Je t'ai trop attendue

Single mom Rosemary Zoltanne (Markie Post) and her smart-ass teen daughter Sarah (Sarah Chalke) move from L.A. to a big house in Massachusetts where a witch was burned at the stake 300 years earlier. Sarah makes friends with a geeky outsider (Ben Foster) but also attracts the attention of teen members of the "Descendant's Club"-- obnoxious jocks (led by Christian Campbell, brother of Neve) and the high school bitch queens (led by Soleil Moon Frye) who think she's the reincarnation of the dead witch. Sarah gets harassing phone calls ("I've been waiting for you!") and a masked killer with a steel claw lurks around.

This is resolutely typical post SCREAM/I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER fare (supposedly from the "author" of the latter) with offscreen violence, but the performances are surprisingly good and it's watchable, though it all seems like a big build-up to nothing by the end.

I didn't know it at the time when I rented the video, but frequent fade-outs to black and someone credited with the teleplay soon made me realize I'd rented a TV movie that was inexplicably (and erroneously!) rated R to bulk up it's distribution value. Don't be expecting to find gore, nudity or four-letter words in this film.

It's good! Pretty scary, I was surprised. The acting wasn't cheezy like in a lot of made for tv movies. I thought the plot was good but I was a tiny bit disappointed by the ending...but just a little. Go see it!

I'm sorry, but this movie just wasn't all that great. I rented it because it had a shiny cover, it said that it was by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it starred Soleil Moon Frye. But it just didn't work for me. The little attempts at romance were never fleshed out and should have either been strengthened or edited out. And I understand that the TV aspect lowered the body count drastically, but if they scared one girl to death (hokey hokey hokey), they could have used that excuse to ice another character or two. Instead, they just have some little troll-thingie with a cool looking weapon (4 nails... would have been better as 4 blades) who threatens his victims. Nope. But the acting was better than the average TV movie (worse than the average film, but hey), and some of the humor worked.

I did start my Halloween challenge on Saturday 22nd. Which will be 40 days of horror movies/.

Yesteday Day 3

I've been waiting for you (1998)

Well, It Sounded a bit like scream but with bit witches added to it. The masked wasn't to bad but I found it more funny then scary.

The movie it self wasn't all that gory or scary however it still intruded me from start to end,

With these you can't' tell who the killer is from their first scenes but I did enjoy those funny witches scenes. which I found a bit funny, I don't think that was intended.

The acting wasn't all that bad. not great but decent for a TV movie. I didn't really liked how it was all revealed out.

The last scene kinds of leaves you hanging. I did here there was meant another to sequel to this movie. which would have explained the last scene.

5 out of 10

I suppose I shouldn't worry to much about such things in modern movies, particularly the made-for-TV variety, but the anachronisms were just a bit much for me. For instance:

The film's action takes place in Massachusetts; central to the plot is the story of a burned-at-the-stake witch whom apparently used to live in a certain house. Said burning occurred during the Salem witch hunts of 1692, but the house is an unmistakable Victorian. It doesn't take an expert to realize that the style is eponymous with the English Queen, which meant that it couldn't have existed in that form until the mid-1800's, at least 125 years after the murder.

The accused witch, according to the (twenty-something) "high-school kids", supposedly was kept in a "straight-jacket in a padded cell in an asylum". I don't believe any of these things existed in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts; and even England's notorious Bedlam was more of a convenient dump-site for loonies, rather than a real mental institution.

And for a three-hundred-year-old tombstone, particularly one exposed to the corrosive effects of urban New England's infamous acid rain over a good part of that time, the carving sure looked sharp and fresh.

Otherwise, I rather enjoyed "I've Been Waiting for You", simply because, like most "slasher flicks", it gives me--someone whom worked at a state university for over a quarter-century-- the opportunity to watch college-age kids get tormented--even unto death.

Mmmm...yes....