For me the only reason for having a look at this remake was to see how bad and funny it could be. There was no doubt about it being funny and bad, because I had seen "Voyna i mir" (1968). Shall we begin? Here we go...

Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Pierre Bezukhov - a lean fellow that lacks the depth of the original; Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Natasha Rostova - a scarecrow, her image can cause insomnia; Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Andrej Bolkonsky - an OK incarnation which, like the lean fellow (cf. above), lacks depth of a Russian soul and "struggle within"; Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Napoleon - a rather unimpressive leader; Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Prince Bolkonsky - a turd with an English face; Robert Dornhelm & Brendan Donnison's Count Bezukhov - a spineless freak-show...

The rest of the characters are not much better.

The movements of the actors and the way they look and speak are often atrocious. They behave like modern EU citizens dressed up for a one-day masquerade. It all looks cheap and never comes close to the standards of our Russian men and women of the early 19th century.

A good piece of entertainment to scrutinize and make fun of. We had quite a few giggles in our office when remembering this modern product, which had been shown the previous evening on our TV.

"User Rating: 8.0/10 (29 votes)" - I guess, many young people have never watched our film ("Voyna i mir" 1968) or have weird sense of "Tarantino-Spielberg" quality. Remember the scene when our hussar is saving his friend, turns around, shoots, and the bridge goes boom? Looks like a CGI explosion.

There is neither sense nor craft to make a better version of the novel, which was screened properly in our country once. But I would be happy to watch a Russian remake of "Gone with the Wind". Hey, directors, wake up and get busy with that, instead of spoiling our classics.

Now back to common sense. Jokes aside. What I mentioned above is nothing new, though deadly exaggerated.

To make foreign actors trying to pass for Russians (while participating in very serious epics and dramas) is a rude mistake and the filmmakers are making this mistake again and again. Of course it results in numerous laughs - especially Clemence Poesy is uncomfortably ridiculous and her dancing and singing makes a Russian viewer think: "This sucks so much that it's funny!").

In order to say something new, I'd like to mention the pace of the movie. To my mind, this new version is very patchy. The narration and the scenes are not naturally flowing - they stagger and pop up like in a modern video. Again I have to remember our "Voyna i mir", where the action is so natural and the narration is so easy that you simply sit back and enjoy "going with the flow".

I thought that maybe the Borodino battle would be great (to somehow rehabilitate numerous drawbacks) but it has turned out to be no match for the war scenes filmed in 1968.

There should be something good in this movie after all. And there is. The actors seem to be trying hard to make it all work. They did not have a chance from the start but they still joined "the losers' team". Plus 1 point for that recklessness. It makes a Russian viewer uncomfortable - some scenes are ironically ridiculous though they are intended to be dramatically powerful and the actors are doing their best. It all evokes pity, and sometimes - fits of laughter.

What I still like about this serial is the last part of it. It shows very vividly how everybody gets his or her "salary and taxes". Besides, judging by the movie trailers I thought that the film would have an adult sex scene, which would definitely kill the whole project. But, fortunately, it does not have such rubbish. And that's a big plus.

"Voyna i Mir" is no "Harry Potter" and nowadays even we, here in present-day Russia, do not have enough craft to film it properly. Do I have to say that the moral quality of our life has deteriorated immensely? Fortunately, a proper film was screened during our Soviet times. The American version of the 1950s was justified to some extent - ours did not even exist yet. There were extenuating circumstances then.

4 out of 10 (1 point is given from the start, 1 point goes for the recklessness, and 2 points for the last part of the serial. Thanks for attention.


I didn't like this film at all! First of all,I don't know why, but everyone here says, that Clémence Poésy's play is excellent, which in my opinion is absolutely wrong! She is not like Natasha: another appearance, another character... What's worse, she is a very unexperienced actress and that's why she wasn't able to play this role! She disfigured the heroine completely! That was really disgusting to watch her play! To my mind, that would be much better to give this role to a Russian actress, because that would be much easier for her to understand the Russian soul for a Russian person. Unfortunately, Kutuzov looked like a drunk man, who hasn't shaved 2 weeks and defeated a battle in which he lost his eye...( Thank's God, in this film there're some actors, whose play was awesome! I suppose, that Alessio Boni coped with his task very well! I was pleasantly amazed! He is one of the few people who's read the book, which is very important for the play. In addition, I liked plays of our Russian actors, that was really wonderful to watch them)) The only thing I liked in this work was very beautiful views and amazing dresses! My advice is to read the book and to understand a real sense, the aim, with which Leo Tolstoy wrote this masterpiece, and maybe realize the whole idea of the book... 1 from 10


It's been nearly 30 years, and I STILL hate everyone involved in this movie. It remains the worst movie I've ever seen.

Before seeing this, I never much minded Rivers, one way or the other. After seeing this movie, I have an allergic reaction when I accidentally see her on television.

I got dragged to this - against my better judgment - by peer pressure. However, coming out of the theater, those friends swore an oath to never again overrule my choice of movie. Nearly thirty years later, we still carry around mental scars from this movie.

On my deathbed, one of my regrets will be the time I wasted hoping that this movie might get better. It never did.

If you are ever given a choice, you would prefer putting your own eyes out to sitting though this movie.

I registered for IMDb comments just in the hope that perhaps I can warn others against viewing this movie. If I can save just one person from watching this, then my existence on this earth will have been justified.


Absolutely one of the worst movies of all time.

Low production values, terrible story idea, bad script, lackluster acting... and I can't even come up with an adjective suitably descriptive for how poor Joan River's directing is. I know that there's a special place in Hell for the people who financed this film; prolly right below the level reserved for child-raping genocidal maniacs.

This movie is a trainwreck.

(Terrible) x (infinity) = Rabbit Test.

Avoid this at all costs.

It's so bad, it isn't even funny how bad it is.


Leonard Maltin compared this film to a Mel Brooks comedy. He was far too kind to Ms. Rivers, and far too cruel to Mr. Brooks. Not even the raunchiest Mel Brooks films are this tasteless, and at least they're genuinely funny. This picture deserves a place on the hundred-worst list.


I remember this movie when i was 13 (seems a lot of reviews are saying the same thing AGE 13!) with a group of school buddies. We all wanted to see Billy Crystal in his first movie, and fell for the typical commercial ads telling us this was a great comedy. We suffered through about 45 minutes of it, and all agreed to leave the theater. It was grotesque & tasteless, and a far cry from the ability Billy Crystal had to make us laugh, we were not laughing. I stumbled upon this review by accident, and decided to register just to tell the rest of the world what a rot-gut waste of film this was, now if you rent this, you deserve what you get, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!


I cannot say enough bad things about this train wreck. It is one of the few movies I've ever been tempted to walk out of. It was a bad premise to begin with, first pregnant male, but then they tried to make it a spoof. What were they spoofing all those real pregnant males??? This was the worst movie I have ever seen. If it had enough votes it would be on the IMDB bottom 100. If it was possible to give it a zero I would, and I would still feel I had given it too much credit.


I am quite sure that this was the worst movie ever made. If you can't make a 13 year old boy laugh at silly humor you should give up comedy forever. Unfortunately Joan Rivers chose differently. The movie is full of predictable gags (some of these are racist) and very unfunny jokes. Particularly memorable is the scene where the doctor tells the lead character that the rabbit has died and he is pregnant (as I write this, I cannot believe this was actually a movie scene). The man rushes to a dead rabbit on the doctors desk and tries to give it mouth to mouth. ROTFLMAO! NOT! The punch line that can tell you how bad things are in this movie is "I knew I should have been on top." ha ha ha ha ah ugh ........


I really can't believe this movie is not in the IMDB worst 250, it is absolutely terrible. When I originally saw it I remember talking about it in a college class and two other people had also seen it. We were all telling other class members not to see it because it was so horrible. By the time we were done some others wanted to see it just because they could not believe anything was as bad as we were saying it was. Don't be like them, just pass this by. I'm sure everyone involved with this movie would also prefer you never see them in this movie.


Well to answer one persons's question of "why doesn't anyone remember this film?" it's because really,not that many people saw it in 1978 and it's not been shown much on TV since. (If it's on video that'd be news to me!) Even in the era of sometimes mindless comedies that was the '70s,movie-goers had the smarts to avoid this film. Unless they love Billy Crytal,Paul Lynde or Joan Rivers "that" much!

Paul Lynde was funnier on "Bewitched" or "Hollywood Squares" than here. Joan Rivers at this time in her career was getting laughs making cruel jokes about singer Karen Carpenter's lack of weight! Har-har Joan! It also seems like every "somewhat" famous name from the era is in the cast. (Most surprising is Doris Roberts later of "Everybody Loves Raymond".)

Anyhow,a somewhat good idea for a storyline,a man getting pregnant instead of the woman goes to waste here. With help from a male friend Crystal gets set up with a hooker to finally lose his virginity but because she was "on top" instead of him,he gets pregnant! (A commentary on women taking positions of power away from men).

Crystal's stomach grows,he goes through all the female emotions and related feelings. Unfortunately,he is now a socially misunderstood outcast! He's attacked by a mob who wants him rubbed out (I guess).

He's forced to go into seclusion to have his baby...in a barn. Or if you will,a manger (God only knows where it may have exited from! Ewwww!) It turns out (no shock here) to be a girl!

Everything else about this movie is worthless and forgettable,the humor is high school level or less.

2 stars for a good idea and a few good touching & relevant moments w/ Billy Crystal. Ignore the rest of Rabitt Test,it flunks big time!

I can't believe Roddy McDowell signed on either! (END)


I saw this film when it first came out in 1978, when I was a sophomore in high school. I took a date to see it. I didn't "get any," needless to say, because the film was so bad! Joan Rivers' career never tanked as badly as it deserved after making this awful, unfunny crap. In fact, unfunny isn't a severe enough term: this film is ANTI-FUNNY! You walk out feeling like any laughter that might have occurred was beaten out of you before it could happen. This isn't worth watching out of curiosity, or out of any sense of it being "so-bad-it's-good." Not even the gang at MST3K could've made this worth watching! The fact that Billy Crystal's career survived this early suicide attempt is a miracle.


It's difficult to precisely put into words the sheer awfulness of this film. An entirely new vocabulary will have to be invented to describe the complete absence of anything even remotely recognizable as 'humor' or even 'entertainment' in "Rabbit Test." So, as a small contribution to this future effort, I'd like to suggest this word:

"Hubiriffic" (adj.) A combination of 'hubristic' and 'terrific'; used to describe overly ambitious debacles like the film "Rabbit Test."

Joan Rivers and "Hollywood Squares" producer Jay Redack have severely over-reached their meager abilities to amuse in this 82-minute festival of wretchedness. Trying to put together an Airplane! style comedy with a moldy collection of gags, (Note to Joan: German doctors haven't been funny since Vaudeville) disinterred from their graves in the Catskills - that's is bad enough. But compounding this cinematic crime is River's directorial style, which can best be described as 'ugly', and a cast of once-and-future has-beens so eager to please they overplay even the weakest of throwaway gags.

Adrift in this Sargasso Sea of sap is a hapless Billy Crystal in his film debut role as the film's hapless protagonist Lionel. Watching Crystal in this pic is much like watching a blind person take a stroll in a minefield; eventually the cringe reflex becomes a semi-permanent condition as cheap joke after cheap joke blows up in his face.

I can only speculate about the sort of audience who might actually like Rabbit Test. Cabbages, mollusks and mildly retarded lizards are all likely candidates. But for self-aware, thinking humans - I'd enthusiastically recommend pouring bleach in your eyes before I'd recommend "Rabbit Test."


Turkish Cinema has a big problem. Directors aren't interested in global cinema. They are local and folkloric, but want to be international. This brings kitsch results such this movie.

Film has jokes translated to Spanish from Turkish and they don't have any meaning for non-Turkish audiences. Even for Turkish audiences after 10 years.

Players, even Ferhan SENSOY have a worse acting than average. They act like puppets.

Movie was shot in Cuba, but nothing includes about Cuba. So Cuba is thought like a banana republic.

Waste of money, waste of time.


This was allocated to the fans as the "winner takes all" match occurred between two separate "companies" (the World Wrestling Federation and the "Alliance": an amalgamation of former WCW and ECW superstars. Because the final match to duduce the superior company was a tag-team match, the wrestlers were confined to tossing opponents from each side of the ring to another; each wrestler concludes that in order to debiliate their opponents and to intensify the match, interfernce is necessary. Each wrestler merely pummels an opponent with punches, executes a special move, and tags in a partner. The storyline had previously been tarnished by the subterfuge of Vince that a member of the Allance would be fradulent and join the WWF. It was obvious, with that statement, that the WWF would prevail. Overall: very innovative storyline but poor execution, which is not the scarcity of the wrestlers because the match format is tag-team. The remaining matches are just revolting:

Edge versus Test: potent "big boot" by Test, but this did not display the true talents of both stars

Al Snow Versus Christian: good match but superflous to the pay-per-view

Taji versus William Regal: the worst match of the night

Immunity Battle Royal: This was an outstandingly fun match to watch, but because the main stars of both companies were involved in the main event, only a wrestler who characteristically appears on "Heat" and is probably a WCW light-heavyweight reject (i.e. the Hurricane who is merely hired as an entertainer)

Hardy Boyz Versus Dudley Boyz: The best match of the night: Jeff Hardy executed a "Swanton Bomb" from the summit of a cage and through a wooden table and Matt was wedged into the cage, which appeared to be extremely painful.

Because Stone Cold was the WWF champion, Rob Van Dam was the Hardcore Champion, and Kurt Angle was a "mole" in the alliance, all fundamental stars in the main event on the faction of "the Alliance" were granted work after the match's outcome, except for Booker T., who recently attacked a wrestler on "Raw" and will inevitably be given work. Shane McMahon will return to television somehow, and everyone desired to witness the downfall and demise of "the Alliance" to see Stone Cold out of work. The WWF has done much better. A match in which all tiltes were brought to one faction would have been better, and what ever became of Casket and Iron Man matches?


WWF Survivor Series 2001

This was among the worst events of 2001. Perhaps its biggest flaw was the fact that it didn't follow suit to most of the previous Survivor Series'. There was only ONE survivor series match. And that Survivor Series match went on for 45 minutes. What's more, anyone with a working brain would know that it would end with The Rock versus Austin and The Rock prevailing for his team. And don't get me started on the preview before the event. No matter who won it was obvious that no one was going to f***ing die. There was no need for all of that pointless hype. Whatever the storyline, it was just a wrestling event.

And as for the rest of the matches: the first match was Christian defending his European title against Al Snow. It was a good fast paced match and its good to see a heel winning a match fairly. William Regal versus Tajiri was boring and we've seen it 2 or 3 times before. Edge versus Test was good but nothing great. The tag titles steel cage match was the best match of the evening. The battle Royal went on for 10 minutes and no one really cared who'd win in the first place. The Women's title match wasn't great. No, not in the slightest. The main event must have been the most hypocritical match in history. The Alliance lost but guess what, after 5 months every single Alliance superstar returned. The match itself was poor. The Rock eliminated 3 of them and Jericho eliminated 2. The Rock was too caught up with his acting to be there when the invasion began. Jericho was the one that jeopardised the whole match. If I wanted any 2 to be eliminated in the early going it would be them. Everyone knew that Kane, Big Show and Undertaker were just fall guys. 7 matches isn't enough for a Survivor Series. If there's ever a Survivor Series as bad as this again I'll


T. Rama Rao made some extremely beautiful films in the 1980s, but he seems to be a filmmaker who cannot mature with the changing times, styles and fashions. He's like stuck with the same old-fashioned film-making style.

Actors are not bad, not good either. Anil Kapoor generally acts convincingly his two roles of a father and his son, but the flawed script often makes him look funny and pathetic. Rekha is good, but then - she's always good, and here she's nothing more than such. She makes the best of what she is given, but she always does that. In conclusion, nothing great at all. Raveena is OK, which means ordinary, not bad, not good, nothing.

This film is melodramatic, occasionally stupid. Maybe it's a delayed film? Well, even then it still would be below standard. The script is terrible, the film is overdone, and the story goes nowhere. It feels like a film made in the early 1990s, but the script makes it look even older, the style is like from the 1950s.

Don't recommend, unless you're a big fan one of the starring actors.


The film released at the start of 2000 alongwith MELA both disasters So sad to start a millennium with such nonsense

The film seems to suit 70's but looks like an unintentional comedy for 2000

Anywayz some classic gems from the film: Paresh Rawal I don't understand to laugh at his role or cry Reason: He goes searching his mother in the village worst part is when he realises a secret of Anil he keeps the secret in his stomach which becomes big and makes him look pregnant I remember in my childhood my teacher told me the same joke Urrf!!!! as a child i laughed at it that time but here?

The whole film is a joke can't explain We have Anil in a dual role(One older and younger) and Rekha playing the older's wife and Raveena the youngers We also have reject Harish while Shakti playing the son of Aruna Irani who both fight on who has the worst wig

Direction is outdated Music is bad

Anil tries hard looks too old in the younger role and too young in the older role yet good effort Rekha is adequate, Raveena too is okay Harish is bad Shakti Kapoor is terrible Aruna Irani is as usual Rajnikant is okay in a cameo


I just saw this movie on Flix after timer-taping it. I grew up watching F Troop and had a major hard for Wrangler Jane so I was shocked, literally shocked, to find out after seeing this film that the degenerate homicidal nurse was Melody Patterson, who looks pretty good but also looks completely different and is unfortunately poorly photographed. I would never have guessed it was her in a million years. What the hell is she doing in a picture like this? I agree with the guys here that the movie lacks what it's pushing. No sex, no gore, no tease. It's also a remake of the Atomic Brain aka Monstrosity (1964 or thereabouts). Most of the action is tedious; the main character spends enormous amounts of time running around the crazed doctor's house and basement, and the neighborhood in general, or being roughed up by the cop, all of it boring and time-filling. Now if the Italians would have made this, half the film would have been the Slingblade/Uncle Ernest/Jack Elam henchman fondling the unconscious nude girls. But you only get that for 20 seconds.


THE IMMORTALIZER was, uh, interesting. It certainly didn't kill me during its hour and a half duration, but it didn't impress me much either. A group of kids are abducted in an alley by musclehead mutants (in a scene featuring cinema's least convincing head crushing sound effect) and taken to a fancy house in the suburbs. Here Dr. Divine and his team are performing brain transplants for his rich old patients so they can have young bodies again. Hey, this was quietly remade with a big budget a few years later as FREEJACK! Who knew that when you transplant an old person's brain into a different body that their new voice will sound exactly like their old voice? With all this talk of pineal glands and the use of a glowing green serum, you can almost see visions of FROM BEYOND and RE-ANIMATOR dancing in the producers' heads. But the production literally doesn't have the guts to pull it off. I've never understood why, when someone is making a low budget horror film, that they don't pack it to the edge of the frame with gore. The acting is uniformly terrible, with the only good performance coming from Clarke Lindsley as the assistant Dr. Price. He has a nice evil laugh. The only other thing of note about THE IMMORTALIZER is that it features lots of old people doing their own stunts. Seriously, most of the cast takes some serious bumps for old folks.


Bradford Dillman plays a scientist who wakes up one morning in the middle of a bloody crime scene; having partial amnesia (or "global amnesia", which one character claims to define as elective loss of memory), the scientist finds a private detective in the phone book in the hopes of piecing his life back together. Abhorrent concoction very loosely based on Walter Ericson's book "Fallen Angel" (filmed in 1965 as "Mirage" with Gregory Peck). It was probably too racy for television--what with drugs and hippies added to the mix--that NBC initially refused to air it, which is how this low-budgeter wound up in theaters. Director James Goldstone gets freaky with the hyperkinetic visuals and camera-tricks, while editor Edward A. Biery goes wild with the zig-zag cuts. Unfortunately, their admittedly-colorful gimmicks cannot cover up the weaknesses of this updated plot, and the acting is woefully overripe. Dillman, under pressure to recall the events of the night in question, goes through an Actor's Seminar of tics, stammers, nose-wipes, and crazy half-laughs while spitting out dialogue like, "Dream...a dream...drugs...yeah, drugs...that SOUND...bells...help!" As a villainous fellow scientist with a Cheshire Cat smile, Pat Hingle nearly upstages Dillman in the Grand Thespian department by continually addressing everyone in baby-talk, strutting about like a middle-aged peacock and twisting his mouth around in agony. Hope Lange's scientist/love-interest is given the short shrift, but not before she screams at indifferent-lover Dillman: "What do I have to do, talk Ape Man? Me want You!" This is one frantic "Jigsaw"! *1/2 from ****


I doubt Jigsaw was hip even at the time, the whole LSD theme married to a murder mystery being a patently obvious attempt to grab a young audience of the era without in the least truly showing any understanding of the sixties counterculture. The dated aspect aside, Jigsaw suffers from many problems, including overwrought acting, silly and stilted dialogue, LSD flashbacks that go on interminably long even after the point has been hammered home in the first 60 seconds, a failure to create any true suspense even though the actual plot is, on paper, a great vehicle to do just that, and an ending that is so trite and predictable (not to mention reminiscent of a lot of bad television shows) that the climax is actually an anti-climax. If it was a better movie, we might be able to suspend disbelief on a few things where it would help enjoyment, but the weaknesses are so glaring they only serve to highlight the improbabilities viewers might otherwise overlook. I saw Jigsaw on television and it is definitely late night TV fare meant to fill airspace and pass the time to kill somebody's insomnia rather than anything anybody ought to actively seek out. At very best, a three out of 10.


Nell Shipman attempted a plot to lead up to a chase finale in 'Back to God's Country' of the previous year, and she failed miserably. This time, she does better, although it seems pointless. 'Something New' hardly has a plot lying outside of the chase. There's a brief premise, which sets up the hero (co-author and Shipman's boyfriend) to have to save the girl (played by Shipman), then it's nothing but an exciting, implausible chase from there. Of course, it plays out like an hour-long advertisement for a Maxwell Sedan, but the entire movie is congruously ridiculous. It doesn't seem that she learned much from the last-minute rescue films of D.W. Griffith or its parodies by Mack Sennett and other comedians, which she's imitating.

One point of interest is that Shipman writes and directs herself into the film as the writer of the film's story, which has as its protagonist a writer (Shipman again), although she doesn't do much else clever or humorous with it, even though she attempts to. Again, others had pioneered the writer's joke in the intertitles, like Anita Loos with 'Wild and Woolly' or Frances Marion with 'A Girl's Folly' (both 1917). At least, Shipman gives the impression that she doesn't take herself or the film seriously--and neither do I. 'Something New,' despite its claim, is hackneyed.


Being a fan of silent films, I looked forward to seeing this picture for the first time. I was pretty disappointed.

As has been mentioned, the film seems to be one long, long, commercial for the Maxwell automobile.

Perhaps if the chase scene was about half the length that it is, I may have enjoyed the film more. But it got old very fast. And while I recognize that reality is stretched many times in films, without lessening a viewer's enjoyment, what was with the Mexican bandits? I mean, they are chasing a car through the mountains, a car that most of the time is moving at about one mile per hour, yet they can't catch up to it?


Nell Shipman must have been paid a hefty sum of money to promote the Maxwell automobile's off-road capabilities. The plot of the movie is pretty simple, Nell plays a writer who has a bad case of writer's block, and needs inspiration, so she goes to visit Mexico to absorb the atmosphere. There she meets the hero (Bert Van Tuyle), a cowboy who chooses to drive a car rather than ride a horse. While Nell is visiting with her father's partner at his mining camp, a gang of local bandits kidnap her and bring her to their camp deep in the wilderness. The hero needs to get to her quickly, so he decides to drive there in his car. This is where the film takes a weird twist. Bert proceeds to drive over every terrain imaginable, huge rocks, small streams, heavy brush, scraggly tree stumps, steep inclines, etc etc, for the greater part of the film we get to see this car struggling to crawl over obstacles. Now mind you, this isn't a modern-day ATV, it's a 1920 Maxwell automobile, so it looks very out-of-place as an off-road vehicle. And it clearly has limitations for some of the terrain it encounters, we get to see it stuck more than once in this film. But the filmmakers made an effort to show it beating the odds and eventually passing all the obstacles. Once the hero gets to the hidden camp and rescues the girl, he jumps in the car with her and drives off with the bandits in hot pursuit (on horseback), and at this point it became hysterically funny to me. Watching this car slowly rolling over huge rocks, getting stuck in gravel and mountain brush, going forward and back to get momentum enough to pass over fallen tree limbs, the bandits should have had ample time to catch up. But they never do, even though we are to believe this wilderness chase goes on throughout the night. And in a silly climax, the car climbs a mountainside, and helps Nell and the hero push a huge boulder down the side to crush the pursuing bandits.

After seeing this film you would think the army should invest in 1920 Maxwell automobiles because they clearly have better off-road capabilities than Hummers and Bradley tanks combined. Watch this film just for laughs, it's worth it just to see Nell cuddling up to the car grill and saying "You did your best, brave little car"


I enjoy quality crapness, and this ranks up there with some of the finest. the cg is out of this world, or at least pre-dates our world, and the insanity of a 6 foot bloke in a rat outfit chasing after people is laughably bad. I quite enjoyed some of this, but the acting is so goddamn awful, and even the obligatory nude scene doesn't really have any baps out in it. just a complete waste of time if ever i saw one. I don't know who wasted more time, me watching this, or the poor saps who got dragged into making it in the faint hope that this will launch their acting careers. I can assure you, it wont. However, on a brighter note, I have managed to successfully do the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon from this movie, so I think it was almost worthwhile watching the 91 minutes of it.


Yes, this is one of THOSE movies, so terrible, so insipid, so trite, that you will not be able to stop laughing. I have watched comedies, good comedies, and laughed less than my wife and I laughed at this movie. The other comments give the idea well enough. The characters are so unpleasant you cheer the rats on, the effects are so poorly done you wonder whose elementary school art class was in charge, the acting-- oh the acting-- talk about tired dialogue and embarrassing pauses.

But the rat, yes, the big rat. Why we didn't get to see the rat until the end rather surprised me. Often the 'big one' isn't shown until the end because the budget is limited and good effects chew up so much money. I surmise, however, that in this case the big rat was hidden until the end because the filmmakers were ashamed that the best they had was a guy running around dressed up like a woodchuck with third-world dentistry.

The most sublime part of the whole movie is the elevator scene. After figuring out that the rats couldn't stand loud noise (migraines from the bad acting?), the main dude rigs up a fire alarm to send the rats into a frenzy. If you've ever wanting to see a pair of rats waltz while blood squirts out of their heads like a geyser, this film is for you. Really, you need to rent it and see for yourself.

But not for more than 99¢, OK?


well after watching this i can say that it ain't the worst movie ever made,, yes folks there is worse than this,, there are some good points to the movie,, you get to watch drunken teenagers, have horrible deaths,, and cute looking rats eating some science experiment, and getting grotesquely huge,, the drunk janitor,, the cranky doctor,, and yes a girl in thong underwear that has absolutely no shame,, dumb jocks,, i could'nt personally wait for the rat to eat these drunken fools,, i was rooting for the rat the e ntire time,, it had a good premise,, the first part of the movie,, was interesting though with the scientific explantation about the rats,, and the little back story,, but i think that it ruined when the dumb drunken horny teenagers come into play,, the rat in my opinion, the one that get's lost,, her name is Brenda, was so fake,, must have been a cGi rat,, looked like a guy dressed up in a beaver suit,, this was pretty schlocky, lame,, but not totally horribble,,


This film is easily one of the worst ones I have ever seen. And I don't mean that in a good way. We wanted to see a crappy horror/thriller, so we picked the one that seemed to be the lousiest in the store. For once, the film was everything we'd expected. And more! (or should I say less?)

The actors look like they are reading their lines from posters behind the camera. The so-called special effects are created by putting red see-through plastic in front of the camera to give the impression that we are seeing through the eyes of the killer rats. And the script? Don't even get me started on the script... And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it turns out that the first part of the film was Oscar-material compared to the ending.

Take it from me, this film is hilarious if you're into crappy horror-films, but if you want a GOOD film, keep on looking. This is not for you.


Altered Species starts one Friday night in Los Angeles where Dr. Irwin (Guy Vieg) & his laboratory assistant Walter (Allen Lee Haff) are burning the midnight oil as they continue to try & perfect a revolutionary new drug called 'Rejenacyn'. As Walter tips the latest failed attempt down the sink the pipes leak the florescent green liquid into the basement where escaped lab rats begin to drink it... Five of Walter's friends, Alicia (Leah Rown in a very fetching outfit including some cool boots that she gets to stomp on a rat with), Gary (Richard Peterson), Burke (Derek Hofman), Frank (David Bradley) & Chelsea (Alexandra Townsend) decide that he has been working too hard & needs to get out so they plan to pick him up & party the night away. Back at the lab & the cleaner Douglas (Robert Broughton) has been attacked & killed by the now homicidal rats in the basement as Walter injects the latest batch of serum in a lab rat which breaks out of it's cage as it grows at an amazing rate. Walter's friends turn up but he can't leave while the rat is still missing so everyone helps him look for it. All six become potential rat food...

Also known as Rodentz Altered Species was co-edited & directed by Miles Feldman & has very little to recommend it. The script by producer Serge Rodnunsky is poor & coupled together with the general shoddiness of the production as a whole Altered Species really is lame. For a start the character's are dumb, annoying & clichéd. Then there's the unoriginal plot with the mad scientist, the monster he has created, the isolated location, the stranded human cast & the obligatory final showdown between hero & monster. It's all here somewhere. Altered Species moves along at a fair pace which is just about the best thing I can say about it & thankfully doesn't last that long. It's basically your average run-of-the-mill killer mutant rat film & not a particularly good one at that either.

Director Feldman films like a TV film & the whole thing is throughly bland & forgettable while some of the special effects & attack scenes leave a lot to be desired. For a start the CGI rats are awful, the attack sequences feature hand-held jerky camera movement & really quick edits to try & hide the fact that all the rats are just passively sitting there. At various points in Altered Species the rat cages need to shake because of the rats movement but you can clearly see all the rats just sitting there as someone shakes the cages off screen. The giant rat monster at the end looks pretty poor as it's just a guy in a dodgy suit. There are no scares, no tension or atmosphere & since when did basements contain bright neon lighting? There are one or two nice bits of gore here, someone has a nice big messy hole where their face used to be, there's a severed arm & decapitation, lots of rat bites, someone having their eyeball yanked out & a dead mutilated cat.

Technically Altered Species is sub standard throughout. It takes place within the confines of one building, has cheap looking CGI effects & low production values. The acting isn't up to much but it isn't too bad & a special mention to Leah Rowan as Alicia as she's a bit of a babe & makes Altered Species just that little bit nicer & easier to watch...

Altered Species isn't a particularly good film, in fact it's a pretty bad one but I suppose you could do worse. Not great but it might be worth a watch if your not too demanding & have nothing else to do.


What a terrible film.

It starts well, with the title sequence, but that's about as good as it gets.

The movie is something about rats turning into monsters and going on a killing spree. The acting isn't so much poor, but the script is pointless and the film isn't even scary despite the atmospheric music.

It really is amazing that some group cobbled together this bag of rubbish and thought it would make a good film.

It isn't a good film. It's trash, and I urge you not to waste a minute of your life on it! One out of ten.


Spoiler below, but read on or you'll never know the horrible fate that awaits all planing to rent "Rodentz".

On a moonlit night, in a remote research laboratory, a major medical breakthrough is about to have deadly results. A chemical compound that was created to "hunt and destroy" deadly cancer cells has leaked from the hazardous waste disposal system into the building's basement. Now, the rodents involved in the laboratory experiment upstairs are not the only rats in the facility that will become the altered species. Professor Schultz, a leading bio-researcher, has just determined that the addition of a new enzyme now enables his "hunt and destroy" formulation to regenerate for the length of time necessary to neutralize deadly cancer tumors. When three varying degrees of the new mixture are administered to three different rats and the rest poured down the faulty "Waste Hazard" sink, shocking side-effects result in a night of terror.....right.....

Seriously, this is probably the worst film I've seen this year. Everything about it screams "Low-budget!", from the horrendous acting to the special effects which are some of the worst I've ever seen. The characters are clichéd morons and act in stupid, predictable ways: walking down dark hallways alone, looking for a cat, tripping and falling so the "rats" can catch up with them, boarding themselves up in a small room, etc.

While some films are cheaply made, this film really takes the cake. Every possible corner is cut, everything from reusing earlier shots, filming the "Lab" hallways from different angles to make it look bigger (That reminds me--why were only TWO guys working in this freakin' massive building?!?!?!?), to music and special effects that could be done on a children's workshop PC.

That brings me to the worst aspect of this steaming pile of dung--the special effects. Just horrendous. The computer generated rats look so fake and stand out in every scene so even the dumbest of film buffs could see they are computer generated. And that giant rat suit--OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! seriously, are we supposed to believe that freaking beany baby is a monster? Just pitiful........On the better side, some of the gore looks pretty cool, especially considering the budget.

The actors all suck. no one involved with the production cared or knew what they were doing. I've wasted enough time with review, just take my advice, it's garbage. 1/10.

About the DVD: The transfer sucks, the audio is passable and there's a commentary track on the disk by the director and two of his friends, who say they had absolutely nothing to do with making the film but were there to ask questions and make comments. All three of these sub-human primordial slime are so incredibly stupid that they should be institutionalized before they can harm themselves or others. I don't want to waste any more of you kind reader's time or mine, for I am starting to remember more than I want to about this film..... DVD rating: 1/10.


Well then. I just watched an crap-load of movies--all with varying degrees of quality. I wasn't too sure about which one I wanted to review first. Then it hit me like a sack-a-rats: Rodentz. Warn people about Rodentz. This monstrosity stars nobody and is painfully dull to sit through. And it's about mutant rats killing people. Yeah... real freaking' original. "Food of the Gods," or "Willard" anyone? Those were better than this, and that doesn't say much...

**POSSIBLE SPOILER**Okay here's the story: Inna laboratory the scientist and his plucky assistant are experimenting on rats and their laboratory is in a crappy neighborhood and crappy building and the plucky assistant's moronic friends show up drunk and everyone becomes food for the crazed rats and just about everybody dies and, oh yeah, there's one giant rat that looks crappy, but it gets killed, the end. There, all in once sentence! Spoiler, you say? Ppfff!! I beg to differ! The second we all realize that there's a giant rat, we all know it's gonna die eventually!!**END SPOILER**

Here's the breakdown:

The Good:

--Well, I watched it for free, but for everyone else... hmmm, no. There's nothing good here.

Didn't Hurt It, Didn't Help:

--Um... well. the gore was decent. --Very average cinematography.

--CG rats not as bad as they could've been in some shots...

The Bad:

--...and in other shots, the CG rats were pathetically cheap-looking. Look, if your film has a low budget, maybe you shouldn't rely on CG. Lesson to take to heart.

--The acting is extremely poor.

--The characters are beyond uninteresting--we have a mish-mash of clichés and none of them are even done that well.

--Booooooooooooring.

--Been done before--plenty of times.

--Stupid story, just stupid.

--Giant rat looks like fat man in poorly conceived bear costume--that was kind of funny--but not funny enough to give this film any worth.

--Retarded, unrealistic, and boring dialog.

--All the college student rat chow people are drinking Tequila from huge plastic milk jugs--and yet they don't appear to be drunk for anything longer than a few seconds. Way to stick with continuity, guys.

The Ugly:

--This film is bad. Simply terrible. Worse than you might imagine. It's not even laughably bad like, for instance, "Scarecrow" (2002) or "House of the Dead." Now those movies are crap you can enjoy. Even if they do make you stupider.

Memorable Scene:

--The lame action-movie ending, complete with uninjured heroes and explosion. Because it didn't feel at all like the rest of this monstrosity--but still sucked.

Acting: 2/10 Story: 1/10 Atmosphere: 2/10 Cinematography: 4/10 Character Development: 0/10 Special Effects/Make-up: 4/10 Nudity/Sexuality: 1/10 (I was tending to my son occasionally during the film, so I may have missed it, but was supposedly in there) Violence/Gore: 4/10 Dialogue: 2/10 Music: 1/10 (average for the time) Writing: 1/10 Direction: 2/10

Cheesiness: 7/10 Crappiness: 9/10

Overall: 1/10

Watch it only if you love rat and vermin-based horror films. Wait... Check that. Don't watch it. It's crap.

(www.ResidentHazard.com)


Winter Kills is a terrible, incoherent and very disappointing conspiracy comedy-thriller from little-known director William Richert. While watching the film, I honestly felt as if I was the emperor in the classic fable The Emperor's New Clothes. The film made me feel like a fool because I couldn't make head nor tail of the serpentine plot and the nonsensical characters. But I felt kind of embarrassed to admit to myself that the film was tying my brain up in knots. So I stuck with it to the end, hoping that the whole tangled mess would untangle itself. Then I realised.... the film is SUPPOSED to be serpentine, nonsensical and illogical, because that's the whole point. This is a satirical look at conspiracy theories and theorists, with the knotting-up of the plot used as a metaphor for the knotting-up of truths, half-truths and lies that define any conspiracy. Even when I got that the joke was on me, I still felt Winter Kills to be a pretty awful movie.

Young Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the younger brother of a former United States President who was assassinated in Philadelphia. Nick is present when a dying man claims that he shot the President and gives detailed information about where he hid the gun. Nick follows the clues, but every step of the way the people helping him seem to die in mysterious circumstances. Also, his father Pa Kegan (John Huston), a vulgar and disgustingly wealthy businessman, keeps interfering with Nick's investigation. The deeper he delves into the assassination, the more Nick realises that he is descending into a web of complex lies and red herrings, where nothing is as it seems and no-one can be trusted.

The film is an utter nightmare to follow, and in many ways is not worth trying to follow for the afore-mentioned reason that it deliberately tangles itself up. The cast is packed with extraordinary talent but most of them are wasted. Toshiro Mifune has one of the briefest and most pointless cameo roles in cinematic history; Elizabeth Taylor appears uncredited and has not a single line of dialogue; Richard Boone is given what seems to be an interesting role but his character goes nowhere. John Huston has the best role as the powerful patriarch and provides us with the film's few enjoyable moments with his acerbic delivery. Anthony Perkins also gets a creepy role and handles it well, though his screen time is far too short to do complete justice to the character. Some nudity and sex scenes are tossed in for no real reason and, while they're quite graphic and might appeal to voyeurs, they really belong in another film. The film's semi-comic climax is farcical and disappointing, yet paradoxically memorable in its weird little way. There's obviously a cult audience out there somewhere for Winter Kills.... but I won't be counting myself among its number.


With an absolutely amazing cast and crew, this might have been a classic. Instead it is a repetitive paraphrasing of all the conspiracy theories extant in 1979 about the JFK assassination grafted, rather pointlessly, on to a vaguely incoherent plot about the murder of fictitious president Kegan in 1960. Many superb character actors are wasted as they are either not given enough to do - Sterling Hayden or Eli Wallach, for instance, or they are asked to go rather luridly over the top - John Huston. Jeff Bridges and Anthony Perkins do manage to acquit themselves very well, in their very different ways, though.

The photography is gorgeous, but does not justify an hour and a half of your life, or the price of the DVD purchase.


i can't say i liked this movie very much.it has some amusing moments,but it doesn't seem able to make up its mind whether it is a comedy or a drama.it doesn't really work as either.it's too light in tone to be a drama,and the amusing moments are few and far between.it also doesn't make a lot of sense.things seem to happen for no reason.and it's also extremely convoluted.i feel like they just made things up as they were going.if they had just taken a bit of time to explain things,this might have been a better movie.i would say the ending was anti climatic, but that would mean the rest of the movie had actually been building up to something,which it didn't.it just sorts ends,and that's that.i didn't find it boring,really,but like i said,there there just isn't any point.i'll give Winter Kills a reluctant and weak 3/10


From the pen of Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate 1962) comes this muddled tale of political intrigue and assassination. The story, told in almost comic book fashion is difficult to swallow. All-star cast considered, this poor effort is not entirely the fault of the cast and crew: the novel was replete with the same short-comings. It seems as though at times the story is actually mocking the more sincere effort put forth in "Manchurian Candidate." A disappointment on all counts.


Ah WINTER KILLS , based on the novel by Richard Condon which deals with a conspiracy that killed the president of the United States 20 years ago . I knew Condon also wrote THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE which dealt with a similar theme and was looking forward to seeing an intelligent thriller

WINTER KILLS left me cold . It's not a thriller - It's a piece of worthless crap , possibly the worst movie I've seen this month and boy have I seen a lot of bad movies in June . The problem lies in both the direction and the script and seeing as William Richert was responsible for both then he should be blamed entirely for this unfunny farce

There's two things wrong with this movie . First off is the way everything is presented in a totally over the top manner . It's not as OTT as say something like that James Bond movie with David Niven and Peter Sellers but everything has a farcial edge to it with actors completely mugging their performances . This might have been justified if there was entertainment value to the movie but there's none . As a satire it's very silly , so silly that it becomes almost unwatchable . Secondly the scenes seem to have been cut so much that they're rendered senseless . Take for example a scene where the hero is confronting a loopy militia leader called Dawson . Dawson tells the hero he has 30 seconds start then it cuts to the hero being on board a plane . The scenes begin and end with no rhyme nor reason

A dire movie that's an ordeal to sit through


I watched the pilot and noticed more than a few similarities between 3 lbs and House, M.D.. Tucci's character is brilliant but socially inept out of choice, similar to Laurie's character House, but without the acerbic wit that Laurie brings to House. Meanwhile, Tucci's 'straight guy', the emphatic doctor Seger, is not developed into a more interesting character, like the fallible 'straight guys' Cuddy and Wilson. Indira Varma's character Adrienne Holland is too similar to Jennifer Morrison's doctor Cameron to be a co-incidence.

Someone at CBS obviously noticed the success of House, M.D. and told his staff to get him (her) a similar show, hoping that mimicry would prove successful. However, copying a show like House demands the same high level balance of wit and suspense and Tucci and company are just not up to the challenge.

I didn't know the show was canceled until I read the comments on IMDb, but it doesn't come as a surprise to me.


3lbs is obviously just a self indulgent programme for Stanley Tucci to be a producer/moody deep doctor. Unlike House he has absolutely no personality and unlike Grey's Anatomy the brain surgery cases are't even interesting. This programme is supposed to be set in a leading centre for Neurlogical cases - yet there's nothing interesting or exciting going on! Not even the so called pathetic 'feud' between him and a rival adds anything to the show and neither do those hallucinations. In the pilot there was a brief glimpse into the leads's social life as a father - snooze! boring and pointless.

This show is pants,there's a glut of medical dramas around at the moment and this does nothing to make it stand out as special.


I can appreciate what Barney is trying to achieve, but after sitting through this last night at a college movie house, I couldn't help but think...when is this gonna end? A very long and ponderous two hours and fifteen minutes. I had only seen a part of Cremaster 3 on DVD and thought I knew what to expect. That said, experimental films such as this are better digested in small increments. There are a couple of beautiful/horrible images...including the title sequence (no kidding), but if you go into this expecting any kind of plot or meaning, then you are in for a long, snooze-inducing ride. I managed to stay awake for the whole thing (if that's a compliment) but more often than not, I was waiting for some kind of meaning or narrative...big mistake. Among the collection of images are a very ornate gift-wrapping ceremony, the creation of a disgusting dish of what appears to be petroleum jelly slabs formed with a cookie cutter and sprinkled with shrimp (this is served to the crew of the ship which is shown throughout the film), a large blubber cheesecake with a large tentacle turd placed in the center of it, and the mutual evisceration of Bjork and director Matthew Barney which eventually culminates in some bizarre kind of communion, followed by their transformation into whale-like creatures. The soundtrack is at times beautiful and annoying...sometimes even maddening. At one time, there is a song being sung by Bjork to go along with the ephemeral rituals being played before us, and at other times there is just a constant droning of a high-pitched instrument, which we see a mysterious woman playing at the beginning and end of the movie. If this sounds like it doesn't make sense, that is because is DOESN'T! If this sounds like your cup of tea, then you will absolutely LOVE it! If this sounds like something that you probably won't like, then stay far away from it, because you will most likely walk out of the theater during the halfway mark like several people at the screening I attended. This is the very definition of an art film. You get from it what you take from it. But otherwise, there really isn't much there, other than a few oddities and constant construction and deconstruction rituals. I'm glad that there is a place for films such as this, but I can't say I would want to sit through it again. However, I can't say I wouldn't want to see one of Barney Cremaster films from start to finish and compare it with this. I think, perhaps now that I know what to expect I might enjoy something like this more. To give you an idea of what kind of comprehension factor this film has, I probably would've liked it better if I had gotten stoned. Then again, it could've felt twice as long as it was, and then it would've REALLY gotten ponderous. Definitely not for everyone.


This film is massively boring and pretentious. There is only one good moment when a sailor shaves Mr Barney's(think the purple dinosaur-less pretense) eyebrow. The music is relentlessly cloying-it is sad that Bjork, someone with so much inner beauty, has been brought down to pretentious falsity in her art. The pomp of the tea service makes a beautiful ritual seem vapid. the mythology and culture are not respected in this film they are lifted. Not just from Japanese culture but from another filmmaker...(stay tuned) In a perfect "art imitates life" moment-the crew of the ship finds a giant piece of sh*t. Which is what the audience found in the theatre. There are some set pieces which are very composed and arty without heart---thenprepare for spoilers-I'm talking to you MR BARNEY.

The Emperor has no clothes! Mr. Barney you have been outted! I have seen Jodorowsky's HOLY MOUNTAIN. And your thin, fake veil of BS has been lifted. You have stolen your images your style and your ENTIRE ART CATALOGUE from this man. Now that HOLY MOUNTAIN has been released FINALLY let's hope the powers that be at the Art Councils of the world STOP FINANCING YOU! Poor Jodorowsky-lost in a financial battle with the Beatles Lawyer when he is the Lennon/McCartney of film-making. And BTW while Jodorowsky is the Beatle-YOU ARE THE MONKEES! A cheap thin soulless rip off only liked by facile kitschy college freshmen. And BTW I am a filmmaker. If you are interested in making a reality film-I will legally fight you in a ring defending Jodorowsky-you, defending outright thievery.


Drawing Restraint 9. dir: Matthew Barney.

How do you know when you're in the middle of a pretentious art film? Is it that there is only 8 lines of dialogue in 140 minutes of film? Is it when Bjork is wearing what looks like a giant furry pita on her head in a pseudo-Asian ritual? Maybe when mammoth turds and spinal columns are used in a whale blubber experiment. Or, when you're about ready to kill the composer for making a minimal, and still annoying, version of a Philip Glass score? In any case, Drawing Restraint 9 is among the most pretentious of the modern art movies. At 135 minutes, it adds to its pretension by being boring to boot. I would call the use of color stunning, and the opening sequence interesting, but the rest of the movie looked like it was filmed for a Discovery Channel documentary. That is until it looks like they were trying to film their version of P-ss Christ, but that will be coming up later.

Actually, the documentary-esquire portions were the best parts of it. The surface plot is about a whaling ship, and then there is a ritual about making whale fat. Then, there are the guests in the form of Bjork and Matthew Barney who are welcomed on the ship by being put through a ritual of humiliation which includes passed-out head shaving (think frat boy pranks), nicotine patches, and giant furry pita hats. Then there is mutual evisceration, cannibalism, and lets not forget the giant turd.

Matthew Barney has written that this is about "the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity." That's almost like saying, "if you don't get it, then you're not creative in your interpretation, so sod off because I'm an artist." Oh, wait, that's the POST-modern interpretation of that sentence and what the movie would be about if it was POST-modern. But, its supposed to be Modern art. Which is about the art itself.

So, let's start this whole interpretation bit, shall we? The following lines are only 3/4 serious and should not be taken as any realistic attempt to interpret the movie.

The first half-hour concerns pearl divers and the construction of a giant ramp. Obviously, the ramp is symbolic of the need for self-elevation to whatever standards you hold dear, and the pearl divers are looking for pearls of wisdom. Then, on a whaling ship, they build a crate that looks like it is in the crude shape of a whale. Obviously a crude element of foreshadowing.

On the ship, they make whale fat inside the shape of the whale, and take out the fins portion. They replace this with a spinal column and later a giant turd. These are supposed to be the states of the movie itself. When its fat, its entertaining but bad for you. When it is the spinal column, its the "important" parts of the movie, or the backbone so to speak. Then, the giant turd is the bowels of the movie, or when the movie is crap.

Bjork and Matthew Barney the arrive on separate ships, are put into strange humiliating outfits which AREN'T EVEN WELL MADE OR SYMMETRICAL, one suspects that they ran out of money and Barney was trying to quit smoking. SO, they put patches on his head. They go through a ritual and learn about the ship from a Japanese wise man, who tells them that the ship is scarred from when another ship hit it; a crash or intersection, if you will. This inspires Bjork and Barney, who are different on the outside, to start cutting each other's legs off and eat them so they could turn into whales themselves and be the same person. They intersect. Oh, did I forget to mention that this has been done in a Robbie Williams video? Then, the pearl divers come back with their mouths full of pearls of knowledge which they let fall to make a stupid Venn Diagram. Barney made it through 8th grade geometry, obviously. Or, maybe at least some social studies.

Oh, and did I forget Bjork's ear-gouging I-want-to-kill-her score? At times it is hypnotic, but at others you just want to assassinate her.

Art film is one thing, but when you just throw up all sorts of symbolism in the hopes of getting a reaction out of people, it becomes a self-destructive joke. When do you cross the line between becoming a joke in terms of art? Dali and Bunuel frequently made surreal pieces of nonsense but were more coherent and/or entertaining than this piece of trash. Un Chien Andalou had the sensibility to cram as much symbolism as it could into less than half an hour.

So, can I recommend this? Only if you like dull HIGH ART films with lots of symbolism and flat imagery.

D+


I watched this movie as a preview of a Matthew Barney art exhibit. It certainly prepared me. I almost skipped the exhibit and, in retrospect, probably should have.

Aside from the score being great (Bjork) and the photography rich and colorful, the content was mostly tedious and predictable. Gee, I really needed to see someone wearing pearls to figure out what the pearl-divers were up to. The film was mostly a silly mixture of Japanese cultural references and industrial shots of modern whaling technology being used in a mock-hunt/harvest. The film "peaks" with enough gratuitous shock-art to turn your stomach.

What was the point of the movie? While others might argue that it is an anti-whaling piece, one could equally argue that it somehow also justifies whaling. Personally I think it was Barney's attempt at "flashing" the audience with his anal, fecal, self-mutilation, and cannibalistic fetishes.

Bottom line: unless you really get off on Barney's sense of art, don't bother seeing this movie. The message is obscure, the pace slow, and the cultural references pretentious. If you're after shock-art, you'll do better at one of the many "Undead" movies or hunting down an old copy of Hustler and taking in a fecal-cartoon.


I couldn't agree more with another reviewer that mentioned Jodorowsky.

Barney seems to be utterly boring and uninspired "content-wise". He can produce eye-candy (and I like candy), but its pretentiousness and fundamental artistic emptiness just diminishes all the joy.

I am afraid that many people don't distinguish between similar (but really only on the surface) works of Jodorowsky or even more linear film-makers like Tarkovski or Kubrick (I love 2001 Odyssey and was never bored through the ending scenes...) That kind of art as M.Barney's makes adds confusion and fends off the viewers that could otherwise start to appreciate experimental cinema. Typical empty post-modern "conceptual" art. And check his interviews. I just don't buy it, sorry. And so boring.

I was never bored seeing Alejandro Jodorowsky's movies, while Drawing Restraint 9 was an utter disappointment. Especially while it offered the possibilities to be something, to actually tell something in a non-linear unorthodox way (like the beginning and the great choreographed dance and preparations for the ship to sail out. Ships "meeting" on the sea... Ideas of feces as an object of value(if it was feces). Those "pearl" divers... Everything could construct a great surreal movie with some content. But it didn't. ANd those horrible pretentious scenes of dressing up and fake tea ceremony... How vain and fake and philosophically pretentious but empty can it get?

I has some great picturesque scenes, but the whole movie became so boring and pretentious and utterly empty and fake that it made me physically sick.

And it doesn't have good tempo. I like slow pace movies, but this was just boring in some scenes - because it was pretentious and fake - so I was just forced to witnessed prolonged scenes of artistic vanity...

That kind of movies just kill the art and spirit in my view.

I want more Jodorowsky!!!


Don't get the impression from other reviewers that this film stinks cos it's ambivalent about the Japanese whaling industry (which, morally, is no worse than the US meat trade or the Scottish haggis cull), it stinks cos it's pretentious tosh, the sort of up-its-own-behind guff that gets modern art a bad name. That said, there are some stunning images, but there are stunning images in the average bus ride if you use your imagination, so that's no reason to go and see this nonsense. What happens in the film happens very slowly and often accompanied by a soundtrack that sounds like a cat being gutted, and then, just when you thinks it's finished, it starts again. I saw it it in a porn cinema in Rome which had been hired for the weekend to show Barney's film works, which is an admirable and clever way to reclaim what had once been a local fleapit from the dirty-old-men-in-macs brigade, but if the trendy young things and the slightly older beard-stroking Bjork fans were to be honest, everyone might have had a lot more fun if they'd just shown one of the pornoes!


Slow and nice images changed one another, with sometimes annoying music (you know Bjork) in background, for the first 75% of the movie. If you did not have enough sleep, that's a good time.

But, in the last 20% of the movie director decides to bring idea of re-birth, re-incarnation or else, through S&M images: "spiritual lovers" are cutting each others bodies with knives. For me it was very much disturbing and actually changed general impression of blend of abstract art and images of modern Japanese mystery.

Operator and director are great, but weird.

Did not enjoy it at all.


This has got to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen! There were people leaving the theatre, others were falling asleep (ok, it was a late night show)... This is a no-sense movie, one of those who can make you never want to see an out of mainstream picture again. I would love to watch the making-off of this movie as I am deeply interested on what goes on the minds of the authors of such garbage. Do they laugh when they create all this ridiculous stuff or do they actually think they're doing something interesting? I wonder... The soundtrack is awful apart from some instrumental stuff that reminds you of a previous Bjork album. Even if you're a fan of Bjork's music, stay home. It's the best thing to do. The little, tiny, pieces of nice music are no reason for you to go out and submit yourself to this torture. God!...


I thought it would at least be aesthetically beautiful. It was slow, pretentious, and boring. I almost fell asleep. There are some decent songs, but there is this one song at the end which is just some guy yelling out "Yaowwww!" while someone taps randomly on a wooden object. That being said, there are some pretty songs, but it's not worth seeing hte movie over. Go on itunes (they have the album), preview it, and choose the good ones.

Half the movie is some guy making tea. Well, that's a slight exaggeration. But you'll see what I mean if you see it. That being said: DON'T SEE IT!


"Drawing Restraint 9" is a kind of movie one either loves or hates; fortunately or not, I left it with a strong feeling of wasted time and of being thoroughly stuffed with "killing whales is bad" propaganda. Aesthetically, the movie could have been pleasing, especially its first half, until it is not clear that every action portrayed serves as an allegory of various aspects of whale hunting. Until then, it might be slightly amusing to look at daily chores of japan workers, but later it becomes obvious that anything that appears on the screen is a propaganda, and no single frame is an exception. I use the word "propaganda" because the movie uses basically the old morality play device, where "good" and "bad" are not deduced in the course of action but are set in stone. Probably it's just me, but I find such type of art shallow and preconceived, even when it's all about the noble (no sarcasm here) quest of protecting the environment.

In my opinion it is a cardinal sin when a movie material is stretched out without any justification, for the sake of stretching only. In my opinion, "Drawing Restraint 9" could've been easily fit into 75 minutes, but has a torturous length of 2 and 1/4 hours. Yes, there were interesting shots, but there were not enough of these to leave 15-minute gaps of nothingness without notice. The movie has no standard scenario, and there's no evolution of characters, but neither it is a documentary, it's rather a kind of conceptual installation. That's an unusual form for a movie, but it still can be viewed as art even when the concept is as simple and naive as here. OTOH I also believe that the director should've had some honesty and did not pretend that it could be only delivered in no less than 135 minutes.

And yes, the music score mostly resembled whale sounds. How surprising.

2/10.


Renowned cinematographer Freddie Francis (Glory, The Elephant Man) directs this pretty bad horror/drama film. 19th Century England has a different view of how the practice of medicine should be handled than Dr. Thomas Rock, the law stating that only the bodies of hung criminals can be studied and experimented on. But the stockpile of these bodies is a small one, and Rock needs more - and he prefers them fresher. Being a maverick within his circle, he begins to pay people to find bodies for him to study and test on. Desperate sleazebags Robert Fallon and Timothy Broom get wind of this job opportunity and begin to murder people and sell these bodies to Rock. Naturally, this kind of action has even worse consequences than practicing on the dead bodies of non-criminals, and leads to trouble for everyone. While the overall story sounds intriguing on paper, almost everything about The Doctor And The Devils is laughably bad.

After the first fifteen minutes of the film you are already beginning to question your decision of sitting down to watch the film. The entire look of the film is just ugly. Seeing as how the film takes place in the slums of England during the 19th Century, the filmmakers were probably going for an "ugly" look, but they don't do it in an artful way. Everything from the sets to the cinematography just look cheap, feeble, and disgusting. Also, just about everything scene is filled with something that you simply cannot take seriously, and most of the time this has to do with someone (both in the small and large roles) doing something that looks or sounds completely ridiculous. Francis sure didn't help out his actors much.

Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea play the twisted buddies of the film, Fallon and Broom respectively, and are very bombastic but very bad. Their characters are by nature crazy, but Pryce and Rea overact the parts to death. They especially have trouble keeping the same accent from shot to shot - Pryce in particular goes from Cockney to Irish to Long John Silver to some kind of lagoon creature and so on and so forth. It's also a humor riot to see Twiggy in this film at all, let alone playing an in-demand street whore, since she can't act to save her life (though her song during the final credits isn't so funny). Boy she sure came a long way: from "flower power" to "I'll take mee clothes off for a shillin'!" As bad as those three actors are in this film, Julian Sands takes home the award for the worst performance of the film. He is just as lame as it gets, giving one laugh-out-loud attempt after another at portraying anger, love, happiness, anxiety - pick an emotion, any emotion!

There's only one good thing about The Doctor And The Devils: Timothy Dalton's performance of Dr. Rock. Despite being surrounded by cinematic sewage, Dalton is quite excellent; giving an electric portrayal of an overly driven yet good natured man. Too bad the rest of the film could not have been as good as Mr. Dalton....


As others have noted, this should have been an excellent Hammer-style film, and it seems to me that that's how most of the actors were instructed to play it... but the screenplay is so leaden, poorly paced, and filled with a lot of dull soliloquies (poor Timothy Dalton is saddled with most of them) that it's all too overblown and self-important. This is an uncharacteristically weak performance from Dalton, although he quietly nails the climactic scene where Dr. Rock finally realizes what he's done. The only actor who comes off really well is Patrick Stewart who is a most welcome sight. Freddie Francis may have been a great cinematographer, but he was a lousy director.


This film is probably the worst film that I have ever seen. I'm studying french at college and thus understood all the dialog, so the language barrier wasn't an issue. I must say it is really hard to empathize with any of the characters depicted in the movie. There is only one professional actor in the cast and I'm guessing no professional directors or writers.

Although I have rated it 1 out of 10 it probably doesn't merit such a poor rating. This is merely a futile effort of lowering its current overall rating of 7.3 to something more realistic. Perhaps 4.3 would be a more accurate rating because the film is a true non-event 100 minutes or so in length that you will never get back.

The real shame is that I am sure some college student is busting his nut making a film twice as good and half the length. However if you want to join the bandwagon which seems to be rolling around IMDb you might as well go ahead give "Lost in Translation" a 10 as well.


This is a story of a Jewish dysfunctional family. The parents have divorced and mom remains back east in the house. The father, Murray Abromowitz, moves with his children to California, and moves around Beverly Hills so that his children can get the best education possible.

Things really become funny when Marisa Tomei, Murray's niece, comes to lives with the group.

The film deals with the various adventures of the family complicated by the drug scene of the affluent neighborhood.

Jessica Walter costars as a woman who wants Murray to move in with her since she wants a companion.

Carl Reiner and Rita Moreno come in towards the end. They play Murray's brother and sister-in-law respectively; they're also the parents of Tomei. In front of the children, Reiner lets loose reminding Murray that he has been paying the bills for them all along.

The film ends on a sour note as the embarrassed family moves out of their fancy digs and take to riding around Beverly Hills in their car. I guess the film is promoting independence and some good old self-esteem.


---what happened to these unlikeable people. Alan Arkin was, as usual, unfunny and just walks through the role. The kids are all a mess. Mariesa Tomei probably wishes this role had never come her way. And what are Carl Reiner and Rita Moreno doing in this really bad, mean movie? If you enjoy watching losers wallow in their disfunction, and not try in any way to do better, this is your film. All others, take a walk, read a book, or see something else.

Jane


The most difficult thing about this movie is to say anything positive about it. The characters were stereotypical "white-trash", the movie's "plot" was stunted from the beginning, and the worst feature of this movie was that the nudity was so blatantly from body doubles it was funny. Regretfully, that was the only funny thing in the movie. Ms. Jenkins would be better served if in the future, she would refrain from using her life-story to "entertain" people. It was simply that bad. The one positive aspect of this movie (this has nothing to do with the lack-of-quality of the film) is that my brother shelled out the money for this stinker.


From the critical acclaim, I expected more from this movie and from Tamara Jenkins. The story just meandered along and didn't seem to have a point or a plot. And I find it hard to believe that a 14 year old girl (mature for her age or no) would be so blase about getting the loss of her virginity "over with." Maybe I am too young to relate (I was four years old in 1976), but I didn't have any problems connecting with the stories of Shakespeare in Love or Life is Beautiful and I wasn't alive for either of those settings. The cast is very good but unfortunately for them the script did not alow them to engage the audience. Overall, Slums had its moments but unless you are yearning to reminisce over halter tops and tube socks, I would say skip this one.


I was really looking forward to this movie based on the previews and press it received, but after viewing it I was terribly disappointed. Slums is a totally unfunny film mixed with a Todd Solondz type of disturbing family reality sans Todd's brand of humor. The story drags along and each scene is worse than the last. Maybe I missed the point, but if this film is an example of every girl's growing up experience I am glad to be a man.


The film did what it set out to do: show how a young girl copes with poverty and grows into her maturity. However, for most of us, this subject has been explored adequately and in most instances with more sophistication than done here. The movie fixated on breasts, which soon became boring and I lost interest. If this was on TV, I would've switched to the latest news on the Starr Report. That's how boring I found this movie.


Tierney's an authentic tough guy, but this movie misfire from normally competent RKO undercuts his impact at every turn. The script is about as plausible as OJ Simpson at a Ten Cmmandments dinner. Just count the times Tierney's incredible car companions swallow one lame excuse after another for his evasive and violent acts. The old cliché about it "only happening in the movies" applies here in spades. Then there's the guy playing the watchman, who appears to have wandered in from a boozy WC Fields comedy, ruining the menacing mood in the process. The static one-room sets don't help either, and neither does director Feist's obvious lack of feel for the material. Then add a final car chase missing both imagination and pay-off, and the results are pretty flat. In fact the movie only picks up in the station-house scenes where hard-bitten cops discover the hidden powers of innocent-looking gas station attendants. Too bad that Tieney's career never really gelled. I gather that was due largely to being as big a tough guy off-screen as on and getting in one sleazy scrape after another. His ice-cold manner and clarity of emotion remind me at times of Lee Marvin at his tough-guy best. Anyway this project might have worked as a radio play, but as a movie with a promising noir title, it's a disappointment.


"This story is dedicated to women," according to the introduction, "who have been fighting for their rights ever since Adam and Eve started the loose-leaf system." When "Politics" was filmed, the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was only a decade old. And, the film deals with the wielding of political power by women as a voting group. Advocating prohibition, and shutting down speakeasies, was a main concern for women at the time.

Good-natured Marie Dressler (as Hattie Burns) becomes politically active, after a young woman is shot and killed coming out of a speakeasy. She wants the liquor-selling joints closed; and, is drafted into a Mayoral run, after delivering a powerful speech at a women's rally. Ms. Dressler is supported by her tenants, best friend Polly Moran (as Ivy Higgins) and her stuttering husband Roscoe Ates (as Peter Higgins). Dressler's run for Mayor of Lake City draws opposition from men in town; so, Dressler orders the women to go on strike, denying them, "everything" in the "parlor, bedroom, and bath."

The film sounds much better than it turned out. The humor, frankly, isn't too good; and, it features some unfunny and moderately offensive situations ("You look like Madame Queen" refers to an Amos and Andy character). And, the mixing of shootings and slapstick doesn't mix well, this time. Producers might have considered making the film more dramatic, focusing exclusively on Dressler and the characters played by William Bakewell (as Benny Emerson) and Karen Morley (as Myrtle Burns).

**** Politics (7/25/31) Charles Reisner ~ Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Roscoe Ates


I have not seen this movie in ages but figured I'd comment on it anyway, mostly because the memory of disliking it so intently is burned into my memory cells. The original THE GETAWAY was no prize to begin with but at least had the distinctions of being 1) A Sam Peckinpah movie, 2) Featured Steve McQueen, Ben Johnson, and Slim Pickens, 3) Was a relatively painless way to blow away an hour and a half of time.

By comparison, the 1994 version comes across as little more than a vanity piece for the then red hot Alec Baldwin and his soon to be divorced wife, Kim Basinger. McQueen and his then wife Allie McBride also split up soon after their version of the film was made and one can sort of picture the Baldwins at their marriage councilor arguing over who's stupid idea it was to make this movie.

Let's just get it said and out of the way -- Alec Baldwin never was and never will be anything close to the Cooler King, and one of the reasons why this remake annoyed me so much is the perceived arrogance on Baldwin's part to presume to challenge our memory of Steve McQueen in the lead role. Like someone else points out, Peckinpah's 1972 vision of the film was a satire piece meant to sort of parody the action/adventure heist genre. By contrast Baldwin, Bassinger & company seem to be trying to evoke a more serious tone, with only Michael Madsen's and James Woods' slimy unprincipled villain characters coming off as real people.

The movie is also decidedly mean spirited and unlikeable at a fundamental level that is difficult to put into words. One viewing was more than enough, not just because it didn't have anything new to offer but because of how artlessly it was made. Peckinpah's movie was actually a stylish little entertainment that had an upbeat mood, where this version is a slog that takes too long to amount to little or nothing. There's no artistic urgency to it's existence and some of the more uncomfortable scenes are so uncomfortable that they make the film difficult to enjoy.

So I don't know, this was probably one of the films that helped to initiate the wave of pointless, artistically vapid big budget remakes propped up around a then name brand actor/actress, which in itself isn't a really good thing. I'd always rather see a filmmaker at least try to come up with a new idea for a movie & fall flat with something original. This movie just made me want to pull my eyebrows out, and it's revealing that over the ensuing 15 years since it's release Mr. Baldwin has become widely renowned as one of the biggest jerks in Hollywood. Thank god for "Team America" for putting him in his place.

3/10


SPOILERS THROUGHOUT:

The Gettaway is mostly an action movie. And what action there is to!! Shootouts, chases, dumpsters and much much more. It stars Kim Bassenger and Alec Baldwin as the Mc Coy's.

This is a remake and I have not seen the original but really didn't care for this one at all although Bassenger and Baldwin have some nice screen chemistry. But the movie itself didn't do it for me.

The Gettaway became really tiresome really quickly. The plot is overshadowed by one fight/chase after another and as the violence keeps piling up, Bassenger and Baldwin retain their great looks no matter what perils they maybe in. In fact, by the end of the movie they almost look BETTER then in the beginning. I don't think Bassenger's eye makeup moves once during the whole picture.

This isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, certainly not, but it isn't very good and unless one is an action movie purist I can't see really enjoying this movie because there's just not a lot here. The Gettaway isn't terribly original either, and goes every way from unnecessarily brutal to rather dull. It really could have been better I think.

Bassenger and Baldwin give OK performances but they don't have a lot to do except get chased and run for their lives. Sometimes less is more, after seeing the same thing over and over again it gets stale. Didn't enjoy this one to much.


I cannot see why filmmakers remade this movie.

The 1972 movie with McQueen and McGraw is almost a classic. Steve McQueen was an outstanding actor and Baldwin is only an inadequate actor. He has no passion in his play.Also the action in the original "Getaway" was fantastic. But the remake has no action! It is almost boring despite the fact that the film-making in 1972 was more difficult than in 1994.

I don't understand the way that Baldwin imprisoned from Mexico. I think this is a mistake in the story.

So i think that there was no need to remake it, or if they decided to remake a classic, they must choose an excellent actor for the first role, like Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt...


Back when Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger were a mercurial, hot-tempered, high-powered Hollywood couple they filmed this (nearly) scene-for-scene remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen-Ali MacGraw action-thriller about a fugitive twosome. It almost worked the first time because McQueen was such a vital presence on the screen--even stone silent and weary, you could sense his clock ticking, his cagey magnetism. Baldwin is not in Steve McQueen's league, but he has his charms and is probably a more versatile actor--if so, this is not a showcase for his attributes. Basinger does well and certainly looks good, but James Woods is artificially hammy in a silly mob-magnet role. A sub-plot involving another couple taken hostage by Baldwin's ex-partner was unbearable in the '72 film and plays even worse here. As for the action scenes, they're pretty old hat, which causes one to wonder: why even remake the original? ** from ****


Don't even bother with this movie, it's bad when judged on it's own merits, but when compared to the 1972 original (which IS a classic) it's down right awful. And BTW, somebody commented that the 1972 movie is bad when compared to the book. This is silly, movies should never be judged against the books they are taken from. They are 2 completely different art forms (as if this needed to be pointed out but apparently it does). If you used this criteria for all movies then "2001" would suck and so would "Forest Gump" and "Silence of the Lambs".


Nowhere near the original. It's quite accurate copy bringing nothing new to the story. But the directing is very poor. Basinger is weak - without good directing. Baldwin is simply just a second league compared to McQueen. I watched it just out of curiosity, being a huge fan of Peckinpah's masterpiece, and I got what I thought. Almost a B movie with second rate acting and directing. I wasn't even disappointed, I just don't know what they were trying to do. This remake doesn't try to play with the original material, it's not a tribute and indeed it lacks some really good actor of its era.

It reminds me of a bad xerox copy of wonderful photograph.

This is a complete waste of your time. Save yourself 2 hours or watch the original (again:)))


Any one who saw the original would have to go out and destroy this dreadful remake. Alex Baldwin trying to imitate the late Steve Mcqueen in a word for word remake just doesn't work. While Baldwin has done some admirable work this is a flop from start to finish. McQueen had charisma, never try to compete with a star. As for Kim in the role of Ali McGraw enough said. McQueen looked dangerous, menacing and believable as Doc, the film had excitement and suspense,Baldwin and company made this into a comedy,I laughed the one and only time I saw this miserable film. And that dreadful hairstyle for Michael Madsen who is one of today's more exciting and believable actors! Did the makeup people have it in for Michael, what were they thinking.If you wish to see movie-making the way it was under Sam Peckinpah's direction Get the original!


What's in here ?! Let me tell you. It's the presence of (Alec Baldwin). He's not a great actor but maybe a nice star with some good movies which this is not one of them. He did nothing here more than anything he did before or after. So not to mention (literally !) the matter of (Steve McQueen) being at the same role in the original because I don't want to make that comparison in the first place. I'm not a big fan or even a fan of (Kim Basinger), she got a lot of bad movies on her and even at her best she looks average ! And it gets on my nerve indeed whenever they talk about her seductive rare beauty !!?? Well, if being a blond would make anyone captivating then I'll dye my hair in yellow as soon as possible ! And what is it with all the craziness over miss Basinger's Legs ??!! It's surely insanity or bad tasting ? As I don't see them both as not sexy only, but UGLY too ! And if you hate that so shoot me down but you know what ?! I've just watched this movie so I'm dead already !. Yet, what would make you really suffer in unbearable way is that nothing of the credits goes to the one she deserves the mostAnd of course I mean (Jennifer Tilly)..Now we're talking about a true genuine seductive chick with such unforgettable body and one unique sense of allurement like a nasty brunette (Marilyn Monroe) however much more healthier !! (I can't help it, she was the only new and watchable thing in here !). (Michael Madsen) as the bad guy was much appealing as well as effective more than the good guys, (James Woods) is here to summarize the early events beside the pool (so the trailer would be by his voice later !) and he knew before all that this is a whole Hollywood's stuff so "Do your thing, take your cash, and good luck as an actor in other movies !", the editing gave the movie a serious personality along with violent atmosphere done by suitable shining cinematography, so the main goods of it (The action, The thrill, ..) are here and fairly well-made, though any echo for deep meanings about (the kinds of betrayal) as the main dramatic motif of the whole thing is not that strong so don't wait for it. OK, it's all in all another remake without anything special (Except Jennifer Tilly's spicy moments !) so I think I tried to be objective as much as I could therefore I shouldn't end my review saying that (Basinger) or anyone here did better than this movie.. It would be an insult because frankly.. Anything is better than this movie!


POSSIBLY VERY MINOR SPOILERS

This movie is billed as the first Russian horror movie. Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, "The Witch" (its Russian title) will take a place of dishonor in the gallery of horrible Russian movies. It is based on Nikolai Gogol's story "Viy" which is a classic in Russia. "Based" is the key word here since no familiarity with the story is required. Instead, the less you know about Gogol, the better.

It is a unique production because we are quite used to directors taking stories from other cultures and adapting them to their own culture. The spate of American remakes of foreign films is a prime example, but then again, Sturgess turned Kurosawa's Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven with splendid results, and Kurosawa transferred Shakespeare's Macbeth into Japan to make an incredibly powerful Throne in Blood, while King Lear became a riveting Ran. However, with "The Witch," we have Russians transplanting a Russian classical tale onto the American soil. The movie was shot in Estonia in English with the aim of dubbing it into English using American actors and have reasonably synchronous lip movements.

As a natural consequence, lost is the colorful Ukrainian background for the story, in comes a drab American small town seemingly lifted from some outdated horror book manual. Gone is the boozy seminarian Khoma Brutus, instead we have a boozy journalist who is about to win Pullitzer prize, and who at the same time writes about X-Files-like events and frequents Miss Boobs contests. (I never thought Pullitzer prize was given for that kind of writing, now I humbly stand corrected.) In a strange nod to Russianness, the journalist is named Ivan Berkhoff. They should've named him John Smith because it is impossible to get more hackneyed, clichéd and generic than this movie.

Berkhoff goes to a town named Castleville, gets stranded on a dirt road, staggers on until he finds a dilapidated house and is rather un-welcomed by an old crone. All that to the accompaniment of a radio announcement about the forces of evil being at their most powerful, and people better staying indoors and avoiding water. Need I mention that it's raining really hard? After a few supposedly frightening scenes which had me laughing, the story finds our journalist dressed as a priest, he's mistaken for a priest, and the local sheriff tells him his daughter who died after being brutally attacked wanted the new priest to pray for her for three nights. At this point, the action supposedly starts. Those who have time to kill are welcome to it.

What is wrong with this film? Everything, starting with the dialog and down to the prop department. The dialog which I heard in Russian was clearly originally written in English, and it was compiled exclusively from clichés and platitudes picked from American films. The actors just as clearly struggled with English because the timing of their speech was labored and unnatural, and the Russian dubbing followed suit. The acting is mostly atrocious, and not only because the actors find it often difficult to talk but because they don't have anything approaching a range of facial expressions. For the most part, they're just blank or you wish they were. The only exceptions being the sheriff played by Lembit Ulfsak, a fine Estonian actor, and Arnis Lizitis who plays a wheelchair bound resident of Castleville. Oh, and a rooster of course who's absolutely natural on camera! I know actors complain of being upstaged by dogs and cats but when Nikolaev is upstaged by a rooster it is a sad testimony to the general quality of acting in the film.

There wasn't a single scary moment in the entire film, and there wasn't a single original moment in the film either. Mind you, this comment's coming from somebody who's rather inexperienced with horror. The film is filled with standard moves used in horror movie since the genre's inception. At a critical moment, the camera lingers lovingly on a kerosene lamp. The lamp promptly goes out. It must have seen a few horror movies, too. An example of supreme idiocy comes at another moment, a character jumps out of a bathtub and runs at the camera. He's wearing something the looks like loincloth! It doesn't get any more idiotic than this!

Those in Russia who liked it claim it should've been advertised as a mystical thriller. I wasn't thrilled either. It was run-of-the-mill from start to finish. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the entire population of the little town behaved as if they knew exactly they lived in a horror movie, except they weren't quite sure whether it had zombies or not. Therefore, some of them acted zombie-like just in case.

The makers of the film say it's about finding faith. Such a fine collections of idiotic actions, stupidly contrived moments, and, yes, clichés, doesn't deserve to be about finding faith. The movie is so thoroughly and utterly fake it deserves only to be an exhibit in a wax figure museum.


Nikolai Gogol's story "Viy" has been filmed again and released to home video in the US via Faith Films.

The original story concerns a priest who has to watch over the body of a witch with only his faith to protect him. Greatly expanded and set in America, though clearly filmed in Russia (the houses,clothing and furnishing are all wrong despite the English signs), this is an odd film that doesn't really work.Part of it is the weird setting that tries very hard to be backwoods America but clearly isn't.There are also some weird, intentionally oblique moments as the main character being a reporter at the start and a priest a short time later. I'm not sure why they did that, even after watching the making of piece on the DVD) The other problem is the dubbing which is beyond awful. Its done in such away that everyone speaks when their lips are not on camera- or if they are the voices don't even remotely match the lip flaps. I don't know if its Faith Films fault or that of the producers who made the film hoping to dump into the West (revealed in the making of piece).

The film isn't very good. As I've said it has all sorts of technical issues that just make this an odd ball curio. Despite some really good looking horror images the film never works as a horror film. As film to engender faith its much too confused in this retelling to amount to make anyone feel anyone closer to god.

Given the choice I'd give it a pass, even at a bargain bin price. My advice would be to find the 1960's version of the tale called Viy which will bring both some shivers and some understanding about a belief in god.


Ivan (Valeri Nikolayev) is a bitter, cynical journalist who investigates the unexplained. He travels to this small town where it's said that a witch (Ita Ever) is terrorizing the community.

His car stalls and he takes refuge in a small building, and meets a beautiful, mysterious girl. Suddenly she turns into a demon and he kills her, and the town is wondering who murdered this woman...who I guess was the witch but I am not entirely sure. Ivan is now being pursued by her spirit, or something, and he has to have faith, or something, to beat it.

I really hate Christian films. They are usually filled with lame actors, stupid storyline and minimal effects. Not to mention that this isn't just a Christian film...but a foreign one as well. The voice-over actor for Ivan made the movie more comical than terrorizing, because it is so high pitched and whiny. You won't miss much by missing out on this film.