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In 1972 a chartered plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby squad and various family members crashed in the Andes. If that sounds dry and matter-of-fact, you haven't seen director Frank Marshall's harrowing re-creation Alive, an adrenaline-pounding, heart-in-your-mouth spectacle that kicks off this famous story of survival. The real-life against-all-odds odyssey made worldwide headlines when it became known that the survivors ate their own dead to survive. What could have easily become sensationalistic exploitation is treated with compassion and dignity by Marshall as he explores their moral and spiritual struggles as well as their physical ordeal. As team captain and base-camp cheerleader Vincent Spano slowly collapses under the stress and Ethan Hawke rouses from mourning his dead family to taking charge of saving himself, it also becomes a portrait in leadership, hope, and emotional courage. --Sean Axmaker ... Read more

Description

From the Creators of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION.AnAmerican safecracker named Zed (Eric Stoltz) is summoned to Paris by hischildhood buddy, Eric (Jean-Hugues Anglade), to help pull a Bastille Daybank heist.Dreams of easy money quickly evaporate when the heist goessour and Eric transforms into a psychotic, drug-crazed sociopath.Thishighly controversial first film by Academy Award(r) -winning filmmakerRoger Avary* was an instant cult classic and fast became the barometerby which Generation X gauged its own nihilism.Killing Zoe is a "mustown" dark vision that drags exploitation, kicking and screaming, intothe realm of art house cinema - neither will ever be the same.*1995,Best Original Screenplay, PULP FICTION ... Read more

Reviews (44)

Has flaws, but I love it anyway
I'm giving this film 5 stars despite some small things some folks would consider flaws in the film. I am still giving it 5 stars because it happens to be a film I keep watching over and over again, and I never get tired of a single scene in the whole flick.
Jean-Hughes Anglade and Eric Stoltz are perfect together as old childhood friends out to rob a Federal bank in France on Bastille Day.
Here are the reasons why I love this movie. It really has a lot packed into it. It has a ton of humor, though much of it is dark humor. The extended drug use scene and tour of Paris must be about as close as you can come to honestly portraying being high on film. The pace of the action never slows down, and each scene consistently draws me in. There are a whole bunch of little original ideas and surprises thrown in that makes the film always interesting.
Memorable moments: the dead cat in the hallway, "riding the dragon", the monkey and Billie Holiday, viking films, Ron Jeremy, the ex-con joke, Eric pondering the next move.....
If you like anything by Tarantino, then you owe it to yourself to check this out. Honestly, I come back to watch this far more often than I do anything by QT.

Better than Reservoir Dogs
Roger Avary is the true talent behind Quentin Tarantino (at least according to NBK producer Jane Hamsher) and his first solo job is impressive, if a bit slow. The main heist doesn't really get going until the halfway point. But it's really a character study, anyway.

Zed (Eric Stoltz) is called by Parisian buddy Eric (Jean-Hugues Anglade) to help him break into a reserve bank vault on Bastille Day, one of the few banks open on that day.

Zed falls for a student/escort supplied to him through a cab driver, takes several recreational drugs with Eric and his friends (including Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp), and wakes up the next morning, not quite ready for the job. The job keeps Zed downstairs surrounded by the noise of the drill, so he never notices that things go very wrong.

And who happens to have a part-time job at the bank?

Avary is quoted as saying that producer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction) called him up and said he had a bank set free for a few weeks, did he have a script involving a bank he wanted to film? Avary said yes, he did. Then he wrote one...this.

Comparisons to Reservoir Dogs are inescapable (even on the video box), but the two films are very different, although similarly dark in tone. I think this one is actually better.

I wish I was Zoe!
I wish I was Zoe so that someone would have killed me before I started watching this drivel.
This film was reccomended to me and all I can say is I'm glad I didn't pay to see it.
Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender produced this. I must admit, I find that very hard to believe. Not because of the slow pace, crappy story and characters (Although that is surprisng for those two) but it's the incredible lack of money that surprised me most of all. Don't get me wrong on this, I don't care if a film is made on pennies. BUT IT HAS TO BE GOOD.
Robert Rodrigiez made El Mariachi on seven thousand dollars. This looks like it was made on seven cents.
I personally think that this film was no more than one of Tarantino's old Video archives buddies asking for a bit of money to make a film. Tarantino being the nice guy that he supposedly is, not to mention a film addict, was curious to see what his friend would produce. Now it went one of two ways.
Either Tarantino and Bender gave him the money and left him to do the whole thing on his own without any tip offs, or the guy just kept all the money, went to the local supermarket to pick up a crappy video camera (cos that's what it looks like) and shot the film without a care in the world eagerly awaiting the rap party.
Anyway I f you find all this hard to believe (Just like I did) then get hold of this and find out yourself. But make sure you do yourself a favour and when you start to get incredibly bored, turn the film off. Take my advice, It doesn't get any better.

I would be surprised if Lawrence Bender and Quentin Tarantino didn't agree with me!

craziness
You guys are nuts. Killing Zoe may not be the bank robbery film that Heat is, but it has many more aspects to it, namely gratuitous sex, drugs, and violence. Yes, the bathroom scene is a little much, and the movie is unrealistic. But if you're going to movies to experience realism, what's the point? Just walk outside. Killing Zoe is a perfect distraction for any of you out there who, like me, are to entrenched in reality to fly to Europe and take heroin for the first time the night before a bank robbery you didn't plan for at all. I'm personally insulted by the stupidity that would be necessary to call this movie predictable, simply because I didn't anticipate it was possible for such a level of it to exist and I hate it when I realize that dumb people still have the capability of suprising me. This movie is a classic.

Killing The Audience
Predictable from the first 5 minutes into the movie. Overdone plot about a robbery gone wrong and the safe-cracker hero who has a heart. Nothing original here except for scenes so vulgar and tasteless that it would make Howard Stern turn in disgust.

The script is nil and the acting less than stellar. The conincidences purposefully placed in the film to support the plot are too great to be credible and the action too dull to keep it interesting. I frankly could have done without the grotesque heroin-induced sodomy scenes. Watch "Heat" instead if you want to see a great bank heist film. Don't waste your time or money on this one, it's a sleeper at best: A negative rating is called for. ... Read more

Description

Pinhead is back -- and this time, he's out for more blood -- in the fourth and most terrifying chapter of the wildly popular HELLRAISER series! Spanning three generations, this horrifying story chronicles the struggle of one family who unknowingly created the puzzle box that opened the doors of Hell -- setting the diabolical Pinhead free to spread evil here on earth! Now, the family must fight to slam those doors shut again ... but not before Pinhead wages one of his fiercest and most frightening battles ever! ... Read more

Description

The spine-chilling true story of the cat-and-mouse pursuit of America's most diabolical serial killer. Brian Dennehy stars in this riveting, true-life story of a young detective's (Michael Riley) relentless pursuit of the sophisticated, psychopathic mass murderer John Wayne Gacy. A suspense-packed tour de force of intrigue and terror--all the more shocking because it's true. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

This movie needed more about Gacy and less about the cops!
I know this is based on the cop's perspective of things, but Brian Dennehy (as Gacy) was only in this movie 40% of the time! And only 5% of that showed what the guy was actually about and what motivated the police in the first place!! Instead of giving a gritty, real life portrayal of what a serial killer did (in order to invoke sympathy for the victims and strong repulsion of the character) we are treated to long, boring scenes of investigative ho-hum and the top cop's family life (??!!) I walked away thinking that Gacy was silly rather than evil, and something tells me that wasn't that wasn't the moviemakers' goal...

Excellent acting
This is one of my alltime favourite movies. Brian Dennehy is really scary as Gacy. If you want to watch a great movie, watch this one, but not alone. You really get the feeling that Mr Gacy must have been one sick man, but quite clever, until he got caught, that is. Thank God for Kozenzyk and his team and that they were so persistent catching him, otherwise, who knows how many more men he would have killed unnoticed.....

Brian Denehy at his-evil-best
I first saw this movie years ago and still pick it every now and then because first it's a true crime story, and then Brian Denehy's acting is so extraordinary accurate. If you want to start a collection on thrillers or if you're interested in true crime, and more specifically about the cat and mouse game that Gacy played to the very end, buy this movie, you won't regret it.

Gacy the Evil Clown
Having lived in Chicago when the actual Gacy horror story was first disclosed, I thought that this film (which I think was first made for TV) captured the eerie personality of a serial killer who dressed up as a clown to entertain kids. Dennehey is great.

Dennehy at his best - a chilling, cold and gritty movie
An absolutely fantastic movie portraying the life of John Gacy, a simple man who runs a building contractor company. In his spare time, he loves entertaining sick children in hospital, dressing up as Pongo the clown. But what John does in his spare time is both inconcievable and terrifying. This film is based on a true story - that of John Gacy, and how in his spare time he sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered thirty-three young men, making him America's single-most brutal serial killer of all time. "To Catch a Killer" begins as yet another young man goes missing, Gacy having lured him into his house and taken it from there. When his mother notices him gone, she calls the police. And in steps Michael Riley, who plays Lieutenant Packer, a man struggling to balance his job with his family, much to his son's dislike. Packer spends every waking moment pursuing Gacy, uncovering vital and astonishing clues along the way, revealling more and more about Gacy's twisted actions, bringing the movie to a terrifying ending where at last the boy's body is found. An excellent movie, with Dennehy's best performance ever, and a one even as good by Riley. It revealls the horrifying truth about "stranger-danger", and portrays that, like a breakdown on a lost and lonely highway late at night, it could happen to you. One memorable and terrifying scene has Gacy doing his performance as a clown at the children's hospital. Riley and his men track him down and watch him as he entertains away, showing off tricks and telling jokes. Then as Gacy notices Riley is watching, he performs a cunning trick in which he borrows Riley's handcuffs and demonstrates on a young boy a trick, to see if the boy can get himself out of the handcuffs without the key. Riley watches intently, and Dennehy's role is highlighted with the terror and fear he gives us. ... Read more

Description

An American safe cracker is summoned to Paris by a childhood buddy to help pull off a "can't fail"Bastille day bank robbery, but their dream of easy money quickly becomes a nightmare as his drug crazed friend looses control of the heist-and his mind-leading to a violent blood bath in the tradition of Reservoir Dogs.
From the Creators of Pulp Fiction and True Romance. ... Read more

Reviews (44)

Has flaws, but I love it anyway
I'm giving this film 5 stars despite some small things some folks would consider flaws in the film. I am still giving it 5 stars because it happens to be a film I keep watching over and over again, and I never get tired of a single scene in the whole flick.
Jean-Hughes Anglade and Eric Stoltz are perfect together as old childhood friends out to rob a Federal bank in France on Bastille Day.
Here are the reasons why I love this movie. It really has a lot packed into it. It has a ton of humor, though much of it is dark humor. The extended drug use scene and tour of Paris must be about as close as you can come to honestly portraying being high on film. The pace of the action never slows down, and each scene consistently draws me in. There are a whole bunch of little original ideas and surprises thrown in that makes the film always interesting.
Memorable moments: the dead cat in the hallway, "riding the dragon", the monkey and Billie Holiday, viking films, Ron Jeremy, the ex-con joke, Eric pondering the next move.....
If you like anything by Tarantino, then you owe it to yourself to check this out. Honestly, I come back to watch this far more often than I do anything by QT.

Better than Reservoir Dogs
Roger Avary is the true talent behind Quentin Tarantino (at least according to NBK producer Jane Hamsher) and his first solo job is impressive, if a bit slow. The main heist doesn't really get going until the halfway point. But it's really a character study, anyway.

Zed (Eric Stoltz) is called by Parisian buddy Eric (Jean-Hugues Anglade) to help him break into a reserve bank vault on Bastille Day, one of the few banks open on that day.

Zed falls for a student/escort supplied to him through a cab driver, takes several recreational drugs with Eric and his friends (including Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp), and wakes up the next morning, not quite ready for the job. The job keeps Zed downstairs surrounded by the noise of the drill, so he never notices that things go very wrong.

And who happens to have a part-time job at the bank?

Avary is quoted as saying that producer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction) called him up and said he had a bank set free for a few weeks, did he have a script involving a bank he wanted to film? Avary said yes, he did. Then he wrote one...this.

Comparisons to Reservoir Dogs are inescapable (even on the video box), but the two films are very different, although similarly dark in tone. I think this one is actually better.

I wish I was Zoe!
I wish I was Zoe so that someone would have killed me before I started watching this drivel.
This film was reccomended to me and all I can say is I'm glad I didn't pay to see it.
Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender produced this. I must admit, I find that very hard to believe. Not because of the slow pace, crappy story and characters (Although that is surprisng for those two) but it's the incredible lack of money that surprised me most of all. Don't get me wrong on this, I don't care if a film is made on pennies. BUT IT HAS TO BE GOOD.
Robert Rodrigiez made El Mariachi on seven thousand dollars. This looks like it was made on seven cents.
I personally think that this film was no more than one of Tarantino's old Video archives buddies asking for a bit of money to make a film. Tarantino being the nice guy that he supposedly is, not to mention a film addict, was curious to see what his friend would produce. Now it went one of two ways.
Either Tarantino and Bender gave him the money and left him to do the whole thing on his own without any tip offs, or the guy just kept all the money, went to the local supermarket to pick up a crappy video camera (cos that's what it looks like) and shot the film without a care in the world eagerly awaiting the rap party.
Anyway I f you find all this hard to believe (Just like I did) then get hold of this and find out yourself. But make sure you do yourself a favour and when you start to get incredibly bored, turn the film off. Take my advice, It doesn't get any better.

I would be surprised if Lawrence Bender and Quentin Tarantino didn't agree with me!

craziness
You guys are nuts. Killing Zoe may not be the bank robbery film that Heat is, but it has many more aspects to it, namely gratuitous sex, drugs, and violence. Yes, the bathroom scene is a little much, and the movie is unrealistic. But if you're going to movies to experience realism, what's the point? Just walk outside. Killing Zoe is a perfect distraction for any of you out there who, like me, are to entrenched in reality to fly to Europe and take heroin for the first time the night before a bank robbery you didn't plan for at all. I'm personally insulted by the stupidity that would be necessary to call this movie predictable, simply because I didn't anticipate it was possible for such a level of it to exist and I hate it when I realize that dumb people still have the capability of suprising me. This movie is a classic.

Killing The Audience
Predictable from the first 5 minutes into the movie. Overdone plot about a robbery gone wrong and the safe-cracker hero who has a heart. Nothing original here except for scenes so vulgar and tasteless that it would make Howard Stern turn in disgust.

The script is nil and the acting less than stellar. The conincidences purposefully placed in the film to support the plot are too great to be credible and the action too dull to keep it interesting. I frankly could have done without the grotesque heroin-induced sodomy scenes. Watch "Heat" instead if you want to see a great bank heist film. Don't waste your time or money on this one, it's a sleeper at best: A negative rating is called for. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

curdled
Watchable, but not very entertaining. If you want a good dark comedy watch The Doom generation or Blood Simple. This movie falls short in too many ways to describe. The acting is mediocre at best, and the storyline drags. The concept is interesting, but they just don't do enough with it. Would do fine as a short film, but at feature lentgh it becomes, stretched too thin

The Funniest Film Noir Ever
Do you ever pick up one of those movies at the video store and say, "Wow, this is going to be so terrible that I just have to see it!" Well, I do, and that's exactly what I said about "Curdled". I was so wrong - this film is fantastic! Originally a short film, Curdled struck Tarentino like lightning and he promptly urged (forced) Braddock to make it into a feature length movie. I would not ordinarily apply such a cliché phrase as "wickedly funny" to anything, but that is exactly what this film noir is. Gabrielle (magnificently performed by Angela Jones) is teetering on the brink of an obsession with serial killers. Her consuming desire to understand the mind of a murderer motivates her to land a job with a post-murder cleaning service. Her new occupation allows her the opportunity to get closer to the crimes than she had anticipated. This film is out of this world, if you don't mind the sight of blood and laughing at crazy people, that is. I giggle sadistically to myself even now at the thought of it. Oh yeah, William Baldwin is in it.

finally!
Ive been waiting for this to hit dvd for awhile,Ever since I watched the vhs I was hooked.This thing aint for everyone thats for sure.You gotta have a dark sense of humor or just hang it up and watch something else.The dvd is fully loaded.It has:the short film it was based on,deleted scenes,commentary,plus a gallery,tv ads,a kelly preston tv show,plus alot more.its a shame there arent more people who know about this great flick.

Best special features ever!
This is the same fun, quirky black comedy that all the other reviews mention. Thankfully, the DVD is letterboxed, and has truly extensive special features; among them:

* Commentary by the director and producer (co-writers Reb Braddock and John Maass),
* a making-of featurette complete with brief interviews with cast and crew,
* the 30 minute short film that caught Quentin Tarantino's attention at a film festival in Italy,
* the even shorter 'Baby Curdled' - a film school directing project by John Maass,
* an extensive photo gallery mostly consisisting of candid shots of the cast and crew,
* deleted scenes and an alternate ending,
* the original theatrical trailer,
* by far the coolest interactive menu - watch for the fly!
* the commercials and made-for-tv movie that are seen in the film,
* the 'dance of death' rehearsal - you have got to see this!
* probably more than I'm not recalling

Most features have an introduction/explanation by director Reb Braddock.

SMILY-FACE BLACK COMEDY CAN'T DISGUISE THAT IT'S A DUD.
This is a Tarantino movie. He didn't write or direct it, but executive-produced it. Surely must have been a blooper, because although it wallows in blood (don't all of his endeavours, predictably?) and scrambles to put a "just kidding" face on its darker impluses (don't all of his endeavours, again?), it never quite manages to emerge as a coherent or compelling film.

Angela Jones (the taxi driver in Pulp Fiction if you recall) is a Columbian in California smitten with murders. She takes up a job as a cleaning maid, not your ordinary maid but with a niche-business company that cleans up messes on crime scenes. On one of those scenes, she meets up with a real psychopath killer -- played with as straight a face as possible by Billy Baldwin -- who likes to hack women for dessert.

Intriguing pretext. Unfortunately, the actual movie while neat in bits and parts, is overall quite a boring fare. Jones, the ever so murky maid, has a grating type of naivette about her which is funny probably to people who like to see their women cutesy and hyper-melodramatic, but is annoying to me.

Not sure why this dud was produced. But sounds like with the likes of Kill Bill Quentin may well be developing a real taste for such gore which, if unsuccessful, can be shrugged off under the garb of "oh, it was a black comedy" or a spoof or some such weak-kneed toss-off.

(P.S. The movie goes by the name of "Fetish" in Japan) ... Read more

Reviews (4)

HIT ME is a miss
I love Jim Thompson novels, and I love a good film noir, so I was doubly disappointed when I saw this movie. The direction, while technically proficient, sets the wrong tone, wavering uneasily between brutal violence and goofy antics. The annoying soundtrack was no help, as it seemed at times like it was intended for a light comedy. Elias Koteas' one-note performance portrays his character as if he was totally clueless, making him look as if he had just graduated from the Blue Lagoon School of Acting (Some day I'm going to count how many close-up shots there are of his dumbstruck face. There seemed to be quite a few.). When you find some of the supporting characters are more interesting, you know the movie is in trouble.

Coen-Lite
A reasonable attempt at noir, HIT ME -- photographed far too lustrously to be true noir -- packs a few punches after the first twenty minutes (questionable editing) but is hanging off the ropes by the last, dizzying round (even more questionable editing). Like any good fight, the film works best in the middle -- dodging and jabbing and poking with a learned freshness -- and what an exciting tale it weaves.

In the end, HIT ME plays out much like a Coen Brothers production (BLOOD SIMPLE, FARGO, etc.) only heavily watered down.

Elias Koteas plays Sonny, a bellhop at the long-dying Stillwell Hotel. He's too old to start thinking about his future, and he's not quite young enough to remember the lessons of his youth. He lives in the moment, which the director (SECRETARY's Steven Shainberg) displays at great length with Sonny's closeups of rehearsing his room service delivery skills while riding the elevator. Still, one scheming friend and a tryst with a beautiful Canadian hustler later, Sonny finds himself wrapped up in the middle of a heist, stealing money from patrons holed up at the Stillwell for an annual poker game.

Adapted from Jim Thompson's novel, "A Swell Looking Babe," Denis Johnson makes some curious choices with the screenplay that probably wouldn't have found wider success in Hollywood unless he had incorporated a happier ending. That's one of the plagues of Thompson's books: don't expect a rosy ending, and HIT ME follows suit with more than its fair share of twists and turns. After all, the beauty of noir is that nothing -- even the most perfectly hatched sting -- goes off without a hitch. The film manages to keep the viewer guessing -- up to a point -- but the formulaic pacing could've packed a stronger jolt in the climax.

Still, what director Shainberg learned from HIT ME he puts to far greater use in SECRETARY: in that film, the underdog is allowed moments of glory, and characters are allowed to blossom into their own personal level of happiness, albeit slightly perverted. Here, within the oft-traveled hotel corridors and Sonny's filthy living room set of HIT ME, the greatest obstacle the story presents is the duldrums of Sonny's life: come the film's conclusion, he's in a far worse place than when the whole affair began.

Fun film, but a little too long.
I rented this movie cause it it had an interesting story. A bellhop in total mess. Its fun and chilling at times, but this movie is little longer then it should be. Elias Kortas is simply a great actor. He makes this movie. He is such a young Robert Dinero.

This film was done in 1998, but just released on video/DVD cause it was done by the director who did "Secretary." This film I wouldn't put in "Film Noir" class like the back of box says, but I guess in the new genre of sorts: Post-Tarantino.

This movie is perfect for a rental. Instead of picking the usual Hollywood BS, you should give this one a shot. William H. Macy has a very small role so be warned when you see him on the cover.

Disappointing entry in the Film Noir genre
"Hit Me" is a 1998 film recently released for the rental market. Director Steven Shainberg's more recent, and much better film, "Secretary," also just appeared as a rental.

"Hit Me" is the story of a none-too-swift loser bellhop, Sonny (Elias Koteas) who works for a hotel that has seen better days. Sonny is responsible for his mentally handicapped brother, larger-than-life Leroy, and the two live in a filthy, messy house. Sonny is trapped in a dead-end job, in a dead-end life, and the only occasional excitement is in the form of harassing phone calls Sonny gets from social workers. It's clear from the beginning that Sonny has a certain amount of suppressed rage, and when an ex-employee re-appears with a scheme to rob an illegal card game about to take place at the hotel, Sonny is easily persuaded to join the gang for his promised 10% ($70,000).

I rented this film for three reasons. 1) It was directed by Shainberg, and I recently watched and enjoyed "Secretary." 2) The film was based on a Jim Thompson novel. 3) The film claimed to be 'film noir.' Now I enjoy film noir when it is done properly--but this film was rather disappointing. Yes, the plot did include a few twists and turns, and there was a tricky female, but the director's style was heavy-handed and intrusive. The elements of comedy fell flat--especially in light of the gruesome scenes towards the end of the film, and the plot was predictable. Elias Koteas delivered a great performance, but even he couldn't salvage this film--displacedhuman--Amazon Reviewer. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

A Decent Movie
Honestly, I like this movie. I agree with the other reviewer who felt that the scenes with the children dancing detracted from the plot. However, if you ignore the kids you get a movie with a creepy atmosphere, some good scares, and morality. Plus, you get killer bugs that may or may not be the incarnation of the souls of the people who have been buried in a Potter's field.
What's not to like?

An I thought you couldn't get better than A Clockwork Orange
Wow, what can I say about this movie? It makes me cry every time I think about it. It has everything, social commentary and flies, what more do you need?

BAD MOVIE
I'm a big fan of horror movies, and I watched a lot of them, but this one doesn't have anything interesting for the horror genre...I do not recommend this movie...If you want horror, look for "The Ring"...

Very very clever marketing on a bad movie.
I like other reviewers got this movie because I thought it was going to have zombies and be your typical "undead" horror movie. I was very disappionted an hour into the movie and still no zombies. What you get are killer bees. Very boreing, and very misleading! Please don't buy this movie.

I THINK IS VERY AWFUL AND LONG
I believe what they mean by island of the dead, is the undead flies and Rupert! I expected Zombies and horror goodness... What I got was a spanish cop, Rupert, flies, and dead people in the ground. Also I think the little dancing children were evil and usless to the story. The only thing that could help this movie is it having Evil deafd in the middle of the movie ... Read more