Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

GL84 While on assignment in Romania, CIA agents attempting to solve a rash of strange disappearances finds them to be the cause of an escaped, legendary gargoyle loosened upon the countryside in modern times and must try to stop the creatures' rampage.This one here proved to be a highly-enjoyable creature feature. One of the main parts about this one is the enjoyable action quotient that runs throughout her, which comes along through several rather enjoyable parts incorporated in this one. The biggest inclusion here is the traditional action elements featured within this one, as the opening abduction sequences features plenty to like here with the initial gunplay serving as the springboard for the rather fun car chase through the city that includes the requisite crashing into each other, explosions and maneuvering through tight spaces that it feels quite in line with the standards of the genre, while a later gunfight between rival gangs on a rooftop is a great piece before including the creature attacking leading to a three-way fight between the two holding off the creature which is really fun and a later sequence where it chases them down through the winding mountain road while it tries to get the special weapon in their possession. Still, as much fun as this is the creature action is where the film really shines as there's plenty of confrontations with the creature which leads to attacks like the opening village sequence where they trap the creature underground, the first attack where it's released from the tunnels, the rather chilling scenes of it rampaging across the city as the attack on the photographer in the zoo or the ferris wheel ambush in front of the traumatized child while the attack on the church high on the hillside makes for a rather enjoyable series of action-packed encounters. In addition, the finale here is quite fun with the commandos venturing into the catacombs beneath the church where it has a nursery set-up which makes for a really cheesy time as they battle the infants flying around leading to some grand firefights as they swarm over them in some really nice deaths and leading to the final confrontation with the creature out in the woods for an enjoyable enough finale. Along with the fine-looking creature and cheesy bloody kills, these here give this one a lot of rather good parts to like over the flaws. The main flaw here is the fact that the film's storyline here with the one priest involved in aiding the creatures really makes no sense and doesn't have any real motivation for helping them, due to the rather inane need for a priest to want to assist them at all. It's a pretty complex and confusing reason as for why this occurs and his response is too utterly clichéd and hackneyed apocalypse reasoning that really doesn't help make it any clearer at all. On top of that, the film's rather cheesy and goofy nature on display, as the low- budget nature of this is featured throughout here not only with the typically atrocious CGI that's quite cheap and low-rent while rarely displaying any kind of realistic semblance at all, while others include the creature's origin story and the scattershot story that goes off into all sorts of tangents without rhyme or reason which makes for a really jarring effort at times. This here is all that really holds it back.Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

TheLittleSongbird I was apprehensive as it was a Sci-Fi Channel movie, which often means cheapness and bad writing and acting. But actually, for one it is actually not too bad, not good by all means but unlike others it does have redeeming qualities. The Van Helsing-prologue is rather brief but sets the tone well, the score is reasonably atmospheric, the Romanian locations are simply gorgeous and with references to past horror films(Ghost of Frankenstein, Nosferatu) and Vampire lore there is some evidence that some research was done. Some have said the acting was better than average, some have said it was really bad. I'd say it was a mixed bag. I found Michael Parre and Sandra Hess likable leads, and Tim Abell was fun as Lex, but the best was Fintan McKeown in the most sympathetic role of the film and he does well with it. However, there are some let downs, I never did find the priest character believable for a second, the (beautiful) female scientist likewise, and the teacher was annoying and does some unbelievably stupid things. Here come the bad things about Gargoyle's Revenge however. The gargoyle(s) are much too fake, the haphazard camera work completely betrays this, and they don't come across as menacing or interesting. The murders are poorly done also, again the camera work dilutes the sense of terror the scenes should do, if not enough to clearly see how artificial the decapitations, mutilations and gore look. The script is cheesy and very unnatural and aimless in its flow and structure. The story was decent in idea but falls short in execution, a couple of intriguing scenes like the prologue and the ferris wheel, but the murders and the contrived ending aren't so good, a lot of the telling is dull and predictable and overall Gargoyle's Revenge could have done with much more atmosphere. The action scenes are repetitive, while the characters are not just clichéd but either underdeveloped(the female scientist), annoying(the teacher) or both(the priest), only Father Soren properly doesn't suffer from either. Overall, not good but not terrible either. 4/10 Bethany Cox

RhinocerosFive I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's experience of this film by telling you not to see it if you have anything better to do, like clean under the stove. It gets dirty under there and you've gotta clean it sometime. I think the movie suffers from a lack of sex and violence, though there is one car chase stunt that looks so dangerous it could only have been filmed in a country where life is cheaper than beer. "Gargoyle"'s heart is in the right place, but its aspirations are conservative. It is at least not pretentious. But I had a great time acting in it, playing the perennial idiot in the horror movie who says "What's down this hole?" and dies for his hubris. Plus I got to meet Michael Pare. Every film junkie should work with a B-movie staple at least once before death. And Romanians are the loveliest people I've met. Literally the loveliest. Walk down the street in Bucarest: if 7 of every 10 women aren't absolutely beautiful, you're walking down a street I didn't come across; and be consoled by the fact that at least 5 of the 10 are available for drinks.Part of the film was shot in Casa Radio, an abandoned, unfinished Classic Communist Bloc-cum-Georgian Nightmare edifice originally intended to house KGB propaganda ministries, i.e. Radio Not-so-Free Europe. The building's five stories tall and takes up a city block; best of all, while its facade radiates Big Brotheresque state solidity, it resides near the city center like a post-apocalyptic ruin in a jungle of burdock and hemp peopled by dozens of Gypsies and scores of wild dogs. Construction on Casa Radio was suspended when Caucescu and his wife were executed on TV in 1989, and still there are gaping holes that drop from the sun-baked top floor (offering surreal vistas of a modern quarter-mile stretch of concrete roof, decorated with jutting rebar and old car parts, overlooking a crumbling ancient city) all the way down to the damp, creepy sub-basement (which doubles in the film for the Gargoyle lair.) No American-style guardrails or warning signs for Bucarest. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Casa Radio has hosted several non-union film shoots, including "Highlander III". It is attractive to producers because it's a cheap location, massive in terms of scale and available space, bizarre looking, and free of insurance headaches as it's still state property. Plus no one complains if you don't clean up after your production: anything left onsite is interpolated into the resident Gypsies' construction of their shanty town in this actual urban jungle. An assistant director was bitten bloody by a wild dog during the shoot of "Gargoyle". The apples provided by catering were pressed into service by cast and crew as projectiles in order to keep the prowling dogs at bay. I too was bitten by wild dogs in Bucarest, once in a bar (!) and once in a city park. I also survived two car wrecks in two weeks, both in taxis and neither of which was seen by the drivers involved as grounds for stopping the cars.GEEK NOTE: The Sci-Fi Network or Channel or whatever was one of the backers of this film (the smaller the budget, the more producers on set), so it's a little weird that nobody had a problem with the original title, "Gargoyles", until it was almost time to show it on the network, even though Sci-Fi already had an unrelated series of that name. The title was changed sometime relatively close to release, as I have a color-corrected copy labeled with the former title.

Brandt Sponseller After a brief Van Helsing-styled prologue establishing gargoyles in historical Romania and implying that they've been trapped under the ground, Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness (the title given by the film as well as the video box) takes us to modern day Romania, where Ty Griffin (Michael Paré) and Jennifer Wells (Sandra Hess) are working on the kidnapping of a public official's son. While chasing the kidnappers, Ty discovers that one has suddenly disappeared--only valuable cargo and a large bloodstain remain. Meanwhile, two archaeologists/historians, Christina Durant (Kate Orsini) and Richard Barrier (Jason Rohrer) are working in a church that we realize has a connection with the prologue. How will they all tie together, and what will they do if a gargoyle is on the loose again? Although Gargoyle is a bit awkward in a couple spots--the pacing isn't quite as smooth as it could be--I really enjoyed the film. Director/co-writer Jim Wynorski has a long history making campy, low-budget exploitation horror films (which is a positive in my eyes) and his experience shows. Gargoyle looks much more high-budget and "high-class" than a lot of his other work, but it still retains a sense of fun, freshness and finely honed craft that comes from being a veteran.So imagine my surprise when I check out the other reviews on IMDb and see that to date, the film is almost universally loathed. While reading through most of the other comments, I couldn't help feeling that the majority of them were simply ridiculous. While I can see many filmgoers not pronouncing Gargoyle a masterpiece, I can't see giving this film a failing grade. Like usual, it was clear that the reviewers who hated the film must have had bizarre expectations.Despite the detective/crime/action elements that are prominent in the scene immediately following the prologue (and which were handled brilliantly in my view), Gargoyle is at its heart a monster flick, and a fairly traditional one at that. Surprisingly, a number of people commented on various facets of Gargoyle seeming implausible. Monster films are a subgenre of horror, and horror is really "dark fantasy", or "dark fairy tales" (there are some difficult cases for that description, such as serial killer biopics, but "dark fantasy" works for most of the genre). Thus, Gargoyle is not a documentary. So it really doesn't matter if, for example, gargoyles were unheard of in Romania until recently. It doesn't matter if the CIA doesn't do the work they're shown doing here. You should expect Gargoyle to be implausible--hopefully, you don't believe that giant flying gargoyles are real or believable; when that's the premise, it's not the filmmaker's fault if you expect but do not get plausibility.At that, the film references a number of historical facts. Wynorski and his cohorts actually did a fair amount of research for the film. For example, they talk about the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes, and contextualize the "reality" versus the myths that were built up around him. They actually went to the trouble of finding a property that looks remarkably similar to the famous 19th Century pencil sketch of the ruins of Castle Dracula (you can see it Chapter 6 of Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's book, In Search of Dracula). They also insert a number of clever references to past horror films. One of the principal homes of villainy in the film is named Castle Orlok, which comes from Graf Orlok, the name of the Dracula character is F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic, Nosferatu. There is a reference to Vasaria, the village introduced in Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). There are obvious visual references to the Alien films. They also reference real-life horror culture, such as "vampire clubs".Other reviewers complained about the special effects. CGI is the only means available to produce this kind of film at this kind of budget. Yes, the cgi in the film looks "fake". Again, hopefully no one would think that a huge flying gargoyle would look real, anyway. It's a fantasy token. You have to use your imagination when watching fantasy. Mechanicals/animatronics of flying gargoyles would have looked "fake" too, and would have raised the budget to 100 million. One person commented that the cgi appears as if Wynorski's crew had been trying to capture the look of Ray Harryhausen claymation ala the Sinbad films, and another said that the effects had a 1950s flavor. Believe it or not, a lot of us love Harryhausen's work and monster flicks from the 1950s; so if the cgi has that look, we think it's a good thing. As for the look of the blood and "gore" effects, I thought they were well done. They were stylized and artistic. I like that. To repeat, the film is not a documentary; the blood and gore do not have to look like crime scene photos to be good.Others complained about the performances. The dialogue and acting seemed more than fine to me. I'm not sure what anyone would find unsatisfactory there. The film is a bit campy, but intentionally so--remember Wynorski's roots, after all, and camp is not at all unprecedented for a monster flick. If you like monster flicks, you probably have a fair taste for camp. The one thing that I do agree with most reviewers about is the comment regarding the female cast members--they are all exceptionally, enchantingly beautiful. So even if you don't like the performances, there is plenty of eye candy when it comes to the cast as long as you're attracted to women.Gargoyle had a remarkably modern feel to me. To a large extent, it actually reminded me of "Special Unit 2" (2001) an unfortunately short-lived, campy horror television show that was also unjustly slammed by some critics. It's extremely important to have appropriate expectations when watching a film like Gargoyle. As long as you like the genre and the tone, you should find the film sufficiently entertaining.