Exhibit
A
It's really no mystery why main stream film criticism is
entirely without merit. Most critics are pompous, bitter hacks who see themselves
as demigods, able to flippantly smite any work of art that fails
to tickle their piteous fancy. Many are more concerned about how droll their
reviews will seem than imparting fair and useful information to
their readers. The horror genre in particular has suffered greatly due
to the shortsightedness shared by so many of these self-loving twits. It may
be risky to mock most popular films (you never know which one is going to be
embraced as a new classic) but proclaim that all horror fans are drooling
idiots and that the genre is nothing but trash, and the white wine sipping
patricians at your next dinner party will praise you for your courage.
Too put it bluntly, most critics wouldn't know a good
horror film, if it came up and bit them on their ever-widening
asses.
If you are not familiar with some of these jokers, try visiting this site to learn more about them, it's a fun read. To be fair, not everyone here is an unrepentant jerk, ( I do have a soft spot for Roger Ebert and consider him a talented writer, even though he and I generally disagree on just about everything ) but all are guilty of some small amount of soreheaded whining.
My philosophy on this page is simple. I'm not going to fault people for liking a film I consider bad, that would make me just as petty as some of these reviewers. I will simply show how some very entertaining films have been slighted over the years.
Just a small note, I was "inspired" to do this page by the book "The Critics Were Wrong" by Ardis Sillick & Michael McCormick. It's a very good book, and you should go buy a copy and stuff.
Army of Darkness
Rating **
... the movie seems aimed at an
audience of 14-year olds, who would have been 8 when "Evil Dead II" came out, so
maybe this will all seem breathtakingly original.
~ Roger Ebert
Rating *
~ Duncan Shepard
I realize that Shepard is somewhat of an obscure critic. I use his opinions so frequently in this page as he is, arguably, the worst film critic ever born. He gives just about every film ever released one star or less, sort of like Mr. Cranky, 'cept I'm afraid Shepard is serious.
Ratin
g No StarsAs if such a thing were possible!
Arsenic and Old Lace
...laborious farce...has always been inexplicably popular.
Capra's hick jollity turns Grant into a manic eunuch.
~ Pauline
Kael
The Beyond
Rating: Half a
star
The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult shows.
Midnight is not late enough.
~
Roger Ebert
Black Sabbath
Rating No Stars
Tolerable horror portmanteau.
~
Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
I'll save you the trouble;
portmanteau
noun, origin: froggy sounding
1. a leather satchel for toting clothes, placed behind a saddle
2. a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings; see
spork, killographic
3. word that a witless middlebrow writer with pretensions to culture would use
to refer to an anthology or omnibus
The Blair Witch Project
Rating *
...the overall feel of the
thing is of a long slow road to very mild thrills
~ Duncan
Shepard
Why are people so benighted as to think ‘The Blair Witch
Project’ a terrific movie? [Nocturnal sounds] …may, perhaps, be scarier than
actual sightings, but when certain things are shot so we can’t quite make them
out up close, that is cheating.
~ John
Simon
Rating “Turkey”
A fiendishly clever publicity campaign fueled the release
of this ultra-low-budget quickie, which turned out to be one of the greatest
swindles ever perpetrated on unsuspected movie audiences …fails to deliver on
all counts.
“Dvd & Video Guide” ~ Mick Martin & Marsha Porter
And yet they give “Book of Shadows” two stars. Oy.
Bubba Ho-Tep
Rating *
Prolonged dizzy spell
brought on by an ancient Egyptian Soul Sucker ...
~ Duncan Shepard
Carrie
The horror is effective only once,
at the end… The plot crawls with self-contradictions and improbabilities…and the
bad characters are ludicrous while the good one are saccharine. Worst of all are
the big effects, drawn out to impossible lengths and shot with trashy
blatancy…
~ John Simon
Dawn of the Dead
[enthusiasts] may think that a picture like Dawn of the Dead can’t be for real-that its amateurishness and tedium are distanced by irony…Romero enthusiasts are talking as if Dawn of the Dead were art disguised as schlock. ~ Pauline Kael
Romero has a message, but it’s drowned in buckets of blood. The film fails on
all levels… …I think it’s a dreadful, embarrassing picture by a director who
should know better.
"Guide for the Film Fanatic" ~ Danny
Peary
Ok, I may be cheating here. Danny Peary isn’t mainstream, he specializes in cult films. Which is why he should know better!
Rating No Stars
...absurd pretensions to be
an allegory of something or other; occasionally laughable, otherwise sickening
or boring.
~
Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
Ah, Halliwell's again, what a shock.
Day of the Dead
Rating: * &
˝
Romero has centered the action in a visually dreary location...hasn't
figured out anything new to do with his zombies. ...He should quit while he's
ahead.
~ Roger Ebert
Dead Alive
Rating *
It is finally neither
as amusing nor shocking as simply exhausting.
~ Duncan
Shepard
Rating No Stars
First of
all, french again. Go fu*k yourself. Second, the BBFC does not control the
film output of New Zealand, which is actually, you may not have known this, a
whole 'nother country! Thirdly, I find it rather troubling that even a pretend literati
would suggest it proper that we not be "let" to watch anything.
Fourth, go fu*k yourself.
Rating 'Black Spot' (lowest
rating)
A you-too-can-make-a-movie movie. All you
need is a camera, a willing group of college kids, a makeup kit, and a
familiarity with a few horror movies that had no more to work with. [Raimi] uses
enough bad wide-angle shots, enough bad low-angle shots, enough bad high-angle
shots, and enough bad subjective tracking shots, to last a lifetime.
~
Duncan Shepard
It’s obvious that the people… who made this…film are not
without talent…but it’s a shame they wasted it in such a manner. (When the
possessions start) …the film become infuriatingly stupid. It would be fun to
trip the overly mobile cameraman during one of his too frequent tracking
shots.
"Guide for the Film Fanatic" ~ Danny
Peary
Note: Peary raved about everything in ‘Scream and Scream Again’, save for Vincent Price’s "hammy" performance. Wow.
Rating No Stars
Semi-professional
horror rubbish...
~ Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
The Halliwell's Guide is one of those
starchy, fatuous tomes seemingly compiled by people misguided enough to emulate
John Simon. These folks loath film, they are dead to it, the poor bastards, and
it shows. One could play a drinking game, downing a shot for every film which
scores at least three stars, and remain a teetotaler for dozens of pages on
end.
The Exorcist
Shallowness that
asks to be taken seriously - shallowness like William Peter Blatty's - is an
embarrassment. ...[The Exorcist] is an obtuse movie... It's all so tired that we
can keep going only on fresh atrocities.
~Pauline
Kael
...why do we need such paranormal
garbage as Mr. Blatty’s ‘The Exorcist…? The answer is that most people love
scabrousness, goose pimples, and facile uplift beyond anything else.
Scabrousness, because their daily lives are boringly proper; goose pimples,
because nothing exiting ever happens to them; and facile uplift, because they
are depressed by the insignificance and monotony of their existence.
~ John Simon
(And God bless you too, John. I should note, if you are not familiar with Mr. Simon, he is the leading argument for birth control. Sour, pedantic, petty and childish, his reviews are often nothing more than a collection of vicious ad hominem attacks, insults concerning personal appearance, and cheap shots peppered with racist and homo-phobic slurs. Needless to say, he was a very successful critic.)
Rating
*
The Frighteners
Rating: *
Incredible, the amount
of work that went into The Frighteners. And appalling.
~ Roger
Ebert
Halloween
…there’s so much
subjective tracking, you begin to think everybody in the movies has his own
camera. …Halloween has a pitiful, amateurish script…Carpenter also wrote the score
himself-all four bars-and he’s devoted to it.
~ Pauline Kael
The Haunting (1963)
Rating
*
...no
visible spooks, and not enough plot for its length.
~
Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
At one point, I was rather dubious of this film's classic status. (It hit me one night in a little road to Damascus moment.) But even I appreciated the subtext! You don't see the ghosts? One star!? Good God! What kindergartener wrote this and thought he was being clever?
HellRaiser
Rating “**˝ ”
In his directing debut, Clive Barker…proves even the author
can’t necessarily bring his work to life on the screen.
“Dvd & Video
Guide” ~ Mick Martin & Marsha Porter
Rating No Stars
Yeah, why couldn't you just make a tasteful
version of 'skinless murderer trying to escape sadomasochistic demons'?
Jacob's Ladder
Rating 'Black Spot'
... Adrian Lyne's
political concerns are belied throughout by a chic visual style better suited to
a Pepsi ad.
~ Duncan Shepard
… leads to a climax that- like a bad shaggy dog story- negates the entire
film!
~ Leonard Maltin's Film Guide
Um, no Leonard. The ending explains what everything means, you just have to be bright enough to understand it. No offense.
Rating No Stars
Do you remember those old
Farley/Sandler Halliwell's Guide skits on SNL?
"Day and night she talks, each word more useless than the last."
A Nightmare on Elm St.
Rating 'Black Spot'
...the
photography throughout is about two shades too dark. The idea is further
devalued by the deliberate cheating of the transitions from waking to dream, and
by too many slobbering, cackling pursuits
~ Duncan Shepard
Yes, all those things which made the film frightening and original are bad!
"Freddie" is made up and dressed far too foolishly to be taken seriously-he looks like a poor man’s Jason.
(Book copyright 1985. Ain’t hindsight a bitch?) ...you really can’t respect a film whose highlights (Is film grammatically a whom?) feature blood spurting onto walls and ceilings. There are occasional shocks, but little suspense.I should note, in addition to "Freddie", he also referred to the film’s lead as "Heather Longerkamp."
Night of the Living Dead
Listed in "The Golden Turkey Awards" among the 200 worst films of all
time
"A group of people barricade themselves in a farm house in an ingenious
effort to keep the zombies out."
~ Michael & Harry
Medved
Phantasm
Rating * ˝
Two dull brothers take on…a creepy cemetery worker whose ties
are so thin he belongs playing “Louie, Louie” at a 1964 prom.
~ Leonard
Maltin's Film Guide
Oh, you're so funny, Leonard!
Rating *
This
surrealistic menagerie and the incomprehensible story it takes part in are
ultimately explained...as a child's nightmare. (This explanation, lest it be
taken as too down-to-earth and dull, is immediately contradicted in a final
flash of nonsense which leaves the spectator saying, "Huh?")
~ Duncan
Shepard
Ah. I've got to admire a critic inconsiderate
enough to spoil the end of a movie, and dull enough not to understand it in the
first place. I'm kidding, no I don't
Phantasm II
Rating: *
The images are of corpses and graveyards, spurting blood
and severed skulls, rotting flesh and faces filled with terror. Sitting through
a film like this, which contains so little of genuine interest, I find myself
meditating on such images, wondering who they would appear to, [sic, appeal?] and why.
~ Roger
Ebert
Rating No Stars
...it's
director has returned his ability to shock but still cannot tell a story
convincingly.
~
Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
Stupid artists, why
can't your movies just be like everyone else's?
Prince of Darkness
Rating BOMB
Not for nothing is the religious sect involved called
“Brotherhood of Death”.
~Leonard Maltin's Film Guide
Actually Leonard,
they're called The Brotherhood of Sleep. I suspect you knew that, as your
snarky comment doesn't make a damn bit of sense in its current form. Hire
better proofreaders.
Ravenous
Rating **˝
Despite some pretentious speechifying about history and
Manifest Destiny (about which writer Ted Griffin seems to know very little),
this is really just a supernatural slasher movie dressed up with high-caliber
actors who deserve better.
“Dvd & Video Guide” ~ Mick Martin & Marsha
Porter
Ooooh! I think someone’s political feathers have been ruffled! Tell me, pray, what pretensions were the script built upon? That genocide is bad?
Rating No Stars
...veers
between black comedy and horror while remaining an unappetizing stew.
~
Halliwell's Film & Video
Guide
In the year of my birth,
Leslie Halliwell's
arthritic claws tapped out an essay entitled 'The
Decline and Fall of the Movie'. He continued to run this screed in every
edition of his pile of papyril pulp until his death. This is all of his opinion
on film you need to know.
Polanski likes to make trashy films, and he makes them as
routinely as anyone else. Nothing about this film suggests the talent that once
gave us...[ artsy movies I don't care
about] ; the few vaguely suspenseful moments could have been
made by any reasonably competent hack.
~ John Simon
Note: Not being content to merely preserve his irrelevance for future generations, Simon goes on later in the review to castigate Mia Farrow for having small breasts. A right gentleman, that fella.
The 6th Sense
…the air is rife with misunderstandings, not the least
those of the author. The idea for the film may have come to Night from
…"Incident at Owl Creek"… a short film worth ten full-length efforts such as the
‘6th Sense’.
~ John Simon
My God! He actually became more stupid as he gained experience!
Suspiria
...film has a promising beginning, but it’s done in by
too much artistic flair (at the expense of content); a trite plotline and
unsatisfying conclusion... ...and deafening music supplied by the Goblins... The
deaths of the two female victims are too brutal...
"Guide for the Film Fanatic" ~ Danny
Peary
Again, this is one of those odd ‘everything which makes the movie its own work is wrong’ kinda reviews. Folks, you’ve got to let artists breathe a little.
Rating **
It's...without any
apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. I
can't imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it's
well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.
~ Roger Ebert
Listed in "The Golden
Turkey Awards" among the 200 worst films of all time
"Plot is virtually
nonexistent and bloody 'special effects' are disgusting rather than
frightening."
Rating No Stars
Cheapjack
horror... ...the beginning of the wave of such deplorable movies which flooded
the world's screens towards the end of the decade.
~ Halliwell's Film &
Video
Guide
Thank you Halliwell people, for confirming every nasty thing I said about your type in my review of this film.
The Thing (1982)
Rating * ˝
…nonstop parade of slimy, repulsive special effects…drowns
most of the suspense
~ Leonard Maltin's Film Guide
...a tremendous disappointment, trading in the
good taste that made Hawke’s film so special for some of the most repellant
imagery in horror-movie history.
"Guide for the Film Fanatic" ~ Danny
Peary
Boo-hoo! Mommy! The movie’s too icky!
Zombie
Rating 'Black Spot'
...the gruesome makeup
and special effects of which are slaved-over and slavered-over to an extent that
makes you worry just slightly less about the moviemaker's sanity than about his
soul. For entertainment, this is right up there with squashing spiders and
pulling the wings off butterflies
~ Duncan Shepard
Rating BOMB
A poor imitation of George
Romero's horror films, and pretty repellant,
~ Leonard Maltin's Film
Guide
Rating “Turkey”
Gruesome, gory and ghastly…
“Dvd & Video Guide” ~
Mick Martin & Marsha Porter
Funny. For a horror movie I’d count
those as positives. But what do I know?
All quotes used in accordance with fair usage provisions. (Reviewing the reviewers, how delicious!)