Reviews

I picked up this one solely on the basis of its having John Cassavetes in it. Yes, it is low-budget, but despite that -- or maybe because of it -- the film is surprisingly effective. It's creepy. There's some gore but the slicing & dicing is almost all off-camera. With the exception of one scene about mid-movie, we don't see any of it. That works to make the movie more eerie -- we aren't distracted by the gross-out effect.

Cassavetes shows his talent -- he can make the worst dialogue sound believable. Unfortunately, the side effect of this is to make his coworkers sound even worse than they might have. Because a lot of the dialogue in this movie does stink out loud. On the other hand, there were a number of interesting scenes where you expected someone to break out in positively bad, cliched dialogue and instead -- nothing was said.

Others have commented on the creepiness of the doctor's quasi-incestuous relation with his daughter. It's all true. In fact, it was so blatant I was shocked that it would even get onto the screen. That kind of behavior is something that almost never gets shown.

Summary: good if you want to see a creepy movie with a great actor and lots of strange things going on. Not great art but worth a look.

I was expecting a campily bad movie -- but this movie stunk out loud. It was so bad I had to leave the room a couple of times to keep from turning off the VCR. The action sequences were acceptable but just about everything else was horrible. Bad acting, bad writing, bad directing. The high point of the movie was Mix-a-lot doing "Baby Got Back," one of my all-time favorite cuts. But who the heck told Cameron Diaz she had booty? Thank goodness she doesn't have to depend on her dancing to earn a living!

See this movie if you have a high tolerance for the bad. Probably, a few Buds would help, too.