TheRetroCritic

Back in 1985, Terry Gilliam directed Brazil , a science-fiction comedy like no other about a dystopian future in which the world is run by totalitarian bureaucracy. It wasn't a big hit in the US but it did well everywhere else and over time it has become something of a cult classic. The film follows Jonathan Pryce's Sam Lowry, a meek government employee whose dreary life is turned upside down when he literally meets the woman of his dreams. The world depicted in Brazil is a gloomy, depressing one with its backwards technology, its inhuman laws, its crushingly industrial metropolis and yet Gilliam manages to find the humour in that setting by emphasising just how ridiculous this society has become with countless larger-than-life characters and awkward tech. The result is kind of a cross between 1984 , Blade Runner and Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life . The dreams Lowry has, in which he's flying, saving a damsel in distress from monsters, look beautiful and work a

The video version of my Haunted Honeymoon review.

Gene Wilder writes, directs and stars in "comedy chiller" Haunted Honeymoon , a homage to old horror-themed radio plays. The film was released in 1986 and was a box-office and critical bomb. On paper, this movie sounds like a riot: werewolves, a Hercule Poirot-style setup, Dom DeLuise playing an over-the-top character in drag, Gene Wilder, the whole thing looks like the spiritual successor to Mel Brooks' classic Young Frankenstein . And yet right off the bat there's something not quite right about Haunted Honeymoon. Billing itself as a horror/comedy, it proves to be neither funny nor scary. The plot is initially quite promising as Wilder's radio actor starts randomly acting strange as his shady uncle shows up to suggest scaring him to death in order to cure him. He then shows up with his fiancée (played by Gilda Radner) at the creepy mansion where he grew up for his wedding and we're introduced to various bizarre characters. Unfortunately, from then on, t