A vacuous American teenager popping anti-depressants goes to Paris to stay with her sister. This sister (claimed to be a student at the Sorbonne) turns out to be equally vacuous, with added unpleasantness and stupidity. The thought that either girl would gain anything by staying in Paris is absurd. They spend their time shopping and talking like the 'guests' from Big Brother. They'd have done the same in Newark or Bolton.
The blonde sister (the one from the Sorbonne) takes her dark sister (the depressing one) to a really groovy club called CATACOMBS - believe it or not, it's an illegal club set up by a young 'philosopher' who says fatuous things like 'Death is spectacle.' (He's no Sartre.) The club is situated in... wait for it... the actual catacombs under the Paris streets. Is that creepy and weird or not? Not.
Anyway, the two girls meet some French boys and drink absinthe. They dance around with a crowd of other people. Before we know it, the dark, depressing girl is lost in the catacombs and is being chased by a mad axeman wearing a goat mask... She runs around in the catacombs for the rest of the film. We're supposed to be getting REALLY SCARED. I was looking forward to being terrified or at least mildly frightened - but nothing much happened except an increasing feeling of ennui.
The dark girl's lines are of the 'f**k! s**t! help! oh God is anyone there?' variety. Eventually she meets a French man called Henri (like many American tourists she is unable to pronounce this and insists on calling him 'Henry' - as if he were Ray Liotta in 'Goodfellas'). 'Henry' helps her, but she simply ignores the fact that he can only speak French and she only English. She keeps asking him dumb questions in English and shows her gratitude to her rescuer by calling him 'asshole' and 'jerk' when things go wrong. Her intelligence really shows through when 'Henry' produces what a 5-year old can see is a street map of Paris. Our 'heroine' asks, 'What's that? Is it a map? IT'S A STREET MAP!' When 'Henry' suggests a way of walking through the catacombs to escape from the man with the goat mask, all the heroine can do is to complain,'Oh my God, it's so FAR!' Perhaps she thought she could phone for a cab instead - or get the subway.
Hardly surprisingly, there are no 'stars' in this grand entertainment. It isn't horrific in the least. The ending is quite clever, but to sit through the preceding hour and half to get there is asking too much of anyone. If you want a stylish, witty, and genuinely disturbing film set in the sewers and underground railways of London, watch Gary Sherman's DEATHLINE from the early Seventies.
This film was dead before anyone stepped foot in the catacombs. Less frightening than an international webcast by Lyndon Larouche - and nowhere nearly so funny...
The blonde sister (the one from the Sorbonne) takes her dark sister (the depressing one) to a really groovy club called CATACOMBS - believe it or not, it's an illegal club set up by a young 'philosopher' who says fatuous things like 'Death is spectacle.' (He's no Sartre.) The club is situated in... wait for it... the actual catacombs under the Paris streets. Is that creepy and weird or not? Not.
Anyway, the two girls meet some French boys and drink absinthe. They dance around with a crowd of other people. Before we know it, the dark, depressing girl is lost in the catacombs and is being chased by a mad axeman wearing a goat mask... She runs around in the catacombs for the rest of the film. We're supposed to be getting REALLY SCARED. I was looking forward to being terrified or at least mildly frightened - but nothing much happened except an increasing feeling of ennui.
The dark girl's lines are of the 'f**k! s**t! help! oh God is anyone there?' variety. Eventually she meets a French man called Henri (like many American tourists she is unable to pronounce this and insists on calling him 'Henry' - as if he were Ray Liotta in 'Goodfellas'). 'Henry' helps her, but she simply ignores the fact that he can only speak French and she only English. She keeps asking him dumb questions in English and shows her gratitude to her rescuer by calling him 'asshole' and 'jerk' when things go wrong. Her intelligence really shows through when 'Henry' produces what a 5-year old can see is a street map of Paris. Our 'heroine' asks, 'What's that? Is it a map? IT'S A STREET MAP!' When 'Henry' suggests a way of walking through the catacombs to escape from the man with the goat mask, all the heroine can do is to complain,'Oh my God, it's so FAR!' Perhaps she thought she could phone for a cab instead - or get the subway.
Hardly surprisingly, there are no 'stars' in this grand entertainment. It isn't horrific in the least. The ending is quite clever, but to sit through the preceding hour and half to get there is asking too much of anyone. If you want a stylish, witty, and genuinely disturbing film set in the sewers and underground railways of London, watch Gary Sherman's DEATHLINE from the early Seventies.
This film was dead before anyone stepped foot in the catacombs. Less frightening than an international webcast by Lyndon Larouche - and nowhere nearly so funny...