Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 21st, 2005
Synopsis
In the 1920s, heiress Bo Derek (looking wildly anachronistic) seeks to learn the ways of ecstasy. (Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t make this up.) Accompanied by her best friend and faithful chauffeur George Kennedy (here making a huge career step down from such *ahem* highs as The Concorde: Airport ‘79), she hares off to Morocco, inspired by Valentino movies to give her virginity to a sheik. When he fails to come through in the clutch, she next turns her sights on a Spanish bullfighter....
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 20th, 2005
Synopsis
Gregory Peck is having trouble making ends meet in his current job. A more lucrative one opens up, but with it comes many more demands that create more stress in his family. There is also a secret from his past that is coming back to haunt him.
Eminently watchable, this is also hugely melodramatic, very long, and quite dated. Jennifer Jones as Peck’s wife comes off almost immediately as an intolerable shrew, berating her husband for lack of ambition and complaining about the suppos...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 20th, 2005
Synopsis
Hugely popular in the 1950s, but politically excoriated and ultimately shut down, EC Comics such as Tales from the Crypt saw their stories revived first in the theatrical Amicus anthologies of the early 70s, and then as this TV series. Here is the first season (a mere six half-hour episodes), directed by the likes of Richard Donner, Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis and Mary Lambert, among others. The stories are very faithful to the spirit of the comics (and are taken from actual stories)...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 19th, 2005
Synopsis
Mother O’Leary and her brood arrive in Chicago just as it is beginning to transform into a metropolis. Her sons grow up to become the amoral Dion (Tyrone Power), who never misses a bet and hooks up with the similarly canny cabaret performer Belle (Alice Faye), and the idealistic lawyer Jack (Don Ameche). Betraying political boss Brian Donlevy, Power arranges for his brother to become mayor, but then finds himself in the targeting sights of Ameche’s reforms. The family feud builds to the nigh...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 19th, 2005
Synopsis
Shot in 1974, this is one peculiar piece of work. Springing from director’s John Aes-Nihil’s not altogether healy obsession with the Manson murders, this takes the rumour that the Family filmed their activities and tries to make it flesh. What you see is a series of very convincing-looking Super 8 mm reels of the Family doing their thing, culminating in re-enactments of the Tate-La Bianca murders. Frankly, I’m somewhat at a loss for how to rate this. The home movies look very real, right dow...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Grand Hotel (1932) was the model: a large cast of known faces with soap opera problems. The High and the Mighty takes this set-up and puts the characters in a plane flying from Hawaii to San Francisco, then blows out an engine and has the fuel leak away. John Wayne is the Co-Pilot With The Tragic Past, Robert Stack is the Pilot Losing His Nerve, and they are surrounded by a collection of other very recognizable types: the Cute Kid, the Charming Dying Man, the Loud Couple From N...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 14th, 2005
Synopsis
Expropriated from his castle by the Romanian government (the place is going to be turned into a training facility for Olympic athletes), Count Dracula (George Hamilton) and Renfield (Arte Johnson, mimicking Dwight Frye’s laugh from the 1931 Dracula) make their way to New York. Dracula has fallen for a fashion model (Susan Saint James), convinced that she is the reincarnation of a woman he has loved before. Though something of a fish out of water, Dracula does his best to adapt to his ...
Posted in: Game Reviews by David Annandale on July 13th, 2005
Gameplay
The maps range from the enormous to the intimate. The biggest are Containment and Terminal. Containment is a vast, snowy valley with fortresses at either end and tunnels running the lengths of the mountain walls. This is a map that makes one wish the multiplayer limit was greater than 16, as even the biggest parties can all but disappear in here. Its size does make it the map most amenable to vehicle combat outside of Coagulation. Terminal, on the other hand, is an urban environment reminisc...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 12th, 2005
Synopsis
The opening scene is a montage of a couple in love, while a voice-over reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” – a sure sign that things are not going to end well. Sure enough, in the next scene, the young woman takes a fatal fall while climbing after a kitten. The boyfriend cannot bear to part with the corpse, and off he goes with the body, making his way cross-country to the lake where we first saw them in love, and all the time the corpse and his mind are slowly rotting away.
Chee...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 11th, 2005
Synopsis
Captain Blood (1935) is the picture that made Errol Flynn a star, and paired him for the first time of many with Olivia De Havilland. There had been pirate movies before (Douglas Fairbanks was the star in them), but this became the new high watermark of the genre. Flynn plays a doctor who is unjustly accused of treason and shipped off to a life of slavery in the colonies. He fights back, eventually becoming the pirate of the title, but always remaining an honourable man, of course. Th...
