Erika Carlson Movies

In Paul Verhoeven's wild sci-fi action movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a 21st-century construction worker who discovers that his entire memory of the past derives from a memory chip implanted in his brain. Schwarzenegger learns that he's actually a secret agent who had become a threat to the government, so those in power planted the chip and invented a domestic lifestyle for him. Once he has realized his true identity, he travels to Mars to piece together the rest of his identity, as well as to find the man responsible for his implanted memory. Verhoeven has created a fast, furious action film with Total Recall, filled with impressive stunts and (literally) eye-popping visuals. Though the film bears only a passing resemblance to the Philip K. Dick short story it was based on ("We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"), the movie is an entertaining, if very violent, ride. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

While Salvador wasn't Oliver Stone's first film (a pair of offbeat horror stories preceded it), it defined his style of fiercely dramatic, politically oriented filmmaking, staked out his territory as one of the major directors of the 1980s and 1990s, and remains one of his strongest works to date. Veteran photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods) has been taking his camera to the world's trouble spots for over 20 years; while he does good work, Boyle's fondness for booze and drugs, and his colossal arrogance, have given him a reputation that's left him practically unemployable. Broke and with no immediate prospects, Boyle and his buddy Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi), an out-of-work disc jockey, head to El Salvador, where Boyle is convinced that he can scare up some lucrative freelance work amidst the nation's political turmoil. However, when Boyle and Rock witness the execution of a student by government troops just as they enter the country, it becomes clear that this war is more serious than they were expecting. Increasingly convinced that El Salvador is a disaster starting to happen, Boyle eventually decides that it's time to get out; but he has fallen in love with a woman named Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), and he doesn't want to leave her behind. James Woods gives one of his best performances as Boyle; and the passion of Stone's message, aided by the power of its truth (the film is based on actual events), propels the film forward. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This inept horror film is a rare treat for fans of laughably bad cinema. From the opening flashback, in which a group of hooded cultists chop off a woman's hand and the obviously rubber appendage bounces to the floor, Macabra starts to amuse. By the time the action shifts to present-day Mexico, and the film's heroine (Samantha Eggar) has a discussion with a silver-mine worker as to the sex of a mine and whether silver mines get jealous, it becomes hilarious. The plot concerns the fabled "left hand of power" belonging to Satan, which possesses people's minds, forcing them to chop off their own hands until a priest (Stuart Whitman) turns back the evil. The most unintentionally amusing scenes involve the victims doing everything in their power to chop off their own possessed left hands. They roll around on the floor, put their hands under speeding trains, and force doctors to amputate them at gunpoint. Meanwhile, director Alfredo Zacharias films some explosions and many authentic ruins to promote the idea that Macabra is a professional motion picture. Even in its best moments, however, this film can only approximate a particularly weak episode of Fantasy Island. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

"Names have been changed to protect the innocent" in this infamous fictionalization of the tragic mass suicide of 914 followers of Jim Jones' "People's Temple" in Guyana in the fall of 1978. Rev. James Johnson (Stuart Whitman) is a charismatic but deeply paranoid man of the cloth who moves his flock from Northern California to a settlement in Guyana, where he intends to create an interracial socialist utopia. Addicted to prescription drugs and convinced he is surrounded by enemies, Johnson rules his colony, "Johnsontown," with an iron fist, torturing anyone who violates his rule, seducing both women and men from his congregation, confiscating money and property from his followers, and forcing them to work long hours in the fields for meager rations. Lee O'Brien (Gene Barry), a California congressman who represents the district Johnson and his followers once called home, has received complaints from friends and relatives of the Johnsontown settlers, convinced something is wrong. O'Brien and a team of reporters fly to Guyana to find out the truth about what is happening; Johnson is convinced O'Brien has seen too much, and armed gunmen ambush his party before they can return to the United States (with a number of Johnsontown residents who wish to leave). After a failed attempt to arrange exile in the Soviet Union, Johnson convinced his followers to perform a "final revolutionary act" before authorities arrive. This oddball blend of fact and fiction also features Joseph Cotten and John Ireland as Johnson's lawyers, Yvonne de Carlo as Johnsontown's press officer, and Bradford Dillman as the doctor who mixes the punch for Johnson's final gathering. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this broad comedy-western set in 1908 Colorado, Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed team up as Sam Longwood and Joe Knox, two con-men who once worked as a team. They reunite in order to get revenge upon their third partner, Jack Colby (Robert Culp), who used the trio's ill-gotten gains to become a high society big shot. Oliver Reed's ridiculously stereotypical portrayal of an Indian goes down in film history as the most absurd casting of a Native-American role since Howard Keel's "distinctive" portrayal of Levi Walking Bear in The War Wagon. Kay Lenz also appears as the sexy prostitute Thursday, who has an affair with Sam. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi