Sadly Over-hyped

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A Masterpiece!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Special Effects" could easily pass for a weak episode of "Columbo", except for two things. There is nudity and there is no Peter Falk. I can just imagine an episode titled "Reel Death" on my television screen. This is not far fetched, as director Larry Cohen wrote no less than three episodes of "Columbo". Unfortunately "Special Effects" has problems. The gorgeous Zoe Tamerlis would not be one of them, that is until she opens her mouth. Her acting was perfect in Ms.45 since she played a mute. The New York locations and Eric Bogosian's artistically decorated film studio offer more entertainment than the film itself, which is almost awful ........................... MERK

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS CONTAINED HEREIN. This is an okay one-time watch, but don't expect anything spectacular. The only thing that made this interesting for me was the "cheese factor." In other words: bad acting, bad hair-do's, terrible music soundtrack, moronic plot, lazy directing. This cheese does, however, get tiresome quickly. Larry Cohen obviously thought he was being oh-so-clever when he made this. Like wow, I'm a director, maybe I killed someone. Please! He even screwed this up at the end by making the police detective character "the director." Lame. It is also obvious, Cohen got his idea from Brian DePalma's far superior "Body Double." At least with "Body Double" DePalma took the cheese factor to the max. Re-watch that instead.

Larry Cohen's "Special Effects" is an average snuff-themed horror film.Eric Bogosian plays here an on-the-decline director who murders a starlet(brilliant Zoe Tamerlis,who sadly died in 1999)on camera and decides to use a dead ringer to make a film about the killing."Special Effects" is average-the script is mediocre and the action is dull at times.Still the snuff/murder scene(the strangling)is pretty nasty!The ending is also effective.All in all I'd recommend this film for undemanding horror fans-it's really nothing special,but if you want a passable time-killer...

After making a disastrous, special-effects laden film, a movie director decides to make a low budget biography of a murdered actress. To make her murder look as real as possible the director murders the actress himself. Could have been a very good film about snuff films, but the film's direction is a letdown. Zoe (Ms. 45) Lund (in a dual role) and particularly Eric Bogosian are very good in their respective roles of the murdered actress and the actress playing her, and the Cecil B. Demented director. Brian DePalma would have had a field day with this film.