A CERTAIN SACRIFICE
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson
60 min., not rated, Drama, 1985 (1979) Director: Stephen Jon Lewicki Cast: Jeremy Pattnosh, Madonna, Charles Kurtz
Madonna gets attacked and raped by Charles Kurtz. She, with the help of drifter Jeremy Pattnosh and her friends, try to hunt out Charles Kurtz from where he is hiding and bring their own form of revenge upon him.
I am writing this review mostly to advise you that, in my opinion, A CERTAIN SACRIFICE is one of the biggest rip-offs to ever hit the video market. The video box states that this is the film Madonna refuses to admit that she is in, and it is easy to see why. This film has terrible production values.
The sound is totally horrible. The volume of the sound on the tape fluctuates from inaudible to very loud. There is very little for dialogue, probably to save on production costs, and often there is music to cover up the parts with no dialogue. There are some very pitiful sound effects. At one point a limo pulls away from a curb very slowly, but you hear the sound of it screeching away from the curb and crashing very loudly into the van in front of it. When it cleanly pulls away from the van, the van is untouched. Sometimes there is loud music over the dialogue, that tries to drown it out.
The acting is just plain terrible. The cast looks as if they just read the script while waiting for their shoot to happen. They also look, while they are supposed to be acting, like they can't wait for the shoot to get over so that they can go home. The picture is lousy. It looks like the video cassette is a copy of another video cassette on poor equipment. Colors fade up and down. The screen sometimes gets real dark then real bright. At times faces look washed out, at times the film is real grainy, and at other times the picture is clear.
There is barely any story line to the film, the plot is sad and pathetic. The screenplay, written by Jeremy Pattnosh and Stephen Jon Lewicki, is not worth mentioning. The movie is only sixty minutes long, but the screenplay is really only for a film that is twenty to thirty minutes long, and a pitiful one even at that length.
Lastly, this film was actually filmed in 1979, but apparently was not released until 1985. To the best of my knowledge A CERTAIN SACRIFICE just hit the video market. So, don't waste your money renting this film. A CERTAIN SACRIFICE is marketed as an art film. I don't even consider it that. Personally, I would have been embarrassed to have my name associated with this film. Even as an art film, it isn't worth watching, even for free! It is just sixty minutes of wasted time that you could have better spent doing something else. This film isn't worth watching even if you are an avid fan of Madonna. On a scale of zero to five, I give A CERTAIN SACRIFICE a zero. A CERTAIN SACRIFICE is not rated but contains explicit language, female nudity, violence, and a rape scene.
Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu
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