Project: Kill (1976) Reviews

• Why, God, why?

  rjvspurs2007-04-11

  I have seen many movies throughout my life just like the next guy. This was something special. Project Kill is the worst movie I have ever seen. I actually bought this movie because of the comments made on this website and thought to myself that it can't be THAT bad. Boy was I wrong about that. This movie was rated R back in 1977 and after viewing it, I have yet to find out why. Just a few things that made this film horrible include: The dialogue has inflections that don't make sense where they are placed, the "fight" scenes are so fake I almost started throwing things at the TV, and Nancy Kwan's role in this gem is absolutely pointless. This movie is so bad, I just had to force myself to laugh during some parts to avoid an aneurysm. Godspeed to those who want to subject themselves to this torture.

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• Dumb and Double Dumb rumble at sundown

  yonhope2005-10-10

  Hi, Everyone, One way to make a movie build as it progresses, is to start with a very boring scene. Leslie Neilsen begins his role here by narrating a training film. We can instantly see he ain't the swiftest. The problem is, it is not a comedy. It's funny sometimes but never a comedy. The director must be given most of the blame. The cast is OK. Gary Lockwood and Leslie Neilsen should change their roles. Leslie would make a better pursuer. Maybe Nancy Kwan and Gary should change roles. Nancy would be more believable in the fight scenes than Gary. The actors appear to be doing their own stunt fighting. They look confused. They seem to be trying to remember their choreography while the opponents wait to be punched. The acting borders on awful. Sometimes it crosses that border. The writing is conventional. You have a super secret agency of the government that is made up of well armed men. They are all very stupid. They have $300,000 to play with that they had hidden somewhere. They film some of their exploits for training purposes, but the films are all too dark to see what is going on. My guess is that Leslie Neilsen and Gary Lockwood and Nancy Kwan have never got together to celebrate the release of this stinker. I almost forgot. There is a song in the movie. The girl who sang it was the one who should have been chased and Karate chopped. Actually maybe the song writer should have been the villain. Compare the beginning speech of George C. Scott in Patton with Leslie Neilsen's speech at the beginning of this movie. George C. Scott had a passion and the words to fit that passion. Leslie Neilsen sounds like a boxer being interviewed after a bout where he was unable to find a neutral corner. If you want a turkey for Thanksgiving, this might be it. This is the bird that didn't quite make it over the cuckoo's nest. Tom Willett

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• "Have You Had Your Injections Today, John?"

  Sturgeon542005-06-19

  And I am not talking about insulin for diabetes. Contrary to popular belief, veteran actor Leslie Nielsen did not have his first comedic role in "Naked Gun." No, ladies and gentleman, that role would have to be here, in "Project: Kill," one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies I've ever seen. What is so tragic is that I believe the filmmakers had half-sincerity in what they were doing - trying to make a decent '70s-style political paranoia movie on the cheap. Director and Kentucky-based B-movie maven William Girdler even called this his greatest film, making me wonder whether he had an injection or two of his own. What they made instead is a movie with Nielsen embarrassing himself as a drugged-up, brainwashed top-secret assassin, walking through the Phillipines for some reason with both a bunch of Asian gangsters and an ex-partner after him (played by Gary Lockwood who, unbelievably, was in "2001: A Space Odyessey" 8 years earlier. His presence here certainly indicates that he received no royalties from that film). While on this little travel excursion, we get to see the beautiful and seedy sides of the Philippines (the producer appears to have spent the majority of the budget on pointless scenic photography at the expense of a badly-needed dialogue coach), and we also get to see the clumsiest kung-fu fight scenes ever put to celluloid. I'm not kidding - it seems as if Bugs Bunny was the resident martial arts consultant for filming. In addition, we get plenty of pseudo-sophisticated camera-work a la Sidney J. Furie's "The Ipcress File." I half expected to see the cameraman's foot slip into the bottom of the screen these shots were so inept. Two other highlights: a music score which seems to cut off and restart incorrectly during scene transitions, and Lockwood's boss on the telephone who has the voice of Alvin and the Chipmunks. I feel deeply sorry for the people of the Philippines. First, the United States annexed their country and claimed it as U.S. territory, then a hundred years later it made cheap movies like this even more cheaply over there to exploit the currency differential. A movie like this is grounds for diplomatic sanctions by the Philippines against the U.S. It is good for a few laughs and for curiosity's sake. For that reason, I will forego giving it a formal star rating, and let you get out of this whatever qualities you may; after all, life is like a box of chocolates...

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• "Surely, you don't have to keep doing these types of movies" "I'll try to stop...but please don't call me Shirley!"

  Poseidon-32007-02-14

  Oh, the horrid and lackluster road Nielson's career would have taken had he not participated in "Airplane!" a few years after this, a riotous comedy which gave him an entirely new lease on a career that had nearly come to a close. Here he is stuck in a horrible, low-budget mess in which he plays a government assassin who leaves his highly secretive organization (of which he was the head) and flees to the Philippines. His second-in-command Lockwood pursues him in order to either bring him back or eliminate him while the local police and local hoodlums are also on Nielson's tail. Somehow, he still finds time to meet and bed down Kwan, a lady staying at the same hotel as he is. Things start off inauspiciously with a group of men in those distinctly seventies workout suits watching a training movie about political killing. There seems to be an unspoken contest between Nielson and Lockwood as to who can unzip his top the furthest without looking too ridiculous. Since Nielson has a gold chain on under his, he wins by default. The film is alternately dull as dishwater and unintentionally hilarious. If a person has been waiting to see a knock-down kung fu battle between hired thugs and a man in a wheelchair, this is the film to grab. There's a fair amount of arm-wrenching and neck-breaking as is to be expected from a film called "Project: Kill", but it's more than a little laughable to see Nielson, and even Lockwood, performing these tasks, even if one considers that Nielson was taken fairly seriously at this stage of his career and that a solid career in comedy was yet to come around the bend. It must be noted, however, that in his shirtless scene, Nielson has remarkably toned abs for a man his age and for this time when working out was not a daily ritual for most people. Kwan's role couldn't be more thankless or insubstantial (or inconsequential!) Don't miss the scene in which Lockwood trashes a large section of a hotel lounge (not because of the resident singer, as one might expect!) and strides out without so much as a nod to the management and is then seen sitting in his room on the phone as if nothing happened. Maybe the place was just going to add the damage to his bill. Also, the said phone conversation appears to be with someone from "The Flintstones", so high-pitched and fast is the other voice on the line! Only those with an interest in obscure martial arts flicks (preferably bad ones!) or fans who feel the need to see Nielson's complete filmography should bother with this eternally average and amateurish movie.

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• Project: Thrill-Free

  lemon_magic2008-03-22

  There's a vaguely interesting storyline with a tragic overtone in this little film - if you were generous, you could even call it "Ludlum-esque" - and the two lead actors have done good work elsewhere, but any promise "Project Kill" might have is buried from the opening credits under laughable execution and cheap, shoddy direction and production values. I don't have the problem some viewers do with Leslie Nielsen as an dramatic hero, because I remember him from "Forbidden Planet". And Gary Lockwood was good in "2001" and even played the dashing lead in a light-weight fantasy film called "The Magic Sword". But this film proves that these two actors are really only as good as their screen-play and director let them be - they're badly miscast as secret agent "killing machines". Lockwood, in particular, just can't seem to get with the program - half of the time, he doesn't seem to know what to do with his arms. Nancy Kwan is OK - although she is so skinny and frail looking that it's kind of hard to see her as a sex object, and the other female "lead" is annoying, shrill and unappealing. (I admit that the lines her character has to speak don't help her cause.) Oddly, the acting in some of the minor parts is a lot better, or at least more suitable for the story. Victor Diaz hams it up nicely as the chief gangster, and the guy playing Inspector Cruz is actually a pleasure to watch - here's a character actor who knows what he's doing on camera. And some of the extras and gangster thugs mug pretty well for the camera. Also, when they get shot, they really get into the whole "death throes" thing. As for the fight scenes - it's as if someone associated with this movie watched the action sequences from "Mannix" and "Star Trek" and took notes...but they then lost their notes and tried to reproduce every thing from memory five years later. Nielsen and Lockwood are actually in pretty good shape for older male actors from that era, and Nielsen in particular is pretty buff with his shirt off - but they aren't fighters and they look silly and stiff trying to mix it up with the bad guys and with each other. There are a couple takes that don't completely such; for instance - there's a scene where Nielsen charges a door and shoots a bad guy through the door and back-fists another one out the window - that one was decent. Lockwood sucker punches a couple of thugs in a bar and hits one with piece of furniture, and that's decently done. But that's about it. There are some nice, pretty shots of scenery, and one or two decent shots of Nielsen looking forlorn and lost, but for the most part, the movie is completely static and boring; even the sound and vocals are muddy and muffled. Sound design is one of the most underrated, but important, aspects to a quality film, and this one was obviously recorded on the cheap, which costs it another star. Did I mention that the plot makes no sense? That there are holes in it you could drive a truck through? That most of the dialog completely misfires? I only paid a buck to see this (it's a reissue from Digiview Productions) and I watched with a couple of glasses of nice wine late one night after everyone else had gone to bed, but I wasn't sleepy...I was looking for a time-killer, and that's what I got. Poor Gary Lockwood. I hope he recovered from this.

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