And finally, two more horror classics:

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
Dr. Xavier experiments with formulas to enhance the human vision. Since he can't get financial backup anymore, he decides to try his formula on himself. The results are stunning! Carrying on with his tests, he is not only able to see through solid things, but he also sees ultraviolet light and much more. This ability turns into his curse, as his mind slowly begins to detoriate from the onslaught of new information rushing in from his eyes...
This movie heavily borrows from the 'mad scientist' stories like The Invisible Man. Ray Milland was probably not the greatest choice for the role of the protagonist. While he's not bad, he's lacking some style in this one. That might be due to the (from today's point of view) ridiculously looking glasses he wears through most of the film, though. On the whole, still a very entertaining film, and the final scene even had me shivering in disgust.

House of Wax
Wax artist Garrett has a disagreement with his partner over an addition to their gallery, so the other guy sets fire to the building (with Garrett still in it) to get the insurance money. Garrett returns a few months later (he had been presumed dead), but completely crippled: He's in a wheelchair and his hands are completely stiff - he can't make new wax figures anymore. He restarts the gallery anyway, hiring other artists. Until the day of the re-opening, people start disappearing in the surroundings of the gallery...
This is a very slow film by today's standards. Sure, it opens with a 'big bang', but after that, we get lots of talking and only very little mystery and absolutely no horror at all. That only makes the conclusion even more stunning!

Edited by Mr Creosote at 02:22 on January, 31st 2004

Asylum
Young psychiatrist is interviewed for a job at a mental asylum. One of the inmates is the former director, and as a test of his abilities, the applicant should find out which one it is. So he interviews the three inmates, and they all tell the stories.
First, there is the story of a man who chopped up his wife and wrapped the parts into brown paper to put them in the ordinary waste. He calls his lover, but before she arrives, the wrapped up body parts haunt him...
The second one says he was a taylor. He had trouble paying the rent, when a strange man came into his shop and asked him to make a suit out of some strange shiny material he brought. Additionally, the taylor would only be allowed to work at certain fixed hours of the day. After some strange occurences, he finally manages to get it done and takes the product to his customer. As they fight over the payment, he finds out what dark purpose the suit he has made is supposed to have...
The third inmate is a woman. She had been in an asylum before, but had been released at the care of her husband and a nurse. When she gets home, her schizophrenia kicks in again, and she imagines her 'friend' to be there - and this imaginary friend has very bad intentions...
Last but not least, there is someone who is obviously a scientist and who calls himself 'doctor'. He builds little figures with robot-like bodies, but extremely detailed faces - the faces of the doctors and himself amongst others. He claims he can make those figures live just by the power of his brain...
This movie is a typical British horror anthology of the 70s. The first story is very entertaining, and the second one has Peter Cushing as the mysterious customer. Cushing gives everything a certain grace! The third story is certainly the weakest, the only notable thing about it is that it has an evil Britt Ekland (whom you might know as 'Goodnight' from 'The Man with the Golden Gun') in it. The last story flows into the framework again which is really done seamlessly. The ironic twist at the end is great as well.

Scream and Scream again
There are basically three plotlines running simultaniously, until they're wrapped up only at the very end. A serial killer is stalking young women and draining their blood. A man wakes up each morning in a hospital only to find another of his body parts gone. An officer in a nazi-like regime rises up by killing his superiors. Everything leads to a suspicious scientist eventually...
This movie is watchable for one thing: It has Vincent Price (as the evil scientist), Christopher Lee (as the head of British intelligence) and Peter Cushing (in an unsatisfyingly tiny role as head of the nazi state who is killed in his very first scene) in it! Seen for themselves, some of the parts of the movie are quite good as well: The surreal scenes of the man in the hospital, the classic 'mad scientist' motifs and so on. Mixed (badly) together, it all makes only little sense, though. Absolutely watchable, especially in company, but not the masterpiece the cast suggests it to be.

Since all new movies seem to suck, I've decided to recommend a few classics I watched recently:

The Medusa Touch
Someone tries to kill author John Morlar. Even though he's clinically dead, his brain activity continues. Police inspector investigates the murder and meets the victim's psychologist who has a lot to say about Morlar who suffered from a psychosis which made him think he could cause catastrophes just by thinking about them.
A psychological thriller mainly told in flashbacks. It's not so much about finding out by whom and why Morlar was murdered, but about watching the movie come to its uninevitable conclusion... and it's not a happy ending!

Quiet Earth
Zac wakes up one day and finds the whole city (and eventually the whole world) deserted. The only human being he finds is his former boss who is sitting in front of his megacomputer - dead and his body extremely malformed. Zac tries his best to deal with the situation and seems to go mad completely, when he suddenly meets another living being. Together they start searching for more survivors. When they do find one, however, the real problems are only just starting...
Typical armageddon movie. The story has been done many times before and also afterwards. What sets this one apart is the great first half showing the 'reasonable' actions of Zac at first, and then his slow detoriation into madness (which climaxes in an almost surreal scene of the protagonist only dressed in women's underwear in a church pointing a shotgun at a statue of Jesus demanding to know from god why this has happened, threatening to 'kill his son'). The second half, while still entertaining, is a lot more conventional, centering mainly around the relationships.

The Man Who Haunted Himself
Very stuck-up British chairman of a company leads a completely 'regulated' life without any fun or surprises. One day, while driving his car, he suddenly starts acting like a man possessed; he drives like a madman and eventually crashes into a tree. In the hospital, he's dead for a few seconds, but the doctors revive him. He goes back to his life and his work. His life is thrown out of balance when his friends and his colleagues start talking about meetings with him which he doesn't remember. Even his business competitors who are trying to take over the company he's working for seem to be his friends suddenly. At first, he thinks it's someone impersonating him - until he sees photos of this 'other person' who looks exactly like him. Convinced he has lost his mind, he checks himself into a mental asylum. After one or two weeks, he's released again, the doctors telling him he should liven up a bit, make some changes to his life. Returning to his office, his secretary shows him the contracts he told her to prepare the day before...
The movie is based on a story which has been made into a film before - as an episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'. This British production starring a pre-Bond Roger Moore is superior, though. Mainly due to Moore's performance who actually manages to impersonate both the stuck-up businessman and also the haunted creature he turns into later. Although not overly thrilling (the only question through the whole movie is whether there is another guy or not), it's a very entertaining watch!

Edited by Mr Creosote at 23:37 on October, 16th 2003

I rented Matrix: Reloaded yesterday and I didn't got any expectations due to a lot of very bad reviews about it... So far, I got caught because if I knew how good it was I would have see it at least once at the theater.

It been the best movie I've seen since a while now.

He was HORRIBLE in that Michael movie. And no doubt he is a millionaire anyway...

I completely agree that John Travolta is one of the uncoolest actors, in "Pulp Fiction" as well as in "Michael".

Oh, come on - stupid blokes in carnival costumes talking about McDonald's? Christopher Lee as Scaramanga is cool. Roger Moore as the 'evil twin' in The Man Who Haunted Himself is cool. 'Saturday Night Fever' Travolta is not!

Pulp Fiction among uncoolest movies ever? Heresy!

(I do agree with the rest, though. Even though Matrix was cool the first six times I saw it.)

Sounds as if I have another sure candidate for my list of the 'uncoolest movies ever' here! Will fit in well with Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, Men in Black and Pulp Fiction.

Depends what you look in movies. I was looking for a totally unpretentions style-over-substance funny movie, and that's exactly what I got

Most unfitting conclusion ever

Kill Bill, vol. 1

You'll either love or hate the movie. I personally loved it. It's a story of a member of an assassination team (pretty much something like evil Charlie's Angels, together with a "Charlie", in this case "Bill"), who turns on one of their member (Uma Thurman) and kills everybody on her wedding, leaving her for dead, too. She survives and decides to kill everybody on the team (4 people) and Bill. The rest of the movie is pretty much about killing two of the four members, without much added to the story.

Kill Bill is completely style over substance. Most of the movie is fighting and gallons of blood being sprayed all over the movie set, in the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail fashion. You get a couple of filler scenes that turn out to be a little on the boring side, and then you get a small anime movie stuck in the middle. The action is top-notch, mainly because it seems a little more realiztic than that in Matrix; the only movie I can really compare it to. Acting is pretty much non-existent, and you won't find any suspense or deep thoughts here (pretty much the only entertaining activity will be to pick up random B-movie references).

The directing and editing is pretty cool, though. I can never get tired of Tarentino's style where he throws all continuity out of the window, and starts at the end, then switches to a piece of beginning, only to replace it with an unrelated scene, and so on. Another strong point of the movie is the crude humor.

All in all, it was a great relax to sit in a theater for two hours and watch all the blood being shed. I loved the movie, and can't wait for part 2.

Good point

Ummmm... Maybe because it's a Hollywood production?

That would explain why the movie has absolutely nothing to do with the books, but not why it's so crappy

I think this explains a lot about the movie:


(source)

So anyway, I saw LOEG last night (it's officially starting today here, I went to the geek pre-screening, but was disappointed nobody turned up in costume ). After the movie, I flipped through the pages of the comic it's 'based on' again and my suspicion was verified: There wasn't a single scene in the movie which had been taken from the books.

Since it has absolutely nothing to do with the comic apart from the name, I tried judging it as an 'independent' movie on its own: The story doesn't make any sense. Basically, it's just twice the same stuff: The 'league' going somewhere, lots of fighting, then the whole place blows up. After this, the whole things starts again: going somewhere else, fighting somewhere else, another place blowing up.

Now following: Possible spoilers

Even if one accepts this (incredibly young by the way) M's 'plan' (even though I never really saw him stirring up tension between nations apart from the very first scene in the bank) as given and somewhat logical (which it isn't - because why would he need to assemble this team in the first place at all instead of just getting the stuff from them he wants from each individually which would certainly be easier), what is the use of Quatermain? That guy doesn't have any special powers (yes, ignoring the really, really bad implications of the cheesy ending) and the 'evil agent' also didn't get anything from him.
The movie seems to be made for complete idiots. Each character gets lenghty introductions, about his background, about his powers, about his personality. But not once, but each one several times! I think the 'Gray - portrait - thing' was explained at least five times. Not much better with all the others. Seriously: If you're going to see a movie in which characters from classic literature are starring, I expect you to inform yourself at least about the basics yourself! Not that it should really be necessary with such well-known characters, but still. How stupid do the producers take their audience for? The only one who didn't get any real introduction was Tom Sawyer, but then again, it might have been a little hard to explain why he's not suddenly a sniper and not a painter of picket fences anymore.
Also, I don't think anyone in the cinema believed the invisible guy was the bad one only for a minute - that theory came up way too early and it's too obvious. The 'revelation' about the real bad one was subtle as a bulldozer: M and Q talking about the 'agent' and the next person we see..... and also shouting out loud "I'm evil" only a minute later!

I absolutely hated the 'subplot' about Quatermain's dead son and the 'replacement' Tom Sawyer. Thank satan it wasn't really fleshed out - just these two cheesy scenes when he says "you have all the time in the world". Actually, every scene having Sawyer in it sucked even more than the rest. And I hated that car! Why does Nemo have a car? It didn't even look any different from normal cars! And why can this suck-boy drive it? He certainly can't have seen one before! Which brings us to the Nautilus. How big is this thing? When it first comes into view, it emerges from the Thames - and it takes more than a minute to surface completely. Later, it looks about the size of a big aircraft carrier. Still, it can drive through the channels of Venice. Right. And it looks like.... a rendered sub from a computer game from the mid-90s. Seriously: If they don't manage to make good CGI, they should do their best to hide them as well as possible. Instead, we see outside shots of the Nautilus again and again. And again. And again. And it sucks every single time.

Last but not least, these final fights between the good guys and their 'evil counterparts' was completely predictable and boring.


Conclusion
Somewhere between boring and annoying (most jokes were so flat and obvious they didn't even had me yawning). Also, I wonder why the studio which made this even bothered to pay any license fees, because they made up their own story with their own characters and their own settings anyway.

Movie Review: Wave Twisters

An interesting combination of cell animation, computer animation, 3-D animation, and live-action, Wave Twisters is really a different kind of movie. It starts off when a dentist finds a powerful device in one of his patients stomachs called the Wave Twister. Evil boy Red Worm has been looking for this for quite some time, and attacks the dentist's space ship. The movie is all set to a sort of beat-type, which I can't really describe, making it move along really quickly. In fact, the whole movie is about 50 minutes long. The movie also has parodies of scenes from other movies, as well as some video game refrences. At one point the dentist pilots his ship with an Atari 2600 controller. If you're looking for something quite different, this might be worth a try.

Here's some shots to show what I'm talking about:

I'm honored . Actually, in the end, I was hating the "normal" humans more than the zombies. That's not something I experienced with any other zombie movie.


I think this answers your question, Da_Goat.


Congratulations! I envy you...


Well, you didn't exactly say so, but I guessed it would be aweful. I only wanted to see how much it sucked . Okay, that's not entirely so. I found From Hell to be quite entertaining, and had hopes that maybe LXG would be entertaining as well, despite the fact that it's got little to do with Moore's work. I was disappointed that I was wrong.