OCR Text |
Show - . ii I Cinematic C7) ; Lets go to the movies! s,.nti.ts 'vl : J Hy Dr. Allen Hasson dvLJ ; "VIDEODKOME" () l'.xploitalnive unil Cross " Vidoodi ome" is the name of a videoeassette TV show in this new sci Ii movie. The TV show grips the viewer and draws him into a confusing world of hallucination and weird violence, then kills him. What begins as an interesting idea (if exaggerating the problem of the television-dominated society, degenerates into a series of overdone scenes of violence, including burns, jabs, ami exploding people. It's awful, tasteless junk, and doing poorly at the box office. H for kinky sex, graphic and gory violence, strong profanity. "AMIN1" () Who needs it? Idi Dada Amin (born 19351 is one of those characters you love to hate As I'ganda's dictator from 1971 to 197H, he forced 50,000 Asians to leave his country, and killed or tortured untold thousands of his ow n people who disgreed ith his policies He called for the extermination of Israel, and considers Hitler a great man. Last we heard, he had been exiled to Libya Perhaps his life can serve as a warning, warn-ing, in the sense that Hitler's (hopefully) (hopeful-ly) has. Hut the film. "Amin." instead of teaching, capitalizes on violence It is a poorly-acted dramatization filmed in Africa Io we need this'.' 'CURTAINS" () Bud Monster Gonna Get You! This latest film from Jensen Farley Pictures lives up to the company's reputation "Curtains" is more skillful ly made than others from JF. but it's still a junk film. This standard horror flick employs the usual tricks to scare you. with the usual amount of sickening scenes The story concerns some young ladies lured to a creepy place to audition for a horrific stage play One by one they are bumped off in bloody fashion, and one ol them turns out to be the killer And then there were none. Sob, sob. It lor unrc and violence, sex and nudity, nudi-ty, prolanity. The most interesting tiling alxmt "Curtains" "Cur-tains" is that it shows how badly Saman-tha Saman-tha Knnar im,l 'he ureat character action John Vernon need work. Did the production ensemble, or any of them, feel any sense of fulfillment after lilnunn "Curtains'".' In our opinion, gruesome violence is the ultimate pornography. "TKKNCIICOAT" () TV Sitcom on a Big Screen "Trenchcoat'' is a silly whodunit starring star-ring Canadian actress Margot Kidder ( I Aiis Lane m "Superman") and Robert Hays (the pilot in "Airplane"). It comes oil looking like the two stars needed to do an overseas film, say in Greece, for some kind ol tax advantage. Furthermore. Further-more. "Trenchcoat" appears to be a :in-m unite TV comedy dragged out to a day and a half. Kidder is a klutzy court stenographer w ho takes a vacation to write a murder mystery She and con-man Hays ac-cidently ac-cidently get involved with some criminals in Malta, and the two potentially-funnv performers struggle valiantly through various wisecracks and sight gags on the way to becoming heroes. There is some clever banter between Kidder and the I la lies police, but no real laughs When the bad guys inject her with truth serum, and she says, "You have bad breath." many in the audience laughed -after all, they came to laugh. Hut we were tixi busy with our poK'orn and big orange I'd lor sex. profanity and violence. "ITMi: WALKER" () He is At raid. He is Alone. He is disgusting We couldn't figure out whether "Time Walker" was a njx ff on "E.T.," "The .Mummy." "The Awakening." "Haiders," "Friday the llith, I'he Blob," "Star Wars," or "Halloween." Finally, we decided it was a ripolf on everything. There isn't a single original gimmick in this disastrous, (xxirly acted, pretentious, cliche ridden "mummy" movie. The actors sometimes look like they're watching the director out of the corners of their eyes to see w hat comes next. Archaeologist Hen Murphy presides over the opening of a Disneyland casket from the tomb of King Tut ("The Awakening"). "Clearly the original seals," he judges. A greedy assistant steals the mummy's jewels ( "Haider" ), goofs up the x-ray machine w ith an overdose over-dose of radiation which revives this 3000-year-old dude ("The Mummy"), who comes alive breathing heavily as if in a mask, with bum-bum-bum- heartbeat heart-beat ("Star Wars" and "Halloween"), and goes after the jewels, destroying necking college students ("Friday the 13th") with his gooey, growing, flesh-consuming flesh-consuming fungus ( "The Blob"). And of course, there's the obligatory girl chased chas-ed down the obligatory lonely corridor, a la "Hallow een". But gosh, he's just an innocent little time traveler anxious to phone er, go home. (The glowing jewels are knobs for his hand held time machine, and he has a jewel in his tummy tum-my too, like E.T. ) E.T. wouldn't have done those nasty-things nasty-things to folks, even if they were orgiastic college kids. Dumb characters and dumb stereotypes in this film insult everyone. The pretentiously beautiful ending is disgustingly out of place. This is the kind of stuff usually shown only at drive-ias, and we're thankful our editors have not asked us to make a regular practice of review ing DI movies. Rated PG (should be R) for nudity, gross violence, sex and profanity. "FRANCES" (") The Perils of Hollywood "Frances" is a compelling tragedy-based tragedy-based on the life of ia:!0's film star Frances Farmer, who would be about 7U years old today if she were alive. The movie indicates that her spirit Nvas dcslroyi-d by the corporate demands t Hollywood, the newsmongers, by th surgical destruction of her mind an' especially by her mother's expeetatioa' Frances Palmer grew up in Seattle where she achieved nationwide recogni tion around 1030 with an award-winninj essay denying the existence of God. Sh made her way into the movies at age 22 w here she quickly rose to stardom as ; contract performer with Paramont Pic tures. But she disdainfully left Mollywoo for the New York stage, doing protes drama for playwright Clifford Odetls with whom she had a disappointing af fair. Odetts dumped her, and one thinj led to another. Paramont wasn't to thrilled about having her back, she wa.-becoming wa.-becoming an alcoholic, was more fierce ly anti-establishment than ever, got jail ed in 1!)42 for hitting her hairdresser, an( finally her mother had her confined ii various mental institutions over a pericx of years. "I don't want to be what you want tc make me." she tells the doctor at the mental hospital, "dull, average, normal." nor-mal." Certainly many creative artists have had to deal with the problem ol creativity versus normality. Jessica Lange is well deserving of he Academy Award nomination for penetrating portrayal of Farmer. Bui without know ing how much of the film L true, and w ith the gruesome portrayal o rats, lesbians, rape, shock treatment am lobotomy in the mental institutions, thi viewer needs more understanding o Frances' character, and more didactit uplift than the film provides. Frances openness, her devotion to a private diary and her relationship with her father should all be more touching than they are: there is too much about her career and too little about her character. The lesson, if there is one, is the distur-bing distur-bing thought that the mother, psychiatrists. reporters and moviemakers may have been the real crazies. Or. to put it bluntly, and locally: local-ly: Is it possible that the so-called "insane" "in-sane" among us are really the only sane ones'.' If you think so. this is your kind of movie. R for full nudity, hardcore profanity, sex. violence, rape. |