Meridian (1990)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

As Good As It Gets

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Give Charles Band a little credit for stepping outside his genre comfort zone. Here he attempts to create a deadly serious Gothic romance. While it's going to be much too slowly paced to suit some tastes, others will appreciate the heavy atmosphere, and the incredibly sincere performances.The premise is essentially a variation on the classic Beauty and the Beast theme. Two art school graduates, Catherine (Sherilyn Fenn), and Gina (Charlie Spradling), travel to Italy. Gina goes to work restoring paintings, while Catherine goes to live in the opulent castle that she has inherited. Soon, Catherine finds herself caught up in a love triangle with twin brothers (Lawrence and Oliver, both played by handsome Malcolm Jamieson). Lawrence is cruel and controlling, Oliver is the much more sensitive one. Yet Oliver is the one suffering a sad curse.The movie is worth watching for Ms. Fenn. She's absolutely beautiful, as always, but also delivers an appealing performance. Fenn and the equally ravishing Spradling do show off quite a bit of their bodies in some extended love making scenes. Jamieson does a respectable job at portraying these two wildly contrasting characters. The strong supporting cast includes Hilary Mason as the wise and loving old nanny Martha, Phil Fondacaro as the dwarf, Vernon Dobtcheff as the priest, and Alex Daniels as the beastly incarnation of Oliver.Pino Donaggio composed the haunting and lovely score, the lighting is by genre veteran Mac Ahlberg, and the castle sets look pretty good. There aren't that many visual effects to speak of, but the beast makeup by Greg Cannom is reasonably impressive. Another enjoyable element is watching a painting reveal itself under another painting, as Gina goes about her business of restoration.Worth a look for people seeking a change of pace from more typical Full Moon product.Seven out of 10.

My friends and I went through a period of rather than attempting to rent the best video we could find we deliberately attempted to rent the worst. And if it had beautiful scantily clad women on the cover all the better. Phantoms/Meridian was top of the list not least because we were big Twin Peaks fans and posters of Sherilyn Fenn adorned our bedroom walls. Really it's a pretty schizophrenic piece. We have a PG rated supernatural romantic love story that takes up the vast majority of the running time. It's OK, nice scenery, some decent acting and dialogue but pretty much unremarkable. The end scene where they disappear into the floodlit skull like cave is quite arresting and I recognised the whip wielding dwarf as Krammer's friend from Senfield.But then it's like the producers said "We need to spice it up a bit" and filmed THAT scene, the infamous but undeniably strangely sexy sequence where the gorgeous Sherilyn and her equally beautiful co-star Charlene Spraldling are stripped and drug-raped only to succumb to their dark desires and end up willingly and enthusiastically participating in their own ravishment like true Gothic horror heroines. We always wondered what Sherilyn looked like naked and she certainly doesn't disappoint, just as gloriously nubile as we fondly imagined. Spraldling is also fantastically hot (and buxom!)and again, shame she never did much after this. Pretty astonishing that they could still get away with an amazingly un-PC storyline like that in the 1990s! All the more amazing that the actresses actually agreed to do it no matter how much soft focus, erotic music and slow motion is employed, especially since Sherilyn was enjoying massive mainstream success with Twin Peaks at the time. And THEN, then when you think it just can't get any weirder the twin having sex with Sherilyn's character transforms into a monster and she still keeps having sex with him! AND THEN she falls in love with her man/beast rapist! Smacks of GOT/Galaxy of Terror fic, a fetish for beautiful women raped and impregnated by monsters whom they then fall in love with (yes, I am serious, just Google the term or search Monster Sex on Amazon if you don't believe me)So, if you want to see a film with lovely scenery, a truly unconventional Gothic romance, a weird yet extremely erotic sex scene with 2 very beautiful female stars and a storyline that singlehandedly sets the cause of feminism back about 500 years then this one is for you

Two American students go to Italy after graduating from art school, one to work in restoration of paintings, the other because she's inherited her father's castle. When the restorer visits her friend at the castle, they invite the players of a travelling sideshow to dinner, and are slipped drugs, leading to an orgy of abandon. The woman who owns the castle keeps having visions of a young woman who has been stabbed. After talking to her nanny, she finds that the "vision" woman is her father's sister, who was murdered brutally as the consequence of a 15th Century curse put on her family, and that she is the next in line, and the troupe they have entertained is a part of the curse....So the film looks good, very good in one scene, but when it has something like that so early on in the film, where do you go from there?Well according to this film, nowhere, just keep shooting the scenery, put a ghost and a beast in the film, and chuck in the old beauty and the beast film.It doesn't work one bit, it's uncomfortable to sit through, and becomes a chore very quickly.Boring and drab.

Well Full Moon aren't exactly known for their great horror classic - and with films like this in their resume, it's not hard to see why. Meridian is a silly mess of a film that is as ridiculous as it is boring. It would seem that Meridian is trying to go for a sort of Hammer Horror feel, but it misses the 'camp' mark and unfortunately ends up being purely tacky - which doesn't do the film much good at all. The plot sounds like it might be interesting, but you shouldn't be fooled! We focus on two American students that go off to Italy after art school. One goes to restore paintings, while the other one is there as she has inherited her father's castle. However, there's something odd going on in the castle as it's new owner begins seeing visions, and the circus folk that hang around seem a bit odd also. The plot is never particularly fascinating, and despite a few sex scenes (which really couldn't be much less erotic), there is very little worth remembering in this film. Given the right handling, it could have been an atmospheric and memorable fantasy fairytale - but as it happens, Meridian is just trash, and not the good kind!