WisdomsHammer If you watch this movie with any seriousness at all, you will suffer. If you watch it and try not to laugh, you may be surprisingly entertained. Try not to laugh at most of the death scenes. Try not to laugh at Ginty trying to act. Try not to laugh at abrupt and inappropriate jump cuts and transitional scenes, including the ending, that has sexy sax music played over it. If you watch it that way, as I did, by the Scarab, you will be entertained!

Leofwine_draca This bizarre Spanish horror yarn gets by through just being so darned unusual. Some inspired scenes of craziness had my jaw dropping on the floor, but at other times the film is so bad that it makes you want to laugh or fast-forward, depending on how funny you find bad movies to be. SCARAB is a film that walks a fine line between genius and silliness, but I think it pays off in the end as a fun viewing experience. You won't find many films like this around, that's for sure.Imported American lead Robert Ginty is the offbeat hero, an unlucky reporter whose persistence almost leads to his death. Now, Ginty is not like your usual action heroes (handsome, athletic, etc) yet he carved a niche for himself as a dependable lead in the '80s. He certainly attempts to invest his various characters with drive, determination, and emotion, and I admire his work, so his presence is a plus for me. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Rip Torn as the chief villain, a crazed cult leader who dresses in ancient robes and masks and does all sorts of weird things. Torn's hammy and unthreatening turn makes him one of the less memorable screen villains.The opening scene itself is a weird one, as a scientist who is experimenting on a scarab causes a god to appear (!) after dripping blood on the beetle. Here, the special effects take the form of negative images and the like, so you know that the effects men were imaginative but challenged when it comes to the budget. What follows is a series of cool suicide scenes in which various political/important figures suddenly snap and violently murder themselves, usually in front of an audience. These scenes unmistakably reminded me of the moment when the American Ambassador blows his own head off with a shotgun in OMEN III: THE FINAL CONFLICT.In a nice touch reminiscent of an Italian gialli, Ginty finds himself pursuing a mysterious nurse through cobbled streets after seeing her at one of the public suicides. He is repeatedly stopped in his attempts. Meanwhile, interspersed with the thriller aspects are some dodgy scenes of writhing, naked women presided over by the deranged Torn, all taking place in weird expressionistic sets which mainly look cheap and nasty. After one woman begs Torn to be her lover, she turns into a sow and an evil laughing old woman apparition appears! You have to see it to believe it.After this point the film begins to make less and less sense. In a desperate attempt to meet up with the nurse, Ginty rides his motorbike on to a train (!) and finally joins forces with her to combat evil. They travel to the girl's house to have tea with her mother, who is then killed by masked assassins. Bizarrely, the girl shows absolutely no remorse - or indeed sadness - at the death of her mum, instead running off with Ginty to find Torn and his cult. Oh yeah, and she also has the power to heal people through touch alone (?).Well, this movie doesn't make ANY sense, but I enjoyed it anyway. There are some great visuals, like when Ginty and his companion encounter a street full of smoking corpses (I don't know what they were doing there but they looked cool all the same). Another cool scene has our heroes attacked by flaming arrows but repelling them through magic to explode the attackers. Ginty puts an egg in his beer and delivers one of his oddest performances yet. In the film's highlight in my opinion, he's nonchalantly walking down the street (wearing dated headphones no less) when he is attacked by an assailant who can blow things up and shoot bullets from his finger! Havoc ensues, and it's all very weird and cool to watch, even if I didn't understand what was going on.The supporting cast is a better-than-most one for a production filmed in Spain. For example we have stalwart Brit performer Donald Pickering popping up as a blackmailed banker, and the bug-eyed Marty Feldman lookalike Jose Lifante (from THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE) as an occult bookstore owner. Cristina Sanchez Pascual is the unusually heroic female lead and puts Ginty's weakling to shame! Although the probability is that you won't understand it, I enjoyed SCARAB for what its worth as an offbeat, very eccentric horror-cum-foreign adventure yarn. Worth checking out.

Paul Andrews Escarabajos Asesinos, or Scarab to English speaking audiences, begins with some silly scrolling text which reads, "long, long ago when there was neither earth nor sky, nothing but a dark, watery mass, there lived a spirit possessing magical powers. One day the spirit took counsel with it's heart and was moved to speak it's own name, brought into being a grand, majestic. This figure-the God, Khepera, whose symbol was the Scarab" grammatical errors aside this piece of text means nothing. We then cut to the laboratory of Wilfred Manz (Rip Torn) P.H.D. Physics. Manz is conducting some sort of experiment on an Egyptian artifact that is in the shape of a Scarab. After reciting some silly dialogue nothing happens so Manz punches some glass beakers in frustration and cuts himself. His blood drips onto the Scarab and a shadowy figure rises from a swirl of smoke & bad neon lighting. Jack Murphy (Robert Ginty) is an American reporter working in the Spanish capital Madrid, after getting into bed with the wrong woman his editor Raleigh (Sam Chew Jr.) says he is going to give him one more chance & sends Murphy to cover a boring press conference by the Spanish Prime Minister (Hector Alterio) on 'new morality'. Half way through his speech the Minister grabs a security officers gun and commits suicide. Murphy notices a Spanish nurse named Elena (Cristina Sanchez Pascual) take a small Scarab which had fallen from the Minister's lapel. Sensing a story Murphy follows Elena. After various inane plot devices & coincidences it turns out that Elena is Manz's daughter & that Manz is now the leader of an Egyptian cult (since it's set in Spain shouldn't it be a Spanish cult?) who apparently wants to save the world by bringing back the Dark Ages before mankind destroys itself with an Atom Bomb, makes sense yeah? Manz & his followers plan on doing this by assassinating heads of state & men in power. I said it was bad, don't blame me. Elena feels she has to stop him, Murphy does too. But in reality Manz has plans for both Murphy & his daughter Elena. Oh, & for some unexplained reason Manz steals some money from a banker named Harrington (Donald Pickering) by blowing the Bank of England up. So, in an incredibly lame climax it's Manz & his worshippers against Murphy & Elena in a fight to the death! First off I should apologise if I've made Escarabajos Asesinos sound exciting or interesting because, frankly, it's as dull as dishwater & about as much fun. Co-written & directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe I absolutely hated this film. I find it incredibly hard to comprehend that it took four people, Jaffe, Robert Jaffe, Ned Miller & Jim Block to write this crap. Four people? Maybe everyone had their own ideas & that's why it turned into the mess that it did. Maybe there were creative differences, or maybe these four people have no talent & just didn't know how to write a decent horror/thriller. You decide! Escarabajos Asesinos is extremely slow & uninvolving. I never felt that anyone or anything was in danger, I mean taking over the world by assassinating government figures? There are only two assassinations throughout the entire film, & then the film tries to surprise us by saying this plan was a front for something else even less exciting and even more boring if that's possible. I hate this film, I almost fell asleep watching it. Ginty has all the personality & acting ability of a peeled Bannana & his falling in love with Elena was hardly a surprise, I mean just once can't the leading man and woman hate each other & resist the temptation to get into bed with each other after less than half a day of meeting each other? Forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any apart from a so brief it's almost subliminal cut chest & stomach. There is however plenty of nudity as not only does Manz have a collection of worshippers, he has a collection of young female almost totally naked dancing worshippers, who say things like "don't you want any of us!?"! Manz's lair is totally ridiculous, foam rocks and no walls, just a totally black background that looks like a school stage play with big black curtains hanging down. And there is dry ice swirling around all the time, some stupid looking trees without leaves and some ancient artifacts that glow in the dark! The costumes look cheap as does the children's face paint they all wear, Rip Torn looks very fetching with silver eye shadow! There is no atmosphere, gore or excitement during the overly long 90 minute running time. The only good thing I can say about Escarabajos Asesinos is that it is made with a fair amount of competence throughout, bad sets aside that is! Please do your best to avoid this film as it hurts me to think some other poor soul may have to sit through it, if I can just stop one single person having to endure this piece of crap then this review has been worth it. Avoid at all costs!

Kerozene Some illuminated scientist awakens an Egyptian entity. The scientist becomes the evil guru of a sect of killer fanatics who's goal is to eliminate the most powerful men in the world.Robert Ginty is a reporter. He finds out that the victims all have a little scarab-shaped amulet on them. The scarab turns out to be the symbol of some Egyptian cult....Pretty bad movie. Badly directed and badly played. The only cool thing about this movie is the Egyptian rituals with lots of half naked babes dancing like crazy among an extremely fake looking set. Oh, and there is this guy, who shoots bullet with his finger. Nonsense.