Sadly Over-hyped

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This mini-series was shown on Finnish TV on last Christmas. What brought me to watch it was a picture on a TV guide magazine and the premise: "scientists are trying to recover memories from a frozen head." OK... As a fan of sci-fi in general I did some searching on the Web and was impressed enough to decide that I would spend some 4 hours of my precious Christmas holiday watching this one. I wasn't disappointed.Cold Lazarus tells the story of a group of scientists in the future who are trying to recover memories from a hundreds-of-years old frozen severed head of a screenwriter Daniel Feeld, a character who was introduced in the earlier mini-series "Karaoke". (Which was also shown on the day before "Cold Lazarus") The man died to cancer in "Karaoke", but apparently he decided to get his head frozen.The future world is a truly strange place where giant media empire controls the people. It seems truly unethical to make entertainment from a dead man's most painful memories. (Including very disturbing images of sexual abuse as a child.) Then there was also this group called RON (Reality Or Nothing) who fought with weapons against the media. Interesting analogy to today.Technical quality was overall very good. The special effects were fine, although some set pieces and especially props had a "cheap" look on them. That didn't bother me too much."Cold Lazarus" is always worth watching.

I am not a fan of Dennis Potter, although I believe that he could have produced good work if the producers of his TV series had been less indulgent, and had forced him to cut his scripts in the interest of wit, point, and (above all) brevity.I once sat through "The Singing Detective", which was not bad apart from the umpteen pieces of repeat footage. I even endured the Bob Hoskins version of "Pennies From Heaven", which I thought would never end, and which was padded out with surely every third-rate song from the 1920's. At least half of it should have been left on the cutting-room floor. The shortened film version starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters was a perfect validation of the adage "Less is more".In another piece Potter used grownups in the roles of children. This was a good basic idea, but he did nothing inventive with it. I found it as watchable as a one-joke comedy.Some of Dennis Potter's other pieces were so dull and slow-moving that I gave up after ten minutes. But none was a feeble as "Cold Lazarus", in which it was proposed that all records of past history had been inexplicably lost (HOW?), and in which one character came up with a BRILLIANT (?) idea for a new TV series, which clearly was nothing more than a rehash of those old mystery/horror TV series produced by Rod Serling and others.Maybe Dennis Potter had never watched TV back in those days. A pity, because he could have learned a lot.

This story is a very good story in itself and if you've seen the story (behind Lazarus) you will get even more out of the serie. I enjoyed this "realistic" sci-fi stuff more than most of the hollywood style bang-boom-big explosion kind of action sci-fi.But I must warn you, if you hate each and every drama movie, go watch something else. All other people should watch this one.

I consider Dennis Potter's "The Singing Detective" the best thing ever to appear on TV. "Karaoke-Cold Lazarus" are contenders for second place. It is vital to see Karaoke first because Dennis Potter wrote them as a part of a whole.Potter racing against the clock to finish Lazarus before he died. They are funny, weird, mysterious and profound -- a rare combination for any medium. It helps to know a bit of Potter's bio to fully appreciate the depth of this accomplishment.My favorite moment came when slimy TV producer Siltz exults in the opportunity to own a writer's mind (literally) in order to exploit it. I can imagine the smile on Potter's face when he first conceived that scene, seeing it as a metaphor for his showbiz struggles with the Siltzes of the world.Anyone who appreciates great writing will love this. Dennis Potter wrote a brilliant script about his own death. I doubt anyone will top his feat for a long time.