money. He's worse here than he was in "The Deserter," a Yugoslavian film that paid him a hell of a lot more.

And someone please tell me what Henry Fonda is doing in this film? A great actor, who also maimed his career by doing "The Swarm." Thank God for "On Golden Pond" or he'd have ended up in B-movie hell like Myrna Loy and Ida Lupino.

Bo Hopkins and Claude Akins, aren't great actors, but they were worthy of a better film than "Tentacoli." The movie was so awful the Italian actors in it had absolutely no excuse for doing it. Cesare Danova and Delia Boccardo somehow survived this and continued their careers right up to the present day.

Besides the wooden acting and the murky special effects, we get poor editing. Continuity and credibility problems abound. SPOILER ALERT: the ending featuring the killer whales vs. the octopus is also wasted.

A lot of the blame can be placed on director Ovidio G. Assonitis (wow, isn't that an appropriate surname). He also went by the alias Oliver Hellman when making cheap American productions. A look at his resume (which, somehow, still continues with a couple of new films slotted for release in 2004) will show the kind of director and producer he is:

American Ninja IV: The Domination; American Ninja V; The Curse; Piranha II: The Spawning; Beyond the Door III; Forever Emmanuelle; Super Stooges vs. The Wonder Women (what the hell is this about?!)

Take my advice and skip this film. If you want to see a movie about a giant octopus, buy "It Came From Beneath the Sea" or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Heck, even the Russian-made "Octopus" and "Octopus 2: River of Fear" are better alternatives to "Tentacoli."

Yes, it could have been so much more, but Hollywood went for the bucks and not the bang in catering this movie to the masses. Face it, "28 Days Later" and the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" were excellently-written and acted movies, but didn't do well at the box office. Producer and director Paul W.S. Anderson went for style over substance in "Resident Evil," having learned his lesson when he did substance first in "Event Horizon," which flopped at the box office.

In this movie, based on the popular series of video games that parents wanted slapped with user ratings, a deadly virus is unleashed at a super secret underground corporate facility. The Red Queen, the Artificial Intelligence that controls the facility, called the Hive, as well as monitors the 500 workers living inside, cold-bloodedly, but logically kills everyone and seals off the place to prevent the spread of the virus.

The Hive is the brainchild of the Umbrella Corporation, an evil worldwide conglomerate that makes The Company from the "Alien" movies seem tame by comparison. Unfortunately, Anderson makes Umbrella a clichéd, stereotypical villain.

We next see the main characters. Milla Jovovich, the butt-kicking universe saver from "The Fifth Element," plays Alice and wakes up half naked (as usual) in a shower. She can't remember anything and we learn that the Red Queen's defenses go outside the hive and into Alice's house which guards the entrance to the Hive. Alice is hit with nerve gas. We also meet Matt, a local police detective, played by Eric Mabius. He might be more than he seems, although this plot point is also wasted.

Soon, commandos from Umbrella crash the place. Among them are Rain, played by Michelle Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who won acting accolades in "Girl Fight," has been stuck in two-dimensional roles since then, ranging from the girl with the bad attitude in "Blue Wave" to the cop with a chip on her shoulder in "SWAT." Here, she's pretty much the same and we never really get to care anything about her. The only really interesting character here is One, the commando leader, played by Colin Salmon ("Prime Suspect," "The World Is Not Enough," "Tomorrow Never Dies," "Die Another Day"). But, being in charge and being black in a sci-fi film, it's not a spoiler to say his time is up pretty quick.

The group, including a manacled Matt, descends into the Hive and takes a small train to the main facility. Aboard, they find Chad, played by Martin Crewes. He's Alice's "husband" and another Umbrella operative who protects the Hive. He's also suffering memory loss from nerve gas exposure. Unfortunately, whereas Alice slowly regains her memory, he won't remember until a certain plot twist late in the film, which makes it so obvious that the whole subplot is unnecessary.

I won't recount the movie scene by scene, but Anderson's direction pretty much kills the suspense. Even the emergence of a creature called The Licker (sounds perverted, doesn't it?) doesn't add any scares or suspense. Hollywood typically adds things like The Licker and shows them so far in advance as to cancel their surprise, instead relying on lots of gore. Obviously, The Licker is CGI-created but its movements are stiff and disjointed making it seem like it was a plot twist thought of at the last second and belatedly laid out over the finished product.

And speaking of gore, here's where the film really bogs down. The virus re-animates the dead, but the actors playing the zombies are so stiff you'd think they really had rigor mortis. Also, they supposedly need to feed, but they rarely feed. They bite and draw some blood, but that's about it. It's like those shark specials on Discovery where they say sharks bite divers then back off when they realize they're not seals. The zombies bite a little, then either back off or get punched out. They're not scary at all and the big gun battles with them are rather lackluster.

Pretty soon, the whole film degenerates into the standard action/horror film cliché. A few people trapped in a remote location, trying to escape while being picked off one by one. And if the one doing the picking off was anything but The Licker, it might have been okay. But, it is The Licker and it ends up being The Lacker.

The movie does have some fine points, though. The scene near the beginning with the woman in the flooded lab and the one with some of the security commandos stuck in the Red Queen's chamber with its lethal laser beam are tense. Also, don't miss the scene when the heroine faces off against some obviously p*ssed off hell hounds that used to be Doberman pinschers. Oh and the ending is a trip. You can see it coming a mile away and you can tell it's a setup for a sequel, but it's jarring nonetheless.

Also, British child actress Michaela Dicker is marvelous as the Red Queen. She outdoes everyone else except for Colin Salmon.

Overall, the movie wasn't as bad as most of the reviewers make it out to be. However, even those unfamiliar with the video game, will see that there could have been so much more to the movie and that, ultimately, is what makes it a disappointment.

"Monolith Monsters" was unique in that it took a different approach to 1950's sci-fi. There were no alien monsters. Atomic radiation didn't spawn them. You couldn't just blast them with guns. There weren't any miracle chemicals or devices needed, just good old-fashioned common sense.

In a nutshell, a meteor crashes into the desert outside a small Arizona town, leaving a huge crater as well as thousands of small, but smooth shiny black rocks. When these rocks come in contact with water, they absorb the silica content and begin to grow until the silica source is gone. When they grow tall enough, gravity makes them unstable and they fall, only to have the shattered pieces grow yet again. In this way, they spread forward in a seemingly unstoppable wave of destruction. By the way, they absorb any kind of silica, including the small quantities the human body uses to make skin flexible so fingers and joints can bend and so organs like the heart and lungs expand and contract. Thus, when humans handle a wet rock, they literally are turned to stone.

Despite the unique plot, you come away from the movie feeling somewhat disappointed. Director John Sherwood had only two directing credits to his resume. Most of his career was spent as an assistant director up until his death in 1959, two years after "Monolith Monsters" came out.

The cast is credible though not used to anything close to their abilities. Grant Williams, so brilliant in "The Incredible Shrinking Man," plays hero Dave Miller somewhat distractedly. His love interest, Cathy Barrett, is played by Lola Albright ("Peyton Place"). She's so syrupy and sweet it's absolutely nauseating. Her portrayal was typical of female characters in '50s sci-fi and horror, but she was way over the top in this role.

Les Tremayne, a well-known veteran of radio, theater and screen in such films as "War of the Worlds" is totally wasted. If he had simply left the set one day into filming and had never returned, his role could have simply been written out with no production delays or problems whatsoever. He mostly stands around in the Arizona heat in a white suit, listening to the other characters emote. Other veterans like Richard Cutting ("Attack of the Crab Monsters"), Phil Harvey ("The Deadly Mantis") and Steve Darrell ("Tarantula") are likewise wasted.

Much of the actors' dialog is stilted and unnecessary, like the actors were getting paid by the word. Also, their interaction is way too pat. Everyone comes off like they live in Pleasantville instead of Our Town.

The holes in the plot are glaring. For instance, when Williams and a professor, played by Trevor Bardette, go out to find the meteor crater, they locate it and see the hillside and plains surrounding it covered in the small monolith fragments. Later, during a driving rain storm, they pair drive out to the crater and watch giant monoliths growing out of the mouth of the crater. Somehow, the director Sherwood forgot about the fragments and the area around the crater should have been thick with thousands of growing monoliths.

Also, you get the feeling the movie ended too soon, although that's typical of sci-fi films of the 50s and 60s. Most never made it to 90 minutes in length. So, here, you get to see the monoliths destroy a farm and you see a few townsfolk affected by the monoliths, but that's it. To me, it seemed to lessen the potential thrill factor. Also, a lack of common sense does in the film. I won't give away the ending, but a mean of stopping the rocks is found, but the actors intimate that if it fails in one instance that the rocks will never be stopped and will destroy the earth. Common sense says that since the monoliths are in the middle of the desert and the solution is so common that there is plenty of time to stop the monolith monsters.

Still, the movie is interesting enough for a late Saturday night. The movie was adapted from a story called "Monolith" that was co-written by Robert Fresco and Jack Arnold. Interestingly enough, Arnold directed Williams in "The Incredible Shrinking Man." Arnold had a lengthy director's resume, including directing and producing some 30 TV series (!), including "Wonder Woman" and "The Bionic Woman." One wonders if Arnold should have directed "Monolith Monsters."

You can tell the film was from Universal Studios, even if you miss the opening credits. The town of San Angelo doubled as Desert Rock in "Tarantula" and was also used in "It Came From Outer Space," another Jack Arnold classic. The music, done by an uncredited Henry Mancini, can be heard in many other Universal monster movies. Steve Darrell, Phil Harvey and Richard Cutting were stock actors for Universal.

On a side note, look real close at the scene where extras are working feverishly at the dam. The man waiting for word from Williams so he can trigger the main weapon against the monoliths is an uncredited Troy Donahue. Universal did the same thing in 1955 with an uncredited Clint Eastwood in "Tarantula." It took years for people to pick up on the cameos.

Let me start by saying I own a lot of really bad grade Z sci-fi flicks because I grew up watching them. These days I pop 'em in the VCR or DVD to get a good laugh. Unfortunately, while I see them as harmless fun, the actors in them and audiences watching them were almost always trying to be serious which ultimately makes the films the duds that they became.

That said, let's talk about "The Giant Claw." Reputedly, actor Jeff Morrow ("This Island Earth"), Mara Corday ("Tarantula," "Black Scorpion") and others signed on for what was supposed to be a sci-fi thriller. The bad part of sci-fi flicks is that a good deal of them depend heavily on special effects and they have to be added after the actors are finished. Thus, as with Morrow and Corday, they don't see how much a film can change. Morrow reportedly walked out of the theater during the opening night of the film, went to a bar and got drunk. Corday supposedly had her head buried in her hands during the showing.

Apparently the producers wanted to save money on the effects and outsourced the work to a studio in Mexico City. What we got was a giant wooden marionette puppet with a stupid squawk and with the strings clearly visible. Half the time, we only see an outline of the bird which makes it even more laughable.

They tried to add in stock footage of planes exploding as if attacked by the Giant Claw, but it was too little too late. Low-budget films of the 1950's tended to toss in stock footage just anywhere and in this film, it showed.

The story itself deals with a giant bird from outer space that comes from a galaxy made of anti-matter. It's looking for a place to lay its eggs. It isn't anti-matter itself, but can project an energy shield of anti-matter which causes missiles, rockets, bullets and shells to explode harmlessly.

Morrow is civilian fly-boy Mitchell McAfee, the first to see the bird. At first, the Air Force, for whom is doing test pilot work up at the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line in Canada, disbelieve. Even a pretty scientist played by former Playboy Playmate Mara Corday laughs at him until planes start falling out of the sky like flies, including a transporter carrying Morrow and Corday.

Morrow isn't the greatest actor, but he carries his load well enough. Corday was an okay actress, but she's so gorgeous you could forgive the sometimes wooden acting (see the scene where an office door blows open after a small explosion). Morris Ankrum, who made his whole career playing grade B and Z dreck (when not playing a judge on "Perry Mason"), is tolerable except for his silly comments that sounds like some kid's grandpa talking to a five-year old. Robert Shayne is also good until he bemoans the fact that modern weapons can't kill the bird.

The plot and script are credible, save for two important things. It may be a spoiler alert, so watch out. In one scene, Morrow and Corday have to return to a French Canadian's farm to find the bird's egg. They have .30-08 rifles (though they look like .22's). To this day, I still can't figure out why the producers couldn't get a couple of extras to dress up as army guys to do the scene. The other thing is in the end. Morrow's character creates a weapon that may destroy the bird's shield. It may take hundreds of shots to penetrate the bird's shield, but the gun fires about four times.

As I mentioned before, the producers added in stock footage in the editing room with no regards to common sense and continuity. In one scene, near the end, the army tracks the bird with radar and shoots at the bird with radar-directed anti-aircraft artillery. Somehow they forgot that the bird's shield made it invisible to radar.

And would somebody confirm if Jeff Morrow is also the narrator of this film. The narrator has a thick Brooklyn accent and sounds like Morrow, especially when he says words ending in "er." Also, listen for the infamous "01815 hours" slip-up.

Overall, it's another good schlock film ruined by incredibly bad special effects.

And I suppose it's true. Most sequels cannot live up to the original and usually try a new tack to keep viewers buying. For "Starship Troopers: Hero of the Federation" (which sounds more like a video game title), producer Jon Davison and first-time director Phil Tippett rip off plot lines from other classic science fiction movies.

Now, let me say that this sequel is not a good sequel or a good movie. On a Saturday night when nothing else is one (and you don't have cable), it's okay. But, neither is it, as some reviewers have said, the worst sequel of all time (no, that would be "Exorcist II: The Heretic).

The main plot deals with troopers stranded on another bug-infested planet, unable to be retrieved because bugs have overridden the available landing zones. They retreat to an abandoned outpost to find that a trooper named Captain Dax (not colonel as previously mentioned in other reviews) is not only the lone survivor of his company during a fierce battle against the bugs, but that he has killed his commanding officer for reasons I won't name so as not to spoil the one decent subplot in the whole film.

In this film, Tippett, best known as a creature designer and visual effects artist for such films as the first Starship Troopers and the Star Wars and Robocop trilogies, borrows heavily from the time-worn cliche of a few people trapped in a dark place and apt to get picked off one by one. It worked so masterfully in "Alien" but rarely before or since.

Tippett knows his visual effects and uses them to great effect (no pun intended), but a small $6 million budget (well, small in Hollywood terms) means he can't show a lot of the stuff the original had. Still, the creatures are excellent. I wish I could say the same for the weapons effects. Tippett couldn't direct and supervise the weapons effects at the same time and it shows.

Probably the worst part of the movie is the actors. The first film worked because the intense action and great special effects made up for the lack of experience of the main stars, who were virtual unknowns, save for Neil Patrick Harris. Also, supporting actors like Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, Rue McClanahan and Richard Venture made up for the weak acting of Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer and Denise Richards. (On a interesting side note, it'd be nice to see why Van Dien and Richards weren't in this film; goodness knows their careers could use a push of any kind).

Richard Burgi as Captain Dax is probably the best known of the group. Aside from several short-lived syndicated TV series, he did stints on "Days of Our Lives," "As the World Turns" and "Another World." Kelly Carlson is not, as some suggest, the next big thing in acting, but she does have an nice body, which she shows a lot of in yet another cliche of not-so-good sequels. Sandrine Holt may be the most recognized star, if you liked her excellent turns in "Rapa Nui" and John Woo's "Once a Thief" and if you weren't automatically turned off by her appearance in the god-awful "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever."

As with most sci-fi and horror sequels, the gore is piled on. Author Stephen King once said that if he couldn't scare, horrify or terrify a reader, he'd go for the gross-out. Horror and sci-fi sequels go for the gross stuff often and this film is no different.

****SPOILER ALERT*****: The main antagonists in this movie are bugs that can be planted inside humans (a la "The Hidden"). The infected troopers try to messily (and seductively) plant bugs inside other troopers. So, we get a scene where a female trooper whacks an infected guy's head seven or eight times with a machete, then picks up the severed head. When a bug starts to emerge, she chucks the head inside a microwave oven and fries it. Anybody who was sickened by the Nicholas Berg episode in Iraq may want to fast-forward past this little trinket.****ALERT OVER****

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give "Starship Troopers: Hero of the Federation" a 4. Considering the really awful straight-to-video low-budget flicks with a lot of the same plot, this movie could have been a hell of a lot worse. Instead, it will fit in with all the other two-star films listed in "TV Guide."

I know it sounds like a contradiction, but "Ice Palace" suffers from a long running time while the movie's scenes are too brief to offer anything substantial. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber (who also wrote the best-selling novels Show Boat, Cimarron and Giant, all of which became classic, award-winning films), the movie deals with an almost life-long rivalry between Zeb Kennedy (Richard Burton) and Thor Storm (Robert Ryan) in the wilds of a still territorial Alaska. Zeb is a WWI veteran who comes back home to Seattle to find he can't get a job, thanks to local packers who see him as a troublemaker because he dances to his own tune and not theirs. He heads to Alaska aboard a freighter, along with a bunch of Chinese workers (he meets the character of Wang (George Takei in a demeaning role of a pidgen-English speaking role of comic relief). Zeb meets Thor (Robert Ryan), a local fisherman in the town of Banarov when he is beaten up by local cannery workers and thrown into the bay after stepping in to defend Wang, who's being threatened. Not to belabor a point, but Thor and Zeb become friends and conspire to open a rival cannery in Banarov to avoid having to grovel at the feet of the big cannery across the bay. Zeb then meets Bridie Ballantyne (Carolyn Jones), who is Thor's woman and business partner. He falls for her, makes her fall for him, then realizes it's wrong and decides to leave Baranov. Thor, unknowing of all this, gets him to set up financing in Seattle for the cannery. Zeb does this by marrying Dorothy (Martha Hyer) to get her father to back the cannery, thanks to some advice from best friend and future business partner Dave Husack (a pre-Gilligan's Island Jim Backus). Anyway, when Zeb, Bridie, Thor and Dorothy all meet up, it's like that song where Chicago says to look away. The jig is up and sets the tension for the rest of the movie. Zeb becomes a tyrant, in league with other big packers, while Thor becomes a protector of Alaska, seeking statehood so that federal laws can come in and stop Zeb, called "Czar" Kennedy by the locals. The problems with the movie deal mostly with the length of the novel, which rivaled "Giant." Whereas "Giant" and "Cimarron" dispensed with huge chunks of the books to avoid boring and losing audiences, "Ice Palace" tries to touch on all of the story. This leaves quick scenes that jump and leave the rest of us behind. Characters aren't allowed to develop fully. For instance, Zeb defends Wang and then, feeling guilty about Bridie, decides to leave well enough alone. A moment later, he's a cruel, callous tyrant who calls Eskimo kids "half-breeds" and mistreats his wife, Dorothy (Diane McBain in a wasted role). The costumers and set designers do a marvelous job of advancing Baranov year by year and a little make-up does wonders to make Burton et al age with the times (although Jim Backus, who was 14 years older than Burton, seemed to just let the Just for Men wear off). In no short time, we're introduced to Chris, Thor's son by his Eskimo wife (Dorcas Brower, a gorgeous woman who's character is barely touched upon because she conveniently dies off-screen in childbirth). Grace, Zeb and Dorothy's daughter is seen briefly as a little girl and then as a teenager who elopes with Chris. By this time, Zeb is a shell of a husband and Thor spends his every waking moment railing against Zeb like George Bush against Saddam Hussein. Then, suddenly, Grace is pregnant and she and Chris are flying across the frozen tundra on a three-week journey via dog sled to the nearest town so she can give birth (don't ask). They get lost and Thor and Zeb come to the rescue. Great drama until the scene with Chris fighting a man in a bear suit (watch how the bear throws Chris to the ground, then hams it up in a death scene; it's unintentionally hilarious). No doubt, the movie has a great cast, but most of the roles are underdeveloped and a few are totally out of place. George Takei's voice-over work on the English version of "Rodan" must have seemed a godsend compared to the simpering man-servant Wang. Kar Swenson as the full-blooded Irish father of Bridie is a hoot. Swenson is best known as lumber mill owner Lars Hanson of "Little House on the Prairie" and his Scandinavian accent massacres his attempts at speaking with an Irish brogue. Bridie is also wasted. She's supposed to be the object of love for Thor and Zeb, yet she marries neither, tries to help Thor raise his son, but is rarely shown in the same space as the boy. As she ages, she begins to resemble Bette Davis (it's hard to imagine her later role as Morticia Addams). It's become more and more difficult to believe she can still harbor any love or like for Thor or Zeb, both of whom lose audience sympathy by being total jackasses. Of course, all would seem to come together in the end, despite a despicable plot by Zeb and Dave's son, Bay (Ray Danton), to use his granddaughter Christine (Shirley Knight in another wasted role). But even this is left flapping in the breeze, literally, when Thor and a local pilot do the cliche "small plane in a snow storm hitting a glacier" plot twist. You can guess what happens next, which leaves you feeling cheated.

"Ice Palace" plays out more like the pilot for a TV show, where you hope unresolved issues will be answered. Actually, it probably should have been made into a TV show a la "Peyton Place" where the whole story line could have been given its proper due. All in all, it's an interesting little film to watch if you happen to be the kind of person who doesn't hit the "pause" button when the phone rings or the doorbell rings in the middle of the viewing. If you miss a scene, don't worry. You'll be just as confused as if you had watched it.

I was thoroughly impressed with "Blade II," although I do feel it could have used some extra work. Wesley Snipes is bad ass, as usual, as Blade, the "Daywalker" (half human/half vampire). For those who may not have seen the original or may not know about the comic book, Snipes gives a brief, but thorough introduction to his character and that of Whistler, his mentor so you don't get lost. It won't be like trying to see the "Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" without seeing the first series installments.

In the first film, Snipes just brooded as he slowly revealed his world to N'Bushe Wright. In this film, he gets to let loose and even show some emotions, such as when he rescues Whistler and later with the female lead. Some of the action is cartoonish, but, hey Blade is a Marvel Comics character.

The supporting cast is tight, too. Kris Kristofferson is tough as nails, although he manages to take way too many punches for a guy his age. Ron Perlman plays yet another guy with serious attitude as a Reinhardt, a member of the Bloodpack, vampire mercenaries trained to hunt Blade, but who must now join up with him as their leader to deal with Reapers, a new strain of vampire. I wish director Guillermo del Toro ("Mimic," "Cronos") could have fleshed out the rest of the Blood Pack (Priest, Snowman, Chupa, Lili and Lighthammer all get serious camera time, but remain two-dimensional). Del Toro should have taken a page from "Aliens" in which most of the space Marines reveal some character.

Luke Goss as Jared Nomak, the original Reaper, is almost as impressive a bad guy as Stephen Dourif was as Deacon Frost in the original. He's totally believable, especially in the opening scene when he had me thinking he was just an extra about to be sliced and diced by vampires at a Czech blood bank. Thomas Kretschmann is suitably evil as the vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos, although he never gets to the point where I cared when he got his comeuppance. Karel Roden plays the slimy lawyer to a tee.

Best of all, though, is the lovely half-Chilean, half-French bombshell Leonor Varela ("Cleopatra"). She plays Nyssa, Damaskinos' daughter. She can act and with the skintight black leather suits, she looks hotter than hot. Hotter even than former porn queen Traci Lords was in the original movie. The only thing I hated about Varela was that del Toro began to show Blade and her character warming to each other, but he never really explore it. Let's just say, I was really disappointed in the ending, though it was heart-wrenching and poignant.

The action is magnificent. Some of the CGI effects when Blade and Nyssa go at it looks silly, but it doesn't detract from the film. The best action, though, is a scene later when an unarmed Blade takes on a couple of dozen "familiars" (humans who have sold out to the vampires) armed with cattle prods. The martial arts here are believable and cool and reminded me of Bruce Lee's legendary fight scene with the guards in the underground complex in "Enter the Dragon."

Also, check out the fighting in the House of Pain, a disco for vampires (seriously). The gunfights are awesome (and show you how much pure-blooded vampires really like their half-breed cousins). Donnie Yen as Snowman choreographs the fight scenes and even gets to show off some of his stuff himself (although the film could have used more of him since he comes off as likeable and not a smartass like Chupa, Priest or Reinhardt). On a side note, the producers hired some hot-looking women to play female vampires at this club. They certainly don't look anything like the traditional pasty-skinned vamps from the various Dracula films.

All in all, "Blade II" is worth adding to your video collection, even if you're not a fan of the comics.

First of all, this sequel was head and shoulders (or head and tentacles) above its predecessor, which was just horrible all the way around. In the first film, the an uncool special agent takes a terrorist back to America aboard a nuclear sub. The octopus plays only a minor part, looking mostly fake while the agent battles the terrorists, get the airheaded blonde heroine and stands around while the octopus sinks a cruise liner. In the sequel, for some reason, a giant octopus takes up nesting in the East River (I guess to feed on all the mob informants that end up there). It kills some tourists, then sinks a tugboat. In short order, it kills two cops, including the hero's partner, then freaks out and smashes the Brooklyn tunnel after being attacked by NYPD blue. The acting was so-so. A bunch of no-names make up the cast. Michael Reilly Burke is credible as Nick, the hero. Fred Lane is actually better as his partner, Walter. They're members of the New York City Police Department's harbor patrol. Walter's a short-timer, about to transfer to a cushy desk job, so it's no plot spoiler to say he has "dead meat" stamped on his wetsuit. Meredith Morton gives the film its real plot problem. She plays Rachel, a mayoral aide, who becomes the love interest and joins Nick in his quest to find the octopus. Her part is not credible. In fact, if she had been completely cut out of the film, the movie wouldn't have suffered. I'm all for love interests and romance, but, please, make the character an integral part of the set. Also, the film could have used some good old-fashioned humor. The only real humorous scene comes late in the film when Nick and another harbor diver named Tony dive down and find a dead drug smuggler. The octopus attacks, so they look at each other, then grab the dead guy and chuck him into the monster's mouth while they make their escape.

The CGI special effects are very good. Animatronic arms help out immensely. The stock footage of New York is almost seamlessly blended in. The movie was shot elsewhere, of course, since the East River has never looked that clean since we took it from the Indians. Also, there are a few clues the Russian filmmakers need to get clear. The police uniforms looked authentic, but no cop would be caught dead inside a powder blue police car! Alas, I have only two real problems (aside from the heroine). First, the film shamelessly rips off "Daylight" with a tunnel-flooding scene at the end (this can be excused since virtually no one saw that Stallone dud; but the actress in the bad wig poorly pretending to be an old Jewish woman can't be excused). Second, the ending defied logic. I won't spoil it, but let's just say that the amount of explosives the cops used should have stopped King Kong. Note: Nick and Rachel never actually kiss

There are more than enough descriptions and adjectives in the other reviews, so I won't add more. I just want to remind viewers to catch the entire movie. Many people seem to start watching the movie when Henry Fonda and his gang gun down the family (including the children). The real beginning features some of the most classic scenes in not only westerns, but all of movie history.

The scene starts in a dusty train station. A grizzled ticket agent is counting his money when the door opens. He looks up and sees a pair of dusty boots. The camera pans up past a sawed off rifle to the hardened face of Woody Strode (Sergeant Rutledge, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Spartacus, The Professionals). Soon we also see two more men, including Jack Elam. Looking on is a worried Indian maiden (played by Strode's wife, Luana, a real-life Hawaiian princess). The trio of gunmen go out to the platform to wait for the train. Elam uses his gun to play around with a buzzing fly. Strode waits under a water tower, which drips water onto the brim of his hat. Director Sergio Leone improvised because he didn't expect the tower to leak, so he had Strode take off the hat and drink the water from the brow in a scene now considered an instant classic. The train arrives and the gunmen don't see Bronson, so they start walking away until they hear a harmonica. They turn to see the train pull away and Bronson on the other side of the tracks. He has a harmonica in his left hand and a satchel in his right.

Bronson: Did you bring a horse for me? Elam: It seems we're one horse shy. Bronson: Actually, you brought two too many.

With that, Strode's evil grin disappears. The satchel drops, guns go up and shots get fired. All four men go down and we just see a windmill in the background. Is it the end of the movie? Is everyone dead? Will we see the film in flashback?

That's what really caught my eye when I first saw the movie. Fonda's appearance later helped cement it for me, especially when one of his henchmen calls out his character's name and asks what they should do about the little boy who survives their massacre of his family. Fonda calmly and coolly replies "Well, seeing as how you used my name..." before shooting the kid.

A great movie and a great tribute to Hollywood's great western history.

When I heard about and saw the trailers for "Posse" I was eagerly waiting for the film's release. African-Americans made up fully a third of all cowboys in the Old West, but were virtually non-existent in Hollywood's Old West, except as train porters or mammies. The only real black cowboy seen by most Americans was Woody Strode, thanks to John Ford ("Sergeant Rutledge," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "How the West Was Won"), Richard Brooks ("The Professionals") and Italian filmmakers ("Once Upon a Time in the West," "The Revengers," "The Unholy Four").

"Posse," written, produced and directed by Mario Van Peebles, had promise. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down by cliches and a tired storyline. A rousing climax almost saves the film, though.

The movie begins with a stark history lesson about the true accomplishments of blacks in the Old West, as told to Reginald and Warren Hudlin by an old man (the legendary Woody Strode). He then segues into the fictitious story of Jesse Lee...

Lee (Mario Van Peebles) and his men are getting cut to pieces by the Spanish during the Spanish-American War while their commanding officer (a slimy, but effective Billy Zane) drinks Cognac miles away. Lee complains about the conditions and is arrested. Zane later promises to exonerate him and his men if they will pull off a mission for him -- namely to steal valuable documents from the Spanish. Stephen Baldwin is thrown in with Lee's gang because he's a troublemaker Zane wants to get rid of. The group pulls off the mission, but, instead of finding documents, they find gold bullion. They also find Zane and his cohorts waiting at the rendezvous point with guns to finish them off. Unfortunately for Zane, his men are like Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders -- long on bravado, short on skill. Lee's men, having been in combat, get the drop on Zane, kill most of his men and flee back to America as wanted men. (By the way, the method they use to get out of Cuba and back to America is original, but very creepy).

The middle part of the film is spent showing Lee and his men (rapper Tone Loc, Baldwin, a whiny aide and a few spares) heading to New Orleans, where they meet up with Big Daddy Kane. They also run into Zane, who has been tracking them. The whole tracking plotline is hard to believe (remember how long it took John Wayne to track down Natalie Wood in "The Searchers"?), but it makes for good shootouts.

Eventually, Lee and his men make it back to Lee's hometown, a black township full of freedmen. Such townships were numerous in the Old West, but survived only at the whim of white county officials (watch "Rosewood" for an example of what they often suffered from). The town is run by Richard Jordan as a greedy sheriff in cahoots with some crooked county officials. Throw in Zane and his own posse, along with a Gatling gun and you get the rousing climax.

Mario Van Peebles is not much of an actor, but he has enough range and skill to carry the burden of being Jesse Lee. Baldwin is not quite up to par with brothers Alec and Daniel, but he holds his own, especially when he meets his demise at the hands of fellow whites. I liked Big Daddy Kane's soft-spoken, but proud and defiant, role as Father Time and the way he kept looking at his pocket watch before doing anything. Tone Loc was a waste, though, since he kept rapping like it was 1998 instead of 1898.

The town basically had one purpose and that was to show off an impressive cast of black stars -- Melvin Van Peebles, Pam Grier, Reginald Vel Johnson and Nipsey Russell, among others. Of course, having a cameo meant biting the bullet (literally) in the finale.

By the way, another problem for "Posse" was its setting. Many contributions and accomplishments by African-Americans came during the years following the Civil War, from 1865-1890. Black soldiers became the vaunted Buffalo Soldiers who protected white settlers and tracked down Geronimo. Freed blacks moved west in droves as homesteaders and as cowboys on cattle drives because many white men had been killed or maimed during the war. Black townships sprang up in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Black lawmen like the legendary Bass Reeves were in abundance, especially in Oklahoma and Texas. By 1898, blacks were in a decline (despite their bravery in the Spanish-American War) that would not be reversed until World War I. Surely, Van Peebles could have drawn up a storyline set between 1865 and 1890.

"Posse" has a lot going for it. It's too bad Mario Van Peebles went for cliches, shootouts and tired storylines meant to sell tickets rather than tell a good story. "Unforgiven" and "Tombstone" showed you can do both.

"Auntie Lee's Meat Pies" is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek (no pun intended) horror film. Basically, Aunti Lee (Karen Black) employs her four nieces to lure unsuspecting men to their shack. The men are then robbed of all their belongings and get ground up as meat pies to hide the evidence.

The only way you can really stomach this film (no pun intended) is by looking for the stars. Karen Black took the role to break what she thought was her pigeon-holing as a good two-shoes. It's fun to see Pat Morita take a break from his Karate Kid series to play the sheriff. The best cameo belongs to Huntz Hall as a farmer. Hall, for those who don't know, was one of the original Dead End Kids, also known, in various incarnations, as the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys.

But, the best reason to watch this film is for Auntie Lee's nubile nieces. Pia Reyes, Ava Fabian, Kristine Rose and Teri Weigel were all Playboy playmates prior to this movie. Weigel is also currently a porn star, so you can see why men eagerly followed her home.

If you're in the mood for something really gruesome, though, try finding "Sweeny Todd: The Demon of Barber Street" instead. Auntie Lee may make meat pies, but you will find something much better with her nieces' eye candy.

That's right. If something happens in a film and you find it so outrageous that you want to get up off the coach, reach through the screen and hit someone has done its job (unless it's a Pauly Shore movie, in which case you want to hit the producer).

Seriously, "Full Metal Jacket" is probably Stanley Kubrick's best film. It's based on a novel called "The Short Timers" and is told in three parts, although most people think of it as two halves. The title refers to the hard metal casing surrounding the soft lead core of the bullets used in the M-16's and M-14's the Marines used in Vietnam. It's also an allegory, described the hard shells that are molded around soft, impressionable young men when they become killers as impersonal as a bullet during war.

The first part of the film is easily the best. Young recruits arrive at bootcamp, get their heads shaved and meet the drill sergeant (played to perfection by R. Lee Ermey, a then-recently retired real life Marine drill instructor). He curses at them and screams at them, assigning them goofball names that describe their personalities while dehumanizing them. The chief recruits here are Private Joker (Matthew Modine), who is here mostly because he doesn't want to join the Army; Private Cowboy (Arliss Howard, who's here because he wants to be), and Private Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio, who doesn't have a clue about life off the farm and is in for a rude awakening). Watching these "numb nuts" get turned into emotionless killing machines is quite disturbing at times. Even outrageous, although it is based on real Marine Corps training doctrine. Take, for instance, the marksmanship scene where R. Lee Ermey highlights Charles Whitman, who shot several people from the tower at the University of Texas, and Lee Harvey Oswald, who allegedly shot a mobile JFK from the sixth floor of a book depository. He then asks where both men got their marksmanship training -- the Marine Corps, as if he really wanted to glorify these guys just because they were Marines. Watching that, I wanted to reach through the TV and joke Ermey.

Part two follows Joker to Vietnam. Many people think the movie went downhill from here, but it is an essential part of the movie. Joker and his fellow Marines were trained to be killers, but they were trained to fight an old war. America was used to wars like Korea and World War II where you had a clearly defined enemy and clearly defined battlefields. Instead, we get men sitting around doing nothing, waiting to go into battle the next day like going to the office. Vietnamese women sell themselves openly while young Vietnamese men wait to either steal cameras or shoot GIs. Joker talks like he's ready for combat, but when the Tet Offensive opens in 1968 and he has to man a machine gun to protect his base, he finds out he's not ready. It's eerie to watch the Marines when they have to retake Hue City. They actually look happy as they mass up and walk behind tanks because the war is finally looking like what they had been trained for -- a straight up fight between two armies. The most interesting part of this section of the film is where a TV crew interviews Marines. Some of the comments are ordinary, some are profound and some are just plain boastful, if not moronic (if you watch some of the reality-based TV shows today, you'll understand).

The third and final section of the film depicts the biggest battle of Vietnam -- how it really changed the men fighting it. Joker hooks back up with Cowboy as he is leading his squad to an old part of Hue City where military intelligence thinks some enemy soldiers are holed up. The squad is ambushed and several members are killed. The squad shoots up an entire building in response, but don't hit the sniper. The harrowing scene has Dorian Harewood lying wounded in the open as the sniper shoots holes in him trying to lure his buddies out of hiding (John Wayne's "Sands of Iwo Jima" hinted at this scenario and "Saving Private Ryan" copied it). It's almost repulsive to see American soldiers cowering when one of their own is in need of help, but this is the reality of war. Later, when the surviving squad members finally get up the courage to hunt down the sniper, we get to see the true effect of war. Joker is trying to maintain his sense of morality while the other squad members are eager for revenge. Kubrick was trying to show the real tragedy of Vietnam in that most of the soldiers were not like Joker. They were hardened and haunted by war, but when it was all over, you knew they would be sent straight back into society (Think of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo in "First Blood" who wanders around homeless and aimless because Col. Trautman trained him for war, but not for peace).

The camera work of the film is great, especially the choppy style that gives us a bird's-eye view as soldiers run for cover. Kubrick never tries to overwhelm us, just show us the truth. The movie has been hailed by many critics as the best war movie ever made and I agree, although "Das Boot" and "Saving Private Ryan" are close. It is not an anti-war movie, per se, because it just shows what really went on in training and during the war. It doesn't take sides, like, say, John Wayne's unabashedly patriotic "The Green Berets" (which, by the way, inadvertently, showed the futility of combat in Vietnam during the camp attack scene).

Overall, I rate this 9/10. Too bad Kubrick died with "Eyes Wide Shut" as his last film. Hopefully, people will remember "Full Metal Jacket" instead.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw the trailers for this film. When it faded quickly from theaters after a strong opening weekend, I thought I had wisely saved my ticket money. Then, I saw it only sale at Blockbuster in a 2-for-1 deal, so I decided to check it out. Now, I wished I had seen it in the theaters.

The movie is based on a series of computer games from Japan that led the way for such reality-based games as "Wing Commander." The plot concerns Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na), a scientist who, along with he mentor, Dr. Sid (excellently voiced by Donald Sutherland), is trying to find life force spirits that might drive out the phantoms. The phantoms are aliens that have landed on earth and have destroyed much of the planet by ripping people's souls right out of their bodies.

Ross and Sid are helped by Captain Grey Edwards (Alec Baldwin) and his small band of troopers (voiced by Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi and "Frasier" regular Peri Gilpin). Ross has been having weird dreams about the aliens ever since she was infected by them. General Heiner (James Woods) thinks she's under their influence and seeks to discredit her work to find the spirits. He's a stereotypical sci-fi general, favoring military force to destroy the phantoms. In this case, he wants to use a new weapon called the Zeus Cannon to blast the meteorite the aliens arrived in 34 years earlier. Apparently the fact that humans have been driven to live inside protected domes hasn't dawned on him. Unlike sci-fi generals who are megalomaniacs or power seekers, Heiner is driven by an intense hatred that will make him do something disastrous, something that will drive him to the brink of suicide.

The animation here is excellent. There are a few moments in the beginning where the movement is stiff, but it gets better along the way. The dialogue is very good, with none of the usual stiff one-liners that plague live-action films. The characters emote well, which is something I don't expect from CGI-created characters (even from "Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles"). The only flaw with the characters is we don't get enough time to really get to know them before all hell breaks loose.

This character flaw can be traced to the movie's grand flaw and, most likely, the one that helped kill box office sales. The movie is part of a series, so you don't see the beginning. In the beginning, Ross and Grey trade barbs as if they're old friends (or maybe old lovers). Imagine if the Star Wars franchise began with "Return of the Jedi." Viewers would be wondering how all the characters got there, how they knew each other, why they're fighting the Empire, etc...

"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is a fine movie worth repeated viewings. But, despite all the viewings, you'll still come away with the feeling that you've missed half the movie.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, "Bug" is a tale of two movies. The first half is generally good and creepy. The second half aims higher but falls much, much lower.

Basically, an earthquake in the rural California unleashes a previously unknown species of cockroach. The roaches can start fires (a nifty defense mechanism). We see a roach crawl into the tail pipe of a truck and ultimately cause it to explode with people inside (don't ask how). A woman has her hair set on fire by another roach and we see her running around in flames like people generally do in real life instead of doing the "stop, drop and roll" thing. We also get a nauseating scene where a cat decides to toy with a roach and gets fried, not once, but by dozens of bugs.

Bradford Dillman ("Piranha") plays Prof. James Parmiter, who figures out that the roaches come from deep inside the earth. Joanna Miles plays his wife Carrie. She's the one who has her hair catch fire. Other cast members include Alan Fudge and Jesse Vint.

The biggest problem occurs in the second half of the film, after Joanna Miles dies. Dillman gets despondent and basically turns into a mad scientist. ****Spoiler alert ****. Ironically, the filmmakers decided to literally let nature deal with the roaches with no help from Man. So, we have to sit through a muddled second half as Dillman's Parmiter supposedly gets obsessed with the roaches. For some reason, they try to make the roaches appear extremely intelligent, to the point they actually join together to form coherent sentences on walls!

That just made the movie extremely silly at that point. I was engrossed up until that point. The second half felt like I had wasted my time getting the movie. I actually got up to make popcorn, use the restroom and answer a phone call without bothering to hit the "pause" button. I later rewound it and watched it closely, but realized I hadn't missed anything worthwhile.

The movie was writter by the legendary William Castle (who created such classics as "13 Ghosts," "The Tingler," "The House On Haunted Hill" and the Whistler and Crime Doctor crime movies of the early 40's). Jeannot Szwarc directed. Szwarc was also responsible for such woofers as "Super Girl" and "Santa Claus: The Movie.'' He now directs episodic TV shows, including "The Practice" and "Providence."

As written by Castle and directed by Szwarc, the movie begins very well. The roaches look real and the special pyrotechnic effects are good and believable. The only serious drawback is a stupid musical score that, at one point, seems almost cartoon-like.

The movie could have been better if one of two things had been done, I believe. One, Castle could have changed the second half of the movie so that more of the roaches are shown, along with Man's approaches to stopping them. Two, he could have recast Prof. Parmiter. Dillman just didn't (still doesn't) have the acting chops to pull off such a serious change, transforming from dull scientist to mad doctor on the edge of insanity. Personally, when this movie came out, I only knew Dillman from his two-dimensional performance in "Piranha," his awful part in "The Swarm" and his police captain role in "The Enforcer" where Clint Eastwood tells him his mouthwash ain't making it.

Personally, I'd rate this * 1/2 out of *****. It could have gotten up to ***, but the weird second half ruins everything else that went on before it.

This was a television movie from 1977, made at the height of the eco-horror theme of the 70's ("Kingdom of the Spiders," "Grizzly," "Day of the Animals," etc.). The plot is thin, so the producers and director loaded up on noticeable stars. But, it's still got television and cheesiness written all over it.

First of all, the executive producer is Alan Landsburg, who credits range from bad ("Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo" and "The Savage Bees") to good ("Bill" and "Bill: On His Own" with Mickey Rooney, and "That's Incredible" and "The Undersea World of Jacque Cousteau", all multiple Emmy winners). Producer Peter Richmond is best known for the "Get Christie Love" movie and subsequent TV series, as well as "Terror Out of the Sky," the sequel to "The Savage Bees."

Director Richard Scheerer is virtually synonymous with TV. A list of the programs he's either directed or produced includes "The Love Boat," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek" Deep Space Nine," "Jake & The Fatman," "Hawaii Five-O," "Matlock," "Fame," "Hotel," "Falcon Crest" (which, coincidentally starred Robert Foxworth, this movie's leading man), "Dynasty," "The Night Stalker," "Knot's Landing," "Ironside" and "Police Story."

The cast is actually good because, up until the ants arrive, the movie plays like a nighttime television soap opera. The one exception is Suzanne Somers. She plays a businesswoman sleazy Gerald Gordon brings to the resort for a little adulterous seduction to close an important business deal. She gets top billing anyway, being the most recognizable TV star at the time. Others include the aforementioned Foxworth, Lynda Day George ("Mission Impossible"), Bernie Casey ("Never Say Never Again"), Barry Van Dyke (Dick's son, who co-starred with dear old dad on "Diagnosis Murder"), Brian Dennehy, Rene Enriquez (Lt. Ray Calletano from "Hill Street Blues"), Steve Franken ("Nurse Betty") and Stacy Keach Sr. (matriarch of that acting family). Myrna Loy of the "Thin Man" movies is on hand as the "special guest star," unfortunately joining the likes of Henry Fonda, John Huston, Ida Lupino and Shelley Winters as veterans in need of a paycheck, even it's from something totally beneath them.

The plot revolves around Lakewood Manor, a new resort going up near a lake (of course). The place is only half-finished as opening day arrives, so construction crews led by Bernie Casey and Robert Foxworth are still digging. A wheelchair-bound Loy is owner of the place and Franken is her right-hand man. The guests include Van Dyke, Gordon and Somers, among others. Despite the cheerful start, we all know something is amiss. Soon, we soon a couple of construction workers get attacked by ants and fall out of sight. They're not discovered for awhile (because they're the stereotypical lazy guys always disappearing for a break).

It seems the local ant population has a beef with the people. Actually, Loy ignored her homework and had her resort built over an old chemical dumpsite because it was too expensive to dig up and clean up the site. So, the chemicals leaked and, over time, the ants were affected. When resort construction crews start digging into the ant hill, all hell breaks loose.

There really is no horror, mostly because it's a TV movie accessible by kids, even though it features Suzanne Somers with most of her breasts exposed (still tame by today's TV, though). A kid in swimming trunks falls into a trash dumpster and gets covered with ants. He staggers into the swimming pool, thus washing off the ants. But, he dies because the chemicals have made the ants' bites toxic, although it really wasn't needed. If you've ever been bitten by fire ants, you'll understand.

Pretty soon, the whole resort is covered with ants. This is courtesy of Foxworth, who gets angry when Franken and Loy won't believe him about the ants, so he goes and bulldozes the entire mound. Today, he'd be sued for millions, if not beaten to death by relatives of the dead people.

Efforts to save the people are many. A helicopter lifts Loy out (a kinder fate than the one she suffered later on in "Avalanche"), but Van Dyke falls out a window helping her. Casey braves the ants to take the bulldozer in and rescue him. Of course, the helicopter trick is done away with because the downdraft from the rotors keeps blowing ants onto the hundreds of curious onlookers and the fire department has to waste water hosing the people off (why they didn't take that cue and just hose the resort or hose off the bulldozer for repeated trips is a mystery). Meanwhile, the ever-shrinking pool of survivors retreats higher into the resort as the ants follow. In the end, the few left are forced to sit in a room and let the ants crawl all over them while they breathe through paper tubes waiting for the Environmental Protection Agency to arrive. Guess which guy gets his just deserts in this scene.

The special effects were kind of cheesy. The masses of ants looked like black rice. The good part was that the movie borrowed from "Kingdom of the Spiders" which used thousands of live tarantulas to crawl all over people. Here, in the finale, the actors have to sit while the camera goes close-up to show real ants crawling all over their faces. I'm betting they listed this movie as their own personal version of "Fear Factor." Although Steve Franken did hook up with Peter Richmond again and got "stung" to death for "Terror Out of the Sky."

This movie actually had its moments. Bernie Casey was the only black guy in the film and he survives. Unfortunately, Rene Enriquez as the only Hispanic bit the dust pretty early. Overall, it was mindless TV fare, made for much cheaper than it would have cost to buy the rights to big movies on the silver screen. Another critic mentioned that the film was never shown again on broadcast TV and has been relegated to late night film bins on syndicated TV. That's true, but it's also true of most made-for-television movies.

"It Happened At Lakewood Manor" can still make your skin crawl. If you want to be scared by ants, try "Them" or "The Naked Jungle." But, if you just want to sit back on the couch with some popcorn, this movie will do. You may want to watch it with a significant other, though, so you can lightly brush against her skin and watch her jump. It works, although you'll probably stay on the couch long after she's gone up to bed.

Let's face it folks. B movies were to the 50s and 60s what straight-to-video is to us today. Low budgets, thin plots, just enough action and suspense to get people to look and spend enough money so the producers get a little profit. Plus, it's a way for producers, directors and actors (most of whom couldn't in the door at a major studio) to pay the rent and build up their resumes. For us, the viewer, it must have some appeal because we all seem to be watching the entire film so we can rip it to pieces.

That said, let's get to ripping this one.

First of all, keep in mind that the director is Ray Kellogg, who also did "The Giant Gila Monster" and "The Green Berets" (if that's not a diverse resume, nothing is). The producer was Ken Curtis (Festus from "Gunsmoke"). He had always wanted to make a movie and John Ford, for whom Curtis had made films like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "The Searchers" and "The Horse Soldiers," encouraged him to go for it. Unfortunately, Ken couldn't coach Ford into directing it.

Next up...the plot. It concerns seven people trapped on a remote island during a hurricane. In addition to the people, we have a few hundred shrews (although we never see more than a dozen or so) about the size of full-grown dogs. Science strikes again. The movie then proceeds to show how the seven trapped people try to survive a few hundred hungry shrews trying to get at them.

It seems a cadre of scientists trying to figure out a way to increase the human life span experiment on some shrews, which are normally the size of a man's thumb. Shrews have a speedy metabolism and can be ready to reproduce in less than a month. Also, they have to eat three times their own bodyweight every day or starve. Somehow, the scientists mess up a batch of shrews, which grow to enormous size. Clearly, Ken Curtis was trying to borrow from "Tarantula" and "Them" with the premise, but not bothering to explain how the shrews grew a thousand-fold really hurts the plot. Somehow, they also add in that the shrews now have poison in their saliva, thanks to ingesting poisoned food set out as a trap (figure that one out).

The shrews escape thanks to a boozed-up scientist played by Curtis. Being the producer, he certainly could have made himself the leading man, but he wisely chose to be the villain. If you saw him in "The Searchers" or "Gunsmoke," you'd realize he's not exactly leading man material. Now, the shrews have multiplied and have eaten up all the food on the island. Except, of course, for the people.

The movie starts off too slowly. A boat captain played by James Best (yes, Roscoe P. Coltrane from "The Dukes of Hazzard") and his engineer (Judge Henry Dupree, a minor jazz player of the time) arrive at the island to bring supplies. They meet a professor (Baruch Lumet, veteran Broadway actor and father of director Sidney Lumet), his nubile Swedish daughter (Ingrid Goude, Miss Sweden 1957) and a shotgun-toting Ken Curtis. When Best tells them he's not leaving because of the approaching hurricane, they all get nervous. We then have to watch them act scared and try not to reveal the shrews to Best. During this time, they manage to drink up half the alcohol in sight.

Only when the shrews finally show up and start picking off people does the action pick up. Curtis shows what kind of a coward he is and we almost wish he'd get fed to the shrews. I won't spoil the ending except to say it involves some ingenuity and a makeshift tank, perhaps the most unique lifesaver in the history of horror/science fiction.

The movie ultimately succeeds best with the actors. Curtis, of course, cut his teeth with the legendary John Ford. James Best is very good, although he admitted later to only doing the movie as a favor to his friend Curtis. Baruch Lumet shows off his stage presence. Gordon McLendon as Radford is a little annoying and stiff, but he plays his death scene pretty well. Alfredo DeSoto as the caretaker makes the most of his time, even goes down fighting. Of course, being the lone Hispanic in the film, he's as good as dead anyway. Ingrid Goude is one hot babe, but she can't act, but she's European and that's what counted to Kellogg (he used a French actress who couldn't act in "Giant Gila Monster").

The only part I hated was Dupree as Rook, the engineer. He's black and plays the part with that irritating, stereotypical Stepin Fetchit routine that persevered in Hollywood until Sidney Poitier and Woody Strode came along. Being the only black guy in a science fiction film, he has the word "corpse" stamped on his head before the opening credits roll. In Stepin Fetchit-style roles, as played by Fetchit and guys like Mantan Moreland in the Charlie Chan movies, he talked ignorantly, walked jolly and, when in trouble, froze in place, acted stupid and cried out "Oh, Lordy!" Well, Dupree gets chased by the shrews, climbs up a low tree and cries out "Oh, Captain!" repeatedly with a stupid look on his face.

Of course, the downer for the film is the special effects. I don't think even Universal Studious could have come up with something resembling a giant shrew. Here, with a thin budget, the shrews are nothing but dogs with some fake hair and clay masks with wooden teeth painted white. For close-ups, you can tell someone offscreen is using a wooden head on the end of a stick. Amazingly, Kellogg's gila monster looked more real.

Still, the visual effects are good. The film was shot in the middle of White Rock Lake in Dallas, but the camera does a good job of not showing the opposing shoreline and making it look like the island is really in the middle of nowhere. The island was rented and they could only film on the backside of it, but since most of the action takes place either at the compound everyone's trapped in or along the path to the water, it doesn't hurt.

But, like I said at the beginning. It's a grade B movie and you're just supposed to have fun with it, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Hey, it beats big budget bombs like "Glitter" and "The Mod Squad."

I say this because I live near Dallas. A Dallas attorney got together with producer/director Larry Buchanan to remake a bunch of Grade B flicks. Incredibly, each film was budgeted at $25-35,000! That Buchanan somehow managed to lure the likes of John Ford-veteran John Agar and veteran stage and screen star Les Tremayne to some of this movies shows how far one's acting career can really fall when alcohol takes over.

This movie was filmed in and around Dallas, especially near the Casa Linda shopping center (thankfully torn down).

The basic plot, lifted almost line-for-line from Roger Corman's schlock classic "It Conquered the World," involves a naive scientist (Anthony Houston) who plots with Zontar, a walking, bat-like, three-eyed lobster, to

bring "peace" to mankind. Zontar hitches a ride on an Earth satellite and takes up residence in a cave that looks suspiciously like a soundstage. He immediately turns off the world's power and turns several key citizens into zombies by using insect-like bats to implant electrodes in their necks. Ironically, the electrodes seem to give the people some personality.

John Agar plays the lead scientist trying to stop the takeover, but he's mostly bluster and wooden acting. By this time, Agar had taken so heavily to booze that his marriage to Shirley Temple and his career in Hollywood had long since evaporated. At times, you'll swear he was drinking on the set, judging by his performance.

The whole problem with the invasion is that it doesn't present a real foe. In "It Conquered the World" Corman mad it a sly satire of the Cold War and Red Scare. "Zontar" can't find anything to real latch onto. It doesn't even bother mentioning Vietnam.

The camera work in poor. Night looked like day because they had little money for portable lighting. The sound quality is poor and, in many scenes, the dialogue is hard to discern.

Anthony Houston shows some flair, but he mostly looks like someone trying to make the most of a bad role and parlay it into a real acting career. In "It Conquered the World," I thought Russ Bender's part as the general was so wooden, it was laughable, though I did feel pity because his character was bashed on the head with a monkey wrench, shoved headfirst out of a jeep and shot twice. In "Zontar," Neil Fletcher is even worse. While Agar had a problem with booze, Fletcher's general looks like he's on the sauce during the film. His face is red, he seems to be sweating a lot, his speech is slurred and slow at times. Then again, it could have been that his uniform was two sizes too small for his massive bulk.

I thought the movie would ultimately be good for a laugh, but I couldn't find time to laugh. I was too busy picking out all the blunders and mistakes. The entrance to Zontar's cave, for example, is actually the entrance to a storm drain. In "It Conquered the World" the soldiers were much better, led by Corman vets Jonathan Haze and Dick Miller, who played their parts with comedic effectiveness. In "Zontar," we get three dopey-looking National Guardsmen who mostly look lost. When the enter the cave and see Zontar, they fire a couple of shots. Then, the first soldier stands there so Zontar can walk up to him and kill him. His buddies take off and, apparently, never tell anybody. During this time, Buchanan starts using some shaky camera work (a la "Blair Witch Project"), possibly to make the viewers wake up.

When Anthony Houston's character finally comes to his senses and decides to help Agar, he pulls out this plutonium-powered laser crystal. It's supposedly the same crystal he used to send messages to Zontar on Venus. But, in the end *****Spoiler alert ***** he confesses he may have to use it at close range on Zontar. I guess shooting from a distance would have been the coward's way out, especially since he would have had to answer for all the death and property damage he caused.

The final indignity is Agar's endless, mind-numbing speech about the nature of mankind. Peter Graves made a similar speech in Corman's original and that was tough to take. But Agar, his speech sounding slightly slurred from alcohol, is enough to make you reach for the remote or "accidentally" take over the end of "Zontar."

Larry Buchanan also butchered a few other films including "She Creature" (as "Creature of Destruction") and "Invasion of the Saucer Men" (as "Eye Creatures" -- sweater- and sneaker-wearing eye creatures, at that).

Roger Corman is the King of the B's, but Larry Buchanan is King of the Z's.

Definitely a waste of talent and film. Many people had been waiting years to see Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) and The Falcon (Tom Conway) on screen together. Unfortunately, they got this piece of trash.

To make a long story short, hypnotist Morris fills the room of a local club every night with his predictions of death. To make it happen, he hypnotizes the beautiful Marla English (who does things with sweaters that would rival any of today's starlets) and regresses her to a past life. Of course, this produces the she-creature, a monstrosity with scales, a tail (or tale) and breasts that rampages around a lake resort, somehow getting the drop on unsuspecting people.

Tom Conway keeps Morris on because he likes seeing his resort packed (if you think this is ghoulish, think of all the people who paid to see Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson just hoping to see Iron Mike bite of a body part).

The only interesting part of this schlock is Paul Blaisdell's creature. It does look authentic, but the suit was way too bulky and the actor inside could only walk at a snail's pace. So, the fact that the creature took people by surprise was all the more unbelievable. The best scene was when the creature somehow sneaks inside a bungalow, surprises a guest reading a book and forcefully folds the bed up into the wall closet. Unfortunately, it wasn't a fold up bed and there was no wall closet, at least beforehand.

Chester Morris hams it up badly. Tom Conway is so wooden you will almost cheer when he unwittingly becomes part of a prediction. Marla English is great, but that's only because she mostly lies flat on her back in a trance or just shows off tight sweaters and skirts. Leading man Lance Fuller is so stiff, he could have been used as a table. He was way better as the brooding alien Brak in the classic "This Island Earth."

The only redeeming value is that somebody remade this in the late 60's and the remake was so bad it makes the original look decent.

And that's saying something. Fortunately, unlike the original, the sequel uses a cast of unknowns (save for Colin Fox), so a lot of people weren't lured to it by big name stars.

The plot deals with a laboratory experiment gone horrible wrong. Lab rats grow to monstrous size and terrorize the countryside. This concept was handled much better and with a much smaller budget in the 1955 classic "Tarantula." Actually, the rats take a trip over to the local college campus. Apparently, the producers figured showing gorgeous college co-eds getting chomped would make viewers ignore the horrible acting, poor special effects and sorry dialogue, not to mention the fact that the same two songs get used over and over again for the background music.

There's a subplot involving a scientist who exposes his kid to the experimental substance and the kid, who's a real brat, grows into an even bigger brat. You'll honestly wish the cops would just shoot the kid. The concept appeared in H.G. Wells' "Food of the Gods" story, but it was, by far, the weakest part of the book, so it shouldn't have been touched upon for this movie.

I won't spoil the ending (should you even care to watch the movie in the first place), but I will mention rats intermingling with college kids packed in to see a swimming meet (!), as well as a scene in a subway that might have been meant for another sequel. Since it took 13 years for "Food of the Gods II" to make it to production, that means (gulp!!) part III should be on the shelves at Blockbuster in 2002.

First of all, let me say I like Bert I. Gordon. I liked his stuff from the 1950's ("Amazing Colossal Man," "Earth vs. The Spider," "George and the Dragon", even the awful "Beginning of the End"). So, it wasn't like I was expecting a masterpiece. But, this film wasn't even up to his usual standards. It was evident (even more so later when he claimed credit for "Food of the Gods") that his career was in a decline, sort of like when Rod Serling and John Ford went into similar slides. In order to work, BIG had to be content with directing and not calling the shots. The result was dreck like this.

Actually, let me say that the acting is good. Joan Collins is pretty good as a sleazy real estate agent. Her snappy one-liners helped make her famous later on with "Dynasty." Robert Pine is serviceable before his "CHiPS" days. Veterans Robert Lansing, Albert Salmi and Irene Tedrow are decent. The rest of the cast (soap opera stars John David Carson, Pamela Shoop, Jack Palance's daughter Brooke) do their best with less than average material.

The Florida locations are great. In fact, the first half of the film would have earned the typical 2-star average rating from TV Guide, despite the tired cliches and poor special effects. Ultimately, it's the second half of the film that does BIG in.

The plot revolves around nuclear waste (since most eco-horror films of the 70's evolved around either nuclear or industrial wrong-doing). Barrels get dumped into ocean, but one makes it ashore on an island in the Florida Keys. The waste mutates ants into giants almost overnight. Interestingly, the ants in "Them!" took nine years and countless generations to mutate from repeated A-bomb blasts.

Anyway, Collins and a group of guests come to the island to check out her real estate investments. Of course, we know it's just a sham, but since the ants ate all Collins' co-conspirators, the guests will never know. Of course, no one notices that all the workers have bitten the dust. The usual cliches ensue -- a strange rustling in the bushes causes a guest to venture into the woods to check it out; an old couple leave the safety of the group and run into a shack deep in the swamp, then run back outside in time to be surrounded by ants. Ants walk down the boat ramp to attack the boat, but the captain finds reason to stall so he can't start the motor and just sail out of danger (sort of the like the car that wouldn't start in "Tarantula" even though it had just been driven).

The poor special effects are laughable. In "Beginning of the End," Gordon had real grasshoppers crawling on cardboard with buildings painted on them. At least, the grasshoppers stayed on the buildings. In "Empire of the Ants" he had ants filmed inside an ant farm, then superimposed on the screen so the ants are mostly crawling on air!

Despite all this, the movie was somewhat watchable, especially since nothing else was on late night. But, then the second half started and the one ounce of credibility simply vanished.

I know producers take liberties when bringing novels and short stories to the screen, but this was ridiculous. The movie was based on H.G. Wells' classic short story, but I don't remember it ever having mentioned ants that hypnotized people. This reputedly wasn't even Gordon's idea, but he needed the money, apparently.

The survivors of the real estate group finally get out of the jungle and make it to this big town that has a giant sugar refinery. Robert Lansing and John David Carson find the sheriff, played by Albert Salmi. He listens to their plight, then pulls his gun on them. He leads the group to one of the refinery and we see the townspeople lined up by a giant box that looks like the ones security guards use at factories. Each person steps inside and gets sprayed by the pheremones of the queen ant so they can be used like aphids as slave labor.

No one bothers to explain how the ants got control of the town. It's connected to the mainland, yet apparently no one gets to a phone. No outsiders ever come calling. Anyway, ****SPOILER ALERT***** Lansing pulls out a flare and fights the queen ant. For some reason, this breaks the queen's hold on the people and they run screaming. The queen ant attacks Joan Collins and douses her, apparently killing her, though I still can't figure out how. In an even stranger scene, when Salmi is released from his trance, he shoots the queen, then calmly strolls away while Collins is screaming for help. Well, Collins is sort of the bad girl here, so she has to get her comeuppance somehow.

"Empire of the Ants" is certainly not Bert I. Gordon's worst film (no, "Food of the Gods" takes that honor). But, it had some much potential. It's not even laughably bad. It's so stupid, you can't laugh. For those familiar with Gordon, they'll see how bad life was for him at the end.

You know, something bad happened to Bert I. Gordon. In the 1950s and 60s, he made films that were expected to be high camp ("Amazing Colossal Man," "Beginning of the End," "Attack of the Puppet People," "Earth vs. The Spider," "Village of the Giants" which inspired Irwin Allen's "Land of the Giants"). In the 70s, however, Gordon seemed to try to make his films serious. As with this film and, later, "Empire of the Ants," he found audiences had changed. Eco-horror with some message against nuclear power or industrial waste was the in-thing. Big studios didn't accept his old stuff anymore. So, he changed the tone of his movies and offered it anyone who would fund him. You can see the results.

The movie is based loosely on H.G. Wells' classic "Food of the Gods." Gordon later butchered Wells again with "Empire of the Ants." It revolves around a bunch of people who travel to the countryside and encounter giant, mutated animals and insects. The cast, like "Empire of the Ants" and other 70s eco-horror flicks, is filled with people who should have known better:

Marjoe Gortner (the psycho bag boy from "Earthquake") Pamela Franklin ("The Nanny," "The Legend of Hell House") Ralph Meeker ("Paths of Glory," "The Dirty Dozen") Jon Cypher (Chief Daniels from "Hill Street Blues") Belinda Balaski ("Piranha," "The Howling") Ida Lupino ("The Sea Wolf," "High Sierra," "Junior Bonner")

I was upset that Ida Lupino did that crapstravaganza. That is, until I saw John Huston in "Tentacles," Henry Fonda and Michael Caine in "The Swarm" and "Bradford Dillman in "Bug." Sometimes our favorite, beloved actors and actresses had to take schlock like this to either put food on the table or stay active in Hollywood.

Anyway, the animals are mutating because they're getting into Lupino's "ambrosia," a chemical mix she's supposedly using to make her fowl grow bigger. In H.G. Wells' story, the ambrosia, which means "food of the gods," makes everything bigger, including newborn children of pregnant women. The movie seemed about to touch on that, but didn't (although it was later shown in the very, very, very much unneeded 1989 sequel).

The acting is over the top. Franklin holds her own and Lupino seems to be having fun just being on the silver screen again after a long layoff. But, Gortner, a former brimstone evangelist, is unbelievable.

Ultimately, the undoing is caused by very poor special effects. The giant chicken attack will leave you rolling. Close ups of the head are actually done with a stunt actor in a chicken head trying to peck at people. The close-ups of the heads of the giant rats make them look like the stuffed toys they are. The sight of Ida Lupino beating at the giant plastic worm chewing on her arm will either make you laugh or have you crying as you fondly remember when she did much better films.

What makes this all worse is that Bert I. Gordon did a much better job with giantism in "Village of the Giants" in 1965. Could his talents have slipped this much in 11 years? Personally, I think he should have slipped a little camp into the film to take the edge off. When people think you're giving them crap and trying to pass it off as serious, the results are almost always less than pleasant.

"Food of the Gods" is decidedly unpleasant.

There are two travesties to talk about before we get to the travesty that is this film. First, a look at the credits will turn up two family names (Rebane and Brodie), which tells you how low the budget was. Bill Rebane produced and directed the film. Jutta Rebane did set decoration. Wife Barbara was the 2nd assistant director and unit manager. Kevin Brodie, son of Steve Brodie, was 1st assistant director. Sue Brodie was the set's hair stylist and Robin Brodie supervised wardrobe (and what a bad job she did and Sue did).

Secondly, the B-movie veterans that were absolutely wasted in this film was more of a tragedy. A quick look will show:

Steve Brodie ("Beast From 20,000 Fathoms"; "The Caine Mutiny") Barbara Hale (Della Street on "Perry Mason"; "Lorna Doone") Alan Hale Jr. (The Skipper) Leslie Parrish ("Sex & The Single Girl"; "Manchurian Candidate") Robert Easton ("Centennial"; "Pete's Dragon"; voice of "Stingray") Kevin Brodie ("Night of the Grizzly"; "Dog of Flanders") Christiane Schmidtmer ("Boeing, Boeing"; "Ship of Fools") Bill Williams (TV's Kit Carson; also, Barbara Hale's husband)

Actually, many of this stars once did A-list work, so it shows you how far they'd fallen when this flick came around. Not everyone was as lucky as Barbara Hale, who was rescued from grade Z fare like this when the Perry Mason movies came out in the 80s and 90s.

Now for the real travesty. The plot involves a meteor that crashes to earth in a very redneck part of Wisconsin (looking more like somewhere in Arkansas). A farmer played by Robert Easton, who wrote this claptrap, and his drunken wife (played by Leslie Parrish) investigate. They discover small rocks. When the rocks break open, the couple find diamonds. The rocks also contain spiders, although these two idiots somehow manage to always be looking in a different direction when the spiders crawl out. Soon, there are spiders crawling everywhere, stringing cobwebs all over the place. Of course, Easton blames the cobweb extravaganza on his alcoholic wife's lack of house cleaning (apparently not noticing that the spiders are tarantulas, which are not common to Wisconsin). There's even a gross out scene in which a spider gets blended with a milkshake and Parrish accidentally drinks it. Uggh!!

Meanwhile, a NASA expert (Steve Brodie) travels to the area to consult with a local scientist (Barbara Hale) about strange energy patterns that are fouling up NASA's satellites. The energy centers on Easton's farm, but danged if Hale, an astronomer, can find it. She must have been filing legal briefs for Perry Mason when the meteor passed close enough to her observatory to turn night into day.

Add to this a totally redneck sheriff (Alan Hale Jr.) Hale's first line is (I kid you not) "Hey, little buddy", only this time it's aimed at Kevin Brodie.

The acting is atrocious and even Brodie, Hale and Hale Jr. can't make their lines work. The credits listed two men responsible for special effects. They both should have been banned from the business. Roger Corman did more with less in the special effects department than these two. For example of this movie's less than zero effects, Leslie Parrish, in a drunken stupor, opens up a dresser drawer and a giant spider that looks like a stuffed animal leaps out at her. Don't ask how the spider got in the drawer and closed it in the first place. Anyway, Parrish, running around in panties and a half-open shirt runs out to the barn for safety. Then she looks up and an even bigger stuffed spider leaps onto her. She falls and it is on top of her. But, you can see the button eyes and even see the wires used to dangle it from the ceiling.

A cousin comes calling, looking for his own share of the diamonds and he runs into another giant spider hanging over the road on a giant web. In a panic, he crashes his car into a gas station. Then, inexplicably, he spends a lot of time trying to get every shard of glass out of a nearby window before he tries to climb out. Naturally, he gets barbecued in the oncoming explosion. By the way, the sheriff later drives out to Easton's place on the same road and there's not a trace of webbing or even of the spider, which was bleeding like a stuck pig.

Spoiler alert...stop reading if you're certifiable enough to want to see this movie. I should have been certified after spending $10 to buy it online.

Easton, not missing his wife one iota (he's seeing Christiane Schmidtmer on the side, but, really, she has one of those parts where, if she were to disappear in the middle of a scene, she wouldn't be missed by the audience). Easton goes out for more diamonds. As he sits to rest, a monster spider pulls itself out of the ground, sneaks up on him (!) and eats him. The spider then attacks the house, but not before we get a shot of Easton's nubile stepdaughter in just her panties. Nothing like a little T&A to thrill the drive-in audiences this movies was made for.

Shortly afterwards, Barbara Hale and Brodie come calling to check on the meteor. The spider comes over the hill at them, but curiously stops. We do get to see Brodie and Hale roll down the hill.

The giant spider here is actually a robotic model fitted over a Volkswagen Bug. You actually see the wheels when it comes to town to chase kids and adults at a baseball game, and, later, rolls down a street after fleeing people. Reportedly, the townspeople were excited to be used in the film, but later, asked for the town name to be changed in the film to avoid the embarrassment. For some reason, Alan Hale never leaves his office during the spider's rampage. We see him getting reports of the spider, even loading a shotgun, but he keeps getting phone calls that force him to park his big butt back behind his desk.

A local businessman played by Bill Williams (bet his wished for his days as Kit Carson again) organizes a posse to go after the spider. We see guys shooting at the spider as it sits at a stop light. Hale Jr. rams it with his car and gets it to follow him. He never takes a single shot at the thing. Behind him, we see a street full of dead people, even though the spider didn't touch any of them. They probably died from embarrassment.

I don't want to give away the ending...oh, heck, might as well. Brodie calls for NASA to drop some kind of energy weapon into the meteorite crater to close it because they think it's a black hole to a dimension full of spiders. Seriously.

When the giant spider gets too close, Brodie asks a deputy to stall it. The deputy shoots at it, then, after running out of bullets, attacks it with his gun belt (since the spider was black, I wonder if that qualified as police brutality). When the belt fails to work, the deputy practically jumps into the spider's mouth. Really. The script called for him to get eaten, but the stuntmen inside had trouble pulling him through the mouth opening, so he had to keep jumping up into the opening until they finally pulled him completely in!

The spider finally gets to the hole and they drop the energy bomb on it. The energy causes an implosion, which requires that the scene be run backwards. For some unknown reason, the spider melts into something like ice cream at first, then into something much grosser.

Oh, before the bomb is dropped, Brodie tells about a dozen people to take cover. Five minutes earlier, it was only himself and Hale at the scene. Then, a dozen people mysteriously appear (though no extra cars show up). It's just another example of bad direction.

The whole movie is filled with stupid, inane scenes like that. When Barbara Hale goes back to her jeep to retrieve a flare gun from a case, she finds spiders inside. She lets out the funniest terror scream ever heard, then tells Brodie that the spiders came from the rocks. Since they're about to kill all the spiders with the energy bomb, this little fact is just a little bit late.

Another scene has a motorcyclist crashing his bike when the meteor hits the ground. Then, the guy gets up and runs headlong into the woods instead of getting back on his bike, disappears, then screams like the spiders got him. Later, Barbara Hale finds his skeleton (still fully clothed!).

If you like bad acting, bad dialogue, bad directing and just plain bad everything, rent or buy "Giant Spider Invasion." But, I warn you, you can only laugh so many times before you start crying about the money you'll have wasted.

Personally, I like Mariah Carey. She's a great singer. I just think she doesn't take advice well. She ignored her mom's advice and dated and married Tommy Motola, although he's 25 years her senior. She then wanted out of the marriage for finally seeing what everyone else saw long ago. She then was supposed to have matured, as evidenced by the videos for "Honey" and "Butterfly." But, although she can still sing, she keeps trying to be younger than she is (her clothing seems to get skimpier) and she continues to sing schmaltzy corn like "Boyfriend" which she had to sell at bargain basement prices ($.79!) just to barely make gold. But, she can still sing as "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" from this movie will attest.

Now, onto the film. Mariah bashers aside, this movie suffers from Mariah's own actions. As an actress, she's okay, probably on par with Madonna. But, like Madonna, she seems to think she's a better actress than she really is, hence, she got upset when film goers didn't agree with her.

Another problem is the plot. The story is almost autobiographical, but Mariah plays it like she's never experienced it before. It's like she's following cue cards in almost every scene. Her scenes where she sings are great, but even Madonna sang great in "Dick Tracy." The script moves too quickly, taking Billie (her character) from obscurity to stardom so quickly, no one has time to even check for plausibility. Mariah's own meteoric rise wasn't this fast.

Her romance with Max is cheesy. He hears her record, then falls for her music and buys out her contract with another producer (for $100,000). He then slowly falls for her. Come on. Even Tommy Mottola was laughing at that premise.

Most glaring of all is that Mariah used her star clout to push for a lot of things she shouldn't have. She wanted all the credit (and got all the subsequent work) on the soundtrack. She wanted in on the movie's editing sessions. Other times, she let people take her for granted, even when she had questions and reservations about scenes. She picked the songs she wanted released to the radio. All of this led to that famous mental breakdown in 2001.

When the movie came out, it naturally garnered bad reviews, mostly because Mariah (and the production company) had been hyping it as the next best thing to sliced bread instead. It couldn't live up to its own lofty goals. The songs picked for radio release were okay, but nothing to make people rush out to buy the album or see the movie. Overall, it had bad marketing. People I know who actually saw it think it might have some decent potential in the video market.

Ironically, pop star Britney Spears had more success with her film debut ("Crossroads") because she did the opposite of Mariah. She made herself part of an ensemble cast, so she wouldn't shoulder the burden. She didn't oversell the movie. She targeted an audience and played to their expectations. She marketed the movie well and didn't pass it off as a blockbuster. As a result, it did decent business at the box office and made a good profit.

As for "Glitter," it was like Mariah Carey tried to force it down our throats ("It's about me, so you should like it as much as you like my music"). Unfortunately, it's a clear case of too much promise, too little delivery.

On a good note, Mariah's young and, unlike Madonna, she can still learn from her mistakes.