Special Effects

This is a really underrated Cohen film. It has great art direction and terrific performances by Zoe and Eric. The film obviously borrows big from Hitchcock but it never feels like it's stealing overtly (like the way certain DePalma films feel) Watch this if you can find a copy.

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS CONTAINED HEREIN. This is an okay one-time watch, but don't expect anything spectacular. The only thing that made this interesting for me was the "cheese factor." In other words: bad acting, bad hair-do's, terrible music soundtrack, moronic plot, lazy directing. This cheese does, however, get tiresome quickly. Larry Cohen obviously thought he was being oh-so-clever when he made this. Like wow, I'm a director, maybe I killed someone. Please! He even screwed this up at the end by making the police detective character "the director." Lame. It is also obvious, Cohen got his idea from Brian DePalma's far superior "Body Double." At least with "Body Double" DePalma took the cheese factor to the max. Re-watch that instead.

For the first 20 minutes, mary jean is running away from someone named keefe. We're not sure why. The script is terrible. The acting is terrible. The background music is terrible. I'm surprised they remembered to put film in the camera. When she escapes into someone's workspace, he murders her. And now the cops are pretty sure the husband did it. That seems to be the guy that was chasing her at the beginning. The husband is sure that Neville, her director did the deed. This film has it all! Frontal female nudity, rear male nudity. Violence. Lots of it. Murder. A couple of em. How are the lawyer and the director connected? Who cares. Movies have to be real bad to bail out halfway through, so i stuck it out to the bitter end. Ecchh. Written and directed by Larry Cohen. Shows on the epix channel. I wouldn't go to any trouble to see this one. Pretty lame.

"Special Effects" could easily pass for a weak episode of "Columbo", except for two things. There is nudity and there is no Peter Falk. I can just imagine an episode titled "Reel Death" on my television screen. This is not far fetched, as director Larry Cohen wrote no less than three episodes of "Columbo". Unfortunately "Special Effects" has problems. The gorgeous Zoe Tamerlis would not be one of them, that is until she opens her mouth. Her acting was perfect in Ms.45 since she played a mute. The New York locations and Eric Bogosian's artistically decorated film studio offer more entertainment than the film itself, which is almost awful ........................... MERK

A failed movie director kills an actress he is auditioning for a film. He then begins to make a film about her life and tries to frame her boyfriend in the process. An interesting idea is hampered by rather uneven performances, poor plotting, and a low budget. One wonders what the master of the genre Hitchcock could have done with this. My rating: 5 out of 10.

After making a disastrous, special-effects laden film, a movie director decides to make a low budget biography of a murdered actress. To make her murder look as real as possible the director murders the actress himself. Could have been a very good film about snuff films, but the film's direction is a letdown. Zoe (Ms. 45) Lund (in a dual role) and particularly Eric Bogosian are very good in their respective roles of the murdered actress and the actress playing her, and the Cecil B. Demented director. Brian DePalma would have had a field day with this film.