Pulsion homicide

Jennifer (Meg Tilly) returns to her small California hometown with her boyfriend Stuart (Tim Matheson) after her mother attempted suicide. The strange part is her mother did it on the phone after she called Jennifer in a rambling rage. The stranger part is everyone in the town has started acting kind of strange after a small earthquake. Something has caused folks to lose the inhibitions and it results in all out chaos with everyone raging or lusting after each other. Wow! Now this is why I love watching movies because there is always an unheralded gem out there like this. Sure, it was done before with Romero's very similar The Crazies (1973), but this is just as engaging. This was Brit director Graham Baker's second feature (after The Final Conflict in 1981) and he handles it so well. There is a great slow build of craziness until things just explode. One great scene has Hume Cronyn as the town doc tampering with the mother's oxygen supply. Another is a scene where Matheson succumbs to the craziness by seducing a bubble gum chewing teenager that is done perfectly with no dialogue. Look for Bill Paxton as Jennifer's younger brother and Peter Jason as a government guy.

I wasn't expecting much from this when it came on TV and was half-watching while doing computer stuff but it pretty soon drew me in. The characters and their interactions were much more realistic than I expected and the acting was really good. Last night I watched World War Z a big budget 'zombie' film from 2013 starring Brad Pitt and it was really poor - Impulse is a far more mature and involving treatment of a broadly similar theme.

"Impulse" is a movie for which I had relatively high expectations: the idea of people losing the ability to control their impulses and totally disregarding all the established social rules sounds very, very intriguing. However, the result we get here is (despite a few unexpected twists) a disappointing and very slow-paced (there is a dialogue-free passage where a man simply walks around for about seven minutes) thriller. George Romero had used basically the same story ten years earlier in "The Crazies" - and he did it much better. (**)

I saw this movie on SciFi the other day and must say it was like no other. A lot of cool scenes with people doing crazy s**t, cause they're acting on their first impulse and giving no second thoughts to their actions AKA some funny s**t. It didn't seem like it was that old a movie until the dude puts on a sleeveless jacket. Well this is my first attempt at writing a review for a movie so whatever. I'm gonna write more so hopefully they'll get better and if they don't then go cry to your mother!

OK, first of all, ignore the last person' review. They admit to falling asleep through it so it's no wonder they didn't understand what was going on!!! As thriller/horrors go, this film ain't too bad, it is certainly very watchable. Right from the opening scenes you get a general idea exactly what is going to be the cause of all the craziness that follows, and come the end you are proved right with everything being made clear.

I enjoyed this movie, it was quite eerie at times and as old films go it was passable. Great to watch late at night! I give it a generous 7 out of 10.