Reviews

...but maybe my expectations were too high.

It begins wonderfully with a great sense of visual style and the promise of an interesting structure but the problem is that Director/Host George Miller (Mad Max, Babe: Pig in the City) just isn't a great on-camera presence and his overview begins to d..r..a..g...

I saw this on a tape paired with a Sam Neill-directed doc about New Zealand film and to my great surprise I thought Neill's film was better, so maybe this suffers in comparison.

Still, this is a good film on the subject, just not the great one I was hoping for.

George Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is the only one of these shorts that holds up twenty years later. I think it comes pretty close to being a perfectly constructed piece of filmmaking: funny, manic, scary and just exhilarating from start to finish.

It is far superior to the original Richard Donner-directed episode that starred William Shatner; I can only assume that people who prefer the original are influenced by a sense of nostalgia.

Everybody I know thinks it is BY FAR the best segment!

As for the others...

The Prologue is okay, kind of fun to see young Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd. It also introduces the film's great catchphrase...

Part 1 is simply awful, terribly trite and just icky because the sanctimony clashes with the knowledge that you're watching the last days of Vic Morrow and the filmmakers' negligence will soon result in his death.

Part 2 is dull, maybe Spielberg's worst effort.

Part 3 is an improvement, but it didn't really work for me.

I think this would make a great rental if you just watch the prologue, then skip ahead to Segment 4...you'll get 40 minutes of great entertainment.