MovieChat Forums > The Ninth Configuration (1980) Discussion > holy mackeral

holy mackeral

posted 13 years ago by jnatch
3 replies | jump to latest

I came to this board having just seen this expecting a full on collection of abusive threads. Why the love for this, which has to be the single most pretentious thing I have ever seen. The acting was atrocious, the script was all over the place. The bikers were the most laughably sterotypical characters I have seen in some time. Long stretches of this film were like a bad episode of MASH with random self involved silliness that wasnt interesting, funny nor moved plot. They kept showing the castle long shot with the fake fog over and over and over, I suppose to set mood. The surprises were telepgraphed way in advance, I knew he was a loon himself almost instantly and when he brought up his "brother" Killer Kane, I said in a second "he is killer kane"

If they bring back mystery science theatre they should do this "film"

No wonder Blatty didnt keep directing, he must realize he made trash

[–] ethermusic1981 11 years ago

*yawn* Sorry, did you say something?

[–] poofta1970 11 years ago

You are entitled to your wrong opinion :-D

[–] Edward_de_Vere 11 years ago

To be fair, like Blatty's other film Exorcist III, this movie is very frustrating because it mixes some absolutely brilliant material with pathetic and amateurish material. For instance, most of the slapstick humor in The Ninth Configuration does seem like a bad M.A.S.H. ripoff (the one exception was Robert Loggia as Al Jolson - that was brilliant).

So you're left with either believing that you're watching a terrible movie with some excellent material, or an excellent movie with some terrible material. I prefer to give Blatty the benefit of the doubt and call it the latter.