Reviews

Absolutely worthless, mirthless would-be comedy/horror trash! If you like your low-budget horror slow-moving and completely without any kind of tension or scariness, well, my friends, you're in luck! This is the movie for you!! No scares, no nudity, no sexual tension (despite the presence of a coupla skin-worthy starlets), precious little gore... Thanks for wasting my time, BUG BUSTER! I hope the filmmakers die from cancer of the soul. That's what I felt like watching their putrid turd of a half-witted effort. Any movie that can waste the efforts of likable talents like Katherine Heigl and Meredith Salenger and Bernie Kopell has really not got a lot going for it. We won't even speak of the wasted time and efforts of our favorite STAR TREK supporting players George Takei and James Doohan. Hope you got sizable checks for this, guys.

While I was fairly impressed with the first two episodes of this series, I couldn't help but feel the shows would have benefited by being expanded into 75-90 minute features. While there was enough tension (barely) I think they would have bettered the show by giving them more depth of characterization. Greater length would have allowed them to be distributed overseas and on video as features. If TV-head/exec producer Mick Garris had been thinking properly, he might have set himself up as his generation's Val Lewton or Roger Corman. Oh,well, Hollywood squanders a golden opportunity. What else is new? I'll keep watching, though, all the while wishing someone had had the foresight to make these movies instead of mere TV series episodes.

Critics and fans alike have been mystifyingly kind to this blatant and utterly banal rip-off of the clearly superior "Six Feet Under." The cast of "Out of Order"(see, even the title is a derivative) is the only thing that makes this show even marginally watchable. Eric Stoltz and Felicity Huffman do what they can with what feels like underwritten characters. The rest of the cast shines too, but the problem is the creative team aims higher than they can deliver. They can't really do anything except put their characters through motions we've seen done better before. They aim for a "How we live now" immediacy that just doesn't hold my interest, unlike "Six Feet Under" which doesn't have any problem being original and provocative.

About the only real pleasures to be had from this too typical tv drama are the faux Euro scenery (where did they shoot that?) and the way the luscious Joanna Cassidy fills her clothes. Too bad she doesn't get out of them a little more, that might have given this would-be romantic drama/soap opera a bit of juice. As it is, you'll have to accept Tracy Nelson's attempts to lose her virginity with non-English speaking Italo-stud, Linda Purl's attempts to get it on with a stiff pseudo-Springsteen stand-in and the always welcome Joanna Cassidy's attempts to re-connect w/old flame Barry Bostwick. If only it played as good as it reads...

Surprisingly, for a Lifetime movie, this was really watchable. Not great, necessarily but definitely watchable. The fetching Jenna Elfman plays a woman accused of harassing a handsome doctor. As the plot kicks in and the point of view switches from Jenna's seemingly normal medical writer to the doctor we learn that the young lady isn't all she seems to be. Handled in a really mature character-oriented fashion instead of the usually hysterical overly zealous admirer-from hell manner. And Jenna's really got acting chops!

This is a fairly routine though watchable whodunit that is notable mainly for the nearly salacious-for-the-time talk about the womanizing habits of a gossip columnist who gets murdered. Oh yes, the ever enticing Hazel Court is present as a past amour of the now-dead rakish fellow who tries to avoid suspicion for his murder. Her husband investigates so as not to have his honey nabbed by the coppers. London locations make it watchable.

This was a great opportunity to bring some great old-fashioned film noir to the great wasteland that is the made-for-tv movie industry. Too bad John Wells' re-working of an old script from a previous generation is so lacking in character development or even at times coherence. The cinematography is sub-Ridley Scott, pure noir imitation. "The Nightman" does boast some good acting from both the beautiful Joanna Kerns and the fetching Jenny Robertson but this movie's not even a guilty pleasure. Maybe good for laughs if you catch it coming home from a party loaded to the gills.

This movie totally flummoxed me. I thought it was going to be a comedy! Come on, a slasher going around killing virgins? That sounds like a set up for parody to me. If the movie had pursued that line it might have been successful as a send up of the increasingly ridiculous slasher film genre. Instead, it merely is part of the increasingly ridiculous slasher film genre. As it is, though, the film is watchable in a time killing kind of way.

This is a well intentioned but dismally dull and wretchedly written indie exercise in lower working class experience. Actor Frank Whaley's directorial debut is an ambitious but unsuccessful look at a teenager's coming of age in a 1970s slacker neighborhood. No doubt autobiographical to some degree, the movie sets up a somewhat cliched conflict between alienated teen and his drunken lout of a father (Val Kilmer). This got some good reviews but I bailed out after an hour, wondering how it managed them. I felt like I had seen it all before.

I will admit that this movie managed to hold my attention in a way that many admittedly better movies have not. Reason? There just aren't that many hooker comedies that skirt the subject of sex the way this one does. That struck me as novel while I was watching it and made me think the filmmakers were attempting something more ambitious than the usual chortling over sex. Tara Subkoff is very watchable and likable as a gangly, awkward young prostie wannabe. She has the unique ability to project awkwardness, emotional need and immaturity, mix it up and have it come out something like bohemian cool. I got a lot of insight into a whole generation of disaffected youth watching this flick. Cool, indeed.

This is one of those really cool (pardon the pun) made-for-tv flicks you would come across in the 1970s. I'm a total sucker for that sub-genre of the horror flick called "Scientists stranded in the frozen wastelands." Other examples: both versions of "The Thing" and the original "Outer Limits" episode known as "The Human Factor." There's just something about the frozen north as a setting that captures and holds the imagination like no other. Not even the venerable old "Haunted house on a dark and stormy night" does it for me like the icy tundra of an isolated, frozen research station. Brrrrrrrr!!! Check this one out for sophisticated science fiction chills.

I just saw this film again for the first time in years, and it has not aged particularly well. In fact, I'd say it's pretty wretched. Any one who's ever seen a movie before should have no problem seeing where Brad Mirman's script is going. A perfunctory plot and some truly boring courtroom scenes grind one's interest to a nub. The only real interest, besides the sumptuous cinematography of Kubrick associate Douglas Milsome (Full Metal Jacket) is Madonna's hysterical enthusiasm for shedding her clothes. Almost worth watching strictly for that. Almost.

This is a fairly tedious (except for generous amounts of cleavage) "novel for television" I believe they called them in my tv-addled youth. Absolutely nothing "Gone With the Wind" didn't do ten times better. Except for that cleavage. Oh, Terri Garber, where are you now?

Whatever happened to Heather Thomas, anyway? She provides almost the sole reason to watch this lunk-headed teen comedy. Well, I take that back. There's also character actresses Sue Ane Langdon and Marya Small (both familiar to '70s tv viewers) and the young Felice Schachter seems very sweet as Scott Baio's soon-to-be girlfriend. But what happened to Heather? She dominates this lame movie even when she's not on screen. You would think producers would have been lining up to sign her. Was she dismissed as a beautiful bimbo? Unfair if she was. Thomas is a much better than that other more famous Heather, Locklear. Check out her performance if you don't believe me. Frankly, I think the wrong Heather from '80s tv became famous. "Zapped!" star Heather Thomas demonstrates a charisma and sexual allure the other Heather can only guess at. Not to mention acting ability. Damn that Aaron Spelling!

This is a very entertaining artifact of its era, the swinging sixties.Concerning the attempts of Walter Matthau to cheat on his sexy wife Inger Stevens with the even more sexy and luscious Sue Ann Langdon (what did this guy want, everything?)cheered on by his rake of a pal, Robert Morse(!!). A case of stunt casting which in this case works. The sexual revolution hits poor suburbanite Matthau right in the face and he wants in on it. Who can blame him? This would-be bawdy comedy was directed by nice guy Gene Kelly, so if it's not rapacious enough for some, it's still the best piece of bawd this side of Billy Wilder.

This was one of the most repulsive and disgusting movies I've ever tried to watch. So much gore and special effects splatter overwhelm whatever extremely minor narrative pull the movie has. The movie starts off stupidly as a would-be attempt at irony (e.g., horrible violence set to silly '50s pop song) lets you know how wrong this flick is gonna go. If not for the extremely lovely presence of leading lady Isabel Glasser I never would have spent as much time on this splatter-dog of a flick as I did. Didn't need to see James Remar's tackle, either. All in all, a waste. I will keep my eyes out for Glasser in the future, though.