Murder in the Sky (Pilot X)

Starring:Lona Andre, John Carroll, Leon Ames, Henry Hall, Hans Joby, Gaston Glass, Pat Somerset, Wheeler Oakman, Reed Howes, John Elliott, Willard Kent, Forrest Taylor
Director: Elmer Clifton
Studio: Alpha Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Okay, so I'm the one guy who didn't think it was all that and a bag of chips.
An Experience that will Stay With You For Some Time To Come...
loved it
Ridiculous ending, not worth watching!
This is a very good movie

Open Your Eyes
Starring: Carola Angulo (II) , Gérard Barray , Joserra Cadiñanos , Penélope Cruz , and Ion Gabella
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Vanilla Sky
Belle Epoque
The Sea Inside
Woman on Top
Amores Perros

ASIN: B00005LZOD
Release Date: 2001-08-21

Amazon.com

Imagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility. This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward one perception of reality, then switching to another until reality itself is called into question. Melodrama, love story, and psychological thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.

Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain, rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary" on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed, we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen the film; suffice it to say that Open Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond, and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and star in an English-language remake, Vanilla Sky. The 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original role. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Okay, so I'm the one guy who didn't think it was all that and a bag of chips........2006-12-21

Abre los Ojos (Alejandro Amenabar, 1997)

Okay, I have to say this first: Eduardo Noriega is the male lead in the new Brad Anderson movie Trans-Siberian. I don't need to know anything else, because Brad Anderson is about as close to being a god as movie directors get. If Anderson thinks Eduardo Noriega is the goods, then Eduardo Noriega is the goods.

He's also the star of the much-talked-about Alejandro Amenabar film Abre los Ojos, which everyone and his mother complained was desecrated when remade in America as Vanilla Sky a few years ago. And while I can't find anything wrong with slagging a Tom Cruise flick, I'm not terribly sure why this movie is being held up as the gold standard. Maybe it's a relativity thing; I have (to the value of my sanity, according to friends) managed to avoid seeing Vanilla Sky.

In any case, the plot: Cesar (Noriega, who, did I mention, is in the new Brad Anderson movie?) is an arrogant, handsome womanizer who meets the woman of his dreams, Sofia (Penelope Cruz). Problem is, the girl he jilted for Sofia, Nuria (Before Night Falls' Najwa Nimri), isn't too happy with the arrangement. While offering him a lift home, she commits suicide by crashing her car, an accident that leaves handsome Cesar horribly disfigured.

Now, intercut with all this are scenes of Cesar being interviewed by a doctor, so we know there's a lot more to this story than we're being let in on. And that's all well and good, except that the movie keeps raising two questions for each one it answers. At that rate, you're going to be left with a whole lot of unanswered questions when the movie ends. And that's exactly what we get. It's not so much that the film is ambiguous, which it is, but it's that the ambiguousness of the ending is the part about which we can feel we have the clearest grasp on. There's an "as you know, Bob" character at the end to explain everything, but Amenabar has given us a very strong feeling throughout his tenure in the film that the guy is, quite simply, lying his tuckus off. And where does that leave us? (Knowing nothing but our interpretation of the ambiguous ending, of course.)

What we do get is some rather fine shots of Penelope Cruz showing a lot more skin than we've seen from her before, a handful of really good performances (including Noriega's), and a mystery that, were it to come to any sort of conclusion, would be a cracker. Now, I'll be the first to admit that it's entirely possible I missed some small detail that makes the whole thing make perfect sense, but until someone points it out to me, 'm still wondering what it is about this movie (aside, of course, from Penelope Cruz naked) that gets peoples' juices up.

And did I mention that Eduardo Noriega is in the new Brad Anderson flick? ** ½

An Experience that will Stay With You For Some Time To Come..........2006-10-02

Abre Los Ojos came to my attention after seeying it's American Remake, Vanilla Sky. Vanilla Sky had amazed me and had been spinning in my mind for a long time after I had seen it. Then I found this dvd of the original, and bought it here on Amazon.
When it arrived I immidiately watched it, ready to be pulled into that world which Vanilla Sky had pulled me in about a year ealier. Only this time, this movie stunned me even more than Vanilla Sky did, it captured me, moved me and gave the world of dreaming and love a totally different perspective than it gave me when I watched Vanilla Sky.
The reason?
The original is simply more powerfull than it's remake.

Abre Los Ojos is one of those movies that is everlasting. It is a tense thriller, a beautiful love story, an emotional drama, a big mystery and can even be placed under the catagory Horror at some moments.
The story is the most original and one of the most powerfull stories I've ever seen. It's complex, it's tempting, it's confusesing, it's powerful... It's everything that makes a story worthwhile and is absolutely something to remember and think back to.
The cast is fantastic. Penelope Cruz plays the exact same role that she plays in Vanilla Sky. The thing that makes her better in this one than the remake is that she has no problem pronouncing her scentences. Spanish is her motherlanguage, the language she was raised with and the language she can pronouce with pure pasion and fantastic acting. She also did a fantastic job in Vanilla Sky, don't get me wrong, but here you can feel her emotions fluently and she gives her absolute best and in Vanilla Sky you can't really feel that even though she acts absolutely great in that movie.
The leading role is for Eduardo Noriega, an actor that is absolutely convincing and realistic for the part he plays. He was a great casting choice and gives his very best. The thing that makes him believable is that you will feel for his character during the movie. He portrais his character in such a way that is only said in one word: powerful.

The other aspects of the movie: the setdesign, the locations, the lighting, the music, the cameramovements, the editing, the atmosphere and everything else is all maqnificent and leaves a powerfull impression. It helpes the story live and feel real to the audience.
Everything has been taken care of to make every small detail look stunning which helps you even more with falling in love with this movie.
Don't you worry about the language (the whole movie is spoken in Spanish), cause when you are into this movie you won't even notice that you are still reading the subtitles.

My only left advice to you is: Watch Abre Los Ojos first, and after that Vanilla Sky. I did it in the other direction and all I can say is that I think it's a pitty that I did so. So don't make the same mistake that I did and watch Abre Los Ojos first! You will understand what I mean when you will watch Vanilla Sky secondly.

So open your eyes and be moved by this absolute masterpiece of filmmaking. Yes people, this is what the movies are all about!
WOW, what a film!

loved it.......2006-08-28

This film, which in my opinion is way better than Vanilla Sky, flat-out spreads important questions to the viewer. the most important being: how far are you willing to go, how much of your life will you allow beauty to control?

Ridiculous ending, not worth watching!.......2006-08-10

This movie was captivating and interesting for the first 3/4ths of it. It is a psychological thriller/mystery and you obviously want to find out the big explanation at the end that resolves all your questions. Well, the ending was so incredibly far-fetched and crazy that I can't believe that anyone who read the WHOLE script actually wanted to work on this movie. It ends up being a stupid "sci-fi" type ending. So, if you want to get all into a movie, only to have them resolve it with the most ridiculous scenario possible, buy this one!! ....or....DON'T.

This is a very good movie.......2006-08-05

I got this movie so that I will continue to improve on my Spainish. I am thrilled to find such good movie in the process. I have seen Vanillia Sky, but this is so much better, in some way much more original. The performances...what can I say, I stayed glued to the television until the end.

Average customer rating:

"Thousands of eyes will be exploring you, appreciating your beauty, even long after your dead."
Low Budget and Obvious, But Entertaining for Fans of 1960s B-Movies
INTERESTING LOW BUDGET SHOCKER....

Violent Midnight
Starring: Lee Philips , Shepperd Strudwick , Jean Hale , Lorraine Rogers , and Margot Hartman
Director: Richard Hilliard
Manufacturer: Dark Sky Films
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Werewolves on Wheels

ASIN: B000C65YM6
Release Date: 2006-03-28

Description

In this Psycho-esque black & white thriller from Del Tenney, Elliott Freeman (Lee Phillips) is a Korean War vet-turned-painter who becomes the prime suspect in the brutal stabbing death of his model, Dolores (Kaye Elhardt). Did Elliott kill her to end their relationship? Or, did her ex-boyfriend, Charlie (James Farentino) murder her out of jealousy? Or, could it have been Professor Melbourne (Day Tuttle), a peeping tom with mysterious ties to the woman? Regardless, it's up to Elliott's attorney (Shepperd Strudwick) to clear his name and downplay his reputation as a one-man killing machine. While Detective Parma (Dick Van Patten) chases down the leads, Elliott's half-sister Lynn (Margot Hartman), arrives to enroll at the local college. She's quickly befriended by Alice (Lorraine Rogers), a sexy young co-ed intent on seducing Elliott, who spurns her advances. Suddenly, Alice becomes the victim of a vicious stabbing and once again, all eyes turn to Elliott. How can he ever prove his innocence when everyone is against him? Psychomania is the first film produced by Del Tenney, who went on to produce such low-budget horror gems as The Curse of the Living Corpse and The Horror at Party Beach.

Customer Reviews:

"Thousands of eyes will be exploring you, appreciating your beauty, even long after your dead.".......2006-12-16

Produced by Del Tenney (The Horror of Party Beach, The Curse of the Living Corpse) and directed by Richard Hilliard (I, Marquis de Sade), who's also credited with the writing, Violent Midnight (1964) aka Psychomania stars Lee Philips (Peyton Place, Middle of the Night) as an artistic painter with a checkered past who finds himself a prime suspect in a homicide investigation as the woman he was using as a model turns up viciously murdered. Also appearing is Shepperd Strudwick ("One Life to Live"), Margot Hartman (Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women), Jean Hale (McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force), Kaye Elhardt (The Navy vs. the Night Monsters), Richard Van Patten (The Shaggy D.A.), and James Farentino (The Final Countdown, Dead & Buried), in his silver screen debut.

Lee Philips plays Elliot Freeman, a war veteran/temperamental artist who leads a solitary existence (by choice), his only real visitors being his cultured attorney Adrian Benedict (Strudwick), and his model Dolores (Elhardt), a pretty, young, local woman who's `round, firm, and fully packed', at least according to the men in town (they ain't lying). Seems Dolores, who's involved with a local thug named Charlie (Farentino), has it bad for Elliot (probably due to the fact the pair got it on when Dolores first started posing for Elliot), but Elliot only sees her now as a subject for his art, and is interested in keeping their relationship on a business level. Anyway, one night Elliot and Charlie get into a brawl, one in which Elliot, with skills obviously learned during his military service, nearly kills Charlie, but for the intervention of some patrons. Later that night a mysterious prowler breaks in on Dolores and savagely murders her. Richard Van Patten and his humongous forehead make the scene as a detective, and his subsequent investigation leads him to Elliot, as Charlie, the other suspect, manages to schmooze a false alibi out of an incredibly mannish looking woman who's got the hots for him. The situation becomes even more complicated as Elliot's half sister Lynn (Hartman), whom he hasn't seen in about six years, arrives in town, as she's been living with her mother (Charlie's step mother), and is planning on attending a local women's college, one that's inhabited by a whole mess of loose, young women and one really creepy voyeuristic professor named Melbourne, who seems to have knew Dolores better than he should have, resulting in yet another potential suspect. Anyway, things get wild and wooly from here as another woman is murdered, various bombshells are dropped, Elliot's past is revealed, a goofy folk song is sung, and the identity of the sadistic killer eventually revealed...

While this is a very low budget feature, I thought it was done well as it kept my interest throughout. That's not to say I didn't think there were some weak areas in the production, but all in all I thought it an engaging, slightly lurid murder mystery film. The main weakness to me seemed the presence of a whole lot of unnecessary character development. Some scenes are unnecessarily drawn out (like this review), the result being the flow feeling uneven at times and running about fifteen minutes longer than it probably should have...the upside is the characters are fairly interesting enough that I didn't mind spending the extra time watching them as they engaged in various, usually immoral, activities, as was especially the case with Charlie, who spent a good deal of time messing around with a sleazy student from the college who dug on his animalistic charms (I gotta find this school as most all the females in attendance were very comely and man crazy to boot). The film seems to spend a lot of time developing the various suspects, but it became apparent about halfway through which characters weren't the killer (laws of physics tended to preclude some of them). As far as the real identity of the killer, I didn't know it until it was revealed (my guess was way off), and I doubt few watching this film will catch on as there's just not a whole lot to go on, at least not until the end, when, through an expository dump, all is revealed. And yes, it did make sense, but only in terms of having everything explained in a chronological fashion). Normally this might bug me, but, as I said earlier, the characters, along with the story, were interesting enough to allow certain aspects to slide. I thought the performances were decent enough, and the direction strong, albeit a little rough at times. There's a great interior shot at the beginning, a slow pan down from a large, rain-spattered window that eventually focuses on Dolores (who's completely nekkid), posing for Elliot. I'm unsure why that shot would stick in my mind, but it did...someone else mentioned the presence of a bit of skin in the film. I, too, thought it odd, given the year the film was released (there's nearly a full frontal of Kaye Elhardt, who played the character Dolores, as she's posing), as you just didn't see that kind of thing from films of the time, apart from stag features or nudie cuties. Nevertheless, it was appreciated. One other thing that annoyed me a little...it was in terms of Van Patten's character. On the back of the DVD case his name is listed as Detective Parma, but the only time I ever heard anyone within the film address him by name, they called him Lt. Thomas...I looked on The Internet Movie Database and he's listed as Palmer...oh well...all in all I thought this a lurid, somewhat solid, economical feature worth the attention if you enjoy a bit of sleaze with your murder mysteries.

The picture on this Dark Sky Films DVD release, presented in full frame (1.33:1) black and white, looks exceptionally sharp and crisp, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio comes through very well. There are some extras available, including a photo gallery, a commentary track with producer Del Tenney, English subtitles, and a couple of trailers for some other Del Tenney films such as The Horror of Party Beach (1964) and The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964), both of which are available as a DVD double feature released by Dark Sky Films.

Cookieman108

Low Budget and Obvious, But Entertaining for Fans of 1960s B-Movies.......2006-07-06

When Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO opened the door, many other films followed, and the early 1960s saw a glut of low-budget, black and white thrillers that held scantily clad women at the point of a knife. Released in 1964, VIOLENT MIDNIGHT (also known as PSYCHOMANIA or BLACK AUTUMN) is fairly typical of the genre but better than most.

When Delores is found stabbed to death in her rooms there are two very obvious supects: Elliot, the reclusive artist who has employed her as a model, and Charlie, her tough-guy boyfriend. After all, the two men had a bar room knife fight over her the night before! Fortunately Elliot has his half-sister, who has just arrived to attend a local all-girl college, for support. But before too long the student body becomes precisely that, and both Elliot and Charlie come under renewed suspicion.

The cast is unexpectedly solid. Leading man Lee Philips (in the role of artist Elliot Freeman) and supporting actor Shepperd Strudwick (as his attorney) both had long and respectable careers both before and after VIOLENT MIDNIGHT; James Farentino, Sylvia Miles, and Dick Van Patten would go on to notable careers of their own. Even so, there's nothing subtle about the script, which crams everything from biker chicks to college sirens into the mix, and most viewers will probably identify the killer in the first twenty minutes of the film.

Even so, and in spite of a budget that was clearly just this side of zero, VIOLENT MIDNIGHT isn't a bad little flick, and it easily holds its own with the likes of the better-known DEMENTIA 13. It will probably lack appeal for the casual viewer, but fans of 1960s B-movies will have a good time.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

INTERESTING LOW BUDGET SHOCKER...........2006-04-12

The first film produced by low budget indie filmmaker Del Tenney is a lurid, voyeuristic but interesting murder mystery. A wealthy war veteran turned artist finds himself implicated first in the brutal murder of his nude model then in the murder of a promiscuous college coed. But there are a couple of other suspects acting suspiciously...one of whom is an actual voyeur. The b&w film is set in a small college town with the college being all women. The acting is passable to good with a few familiar faces: Sheppard Strudwick as a lawyer, Dick Van Patten as a cop, Sylvia Miles as a bar floozy and James Farentino as a motorcycle thug. They all have good-sized roles. The murders (stabbings) are brutal, there's a surprising amount of (female) skin for 1962 and the ending is kind've a surprise. You do keep guessing at times who the killer really is. The DVD print is excellent. Not bad viewing for those who appreciate low budget but pretty good films. Actually, "Violent Midnight" is kind've an American "giallo" with it's lurid, near-exploitation values and creepy set-ups. In fact, giallo afficianados may go for this as well. Worth checking out as an obscure find. Enjoy.

Average customer rating:

Murder in the Sky (Pilot X)
Starring: Lona Andre , John Carroll , Leon Ames , Henry Hall , and Hans Joby
Director: Elmer Clifton
Manufacturer: Alpha Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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