Reviews

(The following is a review of the "Through the Looking Glass" portion) This is a senseless travesty that turns a classic children's book into a cheesy semi-horror picture. Disguised as star-studded family entertainment, this garbage is guaranteed to induce nightmares in all but the most desensitized children. Especially disturbing is the depiction of the Jabberwocky. My tough younger sister who is not normally rattled by monster movies was reduced to tears at the unnecessarily freaky depiction of this creature. The writers seem to have rejected the fact that in the book, the Jabberwocky is a cryptic metaphor for a difficult logic problem. In the film, it becomes a catalyst for sleepless nights for youngsters. Irwin Allen should have stuck to his true calling:disaster epics and left family entertainment to those more qualified to create it.

This is a satisfying little B gem from Associated Artists with a solid performance from Darro as a streetsmart, yet self-sacrificing adolescent willing to endure a tough reform school for the sake of protecting his foster family's good name. It never fails to amaze me how these low budget 1930s B-directors were able to pack so much plot into a one-hour movie and Boys' Reformatory is a prime example of what seems like a truly daunting task. Maybe it was because I watched this late at night but a certain plot twist towards the end really floored me. However, those accustomed to the grittier,more realistic exposes of the thirties juvenile justice system like Crime School that Warners was putting out about this time may be disappointed that this movie focuses more on the issues that caused the kids to be sent to reform school as opposed to the conditions inside the institution. Still if you are looking for one of the more entertaining, action-packed efforts of one of the great, but nearly forgotten young B actors, this movie is well worth your while. P.S. If you own a video projector, I don't recommend watching the DVD on the big screen as Alpha used a somewhat shaky 16mm for the source print. Nostalgia Family Video has this on VHS but I have no idea of the quality on that one.

Despite the nearly overwhelming subplot and a flubbed line that was not reshot,I genuinely enjoyed this low-budget stingfest. The CGI bees were a hell of a lot better than those in that made-for-cable travesty Deadly Swarm and the attacks were effectively staged. This coupled with the exuberantly over-the-top characterizations will guarantee this film cult status in about 20 years.

When I saw the ad for this, I naturally assumed this remake of the 1939 classic would be a sentimental period piece with a soundtrack replete with Elgar and choirboys. Instead I experienced one of the harshest exposes of hazing in the British public school system since If. Nothing is left to the imagination, making this movie unsuitable for anyone under 13. However, unlike the exploitative Oliver Twist miniseries that Masterpiece Theater did a few years ago, the writers did not go overboard trying to create a realistic atmosphere. This allowed a fine cast to turn in some superb performances without being overwhelmed by the plot and that's what makes this the BBC's best effort since the 1983 version of "Jane Eyre".

The director of this limp excuse for a monster movie Arnold Laven had never done sci-fi before helming this stinker and it shows. Roger Corman's trash bag critter from Creature from the Haunted Sea could annihiliate these lethargic caterpillar hand puppets in seconds. And yet the audience is supposed to believe that these benign beasties are capable of ripping someone's face off? Maybe one of these days some "lost" footage will turn up showing the caterpillars had a little help from Godzilla. Until then, this stands as THE fifties monster movie least likely to hold up today!

While watching this well-executed superior entry in the long-running Amityville series, it is difficult to imagine that this is the prequel to one of the campiest adaptations of a classic modern horror novel ever.The picture's intelligent use of motifs makes this a great choice for those who watch horror for other reasons than to simply get scared.The fog swirling around the house helps to accentuate the family's hazy perception of the dark enigma that is their oldest son's demon-plagued mind.The recurring distorted schoolyard chant(a carry-over from the original)in the score emphasizes the characters' loss of innocence and virginity. The special effects are fantastic especially in the scene in which the priest is alone in the house with the killer. Only drawback-an unnecessary incest sequence that foreshadows the increasingly perverse nature of post 1989 Amityville films-especially Amityville 1992. This film has been villified for its mediocre acting-but I have never gone into a horror picture expecting Oscar-quality performances. Basically if you're looking for 100 minutes of premium-grade retro chills, you've come to the right place!

Without a doubt, this low-budget haunted house thriller pales in comparison to genre classics such as Poltergeist due to horrendous acting and a pervading student film feel. However, if you enjoyed the Amityville Horror movie and book (especially the book) you might want to give Beyond Darkness a try. Many of the most terrifying aspects of the Amityville book are an integral part of this movie including hooded entities lunging at the cast out of nowhere, doorways to hell, and some unforgettable scenes of inanimate objects like an antique radio becoming possessed by the dark forces in the house. Yes it's true that the portrayal of the family is perhaps too clean cut (I know for a fact that pastors' kids can sometimes be brattier than other people's!) and that the actress playing the executed serial killer is more than a little wan. However, if you don't expect Oscar winning performances in horror films, then you will find Beyond Darkness a creepy treat to watch alone on a stormy night. And before inserting the tape, you might want to turn off the radio first.

My main beef with this movie is that there is no one to sympathize with to the extent that you want them to own the estate at the end. Blanche is manipulative and ruthless, not to mention butt ugly. Her boyfriend Phillip cares for his horse more than other people and harbors twisted delusions that he is entitled to the property he works on, despite the insistence to the contrary by his harried lawyer. The Furies are a bunch of arrogant bigots and I don't really feel sorry for them when Phil dresses up as a gypsy and offs Simon and Lawrence. When I found out who finally got the house, I wished the gypsies had torched the place. My other problem with this film is that it's in color. Postwar British filmmakers were doing such fantastic things with black-and-white photography in terms of elevating the importance of atmosphere and shadow in cinema,especially in moody Victorian pieces. Unfortunately the talents of Guy Green who worked with David Lean on the classic versions of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist are obscured in a garish Technicolor haze. So if you want a more satisfying example of British noir seek out any of the Dickens adaptations made between 1946 and 1954 or the screen versions of Terence Ratigan's The Guinea Pig and The Browning Version. Leave this ill-begotten mess in the family therapist's office.

It is possible that if this picture had been shot in black-and-white,the good folks at Cinemagic could have saved precious finances that could have gone into improving the special effects and hiring some decent actors. However for those of us who enjoy laughing our butts off at movies that display such a shameless degree of ineptitude,maybe it's "better" this way. Half the humor comes from imagining what Godzilla would do to this scaly,acid-puking hand puppet who due to the worst stop-motion photography ever seems to be destroying Copenhagen while combatting a prehistoric case of osteoarthritis.Of course the critter probably is diseased because he was spawned from what the cast refers to as a tail but looks more like a giant turd. The rest of the guffaws come from the over-the-top characters. There's electric eel-loving Peterson who comes off like a Danish Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies. There's General Grayson who never passes up a chance to remind us that the days of dialogue censorship were behind us by 1962 as he flaunts his expertise in the usage of the word "damn". There's Professor Martens who tries so hard to keep a straight face he sounds like he's reading from cue cards. In other words,you are not a true connoiseur of truly awful cinema until you have sampled this limburger Danish.

This is by far one of the worst sci-fi flicks of all time. The special effects were so glaringly artificial I might as well have been playing a computer game instead of watching a movie. The writing and acting are gratingly amateurish, in fact, I have seen student films that are more professionally executed. Reptilian and his alien cohorts look like wasted refugees from "Power Rangers". If this pops up on the Sci-Fi Channel again avoid at all costs.

There have been too many adaptations of Great Expectations and other Dickens classics that have failed to miss the fact that the eminent Victorian author's novels were not intended as sentimental, romantic fairytales but as scathing criticisms of the less-than-progressive aspects of life in 19th century Britain,namely the exploitation of the impoverished masses by the hypocritical idle rich. This 1934 travesty is about as accurate a realization of Dickens' original vision as Free Willy is a realization of Melville's vision for Moby-Dick. The scenes involving young Pip are played out like an Our Gang comedy complete with cloying music and the rest of it is filled with wooden acting,overly high key lighting, and an abundance of peculiarly well-fed poor people- this last aspect a phenomenon that plagued other mis-begotten Dickens farces of the '30s such as Monogram's Oliver Twist and the MGM A Christmas Carol. Every time this shows up on cable(a rarity at least in Madison,thank God) or is borrowed from a library,Dickens must do a backflip in his grave. All said, if you want to see DICKENS' Great Expectations stick with the Lean version or the respectable 1989 Disney version.Leave this one to rot in Miss Havisham's wedding cake.

This 1991 chiller is everything The Amityville Horror should have been and wasn't. While the bombastic performances and hackneyed,exploitative script in the latter film have garnered numerous parodies , The Haunted lets you know early on that this is no campfire story. The "disclaimer" at the beginning states that "though events of the supernatural have been subject to controversy, the events depicted were documented as true by a variety of sources." In the ensuing 90 minutes, this point is forcefully brought home due to a variety of reasons that broke exciting new ground in the stagnating haunted house genre. First and foremost,one is more apt to empathize with the characters than in your average horror film because they are down to earth, religious,middle-class people. This aspect of the film adds to its chill factor because one realizes that such horrible events could happen to anyone. Secondly, the film is well-paced and the supernatural sequences are shot with a level of intensity normally reserved for Sam Raimi's best efforts. The rape scene alone is enough to keep all but the most die-hard skeptics awake for nights on end. Thirdly, this film is devoid of the excessive excursions into pornography that too many early 90s horror flicks were wallowing in. So if you're looking for that rare synthesis between the 24-jumps-per second style of the Evil Dead flicks and the just-the-facts-ma'am attitude of Haunted History, this is your movie.

For the most part this is a fairly weak Monogram (read budget with a capital B) adaptation of the Bronte classic. Colin Clive is woefully miscast as Edward Rochester, a character so complex and filled with such passionate brooding that it takes the likes of an Orson Welles or a George C.Scott to really pull it off. Instead Clive plays the master of Thornfield like he is just some normal single dad on the make who just happens to have his unbalanced first wife locked up in the attic.Maybe director Cabanne thought that this interpretation would make the character seem more suspicious to the audiences of 1934. Unfortunately this reviewer writing in 2002 finds Clive's Rochester about as suspicious as a stained glass window. In a Lutheran church.Virginia Bruce is adequate as the title character but unfortunately her best lines are undermined by unnecessary stock music pulled from Monogram's Oliver Twist (released the previous year). However horror fans especially those who feel at home with the jump-out-of-your-skin style of Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame should see this film for the well-timed SHREIKS emanating from that attic. Claire DuBrey's banshee routine is enough to make your heart jump out of your mouth and do the macarena on top of the TV. So see this Eyre for the Screamer not for Ward Cleaver.

This is by far the tackiest Edgar Rice Burrough's adaptation I have ever seen and one of the worst movies ever made. The "dinosaurs" bear no resemblance to anything that could have ever existed above or below ground and instead look like something an insane Japanese producer chucked into the dumpster. The sound effects the guards make are shrill and basically sound like a nauseous dial-up modem.The garish,hallucinogenic colors are out of place in what is supposed to be a Victorian fantasy, not a bad episode of Star Trek. Peter Cushing, who excelled as a vampire at Hammer Studios is wasted in this tepid effort and clearly looks dissatisfied with his wan co-star,Doug McClure who made a career of starring in trashy adaptations of classic sci-fi novels. If you're looking for watchable AIP sci-fi from the same year see Food of the Gods instead and pitch this rotten Core into the disposal.

Like the three books George carried with him on his final journey into the future, this 1960 masterpiece would be one of the top three movies that I would take with me if time travel were a possibility.It is a fantastic cinematic treasure that has fascinated me since I was a child with its fast-moving meditation on the futility of war as a means of preserving capitalism as the paramount means of survival for modern society.The special effects, especially the wizardry engaged in the time warp sequences, are the best I've ever seen in a 42-year-old movie. The way Pal stages that eruption scene almost makes you want to cover your own head in the same manner that moviegoers of H.G.Wells day would have shielded themselves from the tidal waves of nickeloedeon thrills when that lava threatens to roast George alive.I recently purchased this gem in 16mm on e-bay and am DYING to project it on the big screen(the garage door)!!

Attention horror filmmakers, industry moguls, and anyone who gets paid to scare the hell out of people: In 1976, Jay Anson penned one of the most frightening and fascinating accounts of demonic persecution ever written. Despite the fact that the whole thing had been cooked up by a self-employed Long Island surveyor desperately short on monetary resources, the book version of The Amityville Horror still has the power to chill due to the documentary-style approach that makes its hooded demons and red-eyed ghost pigs seem frighteningly plausible. Unfortunately, the 1979 movie version sodomizes the whole point of the book and instead focuses mostly on the deterioration of George Lutz's mental state and Father Delaney's health. One insider at the time claimed that the 117-minute running time was too short to show all the events in the house. Well, good God, it doesn't take a Steven Spielberg to figure out that 117 minutes is more than enough time if they just took out the puking nun, 95% of Rod Steiger's scenes of him screaming profanity at his monsignor and being blinded by a falling piece of church statuary, as well as that cliched sequence with Brolin climbing up the stairs with an axe and coming close to using it on his wife. If they had axed those scenes there would have been time to stage that spooky dream sequence from the book in which the hooded demon has the face of George with his face torn in two, as well as the scene in which the same entity burns its image into the fireplace, in addition to the levitations. Not to mention the final night scene which was one of the most unnerving sections of the book and alone could have made this movie kick some major butt. Instead because of all the unnecessary decorations die-hard fans of the Anson book are left with two corny fly scenes, some glowing eyes,and a brief shot of a ghost pig in the window. And I know darn well that something pretty creepy was excised from that scene where the family is fleeing down the oozing staircase. Kidder throws open the door to the second flight of stairs and her and the kids scream but the viewer sees nothing. They get downstairs by the door and from Kidder pointing frantically to the stairs it's pretty obvious there's something nasty up there. I'll bet in some landfill in Hollywood there is a few feet of film of a pig ghost lifting Amy off her feet and trying to kill her or something. But does the viewer get to see anything like this? Hell no, because this film harkens back to the stone age of horror films when the Hays Office wouldn't let Frankenstein chuck the little girl into the lake in its obvious insistence that anyone who has read the book and not gone mad from the nightmares should still be coddled to like some halfwit who doesn't know the vomit coming out of Regan's mouth from babys***! But we are not living in such puritanical times anymore. This is the age in which Amityville can be redone in a way that will scare the pants off of even the most hard-core skeptics So this is an appeal to all horror filmmakers, especially the indies looking for a quick buck. If you want to make a NUMBINGLY SPOOKY movie that will gross in the millions and put your name right up there with John Carpenter and James Whale: REMAKE THE AMITYVILLE HORROR AND MAKE IT A MORE FAITHFUL ADAPTATION OF ONE OF THE SCARIEST BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY!!!!!!!

P.S. One of these fine days, I have a mind to get permission from the Anson estate to write a screenplay based on the book and put that on the market.

This enduring classic is one of those films you can start at 12 midnight and watch all the way through without dozing off for a second. There are no dazzling special effects, no edge-of-your seat car chases or mid-air rescues.However,its engaging procession of honest scenes depicting the often overwhelming, though eventually rewarding, trials of a man of God during the first half of the twentieth century rival the greatest of superficial,high-tech thrills today's blockbusters have to offer. From the early scenes of Mrs.Spence trying valiantly to adjust to the squalor of her parsonages to Dr.Spence's creative solution to the adult choir's intolerable dissonance this film is a radiant beacon in a bleak world bereft with terrorism, wars, and rumors of wars due to its straightforward, heartfelt depiction of faith under fire. Though obviously filled with references to Methodist doctrine the film does not alienate members of other denominations and even nonbelievers can see this as an excellent example of how old-fashioned values triumph over hypocrisy and ignorance in turbulent times. Unfortunately, this movie is unbelievably rare and only pops up on TCM once in a blue moon. I

Only the most ardent fans of the man best known to the nostalgia-minded as the title character in the radio/TV sitcom THE LIFE OF RILEY have any business viewing this weak Eugene O'Neill adaptation. The impact of its contemplative dialogue is drastically lessened by static characters and a frustratingly implausible ending. For example, are we to believe that Bendix can get away with breaking into Susan Hayward's apartment tote her around in his arms while leering perversely at her and dump her on the sofa with the close-up clearly showing she will doubtlessly be traumatized for life by this experience and then have the film end with him yucking it up with his fellow coal stokers? This damaging flaw could have easily been replaced by a complete plot rearrangement in which Bendix softens Hayward's callous snobbishness through a comically developed friendship/romance with her. Instead all we get are 90 minutes of Bendix grunting and leering in one of the most unsatisfying and disturbingly sexist pictures to come out of the Second World War.

Overall,this is an inferior adaptation of the Bronte classic in comparison to the 1944 Orson Welles version. The acting by the supporting cast,especially Jack Hawkins as Mr.Brocklehurst, is campy to the point of near-parody. The cinematography is entirely too bright for this type of film,the gaudy oranges and reds made even tackier by the copious amounts of speckles and scratches that give the print a sometimes aggravating institutional-film quality.Thornfield Hall is supposed to be hiding a very malevolent aspect of Rochester's past and the wise filmmaker needs to mask the castle in gloom and shadow with only a few candles here and there so the cast doesn't trip over themselves. Instead Paul Beeson turns the place into a showplace for expensive furnishings and draperies with enough chandeliers to turn the place into an elitist sports arena. Thank God for George C.Scott! Fans of his Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol" will be fascinated with his deep insight into the Rochester character and the unpretentious earthiness he brings to a role that due to its many blustering and eloquent speeches is often misinterpreted by many of the best actors. His best scene by far is not with Eyre but his candid conversation with his mad first wife which gives us a close-up look at a side of the character not usually explored in film versions of this story. So while the Orson Welles version undoubtedly stands as the definitve interpretation, this version despite its flaws is very much worth your time because of Scott's brilliant performance