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Presence: Lord of the Flies Meets Gilligan's Island

Martin Asiner | jersey city, nj United States | 01/01/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"All too frequently, big budget Hollywood films sport an impressive cast of well-known actors whose talents go to waste is a mess that leaves the audience shaking its head at its ineptitude. Such a waste of big stars can happen on a low budget film too. In PRESENCE, director Tommy Lee Wallace takes the acting ability of popular film and television star June Lockhart (LASSIE, SERGEANT YORK), Joe Lara, and future bimbo star Nikki Cox and totally misuses their talent in a movie that was supposed to fighten but wound up as merely amusing. The plot involves the time honored cliche of a group of scientists, military men, and bikini wearing CPAs stranded on a lost island when their plane crashes only to find that the island had been inhabited by CIA spooks running forbidden bioharazrd experiments. Naturally, the experiments had gotten out of hand, creating scaly-like creatures right out of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. As if this was not incredible enough, the survivors meet a tribe of natives who seem to have wandered off from the set of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. You would think that with so many model types in bikinis, such a movie ought to have at least one or two love interests. Model Kathy Ireland bounces her locks around without entangling any man. PRESENCE is so full of cheesy scripting and unbelievable plotting that the eggs that Hollywood lays in its big budget disasters are not limited to them alone. The best part: Kathy Ireland in a bikini. The worst part: everything else."

TV PILOT ALERT

Michael Butts | Martinsburg, WV USA | 02/15/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"THE PRESENCE is a 1992 tv-pilot for NBC that never sold; watching it you can see why. A typically stereotypical group of survivors end up on a deserted (not really, though) island which once housed a facility where genetic breeding was conducted. In the mishmash of the plot, one never knows what really happened, and by its "open ending", you can see how it would have been a series. The cast is wasted, with only flashes of talent from Gary Graham and Joe Lara. Otherwise, its effects are mundane and its suspense level virtually non-existent."

The Presence

Bergkvist Mattias | Landskrona, Sweden | 05/29/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The movie was as bad as I remembered, but it was still fun to watch it. Haven't seen it since it came out on VHS."