Horror > Universal Horror

One Man and His Space Greenhouse

Advantages: Very moving story of one man's fight against ecological destruction
Disadvantages: Absolutely none

Starring: Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell Cliff Potts as John Keenan Ron Rifkin as Marty Barke Jesse Vint as Andy Wolf This 1972 Science Fiction (not Horror, as Ciao have so strangely categorised it!) movie is set in the not too distant future. If that phrase ‘in the not too distant future’ has a ring to it for those of you who are Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans, read on: this film tells the story of a sorta hippieish-acting man in a blue jumpsuit ...
...only two small robots for company. Sound disturbingly familiar? This is the film credited by MST3K creator Joel Hodgson as being his major influence on the look and feel of that show. The film doesn’t start with Freeman Lowell alone on the satellite – to begin with he is part of a maintenance crew consisting of four men and three small maintenance robots called Huey, Dewy and Louie. The circumstances of how he ends up alone with two robots, I’ll ...

thereddragon 26.02.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Silent Running (DVD)

Movies For Halloween - The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari

Advantages: One of those "greatest film ever" regulars, and with good reason.
Disadvantages: None.

There is something inherently eerie, otherworldly, about silent pictures. Whatever the merit of the film itself, the faint flickering of the frames (however good the restoration), the grain, the occasionally over-theatrical performances (I'm generalising horribly here, I know. There is nothing theatrical about many of the performances in, for example, Benjamin Christensen's masterpiece Haxan), even the nature of the musical soundtrack, disembodied ...
...Eerie, yes. And how much more so when these elements are wrapped around a picture already reeking of the uncanny? A picture, perhaps, like Robert Weine's 1919 The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari is a masterpiece. Routinely propping up the top end of Best Films Ever Made lists, it is a nightmare plucked from the mind of a madman, held aloft that we might gaze with hands over mouths and eyes wide at the intricacies of its grotesquery, ...

DavidJay 17.10.2008 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari (Silent) (DVD)

I! AM! BEOWULF!

Advantages: Anthony Hopkins
Disadvantages: CGI.

...but I digress... Beowulf uses a technique wherein CGI is pasted over and mixed in with live action footage. Original, yet massively over-ambitious. The graphics werent generally well-received, as the public has come to associate CGI characters with childrens' movies. Not to mention that CGI itself is only in its adolescent state. However, it could not have acheived its impressibe battle scenes without the technique, the most memorable being the one ...
...conveniently placed objects and furniture obscuring Beowulf's genitalia in a highly comedic fashion. The film has, to all intents and purposes stuck to the text, with its landscapes mirroring perfectly, the imagery of the book. I was surprised to see excessive bloodletting in this film, as it is not what I have come to associate with CGI-based movies. Nonetheless, there is plenty of it. Although in terms of entertainment, the level of gore pales ...

Mutalisk 09.10.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Beowulf (DVD)

So you're my replacements? A dandy and a clown!

Advantages: Troughton and Hartnell in COLOUR! The 3 Doctor's interaction with each other.
Disadvantages: The Gel Guards are pretty abysmal. Ah well, you can't have everything...

DOCTOR WHO embraces its past fully for the first time, with mixed results. Were it not for the presence of the Three Doctors maybe it wouldn’t be that interesting. THE STORY An event of such cataclysmic proportions threatens all life in the universe when a Black Hole opens a rift between the worlds of matter and anti-matter. The Time Lords, overseers of all time and space, are left helpless after a massive power drain. Energy transmissions from ...
...the second incarnation of the Doctor (Patrick Troughton), to assist himself. When it becomes evident that these two Doctors don't quite see eye to eye, his first incarnation is sent to sort them out. Things get worse, however, when the 2nd and 3rd Doctors along with a small group of their friends are themselves transported into the Black Hole. Soon the Doctors discover the cause of the trouble when they encounter a shadowy figure from the Time Lord's ...

paramanjara 24.07.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Doctor Who - The Three Doctors (Box Set) (Disc And Model Car) (DVD)

Death Note Movie Version (DVD)

Advantages: totally worth to collect
Disadvantages: if you not a DN fan or movie freak, then you will not really interested in it

Death Note (デスノート, Desu NÅto?) is a series of two live-action Japanese films released in 2006 and based on the Death Note manga and anime series by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. The films primarily center on a university student who decides to rid the world of evil with the help of a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it. The two films were directed by ShÅ«suke Kaneko, produced by Nippon Television, and distributed ...
...as the "Death Note". The Death Note's instructions claim that if a person's name is written within it while picturing that person's face, that person shall die. Light is initially skeptical of the notebook's authenticity, but after experimenting with it, he realizes that the Death Note is real. Soon he is visited by the Note's original owner, a shinigami named Ryuk. After that meeting, Light seeks to become "the God of the New World" by passing his ...

QieRa 30.12.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: not helpful
Review of Death Note (DVD)