Reviews (39)

Very good horror film entry
Others put this film down comparing it to other less than imaginative horror films, but that is not the case at all. This is a film head and shoulders above the rest of the early 80's slasher films.Actually one of the best.The murderer in this movie is particularly vicious and cruel (that's what makes it way cool)obviously taking delight with each murder. (Notice the smile on the murderers face after one murder in particular?)Both funny and engrossing. Yes I agree with other reviews, the murders, at least some of them are imaginative , as well as clever.I liked the psychological bent of the film. A worthwhile way to spend an evening of video viewing. Give it a try.

Horror movie classic. Who is the killer? Best twists!
Here is another horror movie classic. College kids like this one. Melissa Sue Anderson (Little house on the Prarie) and a gaggle of other university students are being killed one by one. Each one of the students are a little on the crazy side, so no telling whom the killer may be. Her mom had died. Eventually her dad and herself move back into town and the family house. "Virginia" is really down and bothered. But she is making friends in school and considers herself to be in the Top Ten. Cast also includes Tracy Bregman (Days Of Our Lives, Young and the Restless, Bold and the Beautiful) and Glenn Ford (Superman [1978]). Can you guess who the killer is? This RCA home video print is not too good. The color is faded. The film being Canadian might have something to do with that. But this is a good film worth watching and good acting from Melissa Sue Anderson.

Highly Underrated Slasher
5 out 5 stars when it comes to slashers! Clever plot twists, inventive murder scenes, and a great build up to the ending. Plus: Melissa Sue Anderson is great as our lead character, Ginny. Worth a watch!

cheesy fun
okay so it isn't the best movie ever but it's fun and funny. i liked it.

You Say It's Your Birthday
Thanks to horror classics like Halloween, The Howling, and The Exorcist, the genre saw a resurgence in the 70's and 80's, not even matched by today's standards. More often then not though, most of them were just pale imatations of, the crazed killer stalking teens with raging hormones plot. Very few of these films broke away from the pack, comming up with a new spin, an exception is the mildly clever Happy Birthday To Me.

Thanks to severe head trauma, Virginia Wainwright, (Melissa Sue Anderson, who tried to shed her past role on TV's Little House, but hasn't done much since) part of her brain is damaged, to the point where she can't remember her recent past. When she returns to school at the Crawford Academy, she is welcomed into the Top Ten, a snooty social clique. Things turn deadly, as someone starts killing off the members of the group. With her 18th birthday approaching Virginia starts to doubt her own sanity, thinking that the killer's real identity, may indeed, be linked to her own forgotton past - or that she herself may even be the killer, acting out, during one of her blackouts.

Directed by Lee J. Thompson, who worked on the original Cape Fear and Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, elevates the film a bit, and makes you (almost) forget that it's really just a slasher flick. The interesting twist of the possiblity that the heroine may be the murderer is also kinda fun. The film is also given even more credability, by the prescence of the great Glenn Ford, as Dr. David Faraday. The script has all the familiar horror film cliches, of course but as I said, it's still got enough there to make it watchable and even fun.

Happy Birthday To Me is not yet available on DVD. Therefore, VHS will have to do for now. It may be hard to find a copy of it. If you do...Rent don't Buy...It's worth a look for horror enthusiasts *** and a half stars ... Read more

Reviews (9)

'Conquest Of The Earth' AKA 'Galactica-1980'
Well... The series was Ok... It might have survived better with all the original cast seeing as it was only made a year after ABC axed the original Battlestar Galactica. The only episode I really liked was with Starbuck and a few of the original cast that returned for that episode. 'Conquest of the Earth' is good as a collector's item for any BG fan... But it is such a chopped up and pieced together video of the 13 episodes they made. They should have just released them all uncut on Video than take them all and cut them up for a movie. It's about as bad as when they took the TV Show 'Voyagers!'(That I really liked) and re-edited and changed the effects and cut up shows to make a 'Voyagers!' movie for VHS back in the 80's.
So if you liked BG then buy it if nothing more than to see how they tried to return the show to TV. But fan's try hard to forget the 'Galactica 1980' version... Probably as much as we are not looking forward to the Dec.2003 mini-series "BattleStar Galactica' that is being hailed as 'Reimmagined' for the Sci-Fi channel....Seeing as StarBuck is a female character now, and there will be no Daggit 'Muffit' as well as the mythology background of the original BG. I'll peek in on the Mini-series... Maybe Ronald D. Moore will make it as true to the original as he can? After all... A lot of old Trek fans were up in arms over the thought of Star Trek:TNG at first...But I gave it a chance! And loved it!!! But I think taking a loved male character that worked well with Apollo and making it female would be like Star Trek:TNG being remade with Data and Riker as females, and changing Gene Roddenberry's entire premise of Star Trek. In other words... Don't mess with what works. :-)

They finally made It!!!!
I loved the original when it first started. When they finally reach earth its kind of cool. They got new flying bikes and stealth technology..I just wished the movie was edited better. But its one every collector must have....long live battlestar galactica............

So bad it's... well, it's just bad.
Why on earth didn't they let the Cylons kill Wolfman Jack? OK, this isn't exactly Shakespeare, but you know what - neither was the original Battlestar Galactica, which had to hold the record for most sf/x stock footage ever used in one series. This bizarre combination of "Galactica: 1980" footage and other bits 'n' pieces is worth a look for camp value for any "Battlestar" fan with a sense of humor - besides the aforementioned totally wacked-out cameo by Wolfman Jack, you have the never-explained "human" Cylons, the so-bad-it's-laughable f/x for the "sky bikes," a funky disco soundtrack, the really lame "Dr. Zee" character who's never fully explained, played by two actors in the course of the show (one of them Robbie Rist, lionized as the "ninth Brady!"), and to top it all off, a somnabulent Lorne Greene with a beard looking like nothing so much as a mummified corpse that walks. ("Just gimme the check, and let me go home..." he seems to be thinking.) I have fond memories of the original Battlestar although these days I can see what a fairly dated, hokey piece of work it is (still fun though), and this "Conquest" makes that stuff look like "2001." Get it if you're a fan who never saw the lamentable "Galactica: 1980" series and are trying to remember why it was an even more terrible "TV sequel" than "AfterMASH."

Make it go away!
Ok, everyone close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and say "There is no Galactica 1980, there is no Galacatica 1980!" This pitiful half hearted, half budgeted attempt to revive Battlestar Galactica in the 80's was so terrible that everyone wants to pretend it never happened. Even Richard Hatch (Apollo) ignored this short lived series when he co-wrote his two BG novels. Basically, this flick has horrible effects, very cheesy acting, and at least a quarter of the movie is clips from the old Galactica series. Take my word, don't waste your money. You can buy all the episodes from the original series and be entertained for a long time, but this one will put you to sleep.

A kind of "best of" Galactica 1980
Though, I do agree that the G'80 series was horrible, it did have some interesting moments. "The Return of Starbuck" was obvoiusly the best episode. "Conquest of Earth" starts off with the first part of "Galactica Discovers Earth" , then skips the stupid subplot and goes right into "The Night the Cylons Landed". Thank goodness they edited all the stupid scenes from it though. I think maybe Glen Larson released "Conquest" to kind of squeeze something good out of G'80. One review on here said that there was no explanation as to the two Dr' Zee's. Actually there is a redub in "Conquest" that mentions that one is Dr. Zee and the other is his brother Dr. Zen. For the most part, "Conquest" is not a great movie, but it's much better than the entire series of Galactica 1980. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and assisted by Angie Dickinson, as he desperately searches for someone, anyone, who can just give him his money. But if Walker is an extreme incarnation of the revenge-driven noir antihero, the modern syndicate has been transformed into a world of paper jungles and corporate businessmen, an alienating concept to the two-fisted, gun-wielding gangster. Boorman creates a hard, austere look for the film and fragments the story with flashes of painful memory, grafting the New Wave onto old genres with confidence and style. Haunting and brutal, Point Blank remains one of the most distinctive crime thrillers ever made. --Sean Axmaker ... Read more

Reviews (21)

The acting is the key here, not the plot.
Lee Marvin is at his minimalist best in this film. Boorman obviously had a great deal of respect for Lee Marvin's inate talent. This is one of the few films that seems to be a real collaboration between director and actor.

In some of the scenes such as when Walker (character name) confronts his wife after she betrays him, Marvin never speaks. He doesn't need dialog to portray his emotional state. The violence is realistic. When Walker fires his .357 magnum, the recoil from this powerful weapon looks authentic. The fight scenes aren't clean and crisp. They are brief, messy and basic.

The pitch here is subtle and played under the top instead of over. Mel Gibson has done a remake of this movie called "Payback." The story line is easier to follow than "Pointblank" but you will see a huge contrast in acting styles. I like the original.

An undeniable CLASSIC
John Boorman's first "American" film, Point Blank still influences filmmakers, such as Martin Scorsese, to this day. Lee Marvin, in one of his best performances, stars as Walker, a man who seemingly comes back from the dead to seek revenge on the friend who betrayed him and recover the 93 grand that he was cheated out of. Walker is pure momentum, a relentless driving force that is virtually unstoppable. He acts almost like anti-matter, his mere presence on the scene causes the world around him, and the people in it, to fall apart. John Boorman based his concept of the character on Lee Marvin's screen persona and certain aspects of his real personality. Angie Dickinson is transcendentally HOT, John Vernon makes his screen debut, Keenan Wynn and Carol O'Connor do great work. Point Blank has a unique, modernistic style all its own - part Antonioni, part Kiss of Death, part science fiction ghost story. Current action films pale in comparrison. Stay away from the crappy remake starring Melvin Gibson and watch POINTY BLANK instead. "You're a very bad man, Walker!"

Payback time

Director: John Boorman
Format: Color
Studio: Warner Studios
Video Release Date: June 22, 1994

Cast:

Lee Marvin ... Walker
Angie Dickinson ... Chris
Keenan Wynn ... Yost
Carroll O'Connor ... Brewster
Lloyd Bochner ... Frederick Carter
Michael Strong ... Big John Stegman
John Vernon ... Mal Reese
Sharon Acker ... Lynne
James Sikking ... Hired Gun
Sandra Warner ... Waitress
Roberta Haynes ... Mrs. Carter
Kathleen Freeman ... First Citizen
Victor Creatore ... Carter's Man
Lawrence Hauben ... Car Salesman
Susan Holloway ... Girl Customer
Sid Haig ... 1st Penthouse Lobby Guard
Michael Bell ... 2nd Penthouse Lobby Guard
Priscilla Boyd ... Receptionist
John McMurtry ... Messenger
Ron Walters ... Young Man in Apartment
George Strattan ... Young Man in Apartment
Nicole Rogell ... Carter's Secretary
Rico Cattani ... Reese's Guard
Roland La Starza ... Reese's Guard
Bill Hickman ... Guard
Chuck Hicks ... Guard
John Kerr ... Stevie, Actor in televised movie
Joseph Mell ... Man
Andrew Orapeza ... Desk Clerk
Felix Silla ... Bellhop
Ted White ... Football Player
Louis Whitehill ... Policeman
Casey Brandon ... Dancer
Jerry Catron ... Man
Lauren Bacall ... Actress in televised movie
Karen Lee ... Waitress
Roseann Williams ... Dancer
Bonnie Dewberry ... Dancer
Carey Foster ... Dancer

Walker (Lee Marvin) took part in a heist which went sour. Double-crossed and shot by his partner Mal Reese (John Vernon), who also takes up with his wife, who thinks he is dead; Walker, however, survives and comes back for his ninety-three thousand dollar share, and vengeance. This film is reminiscent of the movie, "Payback," with Mel Gibson, which has a very similar plot. It, however, came later.

Filmed partly on the old federal prison at Alcatraz (Pelican) Island, in San Francisco Bay, as well as in several other old cell blocks, the set alone is interesting.

Angie Dickinson plays Chris, Walker's sister-in-law. In one scene she administers a physical beating to Lee Marvin that must have required him to wear padded clothing to withstand it, even though he is larger, and, one would expect, much stronger. She really cuts loose and is not pulling her punches, most of which land on his chest.

This is an entertaining film, and results in some very satisfying feelings of vengeance.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

The Best 'Parker' adaptation yet...
This classic crime film from John Boorman needs no more description when it comes to plot, style and quality: what fans of the 'Parker' series of crime novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake, who incidentally screenwrote 'The Grifters') will want to know is whether it matches up to the books.
'Point Blank' is based on 'The Hunter', the first Parker novel, since then retitled as 'Point Blank' in its book incarnation. In the film Parker is called Walker (for no apparent reason) bud it faithfully played by Marvin, who is the best screen Parker so far encountered. Although the script takes considerable liberties with the novel's plot at times, this is the film that gets closest to the cold, methodical genius of the parker we know and love from the novels. Robert Duvall's Parker in 'The Outfit' was hampered with a motivation the literary
Parker would never have needed (vengeance after his brother is killed) while Peter Coyote's Parker in 'Slayground' is hamstrung by a plot that veers millions of miles away from the book, which was utterly absurd as 'Slayground' is one of the most visuallly kinetic novels I've ever read (and I've read a couple of thousand) and still cries out for a faithful film adaptation. Mel Gibson in 'Payback'?...say no more. MG is a buffoon who lacks the gravitas to come anywhere near the effectiveness of one of the minor characters in any Parker novel, let alone the greatest antihero of them all himself. Finally, De Niro comes close to Parker in 'heat' (in which he plays a similar character) but his downfall comes through sentimentality, something the emotionless workmanlike Parker of the novels would never allow to cloud his judgement.
No, if you love the novels, then Lee Marvin is the closest we've had to an authentic depiction of Parker (especially in his physicality) and Boorman has done the best job thus far of bringing Stark's existential vision to the screen.
And if none of this means anything to you - if you like crime cinema and have not seen 'Point Blank', you don't like crime cinema. Now where is the DVD edition ?

Walker Doesn't Kill a Single Person In this Film
After a single viewing of "Point Blank", one might come away with the impression that the central character called Walker is a remorseless killer. The huge, wonderful joke is that in this very violent movie -- very, very violent for its day (1967) -- Walker (Lee Marvin) doesn't kill a single person! He does some serious damage to a couple of people in his quest for revenge, but a careful viewing of the movie reveals that he doesn't even kill his main betrayer, a character named Mal Reese, played by John Vernon. (Reese staggers off a penthouse balcony, so Walker doesn't even get THAT satisfaction.) I invite anyone who is skeptical to watch the film again -- I myself have seen it probably thirty times, or more. (Not very healthy, I know, but its an incredible film.) ... Read more