An Italian sword and sandal action adventure film directed by Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young.
After years of war between Rome and Alba, triplet brothers from each place arrange to fight and have the outcome of their conflict determine the end of the war.
Yet another inferior sword and sandal flick that seemed to drag on forever. These things follow a formula just like generic kung fu flicks and are indeed very similar. Wretched audio and video? Check. Light on plot and characters difficult to differentiate? Check. If I were reviewing how well it fit the mold of this genre, it would get a "best" rating. I'm not.
A movie should be something special and different in some way. It should have characters that feel like old friends by 10 minutes in and a plot that seems to determine the fate of this world (if not other worlds as well). Creative camera angles with good quality video that is easy to see and convincingly tasteful special effects should be a feast for my eyes. Audible, clearly spoken dialogue and an epic musical score of a soundtrack should push it into the realms of ear-candy. A good film should have consistent style and flavor; it should be identifiable as that film at any part in it's duration. In the first 5 minutes, my interest needs to be lured into the world of the film. By half an hour, I need to be engrossed in the story. At about an hour to 1:30, I should not want it to end. At the end, I must desire to watch it again at some point. That is what makes a good movie.
THIS was NOT a good movie. It contained 1/16th of what I described in the paragraph above. The dialogue was clearly spoken and audible. I'm going to rate it bad because it was a cookie cutter piece of crap.
An American documentary directed by Ralf Schmerberg, produced by Red Bull Media House and Red Bull Music Academy.
Some various musicians are interviewed and scenes from New York City are shown.
For a film about music, this was a cacophony of both audio and visual data. This makes sense considering the production company. The most banal and disjointed musician interviews were chopped up and interspersed with nonsensical scenes from NYC. They would play a short clip of someone saying something that might be related to music by the furthest stretch of the imagination, followed by a NYC scene like traffic or dogs barking. Why? To disorient the viewer, avoid presenting clear and coherent information of any kind and to MAKE MONEY. That's right, now documentaries don't present information, they serve the all-mighty dollar like everything else. Welcome to the new world order. All of us poor humans sat on our lazy asses as 2012 came and went and now the Illuminati have won. Welcome to THEIR world! They accidentally included a short clip of Malcolm Cecil discussing the balance that musicians need between the forces of grounding, spirit, theory and emotion at 55 minutes. This weird bassist from the '60s caught them off-guard and presented the only actual information in the whole film. I rate this cacophonous disarray shit.
An Irish American made for TV film directed by Michael O'Herlihy.
When an airplane crashes into his house, a man's wife and children are killed. He sets out to find who crashed the plane and to get revenge (apparently, according to Wikipedia).
I had to turn this off at about the 20 minute mark because I could not hear what the people were saying. The audio was muffled something fierce and they all sounded like they were slurring drunkenly. In a film that is as dialogue-based as this, not being able to understand the words is a fatal flaw. I have to rate it shit because I turned it off.
An American crime film directed by Joe Tornatore.
A group of Vietnam veterans gets involved in the ongoing conflict between white mafia, black gangs and the cops.
I was being too nice to the public domain movies. Now it's time to get nasty. What a horrible load of crap! The acting was some of the worst I've ever seen, the editing was sloppily timed, camera-work was lame, characters undeveloped, plot boring and the quality of the audio and video followed along these lines. It was like an hour and 20 minute Sabotage video by The Beastie Boys. Then in the last 5 minutes, a back-story develops for one character and twists the plot of the whole film retroactively. It seems like they tried to justify the whole stupid movie by making the last few minutes interesting. Too little too late! I'm rating it bad.
An American talkie directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, starring John Carradine.
A puppeteer who strangles women set his sights on a dressmaker.
The audio and video seemed like they were from 1904 rather than '44. The plot was dry and the characters drier; Mummy dry. Being totally devoid of style, this film should have been put out of it's misery sooner because an hour and 10 minutes was too much and I turned it off half way through. I have to rate it shit.
A British horror film directed by Richard Jefferies, starring James Earl Jones.
When a recently married couple are on vacation, they go to an island near Greece in search of the man's lost sister. They find her there among the irritable locals and a treasure hunter. The treasure hunter wakes an ancient monster while looking for riches and the locals try to revert to their old ways of sacrificing virgins to the monster.
You may recognize James Earl Jones' voice, but not his appearance. This is because his most famous roles were as Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King. He was also the voice of Ommadon in Flight of Dragons and the narrator for Long Ago And Far Away. Other than employing the talents of a famous voice actor, this film was one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever seen. It's not in the running for "worst film ever", but still, it's pretty bad. The audio was bad and much of it was in Greek(?) and there were no subtitles. The video looked like it was from 1972, not '82. The plot was stupid and full of superfluous characters and there was no style or flavor of any kind. I'm rating it shit.
A Chinese kung fu film directed by Godfrey Ho.
Standard Godfrey Ho story: cops looking for criminal ninjas.
What a worthless film! At least it was only an hour and 7 minutes long. Crappy plot, crappy characters, lame-ass action scenes. you get the idea. Don't watch it. I'm rating it bad.
A Chinese kung fu written and directed by Ling Shang A.K.A. Shang Lang.
A martial arts expert who is also a jeweler goes searching for his missing brother in Thailand.
What a horrible piece of shit! The production was bad, acting was worse and even the fight scenes were bad. No redeeming qualities at all. I rate it shit.
A Chinese worthless piece of crap by Godfrey Ho.
Chinese gangsters are sending Russian weapons to the middle east. An American is sent to do... something...
I've said that 1987 is the best year for movies. Apparently, it's also the worst. The plot didn't make sense, the fight scenes didn't fit in the plot, the characters didn't fit together in the story and the camera-work and lighting were both horrible. This is how not to make a movie. It's worse than Ben Hur, worse than Some Kind Of Monster and probably worse than whatever beat them last. I had to turn it off about half way through, looked it up online and read about some fantastic ninja fight "in the last 5 minutes or so", looked for the fabled fight scene, but didn't find it. I have to rate this shit. Fuck you, Godfrey Ho.
