Out of Season

**SPOILERS** Weird 1940's Hollywood type film noir filmed entirely in the former Communist Peoples Republic of Romania of all places! The movie has former Chicago Jewel thief Harry Barlow, Dennis Hopper, get involved with this aimless drifter Pierre, Jordan Frieda, who at first tried to rob Harry's beach-front bar. Catching Pierre with his pants down Harry has him put under his wing and trained to rip off the local amusement park's daily take. This all is to happen after the amusement parks grand opening of it's world famous roller costar known as the anti-gravity ride. Pierre ended up getting stuck at this dingy coastal town when his money, that he had hidden in his hotel room, was stolen by this homicidal religious fanatic Simon Guant, David Murray. Simon got Pierre to rip off Harry's Bar only to have Harry, who caught him in the act, get Pierre to work for him instead. Harry plans to use Pierre to rip off the amusement park's owner Michael Philips, Jim Carter, take when the park opens. What both Harry and Pierre don't know is that Simon is playing it both ways in planning to have Michael murdered with the help of Michael's cheating wife Eileen, Gina Gershon,whom he's planning to double-cross at the very last moment. The slippery and slimy Simon has Elieen confess on tape, without her knowing, that she's to have Michael murdered which will be all the evidence that Michael will need, by paying Simon $10,000.00 for it, to get an air-tight divorce against her! To round the utterly confusing movie plot out there's also Michael's snotty and spoiled daughter Kelly, Dominique Swain, who's Pierre girlfriend and is also looking to stick it to both her hated parents Michael & Eileen. Kelly is also unknowing working in concert with the greedy and unscrupulous banker Fraser MacDonald, William Armstrong, who's got a lean of Michael's amusement park by him being behind on his loan payments to his bank. It's Fraser who's also just dying to get his hands on the 60 aces of prime waterfront real-estate, that comprises Michael's amusement park, and turn it into a multi-million dollar shopping mall! ***SPOILER ALERT*** The whole mind boggling plot, by Simon Eileen Pierre Kelly & Harry, falls apart with Pierre breaking into Michael's house and thus keeping his wife Eileen from murdering him and being stopped by her partner in crime Simon, who planned to double-cross her all along, from doing it at the very last moment! Harry who, like almost everyone else involved in break-in at Michael's pad, has no idea of what's going on and is later attacked and both brutally tortured-as well as crucified-and murdered by the crazed and criminally deranged Simon. The by then helplessly drug and alcohol addicted Simon thought that both Harry and his accomplice Pierre ripped off Michaels' amusement park receipts as well as his wife's, Eileen, jewelry which in fact they didn't! In the end Simon,together with the femme fatal Eileen, ends up getting everything that he so rightfully deserves with Pierre taking off in the by then late Harry's 1969 firetruck red Cadillac Seville and riding into the California, or is it Romanian, sunset. It's now left for Pierre girlfriend Kelly to put on an act, as well as throw off suspicion on herself, as the grieving and orphaned daughter of her dead parents Michael & Eileen that she unintentionally had a hand in doing in as well as Simon that she very intentionally did leave hanging on a vine.

The movie is really slow paced to start of with, and is generally not very interesting. Sure it picks up towards the end. Sadly that's not much excitement either and the measures seems to outweigh the goal. Two story lines in the movie, runs parallel until they crosses paths towards the end. Sadly I think the bad acting were shining through the most towards the end. D. Murray, acting as "Simeon" might be the only one with decently portraying his character. I paused the movie twice while watching, getting a break and doing other things. To then resume watching later. Thats usually not a good sign. I felt the acting were below average, and worst at the end. The plot seemed quite unlikely to me and the slow pace, for the first hour made it hard to do in one sitting.

who greenlighted this banality? nothing but an empty imitation of a real movie, drivel with nothing to say. Oooh, gratuitous religious imagery! Oooh, stringy-haired unsmiling bad guy! Ooooh, slack-joker-smile Gina Gershon playing, big reach here, a dull-brained gold digger! Forgettable characters without any depth; hell they even made Dennis Hopper into a watered-down version of himself, just imitating all his other characters. so sad when you get partway into a movie and you just don't want to bail, hoping the ending will resolve something, then when you get there, you just hate yourself. Found this one on my girlfriend's shelf on a slow night. It went in the trash after i finished it, wouldn't even give it away.

How do you know when your acting career is on the skids? When you accept roles in a film as poorly written as this one you are signalling that you have no professional pride left. Like the alcoholic reduced by poverty to drinking methylated spirits, an actor of any former repute must gag on the lines he or she is forced to mouth in garbage like this. The wonder for me is that this sort of amateur rubbish gets financed. The plot is laughable, the characters are totally unbelievable, the dialogue is execrable, the direction is workmanlike and -- not unexpectedly -- the acting performances are woeful. Memo to Jevon O'Neill: Don't give up your day job. I give it zero stars, but regrettably IMDb allows a minimum of 1.

..... unintentionally funny movies. Not being an actor I still know that had I been cast in this thing I would have had to do many takes; laughing during scenes that one should not have been laughing in: The character Kelly, near the end of the movie, portentously looks at the normally turbulent winter ocean scene and says, "I think there's a storm coming"! No kidding, Ms. Meterorologist.: Poorly written script that through redundancy made sure you 'got the point': Gina Gerson doing a bad impersonation of a sexy woman: Dennis Hopper directed to show way too much 'feeling' and 'softness'; this guy was number one choice for the Mafia in Chicago?: Hopper knows that Simeon has ripped off a dozen or so cases of his bar's booze and does nothing about it!: Haven't Pierre and Simeon ever watched any of the CSI's?; they left fingerprints ........ everywhere!: Handcuffs on Gerson that she slipped out of?; doesn't the screenwriter know how police handcuffs work?: Simeon suspects the heavily disabled Harry of pulling off two killings and the robbery? - Pierre 'knows' that Simeon is going to be in the church praying after the killings?..... and then Simeon, offered proof by the virginal Pierre that he had jewelry lifted from the robbery.....let's him go?! Since I was unable to find any evidence that 'Out of Season' was ever reviewed in a theatrical release, then it must have been a straight-to-DVD deal. Bravo to the distributors for not buying this piece of garbage and bravo to the producers for seeing how bleak the movie's financial future would be in trying to release it theatrically and instead cutting their losses and going to cable/dish.

'Out of Season' by the unknown director Jevon O'Neill does not lack cinema quality. It is a very dark story, confined in a recreation park near the ocean, with six dark and mean characters planing to rob and kill one another. They are doomed from start, and the vary unhappy ending is much too predictable. Yet, there is good acting in the movie, tension builds in a credible manner, and the minor tone of the film makes the more scary moments quite bearable. The only thing that could be said more is that the quality of the cinema and of the acting deserved a better and more human story than this one, but otherwise Jevon O'Neill may be a name to watch for in the future.

I liked the movie. The characters matched the setting perfectly. The characters are shifty and edgy and not quite right as is the decaying off season amusement park where they hover. The movie was possibly too violent at the end but the viewer could see that the rot would never come to a peaceful resolution.Their Low life dreams were well described. I liked the bleakness of the unused boardwalk, the sounds of the rides being tested, the rain bucket which catches water from a leak that would have been there for years. Mary Poppins would not like this neighborhood . And the characters who cling there dream small time dreams...small scores which they think are big but the viewer knows are not worth the effort.

Wow, having just watched the movie and then read the comments, I'm struck by the differences of opinion on this one. Some hate it, some love it. I'll put myself in the "I love it" column. It's a dark and gritty film with generally unsympathetic characters and maybe a tad too many off-kilter viewing angles but I couldn't take my eyes off this film. Yes, there's violence, but that's not uncommon these days. There's a mixture of accents, which seems to bother some people more than others. It didn't bother me; people move around and it's unreasonable to expect all people to sound alike. It's a mysterious type of film; even after watching it, you'll likely wonder what such-and-such was all about. That's OK: it means you're still living through the action. It didn't all stop when the credits started to roll. Ignore the negative comments and give this one a go. I give it a TEN.

The film was hurt by not clearly establishing where it was meant to be set. Since half the cast were American, I assume it was meant to be the US, but the rainy, out-of-season seaside resort with dodgy fairground rides seems much more reminiscent of Britain. The remainder of the cast sport a weird array of accents - Jim Carter attempts to sound American but not very convincingly, Jordan Frieda sounds like a British public schoolboy and I couldn't quite work out whether David Murray's Simeon was meant to be Irish or some other nationality. The lack of a clearly defined setting meant it was harder to believe in the characters. They had no grounding or context. The film was intended to be a kind of Greek tragedy but I found it unconvincing and relying too much on coincidence. Plus points were Dennis Hopper (who is always superb) and David Murray, who exuded a powerful and menacing presence as the chief evil-doer.

*****MAY OR MAY NOT CONTAIN SPOILERS***** I bought this movie for a dollar at a pawn shoppe along with twenty other movies, so I didn't get a chance to view this for a while. My roommate watched it and said it was garbage, filled with senseless violence and bad acting and directing. I finally sat down and watched it, and I was left speechless. The directing was incredible, it reminded me of Roger Avary's 'Killing Zoe'. It was just a great neo-noir flick. Depressing, dark, and utterly incredible. Acting is well done, especially David Murray as Simeon. The lighting effects were spectacular and Avary's fast-paced angle-switching was breath-taking. And the symbolism...oh, the symbolism...just one thing to say about that...that clown is amazing! Anyway, if you're looking for a good neo-noir drama with well done acting, great symbolism, and directing that will leave you speechless, then go pick this up. It was certainly worth a dollar.