Purely Joyful Movie!

A Masterpiece!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

When I was a kid the VHS tape of this movie was one of those ones where the awesome cover art would always catch my eye and make me really want to watch it. The version with the monster, not that baby bottle crap. Okay, so Kindred is a movie that I really do want to love or even like that much, which I suppose I should, as it does feature a lot of the required criteria that I usually do tend to go for in what I'd consider a fun horror movie, it has an eerie atmosphere, it was made in a time in the 80s that more often than not tended to be very kind to flicks of this nature, it's got a neat grimy monster, two pretty great scary sequences and some very impressively done grotesque practical special effects for a low-budget, in fact I'd say they are the film's best quality today, with globby gunk being liberally spewed just about everywhere in one climactic moment.. But I don't know, overall it just doesn't do that much for me, it's good in stops and starts but I'm mostly just bored by it, it's tone is very dull and dreary, and it drags along at a soap opera's pace with a weak cast of characters who's dramas I couldn't care less about. Especially David Allen Brooks who I thought was awful and his boring acting was stiff as a board. The only one of the group that I did like was the clown-faced Peter Frechette who was really naturally funny and I was glad that he got to live as the obnoxious 'comic relief' type is usually the first to go. He brought a little much-needed lightness into this weirdly dour movie. Some things about it that I found distracting was the drab and murky quality of the picture, and actually the music score which I thought was very wrong for the film and gave it the wrong kind of vibe, didn't go along with the imagery and story and wasn't doing it any favours.. I'm not saying it's bad exactly, just that its components don't gel together well for me at all. There were some things about this unnerving tale of good old-fashioned genetic manipulation gone awry that I liked. Like Rod Steiger, who despite rather hilariously overdoing it at points, was very good as a merciless mad scientist from hell - he's so horrible! Not only does he cold-heartedly perform cruel surgery on helpless animals in his laboratory of horrors, but he also organises fatal accidents so that he can procure the victims to experiment on to transform them into mindless freaks, which he feeds his right-hand goon to early on in the story when he makes the mistake of crossing him! Now that scene I do love because it's so nightmarishly creepy, gives me major chills! Some other bits that genuinely got under my skin was when the watermelon girl literally gets (one of) the creature's tentacles shoved under her skin, seriously nasty stuff. And also when Melissa the terribly British scientist is revealed to be another one of the fiendish Doctor Lloyds mutants as she painfully changes into a hideous half-fish woman, and dies! They did a terrific physical effect there, the flick's almost sure to deliver to the body-horror/creature enthusiasts. I like how they dropped a few none too subtle hints about her secret beforehand. Something that was interesting and different about the monster was that there wasn't one, but many of it stalking the decrepit old house in various stages, including cute little ghoulie-esc baby ones that pop out of nowhere at the end in what I thought was a really silly and tacked-on scene that made the ending seem overly drawn-out. Not quite good enough for me, I thought it started out promising but didn't live up to its sinister themes and use them to the fullest and it ended up going for the gross-out extravaganza and dumb explosion ending where, much like Anthony as it melts and reveals the guy's twin inside(!?!) and drags the real villain back down into the murk from whence it came, everything just falls apart into piles of gloppy-goo! Well that was fun.. Oh my god, I'm so glad that I don't have a single gill!

That's right, don't watch on a full stomach and just try not to eat while watching it. It's not that it's particularly gory, but I'll explain later.As his mother lies dying in a hospital bed, David Brooks hears her tell him of top-secret experiments on his brother, Anthony. She advises him to go back to her house and destroy her notes and burn the place to the ground. Instead he goes with his wife and colleagues for a weekend to find out more information. While he is there he meets Amanda Pays' character who is a marine biologist that has been following his mother's work for quite some time. She is secretly working for Rod Steiger, a corrupt scientist who will stop at nothing to find out more about "The Anthony Experiment". It turns out Anthony is in the basement the whole time, transformed into a hideous aquatic creature. He had been genetically altered with a substance called Neomycin, a chemical found in all marine life.The movie's selling point is it's all-star cast and stomach-turning special effects. Sadly, Kim Hunter's character dies early on. There are some truly hideous monster creations. Rod Steiger keeps the rejects locked up in his basement. People with deformed pus-covered faces, octopus-like suckers on their arms, over-sized exterior veins and arteries with bluish-green fluid pulsing through them. Amanda Pays undergoes a truly remarkable human-to-fish transformation that should have won a freakin' Oscar. And the Anthony monster is truly horrifying, some kind of largemouth bass-squid-eel-humanoid monstrosity with glowing red eyes that melts down once electrocuted in a veritable fireworks show of squirting slime, blood spurting, and dripping latex. Rod Steiger gets blasted right in the face with a healthy dose of fish sludge (cod liver oil?). If you like your monster movies gross and slimy this one is for you.

I remember this film from when I was a wee little thing. It definitely scared the crap out of me when I was kid. Not bad for a little horror monster movie that probably not a lot of people have heard of. The most memorable moments in the film for me have already been mentioned in previous reviews.Now that I'm 27 years-old, I can still remember how horrific I found the "watermelon" scene when "Anthony", the mutated creature with long tentacles and sharp teeth, manages to miraculously crawl inside a watermelon. The scene where it bursts out of the watermellon in backseat of a car and attacks an unsuspecting woman by stuffing it's tenacles up her nose and under her skin still grosses me out. You'll have to see it to believe it. Very great visual effects for a little horror movie. This movie gave me nightmares when I was a kid. Now that I think about, the "watermelon scene" does come across a bit silly but it's still a very effective and creepy scene in the film. And the "fish lady" transformation scene still etches itself in my brain. If you come across this rare little horror movie, check it out for the creep and camp factor. True 80's horror fans won't be disappointed.

This one was a real surprise. I expected it to be a tedious and clichéd film but it was so so much more.The acting was simply magnificent and for an 80's movie, the special effects were some of the best i have seen. The story line was also very solid and i found myself wanting to the movie not to end as i was so into it.One of the very best horror films you are likely to see.10\10.A A A A