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Reviews
Our Man Flint (1966)
A letdown
Although "Our Man Flint" was billed as a spoof,it was too serious for its own good. When I hear "spoof,' I expect to see some really outrageous things -- taking conventions from the genre and then going over-the-top. Maxwell Smart comes to mind.
But OMF lacked that sense of playfulness and fun. Sure, it had some silly touches (Z.O.W.I.E., the actor portraying Dr. Wu) but I think the movie would have benefited from developing them further; as it is, they were basically flat one-liners. An 83-function cigar lighter is a nifty concept -- but Flint could have/should have availed himself of many more of those functions.
And the "villains" were on the weak side; more flamboyant characters (use the *original* Dr. Loveless as a reference point) could have certainly livened things up.
"Our Man Flint" is not a horrible movie by any stretch; just missing a certain "zing" factor.
The Outer Limits: The Probe (1965)
A sad, sad ending
Such a disappointing coda to a once-great show.
The plot lacked coherence: we never learn where the probe comes from, or where it's going. The characters are "disinfected" to repel the creature...but the probe later self-destructs so it can't harm anything. Surrounded by plastic flooring, walls, columns, and gas emitting wall-holes, the group's leader deduces that they're all under a giant microscope. And (very) suddenly, it's all resolved -- or at least rushes to a conclusion -- when our intrepid crew is picked up by a rescue plane. Afterward, no one seems particularly concerned about the presence of an alien vessel, neither in the ocean nor as it lifts off and flies away...only to explode.
The "special" effects were bargain-basement, too: lots of blinking lights, a couple of animated light beams and a rubber "creature" that just shuffled along on the floor.
And the dialogue was inept: didactic and stiff. As a sound grows louder and louder, the leader observes "That sound is growing louder and louder! If it keeps increasing, it could break our eardrums!" Or in an attempt to communicate with the aliens: "Keep repeating E=MC-squared! It's the law of the universe!" As long as everyone in the universe uses the English alphabet, I guess.
Overall, it's on a par with cheap B-movies from the '50s. And that's really too bad. Because The Outer Limits could be fantastic sci-fi: "Demon with a Glass Hand," for example, "The Bellero Shield," or "The Architects of Fear."
"The Probe" just isn't very good.
Click: The Calendar Girl Killer (1990)
Hooray for fast-forward
There might be spoilers below. But so little goes on in "Click" that it's hard to tell.
Don't be misled by the gushingly overheated verbosity of a few other reviewers here. No number of adjectives will disguise the fact that the movie simply stinks. The tedium was such that I FF'd through a good 60% of it, trying to find a spot where something resembling a story was happening.
So many bad things to point out. For example...the motorcycle stunt is incredibly inept--the car has already crashed, and the bike appears to hit something well ahead of it (we can't see). Then a slo-mo flying body, seemingly 20 feet up, flies out head-over-toe, and slams into a gully a good 30 feet away...then gets up without a scratch.
Why does the red-haired model bother to put on lipstick just before taking a bath? Why does the pop music she's listening to on a radio continue to blare as the "scary music" blares on top of it? Who set off the bombs during the run through the field--the killer is chasing the heroes while that happens. Why does no one seem to notice that models are dying? Why does the killer hate models in the first place? Why the cross-dressing?
One saving grace--the models *are* cute, even with the big hair.