Trampyre

For good reason, the opening moments of this film is the chilling clip from JAWS, with the character of "Quint" giving a brief history of the horrors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during WWII, and the frenzied shark attacks that the survivors endured. Both with re-enacted testaments, and comments from the few living survivors, there isn't much more one would need to know after watching OCEAN OF FEAR. It is simply chilling, and should be of major interest to shark fans and WWII historians. Outstanding film! Every aspect of this terrible tragedy is explored, and it was an incident that begged to be explored more completely. There was a fictional account of the incident made in 1991, MISSION OF THE SHARK, starring Stacey Keach and Richard Thomas, but this is the film you want to see!

This "movie" is a pretty pathetic waste of time. Outside of a chilling (but predictable) performance by Thomas Gibson as The Devil, this movie really stinks. All the major horror clichés are stolen from ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE OMEN- there is NOTHING the viewer won't see coming as any sort of shock or surprise. Good performers like Matthew Lillard and Kim Delaney don't add anything. For a supernatural tale, there's really nothing in the way of special effects. The script is terrible, and the direction barely adequate. It blows me away that anyone connected with this film would waste time and money to create this piece of trash, even for something concocted for TV.

What to do when making a film of an allegorical Science Fiction classic novel? Unfortunately, John Carpenter didn't have a clue... The original film version of VILLAGE got most of it pretty right. In one of the paperback versions of the source material THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS was a mini study guide, which proposed questions to many themes in the novel. If only Mr. Carpenter had read these... This version of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is way too action-oriented... explosions...brutal deaths...hysterical townspeople... "The Children" themselves don't really follow the design of author John Wyndham, especially highlighted by "Mara", the "leader" of this child invasion- she wears EVIL with a capital "E" on her face. The children are much more sinister in the original, outstandingly encapsulated by the performance of Martin Stephens, whose blank-faced stance defines "emotionless". These pod children become much more sinister and terrifying than Carpenter's brood, who (except for "David") read more like Patty McCormack's "Rhoda" in THE BAD SEED- their intentions are obviously no good from the beginning, and with LOTS of camp overacting by vets like Mark Hamill, there is nothing scary (or interesting, for that matter) in this remake. It's a totally wasted opportunity to do justice to a modern sci-fi classic!