Urban Legend (1998)

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely brilliant

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is set in a university where a killer is making real several urban myths that end in the death of local students. Everyone who reads this phrase will probably think "I've seen something like that somewhere..." and you're right. It seems that American directors love to slaughter college students in horror movies, in particular with a few bites of sex and drunkenness to spice things up. It's not usual to be very interesting movies and this is just another movie where naughty and slightly drunk teenagers are killed like dogs on a freeway. The script is simple, taking advantage of a huge variety of US urban myths to support itself and creating around a mysterious murderer a cross web of suspicions (if you remembered "Scream", I also remembered watching). The actors are deeply amateur and never surprise. In fact, the cast leaves much to be desired for the level of interpretive quality, but nothing that we were not expecting from a film of this level. Alicia Witt stands out in the midst of the kids around her, but she's still a very raw and little-worked talent. In the end, you think they should all die because they are just idiots. As a horror movie is bad because it ends up getting funny and making you laugh, but if you look for a light movie that you want to watch without thinking too much about it, this movie will do.

And, yeah, this is a spoiler SUPER alert, do NOT read further if you haven't seen the movie! First off, I am not a fan of the slasher movie genre. As RavenGlamDVDCollector, I do go after the pretty girls, though. My gripe with slashers is of course that blood and glamor doesn't mix. Who wants to see a pretty girl cut up? (That is, of course, a stupid question that I do not want to hear the answer to) I'm a big Rebecca Gayheart fan ever since her BEVERLY HILLS 90210 days, she was sorely missed by me when her character was killed off in that series, and so it came to pass that RavenGlam research showed the incredibly hot young cast of URBAN LEGEND. There are two sequels, direct-to-video, that seem entirely less promising, but URBAN LEGEND the original sure has a lot of pretty girls, with Tara Reid thrown in for good measure. Alicia Witt I knew from BODIES, REST & MOTION in a short but vivid sequence, aside from an absolutely vague memory of the kid in 90's sitcom CYBILL It is way beneath me to discuss the bloody scenes in this movie. They are extremely far-fetched, and as it turns out, FINAL SPOILER ALERT, committed by best friend Brenda. However berserk any human might get, and, yes, we all have it in us to kill, but come on! Rebecca Gayheart could execute that big blonde guy by hanging him? The bloody strangulation scene deemed as a 'suicide' is a symptom of a terminally-ill plot. And everybody wears that freaking abysmal style of coat. Even next to an indoor swimming pool when it was clearly shown to be a normal day, nobody else was remotely dressed for winter, and that thing was designed for Eskimos.The potholes in the plot are big enough for two army trucks to disappear into with no survivors.Best thing about the movie, Alicia Witt. Okay, I do agree, she wasn't scared enough, but in some scared scenes, she was just ooh-shame-what-a-beautiful-scared-bunny, let-me-hug-ya! Tara Reid was an absolute disappointment, I am very sorry to say, she could have done a lot better. And speaking of Tara, the trailer shows a bikini dance flash or something like that, just mere seconds, but there is no such scene in the movie, and no deleted scene on the DVD.As for Rebecca, I suppose you gave it a good shot, but, really!

Urban Legend (1998): Dir: Jamie Blanks / Cast: Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Jared Leto, Robert Englund, Tara Reid: Another slasher film out to educate the public on various methods to kill people. It is a film about untrue events that bare probability. It involves the killing of teenagers based upon urban legends. Robert Englund plays a professor who teaches a class on the subject, and his urban legend involving a babysitter receiving threatening phone calls was presented in a superior horror film called When a Stranger Calls with Carol Kane as the sitter. Director Jamie Blanks does a fine job at concealing the killer's identity. It is well made but written as an executioner's handbook. When A Stranger Calls or Halloween have the suspense that this film lacks. We are required to blame the murders on Englund because of his notorious career as Freddy Krueger. Can a guy not get an even break? The young cast wander about aimlessly waiting for their roles to spark life despite the fact that the only thing to spark out of their lives is a very gruesome death. Among the wasted cast are Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart and Jared Leto and their roles consist of running, screaming and being murdered in some fashion that is unfortunately more creative than anything else the film has to offer, which isn't much. Yet another puke fest in all of its gory sick details. Score: 3 / 10

When a series of strange deaths occur on the campus of Pendleton College, student Natalie begins to suspect that there is a bizarre link - someone is taking urban legends and making them a reality. Her classmates Brenda & Damon insist the deaths are just coincidence. But when Natalie gets too close to discovering the killer's real identity she realises that she could be the next victim.This film starred: Alicia Witt, Jared Leto & Rebecca Gayheart.Urban Legend is a poor film in my opinion and not one that I would probably watch again, it was sloppy in some scenes and is slow and boring in others. Overall I don't enjoy it and wouldn't recommend it, it tries to be clever with it's twists, but most of the time the twist is what you were expecting to happen anyway.**/***** Poor.