Customer Reviews:
Bad direction + shoddy production.......2008-02-13
A giant fish inhabits a human body and makes it have a mid-life crisis (girls, sports cars, etc), probably an allegory for the 80's. Kyle MacLachlin another alien parasite who tracks down the bad fishman. Cheap looking and badly directed (the only other film this director made that I've seen was the terrible Elm Street 2). In 1988 John Carpenter made They Live, where one man discovers aliens are living amongst them promoting consumerism. They Live scores slightly lower at he IMDB, but for my money it a much better film. They both probably both got produced after the success of 1984's Terminator and 1983's V tv series. I guess this is one of the series of productions in the 80's where America is plagued by aliens/robots that look just like humans except for about 60 seconds where they spend their special effects budget to show the alien's true form. By the 90's these probably went straight to video unless thay had at least 10 minutes of effects (eg Species).
Amazon.co.uk Review
John Flynn has directed some good, tough, pacy thrillers and Best Seller, along with the 1973 The Outfit, can claim to be the best of them. It kicks off with not one but two slam-bang action sequences and then, having grabbed our attention, pitches us straight into its twisty plot premise. Brian Dennehy, reliably watchable as ever, plays an ageing cop-turned-novelist who has hit a writer's block since his wife died. James Woods at his most suavely sinister is a hitman with dirt to dish on the head of a big corporation. Woods proposes a Faustian pact. He provides Dennehy with the full crooked story on the mobster-turned-corporate boss and the cop writes it up. Dennehy gets a best seller; Woods gets his revenge and comes out looking like a hero.
The dialogue, courtesy of screenwriter and horror-movie director Larry Cohen (It's Alive; Q--The Winged Serpent), is satisfyingly hard-boiled and slips in plenty of subversive sideswipes at rampant capitalism. ("It's the American Way, Dennis," says Woods, detailing how he helped his boss rise via robbery and murder. "I'm a businessman, an executive.") This certainly isn't the only movie to get mileage out of the symbiotic relationship between cop and crook (see Michael Mann's Heat), but it works several neat variations on the theme, with Dennehy and Woods both at the top of their respective forms. If the film never quite lives up to its potential--the required final confrontation between the two principals doesn't materialise and Victoria Tennant is thrown away as Dennehy's love-interest--it remains a way better than average thriller with its roots deep in the best B-movie traditions.
On the DVD: Best Seller on disc has no extras apart from the theatrical trailer. The transfer is good and clean, and preserves the original's full-width framing. --Philip Kemp
Customer Reviews:
A Little Gem.......2006-10-30
This cracking little thriller features two of Hollywoods most underated actors. James Woods always the 2nd string to better known actors, and Brian Dennehy who is now an award winning stage actor on Broadway.
Without these two actors and the chemistry that develops between them the film wouldn't have worked. Its an interesting story that keeps you guessing where its going (unless you've seen it as many times as I have). The direction by John Flynn is straightforward, and the script by Larry Cohen is pretty sharp. There are a few memorable scenes that will stick with you, and I would say its one of the few films I've seen where it could have been 15 minutes longer.
Woods plays the villian in the film, with Dennehy playing the cop who is now a successful novelist. Something in their past links them together and Woods wants Dennehy to write about it!
If you've managed to miss this film over the last 20 years, its well worth buying, as I have found it certainly holds up to repeated viewings.
Keeps you hooked.......2006-01-09
I only bought this because it was cheap and I'm a huge James Woods fan, really I'd little idea what to expect but I wasn't disappointed.
The performances are solid and the two lead characters (Cleve and Dennis) are interesting and likeable. The film is about a criminal (Cleve-Woods) who wants revenge on his former employer by having all the employer's secrets released in a book, which he wants written by cop Dennis who once had fame for writing the non-fiction book about a robbery of which he was the only survivor.
Cleve wants the book to mostly be about him and at first comes across as a wicked, selfish character, whilst Dennis is pitiful and pathetic at times. Both characters grow and strengthen through the movie, Dennis is admirable through his strong desire to protect his daughter and Cleve is humourous and one has to sympathise with his desire to be liked despite his deeds.
The relationship between the two is excellently portrayed and I would reccomend this to people who like not just crime movies but general thrillers, the soundtrack is good for the age and the suspense is always there.
Just Brilliant!Keeps you hooked!.......2003-07-16
I was watching t.v late one evening and was just about to pop of to bed when I heard a knock on the door.It was my two older brothers.Being a rowdy lot I knew I wouldn't get asleep for a good while so we all sat down in front of the t.v flicked on bbc1 and seen a film was going to start.This is one of the best movies to come out of the 80's gritty and hardhitting.It serves up tension and violence by the bucket load.Absolutely fantastic,watchout for the great ending.
Amazon.co.uk Review
By all rights, Alex Cox's absurdist spaghetti western Straight to Hell, should be up there in the canon of must-see cult movies. It was written in three days and filmed gonzo-style in six weeks in the Andalusian desert landscape of Almeria, Spain, on an abandoned film set originally built for Savage Cowboys, a 1969 Charles Bronson western. The cast includes the good, the bad and the ugly of rock and roll--namely Joe Strummer, Courtney Love (in her first starring role) and Shane McGowan--and cameos from Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and Jim Jarmusch. It also features a pre-Reservoir Dogs plot concerning three sharp-suited but incompetent hitmen on the lam in the desert with the proceeds of a bank heist and a pregnant girlfriend in tow (Love). There they stumble upon a remote, ramshackle town, home to a gang of coffee-guzzling gunslingers called the McMahons (the Pogues) who initially accept the bumbling assassins as one of their own. But the appearance of shadowy industrialist IG Farben (Hopper) throws the precarious peace into a trigger-happy turmoil. Despite the promise, the film was almost universally panned on its release, the main criticism being that although the cast and crew seemed to having a blast, not much thought was put into translating the joke to the audience. It's certainly anarchic and frivolous, but also silly and pointless. Sy Richardson as the Jheri-curled Norwood who steals the show, remaining stoic and super-cool as the chaos rages around him.
On the DVD: "Back to Hell", a 20-minute feel-good featurette, reunites the majority of the cast members (minus Courtney Love) 14 years on to reminisce on their experience making the film. At the end, Alex Cox cannily manages to elicit guarantees from the actors to appear in a mooted sequel. The original dialogue plays at low volume underneath the commentary track, making it hard to hear what the filmmakers are saying at various points. A promo video for the Pogues rendition of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is tacked on at the end, but looks as if it was sourced from a worn videotape. --Chris Campion
Customer Reviews:
One of the most wacked out films I've ever seen........2003-03-27
This is the kind of film that you'll either love or hate; there's no in-between. It's a psuedo-spaghetti western that manages to pay homage to the genre while sending it up with obvious glee. Filmed on Sergio Leone's favourite set in Spain, it stars Sy Richardson (Samuel L must have seen his performance before appearing in "Pulp Fiction") as the leader of a trio of inept hitmen-come-bankrobbers, with his pregnant and extremely whiney girlfriend in tow. Add to the mix a family of schizophrenic, homicidal and coffee addicted Mexican style bandits played by the Pogues, Elvis Costello as their butler, Edward Tudor-Pole, Amazulu, Denis Hopper and Grace Jones in cameo roles and, most importantly, a highly memorable and rather impressive performance from Joe Strummer as one of the hitmen, and you have the ingredients for a completely nutty 89 minutes that'll make you laugh out loud or switch off within half an hour. It doesn't necessarily follow that if you admire Alex Cox's work you'll enjoy this film but if your sense of humour is a little off kilter then you won't regret buying a copy. It's hilarious, I promise (but maybe I'm just weird). Besides which, it's beautifully filmed and worth a gander for the wonderful cast alone.
definately straight to hell.......2002-12-01
this is possibly the worst film ive ever seen.courtney love says about 5 words, and the acticg is atrocious. the story is nonexistant and the dialogue is awful.
this "film" bored and confused me to tears!
dont do it!
A wild punk western.......2001-06-02
This Alex Cox film was enjoyable, it has allot of his usual cast members from his other films. I am not sure of the date it's sett but I don't think it matters. The film has allot of music stars in it and is more of a homage to the wildness of them opposed to a western with a plot. It's a humourous film though, with amusing little touches and a general feel of madness and perhaps stupidity to it. It's a bit of an aquired taste but it's worth a look for the interesting style, strangeness and music stars performances, aswell as Dennis Hoppers brief cameo.
Amazon.co.uk Review
With a pounding, synthesised sound track, big-haired babes in bikinis and succession of increasingly incredible fight scenes and returns from the dead, Midnight Crossing takes some beating as an eminently watchable slab of 1980s schlock. Honesty is a premium in this torrid tale of a buried fortune, hot sex, deceit on the high seas and much extended suspense. Jeff Shub (John Laughlin), a six-packed hunk in tight shorts, lives for his yacht, inherited from his father. When his wife's boss Morley (married to a blind woman and played by Daniel J Travanti) charters the yacht for a birthday celebration, the two couples head off for the Bahamas. Then, Morley reveals his real agenda--the recovery of treasure he buried on a Cuban island in the pre-Castro years--and it soon becomes clear that nothing and nobody are what they seem.
Kim Cattrall, years before her emergence as a stylish television star in Sex and the City, pops up in a in a wet t-shirt. And at the film's centre is a knockout, beyond self-parody performance from Faye Dunaway. Here she plays Joan Crawford playing a blind woman who might not, in fact, be blind at all. Dunaway confirms the suspicion that she was an actress born 30 years too late for the kind of scripts that would have best served her unique brand of throbbing melodrama. The rest of the cast, particularly the usually reliable Travanti, soon follow her over the top. The result is a compulsive 90 minutes of hammy and thoroughly enjoyable action.
On the DVD: Presented in letterbox widescreen (1.85:1) format for maximum effect Midnight Crossing surfaces pretty much as it did in the cinema. Picture quality is fine. The daylight scenes on board the yacht certainly benefit but the interminable night-time struggles are less convincing. Were they shot in a tank? Probably, if the dull stereo sound quality at this point is anything to go by. Extras are limited to the original cinema trailer and filmographies of the leading players.--Piers Ford
DVD Review:
- The House by the Cemetery [1981] (NTSC)
- The House of Seven Corpses [1973] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- The Last Sect [2006]
- The Masque of the Red Death/The Premature Burial [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- The Mummy / Creature From The Black Lagoon
- The Nightmare On Elm Street 1-6 Collection (Six Disc Box Set)
- The Night Of The Living Dead - The Remake [1990]
- The Nostril Picker - Uncut Version! [1999]
- The Omen Trilogy [1976]
- The Phantom Of The Opera [1998]
DVD Review List
DVD Review
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![The Crazies [1973]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00009WVYV.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
The Crazies [1973]
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Creepshow [1982]
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They Live [1989]
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Lifeforce [1985]
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Stephen King's The Langoliers [1995]
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