SHOCK digs up more gold from the Siskel & Ebert anti-horror vaults.
After seeing a random Facebook post on writer/director Don Mancini’s Facebook page, a clip of late, sometimes great, film critics Siskel & Ebert tearing his CHILD’S PLAY 2 a new arsehole on their now defunct AT THE MOVIES TV show, SHOCK re-posted it and then started posting more clips of S&E – and their contemporary, Leonard Maltin – kicking around horror flicks for sport and cheap yucks.
The response has been strong enough that we’ve started combing YouTube for other vintage critiques. Some of them will make the hardcore horror film throw their laptops off the balcony or smash their SmartPhones to shite.
But in some cases, the verbal smackdown is deserved.
Witness this classic clip from 1983, wherein S&E warm up their spotlight on the Roger Moore James Bond flick OCTOPUSSY with a sneering review of director Harry Bromley Davenport’s 1982 British ALIEN rip-off XTRO.
First of all, it’s fun to see a greasy “Video Nasty” spoken about in the same breath as a blockbuster Bond flick.
Secondly, despite their smugness (“most monster movies aren’t any good” says Ebert), I can’t say I disagree with their review. XTRO never grabbed me. I always found it cheap, dull, dark and depressing with its highlight seeing a woman have her belly expand and then give birth to a full size man.
But adult alien infants and stretched-to-the-max vaginas do not a good movie make.
Check out the lads flipping their birds to poor old XTRO. The audio is hissy and low, but put your ear close to your device of choice and you’ll be able to absorb their indifference.
