if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This screen adaptation of George Orwell's famous novel 1984 was made for the BBC SUNDAY-NIGHT THEATRE show and scripted by QUATERMASS scribe Nigel Kneale. It's chiefly remembered today for being the production that catapulted star Peter Cushing to later fame as a Hammer Horror icon, as it got him the Frankenstein role in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. He's certainly impressive as Winston Smith, bringing a mix of steely inhumanity and deep-rooted thought and feeling. As for the production itself, it's a sterling piece of work, a little cheap and stagey by modern tastes - there's no disguising the "filmed play" feel. A sterling cast including fellow luminaries Andre Morell and Donald Pleasence help to bring the material to life, but overall it's Kneale who comes out the winner for successfully getting to the novel's icy heart.

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce: "HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang." We've crossed a Line, here in this company (the "united $tate$"), where "alternative facts" (LIES) are disseminated daily and Fat Cat Fascism is The Order of the Day. Fat Cat Fascists: CASHists. Alternative facts: ALTFAX, in Newspeak. At the head of it all, to quote Orwell, "some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization." (Just the other day, we were told that a "massacre" had taken place in Bowling Green, Kentucky- "The Bowling Green Massacre," it was dubbed. Only it didn't happen. It was all a LIE. An "alternative fact" from, apparently, an Alternative Universe...) (From the book, by George Orwell: "She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her.") (And: "The heresy of heresies was common sense.") In this particular video version of George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Donald Pleasance, in a small part as Syne, has one of my favorite lines. When he suspects that Big Brother suspects him of Thoughtcrime, he blurts: "Was it something I said...?" "Forget what you've forgotten," Peter Cushing as Winston Smith suggests. But therein lies the rub: short of lobotomies all around, is such a thing even possible...? With 65 MILLION refugees from War(s) and Global Warming knocking on the door hoping to be let in, we're already well past the Tipping Point. (Orwell: "Do you know what time of day it is?") What this company needs is competent Leadership (if such a thing exists), although such talk could get you kil-

This great, silver age rendition of "1984" is available via peer-to-peer, although very rare. Well, the budget is rock bottom, exteriors are worth twenty dollars at most...BUT! Acting is just great and lines are delivered in a mostly heartfelt, credible and professional manner. Cushing at his best. On the pop-culture side, i strongly disagree with the poster who claimed " Nowadays Big Brother is little more than the title of a cheap, spineless TV series. Back then it was a terrifying possibility.". Well, judging by the amount of cameras, concealed cameras, data storage, speed traps and how recent international events of magnitude have been handled by media, we can safely guess big brother is more alive today than he ever might have been in the imagination of the most warped writer harboring the most sinister hallucinations just a few decades ago. I find the character of Julia pretty well acted. The final plot twist, although not so original, is very well rendered and the final encounter between the two is gut-wrenching. The torture scenes are good and i loved how big brother diminished food supplies in a row, only to save the day increasing them a little, when none ever recalls the past shortages...sounds much like petrol prices to me. Worth watching more than once.

Difficult to find, and largely overshadowed by the 1984 film, this live television performance from 1954 deserves to be made more widely available.At the time controversial for its scenes of torture and sexuality, it provoked an outburst of Thought Police-style outrage among politicians and assorted editorialists. In fact, the program seems brutal even today, with its depictions of comprehensive hopelessness and deliberate cruelty.Peter Cushing was probably the most famous live television personality in Britain at the time, and he puts in a typically excellent performance. Yvonne Mitchell and Andre Morell neatly tie up the remaining emotional possibilities in this dystopia, with the rest of the cast expressing only various shades of despair. A very young Donald Pleasence plays Newspeak-auteur Syme, confronted here not by "Ultimate Evil," but rather doublethink and "Double-Plus-Ungood.""We are the dead."