Richard Harrington

Genre aficionados looking for chills and thrills will be disappointed; this one could play uncut on television -- network, not cable. The effects and the jokes are equally few and far between, and for all its amiable intentions, House II deserves few boarders.

Charmless, stupid and badly made, No Holds Barred makes Rocky look like Citizen Pain.

Never Ending Story II is as flat as the pages of its script.

Child's Play 3 is further proof of the principle of diminishing sequels: The original was actually quite good, the follow-up was lame and now what is hopefully the capper is DOA.

Alan Silvestri's score is the worst mix of ersatz Jerry Goldsmith and schlock pop tunes, and the acting is pretty weak, though the filmmakers get good marks for using Calegory, a real-life disabled 11-year-old who brings a healthy authenticity to his role.

Scriptwise, you'll be left thinking "if it only had a brain." Like last year's "Hardware," this British effort is simply too talky. Those who seek deeper meaning will enjoy the astrological and satanic explanations, even if they make no sense.

Flowers in the Attic is slow, stiff, stupid and senseless, a film utterly lacking in motivation, development and nuance, and further marred by embarrassingly flat acting and directing.

Scriptwriter Kitty Chalmers really should have called it Replicant, since Cyborg borrows bits and pieces from so many genre films and since it has really no soul of its own.

A cross between an after-school special and MTV video, melding threadbare plot with colorful visuals and delivering a message, which is, basically, Vanilla Ice is cool, you know?

They are also bloody and sadistic. There are two basic gore effects: In one, heavy chains fly through the air to impale people with sharp hooks, which then separate those people from their skin, or worse. Elsewhere, flesh crawls and melds with nearby flesh. There are also close-ups of various bloody, flesh-dripping tools and assorted maggots. All this is decidedly gross but not particularly frightening. [9 March 1996, p.H03]

Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects could be the worst Charles Bronson film ever, and that's saying something. If it were any slower, it would be running backward.

In makeup, Davis is quite evil-looking and, like most good actors facing similar challenges, imbues a weak character with a strong presence. The movie is interesting only when he's wheeling about on screen, but in retrospect this is probably one set of reels Davis wishes he had sat out.