By all accounts, "The Passion" looks to be a recipe for disaster, a gory biblical film with no stars and no spoken English.

First gory film i'd seen.

The older ones are shown the very sobering 'Robbie'- a gory film about children playing chicken across a railway line.

The film was not expected to be well received, as Shintoho studio was considered to be a maker of low-budget, gory films.

That gory films became commonplace in the Vietnam era, Mr. Simon contends, is evidence not of decadence but rather of a "revolutionary" willingness to confront the mayhem of the day.

Its success encouraged a frenzy of Italian film makers to shoot more colorful and gory films.

What you will find, though, is an amusing (if you're an appreciator of dark/broad humour), deliciously gory, occasionally shocking and decidedly vicious little film.

TV Guide, echoing Canby, wrote, "A great cast is primarily wasted in this gory, below-average, and overlong film.

"The subversive streak in me gets an incredible kick that somehow in my career I essentially got the New Zealand government, through the film commission, to finance these incredibly gory films," he said.

He translated an obsession with superhero comics and gory films into a platinum-selling rock band with a messianic appeal.