Customer Reviews

Penn & Teller Get Killed [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Penn and Teller Get Killed is a bizzare, mind bending, dark, dark, dark, dark comedy from the comedy/magic team of Penn Gillette and Teller. Written by it's stars, this movie reaches levels of darkness even Hitchcock wouldn't dare to venture. And therin lies the comedic brilliance of Penn and Teller. This film gets better with each viewing. It's not for everyone, but if you are into dark comedies or just want to spend a couple of hours simultaniously laughing and scratching your head, then Penn and Teller Get Killed is the film for you.

Where to begin? I'm always wary of giving movie reviews since so much is personal taste but here goes.
I won't tell you the story, the title pretty much gives it away however I will say I was impressed by the acting of them both not all TV & stage actors can make the transition.

I was especially impressed with Teller's physical acting, very savvy, the silent film stars would have been touched. Yes it's a dark and funny film, so was Dark Star (remember that one? Harold and Maude?), so were many of Hitchcock's it's no suprise to find Teller is a fan.
Sit back and enjoy Penn and Teller's world. N.B no sequel!

Are we live? Yeah.

Crazy good. Beyond good. Mark Twain meets Patrick McGrath and they both have coffee at The Factory with Edie Sedgwick and Frederick Pohl and Luis Bunuel and then Thomas M. Disch (circa 1974) and Alice B. Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.) show up with glazed donuts good. No - glazed donuts AND crullers. That's how good this is.

Perhaps the best part is the Fan's home video, but the whole thing is purest grow-a-whole-new-brain good. Watch this and have mad new thoughts about public and private acts, illusion and reality, spectator and performer, celebrity and obscurity, fame and responsibility, envy and identity, and how they all gooshily bleed into each other. And just generally be entertained as hell.

But I want it on DVD! So will you; you'll want to watch holes in this thing, Eraserhead eighties hair or no Eraserhead eighties hair. I believe I acquired my copy the year it came out, and I still get that hair-raising chill that tells you you're in the presence of genius, real mythic dreamtime inspiration, every time I watch it. Like other masterpieces, it probably has more depth and meaning than the authors themselves were aware of at the time, and it reveals new levels every time you watch it.

But I'd really like it to be available on DVD.

A respectful request to P&T from a devoted (but not like in the movie) fan: it's not the fourteenth century, and it would make a lot of us very happy to see this on a medium that doesn't get all stretched out after four hundred viewings.

No hard feelings?

The dark comedic brilliance of Penn and Teller is brought to the screen by the legendary director Arthur Penn. Filmed on location in Atlantic City, P&T Get Killed shows the boys doing what they do best. The film also showcases some of thier most memorable stunts. A must see for any P&T fan, cult movie fan, or film noire fan.

Penn and Teller are in top form, being the stars of their first movie (but hopefully not their last!) Of course, I AM biased, being a Penn and Teller groupie myself (and having met them before), but I wouldn't misdirect any of you... Love it. Love it. Love it!

I've seen it 26 times. AND wrote out the entire script. By hand. Only took me 6 hours.

I'm a fan of Penn and Teller, both in terms of their magic and their worldview. All of that is on display here in this slight but funny and engaging movie.

I say slight because the story isn't exactly what I expected. When Penn announces he'd like somebody to kill him, I imagined the second act of the movie would be that it would be about Penn trying to avoid the plots of people trying to kill him, eventually finding a way to get them to stop (or, you know, maybe they'd succeed).

Instead the story is about one nut trying to kill him, which is fine, but it's not developed to be the centerpiece of the story -- it's something that just happens from time to time. Really, the centerpiece is Penn and Teller pulling pranks on one another.

But I'm being more critical than I'm intending to be. I do think the movie is smart and funny, and has magic in it to boot. I'm not sure what I think about the wild, weird, dark, brave ending, except to say that I admire it, even though I'm not sure it was the best choice. Oh, well, it's their movie, they can do what they want. Worth checking out.

But we warned, the movie lives up to it's title. I actually feel as if they did a good job making a movie based around the two magicians. Teller is the best part, a modern day Harpo.

The movie was classic Penn & Teller, enjoyable up to the point where it would freeze up to and start to stutter.

I've got a fairly new LG player that had never had a problem playing anything. I exchanged what I thought was a defective copy and found that the new disk did exactly the same thing. From reading the DvD and the packaging, I found that what I had was a DVR disk, not a DvD. For what ever reason, these disks did not want to operate right in my player. I'm not sure if the copies were defective, or if it was just the DVR format, but the product was junk. Wish they would have work, because I was enjoying the warped sense of humor of the movie itself.

It's nice to see movies every once in awhile that keep you guessing. The plot plays out kind of like "The Game", only you're not so sure the hollywould ending is gunna come. It's funny, strange, and doesn't even feel like a regular movie. But then, isn't that a refreshing change every once in awhile? I'm not a Penn and Teller fan per se, but they certainly do share my sense of humour after all. Definately worth a rent sometime.

I remember enjoying this when I saw it on cable as a kid. It was funny and weird. I bought this because I wanted to see if it held up and it is out of print on VHS and never released on DVD, so renting was out of the question. It does NOT hold up. Frankly, despite the "quirk", it's really rather boring.