The whole thing's grotesque as a gargoyle and ugly as sin.

A lot like getting socks for Christmas: Better than finding coal in your stocking but not exactly as thrilling as unwrapping a big-screen HDTV.

Smokey aims very low and still doesn't hit. [17 Aug 1983, p.D4]

The Mangler is one of the worst movies we've seen in years, and we've seen a lot of movies. [6 Mar 1995, p.5C]

Movies like The Wild Life are softcore porn comics for teenyboppers. It's hard to believe teenagers are really as easily entertained as the makers of this movie seem to expect them to be. What ever happened to introspection and identity crises? [01 Oct 1984, p.C7]

Oh, yes. Reynolds is in it -- but whatever quiet comic timing he once had with DeLuise in movies like The End has been shot to hell by the confusion in the script and the havoc in the pace. They get it back again during the credits, which are accompanied by some outtakes of DeLuise and Reynolds doing their improvisational bit as DeLuise assumes the role of a human bomb. Even bad bloopers are better than this movie. [29 June 1984, p.7]

A shockingly, unbelievably bad movie.

I can honestly think of no reason why anyone would want to see Testosterone apart from the rumor that the film contains a full-frontal shot of Antonio Sabato Jr. naked.

Plentiful helpings of dreadful acting, confusing action cinematography, choppy editing and embarrassing dialogue, with the added bonus of a plot almost as dumb as that of the original film.

The Dungeonmaster is a low-budget fantasy from 1984 on which no less than seven directors labored, and in vain. Each of the seven took one "sequence" in a series of ill-explained jousts between a computer wizard and a caped character called Mestema, who turns out to be Satan himself. Each of the "sequences" is uniformly shoddy looking. [14 Aug 1985, p.D5]

There are plenty of good B movies around to amuse fans of the medieval-hocum genre, but Sword of the Valiant rates a D- minus. [03 Dec 1984, p.C8]

There are not enough synonyms for ''bad'' to describe the pretension and utter banality of the masturbatory The Brown Bunny, a film so exhaustively awful even its creator Vincent Gallo once disavowed it.

There's a delightfully promising premise behind Halloween III -- something's wrong with the kids' masks -- but somehow Wallace gets sidetracked, and the movie wanders away. [30 Oct 1982, p.D5]

B-movie king Charles Bronson, whose long association with Cannon Films has set all-time lows in the idiotic, hits rock bottom in Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. [03 Feb 1989, p.C5]

It's hard to dislike Cheech and Chong, even now, in the wake of the most tedious 90 minutes of "feature" film in 1983. "The boys" have been at work on their curious subgenre -- drug references and large breasts in ceaseless combination -- for far too long now, and you can tell, watching them sleepwalk through the material, that they're tired. [10 May 1983, p.B5]

Lorin Dreyfuss (Richard's brother) and David Landsberg try acting in a movie they wrote for producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They fail on every count...Yawn city, bambino. [21 Aug 1986, p.D5]

Much of the big-surf footage is stunning; some of it is terrifying. But is it worth sitting through North Shore to get to the big sets? No way, dude. [14 Aug 1987, p.D5]

Putting this hackneyed villain in The Big Apple is a tantalizing concept, but Hedden rarely takes advantage of it. He deserves credit for a few shocks and some laughs from a gloom- and-doom deck swabber, but this is highly derivative stuff. And like many slash directors, he replaces suspense with short chases and violence. If audience response is a meter, Jason VIII is a dud. Save a few shrieks, the crowd fell victim to boredom. [31 July 1989, p.C5]

Monumentally silly thriller.

Has he forgotten how to act? He can't deliver lines, he has no comic timing, he moves like a crippled buffalo -- Eastwood is so awful in this unfunny action comedy that those obnoxious movies with Clyde the orangutan now seem like Shakespeare. [29 May 1989, p.C1]

No matter how well-choreographed, Kosugi's karate scenes are impossible to look at as abstract movement divorced from their casually murderous purpose. What is more, they are distorted by special effects and physical feats made possible only by trick photography. [21 Sep 1984, p.D14]

There's a crude energy to the opening scenes of this film, suggesting that the director might one day find a trade. The rest of it is the worst kind of trash, being not just vicious but stupid, too. Peter Fonda appears in an expanded walk-on as a pimp, his "special appearance." Fonda, O'Neal, Cara and the aforementioned Blakley; it is a long fall indeed. [6 March 1985, p.5]

When the film isn't borrowing, it's collapsing of its own weight, slight though it may be. [28 Jul 1996, p.B4]

Hot to Trot is such a poorly executed comedy it boggles the mind. Even a horse's mind. [31 Aug 1988, p.D3]

A sad and rote exercise in milking a played-out idea -- a straight guy has to dress up in drag -- that shockingly manages to be even worse than its title would imply.

Film students may enjoy watching Candy Mountain for the continuity goofs -- snow that vanishes and reappears between shots, a guitarist who either is or isn't playing, depending on whether you believe your eyes or your ears. But music fans drawn by the names on the marquee would do better to spend their money on an album.[26 Aug 1988, p.C5]

Who's That Girl's writers botched the creation of their confection. A successful screwball comedy is like a souffle. This is a souffle made of concrete. [07 Aug 1987, p.D1]

The most astounding thing about this abysmal comedy -- aside from the fact the studio actually allowed critics within a mile of it -- is that it's so ghastly it is beneath even the meager dignity of Paris Hilton.