Richard Harrington

The effects are generally good, and those Cenobites are definitely not the kind of folks you'd have over on New Year's Eve. Still, it's odd that the most intriguing, and threatening, items in the film are those darn puzzle boxes.

Director Bruce Malmuth keeps the pace taut, the shots tight.

Dickerson keeps things moving along briskly and the ensemble manages to survive Eric Bernt's "script" (Connell gets no credit). As for the dreadlocked Ice-T, he avoids the rap trappings of his previous film roles and is generally effective in his survival schemes.

A shameless, uneventful rehash of the classic Western "Shane," "Nowhere to Run" miscasts Jean-Claude Van Damme in the old Alan Ladd role -- an outlaw outsider gradually drawn into both unexpected familial warmth and predictably violent conflict with a greedy land baron...While it boasts better supporting actors and technical credits than other Van Damme projects, the film nonetheless founders, a victim of its own lugubrious pace and misguided efforts at turning the bulging Belgian into a romantic lead.

The script is at once so undernourished and so obvious that you'll be convinced Cohen produced it via telegram: START MANIAC COP KILLS CIVILIANS STOP CLEANCUT GETS BLAME STOP WORLD-WEARY DETECTIVE FIGURES IT OUT STOP BODIES FALL STOP.

Barker the filmmaker resorts to most of the horror cliches he chillingly sidesteps in his writing.

The story is silly but entertaining, the fisti/footsycuffs are generally exciting and the laughs are common. Summer fare, basically.

This Dr. Giggles has a lot of hearts and no brain.

Possibly . . . no, probably . . . no, definitely . . . the worst rock film of all time. [24 Nov 1980, p.B11]

You're going out with a touch of class: a slam-bang finale in 3-D -- make that Freddyvision; a gaggle of one-liners directed at the final crop of victims and a few in-jokes; some wonderfully bizarre dream sequences; and the possibility that while Freddy may be gone, some of his progeny may live on (we can say no more).

Some films aspire to B status; some achieve it accidentally. Return of the Swamp Thing does neither. It isn't shocking or entertaining. At best, it is a catalogue of bad acting unredeemed by humor, and it will quickly settle back into the swamp of anonymity accorded most minor comic book heroes. [26 June 1989, p.B8]

What this ill-fated journey is all about are never rationally explained, but then it seems most of the little thought in Galaxy of Terror was put into the special defects, which include a crewmember whose head and tummy snap, crackle and pop; an arm that gets cut off and still manages to spite itself; and a tiny worm that grows and rapes a comely crew member to death. [12 Nov 1981, p.C17]

Spaced Invaders is a slight, obvious sci-fi parody that would like to be in the same league as Spaceballs, but doesn't even deserve the comparison.

Though it boasts a big budget and is indeed busier and more densely populated than Seagal's previous efforts, Out for Justice feels cheap, not only in its production but in its content. It's "Scarface" without a point of view; it's shallow plot cluttered with extreme violence, both verbal and physical.

Child's Play 2 is an inevitable sequel that's not as good as its progenitor, but better than most movies with the numbers 2 through 8 in their titles. Thin plot-wise, it caters to an audience apparently amused on the first go-round by the antics of a foul-mouthed doll named Chucky.

There are so many problems with Graffiti Bridge. The major one is that this "contemporary musical drama" stars and was directed by Prince, who also wrote the script and the score. This may be four hats too many.

All the redeeming qualities of "Rocky Horror"--naive wit, enthusiastic invention and absurb plotline--have been approximated in Shock Treatment without ever approaching the original. Unlike its inspiration, which fans have returned to time and again, Shock Treatment is hard to sit through once. [28 May 1982, p.C4]

Striking Distance is a solid adventure with just enough edge and mystery.

This is a surprisingly inept tale about an evil nanny and a killer tree that's right out of Jason's woods. Despite a prologue that aims to excuse subsequent plot deficiencies and a finale that's as absurd as you're likely to find in a modern horror film, The Guardian is simply ludicrous.

In the end, it all looks and plays like a $40 million version of a game you're more likely to enjoy on a computer.

Ultimately, it's hard to decide which is more deadly, the action or the dialogue. [26 Dec 1981, p.D5]

Well shot, well edited, well paced, Deepstar Six seems to have gone to the idea-well just a bit too often -- or is that not often enough? While the creature is an average creation, the underwater visual effects are often quite good, if not plentiful enough. [14 Jan 1989]

What can you say when a video game is more exciting and entertaining than the big-budget feature film it inspires?

The plot stumbles over genre cliches after a promising start and the whole thing becomes lamentable. As an indictment of a techno-society in which too much information is available by computer, it's simply unconvincing.

All the characters mumble, perhaps out of sympathy for the Dutch Van Damme's ongoing struggle with their native language. As for plot, it unravels more quickly than the mystery facing Van Damme.

Martial arts maven Seagal has long been on deadly ground with critics, and this, his directorial debut, is likely to keep him there.

It's all good, stupid fun.

Class of 1999 gets a D for dumb, dull and derivative, and so what if director Mark Lester, who made "Class of 1984" eight years ago, is borrowing from himself? The latter was just a punked-up version of the original rock-and-roll high school film, "Blackboard Jungle." For this new venture, Lester has simply tacked on elements of "Westworld," "RoboCop" and "Terminator" in a blatant attempt to enroll the action faction.