Reviews

This show might've been a major hit if it came outn6 or 7 years earlier. By then the airwaves were loaded with detective series with one word titles, the name of the main character. You had Kojak,Columbo, McCloud, Cannon, Bannchek, Bronk, Mannix, that one with Robert Blake playing with a bird and the few multi word titles also based on title characters like Barnaby Jones and McMillan and wife.

Detective dramas like that were just about everywhere in the early to mid 70s but by 1979 they were all gone and the most successful of them had JUST ended. Then came Eischied when these dramas were morphing into near night time soap opera fare but retaining a gritty hard edge to them. This show debuted just before Hill Street Blues and not long before Miami Vice. The viewing audience was moving away from shows like this. The one hour dramas were much more heavy on action. The A Team and Hunter retained an audience but not Tue Devlin Connection or Eischied.

But being removed from the time this neglected show aired, it stands up well. Joe Don Baker is an underrated actor. He succeeds at bringing his characters across well to the point where you don't think it's Joe Don Baker as a cop, Joe Don Baker as a hit man, Joe Don Baker as a private eye,Joe Don Baker as Senator McCarthy,Joe Don Baker as the fictionalized Babe Ruth in The Natural. Watch Framed and Charley Varrick some time to see what I mean. The first two parter mini series is excellent and Eischied debuts as a very rare made for TV antihero. American television did not make main characters like that. It would be about 20 more years before American TV dramas started having antihero main characters. That also makes this show a product of the wrong time. It was either too late or too soon. They did strip away the antihero aspect of the character for the series as the other reviewer noted and they turned it into a typical cop drama for the early to mid 70s.

It still had some good shows and the mini series that started it is great. Revolutionary for American television at the time.. Britain started having antihero main characters 12 years earlier with Callan but the US was far far behind them on that until Dallas and that initial miniseries. The network or producers decided to not continue in that direction but it probably wouldn't have helped considering when it aired. The interest in the viewing public then wasn't what it is 10 years earlier or what it is now with just about every character in dramas doing good, bad or very bad things.

Tracking these down to watch might not be so easy but maybe they're hiding on a streaming site.

For a movie that clearly lacks any kind of serious budget, it has an excellent score mostly composed by Bohuslav Martinu. Typically low budget movies have a soundtrack that's canned. You'll hear the same music from old Twilight Zone episodes (Kingdom of the Spiders) or the same music used over and over in multiple films by the same director (Larry Buchanan and Bill Rebane), this is all classical and it feels like it was composed specifically for this movie. Even though it wasn't, it all still fits so well. None of this score pops up in other movies, just some familiar parts of these compositions later re-recorded by others. The music is the reason I revisit this movie alot. If it's not the score it's Hot Butter's version of Popcorn, also great.

As for the movie, the twist did get me the first time I saw it. Maybe I'm the only one who ever said that about this one but my introduction to it was a Retromedia triple feature set and I expected a typical monster movie. Instead I got something that made me feel queasy by the time it was over.

That is a compliment since I was entertained enough to stick with it. The pacing is pretty good compared to other low budget horror movies from this era. The acting isn't so hot but that didn't bother me much and besides the quality of the acting of some is part of the plot in a way.

Anyway, love the very involved score. Doubt I'd ever be sitting through this without it. I try to imagine if it had no score and just these scenes going on and the brutal attacks happening with just the sound effects for each scene but it would do nothing for me.

That is until it got moved to well past my bedtime. I was a freshman in high school when that happened and I wasn't about to wake up in the middle of every night to see it (I'll go to my grave never knowing how to program a VCR). I did wake up to catch the last episode (no school that week) thought the format changed to a studio audience instead of an audience of one but it turned out to be the crew sitting in for the end.

The show hit all the right notes for quality entertainment. It was sort of intimate like listening to an old Jean Shepherd show on the radio. There was no major audience reactions or show bands led by the Vivino Brothers, it was scaled back (no doubt do to budget issues) but that works to its advantage. The show when I watched never had to compete directly with late night panel shows anyway. The news was usually on when this was. If anything was spent it was on the quality of the writing staff, Nick Bakay and the host Allan Havey who almost seemed to have instinctively perfect timing. Even if he didn't say something outright funny on it's own, he knows when to drop the comment at the right time. The humor also tended to be very dry and often based on strange stories instead of one liners.

On top of that, Havey was an excellent interviewer and got many good guests. I remember Tupac Shakur being interviewed promoting Juice, Bill Hicks looking somewhat sickly and guant but no less funny incorporating some of his jokes into the interview. He was promoting his latest comedy album, even the legendary script writer Dennis Potter was interviewed. Interviews that were thorough and entertaining.

This show is long gone now but it lives on in memory and I've seen the scaled back format used again since (Seth Meyer's show was almost like this during COVID) but the people making Night After Night mattered the most.

I think the only thing I enjoyed about The Informant was seeing Allan Havey playing a role and remembering this TV show while seeing him on the screen. I was remembering a news segment he did from Night After Night about a pet owner passing away suddenly at home and the dogs in the house began eating the corpse. Havey mentioned how guilty the dogs looked in the photo for the article. It's the only laugh I had while sitting through that movie. My date thought I was nuts.

It's pretty bad when a movie gets me thinking ALL superhero movies have run their course. It's not a stretch to think that after The Flash, Marvels that last Ant-Man and this failed to make any real impact on anyone. I guess it will take studios a couple more years to realize the public just might be moving on from people in tights trying to be entertaining but failing to accomplish that.

Shazam! Was a fun comic. A tongue in cheek superhero who stumbles into his powers and never really changes the personality he always had. A good excuse for light hearted entertainment and the comic was successful for it. So any comic that had a successful run must have a movie made now, right? Heck, unsuccessful comics get movies! Ant-Man was the superhero reject in the 60s and 70s because the comic didn't sell well. How many movies does that have? 3. Who asked for that???

Anyway, what we know about Shazam! Was explored fully enough in the first movie. That was a good one. This one is a caricature of that one. The CGI is flashy and sound effects are noisy enough to try and distract from noticing how mediocre the story is.

I know people cite politics for a reason alot of these movies aren't resonating with the public like the better ones already made in the past 15 years but I think it's market saturation and fatigue on the part of the viewing audience. How many more new ones are we supposed to care about before we just feel like rewatching the good ones that started this craze?

This is a pretty typical low budget horror movie for the early 70s with twists and turns leading up to a surprise ending. You'll see alot of that. If it's not Terror at the Red Wolf Inn with cannibals or Legacy of Blood with deaths following the reading of a Will, it's mysterious invitations to a cult meeting years after a tragic event occurred regarding one of their members? Were they summoned by one of the members? A relative of the slain? Both? Neither? They almost all have a twist ending. One of the few that didn't was Invasion of the Bee Girls now that I think about it...

This has a really small budget but that works to the advantage of these types of movies. It gives them a grainy unnerving feel with every ugly frame.

It's pretty well acted and moves along at a good pace despite the fact that these sorts of stories do tend to drag.

Not half bad for the genre. Not sure why they only have the one title listed for it. I know it as Sisters of Death.

Kurtwood Smith is a really good actor and this is proof enough. The script is excellent and Smith's performance draws you right into what life has become for Myron Castleman. A living hell.

The idea of a time loop was later reused for Groundhog Day and by these same filmmakers 3 years after this came out. I vaguely remember seeing the feature length movie called 12:01 but the focus is not so much on the science behind the theory as it is in this. The theory is matter and antimatter colliding which causes a perpetual loop in time which was formed over the length of time of the collision. Everything made of matter relives the time in that loop and nothing more. Myron is one of the few (only one he meets anyway) aware of the fact that everyone is trapped reliving the same 59 minutes.

It's a dark sci fi story. No romance or comedy. More like Kafka.

For those who don't know Monster A GoGo was an abandoned film project by Wisconsin based filmmaker Bill Rebane who favored making Sci fi/horror films. This film project, originally titled Terror at Half Day was abandoned because the union crews ate through the entire budget before production ended. The result was HG Lewis buying that abandoned film footage from a producer, adding some film inserts, narration and making a mess of a film with a lousy ending summed up with a telegram.

Here, Space Mutiny has the same problem for different reasons. A director that left the project, gets replaced and the film becomes completely mangled in post production by mass editing. Dead characters reappear in scenes, additional footage shot with attractive models dancing in slow motion around balls, a story about a mutiny where the mutineers who only risk getting blown up by their own actions with the people they rebel against. A love story is sort of thrown in with motivations changing without explanation and a twist ending in a warehouse. Who doesn't like to play spaceship in a carpet warehouse? Reminds me of me in a furniture warehouse/show space pretending to watch TV on the cardboard set while floating on a waterbed when I was 7.

Movies like this do have an appeal about them for me. I do not expect anything truly good but I do find entertainment in them anyway. I give it credit for not being really slow or boring (worst problem with low budget movies) like something R. O. T. O. R. Maybe something like this would've been handled better when drive-ins were still around but by 1988, they were marketing movies this cheap for direct to video distribution with less of a financial turn around. That means less incentive to invest time on them. Granted drive-ins were thriving when Monster A GoGo was released but there was far less to work with on that than what they have here.

9? After sitting through this entire series with a Saul Goodman who had no relation at all to the one created in Breaking Bad, they end all the loose ends in the Better Call Saul series by episode 9 of this 6th season then clumsily, write Kim out to set the stage for this Saul Goodman closer to the one from Breaking Bad turning up in this series. How does that make sense? It's like the show creators admitting they made a terrible goof and in a rush created this fan service mess.

None of it works. I wish they made a stand alone version with this character and have the events not relate to what happened in Breaking Bad at all. Why not? It comes across as a parallel universe story line anyway where everyone looks older earlier in their lives! LOL!

##Spoiler alert## It isn't good and they won't make a sequel with these actresses playing these characters.

The movie is dreadful, far worse than it's near 7 rating suggests. I know people want it to be better but it isn't.

There's no memorable funny scenes in it. I notice no one cites any. They talk of the movie in general terms. What specific scene is memorable? Where's the "This chick is toast!" Or "He slimed me" moment?

Yes, they TRY to make those legendary funny scenes happen but it's only trying. It feels like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to do a serious dramatic role. It doesn't work. Maybe Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, and Kristen Wiig aren't funny. Maybe we are just supposed to pretend they are. I've sat through bad comedy acts in clubs before. I forced out laughs so they wouldn't feel so bad about themselves while failing up on stage. Now we have that with reviews.

Hollywood makes it a point to beat quality successful entertainment to death; especially if it's a genre that appeals to the 14-24 demographic like this does, and yet there is no sequel to this reboot. Keep pretending this was good....

The problem with Quantum Leap then was they started to run low on fresh ideas. They started making shows not based on the lives of everyday people but on celebrities and famous people whose fate doesn't change despite Dr Sam Becket being dumped in the situation to right some wrong. So the show jumped the shark (badly) with their JFK and Marliyn Monroe episodes and never recovered.

Now, we pick things up years later and try to pick up where Donald P. Bellisario left off.

They inflate the storyline of Dr Ben Song's present which makes it less of an adventure series and more of a drama. Doing this weakens the depth of the stories resulting from the leaping (less time to develop).

Basically this suffers from the same problem the original series ended up having but tries a different approach to keep it alive by shifting the focus. I don't care that much about the world Song leaves behind so this does nothing for me.

Quantum Leap was basically a Sci fi take on the Route 66, Then Came Bronson, Highway to Heaven and Renegade premise. Some stranger (drifter really) getting involved in people's lives and improving things for them by the end of the encounter only to move on to meet more strangers in the next episode. Evem the Incredible Hulk series was like that. That's how all these shows worked. This would be like if Route 66 was rebooted and half the episode was the two guys doing an oil change on the corvette or arguing over a bar tab, or focusing more on the angel Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven getting to where he needs to go than what he does when he gets there or the main characters in the other two trying to fix their motorcycles half of each episode. Or Bruce Banner trying to buy expandable clothes at the start of every episode to avoid ripping everything. It's the same thing as this and it doesn't work.

This reboot is a poorly conceived bad idea. They could've done modern day remakes following the scripts from the early 90s and it would've all worked alot better. Updating the technology and special effects, different humorous characters and encounters. Modern entertainment generally needs alot more humor because life's enough of a misery.

This film apparently was filmed concurrently with Robocop so they're both like knockoffs of Terminator except one has a much larger budget and more interesting plot. R. O. T. O. R. Has neither.

The story is about a robot cop prototype accidentally being activated and it goes off on patrol. The prototype (kudos to who decided to give it the mustache BTW) pulls over a car then goes on a kill crazy rampage trying to get one of the people who wasn't even driving the car he pulled over.

There's a lack of suspense. Lack of urgency. Lack of subplots when they were really needed. Lack of interest for the audience.

The only enjoyment is from unintentional comedy. The overacting, the goofy dubbed voice for the main character Coldyron, the woman with the skunk hair perm, the embarrassing attempts at humor, the lame Dirty Harry knockoff scene, the guy with plastic buckteeth. That's the only reason I don't give this 1 star.

I like how the score sometimes sounds like I Wanna Be Your Dog by The Stooges and the base line to the song Downtown on repeat. It's solo synthesizer or drum machines. Cheap but not terrible

It is weird that both this and Robocop were filmed in the same city at the same time. Well, weird is too strong a word. It is noted.

That could've been the most bizarre premise for a musical I've ever seen. But alas Eric Binford was into the violent Jimmy Cagney movies so this lapses into horror.

It's a decent lower budget horror movie that gets far too predictable at times. It is light on the gore if gore turns you off so don't expect any scalping or bludgeoning scenes. It is almost an interesting psychological thriller but it fails to fully develop as a compelling thriller. Dennis Christoper does an excellent job as the main character but he probably needed more disturbing scenes to hammer home how fully disturbed Eric Binford is and how twisted his relationship is with his Aunt. The exposition on that is just tossed in toward the end.

What you get is a damaged little man obsessing over movies and movie stars going on a revenge kill rampage against anyone who bothers him. A premise similar to that Hawaii 5-O episode starring Rich Little. That character was avenging the death of a loved one by mimicking death scenes in movies.

Fade to Black offers not much besides good acting, interesting old movie references and some really cool location shooting at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Back when the location wasn't corporate and plastic.

It is a good movie for movie buffs of really old movies. References to several movies from the 30s and 40s(wish they mimicked scenes from 99 River Street, respect level goes through the roof if they managed that) pop up alot.

The problem here is the story is flat. Maybe too flat for most to enjoy it. If you want to see a better example of this type of film and see what Fade to Black is missing, watch Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. That character was emotionally and psychologically tortured by his father who used his son's experiences for clinical research. Capturing it all on film.

This was my introduction to Al Adamson films. I didn't watch anything else he did for 15 years....

Blood of Ghastly Horror is disjointed, grainy and clearly has footage made at different times. There's some footage dating back to the early 60s, an unreleased heist movie. That footage was salvaged and used for Psycho A Go-Go then again with The Man With the Electric Brain starring John Carradine. Parts of the footage of those three turn up again with new footage starring Adamson regulars, Regina Carrol (his wife), and Kent Taylor(I think he did 3 films with Adamson). This also has a glassy eyed and sickly looking Tommy Kirk who was completely lost in addiction by the early to mid 70s when this was filmed.

None of the scenes come together well and I'm not sure to this day what the plot was. I think it was a revenge plot avenging the death of Joe Corey played by Roy Morton, who was the only actor in all three of the previous movies. This was Adamson's third attempt to do something with that early heist film footage and it's the worst artistically speaking but I'm sure it was marketed well for drive-ins which is why people still talk about Al Adamson movies and not something by John Kirkland or Leonard Kirtman.

I was born 10 years earlier than that and know what it is.

This is for the ignorant who dont know or think the height of humor is dadjokes and related to bodily functions. Black in this context has no relation to skin color or is tied to any specific racial group or culture but is darkly themed subject matter that has comedic elements to it. Here's an example, remember Breaking Bad? Jesse is being convinced to take credit for crushing a junky's head with an ATM machine? The scene where Walter tells him he's a blowfish? Someone not really threatening but just appears so. Jesse gets on board with that, yells "I'm a BLOW FISH!" Then goes back to the floor and takes a hit from his bong as Walter descends into another coughing fit. That was black comedy. OK? Cohn Brother movies during their prime were black comedies. Jim Jarmusch during his prime were black comedies. If you ever watch something made before you were born, you'd see it. After Hours, Eating Raoul, King of Comedy, What About Bob?, Dr Strangelove. Those are black comedies.

I can only assume this movie which only has the flaw of a small looking budget (despite the incredible cast) as a draw back has such a lousy rating is because people are ignorant. This style of humor is underrated and it is vanishing since more and more people have a lower IQ and need comedy spelled out for them in bright shiny letters otherwise they assume the worst possible intentions with any artistic work and react not knowing better.

This movie has several memorable performances and scenes. It is about a failed businessman facing debt and even prison for unpaid taxes deciding the only thing to save him is movie production. He wants to make a movie based on a self help/fictional aventure story written by Dennis Hopper's character. He falls for his secretary and the two of them make some connections to raise funds to make a movie. First a horror picture to drive up capitol then the other.

Enter John Turturro and Christopher Walken. Turturro is the more memorable of the two. He's flamboyant and odd. Walken is typical Walken. Unpredictable behind his flat expression.

There's alot of dark scenes but it to me is like a lighter version (plot wise) to Get Shorty (that's a black comedy, kids). The humor for me was mostly in Turturro and Hopper's characters. Griffin Dunne plays the failed businessman, Illeana Douglas plays the secretary/ love interest. Scorsese has a cameo scene as a tax collector delivering the bad news of debt and taxes owed.

I first saw this on IFC when I was about 20 back when they showed movies and were commercial free. They showed alot of darkly themed comedy om that channel in those days. All under appreciated now, (Cold Dog Soup, Mystery Train and Stranger Than Paradise were the others I remember) because anyone under 40 aren't intelligent. If you doubt me, look at what they pass off as "entertainment" now. It's like they have real actors in plots suited for bad video games.

I give this 6 stars mostly because the production used no CGI gimmicks or miniatures at all. I respect that more these days as movies have turned into Roger Rabbit while pretending to still be real action movies. I also respect how the cast and crew subjected themselves to winter conditions as extreme as this. I've experienced cold below zero on several occasions. Concentrating on work takes a back seat to physically coping with the conditions and they did it.

The movie itself isn't very good. It struck me as implausible and deliberately ugly when I first saw this when I was a kid. I think I tried sitting through it twice. Didnt understand the ending. Figured everyone died and communists won and seeing a flag over a rock with brief narration didn't change how everything that just happened sat in my mind. I was really young though. Now, it still feels tacked on like they had to change direction after bad test screenings.

Seeing this all now, the story is still goofy but now that I've seen alot of old Twilight Zone episodes on marathon, this feels like a long version of one of those and not one of the better ones because there's no payoff at the end for sitting through it.

As for the whining cry of "this is propaganda!" It's not like the Soviets weren't running similar movies showing Americans and the American way of life in the most negative light possible either so the whining about propaganda doesn't make any sense to me. That happens in cold war and is still happening in the cold war we have now except it's online and done with comments by bot accounts. Bottom line is don't like it, don't watch it. I can honestly say you won't miss much.

And I loved it the first time I saw it. I can't say much about the Picard series or the movies that followed this that went into retcon territory from what I've heard others say. To me, this is the end of TNG and all of the cast. Nothing since will top this episode and how the series ends. What's the point of all the new stuff anyway? It's just there for lazy companies to cash in on past success while the audience either love it for nostalgia, try to like it because they liked how these things first made them feel or loathe the content. I respect the past.

This episode is 30 years old and it bookends the series taking the viewer back to the first episode Encounter at Farpoint.

The Captain is on a solo journey through time to figure out some mystery formation in space. As the episode unfolds, we see the crew in different stages of their own lives and Picard with some help learns the true value of extreme self sacrifice and the ultimate loyalty of his crew and friends. It all hammers home the points of the series down HARD.

As it winds down, theres a hint of even greater wonders awaiting the human race as they continue to explore (the point of Star Trek) THAT I S SOMETHING NO OTHER TNG RELATED SERIES OR MOVIE PICKED UP ON.

That tease in the end makes nothing else top this in my mind and I won't bother watching anymore botched attempts to equal it. I know they'll fail. I'll rematch the reruns again because many hold up perfectly fine. Especially this two parter.

I say that as an American. Sure having some Americam actors must've seemed essential to help market this British based show internationally. They did succeed at this but the writing was affected. Americans were pushed into the story. Either it was an American actor or sometimes a British actor playing an American. In one, it's an out of work actor who goes overseas to be a success, another he's a private investigator searching for his brother. In another its someone hiding from the mob. All plausible but it didn't work for me.

That's not to be very critical of the show because I still enjoy it alot. Some shows are weaker than others but the better ones are excellent and very memorable and were more Hitchcockian than Hitchcock by the middle 70s. The better episodes are more suspenseful than Topaz, Family Plot, Torn Curtain or Marnie and rival Frenzy.

Personal favorite doesn't star an American actor. Stars Patrick MaGee, Don Henderson, Joanna Pettet only plays an American. It's called A Killer In Every Corner.

The show was successful and carries on Brian Clemens' string of successes which he would continue with The Professionals (after The New Avengers hiccup). Laurie Johnson provides the score and some of this same music turns up later in New Avengers and earlier episodes of The Professionals.

If you don't mind your tv shows looking stagey and are much more interested in story and acting, then you'll love this one.

1984 is a love story between an man and a woman in a society that does not allow love between two people to exist before love for the party and its mythical leader, big brother.

1. The goal of this government is not ending imbalances or class struggles even if it said so. The class struggle and imbalances are changed to inner party members, outer party members and the proliteriate. Those last two arent even sure or permitted to question the existence of the leader "big brother." The last two have no access to realnsugar, real tea, alcohol that isn't mostly water and aren't even sure of the real source of their protein, it likely could be their fellow citizens but how would they know.

No one has any hope of changing their status in this nightmare world which the summary makes it sound like wouldn't be so bad because it "eliminates imbalances"

2. Winston Smith doesn't rebel against the very government that took him in as an orphan. It is the only government he knows. He was forced as a child into it without choice after his mother dies. Ultimately his greatest crime is not to over throw the government or have illicit sex, he FALLS IN LOVE with a woman. Thisnsociety calls love the greatest form of hate just like it calls freedom a form of slavery and calls war a form of peace.

Are we really so desperate to end class struggles, heal imbalances and do away with surplus goods (Winston's apartment is nothing more than a jail cell. Clothes supplied by government. Furnishings by government, etc) and imbalances to start rationalizing the type of government as depicted in George Orwell's nightmare vision? A government that freely lies to you and tortures any positive feeling you have for a human being out of you because they declare such emotion as misplaced since it isn't directed toward the state?

As for this adaptation, Peter Cushing plays his most vulnerable character. I've seen him play a blackmailed banker in a hammer film but this went further. Surprised any of this BBC live TV adaptation survived considering tv was simply live transmission in the early 50s. Any saved copy we see today was because a film camera was pointed at a TV showing the transmission of it. Naturally the visual and sound quality is not very good but the quality of the performances are excellent considering the scenes are all one take like a stage play. This is the hallmark of British television until the early 90s. The shows look stagey but the quality of the scripts and performances are usually top notch. The opposite is true in modern entertainment which is why these older shows are seeing a resurgence in popularity.

Unlike other adaptations, the casting isn't very concerned with a market so no internationally famous actors are cast like Edmond O'Brien in the 1956 film adaptation playing opppsite Sir Michael Redgrave for much of the film.

Peter Cushing would reach international fame a few years later in those Hammer films.

This is a unique kind of British sitcom. It shows the cast from time to time as the title character, William Fisher is imagining them. Including himself from time to time.

The title of the show only tells half the story. Billy lies alot to cover up his actions. Courts several women at once, making dates with each of them for the same time. Has conflicts with his perpetually irritated father and his perpetually irritates employer at the local mortuary.

There's a full collection of standout performances. George A Cooper, Mary Warden and Colin Jeavons as well as Jeff Rawle as Billy.

It's not a typical family sitcom of this era like Father, Dear Father or Bless This House because of those strange forays into surrealism. Some times it's a western, a French film, a Godfather parody and it all happens quick enough that you wonder if you just saw it.

Worth searching out.

My initial feelings about this Sam Fuller movie was cool but slow, static and overlong. The main thing I found cool was hearing Can doing new interpretations of their songs (with flutes!). Glenn Corbett also looks a little too much like Franco Nero did back when this was made too.

After getting used to how it all looks and the pacing (methodical to the extreme, I like it alot.)

The story is about the murder of an American detective who was trying to obtain photo negatives of a prominent US senator which feature him in a compromising position with a woman. The murdered man's partner in the firm picks up where he left off and is now also investigating his murder.

There's some plot twists and turns and some very grizzly implied violence toward the end. Implied of course since this was made for TV. Glenn Corbett and Christa Lang are excellent in the lead roles. They seem to share top billing given the screen time they both have.

I enjoy this more than most of Fuller's later films. It is much better than Man Eater or Shark! His ill fated 1969 movie intended to be Burt Reynolds' big breakout role.

Also, I never get tired of hearing Can's work on the musical score. They were at their most mesmerizing during the early 70s at their musical peak.

This is not like the spaghetti westerns you're used to. Dark, cynical and cold. Really cold both literally and figuratively. The setting is a deliberate metaphor, winter.

This is a battle between half angels versus half devils. Their ultimate motivations slightly tip the scale one way or the other. Silence is a mute mercenary hired by outlaws who are in turn pursued by mercenaries.

Jean-Louis Trintignant gives one of the best performances you'll ever see in this genre without a line of dialogue. Klaus Kinski is the sleazy mercenary, Loco who shows up on the movie posters but he isn't the real star giving the real memorable performance.

Sergio Corbucci is the unsung hero of filmmaking. He was adapt at successfully capturing any human emotion necessary for the story. He gets the credit he deserves now but most of his movies were butchered by editing so distrubtiors could market this other Sergio's movies as part of a double feature. His works started getting shown internationally in unedited form the first time 35 to 40 years after they were made. I've only seen this movie in the unedited form but truncated forms likely exist so I can't speak for them or any alternate endings used. I am sure a movie like this in a lesser form would be considerably weaker.

If there was ever one spahetti western decades ahead of its time in terms of story and tone, this is it.

It's everywhere in entertainment now and it's irredeemably cheap in terms of storytelling and its underlining mission; tearing down the past to remake it into something it never was to 1. Apologize for it. 2. Try to change it to suit modern nonsense, I mean sensibilities, 3. Cash in, of course. The flaw in this action every time is the people most responsible for these newer movies DID NOT INVENT THE ORIGINAL PREMISE. If you do not create it, do you care about it? Do you respect it? Does it mean anything to you besides just another job? Certainly not, at least not compared to something you created yourself.

What's here is the identical formula we've seen in Star Wars sequels, that Obi-Wan mini series and unrelated to Disney, Doctor Who. A discrediting of established characters, ignorance of their past and motivations (Indiana Jones the grave robber??? Accused of that by a female Beloc clone that we're supposed to like even idolize as the hero? Jones was all about putting those things in museums so that the ACTUAL grave robbers didn't take them for profit! They were coming for those relics anyway.)

Like the two other Disney products I mentioned, the established heroes are presented as weak, inferior broken down shadows of their former selves. The reasons are different in each case but that's the formula. A younger bland super human by comparison, (typically a woman) swoops in saves the day for these broken down old white men and everyone still breathing lives happily ever after. That seems like the mission statement that is now costing these companies millions because audiences don't like their established heroes being portrayed as weak, inferior broken down old white men. Even if they are old white men, give them SOME dignity at least afterall, Indiana Jones IS the title character, not Fleabag and her sidekick afterbirth or something.

Generally, that's the formula but I've read that the initially planned ending for this was going to be Indiana Jones time traveling back, dying, and Helena being the real one on those adventures in the earlier movies in the series. Chibnall basically did as much to Doctor Who. The fan revolt was real enough to cause a major shakeup in an attempt to keep that series afloat.

People hated Crystal Skull for various reasons, personally I hated the CGI the most. Those bugs, the vines, the monkeys, the aliens. All of the locations look fake. Filming might've been entirely studio bound with CGI backdrops. CGI is no better in this movie. It's worse if you consider how technology was meant to advance over 15 years time. Over reliance on CGI is always a mistake and they make that mistake constantly. CGI doesn't seem to save money either so why not give it up for a change?

The overlong chase scenes lead to desensitization regarding them and that makes them boring instead of exciting and I mean really really boring. That's something good filmmakers understood to avoid years ago. Maybe if they had a thin script like this that lacks some major elements in storytelling, they wouldn't do any better and wind up falling back on chase scenes as filler. Maybe that's why this Indiana Jones movie is a half hour longer than all the others but feels like it has half the story they had. Yes, that makes for a boring movie. You're supposed to not notice how boring because of the visuals and sound serving to jar you awake instead of keeping you engaged in the plot. Have I mentioned yet how cheap that is in terms of storytelling? Let me restate that.

Main characters must first be likable and their adversaries interesting. Mads Mikkelsen barely manages the interesting part (its nothing particulary new for him to do acting wise and that makes his role here cliché) but there is nothing likable about the real star of this movie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. When she isn't cringe trying to deliver a joke, she's a 20 something snob who looks down on everyone who in reality would know far more than her if only because they have more experience than she does. In Raiders of the Lost Ark they established Indiana Jones right in the first act as an experienced adventurer who also is a knowledgeable professor, not as someone with a pasty face a few years removed from college. Her having this fount of knowledge that dwarfs everyone else is more fake than time travel.

In Helena, we see the most frustrating thing about this movie because of the missed opportunity her character represents. There is several ways someone can be a hero. Indiana Jones from the start is a sad, embittered, broken old man; instead of this new character introduced into the series helping him find his sense of purpose again (that can be a form of heroic action btw) as they both go on this quest, Helena never does it and Jones ends up much the way he began but with a happy ending that isn't very believable nor does he seem to deserve because the hero's journey never happened for him. He is basically the same when it's over. His story arc is flat as a board, Helena's story arc is flat as a board. She already knows and does everything. There is no growth anywhere for anyone. She barely manages a level of tolerance for the title character and that's it. Remember Last Crusade? Indiana Jones had no relationship with his father at the start, not too interested in where he was living, nor what he was doing until he is told his father is missing; it ends with a common understanding between them as they are united in ways they never were before. Does a journey like that happen in Dial of Destiny? NO. Even Crystal Skull didn't make Dial of Destiny's mistake of ignoring the monomyth which certainly makes Crystal Skull a better movie despite the CGI. At the start of Crystal Skull, all the main characters are in one stage of their lives and their lives dramatically change over the course of the story and are completely different by the conclusion of the quest. Does this happen in Dial of Destiny? NO. I'd give Crystal Skull 4/10 which means it's bad but it at least showed characters growing as the story leads to a resolution. Which character learned anything major about themselves when this thing ends?

Time travel is no more ridiculous than aliens but not a better idea than them either. You'd think since this was set during the height of the cold war and space race and arms race and all that, Soviets would be the logical adversaries again like in Crystal Skull and not random Nazis who couldn't have the resources on hand (even with covert help) to try and acquire such a thing certainly not compared to a superpower's direct involvement. That's not believable.

The fan service is horrible pandering which is just trying to make something indigestible digestible. Clearly this is the least successful movie of the series so audiences aren't content with these little condescending nods to the past anymore. Pandering didn't make Jaws 4 into a better movie, did it?

The suspension of disbelief is stretched further than seeing that guy's face melt in Raiders or that other guy aging to death in seconds after drinking a sip of water in Last Crusade. At least something unexplainable causes that. The suspension of disbelief here is simply plot holes and violations of basic physics that do not have some supernatural power making it seem possible. First noticed near the end of the de-aged Indy opening. How the Nazi chasing him doesn't become decapitated on the top of the train moving that fast is beyond reason or logic. The sound of the impact was too loud to be anything other than a beheading but no? Also beyond reason or logic is how a woman weighing no more than 130 lbs can hang on to a plane traveling 250 mph with a 200 lb man hanging on to her. There was nothing supernatural preventing her from being blown out of there immediately even without the guy clinging to her, and yet.... There's also examples of villains seemingly warping into locations, or being conveniently dumb to further the plot. I haven't gotten to some teenage boy magically figuring out how to fly a plane almost immediately yet. Such things can be excused a few times but an entire movie? Come on now. Do better, please.....

People wanting to like this will labor to make it seem good in their minds; the people who don't will correctly think they shouldn't have to make an effort to like something that is supposed to be entertaining in its own right.

I continue to wait for the day when these franchises created by others years ago are left alone and the allegedly brilliant people coming up with new garbage like this start creating THEIR OWN NEW FRANCHISES! SHOW US WHAT YOU GOT!!

Friendly Reminder, if you never subject yourselves to forays into the destruction of cinematic heroes, they're not canon TO YOU. If you prefer thinking this ends in '38 with riding off into the sunset, you'd be better off for it. Not everything needs to be viewed through the scope of studio greed. You can easily imagine better content than they provide. THAT WOULDN'T BE HARD TO DO, TRUST ME.

I can guess that is Peter Fonda. When I remember this movie, I remember mostly the long slow scenes of slim women taking their pants off and sitting in front of panels. These scenes are shot from the floor in a wide angle. Their legs dominate the frame. It happens quite a bit like a motif. Granted it is a part of the story in a way.

The plot is these college students and an older professor develop a time travel device, it allows them to go into the future and only back to the present. Only people under 30 can survive the transfer, anyone older develop kidney failure. In their travels, they discover the world of the future looks like it was completely leveled seemingly by volcanic lava that has since hardened. The institute where the transfer device is disappears along with everything, the roads, trees etc. The government in the present day discover what was invented and immediately move in to take it over so anyone who had traveled to the future were basically trapped there with no sustainability besides what they grabbed before leaving.

Believe me, the plot sounds more interesting than it really is. Like describing the plot of Plan 9 From Outer Space without ever seeing a frame of it. As I said, you see legs. Legs and landscapes. They didn't even do a good job of developing the characters. You really get to know only one. The others are like watching furniture. Also not explained is what these young adults hope to achieve AFTER all the damage has been done. There is nothing and no where to go. Some try to go on a pilgrimage (on foot!!) to the West Coast. We can only guess what happened to them. Also not explained is how they learned certain aspects of the plot are true like the over 30 developing kidney failure by transferring.

The ending has an interesting twist and that's a good surprise but overall it's lackluster unless you like legs.