Reviews

This is a unique film, directed by a black female director. It never had a real commercial release. It was seldom seen during the director's short life. It gained a new life after her daughter found a way to get it to TCM and introduce it to a new audience. I don't really think most white - and few black - audiences would be ready for a movie that begins with a black female professor discussing Kant, Hegel and the animus behind Jean-Paul Sartre's work. The movie brings together one of the most eclectic black casts ever and shows black people who are rarely-if-ever shown in films in a real-life drama. No drugs, gangs, rap music, violence or drugs. No wonder no distributor would touch it.

Two things really stuck out to me in this film: first, it was fantastic to see such a great lineup of black female stars and extras in a film. Though it is wholly unrealistic to expect that EVERY woman of color you see will be as smokin' hot as you will see here, enjoy it all the same. The second part was that Angela Bassett's character gets to go to her husband's workplace and assault the white woman she presumes her husband is having an affair with after setting fire to her husband's car and clothes; Loretta Devine gets to interrupt her son being physically involved with a white woman while trying to reconcile the fact that her husband is a homosexual; Lea Rochon gets to deal with a subhuman masquerading as a man; and I haven't even dealt with Whitney Houston's character! It's a great laugh-fest, and I can tell you black men found it hilarious. OK, no they did not. But here's a fun fact: the studio actually tried to sell this film by creating a short film of women who (presumably) had seen the film and liked it - and two of them were white. Figure that one out if you can.

I think this is another movie where people wanted or expected another movie. Maybe a standard monster-in-the-woods flick, there's been hundreds of them. This isn't that movie.

A woman/teacher who returns to a not-missed past in a broken mining town is propelled into a world involving legendary (but real) creatures, abandoned and/or neglected and/or abused children, the after effects of a changing industrial landscape - and her own tortured past with her now-dead father and her now-sheriff brother.

It's an emotional film. Family ties and the desire to protect them beyond human ability becomes a main part of the film, as does the small but important part played by Graham Greene. His words fill in an important turning point while they also highlight the diffidence with which the religious beliefs of First People in America are treated.

Keri Russell puts in an extraordinary performance as the woman/teacher who finds a way to resolve in part many of the horrors she has been forced to confront in her life. I really liked the movie. I think, though, that the fact that (1) most people never saw it in its proper milieu (on a screen) and (2) that you actually had to watch and pay attention to the dialog probably puts it outside many of the Smartphone generation's interest.

Spoiler alert here..

Diana Millay plays a woman of minimal repute who has married an older man with whom she does not live, and on his deathbed he wants to see her. The wife is played by Diana Millay, who probably shows more and deeper cleavage than any other actress in this series ever did, and to good advantage. Girl really had it up front, she did.

The story has been done before. She does well in the role, actually (expectedly) making a play for Lucas because a woman like her would do that, wouldn't she?

Worth a watching.

I don't really care that Mr. Cukor's talent was purloined here in his possible pursuit of the male leads. And I don't care that this film was based on a not-very-good-but-popular novel. It's a lousy movie. It doesn't tell its stories well. It leaves huge holes in the stories of all four women involved, so much so that you never even see Shelley WInters' children though she mentions them numerous times. It wastes, really wastes a field of female stars that would make a marquee of that era sag: Johns, Fonda, WInters, Bloom. Not one is well used or directed here, and the misuse of Bloom is egregious. Technically it is a well assembled product with a great soundtrack and some stunning clothing from Orry-Kelly, especially in Glynis Johns' case. When you get to the "end" of this film you will as I did ask yourself how ANY of the stories shown here were actually concluded. Because as far as I could tell, not one was. That's Bad Storytelling 101.

There were the ingredients of a really good low-budget color film noir here. I have to guess that somewhere that movie/cut might exist. Instead, here, we have the deceptively-titled (let's be honest here..) 8MM 2, which has absolutely NOTHING to do with the film 8MM.

They had the setting, eastern Europe; they had the exteriors and interiors; they had the soupcon of nude supermodel types needed for the right "look". They had the chiseled features of Jonathan Schaech, who does some dorsal nudity here, bless him. They even had Lori Heuring whom I understand has a fan following anxious for more skinny blonde nudity. But the part that wrapped it together went missing.

The rating I gave this movie results 90% from a really good twist ending.

This movie is a contemporary of (and ripoff of) The Entity. The differences are significant though: one movie had major actors, a decent budget, a plot you can follow and award-nominated actors. Then there's this one.

I can't figure out why so many "reviewers" here look at this as anything but what it was, which is my first sentence followed by "It's a B movie.". As a B movie, it's not bad. It has just enough script to almost cover its length, a couple of more-or-less recognizable actors in the cast and a reputation for being Lana Wood's corporeal showcase. She makes the most of it. Lana's body was quite spectacular and you can see it here whenever the photography permits. For Entity fans, I will say that Lana did not use a body double, spfx dummy or anything else.

And to those young kids who reviewed this film and relished using the word "floppy", please know that not all of us are looking for (1) obvious implants or (2) women who are built like 15-year-old boys. Big natural breasts move, kids.

I'd love to have had both movies (Entity and Dark Eyes) on the same bill at a drive-in.

As a movie, it's no Citizen Kane. But neither was Humanoids From The Deep .I like them both. They're B movies.

It's really funny reading the reviews that the kids have here. I doubt that many of them, as I was, were actually around/adults when this movie came out.It was a blockbuster, and it pretty much laid the tracks that Deep Throat used to get to the top of US media. Some complain about production values: I imagine they don't know this film was shot for $5000. Yes, about the cost of two Volkswagens back then. They probably also don't know that the outside shots were all done "wild", which means they picked a place and just did it, traffic/pedestrians/whatever notwithstanding. The scene in the alley shows this. There is a real story here, and one based on the view of the female star, not the men she encounters. The real shame is that you can't buy a complete version of this film, and you haven't been able to for over twenty years. So it is entirely possible the reviewers here only saw the Something Weird version of it, which lacks at least six major scenes. Gee, I'll bet they maybe didn't know that either. As for complaints about the "monster shots", i.e. the full-screen depictions of the stars' vagina, that was a standard shot in the 70's. But in the 21st Century, the proper contrast for a film like this is totally absent, and the reviews here show that.

Sad to read the reviews of so many resolute Superman fans here. I mean, people were asking for "backstory" here. Bro, we know the Smallville story front to back even if we aren't Superman fans. The real kick here is the challenge: what if, contrary to what DC Comics espoused,Kal-El was not only an alien but an emissary sent to cleanse the Earth of humans? How about that one? What if he shared nothing in common with humans beyond appearance? What if he never "matured" in the sense that humans did at all? And how exactly would earth cope with a being who was indestructible by any Earthly means, who never tired, and who had powers so varied and profound even he didn't know what they all were? It was an enormously scary movie, and the character Brandon was very well played. The trick in the cast though was Elizabeth Banks, playing the mother..who managed to star in ANOTHER movie that smashed childhood stereotypes and "knowledge" of characters in the same year: The Happytime Murders. Great movie there, too.

A strange movie. My understanding is that a "producer" recut this film (and it was shot on film with a pro crew) making it the idsorganized jumble it is now. After going to all the trouble of getting an original theme song written (title), there are strange cuts (Lisa gets imprisoned, cries out but there's never a mention of why or how she gets loose). There's some of the original plot still here (LIsa is a 007-style agent) but it's pretty hard to figure out the rest. Decent sex scenes. Lisa looks great. Oherwise, it's hit-and-miss. Oh,by the way: an early drop-in appearance from John Stagliano.

A few reviewers have remarked that there are threads of other movies in Colossus, but their references are faulty. This isn't Frankenstein; it isn't Donovan's Brain; and it most cretainly isn't Der Golem. Instead, there's a quuestion asked here: is anyone really unreplaceable?

A son is killed accidentally; his father, a cybernetic prodigy himself (there were no "cyborgs" in the 1950's) creates a humanoid vehicle to house his son's brain - and he hopes his "soul" - so he can continue his pioneering work. The brain is transferred - the soul, not so much. Also, the heightened abilities and senses gained as part of the transfer go far, far beyond what was planned, overloading the brain.

There are a number of far-reaching concepts exposed here, most of which are shown in the film - even though the budget for the film obviously was limited. But that made it better, not worse. I miight also mention that I don't understand the 5.9 rating for this film whose reviewers gave it so many high ratings. Why?

This hard-to-find movie was a good spy drama capturing the spirit of the international-production era of "big TV". Cliff Robertson plays an American serving in British Army Intelligence in early WW2 Cairo Egypt. There's a threat that Egypt - and Africa - will be lost to the Nazis, and spies abound, as does fleeting loyalty on the part of Egyptians not necessarily on the British side. Widower Cliff crosses paths with Season Hubley, a lady of the evening, in his efforts to defeat or apprehend a German spy played by David Soul. There's derring-do, ineffectual supervision, plot twists and a few stabbings. Overall, I liked it as a period piece. But there's also some TV history here: Lina Raymond, playing Sonya the belly dancer/voluptuary and Season Hubley both do topless nude scenes, the very first ones for females in a major TV market (WPIX-TV NY, 4/29/85 and 5/9/85). That marks some history, if obscure, for The Key To Rebecca.

Let's get one thing straight right now: Joe Friday is resolutely anti-hippie. Even before this series, that was the case. So, let's jump off into a new series. What's the subject? Hippies! This is the famous/infamous "Blue Boy" episode.In the '80s when this series was syndicated, there was a call-in contest to suggest which episodes to show. This one was the winner. Second place was "The Baby in the bathtub." Dragnet fans know which one that was...

This one stars Michael Burns (formerly of "Wagon Train", Bill Hawks' "son") who plays a Jack Webb imagined acid head during the time (yes!) when LSD was not illegal. By the way, contrary to other posters here, LSD is not a "narcotic" and is resolutely not "addictive", and I speak as one who took pharmaceitical LSD in the 60's. Anyway, "Blueboy" fulfills all of Jack Webbs' fantasies of drug use, even though none of them are even remotely correct or true.

It is, however, one of the inadvertenly hilarious episodes of any cop show of the era. Anybody who had real experience with LSD will howl with laughter all through this. The sad thing is that so many people consumed this episode whole and believed it, when it had no basis in fact or practice. And do so today.

By the way, without knowing it, Jack Webb created an icon with "Blue Boy". He was everything no "acid head" ever was. Thanks, Jack.

There's always a time in a champion's reign when a challenger tries you out. Early in The Big Valley, Miss Barbara Stanwyck/Victoria Barclay meets up-and-comer Jeanne Cooper, later to become a heavyweight in The Young and the Restless. Both rise to the occasion.

Heath Barclay (Lee Majors) is a son of the late Mr. Barclay but not Victoria's. Obviously, in a dynasty (whoops!) that's a problem.

In order to understand Heath's life better as Stockton plans a memorial for her late husband, she travels back into his past to find facts. She instead finds a beaten town, and Jeanne Cooper and John Anderson, an aunt and uncle, as Mel Brooks would describe them "prime Western trash". Jeanne's character is especially good as the emasculating, tempestuous hot mature woman stuck in a dead town.

The story plays out interestingly with old documents, a slightly dotty but earnest former maid, and inferences that Miss Cooper has had more than a little direct influence on Heath's past, most of it not good. Take care to liisten to Victoria and the maid's testimony and you'll see what I mean.

But the crackle here is the dukes-up between Cooper and Stanwyck. Jeanne holds her own against one of the toughest and strongest female actresses Hollywood ever produced. That, and Jeanne's I'll-do-anything drive to get paid by the Barclays and/or get out of Strawberry. It's a treat.