The Cassandra Crossing
by George P. Cosmatos
from Lions Gate
Touch Me
by H. Gordon Boos
from Strand Home Video
The romance that opens Touch Me is clumsy and stiff, but when the plot takes a crucial turn, the movie becomes a surprisingly affecting portrait of coping with illness. Brigitte (Amanda Peet) is an aspiring actress who's just begun seeing Adam (Michael Vartan), the owner of the health club where she teaches yoga. Suddenly her world is turned upside down by the news that an old boyfriend is dying of AIDS--and she soon learns that she herself is HIV positive. She sinks into depression and denial and rejects her relationship with Adam, despite his sincere attempts to move forward with their relationship. Touch Me isn't the most crisply written movie in the world, but its depiction of life with the HIV virus has some genuine grit to it and can be quite moving. Also featuring Greg Louganis. --Bret Fetzer
White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd
Humanoids From the Deep
by Barbara Peters (II)
from New Concorde
The peculiar genius of schlock-king Roger Corman is in full bloom with this extremely gory, pointedly offensive homage to 1950s monster movies (with a generous helping of Alien thrown in for good measure), in which a legion of mutated salmon-men terrorize a small town in their search for unwilling female companionship. (Potential viewers should be warned that this movie goes to great lengths to show what earlier films in this genre had only implied.) A guilty pleasure for exploitation fans with a strong stomach and a twisted sense of humor. For what it's worth, director Barbara Peters has claimed that additional shock scenes were inserted by producer Corman without her knowledge. The glop-intensive special effects were devised by Rob Bottin, who later went on to gross out the masses with his work on Seven, Robocop, and John Carpenter's graphic remake of The Thing. --Andrew Wright
The Cassandra Crossing
by George P. Cosmatos
from Geneon [Pioneer]
This exciting disaster/thriller features an all-star cast, including Richard Harris, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster and O.J. Simpson. 1000 passengers, traveling from Geneva to Stockholm on a luxury express train, learn that there's a terrorist on board carrying a highly infectious plague virus. Further complications arise as the train approaches a weakened bridge. Filmed in Europe with gripping suspense and disaster-epic action. Richard Harris, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster, O.J. Simpson
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