ORBzine TV Movie Reviews March 2001

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Omega Doom Rutger Hauer appears in yet more straight-to-video crap. This time he is a tough guy in a post-apocalyptic future where the humans are at war with humanoid robots. There are a couple of babes that look like Carrie-Ann Moss in The Matrix. Search This Site
Marooned This is a somewhat realistic space adventure from way back in 1969. Other SF films released around that time include 2001: A Space Odyssey and You Only Live Twice . The SPFX unfortunately resemble those of the latter. The story is simple. A space mission goes badly, and the astronauts are left marooned in orbit. This bears some small similarity to the story of Apollo 13, and it is important to note that this film was released the year of the first Apollo mission. The ground controller is Gregory Peck, in a role somewhat similar to that of Ed Harris in the later film. The astronauts include Gene Hackman, James Franciscus and David Janssen. Unlike the Apollo film, this time a rescue mission is sent up. Despite the raging Cold War, the rescuers are from the USSR! However, there is a small touch of realism, perhaps even a prediction. One cosmonaut with CCCP stamped on his helmet goes on an untethered spacewalk, using a propulsion pack that seems identical to the ones first used by NASA astronauts in the 1980s! Search This Site
Masters of the Universe Back when the movie Conan the Barbarian was first released, a toy company bought the merchandising rights. After the toys had been manufactured, the Marketing Dept realised that an 18-rated film would not have a large pre-teen audience. To target the younger audience they re-branded the toys as their own creation - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The toys spawned a cartoon series, which spawned this movie. In other words, this is a movie of a cartoon show of a toy of a completely different movie. Despite its roots, feel owes more to Star Wars than anything else. The villains wear body armour and carry blaster-guns! The Schwartzenegger role is taken by his fellow european, Dolph Lungren. The settings and back-story from the cartoon are more or less abandoned in exchange for a bunch of SPFX. The film starts with the land of Eternia invaded by the forces of the evil Skeletor [Frank Langella]. He-Man, Man-At-Arms and Teela [ Chelsea Field ] team up with comic-relief midget Billy Barty [ Legend ], who is covered in latex as always. They slip through a dimensional portal to Los Angeles, where most of the film is set. They are pursued by Skeletor's hench-woman Evil-Lynn [ Meg Foster ]. On Earth they bump into teenage couple Courtney Cox and an almost unrecognisable Robert Duncan MacNeill [ Star Trek: Voyager ]. Search This Site
Fifth Element, The This is not an original film, it is based on a comic by Mobius. The director is Luc Besson , who gives a strangely European feel to the film. For example, Jean-Paul Galtier handled the costume design! The film starts in the early years of the 20th century. Luke Perry plays an Egyptologist, part of a team that discovers a prophecy in hieroglyphics that states Evil arrives in physical form every 5000 years. The prophecy is guarded by a priest, an elderly Herbert Lom type. Three hundred years later the Evil appears, as predicted. John Neville [ Baron Munchausen, X-Files ] is a Space Admiral who investigates its presence. Meanwhile, the President of Earth is advised by his General [Brion James - Blade Runner ] and the newest priest [Ian Holm]. The friendly aliens send a genetically engineered perfect warrior - Leeloo [ Milla Jovavich ]. She meets up with a taxi driver [Bruce Willis] who takes her to Ian Holm. Meanwhile the police try to catch her - they don't try to talk to her, they just start shooting at the slightest provocation. Hmm. The Evil's goal is the total extermination of all forms of life. Its contact on Earth is the strangely-named Zarg [Gary Oldman], a Deep South arms dealer. Apparently Zarg is too stupid to realise that the Evil will destroy HIM along with all other life! By strange co-incidence, Willis is the top Special Forces operator in Earth. The General selects him to retrieve the McGuffin. Julie T. Wallace [ The Living Daylights ] is assigned as Willis' partner. As a nice touch, she has her hair done as Leia's in Star Wars: A New Hope. Willis, Holm and Jovovich all end up going after the McGuffin, hidden on a cruise-liner in the hands of an Opera diva. Willis is the macho hero type, Holm is the Obi-Wan figure and Jovovich is the love interest. It's almost scary when you realise that she is about half his age; even scarier when you think of the rumours that his marriage ended because of an affair with her on the set of this film! Chris Tucker is the token black guy-cum-comic relief, a DJ who appears gay until he performs cunilingus on a female air stewardess. Shades of Prince. Lee Evans pops up as a flunky on the cruise liner. The best scene of the film is Leeloo's martial arts fight, intercut with the diva's singing. They got a RL diva and fitted her with alien prosthetics. Search This Site
Exorcist, The William Friedkin directed this, based on the book by William Peter Blatty . A young girl called Regan [ Linda Blair ] undergoes strange psychological and physiological changes. This cannot be explained by conventional medical science, and it seems that a demonic possession is responsible. Regan's mother [ Ellen Burstyn ] calls in an exorcist - Max Von Sydow! Search This Site
Exorcist 3 This was directed by William Peter Blatty , author of the book that the first film was based on. George C. Scott plays a Police Detective investigating a series of brutal murders. The killings lead to a hospital, which has a secure wing for the mentally disturbed. One inmate, Brad Dourif, knows all the details of the killings - but he has been securely confined for the last 15 years! It turns out that the victims have links to the first film's exorcism 15 years previously. Luckily for Scott, Nichol Williamson [Merlin in Excalibur ] pops up as a priest experienced in exorcisms. This is not really a horror film, more of an extremely tense supernatural thriller. There is very little on-screen gore in the film, so the characters can see the corpses but the audience can't. However, the film manages to maintain a disturbing and uneasy feel, due perhaps to the constant filming of everything in medium shot. The exception is the final climactic scene, which is an overblown SPFX extravaganza that appears to have wandered in from another film. Search This Site
Gremlins 2 Director Joe Dante 's mid-1980s original did so well financially that the makers had to make another. Unfortunately the original gremlin puppets had not survived their many years in storage, which gave the makers the opportunity to show us some new, improved versions! Much like the film itself - a big, overblown remake with tons of parody thrown in for free. Our hero Billy and his GF [ Phoebe Cates ] are now living in New York, working for billionaire Donald Clump [John Glover - Brimstone ]. In a strange coincidence, Clump sends his sidekick Robert Picardo [ Star Trek: Voyager ] to buy out Chinatown for a new property development. The only shop to hold out belongs to the old man who owns Gizmo the Mogwai, Billy's wee fluffy friend from the first film. In another strange coincidence, Gizmo ends up in the laboratory of Christopher Lee, inside Clump's skyscraper. As you can no doubt guess, the gremlins get loose inside the lab and take over the building, just as they took over the town in the first film. The film is filled with jokey references to old black and white horror classics, such as The Tingler when the Gremlins get loose in the projection box. Phoebe Cates even parodies her Christmas speach from the original. The only other 1980s film to be parodied is Rambo: First Blood Part II, which inspires Gizmo to fight back against the monsters. Search This Site
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The [1978] Donald Sutherland [ Don't Look Now ] plays a Public Health Inspector in San Francisco. His friends include Leonard Nimoy [long after his role in Star Trek ] and Jeff Goldblum [before he became a major Hollywood star with films like The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, Jurassic Park ]. They start to notice that people they know are behaving differently. There appears to be some kind of strange conspiracy ... Review of the 1990s remake Search This Site
Repossessed Linda Blair has grown into a shaggable woman, but her career never got past the movie Exorcist Here she plays a housewife who has a relapse of demonic possession . The Catholic Church calls in its best exorcist, played by Leslie Nielsen [ Dracula: Dead & Loving It ]. Yes, this is another one of the Naked Gun type of parodies that he did in the early 1990s. Unfortunately it's about the poorest of the bunch, but it's a nice companion to the films it parodies. Search This Site
Ice Half the sun's surface is covered in sunspots, which results in a freezing spell for the Earth. Most scientists predict that it will soon pass, but one claims it is the start of a new Ice Age. The scientist is due to be evacuated from Los Angeles, which is snowed in. He gets a lift when he bumps into the hero, a cop who used to be a US Navy SEAL. Hmm, no cliches there. The characters are pretty thinly drawn, the somewhat clumsy characterisation provided in a simplistic fashion. As in all post-apocalyptic movies, a relatively simple journey is padded out with lots of random encounters. Hmm. Search This Site
Death Becomes Her This is a farce that attempts [with some success] to be a satire of the greed and selfishness in Hollywood. Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play a pair of hollywood starlets who fight over their Doctor BF [Bruce Willis]. Streep goes to Isabella Rosellini and buys a potion that gives Eternal Life. However, although her personality cannot die her body can, which leads to some ground-breaking SPFX from Lucas' ILM. Streep and Hawn are both good at parodying themselves, although they are both slightly OTT. The real kudos go to Willis, who was a good comedy actor in Moonlighting long before his action-man image started with Die hard. Eagle-eyed observers will spot Adam Storke [ Prey ]. Search This Site