One of the biggest problems I have with this film - apart from the fact that it actually exists - is that, in the hands of finer craftsmen and with a stronger budget, it could have been quite good. The premise, while familiar, could have been put to good effect: an accused witch's curse comes back to haunt the people of a small New England hamlet 300 years after she was wrongfully burnt at the stake. Ultimately however, 'The Devonsville Terror' just lays down and dies quite quickly, offering no suspense or horror whatsoever outside of a cheap play at being a bad exploitation film here and there (at the beginning and again at the end, where almost the same things happen) with a minorly repulsive 'shock' somewhere in the middle. The film is so cheap the producers don't seem to have even been able to afford to pay more than one of the female actors to go topless, blowing the budget instead on pulling unconvincing maggot stunts and a laughable torn by dogs sequence, stealing the melting head scene from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', having a ghostly, horribly burnt face with a full head of hair float around and making the heroine shoot laser beams out of her eyes! An unintentional murder apparently releases the vengeful spirits of three women brutalised hundreds of years before; the superstituous, horribly-cliched small town hicks naturally think the spirits have taken possession of three female outsiders: a radio broadcaster, an environmentalist and the newly-appointed school teacher who hitch-hikes into town and falls foul of the townsfolk by telling her pupils that the Babylonian chief god was a woman. Eventually, after some extended film time where nothing very interesting happens, the locals decide to do them in. All the while the village doctor is trying to purge Devonsville of its curse by exposing his patients to seemingly meaningless hypnotherapy that exists only to allow more lame scenes of women being victimised. Apart from a rather nasty scene where one poor girl is dragged to death behind a pick-up, it would all be quite appalling if it wasn't so half-baked. Because it is, it's appalling for very different reasons.
Reviews
16 Reviews
Cobra Force
(1988)
One of the worst films of all time
18 December 2001
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** One of the joys of working all-night shifts is that very occasionally you stumble across a gem of a film squashed in between the late night news and Anthony Robbins telemall ads. This was not one of those times. "Cobra Force" is an unspeakably bad film that almost defies you to like it in some mind-achingly sadistic way. Quite how any living person would get themselves mixed up in such a godawful mess as this South African waste of celluloid is almost beyond comprehension. Shot on budget-quality stock so it looks ten years older than it is, this incomprehensible action film appears to start out as a crime-buster film and ends up as a bizarre commando flick with condemned ex-vets pursuing a hostage-taking terrorist across the savannah and culminating in the most inane and badly staged shoot out in cinematic history. For the sake of a plot, a KGB operative attempts to stir up a localised war in two African states by assigning a bewildered looking terrorist the task of kidnapping the daughter of an ambassador. In the meantime, there's some kind of war on crime going on with with car chases, executions and people getting blown away willy-nilly. Shots from small-bore handguns send people flying through doors, walls, windows and off balconies. People get set on fire, smashed up in cars and brutalsied for no apparent reason. Whether this is supposed to serve as some kind of sub-plot or not can not be determined. It looks like the producers (if, in fact, there were any) just stuck two different movies together and hoped no one would notice. Don't even mention the acting. As the terrorist drags off his hostage, without so much as a struggle, she whines "Let go, you beast!" Seriously. Two guys masquerading as cops pull over three Asian guys in a truck laden with chickens for no obvious reason at all. A fight breaks out (the Asian guys use martial arts, of course) and everyone gets killed except for one guy who reappears throughout, murdering people. Who he is and what his motivation is, even what he has to do with the plot, is never revealed. As the commandos chase their dangerous quarry across the South African plains, they meet a small boy. Of course, as any good commando squad made up of pardoned criminals would do, they promptly take him with them. And of course, at last, the commando leader catches up with the terrorist, still dragging the hostage behind by the wrist and they face off on a suspension bridge. The only other commando left, who couldn't even shoot straight with a well aimed pistol earlier on, kills the baddie with a machine gun fired from the hip. From a hundred metres away. Without hitting anyone or anything else. It's hard to fathom just why this film exists, unless it's an example of just how bad a film can be. "Cobra Force" is so bad it isn't even deplorable. Even those who enjoy bad films will hate this. I was actually glad when Anthony Robbins came on, and that's saying something.
Cube
(1997)
The only way outta here is going piece by piece
21 July 2001
"Cube" is a dark and disturbing film that is sure to inspire feelings of paranoia, estrangement and mistrust in any viewer. The stark setting, the inescapable frustration of a thoroughly unexplained situation and the very human actions of the characters makes this a singularly powerful piece of psychological cinema. A cop, a doctor, an architect, a prisoner, a brilliant math student and an intellectually disabled man wake to find themselves imprisoned in a cube-shaped room with a single door in each wall. All complete strangers, none of them know why they are there, how they got there, what purpose the structure has nor who built it. To work their way through the puzzle, they have to survive the fiendish traps hidden randomly throughout, like the acid jets which burn off one guy's face and the invisible razor mesh which reduces another inmate to a pile of square-shaped chunks in the opening sequence. Once they slowly discover what's going on, even if they don't know why, avoiding the traps turns out to be the easy part as their own psychological breakdowns caused by their unique and inexplicable circumstances prove to be the deadliest obstacle of all. This is a tense, claustrophobic and sadistic science fiction thriller in which the main enigmas of who and why are never revealed, given even more impact in light of the subsequent rise in popularity of voyeuristic TV shows like 'Survivor'. "Cube" takes the phrase 'thinking outside the square' to a whole new level.
Cannibals in the Streets
(1980)
Anti-social eating habit becomes infectious disease!
16 June 2001
Some Marines (or something) become POWs in South East Asia, where they're forced to eat each other to survive. After finally being rescued and returned to civilization, they find they still like to eat people. Not only that, but somehow (and this is never explained) the cannibalism has mutated into a transmittable virus. Turkey film veteran John Saxon infects his neighbour's horny teenage daughter when he bites her inner thigh and the rest of the film seems to be taken up with endless shots of police cars racing around at sunset looking for these fruitcakes who not only dig human flesh but seem to want to eat ALL THE TIME! Dire in the extreme, the really bad acting and convoluted plot which exists merely as an excuse to exploit cannibalism makes this a genuine bad cult horror flick.
Addams Family Reunion
(1998 TV Movie)
Ack!
27 August 2000
Poor old Raul Julia would be spinning in his grave like a rotisserie chicken if he could see what had become of the Addams Family series. Along with "Super Mario Bros.", this would undoubtedly be one of the most appalling major studio films ever to appear; made for video or not, there's no excuse to make movies which suck so utterly it's painful to watch them all the way through. When my former housemate borrowed this one evening I watched it like a rubbernecker gawks at a road accident. An adequate cast struggles desperately with an idiotic script playing characters made familiar by other people, far more convincingly: Nicole Fugere couldn't begin to come close to Christina Ricci's Wednesday if she lived to be a million. Only Tim Curry has any sparkle, but he could ham up the phone book and make it work. Turkey, with a capital "T"
So, what's all this then?
27 August 2000
Had this film been made ten years before it was, it would have been lucky to have made cinematic release and disappeared onto the video shelves, written off as just another Elm Street/Friday/Halloween rip off. Which it is, although these days everyone compares everything to "Scream"--not much more than an updated rehash of late 70s slice and dice films itself. Four kids accidentally run over a guy on their last day of high school, panic and dump his body. A year later, someone starts sending threatening notes to the parties concerned, and eventually they get picked off one by one. "IFWYDLS" fails on just about every level--the film has no atmosphere, no suspense, a hackneyed and predictable plot, cliched characters and virtually no blood. The killer even has the hide to butcher Sarah Michelle Geller off camera! The film's depiction of small-town class snobbery in America's so-called egaltarian society was also overbearing and the big (un)scary ending sequence even predates "Friday the 13th": check "Carrie" as a reference point. "I Know What you Did Last Summer" is nothing--NOTHING--more than a big budget knock off of every slasher flick ever made, without the style of "Halloween", the suspense of "Friday the 13th" or the sadistic humour of "A Nightmare on Elm Street".
It
(1990)
Sucked
24 July 2000
"It" was not a book which was ever going to be easy to translate into a TV mini-series. The murder, and in this story's case, often horrible murder, of young children is practically a taboo subject even in the cinema world, so trying to bring it to the small screen was always doomed to failure. And "It" does fail. Badly. Not only does it deviate from the novel (which isn't necessarily a sin in itself, if anyone's ever seen a James Bond film), but the production crew took completely the wrong tack. The terror is the novel comes more from the psychological scarring of the characters, the threat that the manifestation will always return. That's the whole reason one of them kills himself! The movie just goes for cheap, unconvincing shocks and really, excruciatingly bad actors. Anyone who casts John Ritter in anything is just looking for trouble, after all. The adults are acted under the table by the children, who at least make the first half of this waste a little easier to bear, and Tim Curry does as Tim Curry does and adds a touch of sparkle where none otherwise exists. If "It" could get any lamer than the poor acting and bad scares, the ending is among the worst of all time. Only "Maximum Overdrive" scores higher on the Worst Adaptation of a Stephen King Story index.
A View to a Kill
(1985)
No. No. And still No.
24 July 2000
I remember being appalled by this film when I saw it on first release; it sickened me so badly I've never revisited it. The cold-blooded violence of every other James Bond film pales into significance when compared with Walken's machine-gunning of innocent employees in the film's third act. At least the unbridled killing in other episodes was reserved for gun-toting thugs or criminals! Any enjoyment I may have taken from this, the worst Bond film ever, was destroyed by that scene... and I've seen and enjoyed some ferociously violent films. Everyone was miscast in this, even Moore and especially Roberts, but even the best actress in the world would have struggled with her role in this film. My review of "A View to a Kill" may be tainted by the ill-feeling I get when reliving my appall in the cinema 15 years ago, but there's no redeeming qualities about this movie at all.
Jason and the Argonauts
(2000)
Ha ha ha
16 July 2000
It's a good indication of just how bad television is becoming when one spends four hours watching such reprehensible ineptitude as this. As a guy who has grown up with Greek myth since I could understand language it's difficult to express how insulted I was by this ludicrous film. Taking liberties with a storyline is one thing. Reinventing it to fit a Hollywood formula is something different: the inclusion of blacks and women among the Argonauts is inexcusable no matter what the producer's motives--not because Atalanta wouldn't have made a good Argonaut, but because she wasn't, and Orpheus was Greek, not Ethiopian. The involvement of Hercules for the entire voyage instead of for only part of the first stage like in the real legend is almost forgiveable after that. For all of that however, the biggest beef with "Jason and the Argonauts" is not that it leaves out huge slabs of the journey, makes up new parts and juggles characters to suit itself. In fact, it gets some parts right: sending the dove between the clashing rocks for example, and Jason's relationship to Pilias among little else. Overall, this film is just lame, a poor, typically made-for-television sham of a cracking good story, exploiting all the best bits for all their worth and completing omitting or changing others. For those who only know the legend from this film: Orpheus wasn't black, Atalanta wasn't an Argonaut, Medea was a cold-blooded conniving bitch who cut up her own brother and fed him to the sharks and Hercules quit the voyage early on to go searching for his gay lover who got spirited away by river nymphs. Let's hope that, one day, some film producer has the guts to tell this story the way is was supposed to be told--and maybe use Hercules' real Greek name (Heracles) to boot.
The Quiet Earth
(1985)
A flawed but classic film
13 July 2000
Despite its preposterous premise and its flawed second half, "The Quiet Earth" is a low-key, under-rated gem from New Zealand, a country still not known for its film-making. The unaccountable ending and the general ambiguity of the entire film actually helps, rather than hinders, its classic qualities; the lack of spark among the characters in the last half detracts from its excellence elsewhere. Zac Hobson awakens from a dream at the exact moment his supervisor at a top secret facility tests an abominable experiment which instantly vaporises all animal life (but strangely leaves plants, structures, clothing, vehicles and everything else completely untouched), and hence finds himself utterly alone in the world. The almost documentary-like portrayal of his indulgence in now meaningless excesses and his descent into madness are--along with its inexplicable ending--the highlights of the film. The rest of "The Quiet Earth", involving Hobson's interactions with two other survivors, is a relative disappointment. Considering the attention given to the scientist's mental breakdown at the start of the film, the conflict resolution in the second half happens too quickly. In spite of Hobson's insistence that the future effects of the experiment are too difficult to explain, Api figures it out while listening to a tape recorder during a car chase! Nevertheless, the blurring of dream and reality and the uncertainty of just which is which is played out right to the very end. Even then the viewer is left without any clear notion of whether Hobson's choice (sorry--it was too good to resist!) has absolved him of his guilt, or even if the whole thing was nothing more than a suicidal dream.
Burial of the Rats
(1995 TV Movie)
A bad movie lover's delight
26 June 2000
This film exists halfway between softcore lesbian porn and gore-soaked splatter as a cheap exploitation film that tries and then fails to do both, without too much concern for acting or dialogue. Mountains of barely clad female flesh go hand in hand with ridiculous violence in this barely recognisable adaptation of an obscure Bram Stoker story about a coven of rat-worshipping female bandits. While there isn't actually any lesbianism shown on camera the implication of its existence overwhelms virtually every other aspect of `Burial of the Rats'. The story follows the adventure of young Bram Stoker and his father, attacked by the bandits during their travels abroad. The younger Stoker kills one of them and is captured; the elder one tries to convince the local constabulary to search for his missing son even after receiving such matter-of-fact advise as `Go on home, and forget all about your son!' In a matter of hours young Bram has fallen in love with one Barbie-doll proportioned Rat Woman and become sympathetic to the others' cause, even if it entails murderous raids on monasteries and brothels. Meaningless topless dancing scenes and silly violence follow, including a gratuitous torture dungeon sequence and the sight of a bucketful of rats picking a corpse clean to a bleached skeleton in a matter of seconds. That a god-fearing Victorian moralist like Stoker would have even conceived of something like this is unlikely: `Burial of the Rats' is pure William Castle camp from the prison guard who can't recognise the protagonist because he has a hat on (!!) to the ludicrous moment when the Rat Queen plucks a disobedient rodent out of the pack on the floor at her feet and cuts its head off-with a miniature guillotine! Insipid and inane but much more fun than a dozen far more well-made `serious' films, this is a bad movie lovers delight!
Necronomicon: Book of Dead
(1993)
What the..?
26 June 2000
I just KNEW this would be bad, but I had no idea how bad it would be. "Necronomicon" is a composite film made up of three separate shorts based on Lovecraft stories... and I use the word "based" VERRRRY loosely here. The first tale begins as a strange adaptation of "Rats in the Walls" and then seems to make a right turn through "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Call of Cthulu" without coming off very coherently at all, although the surreality of it is kind've cool. The second feature is a somewhat more coherent version of "Cool Air" which is more or less true to the original, though featuring a female lead along with a typically wonderful performance from David Warner. Lastly we're presented with something purporting to be "The Whisperer in Darkness" but ends up as some nonsensical dream/nightmare conglomeration that aspires to be Fulci but fails. By the end of this piece I had no idea what was going on! In the meantime, Jeffrey Coombs hams it up as usual in a series of linking cut scenes portraying HP meddling with arcane tomes in a bizarre temple or something--William Castle, eat your heart out! A very hit and miss affair that fails to interpret Lovecraft even more spectacularly than most of the others before it.
The Slayer
(1982)
Hahahahaha
26 June 2000
Warning: Spoilers
Lousy is about the only way this film could be described. A woman who suffers from apocalyptic nightmares goes on a vacation with her husband and another couple to a deserted island which turns out to be haunted by a grotesque demon which picks them off one by one. Absurdities abound: a fisherman and his dog completely unrelated to the plot (!!) are introduced simply to be slaughtered and absolutely no attempt is ever made to account for why a deserted island with only one house would have an abandoned picture theatre in the middle of it unless it's to serve as a venue for a spectacular slaying. Lame as this film is, the ending makes it even worse when the female protagonist wakes up as a little girl and realises she's been dreaming the whole thing!
The Blair Witch Project
(1999)
Not your average horror film
21 June 2000
A film which fell foul of its own publicity machine, `The Blair Witch Project' was abhorred and derided by the mainstream film-going public which it became unfortunately directed at due to its extraordinary and outlandish marketing campaign. `The Blair Witch Project' is not a typical film that the typical cinema-going public would normally be exposed to. The camera-work is jerky, the dialogue repetitive and inane and the action virtually non-existent. At times confusing, annoying, irritating and tedious, this film is nonetheless a brilliant piece of arthouse experimental film-making. This movie is virtually all style-there's hardly any plot, no real action, no semblance of a real script-and one that works on a deeper psychological level than the standard mainstream horror film. Indeed, only the very last image in the film is truly frightening, and only if it can be correlated to an incident at the very beginning. The rest of it only becomes scary afterwards, when the audience has had time to consider what they've seen. It is groundbreaking, manipulative cinema made without a script, with an amateur cast and with little or no post-production values. This is a remarkable film which can only really be appreciated, if the accompanying hype is overlooked, as a unique, avant-garde art film and not the regular Hollywood stock it was presented as to the public.
House on Haunted Hill
(1999)
Campy, uneven, fun but disappointing
21 June 2000
Gore-splattered and at times genuinely creepy remake of the 1958 William Castle film, spoiled by a truly lame ending. A millionaire amusement park mogul invites a group of people to a haunted mansion for his wife's birthday and offers $10,000 to anyone who can stay the whole night. When they arrive he discovers none of them are people he actually invited and one by one they get picked off, both by residual evil forces and each other. The opening five minutes are among the bloodiest in modern cinema as the inmates of an asylum go on a rampage of slaughter and rape; after that the film goes down hill faster than the trick elevator ride in the following sequence. `House on Haunted Hill' suffers from a dearth of character development outside of Geoffrey Rush's wonderfully hammy sadistic funpark owner, a subplot which fails utterly and, ultimately, one of the most disappointing climaxes ever devised. Fortunately, there are a few good scares along the way and nobody seems to be taking anything too seriously, particularly Rush, whose impersonation of Vincent Price is brilliant.
Pieces
(1982)
Hack hack buzzzzz aaaarrgh!
20 June 2000
At my girlfriend's urging I recently re-visited this appalling and truly sick Spanish exploitation film. She promptly fell asleep, leaving me to suffer with `Pieces' untold gratuity and the lamebrained actions of the police characters. Honestly, a nutcase is prowling around a university campus with a chainsaw and the police neither warn anyone nor ensure that his potential victims are safe. Instead, they just let the female students wander about completely unaware, ensuring that the body count mounts with increasingly violent killing after killing while virtually entrusting the investigation to a kid and a burned out tennis pro. Things happen for no apparent reason--a girl skates through a wall mirror and there's a completely meaningless kung-fu scene--and the red herrings are glaringly obvious. The plot? A skitzo hunts and butchers young women with a CHAINSAW, which no one except his victims ever hears or sees and which always starts first time, then takes different parts of each one and sews them all together again. Why? Because forty years before his mother destroyed his nudie jigsaw! Unconvincing acting and utterly unconvincing red herrings are mingled with scenes of incredibly graphic violence as heads, arms and legs are hacked off without pity, capped off by a barbaric and completely unnecessary closing scene that's worse than the whole rest of the film put together! Why? I guess the producers thought the rest of the film wasn't sickening enough.
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