samsloan Reviews

Shorts (2009)

2 Ridiculous

[5/10 · 21 August 2009]

I saw the movie and thought it was 2 ridiculous. However, some of the kids in the audience laughed and seemed to enjoy it, so we should give it a chance.

The high spot was child-actress Jolie Vanier who played the female lead. I predict a great future for her.

Computer graphics and special effects were great and very well done.

Actually, it is hard to believe that anybody thinks this movie will be successful.

I would say that this movie is not suitable for anybody over ten. However, one adult I spoke to after the movie said that she liked it.

Sam Sloan

Center Stage (2000)

How Many Had Stand-ins

[10/10 · 24 April 2009]

I have watched this several times with my daughter, who is taking ballet lessons. She likes this movie and plays it over and over again.

I am convinced that several of the dancers do not really dance at all and appear to dance through camera trickery or using stand-ins.

Sascha Radetsky, Amanda Schull, Ethan Stiefel, Zoe Saldana and probably Ilia Kulik (Charlie, Jody, Cooper, Eva and Surgei) danced their own parts.

Maureen, Emily, and Erik did not dance at all, I believe.

I am not sure about Julie Kent who played Kathleen Donahue and danced the duet with Ethan Stiefel.

Also, I think the dance sequences involved a lot of cutting and pasting. I think it would be almost impossible for anybody to dance that perfectly from the beginning to the end of these long dance sequences.

Sam Sloan

Net Games (2003)

A fair warning to browsers of the Internet

[8/10 · 23 January 2005]

Net Games is an excellent movie once one realizes that it reflects a real situation and real dangers which browsers of the Internet face. The plot resembles the infamous "Cybersex Torture Case", a real court case in which a young woman used the Internet to lure a man into a sexual relationship with her and then, as part of her perversion, had him arrested.

Not only are women browsing the Internet searching for a man, but some of these women are actually FBI Agents posing as 14-year-old girls anxiously seeking sex with much older men. Any man who responds positively, falls into their trap. When her shows up to meet the supposed girl, he finds the handcuffs placed on him.

Yet, the Internet is a part of life which cannot be ignored. I met my own wife through the Internet. We would have never met otherwise. Now, we have a beautiful three-year-old girl. The movie Net Games provides a public service by warning the viewers of real dangers lurking out there on the Internet.

Sam Sloan

Hot Circuit (1971)

A complete circle of love and sex as everyone gets laid twice.

[21 March 2004]

The best porn movie I ever saw, or at least the movie I liked the best. I saw it at the 1972 Erotic Film Festival in New York.

The basic plot is, a girl receives a letter in the mail which has some news which makes her very happy, so she has sex with the first man she sees.

Later, she goes somewhere else and has sex with man number 2.

Next, man number 2 goes somewhere else and has sex with girl number two.

After that girl number 2 goes and has sex with man number 3.

This continues until finally girl number 5 has sex with man number one. This completes a circle and thus the title "hot circuit". Every person in the movie has had sex with two different partners.

All of the girls are beautiful, all of the men good looking. Each sex scene has a realistic story behind it about how the couples met and have sex together. Lots of outdoor shots of driving around Los Angeles. This was a nice happy movie with no conflicts and lots of good sex in it. Everybody gets laid twice.

What is surprising is that it is not available in video. I found it on IMDB but I cannot find it anywhere else. Why does such a good and well produced movie disappear?

Sam Sloan

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

This story is about a real place!

[8 March 2004]

What most viewers do not realize about The Man Who Would Be King (1975) is that it is not about a legendary place, although Rudyard Kipling may have thought so when he wrote the story, because no white man had ever been there and returned to tell about it.

The place was then known as Kafiristan and is now known as Nuristan. It is in Eastern Afghanistan next to Chitral, which is in Northwest Pakistan.

Place names in the movie, such as Kamdesh and Bashgal, are real places in Nuristan. The explorer Robertson, whom Billy Fish reports has having died, did not die in real life but was rescued by a British military force in 1895, after Kipling wrote his story.

The people of Nuristan are believed to be descendants of Alexander the Great, who came there in 328 BC, just as the movie states. They had a pagan religion as the movie describes until they were forcibly converted to Islam in 1892. There are still some believers of the old religion in the Kalash Valleys of Pakistan.

For more about these people see http://www.samsloan.com/damik.htm

I know about all this because I have been there and I married a woman named Honzagool there. She did not bite me as did the wife of Sean Connery in the movie, however.

Sam Sloan

Clambake (1967)

Good Happy movie with reasonable plot, good songs and lots of beautiful girls

[13 October 2003]

Good Happy movie with reasonable plot, good songs and lots of beautiful girls. Elvis plays the fabulously rich son of an oil tycoon. He fears that girls want him for his money and not for himself, so he switches places with a poor water ski instructor, who pretend to be each other.

They are at a hotel where the fabulously rich congregate and all the girls are trying to land a rich husband.

Poor Shelley Fabares is ignored by the man she hopes to land, so she has no choice but to turn to poor Elvis for help. She seems unimpressed by the beautiful songs Elvis sings to her, as she still tries to catch her millionaire. Little does she know what a choice catch Elvis would really be.

The show-down is a boat race. Elvis, who has been hiding his true identity as a high-level chemical engineer, invents an epoxy resin capable of holding a boat together at high speeds.

I liked the movie and wondered why critics panned it. I suppose that it lacks depth and soul wrenching internal conflict, but I cannot see how a movie could be better than this one. Sam Sloan

And the Band Played On (1993 TV Movie)

Great Movie about the History of the AIDS Crisis

[22 September 2003]

I just saw this movie on HBO and it is riviting. People are dying. Nobody knows the cause. A determined but very small group of scientists are trying to find out, but are faced with strong opposition from the homosexual community, the medical community, the scientific community, the government and from religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell who is shown in the film.

What I personally found most interesting is that, according to this movie, the HIV Virus was not discovered by Dr. Robert Gallo at all. Dr. Robert Gallo was out playing tennis and had no idea about it. Rather, the HIV Virus was discovered by the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, which was founded by Louis Pasteur who invented the Pasturizing of milk. Later, after the French had done all the work, Dr. Robert Gallo filed a lawsuit which was settled when the French agreed to give Dr. Gallo credit for being the "co-discover" of HIV, even though he had nothing to do with it.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

An all-time great movie that raises eternal questions

[29 August 2003]

This is one of the all-time great movies and raises eternal questions left unanswered since the Bible. A woman is brutally raped and has the bruises to prove it. Her husband goes out and kills the rapist.

But did it really happen like that? Perhaps it happened a different way. A man comes home and catches his wife in bed with another man. The other man flees. The man beats up his wife and then chases and kills the man whom he caught sleeping with his wife.

Lee Remick is beautiful, sexy and obviously attractive to men. Was she really raped, or was she a seductress and a temptress? Jimmy Stewart is the defense lawyer who defends his client, but is never sure whether his client is guilty or not. Any who is that sexy girl who shared a motel room with the murder victim. Was she a prostitute or a good girl? Was he her lover, or was he really her father? Sam Sloan

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

In the sexy 1960s, "swinging" or wife-swapping became all the rage.

[24 August 2003]

In the sexy late-1960s, "swinging" or wife-swapping became all the rage. It worked like this: I get to sleep with your wife while you get to sleep with my wife. If you did not have a wife, just find any game girl willing to sleep with anybody and trade her off for the night. This practice was very popular and just about everybody was doing it. You could sleep with some of the best and most desirable women that way, if you could find a good-looking girl to trade for her. Take it from one who did it!

However, there was one rule: Last names were never revealed. You never got to find out the last name of your sex-partner for the night. That way, you could never trace him or her back to his or her spouse or job. Everybody went by first names like Bob, Carol, Ted or Alice.

This movie was about such relationships. Bob, played by Robert Culp, and Carol, played by Natalie Wood, are ultra sophisticated swingers, heavily into wife swapping. They meet Ted, played by Elliott Gould, and Alice, played by Dyan Cannon. The plot centers around the question: Will Bob and Carol be able to seduce Ted and Alice into exchanging partners for the night? Sam Sloan

I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967)

An important film because of the precedent it established

[24 August 2003]

This movie caused a great sensation in 1969 because it was considered pornographic. The movie was not allowed to be shown in America. Finally, after a highly publicized court battle, the courts allowed the movie to appear and everybody went to see the movie. The movie was banned in many countries, not only in America, because is showed a man and a woman having sexual intercourse, the first time ever in a movie. However, in the actual scene, they climb a tree in a public park and have intercourse fully clothed in the branches of the tree. It takes the reader's imagination to understand what they are really doing. The content is so mild by today's standards that the movie is largely forgotten. However, it was because of the court precedent set by "I Am Curious (Yellow)" that we are allowed to see almost everything today. Sam Sloan

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1955)

A Married Lady takes her falcon-keeper as her lover

[24 August 2003]

This book and movie caused a great sensation in 1959 because it was considered pornographic. The book was not allowed to be read and the movie was not allowed to be shown in America. Finally, after a highly publicized court battle, the courts allowed the book and the movie to appear on the grounds of "artistic merit" and everybody went to see the movie. The content, about a married woman who commits adultery, is so mild by today's standards that the book and movie are largely forgotten. However, it was because of the court precedent set by "Lady Chatterley's Lover" that we are allowed to see and read almost everything today. Sam Sloan

Mahjong Horoki (1984)

Story of a Professional Mahjong Hustler, Touring Japan

[10 August 2003]

SPOILER!!!! I was a minor actor in this movie. The story line bears similarity to the 1961 American Movie "The Hustler" starring Paul Newman. Mahjong is a game similar to Gin Rummy. The hero of the movie is one of the most famous actors in Japan. He starts off as an absolute beginner at Mahjong, so weak that I and another American beat him at Mahjong. When he does not have enough money to pay his gambling losses, my partner takes him out in the back alley and beats him up. Undaunted, he studies Mahjong and becomes a top player. He comes back to play us again, but our club is out of business. So, he goes looking for top players to play against, for big money. The first showdown comes when a man who is losing all his money, puts the deed to his house on the table. His wife yells and screams trying to stop him, but he bets the house anyway. He looses the house. The winner at mahjong moves into the house. The wife of course stays with the house, so the man who won the house now sleeps every night with the wife. Later, the original owner of the house gets some more money and comes back to play again. This time, the original owner wins the mahjong game and so he wins back both the house and his own wife. Now, the man starts sleeping with his own wife again. Finally, the big game comes. There is a lot of money on the table. A player announces "Mahjong, Mahjong" which means that he has the winning hand. However, before he can turn up his hand and take the money, he falls over dead. The three other players go through his pockets, take all his money and divide it up. Now, they have a dead body on their hands. So, the put the dead body in a small cart, bring the cart to the front of his house, and roll the dead body down the hill to his house. The cart pulls off and that is the end of the movie. How is that for a story line? This movie was not popular at the box office but has developed a great cult following in Japan, especially since I am a star in it. I got the movie role because I am a top American shogi player. Sam Sloan