Colin Skeaping Movies

A British production created by Monty Python alumni, this film concerns an inept chocolate-factory executive (Tyler Butterworth) who accidentally knocks three workers into a vat. The product is an incredible hit with consumers, though one of the workers' widows (Vanessa Redgrave) is considering blackmail. ~ John Bush, Rovi

Gene Wilder directed and wrote (along with Terence Marsh) this mild farce which is a pale reminder of Wilder's glory days in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Wilder plays ham radio actor Larry Abbot, who takes his fiancee Vickie Pearle (Gilda Radner) out to meet his relations on a gloomy country estate before they are married. The creepy clan is lorded over by the bizarre Aunt Kate (Dom DeLuise), who keeps babbling about a local rampaging werewolf. As Larry and Vickie try to spend a quiet weekend in the mansion, they are assaulted with all manners of spooky goings-on -- the kind of routines that were already growing whiskers when Abbott and Costello first dusted them off over fifty years ago. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The second of the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones epics is set a year or so before the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1984). After a brief brouhaha involving a precious vial and a wild ride down a raging Himalyan river, Indy (Harrison Ford) gets down to the problem at hand: retrieving a precious gem and several kidnapped young boys on behalf of a remote East Indian village. His companions this time around include a dimbulbed, easily frightened nightclub chanteuse (Kate Capshaw), and a feisty 12-year-old kid named Short Round (Quan Ke Huy). Throughout, the plot takes second place to the thrills, which include a harrowing rollercoaster ride in an abandoned mineshaft and Indy's rescue of the heroine from a ritual sacrifice. There are also a couple of cute references to Raiders of the Lost Ark, notably a funny variation of Indy's shooting of the Sherpa warrior. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

While wandering the English moors on vacation, college yanks David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) happen upon a quaint pub with a mysterious patronage who warn them not to leave the road when walking after dark. Irreverent of such advice as characters in horror films always are, the two decide to find a short cut....David wakes up in the hospital with a nasty bite wound to his shoulder; the freshly deceased, and rapidly decomposing, Jack arrives soon after to deliver the grim news that, unless he commits suicide, David will become a werewolf when the moon is full. David dismisses the encounter as a hallucination, but all indicators point to lycanthrope; evenings of barking and bloodletting follow closely behind. While the story is thin and much of the tongue-in-cheek humor is overdone, there are plenty of genuine jolts thanks to makeup guru Rick Baker's eye-popping special effects. The werewolf, resembling a cross between a bear and a wolverine, appears frighteningly real, and, given the fantastic premise, the gore is most convincing (although surprisingly and refreshingly scant). The hospital dream sequences are creative, and the scenes in which the werewolf runs rampant through downtown London are particularly good. In all, An American Werewolf in London is an original, atmospheric film that manages both to scare and amuse. While dismissed by most American critics upon its release, the film managed to secure a place in the annals of American cinema when Baker won an Academy Award for his amazing effects and creature designs. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi

This gory British horror satire features a hammy Michael Gough as Doctor Storm, the demented overseer of a bizarre health resort advertising "Hairy Holidays" for teenage hipsters -- on whom he secretly performs diabolical mind experiments, turning them into mindless automatons directed by a remote-control device. Those lucky enough to escape the doctor's operating table are invariably tracked down by a leather-clad bike gang or decapitated by the doctor's car (thanks to handy fender-mounted scythes). Into this trap falls pop music star Robin Askwith, whose quest for a stress-relieving getaway lands him in Gough's house of horrors. Oblivious, at first, to his impending fate (thanks to the diverting presence of the doctor's pretty niece, Vanessa Shaw), Askwith eventually realizes that the fellow patients look just a bit too relaxed for comfort. Ostensibly the blackest of black comedies, some aspects of the film actually presage Lindsay Anderson's far more sophisticated Britannia Hospital, though the satire here is far less intelligent. The biggest laughs are provided by the badly dated, ultra-mod '60s clothing and dialogue. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi