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- Chumpy
Reviews
Soldier (1998)
A sparsely plotted, suspenseful film. Very enjoyable.
I've used IMDb as a source of reviews for quite a while now. The "user comments" tend to be a better guide for whether or not I should spend time or money on a film than the work of professional reviewers.
I was very surprised to see the 5.3/10 voting average and some of the poor reviews of this film by other IMDb'ers. That's why after my second viewing of "Soldier" I felt I should post a comment of my own.
I liked this film quite a bit (8/10) because it is in the tradition of the best suspense films: a simple plot, executed well by writer, director and actors. The stunts and fight scenes are of the traditional type (believable, choreographed action - not insane, physically impossible CGI) and are very well done. Everything moves at a quick pace, without being so fast as to confuse the viewer.
In "Soldier," Kurt Russell plays a soldier selected from birth and trained from a young age by a military which seems to need the most ruthless and efficient men to achieve their objectives. After many successful campaigns, Russell's soldier (Sgt. Todd) is tested against a newer, genetically enhanced model who beats him and leaves him for dead. Deemed obsolete, wounded gravely, and in a coma, Sgt. Todd is hauled away with garbage and dumped on a planet inhabited by some ragtag colonists. There he recovers to find himself stranded and separated from all he has known and counted on in his life.
The colonists Sgt. Todd meets are pacifists and don't have a need for a soldier. They have been attacked by soldiers in the past and are afraid of him. They argue over whether or not Sgt. Todd can safely join their community and whether or not he has any worth as a member of their group.
This is where the film shines and separates itself from other films which have similar plot elements. Sgt. Todd is shown to not want to leave his old role at all. Locked into military modes of behavior, Sgt.Todd refers to everyone as "sir" and expects for them to give him orders. For him to do anything else would acknowledge that he is no longer a soldier, and that's something he can't bear. So, although Todd has been abandoned by the military, he can't allow himself to become too much like the pacifists, or find anyway to let himself fit in. Still, he has nowhere to go and nothing to do, and he stays nearby his new community hoping to be a part of it even as his own soldierly behavior keeps him separate.
This section of the film is the biggest reason I liked "Soldier." It is well written, beautifully directed and brilliantly acted. Russell's performance is dead-on, as Sgt. Todd's face remains a wooden mask even as his eyes move constantly and betray the confusion, fear and longing the character is experiencing.
From my perspective Sgt.Todd is every person who has ever found themselves shoved outside of a role that defined them. Whether a person was pushed out of a job by new management, has retired and failed to find a replacement for the meaning their work once gave them, or has given their life to their spouse and children just to see their spouse die and their children leave home, each of us faces events where we lose the things that make us who we are. That is what Sgt. Todd represents.
Soldier concludes by bringing the community of colonists into conflict with the same military machine which rejected Sgt. Todd. Now the same community which questioned Todd's worth is relying on him. Todd has his purpose again, both in fighting for the people who begrudgingly accepted him, and in facing the new breed of soldiers who replaced him.
Granted, the ending is somewhat predictable, and the plot as a whole has many familiar elements. Perhaps that's why some people trashed "Soldier." Yet those similarities with other movies meant very little to me. In my eyes the total unwillingness of Sgt. Todd to leave his old role as a soldier made the familiar elements of the plot unique, and in every film the telling of the story is usually what makes a movie worth watching.
As a piece of storytelling, "Soldier" is a tightly wound, action-oriented, Sci-Fi film with a simple message. It has no calculated comic relief and takes no huge suspension of disbelief to go along with its high tech trappings. There are no grand special effects displays to distract a viewer from the story. It begins, develops and then concludes. It does all of this with dispatch, but not with such dispatch that anything seems missing. As such, I enjoyed it fully.
-SCG
Horror Hospital (1973)
They Don't Make 'Em Like This Anymore!
This is another film I remember from childhood, from the days of regular TV (free, broadcast, and adjust the "rabbit ears" for reception), as a crappy but atmospheric British monster picture.
Now, not only on cable, but on a premium service, I came across it again - and in letterbox format no less. Well, the film is still basically very flawed, but it really shows how much better crafted films once were.
While it remains a simplistic lots of onscreen gore effort, this picture is so much more beautiful to look at than many produced today. The cinematography is consistently superior, and well supported by excellent lighting and generally well scored music. And even though the special effects don't match up to todays films they retain some value in that they have more visual "weight" than some of the CGI crap routinely inserted in modern movies.
Unfortunately the wacky plot and mediocre (well, sometimes bad) acting show through in the end. It may be that the director was trying for a lot of humor at points but it only worked for me towards the end of the film when one of those fleeing the burning building stops for a snack in the kitchen.
As for the beheading car mentioned in another review: that particular element is worthy of Austin Powers' "Dr. Evil." I can see the good doctor in this movie also calling out "All I'm asking for is for some frickin' sharks with lasers on their heads."
If you've seen this before on broadcast TV, it may be worth a second look on video or DVD for the cinematography and for the sexual elements which explain the plot a little more. In the TV version I saw as a kid, the sexual theme was not at all evident, and so, the plot seemed even more outlandish than it actually is.
Still, if you happen by this big-time cable it may catch your interest, but all the way along you'll wonder why any premium channel could have chosen this film from their catalog. There are quite simply so many more old British shockers which are better than Horror Hospital."
-SCG
Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967)
Plan 9 - no. Robot Monster - no. This is the worst of all time!!
Only because this movie hasn't graced MST3K, has it not received attention as the worst of all time. I saw this film over 20 years ago and still remember it as the worst ever - without having seen it since. And yes, I have seen "Plan 9" and "Robot Monster" and a number of the films shown on MST3K, like "Manos, The Hands of Fate" and "The Puma Man."
This film, which I saw as "The Man With The Synthetic Brain," is truly terrible. A crime film which becomes a mad scientist film, which becomes a chase film, and ends up as a zombie movie!
I saw this on TV, and when coming back from commercial breaks, I frequently thought that I was watching a different film entirely. Both in plot and cinematography, it's like a film pieced together from ill-fitting parts of other films. A Frankenstein of films - at least in the method by which it seems to have been made.
The dialogue is horrible and most of it unnecessary. A typical line: "I flew in.....on a plane!" That would be opposed to flying cross country by flapping his arms. I'm glad they explained that one, I'd have been lost otherwise.
The best part (or worst)? The ending with a Witch Doctor / Scientist shown wearing a Witch Doctor mask and a lab coat. Why a lab coat? Why not?! The lab coat would protect his delicate mix of monkey brains, goat lips, fish heads and guano from suit lint. The suit lint would ruin everything!
Only see this film if you love bad films. Anyone looking for even a below average B-quality movie would be very disappointed by "Blood of Ghastly Horror."
- SCG
p.s. Who gave this movie a "10?" Were they confused by one of the 300 titles used to repackage this bomb? Then again I note that there were two "10" votes and two writing credits on the film. I sense a conspiracy. Someone get Mulder and Scully on this.