Thursday, December 11, 2008

Worst Movies: Number 4

1997 was one of my favorite moviegoing years. It started with the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy and ended with the behemoth "Titanic" (I go into much greater detail on the films I liked that year here). I went to dozens of movies in '97, so it's no surprise that one was a complete dud. The 4th worst movie I ever attended was a sci-fi/horror flick starring Sam Neill from "Jurassic Park".



Here's a brief synopsis of the film (courtesy of Reel Views):

"In the year 2047, the deep space rescue craft Lewis & Clark departs on a two-month journey to Neptune. Their primary mission is to go into a low orbit around Neptune and make contact with the deep space research vessel Event Horizon, which was initially thought destroyed seven years ago. The would-be rescuers are to search for survivors and salvage anything that's reclaimable, but no one is prepared for the horror that lurks deep within the dark corridors of the dead ship."

Like number 5 (Blair Witch 2), this is a movie where it didn't get really bad until the last half hour or so (the previous 60 minutes was just foreplay). As the paragraph above indicates, it did start out with a good premise, but just fell apart as time went on. There are a number of great sci-fi/horror flicks out there (Alien & Aliens, in particular), but this one wasn't even a quarter as good as those.

More interesting than the movie itself was what occured at the screening: There were two teenagers sitting a few rows in front of me and throughout the film, especially near the end, one of them would jump when something scary happened, and it wasn't a minor jump, either (he was genuinely startled). He did this at least 5 times. Pretty funny stuff. I wonder if his buddy knew about this prediliction beforehand.

Like "Blair 2", this movie can be watched in its entirety on YouTube. Go here to get started.

9 comments:

Timothy Smith said...

I liked the idea behind Event Horizon as it was similar to the story behind the "Doom" games which was opening a portal to hell.

In Doom space marines go in to deal with the problem.

I forgot all about that movie until just now, it is rather slow.

Eric Curtis said...

I watched that once probably right after it came out on VHS. There was one scene in it that did scare the hell out of me, but I'll be damned if I can remember what it was.

Don't remember being too impressed with it, either. Seemed like it had a good premise and a big budget, but the execution was off.

I picked up Doom for a couple of bucks at Best Buy and really enjoyed it. Also, yesterday was Doom's 15th birthday.

Timothy Smith said...

I was troubleshooting Doom 4-way play at the university and became interested in network protocols.

One of the guys I use to play Doom with over the phone lived in Boston and offered me a place to crash so I enrolled in Boston University and left MN.

Doom in a way is responsible for my entire career.

Happy Birthday Doom!

Unknown said...

I gotta' disagree with you on "Event Horizon." It was a creepy sci-fi flick with a few scenes that get you jumpy. You can't go wrong with "Titanic" and the "Star Wars" release with extras from one of the most visionary series of films I'll probably ever see. George Lucas is the man.

Thomas said...

Eric, you knew the exact date when "Doom" was released?! Damn, I may have finally found a pop-culture rival. As Jigsaw would say, "Let the game begin!"

Tim, who'd ever think that a videogame could lead one to a career they love (well, other than the guy who wrote "Pac-Man Fever", that is)? I wonder where you'd be today had you not gotten involved with the game.

PJ, perhaps I'll revisit the film on YouTube. If it's not as scary as you say, I'll pretend to be scared and jump up every 10 seconds like that kid did. You're right about George Lucas. If I hadn't seen "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980, I'd probably be a millionaire by now. :P

Eric Curtis said...

That's a great story, Timothy. I played the heck out of the shareware version.

My pop-culture knowledge is decent, but I ran across an article about the Doom birthday a few days ago.

Dämmerung Anblick said...

Actually, I didn't mind that movie either. I think it was the fact that you couldn't see the bad guys, but could sense that they were there. I found that a bit creepy.

Brian Mongold said...

I never saw it, but had to look it up after you mentioned it. Rotton Tomatoes has the Critics hating it, 23%, while the community seemed to mostly like it, 64%.

You know a movie I recently watched that I hated was Hancock. It became unwatchable to me.

Other movies I have hated; The Fog, Grudge II, Love Guru, etc.

Timothy Smith said...

I did not care for Hancock myself, one of the few Billybob movies I did not like.