The old gimmick of the ventriloquist's dummy with a mind of its own, good enough for a short-story segment in Dead of Night, good enough for a Twilight Zone episode, but blown up here to feature length and rather maddeningly devoid of any invention or embellishment which might justify such …
Imitative horror movie, offering a haphazard diversity of special effects, and having to do with a 400-year-old Indian medicine man whose latest reincarnation manifests itself as a fetus on Susan Strasberg's neck which grows day by day from a walnut-sized lump to a Quasimodo-sized hump. On the outskirts of the …
Following in the footsteps of De Palma's Carrie and The Fury, but going a couple of steps further, this supernatural thriller defines "telekinesis" as a mental power sufficient to bring about the Flood or the Parting of the Red Sea. In real life, you would be pretty impressed if someone, …
The true story (or half-true) of an American student's run-in with the indecipherable Turkish penal code is structured as a sort of gauntlet of indignities; and it adds up to a test of whether one feels more readily righteous than bored. The personality of the American student and petty drug …
Seashore romance, lusciously photographed by Philip Lathrop, and, despite some large improbabilities and larger embarrassments, classically crafted by writer-director Jane Wagner. The woman in the affair is Lily Tomlin, a well-to-do Malibu matron who behaves like a candidate for Geritol, displays a personal (or political) preference for bra-less fashions, and …
Somebody's bright idea was to make a self-contained double bill in the 1930s Warner Brothers manner, the first half a fight film called Dynamite Hands (shot in dishwater black-and-white) and the second a backstage musical called Baxter's Beauties of 1933 (shot in premature color). It's an idea to make the …
Surprisingly coherent and polished piece of work, considering it's from the writers of the National Lampoon and from the director of Kentucky Fried Movie; not as raunchy as you might expect, held in check perhaps by the tighter morals of the 1962 period setting, and not as funny either. This …
Living the life of a Franciscan monk and devoting all his energy and legal know-how to the fight against slum landlords, Oliver Barrett IV reluctantly takes out his ice skates one day on the advice of his psychiatrist, and in the middle of Central Park his slumbering sexual curiosity is …
Ghastly-looking movie (lobsterish skin tones, barren settings) about a starstruck egomaniac who acts as if the world is his oyster and who is supposed to be excused for his behavior because Henry Winkler plays the role. With Kim Darby and Gene Saks; directed by Carl Reiner.
Budget-minded Fellini film about a TV documentary crew covering a routine orchestral tune-up in an old church and getting more than they bargained for when the musicians turn mutinous, shrug off the guiding hand of the maestro, and lapse into chaos. There is plenty of room to speculate on the …
More about ex-skier Jill Kinmont (to avoid the boring repetition of the title, which is symptomatic of 1970s sequelitis, couldn't they at least have called it Another Side of the Mountain, or maybe Top o' the Mountain, or maybe Another Day, Another Mountain?), but the new information remains just as …
An antisocial mongrel with a tattered coat and a vicious snarl exercises a bad influence on his canine confreres, and creates a serious dog delinquent problem on a dark and unpleasant resort island. Writer-director Robert Clouse doesn't marvel over the unnaturalness of dogs who behave much like Hollywood Indians (they …
Barrelhouse entertainment from Sylvester Stallone, on whose scrawny novel it is based, and who scripted, directed, and stars. Set in 1946 (preceded, though, by a frontispiece of the black-and-white Universal Pictures logo, circa 1931), the story of Hell's Kitchen, professional wrestling, and three chummy brothers is infused with an atmosphere …
Diane Kurys's remembrance of things adolescent: little vignettes about such things as a girl's first period, ogre-ish grownups, sexual naivety, the grave political realities that exist above the average thirteen-year-old's awareness, things that bring a chuckle to your throat, a tear to your eye, a nod to your head, or …
Eric Rohmer's adaptation of Chretien de Troyes's 12th-century Arthurian romance is fearlessly bold, headstrong, and dull. The extreme stylization (painted scenery, metal trees, rhymed speech) is, as in a Bresson movie, good for a chuckle once in a while -- a fact of which Rohmer, unlike Bresson, is evidently aware. …