Dead Of Winter (1987)

Directed by: Arthur Penn
Written by: Marc Shmuger + Mark Malone
Starring: Mary Steenburgen, Roddy McDowell, Jan Rubes, William Russ, Ken Pogue, Wayne Robson, Mark Malone

Mary Steenburgen plays Katie, a down on her luck actress who is told that she is being considered to take over a film role that was being played by someone else who greatly resembles her. The casting director (Roddy McDoweel) tell her that the first actress had a breakdown and ran away from the set. She is taken to a snowbound country house in remote upstate New York to film an audition tape for the eldery, wheelchair bound producer (Jan Rubes.) After she arrives, things begin to look as if they are not what they seem. Katie soon realizes she is in incredible danger and attempts escape.

With a premise straight out of a 40's suspense melodrama, I didn't expect much from this film. Like most bad thrillers, the most entertaining portions of the film occur in the last twenty minutes, after the damsel in distress finally pieces things together and has to fight for her life. But the majority of the movie is just tedious set-up and scenes of Katie acting like an idiot as she uncovers what her hosts are really up to.

Is she so desperate for a job that she'd go to a remote house out in the country with a complete stranger, just to shoot an audition tape? If you see your drivers license burning in a fireplace, would you not automatically question your hosts? The movie is filled with situations where Katie is forced to do something stupid in order to move the story along. I've seen this so many times in so many of these kinds of movies, but at least sometimes it's exciting. Not here.



Like I said, things pick up in the last act. When Katie's evil Doppelgänger shows up, things get interesting, mainly because we get to see Steenburgen play two different roles, one timid and afraid, the other heartless and evil. Unfortunately for the film, but not for me, their final confrontation is so absurdly shot and choreographed, the scene intended to be tense turns out to be hilarious camp straight out of a Joan Crawford or Bette Davis thriller from the twilight of their careers.

To sum things up the movie isn't a complete disaster, it's just too derivative of films of the past, and doesn't add anything new to the 'woman in distress' thriller sub-genre. Steenburgen is pretty good, even if her character can be a complete idiot at times, and Roddy McDowell has some demented fun when the shit finally hits the fan during the climax.



Final Verdict: See It (if you don't mind cliches.)

Mr. Frost (1990)

Directed by: Philippe Setbon
Written by: Derry Hall + Brad Lynch
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Alan Bates, Kathy Baker, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Vincent Schiavelli, Maxime Leroux, Francois Negret

When an insane mass murderer Mr. Frost (Jeff Goldblum) arrives at a secluded European psychiatric hospital, the only female doctor on the staff (Kathy Baker) finds herself strangely fascinated by him. He only speaks when she is around, and she is slowly seduced by his odd charms and mystique, despite his bloody past. Soon odd, frightening and deadly things begin to occur inside and outside of the clinic, and Mr. Frost reveals that he is more than just a mad serial killer, he claims he is Satan himself, and it is up to the doctor and a policeman (Alan Bates) to stop him.

For a so called horror film, nothing even remotely scary happens. Sure a few people are murdered and some 'scary' visions are seen, but even when these things happen, the filmmakers manage to make it boring, from beginning to end.

All the actors are terrible, especially Goldblum, who basically plays the same character he always plays but with long hair and a bad mood. The usually adept Kathy Baker seems bored whenever she isn't in some sort of trance or in Frost's thrall.

This movie has an interesting premise, but the script is pretty stupid, and the execution is even worse. Whether it was from budget constraints, a bad director, a satanic curse, or a mixture of all these things, the film is just awful. A better director could have taken the crappy script, improved on it's interesting conceits, and made a somewhat entertaining supernatural thriller. But there's no such luck here. What we get is a dull, wannabe intelligent horror film. It shoots to be in league with 'The Exorcist' but ends up in the toilet with 'Bless the Child.'



Final Verdict: Skip It

Nickelodeon (1976)

Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich
Written by: Peter Bogdanovich + W.D. Richter
Starring: Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds, Tatum O'Neal, Brian Keith, Stella Stevens, John Ritter, Jane Hitchcock, Jack Perkins

This homage to the childhood days of the motion pictures starts in 1910, when the young attorney Leo Harrigan (Ryan O'Neal) by chance meets a motion picture producer. Immediately he's invited to become a writer for him - the start of a sensational career. Soon he's promoted to a director and shoots one silent movie after the other in the tiny desert village of Cacamonga with a small crew of actors. But the competition is hard: the patent agency sends out Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds) to sabotage them. When they visit L.A., his crew is surprised by a new species: fans!

This movie has many problems. The biggest one being it's running time. At over two hours, it's just way too long for a comedy, especially one that aspires to recreate the screwball humor of the olden days. The second problem is the confusing tone. One moment it's a love story, the next it's a slapstick comedy, then it's a history of early filmmaking, then it's a melodrama, then back to comedy. Repeat that for over two hours and things get pretty tiresome. Because of the constant jerking of the tone, none of the leads make much of an impression with their characters.


The slapstick comedy that worked so well in director Bogdanovich's hilarious 'What's Up Doc?' falls flat on it's face here. If Bogdanovich hadn't used such a heavy-handed slapstick, there might have emerged a fond tribute to the pioneering days of silent films in the early part of the 20th Century. But instead, he has filled the movie with a whole series of non-stop sight gags that become tiresome and repetitious, even more so because none of the characters involved really come to life. As the pretty heroine of the piece, Jane Hitchcock has very limited abilities beyond staring wide-eyed into the camera lens. Burt Reynolds at least does derive several good chuckles from his comedy efforts as a reluctant participant in the troupe of silent film actors. Younger and elder O'Neal are not too bad, but Ryan is never as funny as he was in 'What's Up Doc?' and Tatum, whose performance in 'Paper Moon' is still the best child performance ever on film, isn't very memorable here.

Technically, the film is handsomely produced and pleasing to look at in color, but it plods along without the benefit of a tight script or a really compelling story and suffers, mainly, from the heavy-handed approach to comedy.


Final Verdict: Skip It

The Apartment (1960)

Directed by: Billy Wilder
Written by: Billy Wilder + I.A.L. Diamond
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee

Bud Baxter (Lemmon) is a struggling clerk in a huge New York insurance company. He's discovered a quick way to climb the corporate ladder - by lending out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. He often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits and one night he's left with a major problem to solve, when the girl he loves, Fran Kubelik (MacLaine,) who also happens to be the mistress of his boss, tries to kill herself in his bedroom.

I expected so much from this film, as it's always referred to as a classic. In my opinion, it's a ridiculously overrated film. The main characters are absurd and their motivations make little sense. The supporting cast plays characters right out of a comic book. All this superficiality and absurdity wouldn't matter at all if only this were a proper comedy. Unfortunately, it isn't one. This is a romantic melodrama with some humorous one liners.

The film plays up the near-perfection and integrity of its two main leads, but it simply doesn't wash in MacLaine's case. If she is such an angel why is she a home-wrecker who goes out with a married man with kids? Her suicide attempt is too far-fetched and overly dramatic. And what's with Lemmon's character? This guy is so self-sacrificing and noble that he should have been nailed to the cross in the last scene.

The basic plot outline of the film is good and there was real potential there for a terrific situation comedy, but Billy Wilder took the easy route and turned this into a schmaltzy romance film with the Hollywood violins accompanying every schmaltzy scene. The charisma of the two leads simply isn't enough to drag this movie out of the mud. The jokes and gags that there are, are mostly primitive and outdated at best.



Final Verdict: Skip It

And God Created Woman (1988)

Directed by: Roger Vadim
Written by: R.J. Stewart
Starring: Rebecca De Mornay, Vincent Spano, Frank Lengella, Donovan Leitch, Judith Chapman

Probably one of the worst movies of the 1980's, 'And God Created Woman' stars Rebecca De Mornay as Robin, a prison inmate who convinces the prison handyman (Spano) to marry her for a large sum of money so she can get released on parole. When she's out, they move in together and don't get along. Robin starts a rock-band, hoping to fulfill her life long dreams of becoming famous. Soon Robin catches the eye of local senator James Tiernan, and they eventually have an affair. As Robin's new found freedom is put in jeopardy, she must do whatever she can to remain free, while not hurting the man she really loves.

If there was ever a movie looking for a point, this is it. The movie has no direction, it wants to be too many things and ends up nowhere. There are prison breaks, gratuitous sex, family squabbles, political banquets, and rock bands. The writing in this is so over the top I had a hard time figuring out if this movie was intended as a drama or a comedy.

Hack director Roger Vadim, remaking his own 1956 film of the same name, had hoped this might do for De Morney what the original film did for famous sex symbol Brigitte Bardot, but the film turned out to be a box-office dud, and she'd have to wait a few more years before her chilling performance in 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' finally saw her deservedly hit the big time.



Final Verdict: Skip It

I Saw What You Did (1965)

Directed by: William Castle
Written by: Ursula Curtiss; William P. McGivern
Starring: John Ireland, Sara Lane, Andi Garrett, Sharyl Locke, Joan Crawford, Leif Erickson

A trio of teenage girls spend the night alone in a big old house making prank calls to people from the phonebook. They have the incredibly bad luck of calling a man who has just murdered his wife and telling him, "I saw what you did, and I know who you are!" Thinking they are serious, the killer decides to find them and do them in. Also involved in all of this is the killers amorous neighbor, played by Joan Crawford, who sticks her nose into her neighbors business one too many times.

What a great idea gone to crap. The photography is flat, the acting is beyond weak, the score was from a 1960's sitcom, and the 'thrills' are non-existent. This movie has such a foolproof concept, but the writing is contrived and convenient. I try to see a silver lining in most bad movies, especially one that features Crawford, but there's no hope for this one.



Final Verdict: Skip It

1969 (1986)

Directed by: Ernest Thompson
Written by: Ernest Thompson
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Kiefer Sutherland, Bruce Dern, Mariette Hartley, Winona Ryder, Joanna Cassidy

Kiefer Sutherland plays Scott, a naïve and idealistic 19-year-old who attends college with his best friend Ralph (Downey Jr.) to avoid being drafted into the army and shipped out to Vietnam, the fate that has befallen his older brother. The film focuses on the boy's experiences during their last summer of innocence, but nothing much really happens. They go to San Francisco, sit in a bar, then come straight home again. Ralph has a bad LSD trip, while Scott falls in love with Ralph's younger sister (Ryder,) and grows increasingly adrift from his war-hero father (Dern) over the war in Vietnam. Even though the film takes place in 1969, nothing of that era is successfully captured here, and the presence of three young stars of the 80's doesn't help either.

Watching it, you sit there waiting for something meaningful to happen, something interesting that might make you give a damn about the people involved. You wait and you wait, and finally, five minutes from the end credits, the film pulls an 'inspiring' and 'uplifting' scene that is truly horrible to watch. I really mean that – it's horrible. I couldn't believe it was actually happening, or that a screenwriter of any merit would expect us to believe that the characters' deeply ingrained convictions about a subject as complex as that which he has tried to tackle could be swept aside so superficially.



Final Verdict: Skip It

Barefoot In the Park (1967)

Directed by: Gene Saks
Written by: Neil Simon
Starring: Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick, Herb Edelman

Robert Redford plays Paul Bratter, a conservative young lawyer, just married to a vivacious young woman, Corrie, played by Jane Fonda. Their highly passionate relationship descends into comical discord in a five-flight New York City walk-up apartment.

The only reason to check out this horribly dated comedy are the performances by Charles Boyer and Mildred Natwick, who play the eccentric upstairs neighbor and Corrie's uptight mother, respectively. Whenever they are on screen the movie comes alive with a comic energy that is absent in the rest of the film.

Redford and Fonda are alright but forgettable, and like most of the Neil Simon movie adaptations, the dialogue is corny and dated. In their day, Simon's plays must have been great on stage, but every film adaptation has the same kind of inoffensive and milquetoast humor that only Park Avenue types still find funny. After a while it just gets boring. Boyer and Natwick manage to make it work, but Fonda and Redford just sound like actors reciting dialogue from a play.

Final Verdict: See It for Charles Boyer and Mildred Natwick

Terror At London Bridge (1985) aka Bridge Across Time

Directed by: E.W. Swackhamer
Written by: William F. Nolan
Starring: David Hasselhoff, Stepfanie Kramer, Randolph Mantooth, Adrienne Barbeau, Clu Gulager, Rose Marie

In 1888 Jack the Ripper is shot by police and dies in the Thames river. In 1985 the last original stone used to rebuild the London Bridge in Lake Havasu, Arizona is laid, and all the city is happy. But since that moment some strange murders occur in the quiet tourist destination. The policeman Don Gregory (Hasselhoff) has some suspects, but his ideas are quite strange. He thinks that Jack the Ripper has somehow been revived. Nobody believes him, even though he is, in fact, correct.

When I sat down to watch this, I didn't expect a masterpiece. I just expected it to be a bad 80's horror movie that would be good for some laughs and some gore. But this is a made-for-television horror film that should never have been made. The premise is ridiculous, the film is scare free, and the acting is atrocious. And since it was made for TV, there is no gore, just women screaming as Jack raises a blade as we fade to commercial.

This film isn't even good for some laughs. Despite the presence of the always terrible Hasselhoff and cult icon Adrienne Barbeau (who is given nothing interesting to do,) the movie is boring, plodding along until it's predictable conclusion.



Final Verdict: Skip It

Compulsion (1959)

Directed by: Richard Fleischer
Written by: Meyer Levin; Richard Murphy
Starring: Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, Orson Welles, Diane Varsi, E.G. Marshall, Martin Milner, Richard Anderson, Gavin MacLeod

In this dramatization of the infamous 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play a pair of rich college students who decide that they can commit the perfect murder and get away with it. They kill a young teenage boy, off screen, but are soon arrested when police match a pair of glasses left at the crime scene to one of the men. Their wealthy parents hire renowned defense attorney Jonathan Wilk (Welles,) who is known for his passionate arguments against the death penalty. Both of the killers confess to the crime but Wilk pleads them not guilty. At the trial, they change the plea to guilty and Wilk argues passionately in favor of a life sentence rather than execution.

The first half of the film is great. We meet the two killers, see how they live, what makes them tick. It's all truly fascinating stuff that is acted very well by the leads. But the second half turns the movie into a shallow ad against capital punishment.

Firstly, we do not see the crime being committed. Perhaps seeing two grown men taking a child, killing him basically for fun, and then discarding his body like a bag of garbage would make a viewer think less of the two poor lads who go to trial.

Second, the little boy is treated more as a mentioned aside, rather than a real little boy. We do not see the huge impact that the murder has upon his family. We never even see the body. There are even subtle, basically unchallenged, references to him being a brat. Thus putting a little negative spin in the viewer's mind that the boy brought this evil upon himself!

Third, In the courtroom scenes, the audience is asked to question their beliefs if they happen to think the killers deserve to be executed for their cold blooded crime. During a long-winded speech made by Orson Welles (taken largely from actual courtroom transcripts) he goes on an on about how the two 'boys' shouldn't be put to death. I'm not going to get into what my beliefs on capital punishment are, but to ask an audience to feel some pity on two callous young men who murdered a boy for fun is absolutely ridiculous!

And we don't even hear any type of closing argument from the Prosecutor. As a matter of fact, everyone, even the judge, looks shamed by Orson's 'wonderful' speech about love, mercy, kindness, blah blah blah... It's a big fat cop out.

The acting and cinematography in 'Compulsion' is great, but the screenplay is just shallow liberal propaganda. (<-- And it really hurts me to say that.)



Final Verdict: See it for everything but the message.

Exposed (1983)

Directed by: James Toback
Written by: James Toback
Starring: Nastassja Kinski, Rudolf Nureyev, Harvey Keitel, Ian McShane, Bibi Andersson, Ron Randell

Every once in a while, you see a movie so dull and so stupid, you have to wonder if drugs were somehow involved in making the film. 'Exposed' is one of those films.

The plot of this film doesn't unravel, it oozes like molasses in January. Nastassja Kinski plays a Wisconsin farm girl named Elizabeth who leaves home and runs away to New York. After being discovered by a fashion photographer (McShane) she is whisked away into the glamorous world of fashion. Soon she's in Europe, and is recruited by a mysterious violin player (the awful corpse-like Rudolf Nureyev) to infiltrate a terrorist organization and kill it's leader. The leader is played by Harvey Keitel, who is given next to nothing to do.

The only good scene is at the very beginning when two terrorist babes blow up a Parisian restaurant. But it all goes downhill from there. In more capable hands and with a better cast, this film could have been good. But everything is a mess. The script is convoluted and boring, the acting is atrocious, the direction is flat, there is no suspense, and no characters that seem even human.

Oddly, so many people seem to praise Nastassja Kinski as a great actress. I've just never seen it. In every film I've seen her in she just seems vacant and bored, but this is Kinski at her worst, no doubt.



Final Verdict: Skip It

The Dark Half (1993)

Directed by: George A. Romero
Written by: Stephen King; George A. Romero
Starring: Timothy Hutton, Mary Beth Hurt, Michael Rooker, Julie Harris, Robert Joy, Kent Broadhurst, Beth Grant, Rutanya Alda

There are only a small handful of films based on works by Stephen King that can without a doubt be classified as 'great movies.' They are 'Carrie,' 'The Shining,' 'Misery,' 'Dolores Claiborne,' 'The Dead Zone,' 'Stand By Me' and 'Cujo.' All the others range from 'flawed' to 'awful.'

Despite it's decent cast, and respected horror director Romero at the helm, 'The Dark Half' lies more towards the awful end of the spectrum. The filmmakers gave it their best shot but things just didn't work out. It fails as a horror film in terms of suspense, plausibility, and narrative.

When Thad Beaumont (Hutton) was a child, he had an operation to remove a tumor from his brain. During the operation, it was discovered that far from being a tumor, the growth was a twin brother of Thad's that never developed. Years later, Thad is a successful author, writing his serious books under his own name, and his trashy money-makers under the pseudonum 'George Stark.' When blackmailed by someone who has discovered his secret, Thad publically 'buries' George Stark. From that point on, Thad increasingly becomes the prime suspect in a series of gruesome murders.

Of all the King adaptations I've seen, this is one of the dullest. The main character is unsympathetic, his alter ego is two dimensional and totally hammy, you don't care about any of the victims (much less even know who they are at some points,) and there is hardly any horror and next to no tension.

However, there is some good production design and cinematography on display here, as well as some striking images. Huge flocks of sparrows gathering as an omen of doom is a haunting sight. But that alone can't save this film, which is just another King adaptation from a period where almost everything he'd write would end up being made into a movie.



Final Verdict: Skip It

Mr. Billion (1977)

Directed by: Jonathan Kaplan
Written by: Ken Friedman + Jonathan Kaplan
Starring: Terence Hill, Valerie Perrine, Jackie Gleason, Slim Pickens, William Redfield, Chill Wills

In this awful late 70's cross country adventure film, Italian actor Terence Hill plays Guido Falcone, the recipient of his recently deceased uncles estate. Guido lives in a small village in Italy where he fixes cars for a living. He is visited by John Cutler, his uncles former right-hand man at the Falcon Bank in San Francisco. He informs Guido that he has 20 days to make it to San Francisco, or the inheritance will be null and void. Soon Guido is in New York and Cutler is back in San Francisco. Cutler has his greedy eyes on Guido's money and new found power at the bank. So he hires the sexy Rosie Jones to seduce Guido on his was to California, and trick him into signing over power of attorney to Cutler. What follows is an episodic cross country lark involving kidnappings, cowboys, explosions, bar fights, car chases, gunfights and other misadventures.

This movie might have been tolerable if the leads could actually act. Terence Hill and Valerie Perrine are embarrassingly bad. Watching Terence Hill in this made me wonder if the directors just grabbed the first decent looking italian guy they could find, rolled camera, and told him to read the cue cards.

Valerie Perrine, most well known (and funny) as Lex Luthor's main squeeze in the first two 'Superman' films, borders on bad camp in this. I must say her scenes were funny but not for the reasons intended. Her introduction scene is notably guffaw worthy.

But sadly, this isn't a good movie to watch to laugh at. Although there are a few unintentional howlers here and there, most of the movie is just plain boring.

There are some good arial shots along the way, and Slim Pickens makes things a little more fun when he's on screen, but all in all this is a true dud.

Final Verdict: Skip It

A Night To Remember (1942)

Directed by: Richard Wallace
Written by: Richard Flournoy + Jack Henley
Starring: Loretta Young, Brian Aherne, Jeff Donnell, William Wright, Sidney Toller, Gale Sondergaard, Donald MacBride, Lee Patrick

In this quaint, serviceable comedy, a mystery writer and his wife move into a basement apartment at 13 Gay Street in Greenwich Village. The whole house has a sinister air and the other tenants seem hostile and frightened. The discovery of a murdered body outside the couple's back door doesn't help the atmosphere.

What this film really is is a knock-off of the popular 'Thin Man' series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. 'A Night to Remember' tries to reproduce the witty banter and screwball crime solving done so wonderfully in those films, and it is only somewhat successful.

Young and Aherne have good chemistry, and the supporting actors are all game, but most of the humor is forced, and the mystery, taking a backseat to the comic antics, is only somewhat intriguing and borders on implausible. The cinematography is pretty good, making the dark shadows of the apartment sinister, but the entire production reeks from budget constraints and looks cheap.

Final Verdict: If you've seen the brilliant first three 'Thin Man' films, don't bother with this one. You've already seen the best and you'll be disappointed here. However, if you haven't seen them yet, check this out, and then rent 'The Thin Man' movies and you'll appreciate them so much more.

Chattahoochee (1990)

Directed by: Mick Jackson
Written by: James Hicks
Starring: Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Frances McDormand, Pamela Reed, Ned Beatty, M. Emmet Walsh

Emmet Foley (Oldman,) a decorated but troubled Korean War vet suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and impotence, has a breakdown and goes on a shooting spree in his neighborhood, subliminally hoping to commit "suicide by cop." When that fails, he shoots himself in the chest but survives to be sentenced to a maximum security mental hospital in 1955 Florida. While recovering, he begins to feel a sense of rage over the mistreatment and open abuse of his fellow inmates, whose needs are ignored in an atmosphere of neglect and filth. With the help of another inmate (Hopper) and his faithful sister (Reed,) he begins a campaign against the entrenched bureaucracy to improve conditions for his fellow patients.

This film would have been better if the director had managed to reel the cast in a little bit. Oldman and Hopper in particular. Their scenes come across as ham-fisted and over the top, ruining scenes that were supposed to be harrowing and shocking. McDormand, playing the dimwitted wife, has a couple decent scenes, but she's far from memorable in this. Pamela Reed, on the other hand, gives a good solid performance in this, free of histrionics and scenery chewing.

The script is another problem. It's filled with every cliche in the 'insane asylum' genre book. From cruel orderlies to heartless hospital bureaucrats to long scenes of suffering. There's nothing here that we haven't seen dozens of times before.

All in all it's not a horrible film, it's just very predictable and routine. There are other, better films to see if you want a look inside the horrors of mid-twentieth century psychiatric wards.

Final Verdict: Skip It

The Gate (1987)

Directed by: Tibor Takacs
Written by: Michael Nankin
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Christa Denton, Louis Tripp, Kelly Rowan, Jennifer Irwin

When three kids (Dorff, Denton, and Tripp) accidentally open up a gateway to hell in their backyard, an army of demon creatures is unleashed. While their parents are away, it's up to them and their friends to defeat the evil creatures and close the portal.

This late 80's train-wreck is rips off both 'Gremlins' and 'Poltergeist.' We get a suburban tract house as the source of evil and cheesy demonic apparitions. But we also get little gray claymation creatures running around. As the film goes on each scene gets more ridiculous than the last, until the laughably bad final showdown. That's all there really is to say about this instantly forgettable kiddie horror flick.

Final Verdict: Skip It

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Directed by: Fritz Lang
Written by: Charles Einstein; Casey Robinson
Starring: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Sally Forrest, John Barrymore Jr., James Craig, Ida Lupino

Famed European director Fritz Lang was responsible for such classics as 'Metropolis,' 'M,' and 'Scarlet Street,' among others. However, he made this film when his career was, sadly, in decline.

The plot involves a group of newspaper reporters trying to 'scoop' the others by finding out the identity of a mysterious serial killer murdering young women in New York City. The reporter who gets the scoop will be given a powerful position at the newspaper. What follows is an overlong, contrived, often dumb film filled with too many characters and too many subplots.

Out of the large cast, the only two performers who salvage their characters from the muddled script are George Sanders and Ida Lupino, who play an ambitious reporter and his scheming gossip columnist lover.

The cinematography at times is interesting and you can tell Lang hadn't completely lost his touch yet. The sequences involving the killer are particularly well shot and suspenseful. The rest of the movie, however, is pretty flat.



Final Verdict: Skip It

Choose Me (1984)

Directed by: Alan Rudolph
Written by: Alan Rudolph
Starring: Genevieve Bujold, Keith Carradine, Lesley Ann Warren, Patrick Bauchau, Rae Dawn Chong, John Larroquette

'Choose Me' concerns the interconnected love lives of several attractive people living in Los Angeles. They include a radio host (Bujold,) an escaped mental patient (Carradine,) an owner of a nightclub (Warren,) her married lover (Patrick Bauchau,) and his bored wife (Chong.) All these characters cross paths constantly. The nightclub owner calls the radio show for love advice, the radio host moves in with the nightclub owner, the mental patient sleeps with both of them, separately. Also getting involved are the married man, who plays poker with and fights the mental patient, who then sleeps with his wife, who hangs out at the nightclub.

It's all very convoluted and unbelievable. The ridiculous coincidences in this movie make the forced connections in 'Crash' seem absolutely brilliant. And none of it is ever very interesting. This was supposed to be a 'serious comedy' but all it turned out to be was a boring cheese-fest.

No one comes out of this unscathed. Everyone gives terrible performances, especially Rae Dawn Chong. The scene where her husband finds her in bed with the mental patient is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

'Choose Me' also has a horrible soundtrack. Over all the scenes that should be romantic or dramatic, R&B songs by Teddy Pendergrass are played. It makes this already boring movie even harder to watch. On their own the songs aren't bad, but they just seem so out of place in this film.

Final Verdict: Skip It

Blue Steel (1989)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Written by: Kathryn Bigelow + Eric Red
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, Clancy Brown, Elizabeth Pena, Louise Fletcher, Philip Bosco, Kevin Dunn, Richard Jenkins

There have always been so few female directors working in mainstream cinema, I always try to see as many of their films as I can. In this case it was a film by Kathryn Bigelow, 1989's cop thriller 'Blue Steel.'

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop who guns down a robber in a grocery store hold-up. Unbeknownst to her, a stockbroker, played by Ron Silver, picks up the crooks gun. Soon he's obsessed with Curtis and out in the streets at night murdering random people. He tracks her down, stalks her, even takes her to dinner. When Curtis finds out that he's the madman responsible for the murders plaguing the city, they both enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

I've always found Kathryn Bigelow interesting. Unlike acclaimed female directors like Jane Campion and Mira Nair, Bigelow's films are aggressive, even masculine. Some of her credits include 'Near Dark,' 'Point Break,' 'Strange Days,' and this years critical hit 'The Hurt Locker.' Watching any of these films you'd have no idea they had a female behind the camera. And that's why I like her so much. She breaks the mold of what kind of pictures female directors 'should' make.

So I was looking forward to sitting down and enjoying 'Blue Steel.' Sadly, I really didn't. The problem isn't the acting or directing, it's the script. The first half of the film is tight and suspenseful, but the second half is full of cliches and plot holes.
The cinematography however, is pretty good, and sort of distracts you from the dull proceedings. It's reminiscent of a Ridley Scott film from the 80's.

All in all, 'Blue Steel' isn't terrible, it's just not very believable or exciting. There was a great movie that could have been made here, but because of the lousy script, we got a mediocre one.



Final Verdict: Skip It

Women's Prison (1955)

Directed by: Lewis Seiler
Written by: Jack DeWitt
Starring: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Howard Duff

Sadly, there's not really much to say about this 50's women in prison melodrama. It's one of those movies that haven't aged well at all, and remain as interesting as a bucket of dust. The usually excellent Ida Lupino stars as the cruel warden in charge of the female side of a co-ed prison facility. After a female inmate gets pregnant, Ida Lupino's warden goes into a frenzy. She ends up beating the pregnant woman to death, and this results in the other gals rioting.

I haven't seen many of these so-called 'women in cages' films, but this film seems to mark the turning point when these types of films, up until then regarded as respectable dramas, transformed into sleazy exploitation.

Final Verdict: Skip It