DVD

A Spring Break whale-watching cruise goes off-course and then blows up, thanks to the stupidity of the popular kids, and two groups of high schoolers find themselves washed up on a deserted island. The aforementioned populars, led by the egomaniacle The Rog (Robert Adamson) immediately establish their dominance, squandering supplies and tormenting the unpopulars. These unfortunates turn to reluctant leader Flynn (Gary Entin), who begins planning a revolution. Pulled between the two groups is Peggy (Lindsey Shaw), cheerleader and girlfriend to Rog who nonetheless has too much intelligence and self-respect to remain satisfied with either role.

Dennis Mitchell always means well when he wants to help out his parents, or good ol' Mr. Wilson, but he also just wants to have a good time. ¼ helpful young lad but ¾ mischief, Dennis made the leap from the beloved comic strip by Hank Ketchum to the small screen for four seasons.

Roger Corman has never let an exploitable opportunity slip by. A case in point is what we have here. In the wake of the first two Godfather films came this rise-and-fall tale. And because the Godfather movies were handsome, expensive and classy, then this Corman-produced effort is also a nice-looking piece of cinema, even if the budget-conscious element shows through with the use of leftover footage from The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

A stern, hectoring narrator laments the state of the Young People of Today's Modern World, and ascribes their terminal amorality to their having come of age during the World War Two. Having set the stage, he then withdraws until the end, that we might draw the proper moral conclusions from a trio of tales (inspired, loosely, by actual cases) that show the terrible depths to which the Young People of Today's Modern World have plunged.

Since this week it appears I am taking on a U.K. flavor for my reviews, I decided to throw one more British drama review ripped straight from their local tele programs. This one involves a lawyer who turns into a judge and dons the infamous powdered wig. To my shock, it isn't even labeled as a comedy, so why am I already laughing? Well, before I go mad as a hatter, let's proceed forth with The Guilty. We will see if this judge is a cheeky bugger or a wanker. I'm guessing on the latter.

Saying there is an “elephant in the room” often means someone is ignoring some enormously obvious truth. To say that Patrice O'Neal can be ignored is foolish...and to say that he speaks the truth...well, you'd have to be pretty jaded to take this man seriously when he flips one PC view of the relationships between men and women on their heads.

I say old chap, I do fancy a good British TV show. Maybe, it is because I grew up with more than my share of shows like Monty Python and the Black Adder. Maybe, I just like their funny accents. There is probably a bloke in the next alley who is willing to give me a beating for that comment. However, I will hold out and share with you my take on Man in a Suitcase, a late 60’s British drama that aired on ABC. Could I possibly bribe this bloke with some fish n chips?

"How did The Bible come to be? The Bible wasn't always a book or even a series of books. In the beginning there wasn't even a written language. The prophets and holy men who roamed these lands seeking the truth and preaching God's word as they perceived it were talking to illiterate audiences who could only be reached by the witnessed testimony and the spoken word."

That's where Charlton Heston comes in.

"May, 2009 - Seven brave astronauts are about to launch on the most challenging and risky missions ever flown in space. This is the last chance to save the Hubble Telescope."

You have to really go back to April of 1990 to get to the start of the story. That's when the shuttle Discovery launched from Cape Kennedy with the Hubble Telescope in its cargo bay waiting to bring the ends of the universe to our waiting eyes. I was there that day among the crowd of hopefuls as the shuttle ignited its thrusters and pierced the sky for space.

Three years after her unsettling turn in Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Mimsy Farmer headlined this giallo-related effort by director/co-writer Francesco Barilli. She plays a successful chemist on the verge of a psychotic break. She has been haunted since her childhood by the death of her father, and she has recurring memories (or are they fantasies?) of her mother in the arms of a sinister man. Her sense of reality crumbles as objects and people from her past appear and vanish.