Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter O

Oblong Box, The (1969) This rather slow-paced film has the same title as a story by Edgar Poe. Something abominable happened to Sir Edward in Africa so his brother Julian (Vincent Price) keeps him chained up in their Munster-style mansion. Sir Edward has an escape plan, however, which involves taking a drug made by an African witch doctor and pretending to be dead. Unfortunately for Edward, he ends up buried while the pair who are supposed to rescue him are commissioned to find a decent-looking corpse to star in a ceremonial funeral.
Luckily for Sir Edward, he is dug up by Resurrectionists and delivered to a surgeon (Christopher Lee), who finds himself with a house guest intent on revenge instead of a cadaver for dissection. The ignorant natives in Africa, we learn, disfigured Sir Edward instead of his brother, who marries Elizabeth and opens up the gloomy house.
Sir Edward goes on the rampage and attracts the attention of the law (Rupert Davis, an early Inspector Maigret). His brother chases him into the woods and is bitten by the madman before killing him, and Julian ends up in chains in the room at the top of the house with his face festering horribly.

Office Space (1999) Initech is a god-awful place to work. Peter Gibbons and his 2 pals, Mike & Samir, are feeling harassed by the boss and the equipment, and Milton keeps being moved further and further from the windows. The boss tells Peter he has to work at the weekend but his girlfriend takes him to a hypnotherapist on Friday evening and the guy croaks after putting Peter under.
   Peter stays in bed on Saturday and while the company is starting interviews to do some downsizing, he's making a lunch date with Joanna, a waitress. He feels great and he really enjoys doing nothing. The consultants are so impressed by Peter's new attitude that they decide he needs to be promoted. Peter does some remodelling of his environment with a power screwdriver.
   Mike & Samir face the sack, so Peter gets them to put a cash-extracting virus into the computer system. Mike screws up with a decimal point and tons of cash pour into Peter's account. Peter screws up his relationship with Joanna. Then he puts a confession and a refund of the cash under his boss's door.
   Peter has second thoughts but he gets to Initech to find Initech in flames. Milton had found out that he'd been fired while trying to find the boss and run off with the cash after torching the place. Mike & Samir get new IT jobs but Peter finds happiness shovelling up the wreckage of the Initech building.

Ogre (2008) Plague strikes Ellensford, a post-colonial American town in Pennsylvania. The people call on Bartlett, the sorcerer, to work some magic. Everyone agrees to accept the consequences, he has himself declared their magistrate and casts a spell which converts the plague into an ogre, which requires a human sacrifice every year on the winter solstice.
   In the present day, 2 couples go looking for the lost village. One bloke breaks his ankle, he finds the ogre's lair and he and his girlfriend are gobbled up. Jesse & Mike find the village, the population of which has been whittled down to a few dozen over the centuries.
   The next sacrifice is to be Young Steven, the boyfriend of Hope Bartlett. Franklin, Bartlett's critic, realizes that Bartlett can choose the victim and their miserable existence is due to Bartlett's desire to live for as long as there are people available to sacrifice to the ogre.
   Bartlett decides to give Mike to the ogre instead of Young Steven. Hope learns that her father caused the plague and unchains Mike. Steven leaves the bounds of the village and vanishes in a blaze of light. Hope tells her father he's a monster just before the ogre gets him.
   Jesse & Mike ask for help at a police station, the sheriff laughs at them, Mike steals his car, it bogs down but there's a shotgun in the boot. Hope thinks that she can undo her father's spell. Mike offers himself as bait in a trap, everyone blasts the ogre with various weapons, Hope works her magic and the ogre ends up outside the bounds of the village. So that's the end of the ogre. And the people of Ellensford. So what are Jesse & Mike going to tell the sheriff?

Omega Doom got only one star in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine – a sure sign of cult film status. The Mail's preview, and all the others, condemned it as an ultra-low-budget sci-fi with no redeeming features [see also Medusa's Child above]. In the event, it is quite a reasonable way to spend an hour and a half in front of the telly, it moves along at a decent pace, it has humour, violence and retribution, and it held my interest. So a thumbs up to the film and two fingers to the miserable gits of previewers!

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) is a spaghetti Western 30 years on. A guitarist, El Mariachi, or just El to everyone, is grabbed by an armed posse working for a drug cartel, The boss wants to recruit him to kill General Marquez, who had been hired to bump off the president. El has to kill the general after he's killed the president so that the cartel can take over his coup. Lots on the history between El and the general.
   Lots of bullets flying, lots of gratuitous murder, lots of bangs and lots of Mexicans speaking Castillian Spanish. A 3-armed CIA agent is planning to stroll off with the 20 million pesos available to finance the coup. He fires up a retired FBI agent and points him at the head of the cartel, who was one of the FBI guy's 'ones who got away'. The CIA agent has his eyes drilled out, so he has to rely on his hearing to shoot people.
   The coup starts, los tres mariachis join in with exploding guitar cases & lots of guns. The general goes after the cash and meets El dressed in the president's coat. The CIA guy gets to shoot the cartel boss's daughter. The FBI guy does the same to her old man? No, it's El who has that pleasure, and he gives the 20 million pesos to the people of his village.
   This is a corny pastiche of the classic spaghetti Western, and rather silly.

The One (2001) Is a 'futuristic martial arts adventure' set across parallel universes and built on the premise that if Kim (Jet Li) kills a version of himself in another parallel universe, the energy of the Kim personality will be concentrated in the survivors, and if he kills all the others and becomes The One, all their energy will be concentrated in him. But the dimension police are trying to stop that happening, as they think that if Kim succeeds, he'll destroy the balance between the parallel universes.
Kim can move faster than bullets and outrun police cars, but he is caught, convicted of 123 counts of murder and unlawful transits between universes and sentenced to life without possibility of parole at a penal colony in the Hades universe. But a female accomplice helps him to escape and he goes after Gabriel, the last surviving other version of himself, in a parallel dimension.
Kim and Gabriel begin a lengthy battle, which migrates to a chemical plant, where there are lots of explosions. In the end, Gabriel, Kim and the surviving cop are sucked into a wormhole and they end up back on Kim's world; where the authorities shove Gabriel into a transmitter, bound for the Hades universe. Luckily, the cop spots that they have the wrong man, Kim is sent to Hell, where he has to fight all the other convicts, and Gabriel ends up in a universe where his girlfriend wasn't killed by Kim.

Operation Delta Force is one of those films that need a TV fully loaded with ammunition. The bad guys fire off millions of rounds and don't hit anything much. The good guys fire off about as many millions and zap the bad guys. But it is all in a good cause. The Africaaners don't get to spread the plague around and win themselves a homeland, and the good guys don't croak from the plague.

The Order (2001) is all-action rubbish featuring jewel thief Rudi (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and, briefly, Charlton Heston! Rudi raids a Russian Mafia strong and has to fight his way out. His archaeologist dad in New York has a document of great value to The Order, a religious group founded by a disillusioned Crusader. Dad is kidnapped & taken to Israel. Rudi follows and runs into a police major, who decides he's there to smuggle out artefacts.
The head of the Order is killed by Sirus, a fanatic who wants to start World War III. To do this, he needs the map which Rudi's dad found, to plant a bomb right under the Temple Mount and blow up assorted Islamics. The police major is in with him, but the corrupt copper is after treasure, not Armageddon.
Lots & lots of chases and kung fu battles. Rudi acquires a lady police lieutenant as an ally. Rudi & his dad are both shot up a bit. Sirus gets a gutful of sword. The Muscles from Brussels drops Sirus's bomb down a deep hole and sends the police major after it. And Rudi's dad writes a best seller about The Order.

Out For A Kill (2003) had 1 star and featured Steven Seagal. Nuff said! Start with a slo-mo massacre in a Bulgarian night club. The Chinese mob was trying to take over the world's drug trade. Professor Robert Burns, an archaeologist, was framed for murder and drug running. Drug enforcement agents from the US & Hong Kong, who decided he was guilty as hell, wanted to use him for their own devious purposes, so they set the Prof. up as bait. [The director has a slo-mo fixation.]
   The DEA extracted the Prof. from China, which upset the Chinese Mob. Their assassins weren't much cop but they were good for some martial arts and slo-mo killings. The Prof. turned out to be a reformed international thief, who had gained his PhD in gaol! He wrecked a restaurant taking out 3 assassins. And he was lucky enough to be looking around outside when the bad guys blew up his house, in slo-mo, with his wife inside it. So no more Mr. Nice Guy.
   The Prof. went on a rampage and killing spree which took him to a trap in New York, which didn't work. On the way, he read the Chinese characters tattooed on the arms of the assassins. The Head Bad Guy was planning a massive shipment from Burma as a symbol of the new unity of the Chinese Mob, and he felt the Prof. was putting it in jeopardy.
   The Prof. had to rescue the DEA agents. A car chase and another kill in Bulgaria. Next stop, Paris in search of Sai Lo, who was lurking in a Chinese money laundry. The male DEA agent was shot. Prof. Burns finally confronted the HBG, who lost his head. Remembering all the Chinese tattoos let him open the HBG's safe and turn the documents in it over to the Chinese lady DEA agent.

Out Of Time (2003) Denzel Washington plays Chief Whitlock of Banyan Bay, Florida, whose wife has dumped him. His girlfriend, Anne, has terminal cancer and she has made the Chief the beneficiary of the million-dollar insurance policy, which her husband sneaked out on her. The Chief also has a big block of drug money in his evidence store.
   The Chief's wife sends him divorce papers so he gives Anne the drug money so she can leave her violent husband. Then Anne's home goes up in flames and there are 2 bodies in the wreckage. The Chief finds Anne didn't have cancer and he was scammed. Then the DEA asks for the drug money as evidence. So that's the Chief in a deep hole.
   The Chief tells Jake, the drunken ME, what's going on then chases the bogus doctor, who ends up dead. The chief gets the cash but ends up playing tag with Mrs. Chief, the homicide detective on Anne's case, at the dead man's hotel.
   Dead Anne phones the Chief to tell him she needs money to get out of town. Shock, horror! Anne shoots her old man and admits she's the criminal mastermind. But Mrs. Chief shoots her just before the cavalry arrives and Jake saves the Chief's ass from the DEA assholes. Then getting his wife back costs the Chief a million bucks.

Outland (1981) features Sean Canary as a marshall posted to a mining operation on a space rock which is dangerously inside Jupiter's radiation zone, from the view from the windows. The miners keet going crazy and killing themselves and each other. Mr. Canary finds out that the management is giving them a drug which makes them work like horses and go crazy after 11 months. So the marshall finds himself on his todd, apart from the cynical old doctor, with a couple of hired killers on the way to write him off. And when the shootin' starts, half the station is taken out! Not a bad effort.