Change Your Image
Al J
Reviews
Target... Earth? (1981)
Crude goofy documentary about the Tunguska Event
In 1979 I had two film makers Joost and Iris van Rees come to my office when I was working in California. They were making a documentary about the Tunguska Event, asked for an interview. I did it. I did not even know they made the documentary, years later I saw it on television, it is awful, Victor Buono plays Homer the Archivist, he obviously figured out fast that this awful and so he just acts nuts. Here is the weird thing, Googling Target Earth, there are hits where the 1954 film is credited to Joost van Rees who made the 1980 film. And there are places where the poster art for the 1954 film , used on the VHS box turns up as the VHS box for the Target
. Earth? In fact check out IMDb's 'art' for Target
..Earth? It's the one for the 1954 film! Somehow in some crazy way the 1954 and 1980 film have gotten mixed up together.
Helen of Troy (2003)
Should have hired Andrei Konchalovsky
A few years ago there was a TV production of Odysseus. While thin, Odysseus was kind of a "Classics Ilustrated" comic version of Homer's epic, still, Andrei Konchalovsky at least tried.
This version of the Iliad is much worse than Robert Wise's (also called Helen of Troy)1956 version (which was suprisingly lackluster for a Robert Wise film!). I have no idea what work of literature was used to adapt this strange garbled screenplay.
It is no surprise though, Homer still reads as high poetry, making a film of the story will take a genius film maker, John Kent Harrison is not a genius.
To bad this was not just a bad film , which would of made it funny, instead just a chaotic mess that generated industrial strength ennui.