Krod Mandoon is not great comedy, but at least it's better than 90% of the garbage that claims to be funny on American TV these days, and it's a whole lot better than most of the overrated British stuff too. I mean let's face facts - Little Britain was a load of garbage. I wish the Python team were still doing comedy, but until another truly genius team comes along, Krod Mandoon does make me chuckle a bit, which is more than can be said for the rest of the so-called 'comedies' out there. Sure, it's not Python, it's not Blackadder, and it's not even on the level of Absolutely Fabulous, but at least it's not just another Friends or Seinfeld clone.
Reviews
3 Reviews
The Party Animal
(1984)
It's fun
5 March 2002
This is the epitome of the frustrated teen softcore almost-porn movie genre. Party Animal is a silly, fun, sex-obsessed ride for 79 minutes. Forget the plot, which is really just there for show, and just enjoy the wacky hijinks of Pondo Sinatra's comic obsession with getting laid.
Party Animal is 'Love Potion No. 9' without Sandra Bullock. It's a more punk version of 'Risky Business', but with Matt Causey as a country hick version of Tom Cruise. Its sex store scene was borrowed for the movie 'Clerks'. Party Animal's star, Matthew Causey, who plays horny college freshman Pondo Sinatra, quit the movie industry and is now a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. Timothy Carhart (Studly) has had a long and varied TV and movie career, and has recently been seen in 'Hunt for Red October' and 'Air Force One'.
If you see it in the video store, don't think about it, just get yourself a six pack of beer, rent it, and remember what it was like to be a horny 18 year-old again.
Party Animal is 'Love Potion No. 9' without Sandra Bullock. It's a more punk version of 'Risky Business', but with Matt Causey as a country hick version of Tom Cruise. Its sex store scene was borrowed for the movie 'Clerks'. Party Animal's star, Matthew Causey, who plays horny college freshman Pondo Sinatra, quit the movie industry and is now a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. Timothy Carhart (Studly) has had a long and varied TV and movie career, and has recently been seen in 'Hunt for Red October' and 'Air Force One'.
If you see it in the video store, don't think about it, just get yourself a six pack of beer, rent it, and remember what it was like to be a horny 18 year-old again.
Schalcken the Painter
(1979 TV Movie)
One of the best BBC plays ever produced
4 December 2001
Only the BBC has the ability to outdo great writers, and even then, only rarely (Ashenden was one example, Jeeves and Wooster another). Here is one of the best examples: a classic BBC TV play adapted from J. Sheridan LeFanu's chilling short story of the same name.
The atmosphere of this TV film is incredibly disturbing, and the cast and crew all do a brilliant job to recreate one of the most chilling stories of gothic literature. Godfried Schalcken was a real painter who studied under Gerrit Dou in Leiden (Holland). Schalcken painted figures lit by candlelight, and his paintings are quite atmospheric. It is this dark atmosphere which suffuses LeFanu's work and this TV play. After seeing the movie, I took a trip to Europe, and had the chance to see some of the original paintings. They are brilliant in their depiction of light, shadow, and darkly captivating mood.
The TV play is a kind of allegory and a mystery, in which a young maiden (a rare appearance by the lovely and talented Cheryl Kennedy) is married off to a mysterious suitor and disappears. It falls to Schalcken (played brilliantly by Jeremy Clyde), who had used the girl as a model, to investigate. The horror that he uncovers haunts him (and his subsequent artworks) forever.
Unfortunately, like many late-night TV plays that were prevented from making it to VHS by a reactionary '70s era British VHS censorship debacle (the play features a very brief frontal nude scene, performed quite eerily by Cheryl Kennedy), this TV classic is now apparently lost. It has not been seen on TV for over a decade (as far as I'm aware), and like many '70s BBC masterpieces, seems destined to spend decades completely forgotten in some film vault. We can only hope that someone at the BBC will eventually find it and get the powers that be to release it on DVD or VHS. Hopefully soon!
The atmosphere of this TV film is incredibly disturbing, and the cast and crew all do a brilliant job to recreate one of the most chilling stories of gothic literature. Godfried Schalcken was a real painter who studied under Gerrit Dou in Leiden (Holland). Schalcken painted figures lit by candlelight, and his paintings are quite atmospheric. It is this dark atmosphere which suffuses LeFanu's work and this TV play. After seeing the movie, I took a trip to Europe, and had the chance to see some of the original paintings. They are brilliant in their depiction of light, shadow, and darkly captivating mood.
The TV play is a kind of allegory and a mystery, in which a young maiden (a rare appearance by the lovely and talented Cheryl Kennedy) is married off to a mysterious suitor and disappears. It falls to Schalcken (played brilliantly by Jeremy Clyde), who had used the girl as a model, to investigate. The horror that he uncovers haunts him (and his subsequent artworks) forever.
Unfortunately, like many late-night TV plays that were prevented from making it to VHS by a reactionary '70s era British VHS censorship debacle (the play features a very brief frontal nude scene, performed quite eerily by Cheryl Kennedy), this TV classic is now apparently lost. It has not been seen on TV for over a decade (as far as I'm aware), and like many '70s BBC masterpieces, seems destined to spend decades completely forgotten in some film vault. We can only hope that someone at the BBC will eventually find it and get the powers that be to release it on DVD or VHS. Hopefully soon!
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