Reviews

This is not a film that depicts God. Benedeta is the Devil's incarnation. Given to lust, sacrilege, corruption, speaking in the voice and with the tone of the Beast, creating falsehoods, doubts and deceptive in appearances, the Devil manifests in protean forms to deceive. God is love and peace and that is never consistently displayed in Benedeta. A snarling and enraged God? Yeah right.

Unfortunately the truely religious clergy are portrayed as given to human failings and no match for the guile of the Devil. The populace in turn are fooled into turning against religious authority because of the failings of their leadership and the Devil's cunning and deceit.

This is a sad movie for the true believers in Christ because the clergy is cast in such a bad light and the Devil may succeed in making the viewer doubt their faith. If you believe that Benedeta manifests the word and action of God then the Devil has fooled you again. God is love.

Don't let Paul Verhoeven mislead you into thinking he knows how to make a religious movie. There is no true display of authenticity of Christian faith. This is a Layman's view of what a religious movie should look like. But it's pure Verhoeven camp. Showgirls in nuns habits. Gratuitous nudity and lactating women say it all.

A story reminiscent of the Hong Kong movie Human Meat Char Shao Bao (Bat Sit Fan Dim: Yan Yuk Cha Siu Bao), it could better be described as The Revenge of The Killer 38D Call Girl.

The synopsis in plain language: A superficially plausible tale of a roast meat hawker who falls for a call girl after she expresses compassion at his impotence following a failed paid liaison. His impotence and her continued sexy dressing then forms the basis of their failed marriage. Intertwined are several threads involving her now husband's lecherous drinking buddy with designs on her and a funeral director who wins her heart with his apparently genuine concern. His concern we later discover is just another male cunning designed to bed vulnerable women. To cut things short, all the exploitative men die and the ex call girl ends up running the roast meat shop. But not after they've all had a chance at her heavily augmented body.

Meant to be the second instalment in a trilogy modelled on Park Chan Wooks revenge trilogy, this is a far cry from the lofty film making of the Koreans. Instead it is unashamedly modelled on Rebecca Chen's remodelled 38D breasts.

It fails on multiple fronts. Poor script, poor sets, poor lighting, stiff acting and underwhelming sex scenes. The only high points were guessing what Rebecca Chen's lingerie wardrobe had to offer. If the theme was revenge, it doesn't build up sufficiently. If the theme was Rebecca Chen, they could have chosen a more attractive model. But in crazy rich Singapore, getting a local to ditch her clothes for the movies is not an easy thing to do. Even an more acclaimed director like Eric Khoo had to port a Japanese ex-AV actress.

Sorry Mr Loh but this didn't make the cut. 1 gave 5 points for your boldness.

Better and better. I've watched this show a few times and each time I understand something I didn't the previous times.

The pace is slow but necessarily so, reflecting the journeys made and contrasting the intense action. It allows time for slow reflection and the gradual transformation of a hardened, Indian hating soldier into a sensitive, veteran who discovers shared humanity and in doing so, pulls himself back from the abyss that only people who have been through battle will understand. Almost no shows get a 100 points from me. This one deserves it several times over.

Christian Bale you ticked off all the boxes. A stellar performance.

Sexy female cyborg battles, girl-girl underwater fight scenes, chest implanted machine gun secret weapons, skimpy skirts, tittilatingly tight bustiers that never seem to come loose no matter the intensity of battle, lesbian bondage torture complete with armpit licking and a cool industrial set make up for the stiff acting, poor scripting, non existent plot and really bad special effects.

The penultimate cyborg vs zombie fight scene sends the movie into a tailspin to oblivion.

"Share your body with me to become a perfect organism and an eternal life...." was an unforgettable line.

This movie gets 10 points because of the cleavage. But that's all.

Oh and the only nipples you see are the very short sequence in the opening scene.

Stiff, slow and overly melodramatic. Unfortunately it reinforces the Western stereotype of the Japanese as crude, unreasonable and sadistic.

Other than the opening 10 minutes, the show fails on so many fronts. Besides several failed attempts at character development, the movie is so sadly disjointed. Its essentially a patchwork of scenes that have no glue.

(Spoiler) Beats me how the guys on the life rafts somehow keep perfect goatees after days adrift and why fellow POWs have to throw such heavy punches at their friend when ordered by the Japanese commander to do so.

Hey... but it got into the Oscars! Really? Maybe for the cinematography. But obviously not for direction or script!!

Wouldn't watch again.

What's worse than terrible? This movie has no redeeming factors other than being a historical artifact of the sexploitation era. Its a cheap excuse for the director to use other people's money to get girls naked and doing his deviant bidding including one unsimulated fellatio by Sylvia (Lina Romay). Sorry....even the word "director" is too laudatory and honorific.

So why would I watch this movie you ask? I asked myself the same question after I'd finished. Maybe for kicks to see what the fuss over Jesus Franco was all about. I'm sure I'll regret those wasted minutes on my deathbed

I gave a token1 point for the late Ms Romay's token effort. Sorry, Jesus Franco fans but even by 1974 when this movie was made, his star had already fallen. How he managed to get funding for the number of movies he made is unfathomable.

What's worse than terrible? Only the next Jesus Franco movie.