The Jar

I must say I'm a glutton for punishment. I rented "The Jar" simply because I knew nothing about it and it cost a mere ninety-nine cents. The sad fact of the matter is I should have checked imdb.com first. Perhaps had I done this, I could have saved myself the agony. Scratch that...I'll rent almost anything for a dollar without first considering that I'm sacrificing precious time as well.

The film begins with a motorist picking up a bizarre old man after an accident. Instead of taking him to a hospital or to the police, he brings the crazed old coot to his apartment. The man soon disappears, leaving behind a jar containing a hideous demonic thing. It is not long before it begins to grate at the man's sanity, causing hallucinations, mood swings, paranoia, and depression. This ultimately endangers his job, the potential for romance with a new neighbor, and perhaps even his life.

"The Jar" is little more than a forum for a load of disjointed, barely related, surreal visions. The overall effect is to bore the viewer to tears. Decent acting? Continuity? Look elsewhere for these elements. They are absent from this film. Any reasonable person will grant that "The Jar" was hampered by a low budget. However, budget cannot be an excuse for a film this bad, certainly the worst I've seen in 2002.

Many people seem to hate this movie... well, I love it! Caught occasionally on Telecapri (a regional, Italian TV station that used to show a lot of b-horrors 10 or 15 years ago), this strange film obsessed me for years, becoming a sort of legend: even talking to my friends, it looked like I was the only one who had seen "The Jar"! The strange images of this obscure flick had become part of my fantasy. Last year, I subscribed to an internet horror fans' forum and opened a post there, in which I described all the scenes of this movie, I had been recalling for years; there where other people in Italy who knew it! Obviously, they hated it too; but I finally got that film's title! I bought it on VHS on Amazon, despite the reviews found on this site. Yes, the dubbing was terrible (but it couldn't be worse than the usual Italian dubbing this sort of films get), the editing approximate and the story confusing; but all these elements, helped creating the odd atmosphere that this strange film surely has. Hallucinations, suspension between dream and reality, mystery, non-sense (I admit the candy store scene's a "WTF!?" candidate), isolation, terror and probably some inadvertent qualities too! I consider it as a bad dream: incoherent, maybe incomplete (according to another user's comment, "The Jar" was heavily cut for distribution's reasons), but fascinating and leaving my mind full of inspiration and weird memories. I still like it after all these years and I think it's not worse than many other B (or Z-grade) films that attempted to obtain a 'cult' position after years.

-Dario-

I rented this back in the 1980's, and the bad taste still lingers. Not one redeeming quality. Not worth watching, even for the thrill of a "fun" bad movie.

Let's drop the subject right here...

It's true. This flick isn't as bad as some of the reviews suggest as long as you have something else to do during the lulls. Needless to say there are plenty of lulls. I recalled watching this movie back about 16 years ago and was not impressed with it at all at that time. My first impression after all these years is that this was a student film someone managed to sell to a studio. The film is extremely low budget and not terribly exciting. However there are some decently freaky dream sequences that you might find worth watching if you like low budget horror flicks (like me) and the whole thought of this old man leaving a pickled punk in a dudes apartment where it takes over the man mind is at the least creepy. I suggest watching this movie while cleaning the house or surfing the net.... Every 20 minutes or so when something interesting happens you can stop what you're doing and watch for a minute or two.

If you were able to sit through movies like... Drive In Massacre Ghost Riders Garden Of The Dead The Cremators You wont have a problem opening The Jar.

The plot involves a hairy guy named Paul who picks up a creepy old man who was injured in a car accident. The old man insists on taking along this jar wrapped in a bag. Paul takes the old man back to his (Paul's) apartment, the old man vanishes and Paul is left with this jar, which contains this little blue monster that looks like one of the Ghoulies. After that, things get weird as Paul hallucinates and/or dreams all this stuff.

I suppose there could be some symbolism in the film, but we know nothing about Paul before the dreams start, and the dreams seem to have no connection to anything that is happening. My theory is that the director or writer or whoever it was that decided to make this movie took all the weird dreams he had had in his life and rolled them into this painful film. None of the dreams are memorable enough to require a visual translation, though, so they're quite boring to watch. This begs the question of why he decided to do it.

This movie has the feel of a really bad student film. Someone attempting to make an "arty" movie.

Another interesting thing about this film is that it was made in Colorado, but appears to be badly dubbed. All the characters have these dull, out-of-place voices that don't seem to match their faces. It reminds me of B-Movies from the '60s like "Manos: The Hands of Fate" and "The Beast of Yucca Flats" that were either recorded without sound or had the sound erased, and then tried to put sound back in in post-production.

I think this is a bad movie, but I'm no expert. There could be some deep meaning to this film that I don't get. Give it a rent and see for yourself.