ORBzine - 2000.6 Television Movie Review Special!

ORBzine - Movie Reviews - June 2000

TITLE & REVIEW

The Court Jester

Danny Kaye is a circus-performer who joined forces with a Robin Hood-alike who calls himself The Black Fox. Basil Rathbone is the villainous Lord Ravenhurst, the King's advisor. Angela Lansbury is the King's spoilt bitchy daughter - an extremely flawed character, but this reviewer assumes that the writers meant her to be sympathetic when she demands that she be allowed to marry for love.
This film is best known now as the inspiration for an episode of Xena where Joxer, the comic-relief character, becomes a magnificent hero. As the title character Kaye switches from Errol Flynn-style daring-do to comedy bumbling.

Search This Site

Day of the Triffids, The

This is an adaption of the novel by John Wyndham Earth is witness to a display of meteorites the like of which has never been seen before. The only person who cannot see them is Howard Keel, the square-jawed American hero [from a US Navy ship in Southampton] who has just had an eye operation.
Keel wakes up to find himself alone in the hospital - the only sign of life is a distant scream. The glare of the meteorites has burned out the optic nerve of every living thing that watched them.
The blind wander the streets like a horde of zombies, grabbing and clutching at Keel as he passes. In many ways they are more terrifying than the Triffids themselves - it is extremely reminiscent of the zombie scenes in George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The difference? The Triffids themselves are 7 feet tall and move faster than one would expect.

Search This Site

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

This is a typical James Cameron sequel - everything is bigger, flashier and more expensive than the original but the script is more or less the same. Schwarzenegger appears in a flash of light among HGVs and takes out a gang of bikers so he can take their clothes. Robert Patrick [Fire in the sky], a smaller Biehn-like guy, appears and takes out a cop.
Edward Furlong plays the teenage John Connor, a juvenile delinquent who rides around on an motorbike playing Guns 'n Roses tune You could be mine! His mother Sarah [ Linda Hamilton , Cameron's now ex-wife] is in a top-security mental hospital after trying unsuccessfully to blow up Cyberdyne Systems. John is in the custody of a very unlikely pair of white-trash foster parents - the stepmother is Cameron veteran Jeanette Goldstein!
When the 2 time-travellers meet it becomes obvious that Big Arnie is the good guy. And when Patrick heals multiple gunshot wounds and an explosive car crash we know that he is not human. Arnie is a T101, as in the first film - but this time he is up against a T1000 liquid-metal terminator!
Arnie uses John Wayne's True Grit trick of cocking a lever-action gun one-handed, and later on throws Biehn's line from the original - Come with me if you want to live. In other words, he is ultra-cool; this film made him the biggest star ever, until the next year when his Last Action Hero went up against Spielberg 's Jurassic Park and pretty much destroyed Arnie's career.
Schwarzenegger's more recent End of Days has been lauded as an anti-violence movie because of the ending, where Big Arnie realises that his gun is not the answer and throws it away. However, that element of the film was stolen from the second Terminator effort; John Connor demands that Schwarzenegger does not kill anyone. As for gun control politics, the T1000 stabs most of its victims to death.
Joe Morton is the token black guy, the designer who builds Skynet.
The BBC TV version is edited for some of the violence, but contains the Michael Biehn scene missing from the Cinema cut.

Harrison Bergeron

This is a Canadian TV movie adapted from a 3-page short story by Kurt Vonnegut
After the Cold War came the Great Recession - remember, this film was made in the mid-1990s. By 2018 only 15% of the American population had jobs. The USA was divided between the Elite and the Lumpenproletariat; the proles rioted and brought about the Second American Revolution. They re-wrote the Constitution to state that All men are not created equal, and it is the responsibility of Government to make them so.
The society was reduced to a 1950s American Dream utopia, but with Fascist Governance in evidence. For example, there are televised executions by firing squad for tax evasion and shoplifting. In Florida the death penalty is extended to traffic violations.
Enforced averageness is the norm, with everyone handicapped down to the average level of skill and ability. computerised dating arranges all marriages; smart men are matched with stupid women so as to produce average children.
Harrison is played by Sean Astin [Goonies]. His intellect is so vast he is going to be lobotomised so as to make him average. However, he is initiated into a secret organisation of geniuses [run by Christopher Plummer] who actually run the country and manage the average-enforcement. There he discovers the centre where all the TV channels in the USA are broadcast from. In a satirical moment, the Television Department Director tells him Even in the old days television would descend to the level of the lowest common denominator, although sometimes some quality would slip through.
Everything builds up to a climax which is more or less an adaption of the original story. As in the story, the ending is downbeat - but it does have a glimmer of hope at the end.

Sinbad the Sailor

Like Kaye's Court Jester, this 1947 offering is more a period piece than a Fantasy epic. There is no use of magick, merely conjurors' mumery - and unlike the later Ray Harryhausen films there are no spectacular monsters.
Douglas Fairbanks Jnr takes the title role, while Anthony Quinn is the villain. Maureen O'Hara is the woman they are fighting over.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD

This is the second of the 1960s big-budget Dr Who flicks, with Peter Cushing cast in the central role. Bernard Cribbins is the new assistant, a 1960s police officer who accidentally ends up in the Tardis and finds himself in the year 2150.
Earth has been conquered by the Daleks, who rule with the help of their cybernetically controlled human slaves. The Doctor and his companions join up with the London resistance, and try to save the world.

Search This Site

Cutthroat Island

Yet another Hollywood attempt at historical drama-cum-action movie. Renny Harlin , Hollywood's top action & cliche director, cast his wife Geena Davis [Earth Girls Are Easy ] as Morgan, a female pirate. The token black guy on her crew is Boomer from Battlestar Galactica
Frank Langella [ The Ninth Gate ] is her villainous uncle Dog, who is after the other parts of a treasure map he shared with his 2 brothers. He kills Morgan's father, but she gets away with the map. However, she cannot read it because it is written in latin.
Matthew Modine plays a con-man who is captured by the Governor [Patrick Malahide] and his sidekick, Captain Trotter. Modine is sold into slavery, and because he speaks latin he is bought by Morgan. Yes, the historical accuracy is correct insofar as there WERE white slaves in the 1600s!

Search This Site

Outland

Peter Hyams remake of High Noon set in a mining colony on Io. Sean Connery is the Marshal who comes to clean up the town - and has to watch the clock tick until a pair of assassins [hired by gangster Peter Boyle] arrive.

Search This Site

Star Trek: Generations

To coincide with BBC2's showing of Kirk's first mission, BBC1 decided to show Kirk's last mission - the maiden voyage of the newest model of the Enterprise, model B, commanded by Alan Ruck. The under-manned ship is sent to save refugees on a ship threatened by a space anomaly called the Nexus. The Enterprise saves the refugees, including Soran [Malcolm McDowell - A Clockwork Orange and Guinan [Whoopee Goldberg].
Oddly enough Soran and Guinan's world was destroyed by the Borg; however, there is no mention in the TV show of any contacts with the Borg.
80 years later, in Picard's era, Soran is still around. He launches a trilithium probe into a sun and destroys it - and the planets in the system go up as well. The probe travels FTL, as does the shockwave!
Soran has teamed up with a couple of semi-regulars from the TV show - Lursa and B'etor, 2 Klingon sisters. The sisters take on the Enterprise while Picard beams down to Soran's launch site and tries to persuade Soran against destroying the planet's sun. The change in the gravity field will bring the Nexus to Soran's launch site, but it will destroy a planet with 230 million pre-industrial humanoids.
Data has his emotion chip inserted, and has trouble controlling the feelings he has. Geordie is captured, but the sisters relase him after hiding a camera and transmitter in his visor. Luckily for the Klingons, the sisters can read the arabic numerals used by Starfleet to denote their shield frequency.
Picard discovers that his brother and nephew burned to death in a fire. Obviously Federation tech is not so advanced that accidents do not happen. This puts Picard and Soran on the same level - both are getting older, they have both lost their familes. The difference is how they deal with it. Yet when Picard tries to talk Soran out of his genocidal plan, he neglects to use Kirk's powerful speach from the under-rated Star Trek V: Final Frontier - Our pain defines us, makes us who we are.
The Nexus is like a holodeck that provides whatever illusion the visitor's mind wants. Kirk is happiest with Antonia, a woman he met 11 years before his death and dumped 2 years later so he could return to Starfleet.
This film feels like an extended episode of the TV show, with a bigger budget that makes everything bigger and flashier. The fact that the Alien planet footage is shot on location instead of in a sound stage is definitely an improvement, though.
A number of familiar faces pop up in supporting roles.
Jeanette Goldstein is a Starfleet officer on the Enterprise-B, as is Tim Russ [ Star Trek: VGR].
Brian Thompson [ X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ] is on the Klingon ship.
Pat Tallman - AKA Lyta Alexander in Babylon 5 is one of the stunt crew.

Dante's Peak

Vulcanologist Pierce Brosnan is dispatched to survey a volcano. He hitches a lift with town Mayor Linda Hamilton , a local-living divorcee babe and thus the love-interest of the film. Note, Ms Hamilton is about 10 years closer to Brosnan's age than either of his babes in the latest Bond film, The World Is Not Enough.
Brosnan finds the lake has turned to vinegar, and 2 hikers get boiled to death while skinny-dipping in the hot springs. However, as in Jaws the powers that be do not want to believe that there is a genuine threat.
The geologist team send an unmanned robot probe into the volcano crater. Unfortunately it breaks down, and they have to go down and repair it manually.

Search This Site

Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxas

Lord Agon [David Warner - TMNT 2 ], who relies on regular human sacrifice to maintain his health.
Dar's younger brother, King Tawl, has grown up to become one of those irritating teenagers so common in Hollywood movies. Tawl is played by Casper van Dien, now famous as the star of Starship Troopers. Tawl's counselor and bodyguard is Seth, the token black guy - now played by Tony Todd [ Candyman, Star Trek: DS9
Tawl is kidnapped by the Crimson Slayers. Dar and Seth set off to save him. They meet Shada [ Sandra Hess ], a female warrior and Dar's blatant Luurve interest. She is untrustworthy by nature, which gives her an illusion of personality.
In order to enter Agon's city they have to join the circus. It is run by Morgiana [ Lesley Ann Down ], an old friend of Seth's.
The climax is straight out of Conan the Destroyer , while the end itself is reminiscent of Hawk the Slayer . Yes, it looks like this was the pilot for a TV show that, thankfully, never got made.

Event Horizon

The ship of the title, equipped with an experimental FTL drive, disappears near the planet Neptune. 7 years later she is detected in Neptune's orbit, and a rescue ship [the Lewis & Clark] is sent to recover it. The crew includes
Laurence Fishbourne [the Captain]
Joely Richardson [the 2iC]
Sean Pertwee [the Pilot]
Kathleen Quinlan [the Doctor]
Sam Neill [designer of the FTL ship]
Of note to Buffy fans, Richardson and Fishbourne both use the term five by five, now famous as Faith's line.
They arrive at their destination, and it looks derelict. The crew suit up and explore the ship, which was constructed with incredible gothic architecture. Unfortunately, as always happens in this kind of film, something goes wrong. They have to be away in 20 hours, or their oxygen will run out. Unfortunately the film does not take this into account, and we do not get the feeling of the clock ticking down.
The crew start to have visions of their worst nightmares. Neill sees his dead wife come back to haunt him. Doctor Quinlan sees the pre-teen son she left on Earth - which sets up an obvious ending for anyone who has seen Don't Look Now.
The SPFX are wonderful, and the science is less dodgy than usual in SF films. The crew use liquid-filled tubes for shock buffers while in cryo-sleep so they can survive the rigours of high-velocity travel.
The problem with the film is that it is too short at only 90 minutes long. Apparently 45 minutes of gore, mainly the ship's log that reported the fate of the original crew, was cut from the released version of the film. But what is missing is not gore - it is TENSION. This film is a suspense thriller that lacks suspense - it is just too fast-paced. Tragic, that a film made 5 years after the release of Aliens: Special Edition has not benefited from the lessons shown.

Search This Site

The Awful Dr Orloff

This is a 1962 Spanish-made film, and is actually rather well-dubbed. The doctor and his disfigured accomplice, Morpho, kidnap young women and use their skin for grafts on the doctor's disfigured daughter. The policemen investigating the kidnappings are the Gardia Civil, back when General Franco ran the country. Yes, this is actually a period piece!
This is Jess Franco 's masterpiece, and he is so proud of it that he has remade it half a dozen times.

Don't Look Now

This is Nic Roeg 's early masterpiece, based on a story by Daphne Du Marnier . Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a couple whose young daughter drowned in a pond, and to get over the grief they take a holiday - in Venice of all places!
In Venice it appears that the ghost of their daughter has followed them. We are shown haunting scenes of Sutherland chasing a tiny red-cloaked figure down the alleys of the city. The foreboding feeling that the film generates leads up to a hideous and tragic climax.
The film is famous for the Sutherland/Christie sex scene, which is reminiscent of a similar scene in Performance [which Roeg was Cinematographer for]. It was copied more recently in Out of Sight and even Buffy [Season 4]!

Search This Site

SOLO

Mario Van Peebles is a terminator-style robot. Sent into Latin America by Bill Sadler to kill commies, the robot develops a conscience.
Typical straight-to-video trash.

Requiem for a Vampire

We are taking this opportunity to introduce our new feature, the make-your-own-review! Rearrange the following words into any sentance you choose.
French
lesbian
vampire
soft-porn
cheapo
1970s
Jean Rollin

Alien

This is Ridley Scott 's first SF flick, a film noir effort that nicely leads on to his much superior Blade Runner. A ship crewed by a gang of Space-truckers stops at a deserted planetoid to investigate a distress signal. They find a crashed starship, and when they search it they discover its hold is filled with giant eggs. One of the searchers is infected with a face-hugger, and when the others take him back to the ship they doom themselves.
The cast is what would today be considered an amazing A-List.
Sigourney Weaver is the hero, Ripley - a role originally written as a man, but cast as a woman. A major star now, she was less well known then - but all the others have gone on to become well-respected supporting actors. In no particular order:
Veronica Cartwright was originally cast as Ripley, but ended up with the other female role, Lambert.
John Hurt [1984] is a token Brit, whose ending is certainly unexpected.
Yaphet Kotto [Running Man] is the token black man - a giant african-american who could almost take the Alien on hand-to-hand.
Harry Dean Stanton [ Escape from New York ] is Kotto's sidekick, who goes looking for Ripley's pet cat Jones in what has to be the film's finest sequence.
Tom Skerritt [ Space Camp ] is the Captain, who stupidly chases the beast down an air shaft armed only with a flamethrower.
Ian Holm is the other Brit - with a secret agenda of his own. Strange that a film filmed in Pinewood studios, London, with a British director only has 2 British cast members.

Fist of the North Star

This much-touted Japanese Manga cartoon is basically just a stack of cliches. A mysterious stranger staggers across a post-apocalyptic landscape and wipes out a bunch of scummy raider types. He walks into town and gets thrown in jail, where his cell-mate is the stereotypical Japanese Manga bug-eyed loud-mouthed cool teenage guy.
The stranger reveals he has a tattoo on his chest that represents a constellation - the Big Dipper! He uses mystical powers on the villains, and their heads explode. The village wise-man predicts Where the Big Dipper goes, chaos follows. It probably loses something in the translation.

TITLE & REVIEW
The Court Jester Danny Kaye is a circus-performer who joined forces with a Robin Hood-alike who calls himself The Black Fox. Basil Rathbone is the villainous Lord Ravenhurst, the King's advisor. Angela Lansbury is the King's spoilt bitchy daughter - an extremely flawed character, but this reviewer assumes that the writers meant her to be sympathetic when she demands that she be allowed to marry for love. This film is best known now as the inspiration for an episode of Xena where Joxer, the comic-relief character, becomes a magnificent hero. As the title character Kaye switches from Errol Flynn-style daring-do to comedy bumbling. Search This Site
Day of the Triffids, The This is an adaption of the novel by John Wyndham Earth is witness to a display of meteorites the like of which has never been seen before. The only person who cannot see them is Howard Keel, the square-jawed American hero [from a US Navy ship in Southampton] who has just had an eye operation. Keel wakes up to find himself alone in the hospital - the only sign of life is a distant scream. The glare of the meteorites has burned out the optic nerve of every living thing that watched them. The blind wander the streets like a horde of zombies, grabbing and clutching at Keel as he passes. In many ways they are more terrifying than the Triffids themselves - it is extremely reminiscent of the zombie scenes in George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The difference? The Triffids themselves are 7 feet tall and move faster than one would expect. Search This Site
Terminator 2: Judgement Day This is a typical James Cameron sequel - everything is bigger, flashier and more expensive than the original but the script is more or less the same. Schwarzenegger appears in a flash of light among HGVs and takes out a gang of bikers so he can take their clothes. Robert Patrick [Fire in the sky], a smaller Biehn-like guy, appears and takes out a cop. Edward Furlong plays the teenage John Connor, a juvenile delinquent who rides around on an motorbike playing Guns 'n Roses tune You could be mine! His mother Sarah [ Linda Hamilton , Cameron's now ex-wife] is in a top-security mental hospital after trying unsuccessfully to blow up Cyberdyne Systems. John is in the custody of a very unlikely pair of white-trash foster parents - the stepmother is Cameron veteran Jeanette Goldstein! When the 2 time-travellers meet it becomes obvious that Big Arnie is the good guy. And when Patrick heals multiple gunshot wounds and an explosive car crash we know that he is not human. Arnie is a T101, as in the first film - but this time he is up against a T1000 liquid-metal terminator! Arnie uses John Wayne's True Grit trick of cocking a lever-action gun one-handed, and later on throws Biehn's line from the original - Come with me if you want to live. In other words, he is ultra-cool; this film made him the biggest star ever, until the next year when his Last Action Hero went up against Spielberg 's Jurassic Park and pretty much destroyed Arnie's career. Schwarzenegger's more recent End of Days has been lauded as an anti-violence movie because of the ending, where Big Arnie realises that his gun is not the answer and throws it away. However, that element of the film was stolen from the second Terminator effort; John Connor demands that Schwarzenegger does not kill anyone. As for gun control politics, the T1000 stabs most of its victims to death. Joe Morton is the token black guy, the designer who builds Skynet. The BBC TV version is edited for some of the violence, but contains the Michael Biehn scene missing from the Cinema cut.
Harrison Bergeron This is a Canadian TV movie adapted from a 3-page short story by Kurt Vonnegut After the Cold War came the Great Recession - remember, this film was made in the mid-1990s. By 2018 only 15% of the American population had jobs. The USA was divided between the Elite and the Lumpenproletariat; the proles rioted and brought about the Second American Revolution. They re-wrote the Constitution to state that All men are not created equal, and it is the responsibility of Government to make them so. The society was reduced to a 1950s American Dream utopia, but with Fascist Governance in evidence. For example, there are televised executions by firing squad for tax evasion and shoplifting. In Florida the death penalty is extended to traffic violations. Enforced averageness is the norm, with everyone handicapped down to the average level of skill and ability. computerised dating arranges all marriages; smart men are matched with stupid women so as to produce average children. Harrison is played by Sean Astin [Goonies]. His intellect is so vast he is going to be lobotomised so as to make him average. However, he is initiated into a secret organisation of geniuses [run by Christopher Plummer] who actually run the country and manage the average-enforcement. There he discovers the centre where all the TV channels in the USA are broadcast from. In a satirical moment, the Television Department Director tells him Even in the old days television would descend to the level of the lowest common denominator, although sometimes some quality would slip through. Everything builds up to a climax which is more or less an adaption of the original story. As in the story, the ending is downbeat - but it does have a glimmer of hope at the end.
Sinbad the Sailor Like Kaye's Court Jester, this 1947 offering is more a period piece than a Fantasy epic. There is no use of magick, merely conjurors' mumery - and unlike the later Ray Harryhausen films there are no spectacular monsters. Douglas Fairbanks Jnr takes the title role, while Anthony Quinn is the villain. Maureen O'Hara is the woman they are fighting over.
Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD This is the second of the 1960s big-budget Dr Who flicks, with Peter Cushing cast in the central role. Bernard Cribbins is the new assistant, a 1960s police officer who accidentally ends up in the Tardis and finds himself in the year 2150. Earth has been conquered by the Daleks, who rule with the help of their cybernetically controlled human slaves. The Doctor and his companions join up with the London resistance, and try to save the world. Search This Site
Cutthroat Island Yet another Hollywood attempt at historical drama-cum-action movie. Renny Harlin , Hollywood's top action & cliche director, cast his wife Geena Davis [Earth Girls Are Easy ] as Morgan, a female pirate. The token black guy on her crew is Boomer from Battlestar Galactica Frank Langella [ The Ninth Gate ] is her villainous uncle Dog, who is after the other parts of a treasure map he shared with his 2 brothers. He kills Morgan's father, but she gets away with the map. However, she cannot read it because it is written in latin. Matthew Modine plays a con-man who is captured by the Governor [Patrick Malahide] and his sidekick, Captain Trotter. Modine is sold into slavery, and because he speaks latin he is bought by Morgan. Yes, the historical accuracy is correct insofar as there WERE white slaves in the 1600s! Search This Site
Outland Peter Hyams remake of High Noon set in a mining colony on Io. Sean Connery is the Marshal who comes to clean up the town - and has to watch the clock tick until a pair of assassins [hired by gangster Peter Boyle] arrive. Search This Site
Star Trek: Generations To coincide with BBC2's showing of Kirk's first mission, BBC1 decided to show Kirk's last mission - the maiden voyage of the newest model of the Enterprise, model B, commanded by Alan Ruck. The under-manned ship is sent to save refugees on a ship threatened by a space anomaly called the Nexus. The Enterprise saves the refugees, including Soran [Malcolm McDowell - A Clockwork Orange and Guinan [Whoopee Goldberg]. Oddly enough Soran and Guinan's world was destroyed by the Borg; however, there is no mention in the TV show of any contacts with the Borg. 80 years later, in Picard's era, Soran is still around. He launches a trilithium probe into a sun and destroys it - and the planets in the system go up as well. The probe travels FTL, as does the shockwave! Soran has teamed up with a couple of semi-regulars from the TV show - Lursa and B'etor, 2 Klingon sisters. The sisters take on the Enterprise while Picard beams down to Soran's launch site and tries to persuade Soran against destroying the planet's sun. The change in the gravity field will bring the Nexus to Soran's launch site, but it will destroy a planet with 230 million pre-industrial humanoids. Data has his emotion chip inserted, and has trouble controlling the feelings he has. Geordie is captured, but the sisters relase him after hiding a camera and transmitter in his visor. Luckily for the Klingons, the sisters can read the arabic numerals used by Starfleet to denote their shield frequency. Picard discovers that his brother and nephew burned to death in a fire. Obviously Federation tech is not so advanced that accidents do not happen. This puts Picard and Soran on the same level - both are getting older, they have both lost their familes. The difference is how they deal with it. Yet when Picard tries to talk Soran out of his genocidal plan, he neglects to use Kirk's powerful speach from the under-rated Star Trek V: Final Frontier - Our pain defines us, makes us who we are. The Nexus is like a holodeck that provides whatever illusion the visitor's mind wants. Kirk is happiest with Antonia, a woman he met 11 years before his death and dumped 2 years later so he could return to Starfleet. This film feels like an extended episode of the TV show, with a bigger budget that makes everything bigger and flashier. The fact that the Alien planet footage is shot on location instead of in a sound stage is definitely an improvement, though. A number of familiar faces pop up in supporting roles. Jeanette Goldstein is a Starfleet officer on the Enterprise-B, as is Tim Russ [ Star Trek: VGR]. Brian Thompson [ X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ] is on the Klingon ship. Pat Tallman - AKA Lyta Alexander in Babylon 5 is one of the stunt crew.

Dante's Peak Vulcanologist Pierce Brosnan is dispatched to survey a volcano. He hitches a lift with town Mayor Linda Hamilton , a local-living divorcee babe and thus the love-interest of the film. Note, Ms Hamilton is about 10 years closer to Brosnan's age than either of his babes in the latest Bond film, The World Is Not Enough. Brosnan finds the lake has turned to vinegar, and 2 hikers get boiled to death while skinny-dipping in the hot springs. However, as in Jaws the powers that be do not want to believe that there is a genuine threat. The geologist team send an unmanned robot probe into the volcano crater. Unfortunately it breaks down, and they have to go down and repair it manually. Search This Site
Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxas Lord Agon [David Warner - TMNT 2 ], who relies on regular human sacrifice to maintain his health. Dar's younger brother, King Tawl, has grown up to become one of those irritating teenagers so common in Hollywood movies. Tawl is played by Casper van Dien, now famous as the star of Starship Troopers. Tawl's counselor and bodyguard is Seth, the token black guy - now played by Tony Todd [ Candyman, Star Trek: DS9 Tawl is kidnapped by the Crimson Slayers. Dar and Seth set off to save him. They meet Shada [ Sandra Hess ], a female warrior and Dar's blatant Luurve interest. She is untrustworthy by nature, which gives her an illusion of personality. In order to enter Agon's city they have to join the circus. It is run by Morgiana [ Lesley Ann Down ], an old friend of Seth's. The climax is straight out of Conan the Destroyer , while the end itself is reminiscent of Hawk the Slayer . Yes, it looks like this was the pilot for a TV show that, thankfully, never got made.
Event Horizon The ship of the title, equipped with an experimental FTL drive, disappears near the planet Neptune. 7 years later she is detected in Neptune's orbit, and a rescue ship [the Lewis & Clark] is sent to recover it. The crew includes Laurence Fishbourne [the Captain] Joely Richardson [the 2iC] Sean Pertwee [the Pilot] Kathleen Quinlan [the Doctor] Sam Neill [designer of the FTL ship] Of note to Buffy fans, Richardson and Fishbourne both use the term five by five, now famous as Faith's line. They arrive at their destination, and it looks derelict. The crew suit up and explore the ship, which was constructed with incredible gothic architecture. Unfortunately, as always happens in this kind of film, something goes wrong. They have to be away in 20 hours, or their oxygen will run out. Unfortunately the film does not take this into account, and we do not get the feeling of the clock ticking down. The crew start to have visions of their worst nightmares. Neill sees his dead wife come back to haunt him. Doctor Quinlan sees the pre-teen son she left on Earth - which sets up an obvious ending for anyone who has seen Don't Look Now. The SPFX are wonderful, and the science is less dodgy than usual in SF films. The crew use liquid-filled tubes for shock buffers while in cryo-sleep so they can survive the rigours of high-velocity travel. The problem with the film is that it is too short at only 90 minutes long. Apparently 45 minutes of gore, mainly the ship's log that reported the fate of the original crew, was cut from the released version of the film. But what is missing is not gore - it is TENSION. This film is a suspense thriller that lacks suspense - it is just too fast-paced. Tragic, that a film made 5 years after the release of Aliens: Special Edition has not benefited from the lessons shown. Search This Site
The Awful Dr Orloff This is a 1962 Spanish-made film, and is actually rather well-dubbed. The doctor and his disfigured accomplice, Morpho, kidnap young women and use their skin for grafts on the doctor's disfigured daughter. The policemen investigating the kidnappings are the Gardia Civil, back when General Franco ran the country. Yes, this is actually a period piece! This is Jess Franco 's masterpiece, and he is so proud of it that he has remade it half a dozen times.
Don't Look Now This is Nic Roeg 's early masterpiece, based on a story by Daphne Du Marnier . Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a couple whose young daughter drowned in a pond, and to get over the grief they take a holiday - in Venice of all places! In Venice it appears that the ghost of their daughter has followed them. We are shown haunting scenes of Sutherland chasing a tiny red-cloaked figure down the alleys of the city. The foreboding feeling that the film generates leads up to a hideous and tragic climax. The film is famous for the Sutherland/Christie sex scene, which is reminiscent of a similar scene in Performance [which Roeg was Cinematographer for]. It was copied more recently in Out of Sight and even Buffy [Season 4]! Search This Site
SOLO Mario Van Peebles is a terminator-style robot. Sent into Latin America by Bill Sadler to kill commies, the robot develops a conscience. Typical straight-to-video trash.
Requiem for a Vampire We are taking this opportunity to introduce our new feature, the make-your-own-review! Rearrange the following words into any sentance you choose. French lesbian vampire soft-porn cheapo 1970s Jean Rollin
Alien This is Ridley Scott 's first SF flick, a film noir effort that nicely leads on to his much superior Blade Runner. A ship crewed by a gang of Space-truckers stops at a deserted planetoid to investigate a distress signal. They find a crashed starship, and when they search it they discover its hold is filled with giant eggs. One of the searchers is infected with a face-hugger, and when the others take him back to the ship they doom themselves. The cast is what would today be considered an amazing A-List. Sigourney Weaver is the hero, Ripley - a role originally written as a man, but cast as a woman. A major star now, she was less well known then - but all the others have gone on to become well-respected supporting actors. In no particular order: Veronica Cartwright was originally cast as Ripley, but ended up with the other female role, Lambert. John Hurt [1984] is a token Brit, whose ending is certainly unexpected. Yaphet Kotto [Running Man] is the token black man - a giant african-american who could almost take the Alien on hand-to-hand. Harry Dean Stanton [ Escape from New York ] is Kotto's sidekick, who goes looking for Ripley's pet cat Jones in what has to be the film's finest sequence. Tom Skerritt [ Space Camp ] is the Captain, who stupidly chases the beast down an air shaft armed only with a flamethrower. Ian Holm is the other Brit - with a secret agenda of his own. Strange that a film filmed in Pinewood studios, London, with a British director only has 2 British cast members.
Fist of the North Star This much-touted Japanese Manga cartoon is basically just a stack of cliches. A mysterious stranger staggers across a post-apocalyptic landscape and wipes out a bunch of scummy raider types. He walks into town and gets thrown in jail, where his cell-mate is the stereotypical Japanese Manga bug-eyed loud-mouthed cool teenage guy. The stranger reveals he has a tattoo on his chest that represents a constellation - the Big Dipper! He uses mystical powers on the villains, and their heads explode. The village wise-man predicts Where the Big Dipper goes, chaos follows. It probably loses something in the translation.