Robert Houston Movies

While it takes strength and determination to compete in the TransPacific Yacht Race, a 2,200 mile voyage from California to Hawaii, Rock the Boat records the journey of one crew in this race who display a different kind of bravery -- all 10 men on board are HIV-positive, and are battling not only the ocean and the elements, but also a disease that threatens to kill them and a stereotype that judges them unfairly. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Because of her thieving new husband, a young woman is thrown into jail where she is harassed by fellow prisoners and by the warden. Before long, hubby gets a chance to take on the identity of a guard so he can help her escape. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Rock star Adam Ant tops the cast in Trust Me. The premise is as old as dirt, maybe older: art dealer Ant decides that his paintings would be far more valuable if the artists were dead. Now comes the twist: Ant fully intends to make certain that his artists are dead. In particular danger is Ant's chief protege, Brian Packer, who is on the verge of outliving his usefulness. Slapstick, satire and irony are blended in equal measure, resulting in a diverting (if not brilliant) filmic experience. Cast as another art dealer is Barbara Bain, who after years on stage and television is here making her theatrical-feature debut. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This atrocious sequel to the 1977 horror classic is padded with so much of that film's footage that it seems more like a rerun than a new story. The entire cast seems to have lengthy flashbacks of the previous movie's events, including -- in what must be a cinematic first -- the German shepherd dog. The remaining screen time is spent on an uninvolving battle between some bland motocross bikers and the cannibal hillfolk. To be fair, director Wes Craven has stated that the film was extensively tampered with prior to release. That may get Craven off the hook, but doesn't make this muddled mess any easier to watch. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

A hugely successful crime-comedy from Cinema City and director Eric Tsang, Aces Go Places set records at the box office and made a star of Sam Hui. Hui plays King Kong, a clever thief who steals a cache of diamonds from some gangsters, framing another thief called White Glove for the crime. That's when the bald detective Albert Au (Karl Maka), who has been chasing King Kong for quite some time, pairs with the volatile female Superintendent Ho (Sylvia Chang) to bring him to justice. King Kong ends up joining the good guys, with the requisite hostile patter firmly in evidence, to defeat White Glove and another bad guy dubbed Mad Max (Chen Sing), and recover the diamonds from the hiding place where they were left by King Kong's dead accomplice. The English version is missing ten minutes of the comedy which makes this movie special, and the fight scenes are nothing to write home about, but the original's mix of broad action and even broader slapstick made it a hit, spawning four sequels over the next seven years and a failed 1997 attempt at revival with a new cast. Dean Shek co-stars with Cho Tat-wah, Raymond Wong, and cult filmmaker Tsui Hark in a small role. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Horror auteur Wes Craven followed his threadbare but horrifically compelling cult classic Last House on the Left with this wonderfully demented morality fable about a bloody war of attrition between two extremely different families. The story opens on the journey of the Carters, a mildly dysfunctional extended family led by patriarch "Big Bob" Carter (Russ Grieve), as they travel across the California desert in search of an inherited silver mine. When a broken axle leaves them stranded in the middle of a former nuclear testing site, their attempts to find help lead them unwittingly into the territory of a savage family of cave-dwelling cannibals, the apparent progeny of the bearlike Jupiter (James Whitworth) and an abducted prostitute. Jupiter's eldest son Pluto (professional movie weirdo Michael Berryman) leads the first brutal attack on the defenseless Carters who, through necessity, are driven to equally extreme measures in order to survive. Though the film is not overtly bloody, the scenes depicting this confrontation are rendered with an unflinching directness, and the violations visited on the Carters are so brutal as to make the survivors' regression into savagery all the more convincing. No one is spared from the nightmare: Jupiter's boys have even kidnapped the youngest member of the Carter family -- a mere infant -- to serve as fodder for their next barbecue, and the baby becomes the main point of contention between the rival clans. Craven nevertheless refuses to take the easy way out by depicting his "monsters" as soullessly evil; parallels between either family's "values" are clearly drawn as the differences between the two clans begin to blur. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide