Bernard Rose Movies

The third in director Sam Raimi's stylish, comic book-like horror trilogy that began with The Evil Dead (1982), this tongue-in-cheek sequel offers equal parts sword-and-sorcery-style action, gore, and comedy. Bruce Campbell returns as the one-armed Ash, now a supermarket employee ("Shop Smart...Shop S-Mart") who is transported by the powers of a mysterious book back in time with his Oldsmobile '88 to the 14th century medieval era. Armed only with a shotgun, his high school chemistry textbook, and a chainsaw that mounts where his missing appendage once resided, the square-jawed, brutally competent Ash quickly establishes himself as a besieged kingdom's best hope against an "army of darkness" currently plaguing the land. Since the skeleton warriors have been resurrected with the aid of the Necronomicon (the same tome that can send Ash back to his own time) he agrees to face the enemy in battle. Ash also finds romance of a sort along the way with a beautiful damsel in distress, Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), and contends with his own doppelganger after mangling an important incantation. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Director Bernard Rose and screenwriter David Yallop were inspired by the real-life Hulten/Jones murder case of 1944, famously known as The Cleft Chin Murder Case, after a London cabbie was found murdered. It was a sensation in England, where American soldier Karl Hulten and British showgirl Elizabeth Maud Jones became household names -- even beating out news of the war. In the film, Karl Hulten (Kiefer Sutherland), is an American GI who is stalking the black market of London after stealing an army truck and going AWOL. There he meets up with Betty Jones (Emily Lloyd), a stripper with a deluded fantasy world view formed by watching a steady stream of Hollywood film noir and gangster pictures. Seeing Karl, who claims he is Chicago Joe doing advance work in London for encroaching Chicago gangsters, Betty takes the opportunity to set her fantasies to life as she connives Karl into a crime spree of petty crimes. With luck on their side, the spree keeps escalating, until Betty urges Karl to commit the ultimate crime -- murder. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Bernard Rose directed this look at the sordid underside of the film business and one man's attempts to come to terms with his mortality in this fallen world, in a story loosely based on Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Beckman (Danny Huston), a hot-shot talent agent at the powerful Media Talent Agency, unexpectedly dies, and soon his colleagues are scrambling among themselves over the shards of Ivan's leftover business, with Barry Oaks (Adam Krentzman) eager to take over representation of Don West (Peter Weller), a major star Ivan signed shortly before his death. Everyone assumes that Ivan died of a drug overdose, but as viewers watch his last few days in flashback, they learn that Ivan was diagnosed with a severe case of lung cancer as he was trying to put together a deal with firebrand director Danny McTeague (James Merendino), actress Constanza Vero (Valeria Golino), and West. As the dynamic businessman is forced to confront his mortality, he is dragged into a binge of booze, drugs, and women with West, while he also tries to decide how to confront his family and his girlfriend Charlotte (Lisa Enos) with the grim news about his health. Ivansxtc. (To Live and Die in Hollywood) was shot using digital video equipment and a skeleton crew -- according to Rose, a reaction in part to studio interference over his 1997 adaptation of another Tolstoy work, Anna Karenina. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Eleven-year-old Charlotte Burke, the neglected daughter of Ben Cross and Glenne Headley, passes out on the school playground and dreams of visiting a house she'd previously drawn in her composition book. She imagines another visit to her "paper house" while playing hide-and-seek. Experimenting, Burke draws a figure in the window of the house; the next time she dreams, she meets a young boy, as lonely as she. Convinced that she wields a large degree of power in her pencil, Burke draws a picture of her father, Cross, hoping that in doing so he will return home. But Burke is dissatisfied with the picture, and crosses it out--whereupon Cross shows up in her dreams as a murderous stalker. What happens next is a maelstrom of psychological horror, told completely from the child's point of view. Paperhouse is based on Marianne Dreams a novel by Catherine Storr. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Snuff-Movie, an outing by the celebrated music video-director-turned-horror maestro Bernard Rose (Paperhouse, Candyman), references both the Charles Manson/Sharon Tate murders and Michael Findlay's notorious grindhouse film Snuff (1974), in its tale of a slasher movie director's involvement with off-camera butchering. Jeroen Krabbé stars as Boris Arkadin, the popular creator of stomach-churning cinematic gore fests. His life takes a dark turn late one evening in 1975, when, after a private screening of his latest opus, a group of maniacs turn up at his mansion and slaughter all of the overnight guests -- including Boris' pregnant wife, Mary (Lisa Enos). Cut to the present day, in London. A young actress, Wendy (also played by Enos), decides to audition for one of Arkadin's films, and accepts the director's subsequent invitation (despite the admonitions of her boyfriend, Andy) to stay at the Arkadin mansion overnight. Soon, Andy is wracked with horror to discover that additional murders are occurring and being broadcast live, online. But are these homicides real or simply staged contrivances for another film? Teri Harrison and Alastair Mackenzie co-star; Rose authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Based on a story written by Leo Tolstoy in response to Ludwig van Beethoven's eponymous composition, director Bernard Rose's mature dissection of modern marriage tells the tale of a wealthy philanthropist (Danny Huston) who becomes intensely possessive of his wife (Elisabeth Röhm) -- a beautiful and talented pianist. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi