Movie was fun, and not scary except for a few very brief scenes, but tried way too hard to become a cult classic. Some gore, mostly in brief flashback/hallucination format. An eyeball impalation - unlikely but creative (but also gross). A mongoose. A Snakes 'n' Ladders game. Swords and caverns and smoke, oh my. Also a few good lines, huge impractical English luxury automobiles, and a couple of director errors (end of the movie: WHICH hand would you release?).

The storyline: telepathic, telekinetic rogues called "scanners" are trying to escape capture and madness. Most don't make it.

We ended up watching this Troma movie. Troma, in case you weren't sure where you'd heard the name, is the company who put out the movie Toxic Avenger.

You can order your own personal Troma Kit, which includes a Troma Diploma...

Anyway, Nymphoid Barbarian wasn't so good. She was a barbarian/ cavewoman, all right, but she wasn't much of a nymphoid - she mostly bit the guys. I'd rate this one a pass.

Hoskins' sister is mentally troubled; Goldblum thinks he's Strauss or Schubert; the watch in the title gets discussed and passed around. The fish in the title is in the very first scene, but doesn't seem relevant to the rest of the movie and is never again mentioned. A scene with Hoskins thinking he's seen Richardson in a crowd is reminiscent of the Tom Hanks movie Joe Versus the Volcano. The sister is reminiscent of Joan Cusack in general.

Not as funny as expected given the price (under $3), the back cover, and the props that came with the video, but there were some good bits. Not bad as a strange romantic comedy/drama. Dragged on in places.

This pilot has them all in 80s pink-and-grey basketball outfits and 80s hair. There are some very sappy moral speeches.

Not all that bad, although the first half hour didn't give any hints about this becoming a SF movie (it did have a bunch of shirtless construction workers). Piper isn't even that bad of an actor - Vanna White (as "Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love" in a TV movie several years back) is much worse.

Stars Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Tim Curry, and Meatloaf. Co-stars platform shoes, corsets, fishnet, leather, bad makeup, and "sex drugs rock'n'roll." I didn't know this until checking the IMDB, but royal-interest Koo Stark (Prince Charles' brother Prince Andrew dated her for a while) was listed as one of the Transylvanians!

Stupid stuff includes security guard Neelix trying to close snappy metal clasps (would *you* put your fingers in there?), discontinuities, ghastly lines, and water NOT being forced out through a hole (instead, Mr. Shadow uses the hole to get air). Tons of computer-generated special effects. The evil dagger was interesting. Most of the effects were too obvious. Co-stars Jonathan Winters.

Couldn't wait for this one to end.

Fun scenes and improbabilities include hanging off of cliffs, swinging on a rope from the highest point of one ship to the highest point of another, and surfacing quickly from underwater without decompression problems. Co-stars Dracula himself, Frank Langella, as her nasty uncle.

The star: Mr. Average - a postal employee deemed by some "superior" alien race to be "the median" of humankind. His alien advisor: in the protagonist's words, "a teen-aged mall tramp" (who bears some resemblance to Alicia Silverstone, but is, er, more heavily endowed). The love interest: a "crypto-zoologist" (also called a "Crisco-zoologist" by the news anchor who interviewed her within the movie). The rest of the monster-fighting team: a rogue cop who believes in UFOs and an "infonaut" (social outcast with a run-on mouth, irritating whiny voice, and the supposed ability to hack into *any* computer system on the planet within a few keystrokes).

The plot: Monster appears from within a mountain in California. Wreaks havoc. Blue laser-beam eyes vaporize things in its path. Once our hero finds out he's the one chosen to defeat the creature, and is told that the monster knows this and will take (is programmed to take) the *shortest* path to reach him, we notice that is indeed what the monster does. The monster takes the *shortest* path. Not the quickest. Not the most efficient. Just the shortest. That's why so much gets destroyed - the monster isn't programmed to walk around buildings.

There were some fun parts to the movie. It wasn't too awful. We could see folds near the elbows of the monster suit, and most of the sets looked like model railroad kits. Sometimes, we could see the monster *through* the buildings (they had fronts, but no backs). The hero looked like a nice dopey guy. The love interest bore a slight resemblance to Miss Maggie O'Connell; in one scene, the lighting made our hero look like Jon Lovitz. The climax/denouement (sp???)/end of the movie were wham-bam-thank you, ma'am. Once the hero & his helpers encountered the monster, the movie was over within five minutes. Oh, well. It was pretty short - less than 1:30.

The Pest took the plot of The Hunt (man hunts man) and had Jeffrey Jones (red hair, scowls, Ferris Bueller's principal; plays B-rate bad guys a lot; I've been calling him "Ralph" for years but can't remember why) as the grumpy German villain and "The Pest" (Leguizamo) as his target.

Jones' character, Gustav, is trying to complete his collection of heads of all of the human races and sub-races...and "Puerto Rican" ("Latinus Spicticus"(?) on the plaque for The Pest's (Leguizamo's) head) is the only one he's missing. There are more costume changes/disguises in this movie for Leguizamo than Eddie Murphy has probably done in his entire life. Eddie Murphy is more believable, though, generally funnier, and definitely more laid back than Leguizamo. In summary: Leguizamo's persona-changes got tiresome. Leguizamo's spastic dancing got tiresome. The vomiting got tiresome.

There were a few good parts, though, particularly the fellow (Edoardo Ballerini) who played Gustav's pouty son, Himmel. I thought he was wonderful - probably the best actor of the bunch. Poor Himmel has two obsessions: snakes and men. His father wants him to hunt. Himmel wants to write musicals and become a hairdresser.

Also entertaining was the Scottish Mob. The idea was of a Scottish Mob was funny enough in itself; the Scottish Mob's choice of under-kilt wear was pretty good too.

The stereo-cranking contest near the end - aside from the bad dancing - was funny. Unrealistic, but funny, and who hasn't wished at one point that they had a device that could blow out someone else's speakers (no, that isn't ruining the scene - it's a visual)?

So, see The Pest if you must, but unless you love hearing Leguizamo shriek, prance about, and generally throw himself at you, don't expect too much from the main story line. The secondary bits are much better.

What a choice - he takes the job. Lots of fighting, stunts, and dark dirty streets. Bad lines. Bad acting. More sneering. And wonder of wonders (play It's a Small World here for atmosphere), everyone in New York just happens to know Snake!

Check the credits - the dancers' "true" names include "Rodger Bumpass" and "Lowmoan Spectacular". Narration and computer voice are none other than Jamie Lee Curtis.

If you want an "escape from the unescapable" movie, The Rock was better - Sean Connery did a good job, Ed Harris was as wonderful as always, and Nicholas Cage, while completely unbelievable as an intelligent scientist, wasn't too awful.

In fact, Escape from New York elicited so many groans that its (worse!) sequel, Escape from L.A. (1996) was vetted for the evening - we ended up watching Ghosts on the Loose, below. My husband and I watched Escape from L.A. the next day. It had Russell as the same character, in the same clothes, even though this one took place ten or so years later. The characters within the movie commented on his "20th century" outfits. They were pretty Flashdance. On the good side, it had Ensign Ro (Michelle Forbes) as a bad guy.

Stars some people I'm not familiar with, but they may be familiar to people who've watched more '30s-'50s movies. Co-stars Bela Lugosi and a *very* young Ava Gardner as a young bride. Her new husband has just bought her a house; his buddies misunderstand which house he has bought. While the couple is on honeymoon, the buddies (tripping over each other all the way) mistakenly move the furniture from the couple's *real* house into the house next door (the one they *think* he bought). Gosh darn it, the house next door is being used to secretly produce propaganda! It has secret doors, hidden rooms, hidey-holes behind paintings, and villains skulking about and printing nasty brochures. Oh, and a disappearing printing press (the evidence).

Mostly a silly movie, although we were alarmed by the censorship issues.

The intro has a cockroach - with chorus! - flying through NYC until it gets to the apartment building that Joe moves into. Compare this intro with the one of the computer-generated [dragonfly? wasp?] flying insect in Men in Black (199O).

Stuff that leaves one wondering: Banquo's ghost (the original factory owner); the deus ex machina of the floppy-shooting machine; was that Dana Carvey in a wig as the guys' mom?; bothering with special effects all of a sudden in the middle of the film; leftover Stormtrooper uniforms from Star Wars; and, of course, the point. It got tiresome early on, although some of the best laughs were near the end. The middle was definitely an "is it over yet?" stretch. You might want to watch this one with an alarm clock, so you don't miss the inflatable actors.

So why was this a bad movie? The cheesy effects at the end, when we SEE the Jekyll/Hyde transformation. What's the deal with Kuato [from Total Recall (1990)] showing up?

Why mostly? The plot. Mary Reilly could read, even though she'd been "in service" since she was about seven. This worked into her relationship with Dr. Jekyll. How/where did she learn, when so many of the other servants (who seemed to have grown up normally) couldn't read? Dr. Jekyll knew the Councilman from school, but why did Mr. Hyde dislike him? How did Dr. Jekyll meet Madam Faraday? She seemed to have known him for quite some time. How did nobody ever find Madam Faraday's body? How did Mary's flowers bloom so suddenly? If Dr. Jekyll had such a bad case of schizophrenia, why weren't there indications before he started playing with his chemistry set? And speaking of chemistry, what *did* he need all of those organs for?

Maybe they'll make a sequel to explain it all...Mary Reilly takes over Jekyll's lab, makes up her own version of the concoction, pours it over the corpse of Madam Faraday (assuming the body can be found), and Madam Faraday comes to life a la Frankenstein as a sweet young girl...

Late 70s glamour queens (truly - we were convinced it was a '70s film); sex-change pills; makeup and clothes worthy of Divine. An almost-all-transvestite cast. Extremely low-budget; possibly someone's high school or college project (although for which school?). It looked like most or all of it had been shot in black and white and then colorized with glow-in-the-dark paints. This is what our BMN movies strive to be, and Vegas in Space, despite its no-name cast, has now displaced Zardoz as the worst one we've seen yet.

The monsters they fight include a giant iguana, a giant sea turtle, a giant turantula, a giant cricket, a triceratops, and two meat-eating dinosaurs (different ones). I think they were an allosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex, but it was difficult to tell. All of these creatures managed to eke out a diet from the rocks and fish and occasional bushes found in this desert. Oh, and at the end there was a volcanic eruption combined with an earthquake. No plot wind-up. The movie just ended.

Great one, though - fun.

Not nearly as bad as Cabin Boy - better acting. Scary thought, eh?

If you like this (or Ivanova), rent Hexed (1993) - Claudia Christian at the age of about 19, playing a psychotic fashion model. One scene in Hexed has her jumping up & down on a bed with no clothes on (and a knife in hand, I think). You might also check out The *official* Marc Alaimo fan page.