stvartak
Joined Mar 2001
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Reviews6
stvartak's rating
I saw this film several times as a child growing up in the '70s, and it has always stuck with me. It's the kind of fantastic and innocent romance that just doesn't get made very often in Hollywood anymore, more charming for being unapologetically sentimental about love and the supernatural. I wish this film would be shown in a theatre so that I could take a first date to it!
You know the definition of a Popcorn Movie. It's a movie that you know you shouldn't take seriously. It's little more than an excuse to sit in front of the screen together with your friends and have a laugh.
If that's the approach you take to watching Carver's Gate, you might not be disappointed. The props are obviously smoke machines, black light, and rubber masks. The characters are decidedly one-dimensional. And the inspirations for the plot are something less than inspirational, even for 1995. And yet, there's something about this movie that makes you want to like it.
That something is Michael Pere. Pere has the most important (though not all) qualities of a leading man: a handsome face, a resonating voice, and an ability to appear cool in the most ridiculous situations. If James Bond were an American, Pere might be the next Timothy Dalton.
But, alas, this movie was made for television, and like so many other attempts at TV-movie greatness, this one has but a single attraction. (Take William Hurt in the SciFi Channel's take on Dune, for example.)
The rest is a throwaway story about a virtual-reality video game called Afterlife that makes its players feel as though they really are in another world, fighting demons and ghosts and whatnot. Inevitably, some people become addicted to the game, and a policeman of sorts (Pere's Carver) is needed to bring them back out.
The monsters are so real indeed that some of them cross over into the physical world, don rubber masks, and start attacking everyday folks, who inhabit a dark, misty environment not unlike dozens of others in the annals of sci-fi. (Picture Blade Runner on a made-for-TV budget.)
Throughout it all, Pere remains the focal point of our attention and hope for better entertainment. He is cool, collected, and cute, and if your company happens to be a gaggle of teenage girls, you might have a squealing good time. Otherwise, just turn down the lights and turn your mind off for ninety minutes' worth of dumb, low-budget fun.
If that's the approach you take to watching Carver's Gate, you might not be disappointed. The props are obviously smoke machines, black light, and rubber masks. The characters are decidedly one-dimensional. And the inspirations for the plot are something less than inspirational, even for 1995. And yet, there's something about this movie that makes you want to like it.
That something is Michael Pere. Pere has the most important (though not all) qualities of a leading man: a handsome face, a resonating voice, and an ability to appear cool in the most ridiculous situations. If James Bond were an American, Pere might be the next Timothy Dalton.
But, alas, this movie was made for television, and like so many other attempts at TV-movie greatness, this one has but a single attraction. (Take William Hurt in the SciFi Channel's take on Dune, for example.)
The rest is a throwaway story about a virtual-reality video game called Afterlife that makes its players feel as though they really are in another world, fighting demons and ghosts and whatnot. Inevitably, some people become addicted to the game, and a policeman of sorts (Pere's Carver) is needed to bring them back out.
The monsters are so real indeed that some of them cross over into the physical world, don rubber masks, and start attacking everyday folks, who inhabit a dark, misty environment not unlike dozens of others in the annals of sci-fi. (Picture Blade Runner on a made-for-TV budget.)
Throughout it all, Pere remains the focal point of our attention and hope for better entertainment. He is cool, collected, and cute, and if your company happens to be a gaggle of teenage girls, you might have a squealing good time. Otherwise, just turn down the lights and turn your mind off for ninety minutes' worth of dumb, low-budget fun.
Highly recommended for a geek party. What do I mean by that? If you have, or are working on, a science or engineering degree and are a fan of both sci-fi and goofy comedies, then get four friends together, buy a case of beer, and stay up late watching this low-budget masterpiece. It's so stupid and pointless, you'll almost miss how funny and clever it is. The earliest feature-length effort of director John Carpenter ("Halloween") and writer Dan O'Bannon ("Alien"). Perhaps most noteworthy for what it predicts about those two budding careers, it also gives us the lasting contributions of a beachball-shaped alien pet and a talking bomb that can only be defused by phenomenological argument. Quirky, classic stuff.