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The Last Days of Pompeii, a review by GSyren

Title	Die letzten Tage von Pompeji (The Last Days of Pompeii)
Year	1984
Director	Peter R. Hunt
Stars	Ned Beatty, Brian Blessed, Ernest Borgnine, Nicholas Clay, Lesley-Anne Down
Overview	This costume series portrays aspects of life in Pompeii, a coastal luxury resort near Naples catering for the very rich of imperial Rome, mainly before but culminating in the eruption of the Vesuvian volcano, which wipes it from the face of the earth. The main characters include Diomed, a common upstart merchant whose self-made riches from trade allow him to consider running for political office against sitting city magistrate Quintus and an impoverished aristocratic marriage for his daughter Temple; the cultivated Greek Glaucus; the gladiator Lydon; the noble-born Antonius and his sister Ione, the evil Isis-priest Arbaces who is after (their) money and power; the persecution-fearing Christian slaves Petrus, his true love Chloe and their secret leader Olinthus.
My thoughts	I enjoyed the 1935 film The Last Days of Pompeii, so I thought I might enjoy this one. A lot of people praised it on IMDb, too. But it was a bit of a letdown for me. There are several reasons; 1) It's originally a three part mini-series. It would probably have been better if it was presented as such here, but it was presented as one 4 1/2 hour film (albeit split on two discs). It would probably have been easier to digest in smaller chunks. 2) Mixing great actors with mediocre ones is a risky business. It takes a really good director to pull it off successfully. Peter Hunt isn't good enough. 3) The whole things seems to be a whole bunch of subplots in search of a story. For me it basically became a four hour waiting period until the volcano erupts. 4) The gladiator sequences may have been exciting three decades ago, but has been done so much better since. On the plus side, Ernest Borgnine was great, as ever. Franco Nero too. It was fun to see Fulci favorite Catriona MacCall in a non-horror role. The destruction of Pompeii was quite well done for a TV production, even though the sequence wasn't all that thrilling. To sum it up - not all bad, but way too long. Three stars is generous.
Rating

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on April 4th, 2013)

The Cold, a review by Jimmy

Title: The Cold (1984)

Genre: Horror
Director: Bill Rebane           
Rating: Unrated
Length: 1h24
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Tom Blair
Jim Iaquinta
Carol Perry
Stuart Osborne
Don Arthur

Plot:
Nine people are invited to a secluded mansion at the request of three millionaires. It seems the millionaires have invited these people to participate in a game, wich involves their deepest fears, for a prize of $1,000,000. Each guest must face and survive their encounters in hopes of winning the money.

Can I say that I live an overdose of Bill Rebane's movies, 3 in 2 days (I've not written a review of The Demon of Ludlow, because this movie is just stupid)... The basic idea of this movie is good since this is a reality show long before their creation, but this is the only good comment that I will make. The acting is incredibly bad : one of the girl had absolutly no acting talent she's in the film because she had agreed to do the nude parts. There are absolutly no characters building, most of them die and we have no idea of who they are. I'm sure that this movie had no script : the story change continuously even the end make no sense since this killer is never mentions or seen in the movie before the end.

Probably the stupidest movie in this boxset.

Rating :

(From The little known movie review depot on January 25th, 2009)

Tom's TV Finales marathon, a review by Tom

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Die Camper: Staffel 7-9 (2003/Germany) IMDb | Wikipedia AL!VE, Turbine Medien (Germany) Length: 858 min. Video: Full Frame 1.33:1 Audio: German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Subtitles:

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Die Camper
Season 9.13 Winterzauber

I only ever saw the first season of this series and stopped watching it in the beginning of the second season when the whole cast was replaced which really bothered me. I bought this DVD set with all nine seasons, because it is the only way to get the first season on DVD. And as the set cost me only as much as usually a single season sells, it was a good deal.
I decided to watch the final episode for this marathon even though I didn't watch the rest. This is a series, where you can watch any episode and not having missed anything. And as I doubt I will watch all the nine seasons any time soon.
The final episode is just an average episode. Not hinting in any way that this is the end of the series. It is nice enough to watch, but nothing special.

Rating:

(From Tom's TV Finales marathon on April 13th, 2013)