xteve Reviews

Bob Marley: One Love (2024)

Walk Hard: The Hollywood Musical Bio, Reggae Edition

[6/10 · 14 April 2024]

Paint by numbers musical biopic that hits all the cliches; crooked management, a "complex" love story, father-son drama and some genuinely decent concert sequences.

The many flashbacks and heavy Jamaican patois don't do the narrative any favors (subtitles needed for this one!) Cast performances are mostly solid but unspectacular. Lashana Lynch's Rita Marley is a highlight. Kingsley Ben-Adir's Bob is likeable but lightweight - at the end we don't get any sense of what really drove Bob as a musician or a strongly religious man. None of the supporting characters are sketched out much at all, so the film depends on these two performances to carry it, with mixed results.

Overall a superficial examining of an important influential artist that could've been so much more.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Amusingly Bad

[4/10 · 28 December 2020]

First 15 minutes are exciting, if not highly derivative of Harry Potter. After that, oh so, so many fails. Who sets a movie in the 80s and then proceeds to get everything about the period wrong? 80s music is limited to one 30 second snatch of a Frankie Goes To Hollywood deep cut in a forgettable scene. The opening sequence set in a mall sets the tone as ridiculous and it pretty much devolves from there.

Gal Gadot is serviceable in a vapid sort of way but pretty much everyone around her is laugh out loud bad. Kirsten Wiig simply isn't credible as a villain. Pedro Pascal has a manic energy that gives the movie some campy fun moments but tonally he's way off from the rest of the cast.

The script suffers from repeated lapses in logic. The Smithsonian has apparently a bunch of fully fueled aircraft nestled in an airstrip behind the museum? Steve Trevor, a WW1 era pilot, suddenly can fly 1980s jets with no training when my parents can't even figure out how to FaceTime, yet has never seen fireworks?

When a mid-credit fanservice cameo is the best part of a 2.5 hour film, something went terribly wrong. DC should just stick to making 50 Shades of Batman. It's pretty much all they know how to do.

An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018)

If matter is the opposite of anti-matter, then call this film anti-comedy

[3/10 · 21 October 2018]

I have no idea how a film with this kind of comic talent could be so painfully unfunny.

Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry's respective presences should have made this an instant classic, let alone adding Aubrey Plaza and Craig Robinson. Instead the actors seem to have been directed to give utterly wooden and wildly uneven line readings that don't even elicit a chuckle, with Craig Robinson basically copying Peter Boyle's performance from Young Frankenstein.

What a waste of a great cast via terrible direction. Avoid at all costs.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Excellent Escapism & Great CGI Make For Solid Entertaining Film

[10/10 · 23 September 2004]

Ignore a lot of these bad reviews. This film is genuinely entertaining. It's only a shame it wasn't released during the summertime as I think it would have done better then.

This film was a melange of concepts from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Lost Horizon which lends it a touch of class and an innonence that's sadly just lost on a lot of people these days. I'm thinking of the classic fun of films like Gunga Din, which just have a great broadly appealing sense of humor that serves as a refreshing complement to the action. It was also a great idea to film it in the sepia toned style which really adds to the feel of the film.

The one criticism I think holds true is that the acting is slightly wooden at times, particularly in the scenes between Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. But COME ON folks ... this is a homage to pulp entertainment and 30s sci fi, not Citizen Kane. The leads are meant to be stereotyped characters. And if you keep that in mind, Sky Captain crosses the line from mere pastiche to a brilliant homage to 30s fantasy fiction.

In my opinion, one of the best movies of the year, along with SpiderMan 2.

Iris (I) (2001)

All things considered, half of a good movie

[2 July 2004]

Dench and Broadbent do a fantastic job charting the devolution of Iris' faculties as she struggles with Alzheimer's; the problem with this film is during the flashback scenes. Winslet is average, not great in her portrayal, but that's partially because the script doesn't present Iris Murdoch in her early days as a very sympathetic character. Instead of coming off as a free spirit she's far more of a sexually confused egotistical dilantette who uses everyone around her. Scenes where Iris is supposedly revealing her shady past and her motivations fall completely flat...there's not enough of a sense of vulnerability or that she really NEEDS her husband. Ultimately that takes away from the Dench-Broadbent storyline. I felt badly for Broadbent's character as he clearly was in way over his head trying to take care of Iris, but I was puzzled as to why he stayed with her in the first place as she treated him so awfully when they were young.

The flashbacks also aren't handled quite right, the interaction between the "present" and past scenes is too jarring. I suspect that it was a conscious choice to do it that way in an attempt to describe the ravages of Alzheimer's, but the film really suffers as a story because of it. This film would have been better served as a straight linear narrative without the constant flashbacks, focusing on either the young or old stage of Iris' life.

Mean Streets (1973)

A warm-up for Goodfellas

[13 May 2004]

There's elements of style here that Scorcese would later perfect in Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Casino. The use of music in the soundtrack for this film is particularly effective even though the plot is ill-defined and meanders too much. Too many scenes don't advance the story or tell us anything new about the characters.

DeNiro and Keitel are both great in this film but their interaction is somehow less than the sum of its parts. I simply didn't find their relationship very believable...it's never explained WHY Charlie would continue to stick by Johnny Boy when he's such a loser with no respect for any of his friends. It's pretty obvious Johnny's spoiling to get whacked, and for a guy who seems to have as much going for him as Charlie does you'd think he'd leave Johnny to his fate.

In summary it's interesting as a sort of prototype Scorcese film but nowhere near as good as his 70s masterpiece Taxi Driver or his later work. I give it 6 out of 10.

Hellboy (2004)

Very disappointing

[8/10 · 5 April 2004]

Perlman was great...inspired casting there and throughout, but the film bogs down very quickly into a series of CGI fights. Hints of what could have been an exciting plot get smothered into the never ending fight sequences and mediocre, half-realized characterizations.

This movie's about a half hour longer than it should have been, and the CGI sequences don't really serve the story that well.

Fans of the comic should be satisfied...it isn't a terrible adaptation but as a movie it falls flat. They tried a little too hard with this one to merge the occult backstory with the requisite action/fighting stuff. I'd cut at least one or two of the fights vs the "hound of destruction" character. By the third fight it got to be serious overkill. I came very close to walking out of this film just because the third act goes absolutely nowhere.

Gothika (2003)

Cross between 6th Sense and The Ring

[5/10 · 26 November 2003]

Gothika tries hard, but it's nowhere as good or scary as either of those two films. Halle Berry is decent, but the supporting cast (Robert Downey Jr., Penelope Cruz, and notably Charles S. Dutton in a blink & you'll miss him performance) are a group of barely developed characters with no discernable motivation or explanation for their actions. There's a few suspenseful scenes in this, but it's largely derivative. The film completely implodes in the last 15 minutes when the true villians are revealed, and the ending calls into question several previous scenes. All in all, rather poorly directed with a paint by numbers script. Worth a rental I suppose, but I rate this a mediocre 5. Halle Berry can do better than this.

The Cat in the Hat (2003)

Another Seuss classic butchered

[1/10 · 21 November 2003]

Saw this at a preview show last night. Terrible, unfunny, gross. It basically took all the worst parts of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and applied them to Cat in the Hat. Mike Myers has a few funny gags in the film but nowhere near enough to make it work. I don't think even kids would find this funny since there's a lot of adult-ish jokes that kids won't get, even 80 minutes worth of fart jokes and peeing dogs get old after a while.

PLEASE leave the rest of the Seuss books alone ... they aren't meant for live action adaptations.

This is literally the worst movie I have seen since Freddy Got Fingered.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Overrated, pseudo-mystical garbage w/great SFX

[5/10 · 26 May 2003]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS--

This movie was WAY too long. There's like a whole 35-40 minutes of actual story crammed into a two and a half hour long movie...Several characters serve no useful purpose at all whatsoever...Link's wife, was she necessary? What about the councillor and most of the people in Zion? Was there any need to show them in this film? They didn't advance the story at all.

In fact all the Zion scenes were a total waste of time, especially the much reviled rave scene, which does nothing but bring the film to a crashing halt for 15 minutes.

People who say this film is some kind of deep philosophical triumph just make me laugh....you people must experience religious epiphany reading cereal box ingredients. There's nothing original or groundbreaking about this film at all in terms of its philosophical stance, just a bunch of quasi-deep mumbling by the Architect which in the end amounts to nothing and/or contradicts everything they have said before.

Trinity and Neo have no chemistry at all together and are so wooden it's very difficult to care about what happens to them. In the first movie you could actually see them as people instead of some kind of CGI kung fu robot in leather. Fishburne as Morpheus is great as usual but is not enough to carry the film. Apart from Niobe's character there is no other performance worth mentioning.

Of course the SFX are top notch, but for what? Whatever shred of story there is is just a vehicle to get from one action sequence to the next. Were TWO fights vs hundreds of Agent Smiths really necessary, wouldn't one be enough? And then what's up with the fight with the guy who's guarding the Oracle....totally unneccessary other than to show off the same tired bullet time effect, which was used well in the first film but ridiculously overdone in this one. By the 7th or 8th time you've seen it done it's annoying. Not to mention there's no sense of danger involved at all. You KNOW nothing's going to happen to any of the main characters which totally robs all the fight scenes of any sense of drama. We already know who will win.

This movie was very disappointing. I enjoyed the first one a lot because it actually had a plot and a storyline that went somewhere, this was just pure crap. A bunch of action scenes and pseudo-philosophical garbage trying to pass itself off as a smart movie. I guess it is smart for an audience of braindead teenagers. Just stick with action, (you know, where something actually happens), for the 3rd part and maybe this series can be revived.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

Terrible script & poor editing make this a poor clone

[26 November 2002]

I just watched this on DVD last night, having seen it in the theatre. I was very disappointed when I watched the scenes that had been cut, as they fleshed out the story a lot more than the final cut. You learned more about the wasp creatures near the end of the film and why Dooku enlisted their help. Padme's character was a lot more established as well in visits to her parents house and in a confrontation with Dooku.

Many people have commented on the wooden acting of the two leads, which I somewhat agree with, but Christensen is not that bad an actor, and neither is Portman.

The problem with both this film and Phantom Menace is Lucas' dialogue. He writes lines which no actor, even in a fantasy movie, can say without sounding like they're reading them off of cue cards. This can be excused when the line is SF technobabble, but when it's supposed to be intimate romance it comes off as clumsy, forced, and utterly unbelievable. Considering that we KNOW the ultimate fate of each of these characters, these make scenes where they are put in peril uninteresting, since you already know they'll survive. Lucas really blew the chance at creating highly developed, memorable characters in my opinion.

In addition, both this and Phantom Menace sorely miss a solid supporting cast to the two cardboard character leads. Where is the Han Solo/Chewbacca/Lando of these movies? Watching the original trilogy, the chemistry between Han and Chewie gives the movies a much broader appeal than the soap opera Skywalker saga. Imagine the original trilogy with only Luke and Leia as the two main characters -- it'd be far less interesting!!!

Ewan McGregor is given a lot more to do in this film as Obi-Wan, and he acquits himself very well, although I think the scenes on the clone world would have been much better if he had been accompanied by Mace Windu. We almost always see Jedis travel in pairs, until Kenobi's solo visit. Christopher Lee does well in the limited screen time he's given. Samuel L. Jackson gives a one note performance as Mace Windu ... we're never convinced that he's as powerful a warrior as he's said to be. And when a CGI Yoda is the most expressive character in the film, you know something's just not right.

Lucas has really painted himself into a corner to deliver the goods in Episode III. In my opinion, to tie up all the loose ends he's created between Phantom Menace and this film, Episode III might have to be 4 hours long.

In summary, this is a decent film for fans of the Star Wars saga, and certainly better than Phantom Menace, but it still doesn't break much new ground. Compared to the colorful entertaining space opera of the first trilogy it's rather dull and predictable. Hopefully Episode III will give Star Wars fans a movie that can be held up to the high standards of the originals.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

Three Good Performances Lost

[17 November 2002]

Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor and Jared Harris are all great in this film, particularly Dorff. But the film's biggest weakness is that everyone in the movie is so weird you don't really care what happens to them. Only Dorff manages to invest his character with enough humanity and vulnerability that you are actually interested to learn of his ultimate fate. I was kind of surprised to learn that Solanis is held up as some kind of proto-feminist lesbian guru when it is obvious she's only twisted and insane.

Imagine if the situation were reversed and Solanis was a man calling for the cutting up of all women and denouncing women as an inferior race. Such a viewpoint would be considered monstrous! Solanis is a crank and a fool, so it's impossible to take her character's world view any more seriously than the guy down by the subway station who mumbles to people who aren't there.

The entire Factory scene is rightly exposed as the pretentious, ridiculous collection of sub-mediocre talent it was. So the viewer isn't surprised when Solanis shoots Warhol, as he couldn't say no to anyone around him and surrounded himself with so many weirdos it was inevitable.



Would this film have been lauded had it been a biopic of Mark David Chapman? I don't see much difference between Solanis and Chapman frankly...both complete, colossal failures in life who managed to gain notierity through murder or attempted murder.

In summary, this was a well-executed take on a rather idiotic topic. I'd rather see the director use her talents to make a movie about people who deserve the effort. Not worthless no-talents like Warhol and Solanis.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Great, if you've got ADD

[1/10 · 12 January 2002]

This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It would have been better if the editor and director could have let a single shot go on for longer than a second. It's a jumpy addled mess that is derivative of so many songs & movies there isn't a single original thought or idea in this film. Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman can sing pretty well, but it's not enough to save this film.

Nothing personal intended here, but all you reviewers who say this movie is a masterpiece seriously need your heads checked. The sets & production are astonishing, granted, but seriously, the plot of this film makes Rocky Horror Picture Show look like Citizen Kane.

I can understand the "love it or hate it" comments I'm reading, but how anyone could consider this Best Picture???? Give me a break.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

This Theme's Been Done Before, and Done Better

[5/10 · 17 July 2001]

Man this was so disappointing. Minor spoilers may follow.

First off I do have to rave about Osment & Jude Law's performances, both of them were excellent. Jude Law continues to demonstrate he's one of the top actors working in film today. However, beyond those two, the rest of the characters in this movie are very shallowly drawn & crudely executed. It was interesting how the Mecha characters in the scenes right before the Flesh Fair were more realistic "persons" than any of the humans in this movie.

The major flaw of this film is the script. Obviously it had gone through innumberable re-writes by several different writers, and the final result was a mess. Even though Gigolo Joe was my favorite character in this film (Teddy a close 2nd) he really serves no purpose at all in the story. Perhaps the film would have been better served with either Joe OR David as the main character, but not both. The film would have been much darker with Joe as the protagonist, but ultimately more satisfying. It's dark subject material, and using a child as the main character under Spielberg's direction injects a note of poignancy and forced sappiness that ultimately doesn't serve the story.

The entire Rouge City sequence was a flat-out ripoff of Blade Runner . . .at one point this may have been the setting for the entire film, but as it stands now it's just a confusing stop on the neverending quest undertaken by David.

The film is also about 45 minutes too long . . .the idea came to me the other day that the final sequence with the aliens is really the crux of the film -- somehow it seems that the story was constructed backwards in order to arrive at that point.

It would be fascinating to see what Kubrick himself might have done with this film, but I don't think it would have been any better than Spielberg's version. One thing Kubrick might have done away with is the annoying expository narration. If a film needs that much set-up to lay the groundwork for the audience, then something is wrong.

The bare fact is that the major theme of this movie, i.e. what does it mean to be human, what constitutes "real people" from synthetics, has already been examined more concisely and with more originality countless times in film and even in TV. Blade Runner seems to be what this film aspires to be on an intellectual level, but it can't touch that film artistically on a visual or character level.

The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)

Good Intentions, but really falls short

[5/10 · 13 April 2001]

This adaptation of the book is well done in many ways. The casting of the supporting actors, who play Jones & Hagen, as well as the young Hardy, is top notch.

Cinematography, etc. is also very well executed.

I thought that Damon did a very credible job as Junuh, although his character is a Redford clone, right down to the haircut and whispery delivery of his lines, and Will Smith was surprisingly quite good as Bagger Vance. I must admit when I read the novel I had a hard time imagining Smith playing this part, but he carries it off with Morgan Freeman-esque style.

I completely disagree with every reviewer who enjoyed Charlize Theron's performance. Her character is little more than a footnote in the book, and in this film they greatly expanded her role to have a romantic subplot that frankly has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and bogs down the story. Ms. Theron is very beautiful, but her accent is TERRIBLE!!!! Watch her first few scenes with the town elders and tell me how you could ever believe that is a real Georgia accent.

Similarly, the young Hardy, who has a much more credible Southern accent, seems to lose it completely by the time he's grown up to become the narrator, Jack Lemmon. Little continuity errors like that drag this film down.

All in all, Bagger Vance is not a bad film, but it's not great either.

Best suited for golfers and fans of the Great Gatsby.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

Mediocre at Best

[5/10 · 22 February 2001]

This film was released for one purpose only -- to cash in on Blair Witch 1's popularity.

As other reviewers have pointed out ad nauseaum, this 2nd film has nothing to do with the first one. In my opinion it was obviously hastily cobbled together in an attempt to get college-age folks to see it.

The leads aren't great actors, and to be honest I found I didn't care one bit about what happened to any of the characters, since the script makes them stock cliches at best: the Goth, the Wiccan, the Pregnant Young Couple, etc.

There are continuity errors galore in this movie, which also show how it was thrown together. Why is it mentioned that Kim's character is psychic at least 5 times in the first 5 minutes of the film, then it's never alluded to again? What is the deal with the disappearing tree, which also figures prominently in the exposition of the film, but is never mentioned again? And why is the film called "Book of Shadows?" What is the significance, since a book of shadows has nothing to do with this movie???

Overall the film is watchable, but the screenwriters and studio who obviously rushed this out just have product on screens in time to cash in on "Blair Witch" hype all get F's. This could have been a TV movie . . .the bottom line is Blair Witch 1 was a movie that was twice as entertaining, and was probably made for a tenth the cost of Blair Witch 2.

Salvador (1986)

One of Stone's best

[10 January 2001]

This movie is very gripping and is my favorite performance of James Woods.

Woods was definitely robbed of the Best Actor Oscar for this film, I believe it was the year Paul Newman won for "Color of Money". (A fine performance but nowhere near as compelling as Woods'.)

The opening scenes where Woods' character Boyle and James Belushi drive to El Salvador are VERY reminiscent of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

There are a few scenes where Stone's political views are brought squarely to the fore, most memorably in a confrontation between Boyle and a military type at a luxury resort in San Salvador. The dialogue between the two is a damning comdenation of Reagan's Central American policy in the 80s.

I was originally moved to write this review when IMDB had a poll about what film featured the best scene of the Mexican-American border. I immediately thought of the end of this film. IMDB didn't include this in their choices, watch the end of this movie and tell me it isn't one of the most powerful and saddest border scenes in film history.

This film is also an excellent companion piece to "El Norte." if you want to learn more about the effects of American foreign policy in Central America during the 1980s. Highly recommended and not as preachy/weird for the sake of being weird as some of Stone's later films.

Forrest Gump (1994)

Preachy, Simplistic, and Sappy

[4/10 · 8 December 2000]

Great CGI effects & a truly Oscar-worthy performance by Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan.

Tom Hanks is a one-trick pony in this movie, how he got the Best Actor Oscar that year over Morgan Freeman was a crime.

This movie is a pandering treacly love letter to the baby boom generation, with a barely concealed right-wing prejudice, beginning from Forrest's service in Vietnam all the way through to the "resolution" with Jenny at the end.

With that said, though, it is hugely entertaining and an American movie through and through. I found certain parts of this film exceedingly offensive, Zemeckis dumbs down this movie almost to the level of Gump himself . . .maybe that was the point he was trying to make.

Watch this film and ask yourself "What is Robert Zemeckis saying about what makes a good American?"

Forrest seems to have made the "right" choices and been at the "right place at the right time" for the last 45 years. Those who are wrong according to the director's vision seem to pay a heavy price. So is Zemeckis saying that idiocy disguised as innocence and naivety is a patriotic, even AMERICAN quality?

Dune (2000)

Not bad, still for fans only

[8/10 · 6 December 2000]

I think what some reviewers haven't really hit on is that the overall size and scope of the Dune universe is so massive that any film treatment is not going to do Herbert's novel justice. This mini-series could have stretched on for an additional four hours and I get the feeling Dune purists would still be outraged.

With that said, I liked this version a lot more than David Lynch's, even though the mini-series was quite obviously borrowing from the 1984 film in characterization, set design, and art direction.

The acting in this version was not as good as the film in my opinion, despite some good performances by the supporting cast. I felt the actor who played Paul gave a more "tormented" performance than Kyle MacLachlan but was still pretty wooden overall.

Much has been made of John Harrison's script, while he did take a few licenses with Herbert's material I did not feel it detracted from the overall presentation.

One thing that cripples this film is that it was clearly made with people who had read the novel in mind. If you are/were already familiar with the characters and the peculiar political relationships of the Dune universe you will enjoy this a LOT more. I too found myself explaining a great deal of the backstory during commercial breaks.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Some Things Weren't Meant to be Remade

[17 November 2000]

I saw this film last night & was amazed at why anyone would want to remake the original in the first place. The original cartoon Grinch was a success because it stuck to the story and because Boris Karloff provided such a wonderful characterization.

This film reminded me a LOT of Man in the Moon, which depended mostly on Carrey's over the top histrionics to carry the weak plot. This movie is the same way. I found Carrey's performance in this movie a watered down version of his work in "The Mask," and I totally agree with the reviewer that commented on Ron Howard stealing Tim Burton's visual look for this film.

Why did they make this movie? In my opinion it's almost impossible to improve on the original, it's like someone trying to make a live-action remake of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," invariably it disappoints, and I found the backstory of the Grinch's childhood an insulting sellout to Seuss' story.

Armageddon (1998)

Terrible

[4/10 · 10 October 2000]

I just saw this film last night and it is SO bad in SO many ways. It takes the phrase "suspension of disbelief" to an entirely new level.

The plot is 3rd grade gibberish. None of the actors save Billy Bob Thornton create characters that are worth rooting for, or memorable. It was damn near impossible to care about what happened to any of these people, as most of them were stereotype "summer movie" characters. The relationship between Bruce Willis' tough-guy father and Liv Tyler's stubborn daughter was improbably written and poorly acted. I had a hard time believing that people like those two could even exist, let alone have a relationship like they did.

the special effects were good, there were a number of memorable CGI scenes but the editing for this movie was extremely annoying, I TOTALLY agree with the poster who said there are no scenes longer than 3 seconds.

I was actually prepared to give this movie a 6 or 7, until the utterly contrived and vomit-inducing ending, which I won't even bother to spoil, anyone who loses 2 and a half hours of their life watching this pile of c**p deserves to see the ending.

By the way I usually like Bruce Willis in almost anything, but his performance in this film is one of the most 1-dimensional, flatly uninspired I've ever seen. Willis seemed to be taking lessons straight from the John Wayne school of acting, delivering even impassioned speeches in a wooden monotone.

The Cell (2000)

Stunning visuals, terrible script

[18 August 2000]

When is Hollywood going to get the idea that music video directors usually can't make movies?

Tarsem Singh, director of R.E.M's "Losing My Religion" video, among others, does a very mediocre job of holding this film together, despite a very good performance from Vincent D'Onofrio as the psychopathic killer.

Jennifer Lopez's character takes a voyage into the mind of this killer -- a strange combination of "Fantastic Voyage" "Silence Of The Lambs" and "The Matrix" but nowhere near as satifying as any of those films. Part of this is due to Lopez's characterization -- her character is nowhere near as intriguing as "The Matrix"'s Neo nor as appealingly vulnerable as "Lambs" Clarice Starling.

The scenes inside the mind of the killer are stunningly well executed and flawlessly conceived, however, since the character is presented as a fairly uneducated type I find it hard to believe he would be aware of, or even care about, the Eastern mysticism / symbolism used in many of these sequences.

This movie is all eye candy and no plausible story. Audiences will probably flock to see this, but check your mind at the door.

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

GREAT little horror film

[10/10 · 17 August 2000]

This film is an outstanding example of what you can achieve in a horror film without resorting to special effects trickery. "Legend Of Hell House" is everything that turkeys like "The Haunting" tried to be.

Kudos to everyone in the cast, especially Roddy McDowall as Fisher, the only man to survive a previous expedition.

There is also some interesting dialogue regarding combatting the supernatural with science, a topic that popped up in later films such as "Ghostbusters."

MANY horror movies have been made on much larger budgets than Legend Of Hell House, but very few can match it for pure psychological terror. I give this film a 10.