DVD Collectors Online

The Final Countdown, a review by Rich

The Final Countdown



The time is now. The place is aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz, America's mightiest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier on maneuvers in the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, a freak electrical storm engulfs the ship and triggers the impossible: The Nimitz is hurtled back in time to December 6, 1941, mere hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As the enemy fleet speeds towards Hawaii, the warship's Captain (Kirk Douglas), a Defense Department expert (Martin Sheen), a maverick Air Wing Commander (James Farentino) and a desperate Senator in the Roosevelt administration (Charles Durning) must choose between the unthinkable. Do they allow the Japanese to complete their murderous invasion or launch a massive counter-strike that will forever change the course of history?

Once described as the 'Twilight Zone on steroids' with it's larger budget, I couldn't have put it better myself.
I am much more interested in the concept than the delivery, it is a great what-if scenario and one would of hoped the film matched the potential of the idea. Sadly it was disappointing in many areas, the transition scenes are comicaly bad, I never warmed to many of the cast including Douglas, the ending is telegraphed, it has dated poorly, there are no battle scenes, and very little suspense. I would love to see this rewritten and made with todays technology and financial clout.
The outcome leaves you feeling cheated, and the film overall never met it's potential.
 

(From Riches Random Reviews on May 11th, 2009)

Vault of Horror, a review by addicted2dvd

Vault of Horror
Get ready for to descend into the darkness of horror! In this "frequently macabre and eerily funny" (Cue) collection of tales, five unsuspecting hotel guests step out of an elevator into a vault deep underground. Trapped with no way out, each guest shares a gruesome story of an encounter with death. But as the stories unfold, the men begin to suspect that their presence in the vault is no coincidence, and they may have already found that the only way out...is death!

My Thoughts:
I got this double feature DVD (Tales from the Crypt/Vault of Horror) cheap last month during Amazon's huge horror sale. I watched "Tales from the Crypt" last month during my month long marathon... but never got around to "Vault of Horror"... so thought I would watch that disc now. I never seen this movie before today. I really enjoyed it. I especially liked 2 of the segments... the first one with the vampires... obviously since I love vampire stories... and the last one with the voodoo. The only extra on this disc was the trailer for the movie... Though I do find it odd that the trailer was in B&W when the movie was in color. Another thing I found odd on this DVD is... since the only extra was the trailer... why did they make a special features menu?... they could have saved some work... and us a click of the remote if they just put the trailer link on the main menu where the special features link was.

(From Weekend Movie Marathon: Unwatched DVDs on November 17th, 2007)

Pete's Pilots, a review by addicted2dvd

MacGyver


Pilot
A mysterious explosion demolishes and underground lab. Can MacGyver single-handedly rescue the trapped scientists, and stop a deadly chemical leak?

My Thoughts:
This show is a weird case to me. It is a show I enjoy watching quite a bit really. But for some reason it is a show that is out of site out of mind. For some reason I don't go through the episodes of this show like I do most. More like I will get in the mood to watch some episodes. I will usually watch a handful of episodes and then forget about the series for a year or two. This is probably why I only have the first couple seasons of the series so far... though I would like to have them all. The pilot episode is a good introduction to the character. Of course you feel like... Yeah... right... like that would really work (in this case stopping an acid leak with chocolate bars)... but I think that is part of the fun of the series. Just to see the outrageous things he comes up with.

my Rating:

(From Pete's Pilots on March 25th, 2010)