Customer Reviews

Presence [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

All too frequently, big budget Hollywood films sport an impressive cast of well-known actors whose talents go to waste is a mess that leaves the audience shaking its head at its ineptitude. Such a waste of big stars can happen on a low budget film too. In PRESENCE, director Tommy Lee Wallace takes the acting ability of popular film and television star June Lockhart (LASSIE, SERGEANT YORK), Joe Lara, and future bimbo star Nikki Cox and totally misuses their talent in a movie that was supposed to fighten but wound up as merely amusing. The plot involves the time honored cliche of a group of scientists, military men, and bikini wearing CPAs stranded on a lost island when their plane crashes only to find that the island had been inhabited by CIA spooks running forbidden bioharazrd experiments. Naturally, the experiments had gotten out of hand, creating scaly-like creatures right out of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. As if this was not incredible enough, the survivors meet a tribe of natives who seem to have wandered off from the set of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. You would think that with so many model types in bikinis, such a movie ought to have at least one or two love interests. Model Kathy Ireland bounces her locks around without entangling any man. PRESENCE is so full of cheesy scripting and unbelievable plotting that the eggs that Hollywood lays in its big budget disasters are not limited to them alone. The best part: Kathy Ireland in a bikini. The worst part: everything else.

THE PRESENCE is a 1992 tv-pilot for NBC that never sold; watching it you can see why. A typically stereotypical group of survivors end up on a deserted (not really, though) island which once housed a facility where genetic breeding was conducted. In the mishmash of the plot, one never knows what really happened, and by its "open ending", you can see how it would have been a series. The cast is wasted, with only flashes of talent from Gary Graham and Joe Lara. Otherwise, its effects are mundane and its suspense level virtually non-existent.

The movie was as bad as I remembered, but it was still fun to watch it. Haven't seen it since it came out on VHS.

Whoever wrote this script must've watched too many Gilligan's Island eps. Joe Lara's incredible talent was wasted in this film.The other actors/actresses deserve hazard pay for attempting to act in a film suitable only for the limited intelligence of a pubescent l2-year-old.

RELEASED AS A PILOT FOR A SERIES "DANGER ISLAND" AS THE ORIGINAL TITLE. REASON FOR MY 5 STARS IS BECAUSE MY OLDEST BROTHER PLAYED FRANK. AND JUNE LOCKHART WAS MARRIED TO ONE OF MY MOTHERS BEST FRIENDS FROM HER CHILDHOOD DAYS. ANYWAY, THE MOVIE IS WORTH WATCHING BUT PLEASE ONLY EAT FRESH FRUIT WHILE WATCHING IT, DAY OLD FRUIT SPOILS FAST. THE FILM, WELL THINK OF IT AS ED WOODS VERSION OF GILLIGANS ISLAND