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Reviews
Sammy Going South (1963)
A long lost friend
the other day something somewhat amazing (at least for me) happened, i was checking out this usenet group that posts various obscure movies. and was reading the description of one of the posts and immediately knew it was a movie that i had seen many many years ago on when we had a b&w television so i would have been 9yrs old or younger. This movie had a almost overwhelmingly profound impact on me, it's the sort of thing that hardly a few days go by that i don't recall some scene, even 35 some years later, and it may sound a little corny, but i really think it had a formative effect on my life, basically it's an old British film about this 10yr old kid who's parents are killed during the 1956 conflict in the suez canal zone, and he is all alone in this chaotic country, decides to find some relative in Durban clear on the other end of the continent, so he treks out and gets into all these hair-raising situations but survives on his guile and wits, in particular i remember what saved him several times was his abandonment of any aristocratic bearing which endeared him to the myriad natives etc he became involved with, seeing it at that time deeply touched me somehow and the kid became a huge hero and role-model to me, probably more subconsciously than anything considering it has remained so vivid all these years. so it was a minor miracle in a way, to stumble upon it like that, i doubt you would ever see it on television, all these years i had never even known the name of it. I feel as if i have been re-united with a long lost friend, a friend who's name is "Sammy Going South"
i never read any other review before writing my own
now after having read others, there is an almost eerie similarity, i find it extraordinary that this long lost film has had such a profound effect.
Reflections of Evil (2002)
You Had A Sugar Overdose On The E.T. Ride
Go to any big city and you'll encounter scores of wacked-out individuals wandering around, conversing angrily with no one in particular, watch this film and you may get some inkling of just what the hell is going on in these poor soul's minds. Reflections of Evil is essentially a "day in the life" of one such man as he navigates the gauntlet of his private hell. The manner in which director, producer and main character: Damon Packard achieves this can be best described as "experimental" you have never seen anything quite like this. There is no sense in even attempting to catalogue the many unconventional devices used, satirizing Universal Studios with the depiction of a "Shindler's List ride" is hysterical, and they just go on and on. Reflections of Evil will be hard to swallow for many, but if you appreciate, daring or even reckless film-making that goes where mainstream film doesn't dare and makes no apologies, this film will not disappoint