Reviews

Dear Writer Idiots: Here's what you don't do. You don't take an iconic character from books, film, and TV, and turn him into something that your feeble minds think is relevant somehow to today. You didn't create this character and you've got a lot of chutzpah turning him into whatever this character is, which isn't, by the way, Perry Mason. Just use another name and doing soil what Mr. Erle Stanley Gardner created because you know what - you're not better than him. In fact, you're just typical now TV writers, copying other shows and genres, with a "director" who's trying awfully hard (emphasis on the awful) to be David Fincher. Eight episodes to solve a case? Really? Especially when we know who at least one of the guilty parties is in episode one. You love all your digital period detail and I can just imagine you all clapping yourselves on the back for it, but then you go and have someone get a phone number that is a prefix and FIVE digits. Dear people who have no idea about LA or its history - FIVE digits didn't come to LA until 1950 and it was a rarity even then. Prefix and FOUR digits. It's really not hard to find that out if you're not lazy. There were no restaurants/diners on Larchmont Blvd. In the early 1930s like the one you picture, which is, of course, Musso and Frank. Why not just call it Musso and Frank? Seems simple to me.

Your leading man never seems to shave. In the early 1930s men shaved and did not look like some buy from the 2000s. In the 1930s the F bomb was not dropped like it is today, a mile a minute. What do you gain by showing some three hundred pound Fatty Arbuckle-type's tool hanging out. Explain it? Is there an HBO rulebook? Why do the murder scenes look like they're right out of Seven? Why are the supporting characters all cliches out of other stories and films? Why is Aimee Semple McPherson always depicted in these tales and never by her real name?

But the bottom line here is this isn't Perry Mason. It's that simple. It could be Perry Merriwether or Richard Mason or Mason Jar and then people would perhaps go with it. Finally, to those who cannot go one second without using some now cliche - no, this is not an origin story about Perry Mason, because Mr. Gardner never felt Mr. Mason's origins were of interest because that's not what he was writing about. Eight episodes that could have probably been two. But not HBO. No, stretch it out beyond any logical endurance.

If you read reviews here on the imdb, you most likely know that most of them are written by utter morons. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's cut to the chase. This is the only review you need to read - you certainly don't need to read any review that contains more than one star.

This is, simply put, a complete embarrassment. Bryan Forbes, who once showed a little talent, here is at his nadir - this is one of the worst movies ever and his work here is truly awful, both as screenwriter and director. The only amusing thing he's managed to pull off here is the casting of Anne Archer, an almost dead-ringer for Forbes' actress wife Nanette Newman. Roger Moore never has a chance with his incredibly ridiculously written character. Archer is terrible, and all the supporting roles are played by bad actors because after Moore, Steiger, and Gould, they probably had nothing but scale money left. That was, of course, the Golan-Globus way.

And that brings us to Mr. Steiger. In a career filled with method acting scenery chewing, this is his most egregious performance. He is so bad here that one wonders if Mr. Forbes simply had to give up. If Forbes encouraged this kind of performance, well... If any cop acted the way Steiger acts he would be sued and drummed out of the force, it's that simple. He gives over the top a whole new meaning - it's a super size ham on rye performance with much screaming and yelling - it's just laughable. I liked him in No Way to Treat a Lady and In the Heat of the Night and perhaps Duck, You Sucker, and he's good in a few of his early movies. But as the years went on, I'm guessing he was just impossible to direct. I wonder if he was up for a Razzie for this - he should have been. Gould is the only one who escapes this mess by underplaying everything.

The film looks okay, the musical score, right from the get-go with those stupid eighties' electronic drums, is terrible - Michael J. Lewis was very talented, but this stupid film seems to have done everyone in.

This was, perhaps, one of the worst things I've ever seen anywhere. It is the nadir of this iteration of The Twilight Zone, which was an entire series of nadirs. I have lost a huge amount of respect for Mr. Peele, whose last two films I enjoyed. He's a terrible host, and why he's billed maybe speaks to the ego at work here (Mr. Serling was never billed as "narrator").

With this episode, this sorry excuse for what the kiddies like to call a reboot (or is there a newer word now), the show not only jumps the proverbial shark, it actually eats itself. Shame on everyone involved. And of course the idiotic CBS All Access renews it for another season. I can't even imagine what this piece of dog snot actually costs, but I'm glad these substandard writers, who can't even sustain whatever lame story idea they have for even five minutes, and the even lamer directors, who wouldn't know an original shot if it hit them in the head and who are all obviously following some cookie-cutter directorial road map, and awful actors will keep profiting from their amateur work. This series is a textbook example of everything that's wrong with TV today.

It's fine to hate Spaceship aka Naked Space. It's equally fine to love it and most folks who do saw it at a young age on USA cable. What's not fine is to not understand what you are watching, so let me help you. The soundtrack to this film came out a couple of years ago, and in the liner notes the writer/director goes into detail about what happened.

The simple version is that Bruce Kimmel wrote and directed a movie called The Creature Wasn't Nice. At some point, it was taken away from him and completely re-cut in an attempt to make it like Airplane, a series of gags (even though Airplane is not just a series of gags, which is why it works), with plot thrown out the window. What the original version was was a linear film, a literal spoof of Alien and 50s sci-fi monster on board the spaceship films. With a few musical numbers. In the re-cut, scenes were put in completely random order so that when the film isn't funny it isn't anything. Yes, there are funny bits still in the movie and even the one-star reviews here acknowledge that.

But I just read that we will finally get to see the original cut of the film and I'm hoping that it gives this film some vindication.

So, to put a period to this: This is not the film the writer/director actually made - in the original version there are no Japanese monster movie clips, there is no stupid rock music, no hip disc jockey voice for the computer, and on and on.

Let's tart with the date listed here, 1980. This series premiered on June 5, 1976 and ran for eight weeks, the summer replacement for The Carol Burnett Show on CBS. 1980 doesn't enter the picture at all.

Secondly, most of the cast listed here did not appear on this series. The series regulars were, in alphabetical order, Diana Canova, Bruce Kimmel, Gary Mule Deer, Mike Neun, Leland Palmer, and Mike Preminger. Guest stars included Jean Stapleton, The Doobie Brothers, and Paul Williams. For the final two episodes, a new cast member was added: DeeDee Rescher.

First of all, I always have to laugh when I see the standard imdb "I've never written a review here before but I felt compelled to come out of the woodwork to review this movie no one knows anything about" - c'mon, folks, you're not kidding anyone.

Then I'm always amused at the little tiny teens who come here to deride any film they can get their slimy fingers on - of course, seeing this in a theater with these twits would be horrible, which is why I don't go to theaters to see movies anymore - too much moron in the audience (and yet they LOVE the most infantile and ridiculous stupid-hero movies, no matter what).

So, what do we have here? A fairly well directed movie with nice photography, a good score, and a nice lead performance. It has an interesting and weird premise and it moves along at a steady clip and I rather enjoyed myself during its ninety-something minutes. I could have lived without the jump scare dream cliche - once, maybe, but twice, never. I've seen so much lousy junk lately, and yes that includes the dopey super-hero movies - this one's a masterpiece compared to that idiocy - that whenever I see something that's at least competently done, I'm happy. The doll itself is very creepy and well rendered. Is it predictable - some of it, sure, so what - what isn't?

You could do worse.

You will note several ten-star reviews, clearly written by the director or his cronies. So, skip those - how do I know this? Because this is what they do - and no one could be that stupid as to give this film ten stars. Then he has thousands of his nearest and dearest friends upvote it on the main page.

There is no need to pontificate on how bad this film - the script is horrible, the photography is digital (and I don't mean that as a positive), and I can't feel for Nicolas Cage because he obviously enjoys the dough and likes working. Faye Dunaway was clearly bamboozled by the moron director - clearly. She should, at this point, take a leaf from Jane Fonda's book and attempt to not slum. Because when you slum like this, no one will hire you to do something worthwhile. BTW, the "director" described this to the press as a comeback role for her. Uh huh. She has maybe six minutes of screen time.

Gina Gershon, as others point out, gives it her all, but I've never thought much of her all and even if she were Meryl Streep there is simply nothing to be done with either the character or the insufferable dialogue. I found Nicky Whelan ever so annoying, all schmacting all the time.

So where does all this end up? Correct, the director, someone named Jonathan Baker. a) he is a terrible director. b) he is a terrible director, and c) he is also a terrible actor who put himself in this film. Oh, and d) he is a terrible director and, having read up on him, a man of limitless chutzpah and ego. What else is new? The man's claim to fame is The Amazing Race. He has exactly five acting credits, one feature film credit (this one) and that's it. So how exactly did he bamboozle these actors and the people who funded the film? Well, apparently he has money from somewhere - his wife perhaps? Family? Because apparently he put in a million bucks of his own money. Well, that's one way to direct a film. He's also apparently funding a documentary about - him. I'm not making this up, folks. This guy is everything that's wrong with the movies today and hopefully after the failure of this wretched film we will not be subjected to another film from him. The film cost twelve million dollars with, I'm sure, a good deal of that going to the actors he "bought". Certainly none of it went into the filming, which took fifteen days. Who can blame Mr. Cage for taking a large check like that? Or Ms. Dunaway? Or Ms. Gershon? And the film's gross? Under $300,000. So, a complete and utter disaster. I found exactly two legit reviews - the LA Times and the Hollywood Reporter - both hugely negative as they should be - sorry, Mr. Baker, money can't buy that for you. Shame on you and shame on everyone involved. Learn how to read a script and just say no. Learn anything, but stop wasting people's time.

Finally, to the morons and friends of the director who loved the "twist" at the end - what twist? There was no twist at the end. Just shameless lying by the screenwriter/director to get you to believe one thing when another is true. That's not a twist, that's idiocy. And there you have it.

To the "reviewer" who said this could be just a coincidence that this might have been lifted from the 1961 film Scream of Fear - no. Robert Bloch's short story from which this is adapted was published several months PRIOR to the US release of Scream of Fear in 1961. Furthermore, the lead time for publishing in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine was probably at least six months, so Bloch's story was probably written in 1960, so there's no probably about it - simply coincidence.

Now that that's cleared up, this is a wonderful episode and I was so taken with Claire Griswold that I could not understand why she had no career - so beautiful and a terrific actress. Well, she was under personal contract to Hitchcock, as was Tippi Hedren, and she was up for Marnie against Tippi (and how interesting would it be to see what she might have done with the role), and shortly after doing this and a couple of other jobs, she retired to raise her kids and be wife to - Sidney Pollack.

One word sums it up - terrible. I don't know what's more shocking - the silly "reviewers" here who have never seen or read any iteration of Witness for the Prosecution, i.e. the people who like this monstrosity because they have no history and don't even know what the story, play, or subsequent film versions were about, or the fact that legitimate British reviewers heaped praise on this thing.

So, let's just start at the beginning. You want to have the chutzpah to call something Agatha Christie's The Witness for the Prosecution, then don't make up the majority of the movie so that it has nothing to do with Agatha Christie. Sarah Phelps, shame on you - Ms. Christie doesn't need your dreary help and you can't even walk in her footsteps let alone her shoes. The teleplay is dreadful - all the additions are moronic. You know, I have no problem with this soap opera story but don't call it Agatha Christie or The Witness for the Prosecution just because you keep Ms. Christie's central plot element. This isn't going back to the short story, this is a whole NEW story and it's not a good story at that. The only thing that works is the twenty minutes or so of the trial.

It just goes on and on, one dreadfully dull scene after another, filled with whispery acting and the awful coughing of Toby Jones (bronchitis we finally learn) - I don't blame him for coughing, mind you, given the amount of smoke they're pumping into every single shot and scene. It's not the 90s anymore, kids. And yes, the green - it's like watching Saw or something. Agatha Christie didn't write horror stories, you know. It's so dark and ugly and ineptly directed. Kim Cattrall is embarrassing in this as is her character, which has little to do with Ms. Christie's Emily French. The big finish doesn't happen where it should, the courtroom, because once the verdict happens the film goes on and on for yet another thirty minutes. The big finish occurs in France and then after that the film goes on and on for another fifteen minutes because this movie isn't about Leonard Vole or Emily French or Romaine Vole, it's about John Mayhew - sorry, does not compute, I don't care about the character and all his and his wife's angst - this is not Agatha Christie, this is Days of our Lives. I got the Blu-ray of this because of the reviews - fool me once, but never again.

I'm surprised four people have actually seen this. But since one of the other "reviewers" has incorrect information and since the IMDb has incorrect information, let's set the record straight. There is ONE director credited on this film, not two - that director is Mark Rutland, who doesn't seem to be listed on this page (see below for more about Mr. Rutland). One of the directors listed on this page, named Thomas Constantinides was indeed the director when the film began principal photography. He was fired one week into shooting because the producers realized that a) he was bad and didn't know how to shoot a movie and b) his footage would not even cut together.

The producers, in a panic, turned to a friend, Bruce Kimmel, to take over. This he did after having watched the dailies during the day - then coming in that night and taking over. In other words, a moment's notice. Of course there was not much to be done about the horrible script, written by Thomas Constantinides - all that could be done was to actually get the picture finished, which he did. It was he who shot the effective opening that someone here liked. The terrible scenes in the mental institution are 99% Thomas Constantinides' contribution to the film. His footage amounts to about twelve minutes of the running time. Mr. Kimmel, who is credited here on the IMDb did the film under a pseudonym, Mark Rutland (the name of Sean Connery's character in Marnie). This was something he did as a favor and it was not a project he had much control of, especially seeing as the star, Susan Strasberg, was then dating the fired director. I'm sure that Mr. Constantinides added himself here on the IMDb. And yes, he has exactly one other credit to his name. The other listed director (who someone says has no other credits) has plenty of other credits.

The film was a horridly written "thriller" of no merit. The finished film is not good, but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Only on the IMDb can you find people trying to justify and/or tell you that perhaps one of the worst movies ever made is not bad, or it's terrific, a great ride. Listen, either this place is populated by complete morons or it's populated by ten-year-olds - those are the only two explanations when a pathetic waste of celluloid like this gets more than one star from anyone.

I mean, has no one here actually seen a good movie? Is that it? Yes, I'm reviewing the "reviewers." I'm talking to you. Or do you take delight in being that idiot who does this just to mess with people. Yeah, I'm talking to you.

How anyone read this script and said, "Yeah, gotta make the movie," is anyone's guess. I don't care what it cost, it's beyond inept. Poor Shirley Knight. Poor John Getz. The rest of the cast give career-ending performances, especially the fellow who plays George Axelrod (wink wink - we get it, really we do - it's not clever, but we get it). I have never seen worse acting in a film. And that includes Plan Nine. And the little girl? Did the screenwriter think he was doing Willy Wonka? I did love when she was in shock and mumbling, "It's all my fault." If this were the Zucker Brothers, someone would have slapped her across the face and said, "Yeah, you little creep, it is all your fault."

The longest seventy-eight minutes in film history. And how about that final skyline shot that lasted forty seconds for no reason, before fading to the end titles? And then remove the six-minute main titles and you really have the longest seventy-two minute film ever made. Did this get released? Netflix it if you dare. Ooh, and a movie with nine characters trapped in a small elevator is shot in - wait for it - scope. It doesn't get worse than this, folks. Seriously. To the comedians here that liked it - you get less stars than I gave this film.

I read with some amusement the reviews on this film, ranging from boring to brilliant. So, first things first - brilliant it's not. Good it's not. Boring? Sometimes, but that's not the point. Thom Anderson wasn't born here. He doesn't bother to tell us when he moved here. From his rambling, pretentious, pedantic and horribly written narration, spoken by a horrible narrator, he presents himself as a native, as someone who knows Los Angeles intimately. I don't think so, frankly.

There's an interesting idea here - the Los Angeles of film, and the Los Angeles of now. But Mr. Anderson is so in love with himself and the sound of his own voice (and his narrator's) that what we end up with is a smarmy, not very smart documentary about - what? That's the problem. I don't think he has a clue as to what his own movie is ultimately about. His points are occasionally so obtuse that you sit there scratching your head as to what he's trying to say. He puts clips from two Hitchcock films that were shot in San Francisco. Really? And one in Paris? Really? I'm sure he thinks he's being deep and profound, but in both regards he'd be wrong. There are some decent clips here, and happily they've been cleaned up for the Blu-ray and taken from other Blu-ray hi-def sources, so they look much better than what was screened at the Egyptian (I was there). The final forty minutes or so, where he blathers on about completely unknown and obscure films that he's obviously in love with (given that he's a teacher of film theory, I'm sure he revels in such outré material), just devolves this film into complete and utter pointlessness.

Worth it for some good clips, and a handful of interesting bits of information. It's okay to want to make a film all about yourself, but don't call it Los Angeles Plays Itself, call it Three Hours of How I Personally Feel About Los Angeles with Sidetracks to Other Pointless Topics. Then we know what we're getting.

I cannot give it more than one star because it is such a missed opportunity for those of us who a) were born and raised here, b) know this city well, and c) love this city, especially its past, when it was one of the most unique cities in the world.

Joe Dante just doesn't know when to stop. That's always been his problem and most likely always will be. So, half of Matinée (the William Castle half) is fun and affectionate mostly, and the MANT scenes, although a little too smart aleck for their own good, are beautifully done. But trying to shoehorn that plot into a cliché-ridden Cuban missile scare story just doesn't work - it simply sucks the energy out of the film, and the climax is truly terrible - they didn't need the drama of the balcony collapsing - it's like Screen writing 101 - "Oh, we need one more really dramatic obstacle here." It's awful and I'm quite certain that it contributed in a large way to the movie's box-office failure.

And for those of us who grew up back then, I cannot name you one single occurrence of sitting in a brightly-lit movie theater watching a film. Sorry, Joe, didn't happen. Ever. What would have been so difficult to have it dark in the theater but lit so that you could see everyone. Hundreds of films have done it without much of a problem. That alone keeps taking you completely out of the film.

Nice Goldsmith score, well edited, well shot, but, as with a lot of Mr. Dante's films, despite enjoyable parts misses the mark.

After just having perused some of the most obnoxious and idiotic "reviews" for this film, one just has to speak up. Two fools on here actually go so far as to imply the film has overtones that make them uncomfortable, namely an older man and younger woman. This, of course, says more about the "reviewers" than anything on view in the film; note to "reviewers:" get a life or seek help.

Then you have the Tati acolytes who think they know everything and decry the film just because someone else had the temerity to make it. Then you have the just plain ignorant, with several people talking about how long the ninety minute film is. Note to ignorant: Sans credits, the film runs seventy-two minutes.

The most horrible films have drooling, rabid "reviewers" crying "A neglected gem!" about films that should be deposited in a trash can. But for this? This they decry. Unbelievable.

I'm not going to say much about the film because it should be discovered. It is a film of magic, it is a film of beauty, it is a film of small moments, it is a film that will ultimately be considered a masterpiece and these selfsame anonymous "reviewers" will jump on the bandwagon and blithely forget what they originally said.

See it. Sylvain Chomet is the real deal.

So, let me get this straight - if I have a taste for Fellini, Antonioni and Godard I'll feel right at home with A Safe Place? Um, no. I love Fellini, right up through 8 1/2. I've enjoyed much of Antonioni. Godard - a mixed bag for me, but I like Breathless and Alphaville fine, and Band Of Outsiders, too. Mr. Jaglom is not in their company, at least for me, and A Safe Place is a pretentious mess from start to finish. No one loves Tuesday Weld more than I, and she's fine. Jack Nicholson, who came in for a day and improvised everything is embarrassing. Gwen Welles gives new meaning to self-indulgent, but then again she has the most self-indulgent filmmaker imaginable "directing" her.

I have never met a Henry Jaglom film I liked - ever. And his "thing" that if you don't respond to his films then you don't understand women is, well, fatuous. I'm glad he considers himself such an enlightened and sensitive man, but I'm not buying nor are many of my women friends. It is the type of cinema that makes me want to throw up and not because I don't like experimental or interesting films, because I have and I do. As I sat there with drool running out of my mouth because I'd just invested what I thought was almost ninety minutes of my time, I paused the film to find out I was only at the forty-minute mark.

However, one has to commend any filmmaker who keeps on doing it - he does it with his own funds (good to be wealthy) and as long as he keeps having girlfriends he'll keep making films because his entire oeuvre is based on his love life.

I'm sorry, but there is virtually no terrible film in history that doesn't have these insane "If you don't love this, you're stupid or don't get it" kinds of really ridiculous adulatory praise. I saw Ishtar on its opening night. The theater was full. There was, listen to me VERY carefully, not one laugh ever. The full theater was half-full by the thirty minute mark. By the end it was a third full.

So to come here and read these "reviews" where people actually say that it's a brilliant comedy (well, how many people are actually saying it?) like they are somehow so clued in to what comedy is and anyone who doesn't like it is somehow an idiot - well, no, we're not the idiots. I have, in fact, just finished watching it again twenty-three years later. Some movies do age well and I hoped that I'd reassess my original thoughts. But alas, from scene one on it's a mess, it isn't ever funny, and it lumbers along with some of the worst pacing ever put on the screen. The only one who escapes unscathed is Isabelle Adjani. Everyone else is embarrassing, the most embarrassing being Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Beatty. There is such smugness behind this film and it reeks of it. This film didn't bomb because it had a huge budget. This film bombed because - wait for it - it was bad. Not funny. That's a problem for a purported comedy.

So, to those who say things like, "what movie did you see?" I have to say, I saw the movie these people made. I don't sit home in some fantasy-laden hazy state thinking a movie like this is the same as a movie by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. I don't laugh because I know the film was a bomb and that most people with a brain hated it then and hate it now, as if I'm better than them because I "get it."

It's a little shocking actually, until you look at the film's overall all rating here - which is a lot more accurate than these silly love letters to mediocrity.

I sat with amusement reading these ridiculous "reviews" on The Goonies. Ninety-nine percent of them written by people who saw it when they were five or eight and who are 80s children. Well, what a stinker it is. I've avoided it like the plague all these years, but now I've seen it and I'm here to tell you I almost threw my shoe through the TV. The "characters" are so unrelentingly stupid and irritating, the "script" is one bad sequence after another and loaded with some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard in a mainstream film. It is a career low for everyone, if you ask me. You know, I saw lots of movies when I was a kid (not in the 80s) and while I can think back with fondness on some of them, I'm also not living in my past - and I can recognize that while it may have been swell when I was five, while it may hold some nostalgia value, I can also recognize a stinker when I see one from my past.

But that's the deal with 80s children - they don't grow up. Same with 90s and the 2000s. Nobody grows up - thirty is the new ten and the world is not a pretty place. The one redeeming feature of The Goonies is its Dave Grusin score, which is terrific. Simply put, one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I've seen some doozies.

I knew if I came here I would see review after review telling me this is funny and a lost gem. It's not funny. It's not a lost gem. It doesn't matter whether you were in high school when you saw it, or whether you were eighty or whether you were six - it is truly one of the unfunniest comedies ever made, perhaps the unfunniest of all time. The dog is great. Madeline Kahn and the large cast of cameos are fun. Bruce Dern - not exactly Mr. Comedy. Michael Winner - the man who made Death Wish - that's who I'd hire to direct a comedy. The script is horrible, Winner is a Loser, and I just marvel at the deluded people who come to post at the IMDb. I know there is no accounting for taste, but when a movie is this bad, this blatantly bad, then one's mind is boggled reading these ridiculous comments. I was around Paramount at the time this film was released - they were really on a roll with terrible comedies - this, The Big Bus, and not only their comedies, but all their films save for one or two. Perhaps that's what happens when an Production Designer is made the head of a studio (Dick Sylbert).

I didn't really think I could find this film worse than when I saw it on its original release, but having just watched the DVD, it is indeed worse. An all-time bomb. The critics and audience of the time were right - the delusional here are completely wrong.

I read the other two "reviews" here - the first written by someone who seems to have seen a different film than the one actually in front of his eyes, and the other by someone who doesn't really get one of the major plot points. But, this is the IMDb so what else is new.

I'd never seen or heard of Cloudburst prior to the recent showing on TCM. It's quite a good little film - well directed by Searle, whose work I don't know at all, with a top-notch score by Frank Spencer, a composer I also don't know. Preston is very good, as are the rest of the players, especially the actor who plays the Inspector. The storytelling is compelling, and there's a surprising complexity in Preston's character. Leo Marks, from whose play this was taken, was a fascinating writer and person - as one of the others points out, he really did work as a decoder during the war - and this isn't the only film he wrote where the central character is a decoder - he also wrote Sebastian, in which Dirk Bogarde plays a decoder. And, of course, Marks gave us the brilliant script to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom.

Worth catching if you can find it.

First off, this is a terrible movie. It was terrible when I saw it at a sneak preview in LA (where 3/4 of the audience had bailed by film's end), and having just watched it again all these years later, it's terrible now. Only here at the IMDb can you find a bunch of armchair experts proclaiming this a "great" film. In fact, there is no film, none, that doesn't have someone here proclaiming it a lost masterpiece. Secondly, the score is excellent as is the photography, and the performances are fine.

Then you've got all the people here telling us how wonderful Sharon Tate is in this film. Yes, she's spectacularly beautiful but since her entire performance is dubbed by another actress, I don't know how you can call the performance great. And not one person here mentions the dubbing - certainly they don't think Miss Tate, a Texas native, could do that flawless and obviously real English accent, do they?

It's also interesting that while the title change to Eye Of The Devil is reflected in the main titles, the end title still carries the original title of 13.

I knew if I came here I would see 90% rave "reviews" mostly by people who saw this when they were ten and impressionable. So, I understand the nostalgia factor, but not the fact that they are still saying it's brilliant. It's so not brilliant - it's bloody bad. The critics knew it, the public knew it, and all the little boys and girls who, for whatever reason, hold a fond place for this isn't going to change the fact that it's bad. I saw this at a sneak preview several months before its release. By mid-way, over sixty percent of the audience had walked out. I stuck it out (I think I was around fifteen at the time), but only barely and only because I wanted to stay and see the main feature afterward. Even at that young age I knew it was a stinker - and I loved Brynner and even Chakiris.

So, I think it's time to call a spade a spade - bad movie, fondly remembered for all the wrong reasons by people who can't wait to come here and post that they loved it as a kid and why isn't it on DVD. It is on DVD now - and I just finished watching it for the first time since the sneak preview - and it has not only not aged well, it's worse than it was then. There are times when you just come here really hoping to read some interesting comments and you just end up scratching your head in amazement. This is one of those times.

Bottom line - really bad.

I knew I could come here and find someone proclaiming this as one of Ford's best 50s films, and I was right. Not only one of his best 50s films, but better than The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. Uh - no. Maybe Ford's worst, if not, right up there. The people praising the pace must have only seen the US black-and-white version, because the two-hour color version from the UK is excruciating. One uninteresting vignette after another. Yes, good actors, and an active score by Douglas Gamley, but it's just really, really bad.

They insist I write more - why is that? I just said all I had to say, but they say it wasn't long enough, but this must be a new rule or something because in this very thread there is a "review" exactly two lines long. So, let me add one final thought - this film is not good.

Forget the titular Amateurs of the title - let's talk about the amateurs here at the IMDb. My Lord, how bad does a film have to be before people can smell it? How can the film business have sunk so low that people here found this awful, horrible movie funny and charming? This is one of the worst movies ever made, despite its game cast. Have the people who "loved" this comedy ever seen a funny film? Because if you think this is funny, well, whatever must you think of Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Keaton, Mr. Brooks (Mel and Albert), Mr. Allen, Mr. Sturges, Mr. Wilder? Oh, yes, probably never heard of those guys. I know there is no accounting for taste, but one does read these "reviews" thinking that the filmmakers simply sent everyone they knew to post nice things. Because no sane person could think this movie good, or even half-good, or even any good. It is reprehensibly bad in every way.

Reading inane "review" after review here, with only a handful of people actually knowing that this was an adaptation of a hit B'way musical and acting as if it was just a remake of the 1939 film, well, never mind - it's the IMDb, where anyone can spout off without knowing anything.

The film is terrible. Lumet can be a great director, and a terrible director and here he is firmly planted in the latter category. The casting, for the most part, is hideous. Everything that was simple and fun on stage has been changed for the film, from its NY setting (a terrible idea, despite Tony Walton's occasionally amusing sets), and it's all too damn big with no charm. Changing the play's Dorothy to Diana Ross as an ADULT schoolteacher is the worst transgression - are we supposed to give a hoot about her? Please.

It really is one of the worst adaptations of a Broadway musical ever. As to the people who "love" it I say only that there is no movie ever made, no matter how bad, that isn't thought a masterpiece here at the IMDb.

What is it with people and the IMDb? This rush to judgment is astonishing - the critics too, falling all over themselves to proclaim this film a masterpiece. Do words have no meaning anymore? The awful, awful musical score alone would remove this from the masterpiece category. I thought Daniel Day Lewis was terrific (and yes, channeling John Huston, clearly), and I liked all the other actors. It's nicely directed and happily none of the cast whispers, which seems to be today's generation's idea of acting. Some scenes crackle with energy and good dialogue. But, at the end of the day, what exactly is being said here? That greed and power exist? Okay, great. I had no problem with the length, but it just became repetitious after a while. I have to agree with the comment that this will not hold up to the test of time. Citizen Kane it isn't. Treasure of Sierra Madre it isn't.

I'm sure some of this is shilling as someone suggests, which is why one can never take this site too seriously. Then there are the people who feel they must run home, fire up the computer, and howl to the world of masterpieces that exist only in their film study universe.