Entry Twelve

The Creature Walks Among Us: Third and final "Gill Man" film, which began with The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Here, the Gill Man is captured by biologists but is badly burnt in the process. which leads the Gill Man to change slowly into a land animal, though he's caged in a compound for further study. It's odd that most of the drama hardly involves him, rather in how the creature shouold be treated, and making thin parallels between the creatures "humanity" as opposed to man's "inhumanity". It was done before, and better, in the Universal Frankenstein movies.

Ugly Duckling and Me: A European animated movie that utilizes third-rate Pixar creations in a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's story. Ratso (a rat, surprisingly) is a wannabe theatrical promoter who wants to use the Ugly Duckling in a freak show act. It's limited budget shows in the rather bland visuals, and the limited talent shows in the lack of laughs in the script. Kids might be entertained, but adults won't be.

The Incredible Pertrified World: Really lame Sci-fi movie about a group of deep sea divers who get trapped in an experimental diving bell deep under the sea. Managing to escape into some nearby caves - conveniently ignoring the pressure of the ocean, though the movie comments on it - they discover a whole network of caves and wander around in for a bit, then they get out and then the movie ends. Basically nothing happens, and when it does, it happens very slowly, making even the hour of movie onscreen seem thing. In a word: rubbish.

Vampire Diary: An English horror movie filmed in the style of the Blair Witch Project, with two women relentlessly recording their lives. They fall in love, but one's a vampire, and begins to feed on her friends, and things become more and more desperate. It's pretty bad, and the choice of the Blair Witch style becomes sporadically absurd, with silly reasons for the camera to be kept on. The two female leads are decent, but have to choke down some seriously awful dialogue.

The Last Days of Pompeii: A blacksmith who loses his family to financial circumstance becomes a cold-hearted gladiator, reasoning that money is the only thing that makes a man matter. His belief is shaken by the adoption a boy of a man he kills in the arena, and his meeting with Jesus. It all ends in a (literally) explosive climax, when disaster strikes the Roman city. It's pretty bland stuff, only enlivened with the brief fight scenes and the ending. The rest is dull moralising.