Cerberus : Le Gardien de l'enfer

S10 Rating: * * 'Cerberus' is a pretty typical SciFi Channel presentation. An interesting premise of the infamous mythical three-headed dog protecting a sword that render the possessor invincibility. The sword was used bu Attila the Hun so that explains his conquering of the little people of his time. As usually a nefarious scheme is hatched by an equally nefarious madman who then sends some mercenaries to grab the little party favor. Of course the lead merc enjoys his taste of power and commences to do his thing while the good guys and girl deal with the dog and now the greedy merc turned madman. Oh the joys of paint-by-numbers made-for-TV cinema. The acting was ho-hum and the direction is plain. The effects were bad as you'd expect but for whatever reason I found it still watchable.

I found the dialogue, particularly Emmanuelle Vaugier's, very hard to follow. The whole movie was pathetic. I forced myself to watch it all, believing that it would improve.

All the actors in this movie are very experienced (based on their filmographies), so you'd expect they would be able to make something out of a very trite and superficial script.

The special(?) effects were hardly believable - When people lost limbs, it reminded me of the Bridge scene between King Arthur and the Knight from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

Not even the eye candy made up for it.

A lot of sci-fi movies have been made lately, some okay, some terrible, and overall better than the badly scripted ones of the prior three decades. This one had all the better elements of B movie sci fi. A lot of adventure, a cheesy but likable plot, cheesy but likable characters, action, character, atmosphere, and well written and played humor in the right spots. The plot is made to be so hokey that we know this is supposed to be an unbelievable situation, so you have to accept this unbelievable world much as you would a Tolkien world. The unbelievability is more in line with a Bond world, however. If you like Bond movies, you would probably relish this movie. The sword of a Hun leader (the most famous one of course), is stolen from the Roman God of war, Mars, and guarded by the Greek three headed dog, Cerebus, in a village straight out of the Bavarian-Romanian Dracula type movies. So clearly, the writers had a ball putting this together, and no one is expected to take it seriously. Just sit back and enjoy the fun. The lead characters are very extreme, much like James Bond characters, but though the roles are unbelievable, the motivations and actions of the characters ring true in their predicaments. Each of the minor characters is presented with a bit of witticism, mystique, and integrity. No one is a wimp in this movie. And the decisions of the characters are well timed in credibility, which makes this a superior B movie. There are some great humorous moments, such as the bit when the girl suggests using the method of Orpheus to combat the dog beast. And we all know what the other characters think when she suggests a lyre. One of the best scripted pieces done in science fiction. This is what some of the more celebrated and high budget movies wanted to be, but failed. Entertaining and likable.

In Bucharest, Romania, the priceless breastplate of Attila, the Hun is robbed from the National Museum of Antiquities by a gang leaded by the despicable Marcus Cutter (Greg Evidan), and the curator Radu (Gelu Nitu) is killed by one of the thieves. Meanwhile, in New York City, the former assistant of Professor Radu, Dr. Samantha Gaines (Emmanuelle Vaugier), is waiting for the valuable piece for an exhibition. The agent Jake Adams (Sebastian Spence) visits Samantha in the museum to tell about the heist and the death of her friend, and she tells about the legend that the breastplate would have the inscription of the location of the Sword of Mars, which is guarded by Cerberus and made Attila invincible. When Samantha's brother and addicted gambler Jack (Brent Florence) is kidnapped, she believes his debt of US$ 2,000.00 could be the reason, and travels to Romania invited by the evil kidnapper Kul Jae Sung (Garret T. Sato), getting involved in a supernatural adventure with Jake.

"Cerberus" is a reasonable and entertaining adventure, unfortunately "sold" to the viewers as a horror genre by the distributor. I bought this DVD expecting to see a trash movie, and actually it is an action movie with a supernatural dog and sword. The screenplay is flawed and predictable, and also too serious while it should have jokes and humor with the unbelievable situations, but this film is not so bad and does not deserve the IMDb User Rating of 3.9. I only believe that it does not reach the target audience with the scary monster and tagline inducing to horror genre on cover of the DVD. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Cerberus - O Guardião do Inferno" ("Cerberus - The Guardian of Hell")

This movie could have been fairly good. I wasn't expecting something spectacular, but there was, I think, potential for it to be quite good. Unfortunately, this movie turned out to be just awful. The first thing that jarred me was the camera work. The acting, editing, special effects and camera work were all just terrible. I'm not one to usually pay particular attention to things like editing and camera work, but those elements were so bad they stood out to me very quickly. As a result, I was often distracted from what was happening in the movie. As I said, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I was severely disappointed by this movie. I would not personally recommend it to anyone. I didn't find one redeeming factor in this movie.