All this movie has going for it is a great title, box art and idea. A creepy Santa doll is possessed, has an Irish accent and kills a whole bunch of people in the summer. All of the editing is done in-camera, the quality is the level of a birthday party shot by a drunken relative, everyone is probably drunk (I hope they are) and there’s a lot of blood. The effects are abysmal, given away by everyone ripping open their own blood packets, and the Santa attacks are kind of like Bruno Mattei throwing Rats onto Geretta Geretta.
It’s not good — it’s vehemently not good — but man, with that title, I had to enter the breach for you, my dearest readers. Consider it my holiday gift to you. Because I don’t feel like Christmas means anything anymore. I hate getting dark and dismal, but one look outside our doors will show you that this time when we’re all supposed to come together to celebrate good will toward men surely isn’t happening, so if I can bring some light into your life with a bunch of moronic kids abusing one another with a Santa figurine, then so be it. Ho, ho, ho.
We’ve mentioned this influential film series in the context of a few of our other reviews this week. And it is “influencial,” as it certainly had an effect on David. A.R. White and his Christian Apoc-science fiction adventures through his PureFlix shingle: his first was Six: The Mark Unleashed (2004), followed with The Moment After and Revelation Road franchises, In the Blink of an Eye, and Jerusalem Countdown. And the producers behind his debut film, TBN, Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network (through their son Matthew), jumped into the apoc frays with their own, The Omega Code (1999).
The Apocalypse franchise’s roots date to 1994, when the brothers LaLonde, Peter and Paul — inspired by Hollywood’s A-List glut of films concerned with the world’s post-apocalypse survival*, such as Waterworld (1995), Independence Day (1996), Escape from L.A. (1996), and The Postman (1997), along with the “Lucifer’s Hammer” one-two punch of Armageddon and Deep Impact (1998), and Peter Hyams’s End of Days (1999) — formed Cloud Ten Pictures in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, to self-fiance their own, wholesome, family-oriented “end times” Christian films.
The four-film box set that’s easily purchased — as well as the individual films — online at secular and faith-based sites.
As they should: God invented the apocalypse, after all, in The Book of Revelation in The Holy Bible. It’s just not fair that the Somdomites and Gomorrahites of Tinseltown have the secular market cornered on what rightful belongs to Christians in the first place. Estus Pirkle has whole films (If Footmen Tire You, The Burning Hell, and The Believer’s Heaven) based on the Christian belief that God-hating Communists will jam sharpened bamboo shoots through our ear canals, cut people down from trees onto buried pitch forks, and dump the bodies of those who will not deny the Christ, into freshly bulldozed mass graves. Oh, and the child stealing and indoctrination centers where children will praise Fidel Castro.
Hey, don’t be scared, ye philistine. For the LaLondes are not as bibically crazed as Pastor Pirkle and a bit more subtle in frightening you into believing. Sure, with the same, faithful vigor as Christian apoc-progenitor Donald W. Thompson with his A Thief in the Night tetralogy franchise, but only with A-List (well, let’s just say, better) production values backed, not by church volunteers and “saved” community theater actors: but by real, actual actors.
Oh, what a cast these movies have!
The LaLonde brothers’ films have nothing on the early Revelation-based apoc’ers Six-Hundred Sixty Six (1972), and the Gospel Films (studios) 1981 double-whammy of the non-sequels Early Warning and Years of the Beast. Oh, yes, ye B&S About Movies Sadducees: If the subject matter’s rhythm doesn’t get you, the off-the-A-to-B List thespians surely will.
Prior to delving into the feature films business, the LaLonde brothers produced their own television series: a syndicated series that dealt with the very subject matter of their films: This Week in Bible Prophecy. That lead to their creating a series of hour-long documentaries between 1994 and 1997: The Gospel of the Antichrist: Exposed, Final Warning: Economic Collapseand the Coming World Government, Startling Proofs: Does God Really Exist, Last Days: Hype or Hope?, and Racing to the End of Time. Courtesy of the ratings and retail response to those early products, it was time for a (low-budget) sci-fi thriller based on upon their TV/video teachings. That first film became Apocalypse (1998), which spawned the tetralogy franchise: Revelation, Tribulation, and Judgement.
So successful the franchise that, by the time of the release of the third film and before the fourth film, Cloud Ten Pictures was able to option the very book that inspired their film series: the 1995 worldwide best-seller Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Their 2000 – 2005 film trilogy based on that book series, which starred Kirk Cameron (Saving Christmas), culminated with a bigger-budgeted, crtically derided theatrical reboot, Left Behind (2014), with Nicolas Cage.
Okay, enough with the back stories. . . . Lets throw away the melon rind on the way to Eden and unpack the prophe-verse of Franco Macalousso and his deadly O.N.E. (One Earth Nation) squads. (In Donald W. Thompson’s franchise, it was known as U.N.I.T.E. – United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency, if you’re keeping an apoc track of the proceedings.)
Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVThe original, early-2000 VHS covers I remember, checked out from the Public Library all those years ago.Each were later “Apocalypse” prefixed and Roman numeral suffixed for their later DVD reissues.
From the Editor’s Desk, December 2022: Each of the You Tube-based trailer embeds we provided for each film within this review were removed from the video-sharing platform as result of a copyright claim. However, all watch-links are still active for your enjoyment.
Apocalypse I: Caught In The Eye Of The Storm (1998)
Unlike the rest of the films in the series, we’re dealing with a list of no-name (Canadian) actors fronted by the “leads” of Leigh Lewis and Richard Nestor (that’s them, disembodied floating-headin’ the cover, by the way) and Sam Bornstein, each with limited-and-fades-away resumes; Leigh Lewis’s Helen Hannah character is the lone throughline of the series.
As with Kurt Cameron’s Cameron “Buck” Williams in the Left Behind trilogy, Helen Hannah and Bronson Pearl (Richard Nestor) are award-winning journalists who stumble into the deadly plans of Franco Macalousso (Sam Bornstein), the President of the European Union. When the prophesied Rapture occurs and throws the world into chaos, Macalousso proclaims himself the true Messiah and enforces his will upon the world.
You can watch this one Tubi. And we have to note that the video suggestions link to all three of Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind films and Casper Van Dien’s The Omega Code duet, if you’re up to the challenge.
Apocalypse II: Revelation (1999)
What a difference “three months” after the last film, makes: Satan has transformed Franco Macalousso into (wait, he is Satan) . . . Nick Mancuso, of Nightwing and Death Ship?
This time, the tale centers on the exploits of Thorold Stone, a counter-terrorism expert . . . played by Jeff Fahey of The Lawnmower Man? A non-believer hellbent to prove The Rapture is a conspiracy, he stumbles into an underground, Christian resistance movement led by Helen Hannah, from the first film. But since actress Leigh Lewis is way out of her thespin’ element, here: bring in (not much better) supermodel Carol Alt as part of the resistance.
Oh, and Alt’s character is blind. And the European Union, now ruling the world as One Nation Earth, watched John Carpenter secular They Live one too many times, since O.N.E distributes virtual reality headsets to everyone on Earth to celebrate the “Messiah’s Day of Wonders.”
So, to make sure you’re following along: Satan, and not aliens, are doing the VR brainwashing of the puny humans. You got that?
Well, okay . . . so we lost Jeff Fahey and Carol Alt. But we still get a little bit of Nick Mancuso . . . and gain a Gary Busey, a Margot Kidder, and a Howie Mandel. We also get just what we do not need: a non-linear timeline that splits in half across the events that happened before ApocalypseI . . . then we flash-foward — two years — after the events in Revelation, aka Apocalypse II, you got that?
No?
Hey, we feel you, because the plot is bat-crap crazy and all over the place. Gary Busey’s Tom Canbono — from what seems like another movie spliced in — stars as a bitter police detective battling a mysterious group of cloaked psychic warrior-assassins (no, we are not kiddding) after his wife, his sister and brother-in-law (Margot Kidder and a pre-bald/Van Dyked Howie Mandel). However, before Canbono can save them, the psychics take control of his car and cause him to crash. . . .
Then begins the “other” movie: Busey wakes up from a two-years coma to discover The Rapture has occurred, 95% of the world follows Nick Mancusco’s lead, and those who don’t allow themselves to be branded with a “666” on their head or right hand, in the grand tradition of all things Christian, are beheaded. (Yeah, Christians love their broadswords and guillotines in these movies.) As for the “third” movie cut into this mess: Leigh Lewis is pushed even further down the callsheets with her Christian resistance annoyances to expose Nick Mancusco as the Antichrist.
See? Told you it was bat-crap crazy — joke inferring Nick’s Nightwing — which I should be rewatching — instead of this, intended. Yeah, it sure is a long, hard fall from starring with Steven Seagal in 1992’s Under Seige, hey, Nick and Gary? Too bad Steven didn’t star in Jeff Fahey’s role for part deux to really give us something to QWERTY about.
You can watch this on Tubi. You just gotta: Busey battles psychic warriors!
Apocalypse IV: Judgement (2001)
First, we get a gaggle nobody-heard-of-them-or-seen-since Canucks making a Christian apocalypse film. Then we get an Antichrist ruling via virtual reality headsets forced onto Carol Alt by Nick Mancusco. Then we get psychic warrior-assassins after Gary Busey.
What could possibly be left, you ask?
How’s about Corbin Bernsen (The Dentist) and Jessica Steen (the aforementioned Armageddon) starring as a Christian-centric Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib (1949) — itself remade as the romantic rom-com box office bomb Laws of Attraction (2004) starring Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore. Only they were battling divorce attorneys. And Tracy and Hepburn argued a case of women’s rights.
So, what are Bernsen and Steen arguing: a copyright infringement case on the VR headsets? Gary Busey’s malpractice suit? Perhaps a copyright infringement over stealing the plot from the Stephen King’s The Dead Zone in the last movie? (No, not 28 Days Later, that’s not until next year.)
Nope to all.
Nick Mancusco — yes, he actually stuck around for three installment of this utter non-sense — is now, officially, the Antichrist and he’s “suing” Helen Hannah — yes, the out-of-her-thespian element Canadian actress Leigh Lewis is still hanging around, making us wish Carol Alt’s hot blind chick signed for the sequel — for her crimes against humanity. Corbin Bernsen is the troped, milquetoast attorney assigned to kangaroo-court our fair jounalist-turned-Christian revolutionist. Jessica Steen is his bitchy, natch, ex-wife prosecutor assigned by Nick Mancusco to railroad the leftover 5% from the last film that haven’t accepted the Mark.
Hey, wait. Mr. T is on the box! What’s he doing, here? We’ll, he’s spliced in from another movie: he’s heading up The D-Team to break Hannah from prison. Does he use one of those nifty VR headsets to pull it off?
Ugh, I just don’t care, anymore. And how come all of these Christian apoc flicks never end with Brother J showing up, in this case, to beat down Nick Mancusco? At least Estus Pirkle — his sharpened bamboo and mass graves, be damned — wrapped it up and took us upstairs to The Believer’s Heaven, while Tim Ormond has Christ arriving on white horseback with a band of angels in The Second Coming.
“The Supreme Court vs. The Supreme Being. Let the Trial Begin,” so says the box copy. . . .
No. Just let this all end. Please. I believe! I believe! I won’t accept the Mark. Anything to makes these movies, stop.
In answer to reader comments regarding if there was another movie after Judgement (2001) to wrap the story line: if there were plans for one, they seemed to have vanished when the production company closed up their shingle.
* Hey, we known what we are talking about: we’re self-proclaimed apocalypse experts! So check out these featurettes rounding up all of our reviews of apoc’ers from the ’50s through the ’80s:
I was thinking that this movie was worse than some of the sub-VCA adult films that I endured in my teens, back in the days before gonzo when every single porn had to actually have a story that you suffered through.
This all makes sense when watching this movie, because I could tell that Bill Fisher had done adult — he has a movie called His Cock Is a Monster on his IMDB list, after all — and his bio on that site says, “His drive for perfection is what keeps his TV, DVD and motion pictures selling. Coming from the “photography” world, he knows just how to get the shot that he wants. Extremely creative cinematography, excellent writing and great story ideas are why his films are so successful.” He also claims that Helmut Newton recognized his talent, so who are we to deny the story someone posts on their IMDB bio?
Originally known as The Woman In Apt 2C, Full Moon bought this and unleashed it on the world all over again, hiding it amongst the streaming movies they’ve sold to sites like Tubi and making this absolute piece of steaming dung smear itself all over my eyes and brain.
They compare it to Rear Window and yes, both of these movies — actually this is not even really a movie, so wrong already before you get started — have an injured man obsessed with the goings on next door.
But unlike those Caballero, Western Visuals and Coast to Coast movies of my past, the sex in this movie never really happens. It has all of the build that you expect from the form and then it just fades out. This is beyond even Cinemax After Dark — those movies are wonderful, thank you very much — level blandness. This is something that Full Moon is making money off of, despite how bad it is.
Nobody cares about this movie. I had to hunt down who was even in it and all I could find were the actresses Elita Sanders and Mara Kelle, who don’t list this movie on their IMDB page. That’s because it was part of another softcore effort, Erica’s Erotic Nights. That was directed by Francis Locke, who has sold the majority of his work to Full Moon, so this is all starting to make sense. He owned Torchlight Pictures, which released more than 200 erotic thrillers and adult dramas for cable television channels like HBO and Showtime like Bikini Time Machine.
Yet according to this article on The Schlock Pit, Torchlight was “the erotic subdivision of Full Moon that Charles Band had tasked the prolific auteur with overseeing.” Who would that filmmaker be? Oh yeah. David DeCoteau.
Originally opening at Disneyland in 1969, The Haunted Mansion was one of the last Disney theme park attractions overseen by Walt Disney himself. Two years later, a similar one opened in Walt Disney World. Originally it was going to be a run-down building, but Walt rejected the notion of a worn building in his brand new theme park. A trip to Winchester Mystery House — filled with straits to nowhere and doors that opened into brick walls — put Disney and his team on the right path.
The dark ride is one that has its own fans who obsess — and rightly so — over the history and multiple versions of the attraction. After Disney’s death in December 1966, the opening of the ride on August 12, 1969 finally brought numbers up to the theme park that has his name on it.
When you talk into the main room and hear the voice of Paul Frees intone, “When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls, whenever candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still, that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight…” you know that you’re in for a ride unlike anything else. I am notorious for not enjoying theme parks and I’ve gone through The Haunted Mansion multiple times.
Following Tower of Terror, Mission to Mars, The Country Bears and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, this would be the fifth Disney attraction to get a movie of its own. Written by David Berenbaum (Elf, Zoom) and directed by Rob Minkoff (the co-director of The Lion King), it opened to near-universal scorn.
The film stars Eddie Murphy as Jim Evers, who along with his wife Sara (Marsha Thomason) runs a real estate business. He barely has time for their kids Michael and Megan and even sells a house instead of meeting his wife for their anniversary. To make up for it, he suggests a vacation before the occupants of Louisiana’s Gracey Manor ask him and his wife to help sell their gigantic home.
The real reason they are summoned is that the lord of the manor, Master Edward Gracey (Nathaniel Parker) believes that Sara is the reincarnation of his long-dead wife Elizabeth. Yet for some reason, everyone else in the house — including Wallace Shawn as Ezra — is afraid of his butler Ramsley (Terence Stamp, who as always deserves better).
Eventually, Ramsley threatens the children and forces Sara into marrying Gracey before her husband returns to save them all and reveal the truth of what happened on the day of Gracey’s wedding.
As interesting and exciting as the original ride is, the movie is pretty lifeless. In an odd choice, it’s based on Phantom Manor, the version of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland Resort Paris, instead of the more familiar versions of the attraction. It’s also funny that Eddie Murphy had a routine about how he’d leave a haunted house immediately when he was a young and vital standup comic, but by 2003, he was willing to sleepwalk through this film.
But hey! Jennifer Tilly is Madame Leota and that has to count for something!
June 21: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie — is Julie Strain.
On January 10, 2021, our world got a whole lot worse when Julie Strain died. In everything she did — and look, not every movie is really all that great, but who cares — she exuded confidence, a spirit of fun and a knowing wink that said, “Just shut up and enjoy it.” So many kids my age had crushes on celebrities and I would just think, “Yeah, but she’s no Julie Strain.”
This movie has Julie, Brinke Stevens and Tiffany Shepis in it, which is really more than we deserve. It’s about a sorority led by Mother Fitch (Strain) called Delta Delta Pi that loves to eat human flesh because, well, who knows and who cares why. As they prepare for homecoming, a student tries to stop their evil acts, so she brings in one of their first member Rhonda Cooper (Brinke).
Julie’s half-sister Lizzy was also in this, so there’s that. I mean, you also get to see Julie dance covered in blood, as well as demand that people grind a man’s scrotum up. It’s not the greatest movie you’ve ever seen, but that’s totally the kind of movie that Julie would make better just by showing up. Except for the Andy Sidaris films she’s in. Those are like perfect with perfect on top.
Oh yeah — this movie also has full frontal dong. If that upsets you, please know that there are also scenes of tallywhackers being devoured and not in the raw. Please enjoy!
Courtney and Erica Enders started drag racing as kids and Erica became the 2014, 2015 and 2019NHRA Pro Stock drag racing champion. This Disney Channel film tells the story about how they had to work harder — because they were women — than the men they raced against. Erica (Beverley Mitchell, Saw II) even quit for a while until she realized that racing was her dream.
Along with her sister Courtney (Brie Larson, Captain Marvel), they with the NHRA Junior Dragster national title and prove themselves.
While not the gritty story of Heart Like a Wheel, you get the idea of how much the girls sacrificed to become winners. Originally airing on the Disney Channel on March 21, 2003, this was directed by Duwayne Dunham, who edited and directed Twin Peaks, as well as the Disney movies Halloweentown, The Thirteenth Year, Ready to Run and Tiger Cruise.
Snuff Trap feels like Bruno Mattei finally got sick of making all those interchangeable softcore romance movies and said, “You know, I’m at my best when I have no filter.” Welcome back, Bruno. Or Pierre Le Blanc, as you’d like to be known as here.
After her daughter Lauren gets abducted, Michelle (Carlo Solaro, Paprika, Top Girl) must enter the nightmare world of an Italian scum cinema version of a Paul Schrader film. Yet beyond just simple pornography, there’s the danger of snuff films, which seems to make sense when you’re movie is called Snuff Trap. Or Snuff Killer. Or Snuff Killer – Death Live.
Actually, this movie is 8mm, except that no one’s mother thought that the best way to rescue her daughter from a porn ring is to become a prostitute herself. That’s because Michelle’s husband is a politician and he’d rather not have the scandal of a stepdaughter going dietro la porta verde.
Soon, our protagonist finds herself going up against the leader of the pornographer, who has the astounding name of Dr. Hades (Anita Auer) and her henchman Roy.
Oh man, from 2002 to 2007, Mattei was the last Italian filmmaker standing making good old fashion exploitation films. I’m a huge fan of his late career shot on video films, which sure, are total junk, but nearly everything Bruno did was very much the same way. Yet I have such a soft spot in my heart for him, out there in his late 70s making cannibal movies in the jungle and cutting and pasting plots and even big pieces of footage from Hollywood movies. One of those films has the entire budget equal to the total of every movie Bruno ever did and absolutely none of the fun and heart. In a perfect world, we would have figured out how to put the human brain into an eternal robot and I would have paid as much as I had into the Kickstarter to keep Bruno alive, making ripoffs of whatever he could make the most money from at the time.
I mean, who else would make a movie where the password to the snuff empire’s secret inner lair is bondage?
Some rules that I have established of “Is this an ancient future cyberpunk movie?” I will answer some of these to determine the veracity of Paycheck‘s status.
Does it have the title of a Philip K. Dick book but not really have much to do with it?
Yes, it’s based on his story Paycheck which originally appeared in 1953.
Is there a lot of rain?
Not as much as others in the genre.
Does the male hero wear dress clothes and/or a trenchcoat?
It’s a black tie affair.
Do Keanu Reeves, Ben Affleck, Dolph Lundgren or Udo Keir appear in it?
Affleck makes it.
Does the internet do something it can’t do yet, yet look dated AF?
Yes. Also, there’s a discussion of memory sizes, which no speculative science fiction should have, because people brag about their brain holding meg file sizes or less and in 2021, we just say, “Oh. That’s the size of a text message.”
Are Stabbing Westward, KMFDM, Ministry or God Lives Underwater on the soundtrack?
No, but they did have to pay to use “Happy birthday.”
Is it a crappy version of Blade Runner?
Aren’t they all?
Are there numerous Asian-influenced scenes?
It’s less Asian influenced than made by the man who everyone copied by putting a bird on their action scenes, John Woo.
Do people use future terms that make no sense?
Yep.
Are there a lot of whirring sound effects?
Always.
Do people stare at the camera as it moves through a neon-lit strip club?
Often.
Are there rock stars in it?
No, sadly.
Is there a feral child?
I kind of wish there was.
When this was made, Paycheck was Ben Affleck’s biggest check, earning him $15 million. When asked why he starred in the film, he responds “The answer lies in the title.” He also lobbied to change his character from a Yankess to a Red Sox fan.
Woo was trying to make a Hitchcock-style movie and get away from what he was known for and Affleck begged for a Mexican standoff scene and got his way.
Affleck plays reverse engineer Michael Jennings, who analyzes the tech of his clients’ competitors and then improves it. He keeps his clients’ intellectual property safe by repeatedly having his buddy Shorty (Paul Giamatti) wipe his brain clean. Now, he’s stuck in a conspiracy with only clues from his past self to guide him, which is a lot like Total Recall, another Dick story turned film.
Now that he’s made a machine that predicts the future — then made himself forget — past Ben wants future Ben to stop that machine from falling into the hands of CEO James Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), who is using a fake version of our hero’s love interest Rachel Porter (Uma Thurman) to get him to reveal the secrets he’s learned.
Affleck won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his performances in this movie, Gigli and Daredevil, going on Larry King Live to accept and break the award, which was auctioned off and paid for the hall rental for the following year’s award show.
The last Warwick Davis Leprechaun movie, 2003’s return to the urban side of the Irish folklore based horror film series again proves the fact that if you put a movie in my DVD player, give me a Pepsi and a comfy couch, I will watch whatever it is.
This was originally going to be a spring break film, but I guess the lure of seeing a leprechaun get shot in a drive by was too much for some people to pass up.
Sticky Fingaz from Onyx is in this and one day, for one season of a TV show, he would become Blade. So this has that going for it. There’s also a scene where our antagonist tears off a woman’s jaw to get to one of her gold teeth.
So yeah. The leprechaun doesn’t die at the end and they tease he will come back, but fans of the series had to wait until 2014’s Leprechaun: Origins. I always skipped these films and I’ll be honest, outside of the space and Vegas episodes, I don’t know that I was really missing all that much. I realize these films have their fans and tastes differ, but I’m struggling to say anything nice. It’s just, you know, St. Patrick’s Week and these movies seemed like a good idea and I had the box set and…well, maybe the last two in it will be better. Let’s hope.
Every few years, I re-read the Peter Biskind book that this documentary was based on, if only to make myself more depressed as time goes on over the fact that the New Hollywood that changed cinema faded so quickly and was replaced by whatever we have now.
Kenneth Bowser directed this — and several documentaries on another of my pop culture obsessions that had a brief period (s) of greatness followed by mediocrity, Saturday Night Live — and it’s the perfect companion to the book, building on the stories there by featuring interviews with most of the people who survived, like Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich, John Schlesinger, Johnathan Demme, John Milius, Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Francis Ford Coppola and more.
Many of the subjects from the book — including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Altman and William Friedkin — declined interviews. That said, Spielberg and Lucas come off the worst in the book, so I can see them not wanting to be part of a movie that was going to blame their blockbusters for being the end of the artistic aims of Hollywood. To be fair, the movie lays a lot of the claim for that at the fact that so many of the New Hollywood auteurs flamed out or had badly recieved films. But Spielberg and Lucas did slam the blockbuster nails into the coffin.
When asked about the book, Robert Altman said, “It was hate mail. We were all lured into talking to this guy because people thought he was a straight guy but he was filling a commission from the publisher for a hatchet job. He’s the worst kind of human being I know.” And Spielberg was reported as saying that every word in the book about him was “either erroneous or a lie.”
As for Friedkin, who was painted as a bully in the book, he said: “I’ve actually never read the book, but I’ve talked to some of my friends who are portrayed in it, and we all share the opinion that it is partial truth, partial myth and partial out-and-out lies by mostly rejected girlfriends and wives.”
I kind of love that Bogdonovich said, “I spent seven hours with that guy over a period of days, and he got it all wrong,” and still shows up in this movie.
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