The Jar

Ths Jar, released in 1984, follows the day to day life of Paul as his life changes for the eerie after picking up a creepy old hitchiker. The old man vanishes but not before he leaves a mysterious object in a paper bag,hence-the jar. Paul then starts to experience strange illusions, one of which has his bath tub fill up with blood in which we get to witness some really cheap camera-trickish special effects. Paul then meets a new female neighbor, who seems to take an instant interest in dating him, despite the fact that she barely knows him and that he acts extremely quiet and creepy. This film is a complete mess from start to finish.There are so many meaningless points of this film-a part when we watch from the outside as Paul goes into a candy store and buys candy, we do not see him inside, but watch the door for 30 seconds.Its as though the filmmakers were just to lazy to get permission to shoot a scene inside.The female lead is a character that contributes absolutely nothing to this movie.All we know about her is that she has an attraction for schizophrenic single white males and bad movie roles(this movie). The acting is worse than "cue card reading" acting, the characters are shallow and out of place, the camera work is so much off its pathetic, and the special effects look like something out of a bargain bin.I do not recommend this film. This movie makes the countless slashers with masked killers look like masterpieces.

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...

I am a HUGE fan of B-Movies so when I rented this I was looking for a cheesy no budget movie, hopefully about a killer jar or some crazy liquid in a jar that killed like the blob, that is how the cover looked. This is a boring, boring movie, and the acting does not help at all. The acting is bad, the picture quality is bad, the special effects are bad, this normally adds to a good movie but this was horrible. I can not really even tell you what this movie was about because it was so weird...I have seen other movies where a man goes slowly insane, which I guess is what this was about, but those movies were done well and this was...welll...not. Do not see this for the bad quality of the film, do not see this for any reason, unless you really want to torture yourself. That is all I have to say for THE JAR.

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-

"The Jar" is a movie sent from the Heavens---not as a gift---but as a means of testing our humanity and the fabric of our very existences. The word "awful" does not even glance the surface of the ocean of atrocity that is this movie. Often a mediocre production can suffer from a lackluster plot but contain redemption in the form of quality acting, pleasing special effects, a great score, or any combination of the aforementioned. Unfortunately, "The Jar" offers no such redemption. As one watches the film, each passing moment exceeds the viewer's expectation of how irrevocably bad a movie can be; his or her notion of what makes a "terrible film" is completely shattered with every stroke of the second hand. The plot: absolute nonsense with no explanation in sight. The music: subtly pleasing---if you enjoy the sound of an orchestra committing suicide using its own instruments. The acting: sometimes rigid, other times absurdly dramatic, at all times unforgivable. The appearance: completely grainy and dark (not in a mood-setting way, but in a "the camera man is totally incompetent" way) with the actors often way out of frame. The total package: incoherent, psychotic, UNWATCHABLE. The only reason a person should ever view "The Jar" is to gain an understanding of what makes a a movie "good"---which translates to exactly the opposite of everything demonstrated in this picture.