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Many years back, I read the novel Burnt Offerings and was entranced. In my opinion, this was definitely an interest to ladies, in the sense of the subject being a house and its contents. As someone who occasionally felt the need (then, as well as now) to fix up, display, and fawn over household items, I could relate to the main character. It is a woman who is obsessed with renting a particular old house for the summer to restore it back to beauty. As she brings it back to life, however, the house takes life, and does so from her aged aunt, the health of her husband, and the mental stability of her son. She, however, does not see any of this and eventually becomes the house, in a sense.

It is common for me to enjoy a book more than the movie it gets made into, and I think that is the case for most people. One tends to relate more, especially if the book is written in the first person, because there is no clear image in mind of the main character or supporting cast. Yet, when the reader views the action taking place, if the characters do not look like pictured, or if they can not relate to the main character image, the story loses personalization. Since most of us can not claim movie star looks, we tend to see most movies a stories we witness instead of our own escape to another life.

In my opinion, Karen Black, the lead of this 1976 movie, was perfect in her ability to follow direction to portray the character with a saccharine, fake persona, but it did get to me after the first 20 minutes or so. Her husband was well portrayed by Oliver Reed; everyone could relate to his incredulity and exasperation with the change in his wife and family dynamics. Bette Davis was as superb as usual in the role of the aunt who ages about 30 years after living in the house for a month. (Her death scene was one of the highpoints; this is true acting of the highest professional degrees. Other actresses, especially young ones concerned about how they look, would never have been able to pull it off.) The only other major character was the young son (Lee H. Montgomery), and although he was not a bad child actor, the screaming and crying required of him became quite annoying. That poor kid faced harsh roughhousing by his possessed dad, almost drowned in the once calm pool, nearly died from gas inhalation, was attacked by trees, and witnessed his dad falling to his death through a window. It was little wonder that his lines were limited.

If you genuinely enjoy being scared, you will like this movie, although you probably will figure out what is going on long before the final moments. Ms. Black wanted to rent the house cheaply, and her caveat for doing so was to do take three meals a day to an upstairs room and leave it for the elderly relative of the owner. This chore also keeps her from being able to leave once things turn spooky. The first few days, she worried about the food not being eaten; then it becomes a non-issue. She began to spend hours in the upstairs room, gazing at the hundreds of old photos of faces that fill every space, at least when she is not dusting, cleaning, waxing or scrubbing. Her husband and son really do very little, but the aunt takes her easel outside to paint every day, at least until the house stars sapping her energy. The logistics of grocery shopping, community involvement and friends for little Davy are conveniently overlooked, but, hey, this is, after all, a horror movie.

There are some spine tingling moments, like seeing the greenhouse plants come alive, and the pool repair itself, but nothing tops the repeated images of a chauffeur from the past, always with the motor running on his hearse. This is the stuff of nightmares.

There is not any noticeable profanity, or clear nudity, although one scene may be questioned by kids under age eight or so (when Ms. Black has, for lack of works, a headache). Some of the gory scenes in the last five minutes may be too intense for young children. Heck, they may even be too intense for a good many adults.

Although over 30 years old, this movie is indeed timeless, and still succeeds in packing a punch.

Do you like gore? Meaningless gore? Excessive gore? Do you like plotlines that you can’t follow and don’t even want to? Do you like lame sex scenes and pointless topless screenshots? Then Hitman might just be the movie for you!

Maybe the reason why I’m so irreversibly pissed off about this movie is that my hopes were so high. Don’t ask me why-I should have seen the galumphing, gas-leaking, rickety and falling apart train wreck of a movie for what it was from the get-go. But on the contrary-I felt cheated by the movie. The opening credits were so cool, and then, the aforementioned train wreck took place.

Through creepy, mystical music, the names of the movie director, the producer, and the starring actors floated onto the black screen-and now I saw rows of blue-coated orphans executing martial arts moves in perfect synchrony. On the backs of their heads, bar-codes glowed in the eerie luminescence emanating from the TV screen. Man, I thought, this movie is going to rock. I already knew what it was going to be about. A futuristic, totalitarian government, using the martial mastery of children, estranged from their parents at a young age, to bring the merciless and raw power of the government down upon insubordinate heads. A hero amongst the orphan mercenaries, who rises above and sees the evil of his government; forms a revolution and overthrows the dictator-but in doing so, falls prey to greed and temptation and descends into darkness.

Boy, was I wrong.

As the opening credits drew to a close, the scene opened on a darkened living room. As a mysterious looking man entered, he found himself face to face with another mysterious looking gentleman (the mysteriousness didn’t last, in case you were wondering). Mysterious man 1 inquired if mysterious man 2 was going to kill him. The second man replied that if he was going to kill him, mysterious man 1 would already be dead (or some variation on that inevitable line). Okay, I thought, it’s a little cliché, so what? This movie is still going to rock the house down.

Man 2 (this is about when they stopped being mysterious) then inquired when it was right to kill. For a movie that posed such a deep and profound moral quandary, it didn’t show a whole lot of respect for the living-I didn’t notice any qualms or internal struggles when 47 (yes, that is the name of the main character) blew the brains out of a politician with a sniper rifle, to say nothing of the massive body count the movie accumulated.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. No, wait-I’m actually not. For reasons best known to himself, 47 felt the urge to assassinate a politician. Don’t ask me why, as far as I can see it never tied in with the rest of the movie. Cool, cool, I thought, when he aimed at the guy’s head. So it’s fast paced, there’s nothing wrong with that.

It didn’t get any better. I wasn’t particularly excited about the brains and blood splattering, and then, at the secret agent guys insistence, replaying the tape several times-rewinding it, even, to figure out some other hidden mystery, so I saw the whole gross ordeal over again.

It was at this point that the intricate ice sculpture that was my fantasy of this movie began to melt. There was no intelligent plot. 47 poured machine gun bullets into his enemies with an eagerness that was probably supposed to be cool. It wasn’t. I just found myself wanting the fight scenes to be over. Well, no, not quite true. When the fight scenes ended, a new element of the movie arose that was even worse: the love story. Actually, ‘sex story’ would be more fitting here-I don’t feel it was worthy of being called a love story, whatever it was.

After a few minutes of crying over all the unspeakable (but I’m sure manly and necessary) violence that 47 was committing against her associates, the lover declared that he was "actually quite charming when he wasn’t killing people." Whatever charm she detected was lost on me; however, that appeared to be all it took-five minutes later she was topless and straddling him.

It was at this moment (another sign that this movie must have been a serious bore) that I crumpled backward onto the floor. My ornate ice sculpture of darkness, glory and political intrigue had been sledge-hammered; what remained was a slush of gore, sex, and crappiness.

I don’t even remember what happened in the final third of the movie. Except the grand finale-that was pretty hard to miss. The movie wound down with a heroic shot of 47 hefting a gun, off to blow the brains out of more politicians, and ruin an hour and forty minutes of more innocent movie-goers lives.

Review submitted via our Submit A Review page.

Contributor: Jason Lutterloh
Contributor URL: http://www.compjason.com

I have seen Kung Fu Panda twice since its release and immediately fell in love with it within the first thirty minutes of the movie. How can you not enjoy watching a chubby panda wish he was a kung fu hero amongst all other animals?

Going into the movie, I figured it would be one of those cute kiddie movies that are only entertaining for, well, kids. I’m glad I was wrong. This movie would be great for kids but teens and adults as well. My abs got a good workout by the end. How can one not be amused at the power of the “Mushu (or wushu, not really sure) Finger Hold” or the scene at the end where Po (Jack Black) thinks Shi Fu (spelling?)(Dustin Hoffman) is dead? (You’ll have to see the movie to know what I’m referring to here.)

While the movie lasts a mere hour and thirty minutes it is full of gut-wrenching humor and a cute storyline about an unlikely hero. wait, what? You say you’ve seen enough movies about unlikely heroes and underdogs? Go see one more. This one can’t compare to some great sports movies like “Remember the Titans” but its a good relief from everyday stress or a good way to get out of the sun for a while.

I strongly encourage you to go see this movie with your family, friends, or whoever. It’s good, clean, fun entertainment. That is something we lack in America, and it was refreshing to see this movie. If you have any other questions or comments, please respond.

“Skidoosh!”

Review submitted via our Submit A Review page.