Customer Reviews:
the nightmare man.......2006-02-03
When I saw this at The NFT a couple of years ago, I had High expectations. Since it was never repeated on telly, that was quickly dashed.
All it is a episode of Howards Way and Bergerac combined, it's simply not scary what so ever. The only good thing is the Bill Nighy lookalike as the russain - via berkshire colonel, hamming it up to kingdom come.
As for the nightmare man, he resembles a prat struggling to get out of a tight scuba suit.
A good creepy movie........2006-01-23
Perhaps banal and clicheic, and a low budget product of the early eighties, when the soviet union had at most barely begun to fall apart, I liked this movie very much. More a four-part movie than a series, with no special effects worthy of this name, it had to rely on a tight plot, good acting and well constructed parts. They even good took pains to have their medical men (a dentist and a physician) use the medical lingo correctly - since I am a biologist by training, it is more difficult to fool me than the average joe. (The only defect, perhaps, is an uncertainty between a couple of terms, which could easily been avoided, but nothing is perfect.) Apart from that, this is so much better than most of what is released today that I wonder why the movie industry can still be alive.
Never go back.......2005-06-28
Great story, good acting and I'm glad that Celia Imrie survived the killer to play Philippa in Dinnerladies, but the parsimonious 1970s BBC production values really show up here. Everything was shot on videotape, which is cheap and easy to edit, but it gives the picture a flat, colourless, cheap and nasty look. And the attempt at creating the illusion of mist by putting a filter on the lens didn't work either - the scenery half a mile away is as visible as the actors in closeup.
But the greatest disappointment was that I was not as excited as when I saw it decades ago as a young boy. The suspense came from not knowing what would happen or who/what the killer was.
If you have never seen this film, and don't know what it is about, you might quite enjoy seeing it. But if you are just buying it as part of a nostalgia trip, forget it.
Truly eerie ..............2005-05-12
Ever since this release was announced nearly 12 months ago I have been eagerly awaiting it's arrival. I was not disappointed. Time has not diminished the power and drama of the story or the excellent production values. All performances are excellent, especially Maurice Roeves, and it is still creepy enough to inspire a few shivers down the back of the neck. This is one of only 2 TV productions that have really made me want to check the doors and windows before i went to bed (the other being "The Woman In Black") and i cannot recommend it highly enough.
Classic Sci-Fi/Horror thriller.......2005-04-20
Up until the recent Doctor Who the BBC have treated Science Fiction and horror titles with some contempt (look at the last few series of DR Who, the budget couldn't match the creative content). But back in the eighties they still took it seriously. This, along with Day of the Triffids, is an excellent example of what the BBC was capable of.
Only ever broadcast the once this is a 4 part series. Set on a remote Scottish island a new resident is torn apart shortly after getting of the boat. The fact that she has been torn apart by hands alone leads to some rather unusual conclusions. Is thise a monster or could it be an alien from another world.
This series is well acted and is extremely well done. My only critiscism is that in modern terms the ending is a bit more obvious than I would like, but this is more to do with the period that the series was made (and the book written).
The DVD package is a bit minimal, there are no real extra's to this series. This again is to do with the age of the series and there would probably be no real promotion to this series.
One word of advice, do not read the excellent booklet until after you have watched the DVD as there is a very minor spoiler in it about the ending.
All in all an excellent show.
Amazon.co.uk Review
One of Stephen King's most shapeless, all-but-the-kitchen-sink novels, Dreamcatcher is wrestled by overqualified director-writer Lawrence Kasdan and cowriter William Goldman into an equally shapeless, slightly more entertaining big-budget schlock movie. Mind-reading psychiatrist Thomas Jane, back-from-the-dead road accident victim Damian Lewis, slacker toothpick-chewer Jason Lee and psychic car salesman Timothy Olyphant are King-style thirtysomething buddies who might also evoke Kasdan's The Big Chill, bonded forever by a flashback psychic experience that logically took place in 1983 but with the Stand By Me haircuts, music and milieu of King's own childhood.
On a weekend retreat in the snowy Maine woods, the quartet run into an alien incursion that begins ominously, with animals fleeing the forest but then throws in enough phenomena for a whole season of The X-Files with leftovers that could kit out a video nasty, notably toothy worm parasites memorably named "shit weasels" and a giant ET that turns to red powder and possesses Lewis. Mad militarist Morgan Freeman shows up and claustrophobic lost-in-the-woods business is diluted by a helicopter attack on a downed flying saucer and an internment camp for red-blotched infectees, while the plot boils down to something as simple as a race to prevent a worm from being dropped in a reservoir (which will end the world).
On a scene-by-scene basis, it's entertaining and creepy so long as you don't think too hard about details, like why someone charged with trapping an alien by sitting clamped on the toilet lid would risk reaching down onto a bloody floor to get a toothpick or why the aliens didn't just land by the reservoir in the first place. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Give it a try.......2008-01-23
Maybe because of my advanced years I tend to be a little bit harder to please when it comes to horror, shocks, etc. I have seen so many 'scary' films I find it harder and harder to be made to sit on the edge of my seat.
There is no point in trying to add to previous reviews in terms of storyline etc., so all I will say is.....this is a very tense film, there are some comical moments, the acting is good, you do get attached to the characters....and yes it is a bit unbelievable at times, but it did have me on the edge on my seat, so just enjoy it.
Sometimes it's good to set your mind free, forget about logical, believable story lines, and just enjoy a good film. This IS a good film. Give it a try.
Worst DVD i own........2007-11-04
I bought this a part of a buy 3 for £15 or something similiar a few years ago, i didnt really want it but i had two good films i wanted so i shoved this in to make up the numbers, bearing this in mind it has taken me 3 years to finally watch it and what a disapointment it was, its just terrible, why morgan freeman put his talents towrads this garbabe i will never know. I dont even really know why its so bad, it just is, the acting is mediocre from the outset and the storyline is stringing never interesting the viewer or making them care in any way, the so-called special effects are sub-standard and almost turn it into a comedy, for a film that contains probably the greatest living actor this was a major disapointment. I notice you can pick it up off marketplace for 50p, dont waste your money, buy a can of coke or something.
OK BUT NOTHING SPECIAL.......2007-10-26
Years after being apart, childhood friends Dr. Henry Devlin, (Thomas Jane) Joe 'Beaver' Clarenden, (Jason Lee) Gary 'Jonesy' Jones, (Damien Lewis) Pete Moore, (Timothy Olphant) and Douglas 'Duddits' Cavell, (Donnie Wahlberg) have all settling into new careers and begin to fix the severed ties with each other. Going back to the cabin they frequented as children during a torrential snowstorm, they happen upon a stranger, Rick McCarthy, (Eric Keenleyside) inside nearly frozen of frostbite and complaining of being sick. Soon afterwords, a commando unit, led by Col. Abraham Curtis, (Morgan Freeman) and Lt. Owen Underhill, (Tom Sizemore) moves in, and finds they're fighting an alien threat. As they start to come under attack one-by-one, they race to stop it before the military takes out both sides.
The Good News: This wasn't all that terrible. The film's best moment is the bathroom scene. As two of the group return to check on a man, they discover blood all over the cabin, leading to the bathroom. They then burst through the door to find their guest sitting on the toilet with blood everywhere, including on him, insisting he just needs to make some room before the alien evacuates and scuttles across the floor. They hear something drop into the toilet and then push the man off it. It's a really impressive sequence, being bloody, disturbing and quite original. The moment doesn't stop there, though, as one of the them, quickly-thinking, flushes it, slams down the lid and plants himself on it as the alien makes repeated efforts to force its way back up and out. The scene is simply marvelous in its cleverness, with tension-building cross-cutting to the other one searching desperately for duct tape out in the shed while we continually see the creature repeatedly try to break out inside. A marvelous fight ensues when it does break free, leaving blood all over the room and causing some quite gory wounds as well. When the other one comes in and is confronted by a towering alien with the usual big-almond-eyed alien head and the added accessory of the giant slug, now crawling around up the alien's alarmingly long limbs and across its stooped shoulders like a slithering pet boa, it simply ends it with one of the best ways possible. The main alien, the slug, itself isn't that bad, looking like a normal slug only to reveal its multiple serrated teeth lined up in a sack on the bottom of the head, gives it a nice appearance and it does look otherworldly at times. Also to be commented on is remarkable sequence where one of them enters the cabin and finds the entire places shows signs of the incursion, every surface covered by a dark, creeping red crud. It looks impressive on first visit, and doesn't really look all that bad. Otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot here to like about it.
The Bad News: There are several things wrong with this one. One problem stems from the first act's pacing. This film takes forever to get anywhere. It sets up the four main characters at a very languid rate, which would be fine if that had anything in it that would've been useful later, since it drags on and provides nothing all that interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn't and makes the film seem like forever to get to the invasion. It also leaps from one subplot to another with such abandon that the movie loses any sense of flow or integration. Characters and stories disappear for long periods of time and then reappear awkwardly. To begin with, there's enough stuff through the subplots that shouldn't have been there to make the whole thing feel oddly disjointed. Aliens have landed in Maine and an underground militia groups work to kill the aliens and cover up the situation. A mentally slow man sends messages to his friends. There's lots of mind reading. A car accident and a body possession. It doesn't spend enough time digging into any particular plot-line long enough to flesh out the more fascinating ideas, provide it with anything remotely considered an answer for what is going on, and get us to a fully realized ending. It feels really tacked on and comes out of nowhere, then ends abruptly and all is well. It doesn't really provide much in the way of answers and comes as a very disappointing effort. These make it a really underwhelming film.
The Final Verdict: Had this made more of an effort to be more thought-out and not as sluggish, this could've been halfway decent and one of the better King adaptations out there. It's got enough good ideas to give it a go, but those who aren't the most forgiving of King fans will find this to be a really trying film in between the alien bloodshed.
The worst movie I've ever seen.......2007-09-10
I love Stephen King movies, Stand By Me, IT, The Stand, Pet Sem, these are all top class movies, but this one???? What a load of rubbish!! It's pointless and stupid. What's with the aliens at the end and why did the little boy turn into one?!? It doesn't deserve any stars!
Mad filem.......2007-06-25
Quite stoopid really and not worth buying it. However, my fondness of it stems from the scenes of bottom birthing. The ET's come out of the victims arses. Classic, why hadn't anyone else ever thought of that, hilarious.
Customer Reviews:
DULL.......2007-08-31
I hate films like these!
IT BASED ON A TRUE STORY,
it wasn't.
The acting was appauling and the end was the worst
thing to ever witness,
its mainly 2 people floating after
being left by there boat.
Shark infested water?
So many sharks and in the end,
the man dies by being bit on the foot and the girl just
sinks!
Why THUMBS UP, no thumbs down,
not a one star an absoulute zero,
where did the other review comed from!
Susan and Daniel get left behind in the big blue ocean.......2005-05-31
The obvious comparison just about everybody seems to be making with "Open Water" is to "Jaws," but I think that misses the point. Yes, they both have sharks in them, but "Open Water" has more and they are more realistic than Bruce, but I think the cinematic reference point for Chris Kentis' film is "The Blair Witch Project." This is not just because it is filmed with a digital video camera rather than a 35mm camera but because it is the same sort of stripped down filmmaking. For most of "Open Water" we are looking at a couple in the middle of the ocean. Usually we look at them from above, sometimes from below, and sometimes we get point of view shots or looks at what is lurking beneath the waves. But most of this movie is about those two people floating in the ocean.
The two people are Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel Travis); the "Blair Witch Project" analogy gets even stronger here because Blanchard is Ryan's middle name and her first name is Susan, but then we eventually learn the last name of the characters is Kitner, and that was the boy who gets eaten by the shark in "Jaws." They are a young couple who have finally found some time to get out of town and away from their lives (and cell phones). If this were a Greek tragedy you could point to the specific acts of hubris by each that doom them: he complains about her bringing along her laptop but she catches him using it while he finds her naked in bed but not in the mood for love making. Of course the Fates conspire against them that when heads are counted on the boat that they get missed and left behind.
We know from the start that Susan and Daniel are in for the long haul once they find themselves all alone in the water. Periodically the time of day pops up in the corner of the screen to tell us how long it has been, but the hours just keep rolling along. There are sharks and other things in the water for Susan and Daniel to worry about to be sure, but there is also nobody else for them to blame but each other as they ride the emotional and physical rollercoaster of being out in the middle of nowhere. Not only does it definitely put life in perspective, it forces them to do the same thing with regards to death.
"Open Water" is a "true" story in the same sense as "A Perfect Storm," where we basically know the start and the end (although I doubt the end Kentis comes up with is the same as the "true" story of the couple left behind in Australia's Great Barrier Reef) but the middle becomes conjecture. You can easily imagine Kentis, who wrote/directed/edited the film and is a certified diver, hearing the story of two divers being left behind and his mind coming up with thoughts and images of what that must have been like. The result is a sort of "realism," as in the imitation of life that the ancient Greeks considered their tragic plays to be, in that I bought the idea that this is what it would be like and this is what would happen. You might not like the ending, but you cannot consider it a cop out.
In a summer when I was assaulted by an overload of special effects in films like "I, Robot," or treated to jiggling cameras and constant smash cuts in films like "The Bourne Supremacy," this was a movie made by a guy sitting in a boat with a camera while two actors stayed in the water. "Open Water" is not cinema in the sense of "Jaws," which had the virtues of Steven Spielberg's sense of montage and John Williams' unforgettable score, but a movie that gets it sense of suspense and terror from the situation. The editing is straightforward and the music, mostly ominious stirngs and drums, is rather minimalistic.
I was thinking 4.0 for this film until the end, when I raised it a notch to 4.5. The DVD extras are okay, but not quite enough to round up. I fully understand that "Open Water" will not be appreciated by everybody who sees it (obviously given the vehement denunciations of the film) and that it is not a great film that any one will want to watch over and over again, like "Jaws." I watched "Open Water" again when it came out on DVD and will probably never watch it again. But it is an honest effort at filmmaking at a time when the rule is to substitute style and special effects for substance and story. Those who liked "The Blair Witch Project" until it turned out in the end to be a shaggy dog story will have no complaint on that score with this film.
Amazon.co.uk Review
One of Stephen King's most shapeless, all-but-the-kitchen-sink novels, Dreamcatcher is wrestled by overqualified director-writer Lawrence Kasdan and cowriter William Goldman into an equally shapeless, slightly more entertaining big-budget schlock movie. Mind-reading psychiatrist Thomas Jane, back-from-the-dead road accident victim Damian Lewis, slacker toothpick-chewer Jason Lee and psychic car salesman Timothy Olyphant are King-style thirtysomething buddies who might also evoke Kasdan's The Big Chill, bonded forever by a flashback psychic experience that logically took place in 1983 but with the Stand By Me haircuts, music and milieu of King's own childhood.
On a weekend retreat in the snowy Maine woods, the quartet run into an alien incursion that begins ominously, with animals fleeing the forest but then throws in enough phenomena for a whole season of The X-Files with leftovers that could kit out a video nasty, notably toothy worm parasites memorably named "shit weasels" and a giant ET that turns to red powder and possesses Lewis. Mad militarist Morgan Freeman shows up and claustrophobic lost-in-the-woods business is diluted by a helicopter attack on a downed flying saucer and an internment camp for red-blotched infectees, while the plot boils down to something as simple as a race to prevent a worm from being dropped in a reservoir (which will end the world).
On a scene-by-scene basis, it's entertaining and creepy so long as you don't think too hard about details, like why someone charged with trapping an alien by sitting clamped on the toilet lid would risk reaching down onto a bloody floor to get a toothpick or why the aliens didn't just land by the reservoir in the first place. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Give it a try.......2008-01-23
Maybe because of my advanced years I tend to be a little bit harder to please when it comes to horror, shocks, etc. I have seen so many 'scary' films I find it harder and harder to be made to sit on the edge of my seat.
There is no point in trying to add to previous reviews in terms of storyline etc., so all I will say is.....this is a very tense film, there are some comical moments, the acting is good, you do get attached to the characters....and yes it is a bit unbelievable at times, but it did have me on the edge on my seat, so just enjoy it.
Sometimes it's good to set your mind free, forget about logical, believable story lines, and just enjoy a good film. This IS a good film. Give it a try.
Worst DVD i own........2007-11-04
I bought this a part of a buy 3 for £15 or something similiar a few years ago, i didnt really want it but i had two good films i wanted so i shoved this in to make up the numbers, bearing this in mind it has taken me 3 years to finally watch it and what a disapointment it was, its just terrible, why morgan freeman put his talents towrads this garbabe i will never know. I dont even really know why its so bad, it just is, the acting is mediocre from the outset and the storyline is stringing never interesting the viewer or making them care in any way, the so-called special effects are sub-standard and almost turn it into a comedy, for a film that contains probably the greatest living actor this was a major disapointment. I notice you can pick it up off marketplace for 50p, dont waste your money, buy a can of coke or something.
OK BUT NOTHING SPECIAL.......2007-10-26
Years after being apart, childhood friends Dr. Henry Devlin, (Thomas Jane) Joe 'Beaver' Clarenden, (Jason Lee) Gary 'Jonesy' Jones, (Damien Lewis) Pete Moore, (Timothy Olphant) and Douglas 'Duddits' Cavell, (Donnie Wahlberg) have all settling into new careers and begin to fix the severed ties with each other. Going back to the cabin they frequented as children during a torrential snowstorm, they happen upon a stranger, Rick McCarthy, (Eric Keenleyside) inside nearly frozen of frostbite and complaining of being sick. Soon afterwords, a commando unit, led by Col. Abraham Curtis, (Morgan Freeman) and Lt. Owen Underhill, (Tom Sizemore) moves in, and finds they're fighting an alien threat. As they start to come under attack one-by-one, they race to stop it before the military takes out both sides.
The Good News: This wasn't all that terrible. The film's best moment is the bathroom scene. As two of the group return to check on a man, they discover blood all over the cabin, leading to the bathroom. They then burst through the door to find their guest sitting on the toilet with blood everywhere, including on him, insisting he just needs to make some room before the alien evacuates and scuttles across the floor. They hear something drop into the toilet and then push the man off it. It's a really impressive sequence, being bloody, disturbing and quite original. The moment doesn't stop there, though, as one of the them, quickly-thinking, flushes it, slams down the lid and plants himself on it as the alien makes repeated efforts to force its way back up and out. The scene is simply marvelous in its cleverness, with tension-building cross-cutting to the other one searching desperately for duct tape out in the shed while we continually see the creature repeatedly try to break out inside. A marvelous fight ensues when it does break free, leaving blood all over the room and causing some quite gory wounds as well. When the other one comes in and is confronted by a towering alien with the usual big-almond-eyed alien head and the added accessory of the giant slug, now crawling around up the alien's alarmingly long limbs and across its stooped shoulders like a slithering pet boa, it simply ends it with one of the best ways possible. The main alien, the slug, itself isn't that bad, looking like a normal slug only to reveal its multiple serrated teeth lined up in a sack on the bottom of the head, gives it a nice appearance and it does look otherworldly at times. Also to be commented on is remarkable sequence where one of them enters the cabin and finds the entire places shows signs of the incursion, every surface covered by a dark, creeping red crud. It looks impressive on first visit, and doesn't really look all that bad. Otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot here to like about it.
The Bad News: There are several things wrong with this one. One problem stems from the first act's pacing. This film takes forever to get anywhere. It sets up the four main characters at a very languid rate, which would be fine if that had anything in it that would've been useful later, since it drags on and provides nothing all that interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn't and makes the film seem like forever to get to the invasion. It also leaps from one subplot to another with such abandon that the movie loses any sense of flow or integration. Characters and stories disappear for long periods of time and then reappear awkwardly. To begin with, there's enough stuff through the subplots that shouldn't have been there to make the whole thing feel oddly disjointed. Aliens have landed in Maine and an underground militia groups work to kill the aliens and cover up the situation. A mentally slow man sends messages to his friends. There's lots of mind reading. A car accident and a body possession. It doesn't spend enough time digging into any particular plot-line long enough to flesh out the more fascinating ideas, provide it with anything remotely considered an answer for what is going on, and get us to a fully realized ending. It feels really tacked on and comes out of nowhere, then ends abruptly and all is well. It doesn't really provide much in the way of answers and comes as a very disappointing effort. These make it a really underwhelming film.
The Final Verdict: Had this made more of an effort to be more thought-out and not as sluggish, this could've been halfway decent and one of the better King adaptations out there. It's got enough good ideas to give it a go, but those who aren't the most forgiving of King fans will find this to be a really trying film in between the alien bloodshed.
The worst movie I've ever seen.......2007-09-10
I love Stephen King movies, Stand By Me, IT, The Stand, Pet Sem, these are all top class movies, but this one???? What a load of rubbish!! It's pointless and stupid. What's with the aliens at the end and why did the little boy turn into one?!? It doesn't deserve any stars!
Mad filem.......2007-06-25
Quite stoopid really and not worth buying it. However, my fondness of it stems from the scenes of bottom birthing. The ET's come out of the victims arses. Classic, why hadn't anyone else ever thought of that, hilarious.
UK DVD:
- The Offence [1972]
- The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection - 1973-1982
- The Sandbaggers - Series 1 [1978]
- The West Wing - Season 2 Part 1
- Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! [1990]
- Trouble Every Day
- Turkish Delight [1973]
- Two Women [1960]
- Un Coeur En Hiver [1992]
- Where The Heart is - The Complete First Series
UK DVD List
UK DVD
All Drama
|
Drama
|
Categories
|
DVD
|
Video
The Omega Factor - The Complete Series
The Day Of The Triffids
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Children Of The Stones [1977]
Beasts - The Complete Series
Casting The Runes
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