Film Reviews by Frank Talker™

An overlong thriller with, unfortunately, no red herrings to distract us from the rather obvious twist-ending.

Robert De Niro excels in a small part in which he practically winks knowingly at the audience that he knows full-well that he is asking Mickey Rourke's private detective to find someone that the latter actually knows personally very well, indeed.

This kind of death-fixated mystery (eg, Mr Arkadin [1955], Point Blank [1967] & The Sixth Sense [1999]) with supernatural overtones has been done too often to be fully-engaging. Only the strong sense-of-atmosphere and the high quality of the performances from all involved gets us to the finale in more-or-less one piece. Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet are particularly fine with the good personal chemistry necessary to make their romance convincing.

Fun movie which works as a kind of sequel to Dr. Strangelove (1964) - with a dash of the Statue of Liberty from Planet of the Apes (1968) and a little Mad Max 2 (1981) vibe. This movie even lifts lines of dialogue from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and a repeated "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" musical cue from Dr. Strangelove.

Moreover, the plot of rescuing women from the villain's harem is similar to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). It's almost as if the Mad Max movie refashioned a plot from the older movie which they thought nobody had ever heard-of and, so, could get away with copying one which had partly-copied an earlier entry in the Mad Max franchise. Or maybe the producers of the latter thought: Sauce for the goose...

The post-apocalyptic world presented here wants to re-populate itself after the nuclear holocaust by utilising the sexiest women to ensure that the few remaining fertile-men are aroused enough to engage in energetic, regular & polygynous procreation.

The saving grace of this film is that it does not take itself too seriously so that the audience doesn't have to. Sandahl BERGMAN, Roddy PIPER, Julius LEFLORE, Cec VERRELL & Rory CALHOUN work-well together and they understand full-well that they are in a B-movie with lots of absurd humour and action, not a Shakespeare production. Additionally, the frog creature-effects are excellent for such a low-budget movie: USD$1.5 million.

Ultimately, however, it's difficult to figure-out how film-studio executives ever greenlighted this movie, unless they had just snorted an entire line of cocaine before the business meeting where it was pitched. Whomever sold it must have been the greatest movie-idea salesman in film history. And I'm sure glad that they were.

The usual Hollywood America-wins-a-war-against-aliens for the benefit of the entire human race movie - just as bad as the frequent American claims that America won World War 2.

A preposterous plot of sending untrained soldiers into the future to fight a war with aliens resulting in the inevitable demise of most of them is reminiscent of currently sending poorly-trained troops to the front lines in the Russo-Ukraine War.

This film compounds its idiocy with a soap-opera concern for the relationship between the hero and his daughter. This tells us nothing about such relationships and merely serves up cloying sentimentality, while actors flounder with awful expository dialogue; revealing little of character.

The aliens are the usual identity-less horde whom consume humans as food. Yet there is no explanation as to what they are likely to do when they render their own source of nourishment extinct. These evolutionary misfits merely serve to symbolise all of the fears of White culture: Mass migration, ongoing global-warfare, declining birth-rates, economic stagnation, rising crime, social collapse, etc.

Götterdämmerung was never so silly nor so easily solved. This is all good solacing entertainment, but you just can't kill what you fear with imaginary solutions because the problems, themselves, are just as imaginary. An impossibly-limitless supply of bullets won't help here, either, nor will the highly-derivative nature of the plotting - especially as regards the movie "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014).

Ultimately, the movie leaves-out answering the question as to what the goals of these soldiers really are. What civilisational, cultural, social, familial & personal goals are to be achieved here? What is the point of surviving and winning when there is nothing to live for afterwards. Survival for its own sake does not make much of a compelling narrative.

These fundamental existential issues are not explored in favour of a movie that is little more than a re-creation of the mindless destruction and brutal exploitation of colonialism; this time presenting White people as its most obvious victims - a hidden-in-plain-sight confession that what they have done to others can just as effectively be done to them.

Only the supporting players offer any of the only real special-effect in any movie - the quality of the acting - but they are not on screen enough for the audience to ever really care about them. Jasmine MATTHEWS and Sam RICHARDSON are particularly effective here, while Chris PRATT shows just how mediocre an actor he is in a straight drama.

...FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING

The usual snobbish fear and hatred which the White middle-class possess for the poor. Here, modern-day pickup- and truck-drivers are all resentful rednecks, police officers honest and helpful & the middle-class hard-working and emotionally-vacant.

The married couple here are poorly-dramatised and Kathleen QUINLAN is shamefully wasted in a nothing part which centres largely on Kurt RUSSELL's husband role. This makes him appear to be in love with the idea of passionate married-love, itself, rather than with his actual, flesh-and-blood wife.

Without any clear definition of the true nature of sexual love, this movie flounders around in the same thematic wilderness as the desert-bound characters, trying to convince us that over-acting and an increasingly-improbable plot are valid substitutes: Sensationally-entertaining, certainly, but essentially vapid.

The worst aspect of this movie is the self-created class-war between members of the same race. This makes the characters little more than symbols of their respective and enforced roles in White society, with no in-depth characterisation to explain their mutual, divide-&-conquer plight: A class-based paranoid/schizophrenia which keeps them from working together against their real class-enemies, the materially-wealthy and the politically-powerful.

The overwhelming feeling here is that, like the Hollywood movie Deliverance (1972) or the European folk-tale Dick Whittington (1600s), the countryside is a forbidden zone as far as the rich and the affluent are concerned, inhabited only by - and for - poverty-stricken rural failures; while urban areas are populated by a better kind of person in the form of sophisticated city-folk.

In this movie, the near-car-accident plot-catalyst is the fault of both road users, yet they each lack the adult maturity to admit this to themselves - or to each other; inevitably leading to fatal consequences since they then choose to revert to their ingrained socially-stereotypical roles rather than just doing the most sensible thing and avoiding each other.

There is no-one to root-for here as there was, say, in the movie The Ruling Class (1972) because there is no proper dramatic exploration of the actual purpose of being class-conscious.

A load of old rubbish, really - but good, old-fashioned entertainment.

The acting is excellent throughout, the script is weak & the characterisation thin.

Character motivations play second-fiddle to heart-pounding action in the run-up to an almost-impossible "The Dam Busters" (1955) styled military-bombing mission. The supporting characters do not get enough time to shine, dramatically, and there are just too many of them to produce sharp narrative foci.

The love interest is feeble and underwritten with no real sense of emotional danger or sexual passion.

Oddly, the enemy planes in evidence here are not named (Su57s) because these Russian aircraft are actually superior to American F35s which are, in any case, supplanted in this film in favour of older and inferior F18s.

This airplane-technology issue hints at the most obvious problem with the film in its almost-complete dissociation from real-world geo-politics. All that remains is the usual racist arrogance that non-Anglo-Saxons (in this case Iran, since they are the only other country to operate F14s) must have their technological progress deliberately-retarded in order to maintain White supremacy. All the while Russian Slavs, whom engage in defence co-operation with Iran, must also be dissuaded from such collaboration. All of this is presented without offering the slightest evidence for the impliedly-innate cultural-superiority of the Western world or that progress and development in the East is an actual threat to the West.

Dramatically-thin but great driving scenes.

Attractive actors with uneven acting abilities fill-out the melodrama between exciting action-scenes of cars moving at high-speed and then often crashing in slow-motion.

The masochistic stupidity of the two main characters here is so annoying that it is difficult to empathise with them, since the life-threatening situation that they are in is largely avoidable and mostly of their own making.

It is an eternal oddity of horror films made in the West that White characters are somehow ineluctably-desirous of putting themselves into obvious danger, rather than doing the sensible thing and getting away from the obvious danger as fast as possible.

And the obvious danger here is so obvious that a blind person could easily see it: A strange man, in the middle of a sunny day, next to a main highway, disposing of human corpses. Yet they decide to investigate first before contacting the local police.

(Having said that, the first act of Jeepers Creepers is actually based on the true story of a 1990 murderer, Dennis DePUE, in which a married couple actually investigated an obvious murder before thinking to call the police!)

The overall effect of the two-dimensional characterisation and lapses-of-logic is to introduce plot contrivances which reduce any tension or suspense since the main characters are not trapped by the demonic villain, but by their own need to fulfil out-of-date horror tropes, contrivances & genre-movie clichés; eg, three times their old car won't go forward when their lives are in the greatest danger.

Horror is difficult to do well. And a clear decision of the filmmaker must be made at the outset: Allegory, realism or humour; eg, the better, respectively, The Innocents (1961), Psycho (1960) or Evil Dead II (1987). If you try to mix-&-match, as this movie does, the result is a hodge-podge: Is the villain a demon, human or smirking at our deepest fears? We can't tell and, so, don't really care. And without a consistent tone, no solidly-spooky atmosphere is ever created.

This emotional flatness is exacerbated by dialogue which does not reflect the fears of the central characters but, rather, the would-be cleverness of the screenwriter. It's as if these characters are trying-to-be-cool teenagers talking about a horror film that they are watching rather than the one that they are actually in.

This metafictional narrative-technique only serves to emotionally-distance us from the unfolding drama; without offering any of the pleasures of watching the stereotypes that we enjoy so much being lampooned by metafiction; eg, 'You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid and everyone hates them for it?'

Technically, the film is good-looking with decent special-effects and some nice visual ideas; eg, a one-way mirror in a police interrogation-room into which the heroine stares while not being able to see the threatening villain on the other side. Yet, the movie is undone by the fact that the actors do not inhabit their roles sufficiently to convince us that they are in any real danger. The ending underwhelms presumably because of the low budget and, like the rest of the movie, leaves us feeling distinctly emotionally-unsatisfied.

Ultimately, this movie is not genuinely psychologically-resonant, genuinely scary nor genuinely funny-enough to distract us from its sheer vapidity; making it a horror film written by children for those very same children.

NB: This movie was directed by a registered sex-offender which may explain its odd and thematically-irrelevant fixation upon genital functions and the sniffing of used male underwear. These could have been the basis for a better film, but here they are merely self-indulgent details.

Millie PERKINS is really the only good thing in this dire, low-budget movie and she comes across as a mean, hard-hitting assassin extremely well.

The lead, Lola FALANA, is a far better singer than she is an actress and she comes across here as shrill and unlikeable.

An amusing and an entertaining feminist parable which reveals just how nasty are the attitudes of Western men to women in an inherently-sexist culture of rape, sexual objectification & physical intimidation and harassment.

Laurene LANDON is excellent as Hundra; bringing an appealing mixture of sexiness, sass & humour to what must have been a physically-demanding role. She demonstrates that martial skills, self-confidence & self-esteem can be used with great effect to defeat men - especially if closely-associated with a swift kick to the testicles.

This is the ultimate sex-war drama of perhaps the world's first feminist.

(This United Kingdom DVD is a not-by-the-BBFC censored version of the film - unlike the "Richard's Cinema Vault" print currently available on YouTube. This latter version is also properly letter-boxed.)

A desperately unfunny film featuring some very sexy women and classy actors wasted in an underwritten story set in an English country-house.

The production values and the costuming are excellent for such a low-budget movie, but these do not adequately compensate for cringe-making and vapid humour. There are absolutely no valid statements to be made about human sexuality in this British sex-comedy despite its claim to being a sex comedy.

All that the audience gets instead is a White culture of sexual repression, male insecurities & the inevitably-resulting sexual desperation - especially among the largely-unsatisfied women. To make things worse, the film insults its audience by treating them as if they were also just as love-starved.

There is no real sense here that sex is a means to an end - just an end in itself - since all of the characters are either scared of sex or see it as something you get from someone else rather than something that you share with them. And where's the fun in that?

Impressive-looking movie with excellent special-effects compromised by terrible, expository dialogue which does not provide any kind of engaging emotional drama.

The actors do their best but their parts are so underwritten that the love triangle here comes across as pure soap-opera.

The underlying story here of scientific and technological over-reach leading to global catastrophe remains topical but is never fully unexplored. Perhaps there is a reason that the Earth's magma-core is shrouded by a thick mantle which only a fission bomb can penetrate? Yet only one of the characters in laboratory coats here in the whole wide world ever suggests that drilling through this protective layer might have deleterious and suicidal effects for the planet.

Unsophisticated propaganda for the dangers of climate change disguised as a mish-mash of science-fiction, suspense, horror & conspiracy thriller.

This movie does not do particularly well at any of its genres; making it a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none since it cannot decide what it primarily wants to be.

None of the actors does anything interesting with their admittedly thinly-written characters; leaving the audience to focus on wondering what is really going on amidst the long trail of death-and-destruction related to a mysterious, coded radio-message from outside of the solar system.

We don't really care for any of the characters; making two hours pass slowly.

Decent and brisk science-fiction movie, set in 1973, about the White race's obsession with manned exploration combined with the sheer terror of what they imagine they might find on their travels. Almost as if the 'final frontier' were somehow analogous to the "Dark Continent" of Africa.

The "it" here comes very much from the Caucasian id, especially given the fact that this space mission is actually a military exercise undertaken by the 'United States Space Command' in a rocketship packed-to-the-gunnels with military ordnance - automatic pistols, carbines, fragmentation & gas grenades & a bazooka. Quite an arsenal for a round trip to a supposedly-dead planet like Mars!

Surprisingly technically-accurate - at least in view of the silence of space necessitated by the fact that sound, unlike light, does not travel in a vacuum - this movie has too many characters to emotionally invest-in. But at least none of the actresses are here to shrilly scream for the men to come and save them since they actually perform scientific functions in the plot and are treated as more-or-less equals by the men.

The horror element is less successful here since "it" is clearly just a well-built man in an ill-fitting monster suit - whom walks stiffly just like a well-built man in an ill-fitting monster suit would - partly-hidden behind a gloomy lighting-scheme.

What really hurts this movie is that the creature has no motivation for its behaviour beyond wanton destruction and dealing-out death; making it the unreasoning creation of irrational cinematic minds whom are unwilling to grow-up beyond childhood stories of bogeymen.

Fun movie albeit with two leading players lacking any chemistry with each other - along with there being nothing in the way of individual character-development.

However, Bess ARMSTRONG is good value as the spunky flapper-heroine whom holds her own in all of her scenes and is not just around to be rescued by the (admittedly alcoholic) hero.

Yet, the plot is just a series of ever-increasingly explosive clashes between various tribal warlords set against a backdrop of beautiful Asian locations; somewhat resembling a travelogue of the world's war-ravaged hotspots. The worst dramatic offence here is that there is no real sense of danger that the leads will ever get killed, imprisoned &/or tortured - even though many try all of these.

Enough money was spent on the handsome production to make it diverting enough as entertainment, but it is unfulfilling as a true adventure should be; that is, as a metaphor for the search for one's true self.

Brilliant psychological conspiracy-thriller about a combined Sino-Soviet attempt to get a hardcore communist elected as the President of the USA, carefully disguised as a virulent anti-communist.

The performances are all superb, the direction taut & the writing focused - there is a genuine determination here to make the somewhat absurd premiss literally-plausible rather than just metaphorically-believable. It works.

Of particular note are the three distinctively-different female characters whom represent either destroyers of men or their saviours. Angela LANSBURY is terrifying as Laurence HARVEY's domineering mother; Janet LEIGH is delightfully-slutty as the woman whom quickly discards her fiancé after meeting a man on a train whom looks a lot like Frank SINATRA; &, Leslie PARRISH is brilliantly funny as the delightful ingénue whom Laurence HARVEY marries.

An excellent companion-piece to The Candidate (1972), wherein Western democracies tend to elect leaders whom do not truly represent voter aspirations.