thecursor2002

Truthfully, the production isn't so bad (no worse than most King adaptations) and the direction is rather passable. The bug, like in most bad films, is the script.

With such a strong cast and good production values, this should have been a great film.

But somehow the story bogs down at the beginning, more interested in the terrible management of an old mill than the giant monster in the basement. The story makes a play at being true to the source while making a statement but by the last 30 minutes it suddenly remembers that it's a horror movie and tries to stuff the denouement and everything else into a few rushed scenes. The monster, which was actually quite good, doesn't even get time to breathe.

Brad Dourif does his best to save the movie, playing a creepy exterminator with a Jeffery Combs style mania (if the two of them were ever in a movie, the world would explode from the awesome).

But in the end this film had everything, from a giant bat to a good cast, and it still sucked.

Honestly, most B-Movies are terrible. The sudden, sad trend among movie fans to purposefully exalt crap films just for a laugh has become a "lowering of the tone" for snobs such as my self. Is Troll 2 unintentionally hilarious? Yeah. Does that mean it's "Brilliant"? No, it sucks and for many B-Movie fans, the line between satire and reality has been blurred. Face it, the joke is over. The vast majority of the B-films or Direct to DVDers are awful and unwatchable.

But every now and then, you find a B-movie that has enough heart and soul to transcend that. Every now and then you see a movie that has enough gumption to spit in the eye of their low budget and no big name. Crossworlds is one of those movies, it shows a panache you don't normally find on late night cable and plays the hand it's dealt.

The budget is so low you'd expect the sets to be made of duct tape, the plot is a bit out there, and the names of the characters are out right weird and yet...you find yourself realizing that if this had a bigger budget it would be a hit film. If this had some studio support, a slightly tighter story, and better SFX, it would be a modest box office coup.

The film is, dare I say it, rather fun and compared to Transformers or Avatar or some other over indulgent crap masquerading as a blockbuster.

In a just world, this film would've been a real movie instead of a cult classic but then again, it probably would've have been as good if had been made at a major studio.

This long forgotten corner of the Hitchcock universe has occasionally been called "Hitchcock's Lemon" but I personally feel that title is undeserved.

Sure it's not perfect (a sentence I never thought I'd write about a Hitchcock film) but a bad Hitchcock movie is pretty damned good by everybody else's standards.

The tension and push-pull of criminal behavior meeting it's inevitable end at the noose has long built some damn good dramas but some how Charles Laughton's performance elevates this to near madness. His version of Sir Humphrey turns an average movie villain into a fascinating character, a repulsive yet lovable nut who elevates himself yet pushes down the little guy. When confronted by a "lesser person" about how similar they are and how he's no better then anything else, Laughton nearly foams at the mouth. When the hero unwittingly insult's Laughton's manhood and social status there's a definite moment where Sir Humphrey nearly plugs the unsuspecting protagonist right in the back.

All in all, good but not great film. A must for Hitchcock fanatics.