VividSimon Simply Perfect

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

lemon_magic "Metamorphosis" has about 20 minutes of decent work in it, but those minutes are scattered and buried in a 90 minute movie. And it's obvious that those 20 minutes are the sequences the director had in mind when he started this project - the scene where the robot arm injects the serum into the professor's eyeball, the scene where the elevator door opens and a cane falls out, followed by a mutilated cast member, the scene where the little boy hides in the lab from the mutated scientist and tries to reach a key that is just out of his reach, the rough sex/assault flashbacks, etc. And intermittently, these scenes work as well as the film stock and the lighting and the tiny budget will allow.Also, the protagonist is hypnotically good looking (which makes the initial signs of change on his face more interesting), the actress who plays his girlfriend has some chops, the rival professor gets in some neat Scrooge-ish moments, and the protagonist's two main friends are played effectively. Even the little boy manages to be reasonably unforced and natural - he's not Dakota Fanning or Haley Joe Osment, but he isn't nearly as bad as he could have been.Still, there are some really bad and really dull sequences here that pretty much smother any interest or excitement the movie is trying to generate (the director has no idea how to frame a car chase or a driving sequence or a sex scene or a lot of other standard cinematic things required to keep a movie out of Sargasso sea boredom). And the monster make up is pretty bad. And they misspell "chromosomal" on the computer read outs. And someone made the fatal mistake of all cheap movie makers and hired one guy with a synthesizer to supply the music soundtrack, and this guys is under the impression that he's scoring the background to a "Starsky and Hutch" episode.The movie is actually just good enough to make you watch it through to the end, but at the end you'll throw up your hands and say, "Ah, geez, 90 minutes of my life, wasted."

mlamar-3 The story idea itself wasn't bad, but the screenplay, editing and much of the acting were deficient. Many points in the portrayed events seem to have been skipped over, instead of tying them together into a coherent presentation. The film thus tended to be rather choppy and to jump around a bit. Although it was allegedly filmed in Virginia, it seemed to be more like a Canadian film than an American film. I never figured out why the woman from the home office in New York, who was allegedly sent there to examine the finances, seems to have moved into a house there, with her son. (Her son, by the way, seemed to have very little to do with the plot, except perhaps for some background on her.) This movie could be remade, with the needed improvements and be a decent horror film--perhaps becoming a classic. But, as it stands, it is more of an instructional film of what not to do in a movie.

vegeta3986 Ha. without a doubt Tommy's the evil one here. i don't know why, but for some reason, little kids in horror movies tend to come across as little butt munches. and since they're kids, they won't die. because they're annoying...well..except for asylum of terror. but those are few and far between.Anyway onto the movie. Can't find this movie on DVD? sure you can! all you have to do is buy the Chilling classics DVD pack! not only do you get Metamorphosis on DVD for $15, but you also get 49 OTHER MOVIES! what a bargain! pff. OK. i'm done advertising for these cheesy movies. let's just say, this movie ain't worth the 15 bucks on its own.So we have a chemist scientist. yeah. cause all chemist scientists look as handsome as this guy playing Peter. He's trying to come up with a serum to stop deterioration of the body. the college he works at wants to pull the plug on his project, so he tries it on himself. but because this is a horror movie, he sucks it up and starts and incredibly long transformation sequence that takes nearly 3/4 of the movie.To pad out the movie he gets into a relationship with some woman who has a son. and she was never married! scandalous! But of course Tommy is one of the most irritating characters....no. i take it back. HE IS the most irritating character. Far worse than the old crippled guy who wants to take over peter's work and gloats over him while he's in the hospital. that's right, even as an old cripple, you can still be the villain.So we see Peter start to randomly kill some people in visions he has until he realizes he's the one doing it and just decides to kill everyone in his path to get back to normal. However at the end he ends up de-evolving into a lizard. yeah, i know don't ask. The ending really doesn't make any sense. And if you're hoping for any really good payoff, you're not going to get it.This isn't a HORRIBLE movie....it's just frustrating because of the lack of a good payoff. if you already own the 50 movie pack and this is next on your list, you're not in for a snoozer, but you're also not in for a great movie. Just sit back, relax, and eat a lot of snack food. Because this movie isn't going to be making you jump out of your skin anytime soon.Metamorphosis gets 4 plastic lizard heads, out of 10.

Coventry "Metamorphosis" hold a tiny bit of cult-value, simply because it was written and directed by George Eastman. This Italian bloke is more or less the personification of male sleaze and starred in pretty much every rancid Joe D'Amato production during the late 70's/early 80's. Wouldn't it be interesting for avid Euro-cult purchasers to own the only movie directed by the guy who walked around bare-butted in "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead" all the time? I thought so! Now, unlike the movies he starred in, Eastman's own "Metamorphosis" is kind of disappointing in the gore & sleaze departments. There are a handful of nasty murders, cheesy monster effects and naked female bodies (a guest appearance by sleaze-queen Laura Gemser!) on display, but it's mainly a talkative movie. The handsome & eloquent Dr. Houseman is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough with his research on human DNA codes when suddenly the university he works for threatens to cancel his funds. He developed a theory to decode genes and block the human ageing process, but if he doesn't come up with detailed reports any time soon, his research will be stopped. So Dr. Houseman does what any intelligent scientist would do and injects the untested serum into his own veins. Needless to say (and like the title implies), he slowly turns into murderous monster that actually ages much quicker! In other words, his research sucked! Like the other reviewers already mentioned, this movie "borrows" a lot of ideas from David Cronenberg's "The Fly" – the dramatic romance sub plot included - but doesn't add any originality from its own. The big difference is that you constantly feel connected with Jeff Goldblum's character in "The Fly", whereas Dr. Houseman becomes just another monster that needs to be destroyed as fast as possible. The rapid-ageing-syndrome aspect also reminded me of Ruggero Deodato's sadly underrated giallo "Phantom of Death", only the protagonist in that film inherited the disease and didn't inflict it on himself. The physical deterioration of the carriers is very similar in both films, though. Few scares or excitement to discover here, instead the movie features loads of bad acting, poor lighting, lousy editing and a completely retarded climax to boot. Feel free to skip this one.