April 30, 1999
"Idle
Hands"
reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder
If timing is
everything, then the recent carnage at
Columbine High School indicates that
now could scarcely be less opportune
for the opening of
"Idle
Hands," a
cheap-thrills horror film built around
a teen-age murder rampage that reaches
its climax among panic-stricken
students at a Halloween dance in a
small-town high school.
Even pretensions toward the humorous
and hip cannot save this blood-drenched
film from its innate tastelessness,
calculated to find its audience among
those, like its hero and his friends,
whose vapid lives are a celebration of
truancy, marijuana and junk food in a
virtually parentless habitat that
stretches only from bed to television
set. ..
'Idle Hands' is rated R (Under 17
requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian). It involves bloody murder,
resurrected corpses, severed body
parts, partial nudity during sexual
foreplay, sexual references and coarse
language.
write
to David Irving