Search - The Singing Forest on DVD

Worst gay film I have seen

The other side of the mirror | Garden Grove, California | 09/17/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"What a disaster. A good example of of a talentless writer/directer who has no flair for making movies. Jeorge Ameer is really a no talent wonder. His script is so light, if you were to drop it from the ceiling, it would take two weeks to reach the floor. And somebody should tell him "directing" a film calls for more ability than to simply let a camera aim and shoot. I don't find anything about this tripe worth praising. It is void of any artistic vision. And the low budget is no excuse for it being so bad! Case in point: "The journey of Jarred price," was made for $20,000 and it was a very good gay themed movie.I could elaborate, but why bother? A movie this terrible deserves no attention. The only reason I am posting this review is to possibly save other people from having to watch this."

REALLY bad!!!!!!

R. Varner | Staunton, Va. United States | 09/26/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I hate it when I pay good money for a movie only to realize I will never watch it again and would feel too guilty to sell it to another smuck here at amazon.
I could not even get through it the first time. TOTALLY unbelievable, the daddy must have had the daughter when he was what? 14!!! And the fiance falling into bed with the daddy {NUDE} was so fast you would have thought they knew each other from an adult bookstore instead of another time! Bad sound, bad acting, in short..BAD! So when you hear Micheal Jackson sing "who's bad" you can reply.."The Singing Forest...that's who!""

A most horrible viewing experiance

SYlvester Pinchel | New York, New York | 09/12/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"After renting this film last night, I promoptly returned it today and demanded my money back.That is how discusted with this so called movie. It is just about the most terrible thing I ever have seen. There is nothing good about this movie. It is just lame. Non-artistic, poorly directed, with annoying background sounds that overwhelm the viewer so you cannot even understand what the actors are saying at times.I really hated this movie and will go out of my way to warn others not to waste their time on it."

Psychic-Driven Love Five-Some

interested_observer | San Francisco, CA USA | 09/06/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

""The Singing Forest" DVD has the 69-minute feature film, four short films (about 19 minutes in total), a trailer to the feature, and a film gathering highlights of the director's career.

"The Singing Forest" is a story of reincarnated love. Columnist Christopher Hayes (played by Jon Sherrin) has learned from psychic Elvia Flores (played by Toni Zobel) that he is the reincarnation of a man named Jo who helped the Jews against the Nazis. Jo had a boyfriend named Alexander. It turns out that Christopher's daughter, Destiny (played by Erin Leigh Price) is getting married. When Christopher meets the groom-to-be, model Ben Ross (played by Craig Pinkston), Christopher believes Ben is the reincarnated Alexander. Matters play out from here to an unstable conclusion.

I had a hard time believing that the belief in a past-life romance would be a sufficient inducement to flip two nominally straight men into an age-discordant gay relationship with so little resistance from either. The Nazi-era Jo-Alexander relationship was not shown effectively. The daughter's reaction to all of this was initially believable but drifted into the fantastic.

The film tries to make all of this palatable with skin shots of Christopher and the very handsome Ben and by having Christopher look only about five years older than Ben or Destiny, instead of the twenty-plus he would normally be. There were no Jo-Alexander skin shots.

The DVD cover shows a shirtless Alexander (Pinkston) with Jo (Erik Morris) in blatantly inaccurate Nazi garb (e.g., the swastika is not symmetrical). These scenes do not appear in the movie. The two small stills on the DVD back are variants of what happens in the final scene.

The sound was intrusive, with breaking waves, barking dogs, or loud music often drowning out the dialogue.

The black and white Nazi scenes, with a mix of new and stock footage, had some effective images. I found annoying the title card announcing the Nazi scenes took place in 1933 but showing photos from 1945's concentration camp liberations. Jo was said to have been executed as the Soviets approached Berlin, in 1945. There is a big time gap that was never explained.

The opening shot shows an ill Christopher vomiting his alcohol into a toilet with Ben standing nearby. An essentially identical scene happens later in the film. I could spot no good reason to start the film this way. Additionally, Christopher catches Ben taking drugs once but complains about it some time later only once in private and in anger.

Two of the four short films are pretty good. "Uninhibited" maintains good suspense as a man comes home to discover a straight couple having sex in his bedroom. "Misguided Piss" shows a misadventure in cruising in a men's room. The other shorts, "My Straight Boyfriend" and "Popcorn & Coke" are less engaging.

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