Truly Dreadful Film

The Worst Film Ever

Brilliant and touching

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I really like this movie for a number of reasons.First it delivers the shocks and the laughs almost at the same time.It does not pretend to be high art.This movie is fun in a lot of ways. If you have not seen it, you know right at the start that the greedy bunch of relatives and hangers on are going to be dispatched one by one. Part of the fun is guessing who is going to be next on the list. Stella Stevens has seldom looked better than she does in this movie. She has a terrific body and that alone is worth the price of admission. But there's so much more. The cast is comprised of mostly character actors who have had some connection with the bizarre and macabre cinema before. Among the cast members are Victor Buono, Elsa Lanchester, Roddy McDowell, Jamie Farr, Farley Granger, John McGiver and Bernard Fox. Needless to say everybody in the cast gets what they so richly deserve. But the final supreme joke involving Bernard Fox and John McGiver is the topper!

This is a pretty black little film, and I actually really like it. It makes you wonder how they got the money to put it together and got all the celebrities to be in it. Roddy McDowell and Stella Stevens were fresh off of "Poseidon Adventure." Was this a good career move? Who cares? They were both actors who were willing to work, even if it meant doing dumb movies.Stella Stevens plays a woman carrying out the wishes of her lover, that she marry him after he is dead. That's how the movie STARTS, and it keeps going from there! What follows is a combination of campy 70's sitcom humor, a "And Then There Were None"-style "whodunnit" mystery and some grisly, inventive death scenes.The pace is brisk as it moves to a surprise ending that is both satisfying and pretty disturbing for a "comedy." I respect a film that is willing to pretend to be all light and funny, then end so hatefully! The theme of this film is that everyone is money-grubbing, selfish and weak. Nasty, black-hearted, TRULY WEIRD (the opening song just kills me) and I love it! And Stella Stevens is gorgeous and amazing, as always.

**some spoilers**My parents took me to see this movie when I was 6 and it seriously freaked me out for many years to come - especially the shower squishing scene. At that age, I certainly didn't recall anything funny about the film. After a 30 year hiatus, I watched it again last week and, though I did laugh out loud in a few spots, I would hardly call it a comedy. Granted, the whole wedding sequence was hilarious - especially the performance by Victor Buono (the minister). But the rest of the movie was just a game of which selfish, unlikable, poorly developed character would get killed off next and in what gruesome fashion they'd meet their end - basically just an exercise in sadism. This pattern reminded me a lot of "Final Destination 2", though at least that film had something resembling a likable character here and there. (even if only 2-dimensional) Maybe there's a generation gap at work here, or maybe I just don't like English humor as much as I thought I did. Either way, "Heathers" and "Dr. Strangelove" will always be the apex of dark comedies in my book to which all others are compared - and "Arnold" falls way short.

Ah, the brilliance of BCP films.....what can one say? At least this one is fun (just imagine a "Love American Style" episode if made by Hammer Films). Once again a mixture of has-been and never-were big and small-screen actors get bumped off in ways that will seem silly to veteran viewers of Brit-horror films such as TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS and VAULT OF HORROR. It even has the obligatory crappy Shani Wallis song (poor talented-but-totally-misused Shani).