Reviews

I loved this episode. It was clearly a departure from the format of the series.

During the run of this series I only caught snippets of it. It intrigued me so much that when I retired, I purchased the entire series in boxed sets from Ebay, and I couldn't be happier.

While this episode might not "stack up" to the gritty, urban "Homicide" format, it certainly does stand out on it's own due to it's storytelling style.

Tuning in to this episode, you follow the criminal rather than the friendly detectives, and with the ethereal music, we don't realize it's "Homicide--Life on the Street" until the theme starts.

I agree, the guest star's performance did, indeed, carry the show. (Directed by Tim Hunter.)

My only complaint was that Detectives Tim Bayliss and Frank Pembleton were identically dressed in plaid shirts and ball caps as truckers, whereas a better disguise for Frank would have been a dread lock or jerry-curl wig. But the gas attendant's salute to urban legend, and the surprise ending totally redeem the episode for any of it's faults.

I even own Season 7, but watch it far less than Seasons 1 - 6.

The first time I watched this, the phone rang and I had to turn it off. I watched it again 2 months later, and was frightfully disappointed by the way the movie falls apart after the character of Elise Rainier is engineering the journey into the Further. I was so in love with this movie until it decided to play Halloween Costume Party with all it's demonic extras.

Seriously, this was a great premise for a movie: a little boy haunted by supernatural forces; fine actors, a great supporting cast, very homey set design and smart cinematography. Why did they have to ruin it with a "Boo" ending?

At least in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," (1980) it was evident at the end that Jack Torrance got swallowed up into the Overlook Hotel's ghost population. You don't even understand what happens in the ending of this film, unless you want to go to Wikipedia and rely on someone else's "Cribb note" observations.

Sadly, this is what most people do when they sit through a movie and end up asking, "What the heck happened?" Too bad we can't hire a professional editing team to re-cut the movie so it makes a little more sense.

I wasn't alive back in 1955, but upon seeing this film at my birth, I might have re-entered the womb. I was hopelessly disappointed by this silly, asinine plot, which Humphrey Bogart seems to saunter through as if imitating a tipsy Frank Sinatra.

The characters' actions are not realistic: not even in my wildest imagination could I have believed that these 3 lummoxes were even on "Devil's Island." This movie can't even copy the antics of the Marx Brothers or the classic slapstick of "the Three Stooges," so why it tried, I'll never know. The trio of actors lopes and shuffles through each turn of events as if they were all on their day off. I saw no drama, suspense or comedy.

This dud of a movie should be erased from cinematic history. --A lifeless, boring, pale, pastel bore of a film. I give only one star to be shared by all the actors who got paid less than the three main principals.