Probe

Starring:Jim Marrs
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

DON'T BE FOOLED
Hilarious! Outrageous! Shocking! And lots of naked women!

Actress Apocalypse
Starring: Greg Freeman , Garo Nigoghossian , Jay Ingle , Lily Walker , and Angel Martin
Director: Richard R. Anasky
Manufacturer: Crash Cinema Media
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Horror | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( A ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Decoys - The Second Seduction
See No Evil (Widescreen Edition)
Halfway House
The Cheerleaders Collection (The Cheerleaders/Revenge of the Cheerleaders/The Swinging Cheerleaders)
Jacqueline Hyde (Unrated Version)

ASIN: B0007TKGDA
Release Date: 2005-05-31

Description

Self-centered filmmaker David Lincoln is about to make one of the most horrifying slasher films ever made. He allows a documentary film crew to record the making of his historic film, but instead, the crew captures the film's downfall, as his psychotic brother murders all of the nubile young actresses who audition for the film.

Shot in the mockumentary style of "This is Spinal Tap" and "Waiting for Guffman", while exhibiting the over-the-top rudeness of legendary film maker Russ Meyer's films, "Actress Apocalypse" is an exploitation satire that takes on the independent film scene in a sexy and funny way. Humorous, horrifying, and starring some of the most gorgeous women in film, "Actress Apocalypse" is one of the finest exploitation films ever made. EXTRAS:
•Unrated Director's Cut!
•Deleted Scenes
•Bloopers and Outtakes
•Cast Interviews
•Sexy Stripper Vignette
•Director Commentary
•Trailers
•BONUS CD SOUNDTRACK

Customer Reviews:

DON'T BE FOOLED.......2005-07-09

I was seduced by positive reviews into buying this inept piece of contrivance. Don't be fooled. The naked girls are o.k but nothing better than you might expect to find at some amatuer strip night, they have very little screen time.
Oh dear I hate this train wreak dreck, no horror no style, probably the most boring collection of random jump-cut nothingness I have ever seen !
Worse still the men who appear in this belive they are being humourous, if only they were. The last laugh is their's if you get suckered into parting with your hard earned green.
I love low / no budget expliotation movies, I have a collection of many hundreds, never ever have I seen anything as poor as this.
As a far better alternative I recommend H.G Lewis's superior "Blood Feast 2" unrated edition

Hilarious! Outrageous! Shocking! And lots of naked women!.......2005-04-09

ACTRESS APOCALYPSE begins with a dedication "to all
those who've tried to make an epic film in their
backyard." It's an exploitation mockumentary about the
production nightmares of David B. Lincoln (Garo
Nigoghossian) and his brother Vance (Greg Freeman) as
they shoot their ever-morphing "mullet-headed killer
Indian/flesh-eating gay zombie" flick. Things quickly
go awry when an uppity "professional actress" (Dahlia
Legault) makes quite a scene of her own, bawling out
and humiliating the brothers after enduring an
agonizing day of shooting. She storms off the set leaving the already unstable Vance hungry for revenge. He takes over production, auditioning actresses in ways that Russ Meyer never dared to dream of, and the homemade epic turns into a snuff flick when Vance gets his mitts around each new aspiring, nekkid young starlet.. The first extended strangulation scene had this reviewer squirming in his seat! Really demented, disturbing stuff even though the preceding 40 minutes were hilarious! I feel like I've given away too much of the plot, but I haven't even mentioned the antics of the "Golden Terror" yet!
Who knows what inspired ACTRESS APOCALYPSE's "real" director Richard R. Anasky's (who plays the mild-mannered cameraman Fernando in the film) psycho/psychedelic imagery, but it's quite a feast for the eyes and ears. Metal band Space Probe Taurus provides the appropriate music to accompany the visuals. (and the soundtrack CD is included in the unrated double-disc set!) Anasky seems to have a pretty firm grip on who his target audience will be; people tired of the same old thing, looking for a movie with an edge that sends political correctness and Hollywood conventions to the landfill where they belong. So a word of warning to those of you on the fence: this is not a movie to take home to Mother! It's about as bold, misogynistic (to you wimpy PC-types), garish (in a fun way!) and outrageous a movie you'll likely find at Amazon.com!
The DVD has plenty of bonus features but curiously, no commentary. The feature itself has a fun gimmick that I discovered upon second viewing however: there are numerous subliminal easter egg freeze frames scattered throughout the film that speak to the viewer. Little messages that I'll let you find for yourselves. Besides, I doubt Amazon would let me reproduce my favorites without censoring the content. Speaking of censors, there's a certain scene in the film that is digitally pixelled over, but you'll get a good look at what the fuss was about in the outtakes supplement.
Overall, a very impressive debut film! Highly recommended for those of us who're ready for movies that take the gloves off and give their best shot!!!

Average customer rating:

Mars on Earth
OK, but for the Mars layman only

Eyes on Mars

Manufacturer: Space Holdings
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

Science & Technology | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

Space Exploration | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Educational | Genres | DVD | Video

Science & Technology | Educational | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $9.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( E ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

General | Instructional | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

NOVA: Welcome To Mars
NOVA - Mars, Dead or Alive
Mars: The Red Planet Collection
Mars: The Red Planet (Ac3)
Atlas of the Sky

ASIN: B0000YTOLM
Release Date: 2003-12-09

Customer Reviews:

Mars on Earth.......2004-02-23

As a parent and an educator and some one just generally interested in space exploration, this DVD captures the excitement about Mars as well as all the challenges involved in getting there. So many documentary type DVDs are boring-- but this is not. With Mars so much in the news these days, this DVD helps put it all in context-- far beyond the quick soundbites we see every night on TV. I recommend this for any parent, educator or space enthusiast.

OK, but for the Mars layman only.......2003-12-19

With the upcoming landings of the 2 Mars Exploration Rovers, I had high hopes that this DVD would provide every drop of information about the rovers I could absorb. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

This DVD did have a couple nice features, including one with a decent history of Mars exploration and another with expert commentary about the various characteristics of the red planet: dust, water, etc.

But I really wanted to see a lot of footage of the rovers going thru their paces during testing. I wanted to see the solar panels unfold; how the hazard avoidance system worked; how the camera color filters moved; etc. I also wanted more than just basic information about the entry, decent, and landing system - for example, there is a decent imager that measures horizontal speed. None of these details were covered.

There is a truly wonderful animation available on the MER website (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/video/) that shows launch, landing, and roving operations; but this 10 minute animation is rather poor quality in order to make it a reasonable download size. This animation *is* provided in pieces on the DVD along with a neat 'making of' feature, but the animation is not presented as a whole, which is unfortunate.

Description

One dark night, a NASA probe returning from Venus crash lands near the wilds of Long Island and unleashes a radioactive curse upon the nearest living creature, a rabid weasel. Unbeknownst to the innocent residents, this mutating menace transforms into an

Customer Reviews:

punecious, voclacious rip roaring fun.......2005-09-23

...This DVD was a wedding gift from my mother-in-law. My husband insisted we watch this on our wedding night. Since then i have given up men and am living with my partner Florence.

Who are the real weasels here?.......2005-01-22

Who are the real weasels, as in who released this awesomely bad piece of junk to DVD and sold it for more than $1.99? I am a great fan of bad movies with unintentional entertainment value, but this is just bad in every way with none of the yucks that make some bad movies viewable. First off, the sound quality is hideous and cuts in and out. A lot of what you see is 'transformations' I guess, like a rabid weasel coated with radioactive gunk that's mutating, but when about 1/4 to 1/2 the film is like this and you can't tell what the hell you're looking at....well, it stinks. I guess there was imaginative use of props, like a tiny model rocket & some weasel incubators (which looks suspiciously like mixing bowls) but overall this is just so bad it's painful. This is the kind of film that you maybe make when you're a kid and show to your friends, but whoever had the brilliant idea to push this on the general public should be shot. This is the sort of film that needs a warning label....nothing like 'gore, drug use, violence, sex' but just something like 'juvenile mentality and no talent'. Ptoeey.

A Real Party Gem!.......2004-03-04

Oh my! Was I just devoured by a gigantic mutant weasel? Or was it another one of my many LSD induced flashbacks? Where do movies like this come from? And what interesting chemicals were the filmmakers on when they created "Weasels Rip My Flesh?" This obviously zero budgeted home movie caught me unawares, like the oversized rodent of the title. Actually, the surprise here was the sheer enjoyment to be derived from this convoluted tapestry from the five and dime store. I have never heard of the films director, Nathan Schiff before, but since Image Entertainment has seen fit to release three of his movies curiosity got the best of me. The plot has gooey slime from Venus brought back to Earth in a rocket that looks like it's about the length of a Cuban cigar. Two kids find the glop and poor it down a weasel hole after one kid is bitten on the foot. Naturally, the goo turns the harmless little rabid weasel into a gigantic, mutated and equally harmless monster. The beast skips around town, ripping various peoples flesh. Two detectives investigate and are captured by a mad scientist, who plans on using the mutant weasel blood to create more mutant weasels, and...oh yeah, to attain immortality! Eventually, there is a showdown between the good guy, the bad guy the monster weasel, and a monster weasel man (!) where people are shot, heads cracked and limbs ripped off. The ending had me skipping back to make certain what I'd seen was not just another one of my flashbacks.

To be frank, I have never seen a movie as financially bankrupt as this. Apparently it was shot on super-8 when Schiff, the director, was a teenager. The amazing aspect here is that it's thoroughly watchable and quite imaginative. I've seen mega-budget Hollywood movies less enjoyable. This DVD is loaded with extra's, and listening to Schiff and his cast discuss making the film under such adverse conditions, I wondered what the same film would have turned out like had it not been so cheap in all departments. I recommend this movie only to fans of crazy no-budget wonders. The 4 stars are for the generous nasty laughs the film delivers.

Grindhouse classic?.......2004-02-29

After watching Nathan Schiff's first full length filmed on Super 8mm motion picture, 1979's "Weasels Rip My Flesh," I fervently prayed for my own death at the paws of a pack of rabid weasels. The movie has to be the worst film I have ever seen, light years beyond the badness of a Herschell Gordon Lewis film. In fact, Schiff's use of music, effects, and plot makes Lewis look like Cecil B. DeMille. Why Image Entertainment released what is essentially an hour-long home movie on DVD is a mystery which ranks right up there with the Nazca lines or UFOs. Even more surprising, Image punched up the DVD with a boatload of extras. Why did they do this? Some research on the web turned up a few interesting tidbits about Schiff. Apparently many hardcore horror fans consider this movie, along with a couple of others he made in the 1980s, cult classics. Schiff fans point to the heavy gore quotient as proof of this claim, conveniently overlooking the grainy Super 8 film Schiff used, the horrific sound quality of the movie, and the downright ridiculous plot execution. I'm speaking about "Weasels Rip My Flesh" since I haven't seen the other two Schiff opuses recently released. After watching this film, though, you just know the other two will plumb the same depths as this one.

"Weasels Rip My Flesh" centers on the bloody hijinks that ensue after a space probe returning from a mission to Venus crash lands somewhere in Long Island. Two kids find some vials floating in the body of water where the probe crashed, open them, and promptly dump what turns out to be highly radioactive sludge into a hole in the ground. The result? A weasel mutates into a huge, hideously deformed beastie that begins rampaging through the area. The animal kills the two kids amidst great gouts of ketchup and cranberry sauce blood effects before moving into town. At some point in the narrative, two cops enter the picture to investigate the killings. These guys run into another chap who wants to use the infected weasel to achieve immortality. Since the weasel had rabies when the boys exposed it to the toxic waste, the blood of the animal is "impure." Therefore, this psycho wants to use the blood of humans to achieve his nefarious aims. "Weasels Rip My Flesh" degenerates into a lame chase scene replete with gunfire, exploding squibs, and a "surprise" ending that will leave you howling for the blood of anyone associated with the film. The movie is cheesefest city with capital letters, folks. It's so bad that it attains a sort of metaphysical awfulness. I feel less of a person for having watched this film.

Before I hand down a death sentence on the film, I should list a few of the movie's mitigating circumstances. Schiff was a senior in high school when he made most of the film so condemning him harshly is somewhat unfair. In a few respects, he did o.k. with what he had. For example, Schiff used miniatures to show the rocket probe taking off, a cheesy scene laughable in its implications. To show the rocket soaring into the air, he took the camera, held it up to a light, and then pulled it back fast to simulate a diminishing flame trail. Not bad for a young kid. A few of the gore effects looked acceptable, especially when one of the characters loses an arm in a gruesome way and has his head bashed into a wall resulting in a huge splash of blood. Schiff mastered the use of tubes to suggest squirting arteries and actually rigged up a few crude squibs employing blood packets and firecrackers. "Weasels Rip My Flesh" occasionally manages some gross out scenes even as it fails to engage as a whole.

The giant weasel is funny to watch. It looks like Schiff and company made the thing out of felt and used paper for teeth. Obviously, the director was aware of the inherent difficulties in showing such an amateurish creation, so he relied on quick cutaways and other editing tricks to minimize the effect's onscreen time. I think the biggest problem with "Weasels Rip My Flesh" isn't the largely lame effects, but rather the poor film stock. The picture looks awful, just as you would expect from Super 8mm film used in the late 1970s. Moreover, the audio alternates from ultra tacky, distorted music to background noise captured by the cheap camera. I kept thinking how much better the film might have looked if Schiff had used better equipment. "Weasels Rip My Flesh" is too reminiscent of a home video to take seriously; it is the 1970s equivalent of some of those atrocious shot on video films you see floating around from time to time, e.g. "Camp Blood," "Hunting Season," and others.

Description

When a group of unknowing thrill seekers volunteer for what they think will be the experiment of a life time, they set out to achieve the ultimate ability to read minds and expand their memory. But this group gets more than they bargained for when the experiment goes horribly wrong.

Customer Reviews:

What exactly was the point of this movie?.......2006-07-22

The Brain Machine is a very vague movie. The writer felt he had something important to say and the way to say it was never let the audience know just what the hell is going on. Four people, including James Best of Dukes of Hazzard fame as a reverend, are taking part in a psychological experiment. They are asked a lot of questions and told that they must tell the truth or the experiment won't work. Then they are locked in a room in which their environment will be controlled and the walls will gradually close in on them. What exactly is the experiment and what is its ultimate purpose? Not a clue.

Unbeknownst to the doctors running the experiment, there is a shadowy government group watching on hidden cameras. They have done something to the computer running everything which, when the subjects are asleep, infiltrates their brains and reads their minds. Then the computer tells the doctors something the subject is lying about and they must get the truth out of them for the experiment to continue. What did the government do and what is its ultimate purpose with this technology? Not a clue.

Besides James Best, this movie also stars a very young Gerald McRaney and a bunch of non-actors. The worst is the man playing the General in charge of the shadowy government group. Stiff as a board and unable to deliver a line with any emotion. The direction is almost silly. There are two locations in the movie. A hospital-like building where the experiment is taking place and the General's mansion complete with a lovely in-ground pool. Apparently the director felt that two locations would be confusing to the viewers, so everytime the scene changes we are enlightened with the exact same shot of either the hospital or the General's home before the actual scene begins. Then there's the wonderful scenes of the General's henchmen, sitting with headphones on staring straight ahead at make-believe monitors saying things like "Mark 5, Camera 3. We have visual. Countdown 5 4 3 2 1. Mark" Now that is scintillating dialog.

This is not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's not good either. if you need it to complete your James Best library, go ahead, but otherwise avoid it.

"Each Day In The E-Box Represents Five Years Time".......2006-05-14

Made in Mississippi in 1977, this is one of the least coherent, least plausible, and most annoying films I have ever seen. "The Brain Machine" has also had at a minimum five other titles ("Gray Matter," "Grey Matter," "Mind Warp," "Time Warp," and "The E-Box") in attempt to peddle this to an unsuspecting public. I don't care what they call it (I would vote for "Idiots Who Can't Act, Direct, or Edit Make a Feature Film," but that's just me) this film is a disaster of epic proportions.

The premise is that a military-industrial complex is conspiring to control the world. In an attempt to read minds some scientists have developed the "E-Box" where they confine four unrelated people who have to tell the absolute truth, and are subjected to various probes and torments which include moving walls, "pollutants" added to their environment, varying noise levels, and an intrusive female scientist with the biggest beehive hairdo I have ever in my life seen. (Think of one of the women from a "Far Side" comic.) Of course the experiment goes wildly awry and leads to tragedy in the end, as government thugs take control from the scientists.

The film opens somewhat promisingly with the defection of a scientist, Dr. Krisner, played by the delightfully named Zephirin Hymel IV. Krisner takes some ultra-secret files about mind control with him and to fill us in on the action starts writing a letter to a senator which he actually reads out loud to us (clever plot device) which literally begins "Dear Senator, What I'm about to tell you is more horrible..." at which point he is shot dead by rogue government agents. The film becomes rapidly disjointed from there and spends most of the remaining hour on three basic types of scenes: outdoor establishing shots of buildings; the interactions between the experiment subjects and their captors; and (my personal favorite) a shot of two scruffy looking guys in headsets in a control room saying the most stupid and contrived sci-fi technobabble I have ever heard in any movie, bar none. The truth is, I was originally going to give this film one star, but decided to give it two because of the hilarity of the control room exchanges, which desperately want to sound like NASA, but sound more like someone working the drive-through in a fast food restaurant. These exchanges are so delicious I have to give you a random sampling:

"Get my phase three impulse breakdowns!"

"Integrate CIC circuit to probe status...reduce modulation by five...mark!"

"The computers are overriding us!"

"The computers have total control!"

Last, but certainly not least, is a long dialogue about "redactive circuits."

I should mention that the props and special effects match the remainder of the film for quality. There are tons of shots of tinted corridors and control rooms while rotating emergency lights flash, and the mind control probes are bits of wonder by any standards. These mind control probes are actually foldable cots the victims can sleep on, but we are informed (in a lecture) that they are amazing and sophisticated devices that can transmit the virtual essence of the experimental subject to a computer.

The movie also likes to try to be philosophical, though I doubt the wisdom of some exchanges, for example: "No man ever thinks he's going to die; it's the paradox of mankind."..."Yes, we know that now, we made a mistake." Well that cleared that up.

This movie is relentless and poorly crafted in every way. The script is pure drivel, the direction and editing can be generously described as incompetent, and the acting is dreadful: the worst actor by far (Thomas Phillips) plays "The General;" his performance is one of the worst I have ever seen in any movie of any genre from any time period (and yes, I have seen every Ed Wood movie.) Truly, his is a breathtaking performance.

I can't imagine who funded this film or why; moreover, I can't even hazard a guess as to why the final product was released. Have these people no shame?

Get Ready to Integrate.......2006-03-07

Here is one of those movies where the box is the most exciting thing about the movie. Once you begin watching the movie, you suddenly realize that this movie is tremendously exciting, much like watching grass grow. Actually, watching grass grow may be more exciting.

The movie begins with some promise. We see a fellow in a white coat flitting about a laboratory while scenes are cut in discussing the fellow and that he has just stolen the super secret files that no one should ever have access to because they are super secret and it is just too bad that he has to be "transferred," which is a euphemism for shot a whole bunch of times in a hotel room while writing a letter to a congressman who already knew about the secret project anyway. Understanding all this really makes little difference, because this movie is confusing much of the time anyway, and the ending seems almost pointless.

We soon learn that the "project" is going to move forward with four volunteers. We pick up bits and pieces that the "project" has something to do with reading minds. Obviously this project has to be government sponsored because in 1977, when this movie was filmed, government was the root of all evil. Knowing what we know today, obviously evil was milder in those days.

Our four volunteers include ditzy Minnie Lee Parks (Anne Latham, in her second and last role), war veteran Judd Reeves (Marcus J. Grapes, who was near the end of his brief television and film career), Reverend Emory Neill (James Best, a veteran of at least 170 film and television appearances, who many will remember best as Rosco P. Coltrane on the television series "The Dukes of Hazzard"), and highly intelligent Willie West (Gerald McRaney, who was one of the Simons in the television series "Simon & Simon," among dozens of other appearances).

Dr. Carol Portland (Barbara Burgess, who had one role after this movie in 1984's "Laughterhouse") spends a good amount of time trying to keep her hair piled high without snapping her neck, and periodically appearing intelligent. To her credit, she keeps herself above the silly dialogue (more about that in a moment). Dr. Portland appears to be intimate with Dr. Roland Roth (Doug Collins, in his only film appearance, ever; this movie must have told him that acting was a poor way to make a living), who appears to be sort of in charge much of the time, and who shares highly dramatic scenes with Gil Peterson as Dr. Elton Morris. I know Gil Peterson is famous because he was the well known "fourth German soldier" in a 1965 episode of "Combat." If that isn't fame, I do not know what is.

There are a number of nondescript government types who lend credence to the whole government conspiracy plot, but other than seeing moving mouths and one high government person's office that looks a lot like a junk closet at Hewlett Packard, these characters are there for comic relief. Just kidding. Actually these characters are there to be sinister and cold-blooded, but only if you can stop rolling your eyes long enough to focus.

What all this comes down to is that the non-descript government types take over the experiment, and soon our volunteers are doing all sorts of dramatic things (yawn). By the time the movie reaches its inevitable conclusion, I was wondering what all the hoopla was about. After all, one of the characters in the movie sure looked to me like a George Bush look-alike.

There is no way that I am able to explain to you how bad this movie is. It is boring. The technical jargon, which uses the word "integrate" more times than a semester of calculus, was obviously bogus. In fact, the dialogue was a concatenation of actual words that made virtually no sense. It did sound impressive. I was impressed by the use of actual oscilloscopes, computer tape drives and other high tech paraphernalia from the 70s that were likely state of the art at that time. However, getting past the equipment, this movie has nothing to offer. The plot takes a long time to get launched. Once you figure out what the plot is about, you get to the "so what" point, and after that the movie goes down hill from there. I spent much of the movie waiting for something, anything, to happen. It never did.

If you have so much money that you have spend it on something, get this movie. Otherwise, I recommend any other movie you can find.

"I believe this country is riddled with enemies, inside and outside. Your machine may be the only defense.".......2005-12-02

As I write this review, the Amazon website lists this particular film being released in the 1950s, and while there was a film called The Brain Machine released in 1956, it is not this film. This `film' (if you can call it such), of the same name, was actually released in 1977, at least according to The Internet Movie Database, and was co-written (one of three writers, to my disbelief) and directed by Joy N. Houck Jr. (Night of Bloody Horror, Creature from Black Lake), whose father was Joy N. Houck, Sr., producer of Lash LaRue movies in the 1940s and early 1950s. The film features appearances by Barbara Burgess (Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special), Gil Peterson (The Cool Ones), Marcus J. Grapes (Women and Bloody Terror), Doug Collins, Ann Latham (Thieves Like Us), Stocker Fontelieu (Mandingo), Thomas Hal Phillips (O.C. and Stiggs), Gerald McRaney ("Simon & Simon", "Major Dad"), and James Best, forever known to late 1970s/early 1980s television viewers as the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from the show "The Dukes of Hazzard".

As far as I can tell, the actual story starts off with a scientist stealing information about a top secret, hush hush, black bag gooberment project, a project that he, himself might have been involved with (the entire film is confusing as hell due to exceptionally poor direction and inept editing)...pretty much the first fifteen minutes of the film are wasted on the agents chasing him down, retrieving the `crucial' files, and then finally `transferring' said scientist (transfer was code for disposing of, as in killing...we all know how them gooberment types never actually say what they mean, using doublespeak and such to obscure their illicit activities). Anyway, it's back to the lab where we meet Dr. Roland Roth (Collins), his assistant (and girlfriend, I think) Dr. Carol Portland (Burgess), and Dr. Elton Morris (Peterson), all scientists working on some sort of benign environmental, group stress study, one which the gooberment plans to secretly subvert to verify operation of some sort of super computer that can actually breach a person's mind and pluck out their deepest, darkest secrets, sort of a means to ferret out enemies of the state, I guess...so here are the four candidates to be subjected to the test; there's Minnie Lee Parks (Latham), a homely idiot hillbilly, Judd Reeves (Grapes), a war veteran, Willie West (McRaney), a wealthy genius type, and finally Reverend Emory Neill (Best), a religious type whose lost his faith. The four are placed in a specially developed room (along with Dr. Portland acting as a monitor of sorts), subjected to various stimuli, and it's about this time the secret testing kicks in, as the super computer begins probing their minds. Things eventually go haywire (as they're apt to do), and the effect of the mind probing causes the foursome to go nutty as they begin attacking one another ultimately resulting in an unintentionally hilarious finale, at least from my standpoint.

First of all, it's probably worth mentioning this film has gone by a number of different titles including Gray Matter, Mind Warp, Time Warp, and The E-Box...regardless of what it's called, it still stinks on ice. I suspect the reasoning for the various titles is because people who've seen the film would probably give it such a bad rap that the various individuals releasing the movie (to video and such) decided the only way to sucker more people into seeing it was to change the name. As far as the film goes, if you're a fan of establishing shots, i.e. shots that preface a scene in order to give reference to where the scene is supposed to take place, then you'll be in 7th heaven here as I truly cannot recall another film polluted with so many of them...just about every five minutes we're hit with another shot of a building or such, just to let us know where we're supposed to be...gads...as far as the performances here, none of them were very good, only varying in degrees of rottenness. In the actors' defense, I suspect they were probably as perplexed and befuddled with their characters as the audience was with the movie. I highly doubt Best nor McRaney (whom I barely recognized...someone get that man a razor and a comb) talk this particular feature up much on their respective resumes. Burgess is kinda nice to look at, if you can get past her incredibly huge bouffant hairdo...and speaking of funky hairstyles, I'd like to nominate Stocker Fontelieu, who plays the Project Chief Saxon, for cinematic character with the worst comb over...seriously, who does he think he's foolin'? Ann Latham presents the most idiotic character in the movie, which was quite an accomplishment, especially given the competition. I've tried to lay out the basic plot of the story, but it was just so friggin' confusing (despite all the wonderful establishing shots), I was barely able to make heads or tails of this mess. That's always nice, when you have spend so much energy trying to discern what's actually going on within a movie that you don't get to enjoy it. The direction is shoddy, the editing woefully inept, and the dialog is about as stilted, pointless, awkward, and rambling as I've heard in a film. Here's a lovely bit, featured when The Senator and The General (this is how they were referred to throughout the movie, no names, only titles) were discussing the feasibility and benefits of going forth with their secret project...

Senator: You know, I'm sticking my neck out a long way, General, because I believe this country is riddled with enemies, inside and outside. Your machine may be the only defense.
General: I certainly hope so, sir.
Senator: You know it's not vigilance anymore, General...its surveillance...eternal surveillance is the price of liberty, that's why I'm willing to go all the way with you. (I couldn't figure out if he was coming on to him here or what)
General: Thank you, Senator.

I think my favorite aspect of the script was the near endless supply of meaningless technical jargon spewed forth, whose only purpose seemed not to instill a sense of credibility in the audience, but only to eat up many minutes of running time, and keep you occupied enough from thinking how your time could have been better by cleaning the lint out of your belly button rather than watching this horrendously putrescent film. All in all this is about as rotten as they come...there's plenty of unintentional humor if you like riffing on bad films, but if you're looking for an interesting, cohesive, sci-fi thriller, keep on looking, as this on has absolutely no redeeming qualities (and believe me, I looked for at least one).

The fullscreen picture quality on this DVD, released by a company called 905 Entertainment, is so-so, and the Dolby Digital stereo audio comes through well enough. There are no extras included, but there are chapter stops, all four of them, which made me wonder what's the point?

Cookieman108

By the way, the artwork on the DVD case looks interesting (sort of like a very poor H.R. Giger influenced rendering), but it really has nothing to do with the actual film.

Venus Unveiled: The Magellan Space Probe

Average customer rating:

Venus Unveiled: The Magellan Space Probe

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video

Printable materials for educators
Access to the NOVA Web site
Scene selection
Closed captions

ASIN: B000FMLA4S

Product Description

NOVA production, as seen on public television. From back cover: "Although it's Earth's closest neighbor, Venus was an enigma until the Magellan space probe pierced the thick coulds shrouding its surface, exposing a strange, alien landscape that still stirs controversy and scientific debate. Magellan's four-year tour revealed an astonishing planet with bizarre topography, crushing atmospheric pressure, and surface temperatures of 900 degrees. Through unprecedented access to NASA, expert interviews, and rare footage, NOVA takes you on a unique voyage to discover a world no one had ever seen before. Get a fascinating up-close look as Magellan transports you to the uncharted surface of our sister planet. See the astounding first images from the Magellan that shattered many scientific predictions. Trace the dramatic history of previous exploration attempts, including disastrous early Russian missions. See how the new data sparked conflicting theories about the planet's evolution and current state. And discover how future missions to Venus could further deepen understanding of our solar system."

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