Phantasma-gore-ia Blog

Because this movie was made in '74 and I wasn't made until '82 and didn't see it until last week, its characteristic, inspired themes became passe and considerably old hat in just the ensuing years, i.e. the end of the 70s, much less into the great-great-great-great-(etc.)-grandchildren: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Wrong Turn, et al.  The core ideas (the killer being in the house, gatherings of nubile, vulnerable girls, obvoius distractors (red herrings like Keir's character) and such became textbook lesson, sure-fire blueprints for a killer movie a long time before I saw it, and consequently I just didn't get jived by it.  The discordant voices on the phone were unnatural and haunting, but the killer being in the house was suggested aready by the fact that he used the same phones the girls had.  I hated how we didn't see this "Billy" nor understand why in heaven's (or hell's) name he tore into his deadly rage.  Had I seen this in '74, however, it would look and sound different today, but I missed it by...33 years.

This decidedly offbeat flick starts with a man taking his disjointed family to KFC, leaving them clues to a kind of treasure hunt of sorts left in ever-smaller bags like fast-food Chinese nesting boxes.  As they embark on his peculiar odyssey, they start to weld bonds that bridge the gaps they let grow in preceding years.  An unsual sort of family film, it's my idea of a cool way to spend an hour and a half.

Just that.  Like any Christie masterpiece, it's a total guessing game with a frustrating lack of answers for its hapless cast of characters.  Essentially, ten people find themselves on an island with a record that accuses them individually of varying crimes.  They get knocked off successively with an ending that, while not in keeping with Agatha's original story due to the dictation of the Hayes code, is still a "wow" moment.  It's similarities to Identity (2002) can't be ignored, but that doesn't mean by any respect that the latter isn't a great movie or even derivative, managing to devise new and smart connections between the characters as reasons for them all to be held down and picked off, one by one.

Not overly spectacular but not terrifically bad, this fare (ahem) was a good time at the movies, if you can get a hold of it.  Expect similarities to Turbulence and Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying, Die Hard III and, to a degree, Red-Eye.  ;)

Living up to the decidedly fatal and morbid appeal of its namesake, the Tales series, this anthology mix features five stories that explore the lives and deaths of as many new souls as inducted into hell.  They are firmly in keeping with the structure of the show in that they are ultimate examples of dire poetic justice and no one getting away without recieving their final comeuppance.  If you liked this title, I recommend Tales from the Darkside and Necronomicon, also collection-style flicks.

About as grim and bleak a movie as you could get (people conscripted into a goverment-run game show where contestants must kill each other to be the only to survive), it completely works and, if I may be so blunt, sticks it in and breaks it off for reality TV, something years overdue when this movie came out, much more so now.

"There really isn’t much to say here critically except that this is a dreadful movie that has nothing to say, nothing to prove and nothing to mean.  I watched it out of curiosity, and that was satisfied a while back, the FFW button becoming a close friend for the remainder.  A glacial pace, irritating and grotesque characters, an impotent and miserable shot at a story and an inferior, irrational conclusion even given the fracas gone before landed this a sure place on my Worst Films Ever Made list in Top of the Heap elsewhere on the site."

Fifth worst on http://bloodgutsandgore.com and it's not worth saying any more than that.