Reviews

I really am having a hard time picking any positives out of this CGI riddled drivel apart from the end credits!! I can't find any reason for it apart from a big paycheck for Dwayne and the woman from "Scream" trying to revive her career. To top it all off Dwayne's character has a prosthetic leg and makes all the daredevil and high-rise shenanigans even more ridiculous!! It isn't Die Hard and it isn't Towering Inferno but is a steaming, towering piece of crap that is higher than the 220 floor building featured here. Just woeful!!

I happened to stumble on this feature film version of the TV sitcom on my day off and was not impressed in the slightest! The British film industry seemed to churn out these spin-offs in abundance in the early Seventies and few were really any good! This is a perfect example of why they should of stayed on the small screen. I know it was intended as good old harmless fun but the problem is the humour is strained and it is just not funny!!!! Patrick Cargill stars as the long struggling dad trying to prevent his two teenage daughters from either getting married or moving house, whilst trying to get married himself to his agent (he is an author), so he can provide a mother figure for his kids. And there you have it!!! There's the plot in a nutshell plus throw in your usual clichés like the idiotic, clumsy son-in-law, the accidental milkman, and your token black man which provides plenty of ammo for these tedious stereotyped, racist jokes!!! It is worth pointing out that the director, William G. Stewart went on to later present the quiz show "Fifteen to One". Appropriate, as the odds are much higher against him with this project!! At the end of the movie Cargill looks at the camera and asks "Do You Mind?". Well, yes I do actually because it is 98 minutes of my life that I will not get back!!!

I cannot deny that I really like 'Madhouse'. It was made in 1974 and was a typically British horror film of the time, but it has some great things about it. It doesn't take itself at all seriously, and it throws some old clips from Price's AIP pictures, directed by Roger Corman, in for good measure. There's a great cast in here with old horror stalwart Peter Cushing, "Count Yorga's" Robert Quarry, "Confessions" film's Linda Hayden, "Father Dear Father's" Natasha Pyne, Benny Hill's Jenny Lee Wright and even a cameo from the daddy of talk-show hosts, Michael Parkinson!! Price plays Paul Toombes, a popular horror actor renowned for playing Dr. Death, a character who dresses in a black cloak and big hat and murders people in various bizarre ways. Toombes, though has just recovered from a long-term mental breakdown after his young wife was brutally murdered a dozen years before. He has now been offered more Dr. Death film roles, and coincidentally more murders are occurring with the killer dressed as Dr. Death. Who could it be? Could it be Price, going off the rails again, thinking he is Dr. Death? Or Quarry, the suspicious producer, who never liked Price? Or somebody else.....? Watch and see. Great fun!

The Last Boy Scout is a violent, adrenaline-charged action thriller helmed by 'Top Gun' director Tony Scott and penned by Shane Black of 'Lethal Weapon' fame. Its throwaway entertainment really, but its non-stop action and snappy one-liners make great viewing. Bruce Willis plays Joe Hallenbeck, a scruffy private detective who is given a job to protect an exotic dancer played by a young Halle Berry. She is girlfriend to a disgraced ex-pro football player, Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans), who takes an instant dislike to Hallenbeck. Their first conversation in the strip club gives way to some brilliant dialogue, and the delivery of it from the two actors is spot-on. It eventually grows into a buddy-buddy action pic after they get into various scrapes together, while the story unravels into a massive sports gambling scenario involving senators and football team owners. I can't be too specific without giving too much away, but its definitely worth seeing. My only gripe is that Hallenbeck's daughter, played by Danielle Harris, swears far too much for a kid of her age - not pleasant!

Cross of Iron is truly one of the great war films. The battle scenes are filmed with an intensity that you rarely see in films like this. The cast is first rate and Coburn is especially hypnotic as the heroic Steiner, the war-torn soldier who gets involved in a bitter feud with the newly transferred Captain Stransky (played with grim authority by Maximillian Schell). Stransky is obsessed with being awarded the Iron Cross and tries to bribe Steiner into signing a reference for him by promoting Steiner to a Sergeant. Steiner is a complete rebel in as much as he hates authority in the German Army so his promotion does little for him. He is admired by senior officers for his impressive soldiering and his leadership of his platoon so his shortcomings in his behaviour causes them 'to look the other way'. Stransky on the other hand is a wealthy man with Prussian blood and one suspects his Captain's rank came from his higher class background rather than his soldiering skills (as indicated in a bloody battle scene where he cowers away in his bunker, and the real soldiers are out in the trenches fighting at close quarters). These are two totally different men and the conversations indicating their bitter rivalry are fascinating. Coburn and Schell are perfectly cast, but the support is top-notch too with James Mason as the old-school type Colonel and David Warner as a slobbish Captain who seems to have given up hope on everything in general. Peckinpah is one of the few directors who can handle confusing battle scenes with such masterly control(check out the first shoot-out in 'The Wild Bunch') and was definitely the right man for the job here. The film puts an unromantic point of view on war as having the heroic soldiers on the retreat and losing big time - there's no flag-waving patriotic rubbish here - just a good, honest tough war drama. A terrific film which is generally overlooked in a lot of top ten war lists.

There's no better action director than Walter Hill, and this is a perfect exercise to show what the man can do. Setting up an eerie scenario in a swamp with murdering Cajuns and helpless soldiers at their wit's end, this is a riveting action thriller. Trouble starts when the National Guard (who are on a training exercise in the Louisiana swamps) steal some boats to get to the other side of the river. They are only given blanks as ammo, and when the Cajuns see the soldiers in their boats, one of the immature members of the Guard fire his blanks at them. The Cajuns then retaliate, only they don't have blanks-they have real ammo!! What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse, with the soldiers meeting various grisly endings, until there are only two of them left. The final scenes when they are both in the seemingly friendly Cajun village is brilliantly filmed, displaying the men's paranoia perfectly. The film is always compared to 'Deliverance', because of the theme of men being helpless in a hostile environment,which is a fair point, but Southern Comfort still brings its own share of originality to the table. It uses Ry Cooder's haunting, off-beat twanging guitar score to perfect effect,and the film seems to be an allegory of Vietnam(the film was set in 1973). Southern Comfort's best feature is its casting because there are no superstars in this film, just good, solid actors like Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe who get your sympathy as the men-in-peril right to the end. Some of the scenes are a bit over sentimental, but this is an absolute gem of a movie, and one to watch again and again.

This classy shocker was included in a book "The Fifty Worst Movies Of All Time" and got a complete roasting from the authors.Why? I haven't got a clue.It doesn't seem to take itself all that seriously anyway and what it does offer is a thrilling couple of hours entertainment.It is daft(David Seltzer-the author of the novel,claimed he did it strictly for the money),but it is carried off with sheer professionalism,that you don't really care.Gregory Peck gives one of his best performances of his later career, and when the death scenes appear on the screen-they are brilliantly staged.A throughly enjoyable piece of horror hokum which did really well at the box office,so it couldn't of been that bad eh? Apart from "The Exorcist" one of the best of the Seventies.

Takeshi's third film (after "Violent Cop" and "Boiling Point") seems to of hit the right note in blending quirky humour and sudden violence. He plays a yakuza who is getting tired of his lifestyle,and is considering retirement.He attends a high profile meeting with other gang leaders and finds out his next assignment is to settle a gang war in Okinawa.This is of course,not what it seems, with a hit-man sent over to wipe out Takeshi's gang.This does not quite succeed and a violent confrontation ensues. A beautifully photographed,oddball gangster film which manages to see-saw the viewer's emotions.Beat Takeshi's passive persona always seems to work in this kind of film.