Inzaghi, Simone Movie Reviews

SPIDERS (Trimark) and ARACHNID (Lions Gate) are a perfect double creature feature. As you might guess big spiders dominate these two low budget flicks. In Spiders, a college newspaper reporter is assigned to cover the space shuttle landing. When the shuttle crash-lands, they sneak into a restricted area and stumble upon a secret (is there any other kind?) government experiment that has, as they say, gone horribly wrong. Spiders have been injected with alien DNA and now, as is always the case in such matters, there's hell to pay. Arachnid has a group of scientists on a secret mission crash-landing on a South Pacific island where alien spiders run rampant. Both films have some pretty good jolts, but the lame, predictable stories weaken some of the better special effects.

A very well thought out bugfest. While the title creatures are the original reason for watching this one, there is far more to the plot than rampaging arachnids.

A college newspaper reporter is convinced that aliens exist and that the government has been hiding the fact. But when she heads to a secret government facility that is supposedly abandoned, she finds far more than she was expecting.

First off, a shuttle that supposedly burned up on re-entry lands at the base. The crew are dead in horrendous ways. Then the Men in Black show up. They are obviously cruel and cold-blooded.

Trying to avoid discovery, she and her friends hide in a truck and find themselves far underground beneath the facility. There they discover aliens, Apollo missions that were never reported, and a project to mix alien DNA with that of spiders. Then things get really tense.

Fun, fast and with some true jump-out-of-your-0seat moments, this is an above average monster flick with excellent effects and a solid storyline.

This movie was AWSOME.You gotta see it.In space,people were injecting something into a "Turantula",and the shuttle was hit with a solarflare.When a group of people(3 people),Slick,Jake,and a girl got into a goverment place,Slick takes a picture of a shuttle person,the flash made him wake up and a turantula came out of his mouth,oh,i forgot to say that the "Turantula" planted an egg inside of him.Thats all i will tell you.Check me out by clicking on my name.

I have to admit to the same technical difficulties with my DVD as others have reported. Once in a while it goes out of focus and even seems to freeze at one point. The edition I have has a different cover than the one on Amazon.Com but the company and the double-movies are the same.

I bought the DVD for THE KILLER SHREWS and it is the most entertaining of the two films. While the costumed dogs are a bit hokey, with a little imagination, it works fine. Anyway, puppets are used for close-ups. The premise is simple. The over-sized mice eat anything that moves and the only food left are the people on the island. The people have to get to the boat or die. We are spared the gore so common in movies these days but there is still a lot of suspense. You never know when one of the hungry beasts is going to pop up. If they bite you, you're dead. There is poison in their saliva. After that, you're dinner. There are some recognizable actors in the film, too, familiar from programs like the Dukes of Hazzard and Gunsmoke. Oh, by the way, the beginning seems a bit truncated and starts abruptly. I seem to remember a school-type mini-documentary (only a few seconds) at the begining with footage of real shrews. It is missing from the DVD and may be the result of a poor master film copy.

As for THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, the lizard is not really scary and the miniature sets look like miniature sets. Don Sullivan is the likeable hero, a hard-working boy down on his luck but able to sing. He decides to use some nitro he had in storage to fight the creature. Convenient for sure, but don't we all keep some handy for a stray monster? The kid is so cleaned-cut, friends with the sheriff no doubt, and forcing his gang to behave, that we have to wonder if the movie's makers were trying to win parents over. There was a lot of negative opinion about the wild ways in 50's movies.

The director Ray Kellogg liked using foreign beauties in his films. Both movies feature a love interest with an accent, one from France and the other from Sweden. Indeed, Ingrid Goude in THE KILLER SHREWS was a Miss Universe Beauty Pageant Winner.

>No blasphemous or dirty words.
>No nudity or sexual content.
>Plot Violence but nothing graphic and no gore.

Guaranteed to please fans of old horror movies and to bore the kids-- big time.

These movies are a hoot! In the first movie, The Giant Gila Monster it is fun to watch the teens hot rodding around in their souped up jalopies trying to escape the Giant Gila Monster. The songs are hilarious and the subplot of the young man trying to raise money for his little sisters braces makes no sense in the plot. The second movie on the DVD is the Killer Shrews. This movie has a better plot and makes a little more sense than the Giant Gila monster. Did anyone notice that the captain of the ship is the same actor who played Jim Lindsey the Guitar Player on The Andy Griffith Show. These movies are fun but dont expect too much.

This is a fairly low rent disc, four chapter stops and a hard to read bio page that offers little of real interest. The picture quality is quite poor, one posted review offers the idea that this is a copy of a VHS tape rather than a film negative, during one scene the image breaks up in a cluster of squares (I guess that is what some call refracting?).

The movies themselves remain equally low rent 50s swiss cheese fests. Drive-in misfires from an alomst forgotten era. Still monster fans will find more than enough fun in the movies to gobble them up, but they may wish to look elsewhere for better looking transfers of these...gems. The movies are recommended, this particular disc release is not.

Albert Pyun might not have the bad cameras and low budget that he had in Ice-t's Millenium-series (Urban Menace, Wrecking Crew & The Corrupt) but he still is disabled to write a good script.
This isn't even good by low-action-standards, it's one of the worst action movies in years.

Steven Seagal is as bad as only he can be (bad at acting that is).
I wanted to see it couse of the rapper NAS (belly) but he came and went in the time of 4 minutes.
Now that's even less screentime then what Snoop had in the HOT BOYZ, which by the way is 30 times better than this one.

I only bought this movie because it had Nas featured on the cover of the dvd box. It even stated "Starring Nas." Later learning that Nas had very little to nothing to do with the film. He is only featured in the entire movie for a couple of minutes, with a minor role. This wouldn't be so bad if the movie was half-decent, but there is absolutely nothing unique or thrilling about the film. The company that has developed the movie is committing a huge crime of false advertising. Be prepared to see numerous 10 to 15 second cameo appearances from music superstars and actors. So I guess this movie is just like 1993's "Meteor Man?" Do not buy this movie. You WILL regret it.

Ticker is such a jaw-droppingly awful film that the five star rating is to HIGHLY recommended it for Seagal fans who must see what a shell of his former self the big man has become.

Ticker got a straight-to-DVD release in 2001 for a couple of glaring reasons:

1) it's absolutely one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory, and yes, I do like Seagal movies for what they are
2) after 9/11 this movie must have looked like one of the worst decisions anyone involved with it could have made

To sum up--Sizemore is a cop on the edge, Seagal works in the bomb squad, and Dennis Hopper is an ex-IRA mad bomber terrorist who is blowing up San Francisco because...I don't remember, really. After 9/11 the mad bomber/terrorist story line made Ticker about as bankable as a Howard the Duck sequel. And, of course, the film is appalling.

Where to begin? I wasn't expecting much. Just a bad B-movie with enough action to while away 90 minutes or so. Between Seagal, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greene, and Nas all showing up, how bad could it be?

Bad. The film is literally so incoherent that I had difficulty following what was going on in whole sequences. There are gun battles where everyone looks the same, everyone is shooting, and you can't follow the action. The editing is so bad that the film often resembles a series of scenes just spliced together. A bomb is being disabled in one place, and then there's an explosion in another, and then someone is walking around somewhere, we don't know where. The police station is filmed from the same angle over and over, suggesting that if someone stepped the wrong day the set wall would come crashing down. The acting is laughable, as if everyone was equally embarrassed to be involved. Dennis Hopper's Irish accent (which disappears and then reappears in true bad-film-accent-style) is amusing, as are the other Irish 'terrorists' (merely bad looking guys in black leather jackets). Jamie Pressley, whose face looks like it
was warped by one of those computer programs, plays a terrorist. Uh huh. By the time Ice-T showed up for all of 15 seconds, I was convinced he just happened to be wandering by the set that day when they gave him a part.

Speaking of black leather jackets, it seems the entire cast got a cut rate deal on form-disguising wardrobes. A very bloated Tom
Sizemore walks around the entire film in the same outfit. It looks like he had a month between rehab stints or court appearances to make this film, and he phones in a performance that includes him screaming in his dying partner's face, "Don't die!" as well as screaming at witnesses to "Tell me his name!"

Then there's Seagal. You want to believe he can mount another comeback, but there's no chance. You'd think that after Exit Wounds he would be back in the game. Instead he's back on the Weight Gainer 2000, like he's gone from worshipping Buddha to trying to resemble him. He's enormous in this film, clad in black, his hairline disappearing, his dialogue (and bizarre accent) as laughable as any he's done, and then some. He spends most of the film sitting down, filmed like Brando in Apocalypse Now to hide his appearance. By the time he hoists his bulk out of a chair, his fight scenes are once again filmed in almost total darkness so we have no idea what's going on. We see hands moving, limbs flying, Seagal's face a mask of constipation, all to hide the fact that he is completely incapable of doing any stunt work or anything resembling a convincing fight scene. Matter of fact, I have no doubt that Seagal's contract stipulates that he cannot be photographed to look as fat as he really is or that he can't actually exert himself beyond reciting Zen nonsense while someone is trying to disarm a bomb. The man is an embarrassment, but the fact that he goes on with the charade lends him a certain charm. I will continue to watch his movies with the morbid curiosity of someone who wants to see just how bad things can get.

The amazing part is that 99% of the people watching Ticker will know more about police procedure, terrorism, and film making than the people behind this movie. Some kind of credit must be given for the total disregard of anything resembling quality that went into it.

Seagal is determined to play up his bad boy, mysterious man with a mysterious past, Zen spouting, tough guy persona to the bitter end, so why not tune in for a good laugh? He has at least one classic bit where he actually kicks the bumper of a car hard enough to deploy an airbag, a scene I had to rewind because I was laughing so hard.

I could go on and on, that's how bad the whole affair is. Ticker is, in my humble opinion, Seagal's worst hour. And given such efforts as Half Past Dead and The Patriot, that is saying something. Don't let anyone in the cast fool you--it's bad. It's bad-TV-movie bad.

I hate ever to bad mouth this mans movies because he's brought so much to the action/adventure genre,but after watching Derailed I must say what I feel because it's on my chest.Van Damme's most recent thrillers that have skipped the box office and straight to video {The Order,Replicant}haven't been to bad and I can't believe The Order didn't make theaters.But his newest action flick Derailed is a disgrace to action movies and Van Damme himself,I can't believe Van Damme took the script after all the classics he's made.The storyline has been done before and the special effects look like it came from an old Godzilla movie.Terrible! The whole movie is garbage,I'm sorry Van Damme but this film is horriffic.

Okay, okay, I admit it. To all the world (well, Amazon.com users) I am a BIG Van Damme fan. Yeah, I have been taking the heat on this for a number of years now, but I can't help loving the guy. From the guitar-twanging thrills of HARD TARGET to the vicious (and balletic) brawling of KICKBOXER and BLOODSPORT, 'Van Dammage' has constantly entertained and kept my faith in bad action cinema alive. Even though he seems to be appearing in Direct-to-video movies now, he still has the knack for picking interesting riffs on the action genre. Check out his collaborations with two of Hong Kongs' finest: Tsui Hark (the underrated DOUBLE TEAM and KNOCK OFF) and Ringo Lam (MAXIMUM RISK and the killer comeback movie REPLICANT). These movies have shown his ability to choose difficult and 'Non-Hollywood' product, opting to make something far more different than formulaic.

Having said all of that in support of my hero, here comes DERAILED. A near train wreck of a movie (Cliched I know, but I'm sure I stole that line from a friend of mine.), it ambles along like a dodgy episode of an old TV show, with awful production values and terrible visual effects. The dull story is a lazy retread of DIE HARD and UNDER SIEGE 2. A virus has been leaked out on a train by some dastardly terrorists, and only Van Damme can stop them before the world(?) is taken down by smallpox. And, er, thats it. Okay, there may be a little more going on, but from the bad acting, uneven direction and lack of genuine suspense, all you want to do is stop the movie, eject the disc and watch LIONHEART again. Maybe, just maybe, this total waste of time will be just a figment of my imagination.

This movie is that bad. Don't be fooled by the obvious 10+ year old shot of Van Dammage on the cover, or the stills of him riding the motorbike across the top of the speeding train. None of these things will change the fact that this film is like watching paint dry on a very cold day. Coming after his other mistep THE ORDER, this ranks as the lowest dip in his career. Which is a shame, as 2000 saw his excellent comeback flick REPLICANT show that he could still flex his action muscles, as well as delivering a solid performance wrapped up in a decent story. As I have stated previously, this one hurts. To pinpoint what is the worst thing about it, would be a worthless exercise as the movies' problems are legion. Bob Misiorowski's direction is pedestrian and uninvolving (I couldn't believe my eyes when he informs us of the state-of-the-art effects sequences that have been used in the depiction of the speeding locomotive. Try toy trains, bub), and the pacing lacks drive or energy that is needed to make this kind of adrenaline-pumped film work. Summing up, I hate to admit it, but stay away. Movie like this are dime a dozen and seem to turn up on cable TV with alarming regularity. Van Dammage should have steered clear as well, saving his fans from wasting $ and giving his detractors another reason to naysay him. I can only hope that he keeps to his word (on the doumentary accompanying the flick), that he is going back to the movies that made him a star in the first place. The BLOODPSORTS', the KICKBOXERS' and hey, even CYBORG. Now, that would be something to look forward to.

Van Damme's most recent effort has a plot similar to UNDER SIEGE 2 and BROKEN ARROW which is scripted by B action film maker Boaz Davidson, the man responsible for such hilariously awful garbage as AMERICAN CYBORG.
Van Damme plays Agent Jacques Kristoff, who is assigned to escort gorgeous thief Golina Kostantin (Laura Elena Harring from JOHN Q) from Slovakia to Eastern Europe by train. Coincidentally, on board the train is a deadly biological weapon. After the train's first stop terrorists; led by the sadistic Mason Cole (Thomas Arana from GLADIATOR) board with the goal of finding and stealing the vial containing the deadly virus. What they plan to use it for is anyone's guess.
Now for coincidence #2: Among the train's passengers are Kristoff's wife and son. Things really start getting heavy when the virus is let loose throughout the train thanks to the bunglings of one of the terrorists. The leader lets him off lightly though: the culprit is promptly shot through the head, as all nasty terrorists types are wont to do. But as we all know by now, you don't mess with Jean-Claude. Especially when his family is involved. Butt-kicking time.
The movie starts starts OK, but soon derails itself. The addition of unconvincing minature setpieces and an overall air of stupidity make DERAILED about as explosive as a Bay City Rollers reunion. This movie looks and feels no different to any of the other direct to video actioners with stars like Michael Dudikoff and Jeff Speakman. DERAILED is a pretty anemic effort, but not Jean-Claude's worst: NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER and CYBORG are both tied for that dubious honor, but if like myself you're a Van Damme completist you'll want to watch it anyway. Don't say you weren't forewarned.
Extras include a behind the scenes featurette, trailers and subtitles in English and Hindi.

The main problem here seems to be that the central event in the story, the scam , just isnt interesting, its certainly hard to beleive in the characters and their interrelationship based on this event, from there it just falls apart.
Basically boring and very missable.

Summary:
Vincent "Vinny" T. Webb (Nick Nolte; Young Vinnie Webb - Shawn Hatosy) is an alcoholic with a guilty conscience. Years ago he and his best friend, Lyle Carter (Jeff Bridges; Young Lyle Carter - Liam Waite), rigged some horse races with the help of Lyle's now wife, Rosie (Sharon Stone; Young Rosie - Kimberly Williams (I)). But rigging the races isn't what the guilty conscience is from. The racing commissioner (Albert Finney) caught on to what they were doing. So the three friends set him up; Rosie had sex with him while Vinny took pictures. They then used the pictures to get him to keep quiet while they won their final race. After the last race, Rosie took off with Lyle, even though Vinny wanted to marry her.

Vinny has kept the pictures for roughly 20 years as a means of controlling Lyle. Lyle went on to make something of himself, becoming quite wealthy and continuing to participate in horse racing. He even lives in Kentucky now, near the location of the Kentucky Derby. He married Rosie who has developed a love for horses, especially the one the story is named after - Simpatico. Whenever Vinny needs anything, he calls up Lyle and, because Vinny still has the evidence from their crime so many years ago, Lyle has to concede to whatever Vinny wants.

Well, that's all just the backstory, which takes the whole movie to figure out. The movie actually begins when (this is my interpretation) Vinny can't take the guilt anymore and decides to play his hand by giving the pictures to someone (he tries to give them to the racing commissioner to clear his name and to Rosie, but both refuse). To clear the way for him to get them to Rosie he tricks Lyle to fly out to California saying he is in trouble. He isn't really but ends up stealing Lyle's wallet, return flight pass, and cash and heading to Kentucky to try to get rid of the pictures. Once Lyle realizes what has happened he tries to send Vinny's current love interest, Cecilia (Catherine Keener), after him, but the realization of the havoc Vinny is likely to cause gets to him (again, my interpretation) and Lyle and Vinny temporarily switch roles with Vinny becoming the business man and Lyle the drunk. Now everyone involved has to come to terms with the past and the future that has resulted from it.

My Comments:
I'd like to meet Nick Nolte one day, perhaps follow him around and see what he is really like. Has he ever played a role where he was sober the whole time? I mean, the guy just seems to get typecast into the role of a drunk in every move he is in. Anyway, the acting in this movie is okay. So, too, is the cinematography. Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges were pretty good, and so were all of the young counterparts and the racing commissioner. However, I didn't like the two women leads, - Sharon Stone and Catherine Keener. I think Catherine Keener was more convincing than Sharon Stone, but perhaps the reason I didn't like either of them that much wasn't so because there acting was so poor (I don't really think it was all that great), but because they were trying to play characters that just weren't working. Catherine was trying play a naive woman from California and Sharon was playing an embittered wife who was still fixated on a trick from 25-30 years ago.

This leads to the biggest problem I saw with the movie - the story. I guess it's kind of credible, but a major stretch. I wouldn't really know if people do these kinds of things; I've never done anything like it. But the responses of the main characters to the crime were, I don't know, not fitting. I guess theoretically it's possible that Vinny would take to drinking and not make anything of his life, same too for Rosie. But I doubt it. After 30 years or so you'd think people would get over it. Also, Lyle's response to Vinny heading to Kentucky made no sense either. I guess he was thinking that he was going to lose everything, but instead of trying to go to Kentucky to stop him, he gets sloshed and tries to hide from the world. It just didn't make any sense. Overall, the movie is kind of interesting just because all of the characters are screwed up, but the unconvincing storyline kind of ruins the movie.

One final thing - what's the big deal with the Kentucky Derby? I live less than 100 miles from where it takes place and everyone I talk to (definitely a biased sample, I recognize that) seems to think that it's kind of silly. Why all the mystique about it in the movie? I've never been and have no intention of going.

Anyway, this is one that you could miss and not feel bad about having done so. It definitely didn't leave a lasting impression on me and unless someone asks me about it, I highly doubt I'll be talking about it again.

This review refers to the New Line Home Video DVD edition of "Simpatico".......

Successful Kentucky horsebreeder, Lyle Carter(Jeff Bridges) is just about to make the deal of his life, when his past comes back to haunt him. A phone call from old friend Vinny Webb(Nick Nolte) puts the Kabash on everything. The cryptic call has all the sounds of blackmail! Lyle puts everything on hold and rushes out to California, to "help out" his old friend. Vinny has a plan though, that leaves Lyle alone and paranoid. Paranoid, that Vinny will spill the goods on a crime that along with "Rosie"(Sharon Stone),the three committed more than 20 years earlier.

The story of corruption in the horse racing industry unfolds in a series of tense flashbacks, played intuitively by the younger counterparts of the three, Liam Waite, Shawn Hatosy, and Kimberly Williams. The memories that they have tried to bury come flooding back, along with the pain and guilt of the lives they ruined. Will they be able to cope with these secrets for the rest of their lives or will the deeds of the past destroy their lives?

I seem to be in the minority, but I was impressed with first time director Matthew Warchus' style. It drew me in right away with it's Noir-like qualities and intriguing characters. I've watched it several times and never seem to tire of it. It is based on Sam Shepard's play(which I haven't seen, so I can't compare the two). The great cast, I'm sure helps tremendously, but don't look for Sharon Stone until about an hour in. Albert Finney as the immoral victim of the scam is marvelous as always, but Catherine Keener as, Vinny's girlfriend, the somewhat naive but only honest person of the bunch, really steals the show with her superb performance.

If you like a good drama, with just a touch of humor and interesting character studies, this is a good one. With all the various degress of reviews here, you might want to rent it first(I also sometimes see that is is played on some of the cable movie channels) to see if you like it. If you have already seen it, and know you like it, I can tell you that the DVD looks and sounds great. From Churchill Downs to the outskirts of Southern California the colors and picture are an quality outstanding. You have the choice of widescreen or a fullscreen format(This choice pops up right before the start of the film). You can also choose between Dol Dig 5.1 or Stero surround(audio set-up for this).Don't look for too much in the way of "bonus" material. There is a theatrical trialer and filmographies of the stars. The only subtitles and language are English.

Give it a try and decide for yourself....thank you...Laurie

I own this movie because a Friend recommended it, but It's not the original version, it is cut and edited, C'mon guys better sit down and watch TV this weekend, there are better movies there....

Okay, first off, I did not buy this version of Anthropophagous (or as it's titled here Grim Reaper). I'm writing this to let ALL of you know that this version is not worth the buy. There is, however, a place to get this--FULLY uncut with all the restored footage (including the fetus-devouring scene and the last scene, the self-consumption of the entrails). Go to [website] and visit their DVD section. They've got it there, along with dozens of other obscure horror, gore and exploitation flicks. While the DVD that I ordered there has trouble fastforwarding and rewinding, I still have the entire complete footage. The website really is the #1 place to go for anything like this...if they can't do it, none can.

I know I'm only restating what's been said countless times, but just to avoid anyone making the same mistake I did buying this:

The original, uncut version of this movie goes by "Anthropophagus: The Beast" or "Unsane". Those titled movies include the notorious scenes of the fetus getting ripped out of a woman's womb and the self-evisceration and devouring of the zombie's guts at the film's end. As of this writing, Anthropophagus is not available (to my knowledge) on a US, region 1 DVD. This heavily cut and edited version is all that is available on DVD (though the uncut versions are purchasable on VHS in NTSC format).

Add to the fact that the picture and sound on Grim Reaper is laughably bad and that there are no special features (not even chapter stops- the whole movie runs in one continuous loop, so to jump ahead requires your finger on the fast frame or fast rewind buttons), and what was an effective gross-out, 3 1/2 star gore flick has been transferred into a 1 star ripoff.

Perhaps we'll see Anthropophagus in an uncut DVD version by Anchor Bay or Image in the not too distant future. Until then, steer clear of this abomination.

As one who often paid good coin to see Fulci movies during their brief theatrical runs, I can appreciate the guilty pleasure of kicking back to hoot at badly-dubbed sadism and cheesy gore. But I draw the line at clods who insist that Lucio Fulci was some kind of tortured, misunderstood artist. Better you should write theses on the mise-en-scene of AIRPORT 1975, or maybe the underlying theme of ROLLER BOOGIE. There's no doubt Fulci was intending to shock his audience with mean-spirited viciousness; however, his ham-handed obviousness and ineptitude are what make his films "classics". I haven't seen BEATRICE CENCI or that DUCKLING one, so maybe there was some real talent there once. But from ZOMBIE onward, Fulci delivered more unintentional comedy than on-purpose terror. CAT IN THE BRAIN is probably his worst ever, a hopeless porridge of old gore-fx footage spliced into new scenes in an excruciating attempt at a psychological thriller. A horror-film director slowly losing his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy IS a scenario ripe with possibilities: wait till you see how badly this simple-yet-solid premise is botched. Or better yet, take my word for it and pass altogether. I hold no personal animus against the late Fulci, but it irritates me no end that this guy is slowly gaining a reputation as some kind of great Italian moviemaker - mostly from lazy gorehounds who can't be bothered to check out De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti or legit horror masters like Bava and Freda. Maybe CAT IN THE BRAIN isn't representative of Fulci's best -he was in failing health at the time- but I've seen his other "triumphs" and his only genius was in aiming low - and missing.

I'll begin this review by warning everybody that it will only focus on the content of the film, not the DVD itself (which is still 2 months from release at the time of this review). This being an Image Entertainment release though, I feel safe in my assumption that the sound and video quality will be at least acceptable.

This is in a way Fulci's autobiography. Fulci on Fulci if you will. A look (sort of) into the mind of one of the Italian Cinema's most controversial and prolific filmmakers, at least that was the idea. This movie can only be taken on one level, gore munching fun. Unfortunately all of the potential of a poignant look into the mind of the maestro is absolutely wasted, and what's left is a somewhat 2 dimensional story. A director of violent movies (Lucio Fulci) tries to cure himself of all the mental anguish having created such pieces of horror celluloid bestows upon him. In his hunt for absolution, he finds himself in the office of one of the most ludicrously acted doctors this side of Brian Yuzna's The Dentist, who takes it upon himself to live out every murderous fantasy he's ever had and pin the wrap on Fulci.

This idea in itself would have still made for an interesting movie, if not an incredibly deep one, but as anybody interested in this movie probably already knows, only around of half of the movie is actually a new film. Most of Cat in the Brain (or Nightmare Concert as it is also commonly known) plays as sort of a Fulci's greatest hits, being made up of gory highlights from many of his lesser known latter films (and a few movies that he didn't actually direct). It's not unlike, if Lucio's career had been a television series, this would be his end of the 5th season "flash back episode".

Even though many have taken issue with the somewhat plaguristic leanings of this movie, the idea itself still kind of works. The problem is the execution is such that the viewer's head is left absolutely spinning. The film cuts from story, to random gore, to story and back again, allowing the film to get to the point where even the most rabid of gore hounds will be tapping his foot and wondering "When is the blood gonna stop, and the film gonna start again?"

Interestingly enough, through all of this mayhem, Fulci proves to not be all that bad of an actor (his 8,000,000 Hitchokian cameos more than likely got him ready for the role), but unfortunately for the film, he is the only one who appears very fit for the screen.

This film will more than likely only be truly enjoyed by Fulci (or eurohorror) enthusiasts, and while others might enjoy it, they probably won't be able to sit through repeated viewings. But if you are an admirer of the late maestro's work, then there is no reason to not own this "ode to himself". And besides, where else but in a movie made by Fulci, about Fulci would we see multiple Italian beauties swooning "Look, it's the director Lucio Fulci, maybe I can be in his next movie." From the sound of it, she probably has never seen what most often happens to girls in Fulci's movies.

The movie Le Bambole is quite an interesting picture [which I can recommend], as it reflects of the 1960s Italian morals, but this DVD should be avoided at all costs. The quality of the print is simply abysmal. It looks as this had been sourced from a second generation video, if not worse.

Don't be confused by the name; there are other, and much better "The Patriot" films staring Mel Gibson or Steven Seagal and then there's Patriot Games staring Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan. In this 1986 movie a former Navy SEAL who was dishonorably discharged, was called back to the Navy to recover a stolen Navy nuclear weapon. It's not often that I have given less than 3 stars to a military movie; they are my favorite review. But this film, with Leslie Nielsen as its star is as poorly done as I've ever reviewed. I tried to like it; in fact I tried to watch it! No luck. If you're like me and in to military movies, the title "The Patriot" sound inviting, and it is if it's the one with Mel Gibson! ...This poor film of the same name is rated R for a brief sex scene and military violence. ...