We’re introduced to our hero — Bruceploitation star Bruce Li — via a credits sequence in which he, wearing a blindfold, spars with another guy wearing a girdle, while Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces” blares. The film is produced by Woo Ka Chi, which also accurately describes how the music score sounds.

Li meets an effeminate guy with a name like Poochie Chan, who wears a white suit and continuously dabs at his face with a handkerchief. Li also falls for a woman who has a doll in her room that shoots metal darts out its head. How all these characters come into play with the story is a moot point, because there is no story. They simply amble amount and speak in generic terms and, every few minutes, a fight breaks out.

One colorful brawl takes place at night at an amusement park; another on a playground, predating a similar scene in Jackie Chan’s Police Story 2, except Jackie’s scene didn’t steal John Barry’s 007 musical cues, nor did it have a preceding foot chase scored to Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die.” One guy gets shot with an arrow by a dude who looks like either the construction worker or the motorcycle rider from the Village People. Some random minion gets a pitchfork deep in his ass. Story schmory, slightly snory. —Rod Lott

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In case you couldn’t guess by now, eXistenZ was written and directed by David Cronenberg.

With various people wanting her dead, Allegra goes on the run with her company’s PR trainee, played by Jude Law. He’s never played her games before, so they get the necessary “bioport” installed in his back at a local gas station by attendant Willem Dafoe. Now Jude and Jen can play the game together to make sure it works.

The game plants Jude on the assembly line, cutting open mutated frogs for parts to make mini gamepods. This, incidentally, is where the movie starts to go south. Jen worries about her own gamepod, because it’s sick and diseased, and you wonder how the actors were able to keep a straight face.

Both Law and Leigh are fine, even if I suspect the latter is convinced she’s playing Elisabeth Shue. What’s Cronenberg trying to say in the Möbius-strip eXistenZ? Hell if I know! But for a while, I liked how he said it — gory amphibian parts, clitoral joysticks and all. —Rod Lott

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In either an unfortunate accident or a meta-ironic attempt to parrot that shallow world, Be Cool serves up a passel of tired caricatures, stale gags and self-congratulatory cameos (Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Anna Nicole Smith, et al.). There’s a burly bodyguard who is gay and — get this — wants to be in movies! Yowzah! Oh, and a white guy who thinks he’s a black guy! Hoo-boy! There’s a Russian Mafiosi who sports a … bad toupee! Tee-hee-hee! Oh, and then there’s the gangsta rapper who’s just itching to shoot someone! Knee-slappin’ hoopa-hoopa funny!

Some of these high jinks are executed by talented folks, which somewhat alleviates the sting. Andre 3000 (of hip-hop duo Outkast), Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer and especially Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson all shine in their respective roles, until the one-dimensional shtick they are saddled with starts to wear thin. It doesn’t take long.

Others in the ensemble are less lucky. Christina Milian has the thankless role of the young musical talent whom impresario Chili takes under his wing and steers toward a record contract. (Will she make it? Take a guess.) She’s relegated to several performances of synthetic R&B dross while Travolta and co-star Uma Thurman are told to sway their heads from side to side.
 
F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job remake) is a competent, if unremarkable director, and he does manage to keep the flick humming along and even intermittently entertaining. But hell, intermittently entertaining isn’t quite cool enough. Be Cool be crap. —Phil Bacharach

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Thinking they’re up against a “karate killer,” detective Dunne (Clu Gulager, The Return of the Living Dead) brings in professional sparrer Matt Logan (Norris) to train his narcotics squad, which includes Scanners‘ Jennifer O’Neill, top-billed, yet made to look as manly as her character’s name sounds, Mandy Rust.

After the karate killer strikes again, Dunne orders, “These karate people: Check ‘em out!” Even Logan begins to question it, thinking perhaps the murderer is someone he and his punching pals know closely. Without giving away the culprit’s identity, I would like to note that naturally, the final fight occurs in slow-motion and sans shirts.

Made back when Norris was considered a popular entertainer, as opposed to right-wing loon, A Force of One is a decent marriage of his considerable martial-arts skills and the constructs of the action genre. The fun supporting cast includes Super Fly himself, Ron O’Neal; Bill “Superfoot” Wallace (L.A. Streetfighters); Eric Laneuville (TV’s St. Elsewhere) as Logan’s son, so let that sink in, if you know who Laneuville is; Chuck’s brother, Aaron Norris, who co-choreographed all the kicking; Chuck’s son, Michael Norris, as “Pizza Skateboarder”; and Chu Chu Malave. I don’t really know who that is, but I sure enjoy saying his name. —Rod Lott

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Say what you will about Brown’s book — that means you, offended Catholics and people who now pretend they never liked it when they totally once did — but there’s no denying that sucker had a pace that rivaled a toddler after downing a sippy cup full of Red Bull. By comparison, Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code — already overlong at 149 minutes — crawls on the floor, about as speedily as the assassinated character who opens the film, with every scene drawn out past its welcome, overstuffed with interminable speeches. There’s something to be said for brevity – a concept likely eradicated from Opie’s brain once he won the Best Director Oscar.

It makes one colossal mistake: treating the source material as if it were literature. Look, I loved reading Code, but it’s a B-level thriller. Screenwriter Akiva Goldman treats it as if it were a work of serious art, where every sentence had been constructed with precious care, like a Jenga tower, with designs on a Pulitzer Prize. In doing so, the fun is sucked clean out of it, leaving us with one history lesson (and quasi-history lesson) after another, all of which numb our attention. Although it hews closely to the original story, there’s nothing here that sheds light on why the novel sold 2 bazillion copies and counting.

Things distract us: Tom Hanks’ ill-advised academic mullet, Audrey Tautou’s neck mole, Ian McKellen’s shameless honey-baked ham of a performance. The listless tempo carries with it an unintended side effect: highlighting how entirely preposterous Brown’s puzzle-upon-puzzle plot is. Never mind how an old man with mere minutes to live could plant hidden clue upon hidden clue by the razor-thin chance that the people he intended to follow it would indeed — one wonders why the treasure hunt be so elongated when, honestly, it needs no steps beyond the first one. That’s something easily forgiven in the reading experience (if thought is even given to it at all), but maddeningly apparent in the movies. —Rod Lott

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Fade in to 2005 and an ill-conceived remake, with Adam Sandler in the Burt Reynolds role of Paul Crewe, a fallen NFL quarterback rotting in a Texas prison when he is tapped to organize a football team of convicts to play the guards. What is deemed cutting-edge a generation later? Hollywood doesn’t have the cojones to focus too much on the sociopathic tendencies of convicts. 

Nope, nowadays cutting-edge means anti-gay. And The Longest Yard of 2005 is chock full o’ backwards, redneck, stereotype-embracing, queer-is-ha-ha-funny gay-bashing:
• We’ve got a prissy fella who develops an instant crush on Sandler because our hero is boorish and has crashed his girlfriend’s Bentley after going on a drunken joyride. (Gay people love brutes, don’cha know).
• We have a gaggle of flamer convicts who make up cheers like, “Gimme a D! Gimme an I! Gimme a C! Gimme …” (Get it? They want, well, you know …)
• We have two inmates caught making out over a surveillance camera.
• We have Rob Schneider in a cameo (reason enough to avoid the picture) as an overzealous convict all aflutter over the possibility of a group hug in the showers.
 
It appears that gay-bashing is the one remaining widely accepted form of bigotry left in America. —Phil Bacharach

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I’ve really tried to enjoy it. Freddy Krueger’s a good villain, but he’s better served in some of the sequels, especially Craven’s return to the series, New Nightmare. There are some good scares here and there, great bloodletting and weirdly effective dream sequences to compliment an intriguing, if half-baked scenario.

Craven’s choice of heroine, however, ruins everything for me. Or rather, her portrayer. Heather Langenkamp delivers one of the most utterly wretched performances I have ever sat through. Not one line reading approaches believability, and it only makes it worse that she is obviously trying her best. It’s like watching a high school play: She’s pretending, not acting. Considering Craven had a fairly talented ’80s staple nearby in Amanda Wyss (as Tina), his casting of Langenkamp is all the more puzzling.

Beyond Nancy (and her equally atrocious mother, Ronee Blakley), Elm Street is only passable horror entertainment, one of the few movies improved upon in some of its sequels (parts 3 and 7). I must admit a fondness for the ending, but only for its utter ridiculousness; watching Nancy somehow morph into MacGyver as she sets up her entire house with sophisticated traps in a few minutes somehow makes a demon pedophile who kills in dreams seem plausible. —Corey Redekop

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Our hero is Capt. William H. Kemp (James Olson, The Andromeda Strain), who specializes in retrieval of satellite scrap, and doesn’t want to shuttle interplanetary tourists: “I’m a space pilot, not a mechanically minded wet nurse.” However, when safety violations threaten to ground him, a guy’s gotta look long-term.

For Kemp, that means listening to Hubbard (Warren Mitchell, Jabberwocky), the purple-cloaked, eyepatch-sporting baldie about illegally mining the sapphire from a 6,000-ton asteroid. Total fox Clementine Taplin (Catherina von Schell, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), searching for her missing brother, shows up to provide much sexual innuendo.

The film’s highlights are a gravity-free bar brawl, however brief, and cartoon opening credits in a loony spirit not exhibited by the mostly serious story that follows. Directed by Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit), Moon Zero Two certainly looks cool — and sounds it, with a swingin’ ’60s score — but feels forever set at quarter-speed. Good thing that in space, no one can hear you snore. —Rod Lott

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But there’s a story here, too, albeit a sketchy one. The Mountain of the Cannibal God stars Ursula Andress as Susan, a woman in search of her husband, unheard of for months after his jungle expedition. She and her brother hire Prof. Foster (Stacy Keach, who looks coked out of his mind) to take them into said jungle to locate him, although few doubt her spouse remains alive.

The group encounters poisonous spiders, venomous snakes, arm-hungry crocodiles and spike-laden booby traps. Eventually, they come across natives wearing freaky masks, prompting an admission from Foster that he has been partaken of their unusual rituals before: “You never forget the taste of human flesh!” he screams.

Eventually, Susan does find her husband … dead and partially liquified, with a Geiger counter sticking out of his tum-tum. The cannibals strip her naked, paint her orange and tie her up. One cannibal tries to rape her, so the lead cannibal cuts off the eager man’s penis. In more deviant footage, female cannibals masturbate and a man fucks a pig. I leave it to you to determine whether that’s a recommendation or a warning. —Rod Lott

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Bug-eyed, open-mouthed Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) stars as Alex, the best friend of Norman Bates during all their institutionalized years. Upon death, Norman has left the Bates Motel to Alex, who plans not to level it, but reopen it. Upon his release, he has to contend with all sorts of crazy things that confuse and puzzle him so, like fast food drive-in speakers and Lori Petty in a chicken suit.

Adding a café and fountain, Alex reopens the place to quite an eager crowd. First, suicidal writer/aerobics instructor Kerrie Keane (The Incubus) shows up with plans to off herself in the tub. Then Khrystyne Haje (that tall redhead from TV’s Head of the Class) intervenes and drags her to an impromptu sock hop with all her friends, where she’s hit on by a career-nadir Jason Bateman. This all prompts Keane to reconsider the value of life, although she’s been hit on by Jason Bateman and has come into contact with Lori Petty, chicken suit or not.

Bates Motel offers one ray of hope when it appears that Mother Bates — in a Scream-like outfit — has come back to kill off the guests, but that quickly becomes a double Scooby-Doo ending. Absolutely, profoundly pathetic. —Rod Lott

Dana Andrews (Airport 1975) and Jeanne Crain (Skyjacked) portray the Phillips family heads who decide to buy a motel after Mr. Phillips injures his spine in an auto accident. En route to their new home, they’re menaced by three clean-cut youngsters in a red hot rod who don’t like the idea of such squares taking over the motel at which they hang. (Hanging out at a motel? Who’s the square?)

First, they bean the little boy with a thrown beer can, prompting him to scream, “All girls are nuts!” Then, they try running the Phillips clan off the road several times, as well as engage in games of chicken. The crotchety highway patrolman gets in a speech: “These kids got nowhere to go, but they want to get there going 150 miles per hour.”

Andrews is certainly no hero; every time he springs into action, he has a back spasm. Plus, everything he says sounds drunk. Crain overemotes at every opportunity, but she’s hot in that middle-aged, snotty, redhead-housewife way, so I’m cutting her slack. —Rod Lott

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Hodder is the “DarkWolf” — a hybrid werewolf, explains an all-too-knowing policeman — who must mate with a chosen female in order to ensure the survival of its species. (Its acquisition of a capital W goes unexplained.) The chosen female is a blonde waitress (Samaire Armstrong, TV’s The O.C.) who has no idea of her fate, but soon learns when her “protector” — The Birds‘ Tippi Hedren as cinema’s most well-dressed homeless woman — is slain by the creature, as is the cop’s partner, airheaded Playboy Playmate Jamie Bergman.

Everyone in this straight-to-DVD pile of wolf poo is so unlikable, you wish the DarkWolf would kill them all, and then do himself in. But yet, DarkWolf feels the need to plod along on its grubby paws for an hour and a half, occasionally throwing in just enough gratuitous nudity to keep you from hitting “stop.”

The acting is atrocious, even for a straight-to-video movie of this kind, and the werewolf transformation scenes are downright embarrassing. Whenever it’s time for one of those, the movie turns into a poorly computer-animated cartoon! —Rod Lott

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Here, the drifter Django rolls into a town all but abandoned, save for morbidly obese saloon owner Paco (Donato Castellaneta) and his too-hot-for him wife, Lola (smoldering Esmeralda Barros, King of Kong Island), who works there as a, um, “feisty little filly.” Django tells Paco he’s looking for the four men behind the Four Leaf Clover Gang, who murdered his wife. Our cigar-chomping hero carries his smokes around in a music box that displays his dearly departed’s photo and, when opened, conveniently plays the film’s über-hummable Piero Umiliani theme.

After disguising himself as a friar and igniting much dynamite that sends hapless citizens through candy-glass windows, Django meets Four Leaf vet Carranza (Stelio Candelli, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires). Django knows Carranza was the only one who had nothing to do with it, but demands his help to find the other three.

Simple plot, simple pleasures, gringo. Director Edoardo Mulargia (Tropic of Cancer) lightens the mood of the original with noticeable comedy upfront, but that doesn’t mean violence takes a backseat. Although not particularly bloody, the flick delivers plenty of gunshots, most of which hit their greasy targets. Not a single one is Django, of course; he’s too much of a badass, like when he uses a branch to rig a fake arm in his coat to make it look like he’s surrendering. Silly villains — Django surrenders to no one. —Rod Lott

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Here, Zorar plays Maco, the strong, silent type who lives alone and earns a meager living as a bouncer, and whose life is given purpose after thwarting a home robbery while out for a night run. One of the victims in that incident is foxy newscaster Carol V. (María Elena Swett), who later sings his praises on TV, but has no idea who he is, because Maco had donned the blue ski mask of the first criminal he foiled.

Setting up an email account, the superhero soon known as Mirageman becomes a public vigilante, but mocked by the media. His missions increase in severity, from sparring with a gang of breakdancers to rescuing a 6-year-old kidnapped by a pedophile network. Along the way, he (briefly) acquires a sidekick, Pseudo-Robin.

Realistic and original by comparison to Hollywood’s comics-spurred tentpoles, this scrappy, low-budget effort — shot partly catch-as-catch-can — soars on the sure hand of Espinoza’s vision, which comes infused with a dose of good-natured humor, and the broad shoulders of the instantly endearing Zorar, who’s an Expendables-worthy real deal. He speaks very little throughout, but lets his martial-arts expertise — and his homemade Spider-Man goggles — do the talking. —Rod Lott

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An early sequence depicts the film’s female starlets in their underwear, being pelted with tomatoes, leading into the first tale, in which a woman photographs men in poses of medieval torture. Cutting into her lunch of steak has a voodoo-esque effect on the model she left strung up. Later, a man catches a comely cat burglar (Cathy Howard, School for Sex) pilfering his home, so naturally, he ends up rubbing lemon-cucumber soap all over her naked body in the shower. Moving to the bed, he stuffs a phone receiver down back of her panties so the other line can hear whatever it is one would hear from such awkward placement.

Perhaps the most amusing vignette is a spy spoof, in which one Col, X briefs his curvy Agent 28 (Maria Frost, School for Sex) to infiltrate a foreign embassy; seduction becomes a required part of the mission. Sandwiched within the segment is a spot-on parody of a silent comedy, a bedroom farce circa 1929. Elsewhere in Secrets, a man (Elliott Stein, one of the screenwriters) orders a hooker (Benny Hill girl Sue Bond) for some lizard-loving, and an elderly woman puts her past lovers’ souls — all 17 of them — into garden flowers.

The film ends with fireworks that score an orgy ever after. As if you couldn’t tell, Secrets of Sex is nonsensical, but nudity trumps lucidity in such a project, and this UK one actually possesses as much brains as beauty. The women are gorgeous and natural, and the proceedings told with so much humor that it reeks of being good-natured. Director Antony Balch (Horror Hospital) bathes it in such vibrant colors, it’s a practically a piece of Pop Art — with just as little meaning, but none of the pretension. —Rod Lott

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Vadim’s “Metzengerstein” stars a never-sexier Jane Fonda as 22-year-old countess/libertine Frederique who lives an orgiastic existence in a castle, where she keeps a tiger cub as a pet. Although wooed by her cousin (Peter Fonda, uncomfortably enough), Frederique loves a horse — not in an Emanuelle in America sort of way, but I wouldn’t put it past Vadim — perhaps the horse wasn’t young enough. This opening segment is about as successful as then-married Vadim and Fonda’s collaboration on Barbarella, which is to say it looks great, but has a story that plods along like so many exhausted equine. Vietnam vets may most enjoy seeing Hanoi Jane stepping into an animal trap in the woods.

Alain Delon is “William Wilson” in Malle’s middle, rushing to confess an act of murder to a priest. This leads to a series of flashbacks that illustrate Wilson has been haunted since childhood by a double bearing the same name (also played by Delon). Whereas the real Wilson is and always has been a número-uno dick, the doppelgänger intrudes to halt or expose his bad behavior, whether torturing a classmate with rats; dissecting a live, nude woman just for kicks; or cheating in a card game against a brunette Brigitte Bardot. The latter act, unfortunately, plays out in real time, consuming many more minutes than needed.

Unquestionably the finest is the finale, “Toby Dammit,” the only tale set in modern day. Fellini takes the opportunity to satirize celebrity, especially the oversized kind forever pursued by the paparazzi — here, an ill-tempered, arrogant alcoholic (Terence Stamp) who despises his fans as much as his critics. He gets his comeuppance in a long-overdue end. While sly and dreamlike, the piece is, like the others, one that makes its point at two to three times the length it should. —Rod Lott

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In Anatomy 2, an idealistic young intern (Barnaby Metschurat — gesundheit!) joins a Berlin hospital and is soon invited to join a select group of doctors that gathers weekly. As he soon learns, they’re all anti-Hippocratic, but since he’s eager to rub shoulders with the bigwigs, he joins anyway. Perhaps his decision had something to do with the late-night sexperiment he has with the Jeri Ryan lookalike who gives him seven orgasms. The lot is conducting clandestine research of its own involving synthetic muscles operated via remote control that improve one’s muscular strength by as much as 400 percent.

At first, our hero sees potential in curing his crippled brother, but it becomes clear that the organization is only interested in creating supermen at all costs — even if it means become morphine junkies and killing off any member who tries to leave. Potente has a cameo as an investigator who warns the doc of his involvement — perhaps far too late.

Anatomy 2 isn’t better than its predecessor, but at least it is its own being. The filmmakers could have just retread the original, but opted to go a different route while still playing upon our distrust of doctors and fear of bodily harm. In the process, the sequel has become far more glossy and far less gruesome, but I was entertained. —Rod Lott

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As payback, Saint — oh, the irony! — orders the assassination of Castle and his entire family, conveniently assembled in one place for a family reunion. Only Frank manages to survive. Donning the black, skull-emblazoned T-shirt his son opportunely gifted him before dying, he calls himself The Punisher, outfits his car and apartment with weapons galore and sets out to take down Saint and all his expensive-suited goons.

In his directorial debut, Jonathan Hensleigh gives his revenge tale an ugly grit that’s supposed to remind audiences of the pistol-packin’ ‘70s, but unfortunately, his story and pacing are reminiscent of ‘70s episodic cop shows. The dialogue is melodramatic and goofy; the score is overwrought and inappropriate.

And Jane doesn’t get to do much punishing. Aside from the final office-building siege in which Castle doles out some ass-kicking (and neck-penetrating and chin-stabbing), the action is subdued rather than exciting. The film’s big fight scene is supposed to be a mano y mano match between Castle and a mute walking steroid known as “the Russian,” but it’s hard not to laugh since he’s dressed like Baby Huey.

The Punisher is one of the last movies that needs comic relief, but lo and behold, it throws in not one, but two wacky neighbors! It also doesn’t need romance, but Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is there anyway as a heartbroken, downtrodden waitress who takes a shine to Castle. It’s not that the film needs eye candy with Mulholland Dr. hussy Laura Harring bouncing across the screen, but what was Hensleigh thinking when he cuts away from her undressing to lingerie? Oh, well, at least he lets us see Travolta be dragged by a car and set aflame in full. —Rod Lott

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Picking up where D2K ended, with the count burnt to a crisp on a neon crucifix, Ascension wheels the charred corpse of the vampire lord into a morgue, where the enterprising workers steal the body, sensing an opportunity to make some money. They take it to the conveniently vacant and isolated mansion of their professor, played by Craig Sheffer. He’s confined to a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy and has his left hand drawn up and turned in a way that looks like he’s constantly playing charades and no one has yet guessed “hieroglyphics.”

Sheffer — like Stephen Hawking without the RoboVoice and the charisma — believes the key to his cellular regeneration lies within the blood of Dracula, so he has his students revive the body by literally giving him a bloodbath. It works, and the first to die is former Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick, who briefly comes back as cinema’s only vampire to sport matching red bra and panties from Victoria’s Secret semi-annual lingerie sale. Eventually dying (but not soon enough) is the token black guy who, after sprouting fangs, exclaims with no irony, “I got the hooyah power in me!”

Meanwhile, the increasingly oval-faced Jason Scott Lee tracks them down. He’s a priest-cum-vampire hunter, as quick with the scythe as he is with the scripture, and he is as intent on saving souls as he is severing heads. Oh, and what of Drac? He’s tied up for nearly the entire movie, freed of his chains only at the end to set up Dracula III: Legacy, leaving one to hope it has more bite. —Rod Lott

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After this exciting sequence, Spiderbabe continues as a pitch-perfect parody of the Spidey origin story, except there are a few important differences. Most importantly, as with the other films in the Seduction Cinema “multiverse,” the chicks get into the lesbionic action at the drop of a hat. Also, all the major Spidey characters are re-imagined as females. This comes in handy when Patricia tries to convince her boss at the newspaper not to run negative Spiderbabe stories. Also, instead of shooting webs from her wrists, she shoots webs from her nether-regions. Her web-squirting genitals come as quite a surprise to everyone in the movie, including Spiderbabe herself.

Crash does a great job of keeping the action moving at comic-book speed. You know it’s a good sign when you are eager for the lesbian sequences to reach their climax so the real action can resume. The special effects are good in a low-budget, “Look, Ma! I know how to use Adobe After Effects” style. There are a few embarrassing sequences, such as the final shot when Spiderbabe jumps onto the Statue of Liberty’s shoulder. Also, the wall-crawling action just felt a little bit fake. But overall, the movie looks amazing.

If there is anything lacking about Spiderbabe, it is the villain. Fem-tillian just seems stupid to me and, more importantly, is not a direct parody of any of the real Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery. Just imagine the erotic possibilities of Doctor Octopus or the Rhino. Nevertheless, Spiderbabe is a real treat for fans of Spidey, B-movies and lesbians. And that is something I think we can all agree on. —Ed Donovan

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Carpenter attached the scenario of an alien that perfectly mimics other life forms to an isolated arctic base and amped the claustrophobia, resulting in a paranoid classic that is also one of the great practical effect showcases. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. follows the template, but leeches away any hint of tension. It’s not that the audience knows the ending going in; it’s far more that you should never trust a brand property to an unproven talent (see also: anything produced by Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay’s production company). There isn’t one moment in this Thing that isn’t completely predictable.

Where does it go wrong? It’s the overuse of painfully obvious CGI where practical effects would have been a far superior choice. It’s the unnecessary Americans that join a group that we have, for 30 years, assumed to be completely Norwegian. It’s the marked lack of Kurt Russells, Wilford Brimleys and Keith Davids. It’s the oversights of particular plot points in the original (what happened to the thermite charges?). It’s the replacement of Ennio Morricone’s eerie score with a bombastic symphony that telegraphs every scare. It’s the disappointment of seeing that the inside of the spacecraft is just stereotypical weird tunnels. It’s rejigging the idea that anyone could be the monster to, “Oh, I think I know who the monster is: that two-headed guy running down the corridor.”

It’s all this, and more. When only one scene even approaches the level of terror and/or coolness of the original (think face-melting), you don’t have a true sequel, an adequate prequel, a loving tribute or an energetic fan film; you have a sweaty-faced Elvis impersonator in a polyester suit, fighting a heart attack while he bellows “Suspicious Minds” to a group of bored tourists in Nevada.

That said, it’s still better than anything Platinum Dunes has ever released. —Corey Redekop

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As the telefilm opens, government-created android Robert Golem (get it?) goes nutzoid and kills two fellow agents before going on the run, in search of more government agents to kill. In order to stop him, the team has to recruit two ex-agents now in the public sector. One is star Robert Conrad, bringing to Assassin all the verve and intensity of his Duracell commercials. The other is Karen Austin (Markie Post’s Night Court predecessor), because with Conrad in the lead, they needed someone to balance that out and lend the action film some testosterone.

Austin explains to Conrad that she helped create the cyborg (Robert Young, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning), who has two built-in weaknesses: His brain is in his stomach and he has to recharge his power supply every 72 hours by plugging into an air-conditioning unit for 30 minutes, which he does by removing a cord implanted in his ankle. He also has a detachable tummy for working on his insides and is prone to jumping out of high-rise windows to escape capture.

Assassin has no forward drive, nor anything resembling pure action. It’s mediocre in every way, right down to the costumer’s decision to clothe Conrad in butt-hugging khakis. It’s not intended for laughs, but generated a fair share for me. —Rod Lott

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Although they look nothing like Lee, the prof christens them Bruce Lee 1, Bruce Lee 2 and Bruce Lee 3. (Eventually, one will go by the name of Chuck to avoid confusion.) They’re played by Dragon Lee, Bruce Le and Bruce Lai. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you … The Clones of Bruce Lee!

After training with Bolo Yeung and working out to the swiped strains of “Gonna Fly Now,” the trio is set out on secret missions. First, they bring down an “unscrupulous” gold-smuggling film producer. Then they are sent to Bangkok (Oriental city), where they must eliminate a doctor who has created a serum to turn humans into metal bronzemen, but only after ogling all the totally naked Thai whores. When the professor hears about the doc’s undoing, it angers him, so he attempts to pit the three clones against one another, in order to find the best fighter so that he can rule the world.

Despite all the kicking and full-frontal nudity, Clones is mind-numbingly repetitive and tough to follow. Although the concept might lead you to believe otherwise, this is not Bruceploitation at its most enjoyable or its most outrageous. —Rod Lott

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Margaret (Daniela Giordano, Mario Bava’s Four Times That Night) was busted at a party where grass and pills were being consumed; while she didn’t partake, guilt by association landed her behind bars for a short time. Upon release, one of the guards steers her toward a place to stay, ran by the kindly Mrs. Grant (Giovanna Galletti, Kill Baby, Kill). On her first night, a nerve-addled Margaret “hallucinates” the pantyhose man coming into her room.

The brother (John Scanlon, Escape from Alcatraz) of 2A’s previous occupant investigates his sister’s out-of-character death: “Cut the jazz! What’s she talking about?” Could it be Frank (Angelo Infanti, The Godfather), Mrs. Grant’s nerdy son whose workshop is filled with mannequin heads and miniature guillotines? Or perhaps that strange cult that holds meetings on the ground floor, hmmmmm?

The final film directed by sex-pic auteur William Rose, The Girl in Room 2A doesn’t quite reach the Hostel-ility posed by its prologue. Whenever the L’eggs-clad villain shows up, the Italian thriller fills with a little life for scenes of death. Whenever it doesn’t, the movie feels like a series of red herrings biding time until the inevitable conclusion. —Rod Lott

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Not an adventure, but a family comedy with the production values of a porn, the unfunny film cast Arnie as the half-mortal Hercules, who seeks permission to leave Mount Olympus, but his dad, Zeus (soap actor Ernest Graves), won’t let him, yet throws a thunderbolt at him anyway, thus sending Herc to New York City, where he’s befriended by a waterfront pretzel salesman, Pretzi (comedian Arnold Stang, neither comic nor relief), and romanced by a professor’s daughter (Deborah Loomis, 1976′s Blood Bath).

In the Big Apple, Hercules tips over a taxi, wows collegians with his discus skills, does that bodybuilder thing where he flexes his boobies individually, throws a guy into a river, participates in a televised barbell contest, wrestles a guy in a bear suit 600-pound escaped grizzly bear and, finally, drives a chariot down through Central Park. Isn’t that just a fucking riot?

What little fun the flick offers is witnessing Schwarzenegger face his greatest foe: dialogue. He can’t properly pronounce Zeus or Athens, let alone his own character’s name, and rarely does a shot include him saying more than one line at a time. Still, some of those are unintentional gems as he:
• sees a forklift: “Fine chariot! But where are ze horses?”
• is told he better watch his mouth: “I can hear my talk, I cannot vatch it.”
• marvels at an automat: “This fine food for only a few small coins?”
• is asked whether his mother dropped him on his head as a baby: “Once I strangled two serpents in the cradle.” —Rod Lott

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Heading the operation is cocksure Mark Dacascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf), eager to work out the details of a $14 million coke transaction with his visiting supplier, played by rap star Coolio, who must’ve had it worked into his contract to have his character be named Coolio as well. Three times he says, “Man, I could get used to this shit!” Assisting them is a mysterious cutie not afraid to strip naked when she’s accused of wearing a wire.

And I did. For all its flaws — not much of a story, Coolio — China Strike Force delivers in the action department. From the opening training sequence, the film moves to a foot chase on a busy highway with the pursued and pursuer eventually jumping from moving vehicle to moving vehicle. There’s also a great, high-octane car chase between a Lamborghini and a race car, plus several rounds of martial-arts showdowns. But the biggest and best stunt is saved for last, with the characters battling on a constantly tilting plate-glass window suspended high above the city.

Not surprisingly, old pro Stanley Tong — director of several Jackie Chan films, including Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop — is behind the camera and guides his affable leads to direct-to-video greatness. Be sure and stick around for the Chan-tastic ouch-takes at the end credits. —Rod Lott

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But alas, the world is hardly fair, so while we drown in a morass of Sandler-related comedies so poor they make Eddie Murphy blush with shame, Forte is relegated to the sidelines. Never mind that MacGruber is funnier than anything Sandler has done — it’s the funniest movie from the SNL canon since The Blues Brothers.

A riff on the legendary mullet-and-brains TV series MacGyver, MacGruber surpasses its comedy-sketch beginnings by becoming not only an extension of the character, but a rousing and gleefully profane send-up of 1980s action films. To those who don’t know Mac, he’s the ultimate bad-ass: “former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, Green Beret, served six tours in Desert Storm, four in Bosnia, three each in Angola, Somalia, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Sierra Leone.” Yet in the grand tradition of cinematic Homer Simpsons, MacGruber succeeds despite idiocy. And such glorious idiocy it is; watching him beg for a second chance by offering to fuck anything in the room is wondrously funny.

There are other highlights: Ryan Phillippe is a surprisingly strong straight man, Kristen Wiig is game for anything, and Val Kilmer reminds us why he needs better roles. But it’s Forte’s show: He never mugs, never winks; his commitment to being an absolute ass is heartening. MacGruber is a textbook example of the smart-stupid, the type of stupid only very smart people can create. Thank God that Sandler and Dennis Dugan never got their paws anywhere near this one. —Corey Redekop

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They won’t let Sin go to the royal ball, but to her rescue comes Fairy Godfather Sydney Lassick (Cheswick from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), fitting her with a golden bra and other grand articles of clothing. At the ball, the masked Sin has a grand time dancing with Prince David, who falls for her hard. But she stays too long and her clothes fall off, so she flees, leaving behind her golden bra and a mystery as to who she is.

Feeling sorry for his son, the king decrees that all maidens in the village must try on the bra. Whoever possesses the boobs that fit into it perfectly must be the prince’s intended princess, so he and his assistants go door to door and have various women expose their various-sized breasts and try on the undergarment. Just when he’s given up hope, the prince finds Sinderella and thankfully, it fits her tits!

This is one of those nudie-cuties that manages to make female nudity seem rather tame, if not downright dull. But you gotta love the concept, even if it is prefaced with a puppet-laden credit sequence, too-tight tights for all the men, several musical numbers (the first of which has the king sing while topless chicks play with yarn), school-play staging and Lassick playing a scene in drag, effectively putting the “fairy” in “fairy tale.” —Rod Lott

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It’s almost tempting to theorize that Lieberman might be suffering from some sort of curse, since his often-outstanding work never has gotten him the attention he deserves. His great sci-fi/horror satire, Remote Control, has yet to make it to DVD and his most famous effort, Squirm, has the dubious distinction of being the best film to have ever been mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and, yes, I happily would say that right to This Island Earth’s face).

Combining the standard elements of the slasher genre with the backwoods horror of Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes, Just Before Dawn succeeds thanks to skillful direction, effective atmosphere and — most importantly — a cast of likable characters whose endangerment causes us to feel actual anxiety and empathy, rather than the usual slasher-movie schadenfreude.

The plot is bare-bones simple: Several campers in search of an inherited mine in a dangerous forest find themselves being hunted by the demented offspring of the area’s requisite family of religious freaks. But the beauty of the slasher genre is that the plot is always secondary to the execution, and by that standard, this neglected gem easily ranks as one of the best of its kind. —Allan Mott

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Below the Belt (1971) — Quite memorably, Uschi enjoys a poolside romp in this tale of a boxer and the Mafia. She doesn’t even seem to mind the sudden entrance of a curious dog. Now that’s acting!

The Melon Affair (1972) — This goofy, harmless Italian comedy also known as, appropriately, Bang! Bang! The Mafia Gang, stars Woody Allen lookalike/soundalike Frank Corsentino in a slapstick-heavy tale of a virgin nerd who still lives with his nagging mom and dreams about sex all day. During a catering gig, he gets mixed up with the Mafia — with crazy results! Said results include a messy round of sex or two with Russ Meyer regular Haji, but for my money, Uschi steals the show as one of Frank’s daydreams, a topless nurse who smothers him with her fluffy white pillows. The reasons are obvious. —Rod Lott

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The rest of the movie involves Bigfoot attacking women and dry-humping them to orgasm. He also spears an effeminate runner in the butt with a stick and beats up a few guys. Some of his other victims involve a pair of environmentalists who have tied themselves to a tree. They believe that he is a nature spirit. The tied-down chick only makes the monkey love easier for our hairy friend. Bigfoot also likes to urinate on people and masturbate a lot.

A subplot involves a whiny young nerd who enjoys pleasuring himself to Britney Spears magazines. However, Bigfoot beats up the young man in order to get some masturbation material of his very own. The young man collapses into a quivering mess, crying “Why? Why?” Later, he gets another magazine and is pleasuring himself in his own room when Bigfoot reaches in through the window and steals the new magazine. “Fucking Bigfoot!” the boy cries. This is pure comic gold.

While Ape Canyon is funny at times, in the end, it is really not very good. Perhaps if it had been condensed into a short film, its poor production values could be overlooked. However, the muddy, handheld video footage gets tiresome at feature-length. Plus, the Bigfoot suit is not convincing at all — in fact, it seems to be a cheap gorilla suit picked up from a Halloween costume shop. Most importantly, for a B movie, there is a sad lack of nudity and gore. In a movie like this, I simply cannot excuse a lack of breasts. —Ed Donovan

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Yes, it has blood. Yes, it has rape. Yes, it has scenes of more unrelenting violence. But it also has slapstick comedy with rednecks, complete with “wacky” music. And a near-toothless African-American woman who would seem at home on a MADtv sketch. And dare I even mention the banjo-pop soundtrack with songs about the villains? Bad guys’ themes should not be played on the instrument most associated with TV’s Hee Haw.

But onto the story, which marks the screenwriting and directorial debut of Wes Craven, who later would birth terror icons in Freddy Krueger, Ghostface and whoever Meryl Streep played in that violin movie: Virginal 17-year-old Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell, Teenage Hitchhikers) and her best pal (Lucy Grantham) have the unfortunate experience of trying to score pot, but instead running into a felonious foursome led by Krug (David Hess, instantly typecast).

Krug’s so evil, he got his own son (Marc Sheffler) hooked on heroin. Weasel (Fred Lincoln) is a child molester, and Sadie (Jeramie Rain, later Mrs. Richard Dreyfuss) is merely a psycho bitch from hell. Rape and murder ensue, then the tables are turned when car trouble puts Team Krug as guests in the Collingwood home.

Craven and company’s absolute amateur-hour efforts kill whatever power was intended. That’s not to say what Krug and f(r)iends do isn’t horrible; it is. But torture of characters doth not a good movie make, and there’s nothing offered — original or otherwise — to elevate Last House. I even think some of its many rip-offs do the same story far better — Italy’s Night Train Murders, for one — and Hollywood’s vastly superior 2009 remake boasts suspense and style. Yeah, I said it. —Rod Lott

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That’s just one of many of Extreme Ops’ glaring gaps of logic wider than the space between star Bridgitte Wilson-Sampras’ eyes. But sure enough, this criminal mastermind who could not be toppled by entire governments is foiled with X Games stunts; this terrorist is taken down by beer-guzzling, snot-nosed sports freaks. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we have sent Tony Hawk to Iraq?

Dark City’s Rufus Sewell leads the team and has the hots for gold-medal downhill skier Bridgitte Wilson-Sampras-Gums-Teeth. The others dare you to like them, debuting with such lines as “I’m cramping and bleeding like a stuck pig!” and “Wassup, bitches?” That includes the rather unappealing Devon Sawa (Final Destination), whose baby teeth and bloodshot eyes suggests “reeks of skunk weed.” They’re so nutty and anti-authority that they’re always doing things like skateboarding atop moving trains and snowboarding off hotel roofs and laughing about it like it’s the funniest thing on earth. Why wasn’t Matthew Lillard in this?

It’s hard to side with the Extreme Ops team over the bad guys. And how do we know they’re bad? Because they’re bald and play chess … with bullets — how hardcore! The stunts are excellent, but that leaves no excellence for other aspects of the film. At least one character’s voice has been redubbed in its entirety. Directed by Screamers’ Christian Duguay, the flick has more falling snow in it than Chris Farley’s last party, and appears to have been made only for guys who use the word “bro.” Extreme Oops may be a more apt title. —Rod Lott

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Louie, Paul and Joe and the troublemakers to whom the title refers. Joe’s the one in a Fritz the Cat T-shirt and overalls who plays hopscotch, just for the record. Louie’s the one whose girlfriend, Lea (Eleonora Giorgi, Inferno), rats them out in the first scene, letting the authorities know of the bored, pampered boys’ plans to rob a gas station.

That felonious act leaves four men dead, which excites constant gigglebox Joe as they escape from commissioner Tomas Milian (Cop in Drag): “You gotta admit, guys: It was better than OK Corral!” The trio immediately robs a bank of $5 million, then, after a round of group sex where someone farts, a grocery store. One long and winding car chase later, they’re fleeing with Lea to the country, where innocent campers await to be murdered for the hell of it.

Crime sprees usually make for can’t-miss concepts in films, but Young, Violent, Dangerous — while amusing in its first act — is too off-target to register for greatness. Milian’s a fine hero, naturally, but his screen time is limited, given over to the three punks you really don’t want to hang out with. Eurocrime can offer much worse, but it also can offer much better. —Rod Lott

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As an agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. (which could refer to Adamson’s pacing problems: “drag on,” see?), Kelly ends his Mexico vacation early when fellow agents inform him of the kidnapping of his Asian girlfriend Toki (as in “token,” I guess). She’s been nabbed by an evil white guy who’s deeply into the occult and the black arts. Kelly seeks to infiltrate this dude’s immense castle fortress, and his move of choice seems to be inflicting pain on other people’s scrotums. Seriously, I haven’t seen this much ball-kicking since Sly Stallone made that soccer movie with Pelé.

Strangely, the occult guy has a high dwarf population among his teams of henchmen. I counted six of the little guys. And while it’s not fair, politically correct or even logical, it sure is funny! To infuse a bit of Bond-age, Kelly gets a great scene where he jetpacks through the sky. He also romances the ladies, like the mean prostitute named Synne (subtle!) and gets his own theme song, although this one sounds created at a piano bar.

Black Samurai gets so ludicrous, Kelly ends up trading punches with a giant bird! And then there’s some rattlesnakes thrown in for good measure, as well as vintage Adamson touches like the sound effects of an owl in a scene of broad daylight. All the while, you’ll be laughing and scratching your head, asking yourself, “Wait, this was based on a novel?” —Rod Lott

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As the title has it, the film takes place on Tiburon, a Mexican island in the Gulf of California, where marine biologist Dr. Samuel Jamison (George Rowe) embarks on a “most extraordinary adventure.” Calm down, however, because it has to do with finding riches of pearls. Old man Steinhauer (John Mylong, Robot Monster‘s professor) proposes a partnership: “You can be astounded at what you find down there.”

At no point, however, does he say, “And by that I mean, mermaids with tits as big as my head.” Because that’s what the island’s “100 miles of dry sand and granite” gets you: topless, top-heavy mermaids — some with fins, some without, who needs continuity with cans like that? — who swim about and have no problem showing their, um, gills. It’s so innocent by today’s standards that it’s as harmless as a National Geographic special.

Whoever thought pulchritude could be so … well, deathly boring? The women playing the mermaids are lovely, especially Playboy Playmate Diane Webber, but beauty only gets you so far (and that includes the terrific underwater photography). The basically plotless flick spends so much time on scenery that the barking of sea lions counts as action, so when the man-eating shark shows up, you’re praying for blood. According to Tiburon, “Time has no meaning to these creatures,” and we experience that. Painfully. —Rod Lott

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The Regan MacNeil of this Spanish bedeviler is Leila (Grace Mills, Night of the Howling Beast), a young woman whose family believes hasn’t acted the same since her archeologist fiancé, Richard (Roger Leveder), returned from Africa. He’s the kind of guy whose apartment is decorated with voodoo masks and a blue cabinet on which red-paint letters read, “ALL YOU NEED IS TO FUCK.”

Once cast members are found with their heads rotated at a clean 180˚, Dunning investigates. Leila exhibits flashes of tempers and contorts like a seizure victim, but only Leila’s sister (María Kosty, Night of the Seagulls) brings up the possibility of possession. That certainly would explain Leila’s attendance at fully nude funk-sex-occult parties in the ruins of a nearby castle!

Viewers hoping for a satanic shocker are likely to be disappointed. Overly talky, Exorcismo offers few big moments, but they are there. In one, Naschy hallucinates a snake emerging from the faucet; in another, Leila shows up all milky-eyed, pustule-skinned and crusty-lipped at the bedside of her smokin’-hot mom (Maria Perschy, The Ghost Galleon). Atmosphere comes less from director Juan Bosch than composer Alberto Argudo. Watch up to the final split second for a puzzling quick trick. —Rod Lott

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Acting druggy as ever, Keanu Reeves is a serial killer who taunts cop James Spader (whose lazy eye I’d never noticed) by sending him photographs of his next victim, giving Spader and crew 24 hours to try and locate the intended murderee in time. Hardly figuring in to the instantly forgettable plot is Marisa Tomei, looking uncharacteristically puffy and tired, as Spader’s psychiatrist.

You see, Spader is haunted by a particular murder committed by Reeves in the past that he was unable to stop. This has caused him to become some sort of drug addict, resulting in one of the film’s many clichés — namely, that swallowing pills is really hard and requires one to throw his neck back to a perfect right angle and grimace uncomfortably as if the capsules were laden with porcupine quills.

The Watcher also dredges up the equally tired and unrealistic scenes of phone calls that end without the person saying “Bye” or any farewell of the kind; car chases where the one automobile that whips into traffic never gets hit, but causes several crashes; and tape recorders that always rewind to the exact point needed, and never in the middle of a sentence. Slick and glitzy, yet still workmanlike, The Watcher smacks of a director who got his start in music videos, and sure enough, Joe Charbanic did. Thus, you get hilarious, slow-mo scenes of Reeves dancing while holding a gun, not to mention enough photography flashes to cause seizures. —Rod Lott

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The story is about an old scraggly guy who looks not unlike Burl Ives. He has no eyes, sits in a dark room and telepathically has various young people carry out his most twisted sexual fantasies. Said fantasies include having a woman pleasure herself with a new dildo (“It turns on easy,” she says. “Hopefully it will do the same for me.”); having a fat guy butcher and copulate with dead women; and having a bunch of partygoers have an all-out orgy, despite the severed heads that pop up from nowhere and bodies that fall dead without explanation.

In Uschi’s aforementioned scene, she goes to bed, only to have the bed come alive to feel her up and before you know it, she’s screwing the sheets.

Reportedly, The Toy Box boasts a must-be-seen-to-be-believed twist ending, but unfortunately, the copy I was watching pixelated and froze before I could reach it. If what I did see was any indication, I’m sure it’s wild. But if you’ve seen the ending and can fill me in, please do. In the meantime, I’m on to more Uschi … —Rod Lott

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Filled with pointless close-ups shot at strange angles, hilariously dramatic pull-ins and a complete sacrifice of character in favor of constant momentum, Warlock: The Armageddon, like most of Bay’s work, plays less like an actual movie than an abridged version of one with all of the potentially boring bits cut out.

And that is so not a bad thing.

For those of you concerned about the plot, the film features a returning Julian Sands as the titular villain, an Antichrist who rises in anticipation of a long-awaited lunar eclipse and who must find a collection of ancient stones in order to help his father, Satan, escape from Hell and take over the living world. Stopping him are Chris Young (TV’s Max Headroom) and Paula Marshall (whom you know from a dozen cancelled shows … and my dreams), the youngest descendents of a tribe of California druids, whose deaths and subsequent resurrections make them the only warriors powerful enough to halt Sands in his tracks.

More goofy than scary, the movie features a lot of dated effects, but is made highly watchable, thanks to the game cast and Hickox’s stubborn refusal to give you enough time to dwell on the film’s many absurdities and enormous plot holes. Consider it a film for those of you who wish a certain “director” would stop wasting his “talents” on racist toy-robot sequels and get back to the gloriously stupid basics. —Allan Mott

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In this adventure, two sister spinsters announce plans to donate their estate to a children’s hospital. The catch is their father once upon a time designated they must live in it every night for 20 consecutive years, and now, they have roughly two weeks to go. When their chauffeur turns up dead, it’s obvious to us someone’s trying to scare them away by murdering the man and, thus, foil the old maids’ good intentions.

To the loony, incompetent authorities, however, led by Capt. Tweedy (Frank Orth, The Lost Weekend), it’s a long jump to a conclusion of suicide. Luckily, Nancy (Bonita Granville) and platonic pal Ted (Frankie Thomas, whose lower register suggests dropped testicles post-Nancy Drew … Trouble Shooter) appear on the crime scene to fiddle with pieces of evidence and plant a false one. Oh, kids!

When Nancy learns the twist — the one we get from the start because, oh, y’know, it’s in the title — she exclaims, “Boy, isn’t this a pancake!” And that sums up the clean-behind-the-ears appeal of this picture, strengthened by anachronistic plot devices as ice delivery and telegrams. At an hour long, Staircase is hardly taxing. To borrow another two dated exclamations that could sub as a review, “Swell!” and “Hot diggity!” —Rod Lott

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Based on the Disneyland ride, The Haunted Mansion casts Murphy as a real-estate salesman hoping to score big when the opportunity arises to put a multimillion Louisiana mansion on the market. En route to their vacation, Murphy and his clan check the place out. It’s inhabited by butler Terence Stamp and — zikes! — ghosts!

Skeletons come alive, apparitions appear everywhere, Jennifer Tilly’s disembodied head resides in a crystal ball, and yet nothing of significance happens in the entire hour and a half. Nothing but ass-numbing, migraine-inducing pain. This one makes any of the nonsensical Pirates of the Caribbean look like Best Picture material. This also makes Murphy look like the world’s biggest sellout.

Poorly written and utterly soulless, it’s not fun, not funny and not worth a single minute of your time. —Rod Lott

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Either way, Tarzan takes a trip up a mysterious river to confront the mad, god-like ruler of a deadly cult. His ride is on a boat owned by Charlie Allnut-lookalike Sam Bishop (comedian Jan Murray) and his boy sidekick Pepe (Manuel Padilla Jr., who was also in Valley of Gold, but as a different character). There’s also a nurse (Diana Millay from TV’s Dark Shadows) who’s trying to get some medicine to a remote village that’s under attack by a jaguar cult and its leader, Barcuna (Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson).

The Great River isn’t as over-the-top and sexy as Valley of Gold, but that’s what makes it so endearing. It has a different feel from its predecessor, mostly focused on the relationships between the travelers and their various reasons for going up river. There’s a great final battle between Tarzan and Barcuna, but what sticks with you is the movie’s humor and charm.

Boys may sleep with Valley of Gold, but they marry Great River. —Michael May

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1. The plot revolves around an aged container of sickly green liquid that contains Satan himself. “A life form is growing out of pre-biotic fluids. It’s not winding down into disorder, it’s self-organizing.” The idea is so ridiculous, it’s awe-inspiring.

2. This is auteur John Carpenter at his most unfettered, working with extremely low budgets and unconstrained by the dictates of producers. Yes, some effects are dodgy, the acting is rough, and this ain’t a suspense classic like Halloween or a monster epic like The Thing. But when vested in the material, Carpenter works the creepy like few can. The dream sequences gave me daymares for weeks.

3. Right smack in the middle, a religious tome reveals that Jesus Christ was an extra-terrestrial who tried to warn humans about the dangers inherent in the liquid, and no one bats an eye. That is some cold analytical shit happening right there.

4. Carpenter wrote the screenplay as Martin Quatermass, after the hero of the British Quatermass films, and their influence is obvious. Technobabble such as “Say goodbye to classical reality, because our logic collapses on the subatomic level … into ghosts and shadows” does epic battle with theological nonsense: “It’s your disbelief that powers him. Your stubborn faith in, in … common sense. He lives in the smallest parts of it.”

5. The soundtrack is a classic Carpenter synth score.

6. Donald Pleasance! Victor Wong! An unlikely odd couple who debate Carpenter’s absurd science-vs.-religion dialogues with grace and aplomb.

7. Can we get a little love for the lesser Simon? Yes, we all dig Major Dad, but dammit, Jameson Parker needs some respect! And he rocks the ‘stache! —Corey Redekop

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He wasn’t. Not just a flop, but a real slog, Orca stars Richard Harris (Gladiator) as the possibly insane Capt. Nolan, who’s out to hunt down the “most powerful animal in the world,” according to a marine biologist (Charlotte Rampling, Zardoz). That angers her, and so does Nolan’s interest in her, prompting her to diss him with a curt, “You’re a sensitive bore.” (Oh, no, you di’n't!)

Nolan hooks a female killer whale, not knowing the beast was pregnant. When he hoses its expelled fetus back into the deep, the father whale (Orca, I guess) makes it his life’s work to follow them across the ocean and take ‘em out. When Orca makes off with a character’s leg, Nolan channels his inner Ahab and clunkily vows, “I’ll fight you, you revengeful son of a bitch!” The last five or so minutes provide the thrills and atmosphere missing all along.

Among the supporting cast, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Will Sampson plays the Native American no one listens to, and soon-to-be-sex-symbol Bo Derek makes her film debut as the girl who seemingly cannot blink. Orca is played by himself; he’s a talented whale, somehow capable of screaming underwater. —Rod Lott

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After a wizard demonstrates via chalkboard the path their rocket will leave Earth and land on its near-instant journey to the lunar body, laborers build the metallic capsule. Once complete, with much pomp and circumstance, it’s loaded into a giant phallus of a cannon by chunky ladies in short pants and Buster Brown hats. With half a dozen rich, old white men as passengers, it lands with a bloody thud into the right eyesocket of that creepy, creepy moon face.

The would-be astronauts climb out — clutching canes, but no oxygen tanks — and wave to their friends back on Earth. Then, being white-haired and all, they bunk down and sleep, wake up to a storm of stardust, and climb into the moon’s underground garden of oversized mushrooms, where hopping demons scoot their butts across a log like a dog with troubled anal glands does to your carpet. Our Earth warriors beat the crap out of them (they go up in puffs of smoke) and high-tail it home, only to land in the ocean. They get a parade in their honor, and probably got crazy laid.

Kidding aside, Méliès’ imagination is as off-the-charts as his ingenuity. Repopularized by Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, the cinema classic is best viewed in its 2011 restored form, containing its original, hand-colored images and with missing frames mimicked. It also now boasts a score by Air that’s — dare I say it — out of this freakin’ world. This Trip truly is one. —Rod Lott

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Sergio Corbucci’s answer to Sergio Leone’s masterful Dollars trilogy helped entwine the spaghetti Western further into the DNA of world cinema. Starring as the title traveler is Franco Nero, the scruffy Civil War vet who pulls a coffin behind him as he drifts from town to town. As the film opens, he saves a perfectly lovely woman strung up for a good whippin’ from bandits.

She’s Maria (Loredana Nusciak, Gladiators 7), a prostitute fleeing from Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo, a fun name to say) and his band of red-hooded executioners who collect “protection money” from uncommonly muddy ghost towns that don’t need protecting from anything but more rain. Jackson follows her and Django to one of the saloons on his racketeering list.

Jackson finds out the hard way what’s in Django’s coffin: a Gatling gun, with which our protagonist easily kills all the baddies but Jackson himself, and that’s only because he has designs on Jackson’s bonanza of bullion. Only through joining forces with Mexican Gen. Rodriguez (José Bódalo, Companeros) can Django hope to snag it.

With more trigger pulls and resulting bullet wounds than the era was used to, Django shoots its way into your good graces. Corbucci (Super Fuzz) keeps the story going without losing steam, proving that an epic feel can be attained minus an epic length. Naturally, Nero is the big (and quick) draw as Django, a Western antihero who could use a good antidepressant. Often imitated, never duplicated, this is one quicksand-sinkin’, cork-spittin’, mud-wrasslin’, ear-shavin’, bottle-shootin’, hand-breaking good time! —Rod Lott

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No, I mean he literally is shown milking a cow’s udders. That’s part of his job duties. Another: listening to the two upright sisters talk smack about the others — says León: “They’re bitches who keep me isolated! And I don’t have defects!” A fringe benefit: bedding them both.

But director Carlos Aured’s Blue Eyes is more about a different kind of poking: that with a knife. As a Spanish take on the giallo, the film plops these characters within an environment where beautiful blondes have a peculiar habit of being slit and having their blue eyes plucked by a black-gloved killer. Being someone who’s spent time in the slammer, Gilles is under suspicion for the murders, and why not? After all, he’s the one who has recurring dreams of choking fine-looking women.

Better known under its unsubtle U.S. title of House of Psychotic Women, this Naschy vehicle spills plenty of the blood for which he is rightfully beloved. That much I expected. What I didn’t expect was the graphic slaying of a pig, steam and all, unfaked. It’s jarring, whereas the murder sequences unspool to some of the happy-go-luckiest music you’ve heard, and the nursery rhyme “Frère Jacques” becomes a familiar refrain. “Din, dan, don” or “Ding, dang, dong,” it helps make the thriller with the masterfully macabre ending oddly irresistible. —Rod Lott

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On a hot August day in the Bronx, after threatening one of its own with a dead rat, a gang is removed forcibly from its home base(ment) in a two-bit apartment building, much to the rejoicing of the landlord and residents, who throw a party: “We won’t be seeing them again. Cheers!” They forgot to knock on wood, because elsewhere, high as a kite, gang leader Chaco (Enrique Sandino) vows, “I’m gonna get my building back! We’re gonna have some fun!” Watch out for their Wang Chung.

As night falls, the shit goes down. They assault the residents, taking a straight-razor to a neck or two. While getting raped, an African-American woman stabs her attacker in the eye with scissors. She’s rewarded with a pipe up the plumbing — implied, luckily. Our hooligans stop only to shoot up and, in Chaco’s case, knead the breasts of his gal pal with his bloody paws.

Eventually, the residents get all Howard Beale/Twister Sister on the scumbags, which gives the grimy film its cathartic kick. A granny delivers a baseball bat to the ‘nads; one tuffie is electrocute via bed frame; and even the kids get in on the action, pouring pots of boiling water. Those aren’t spoilers so much as reasons for you to watch this relentlessly downbeat exercise in nihilism. —Rod Lott

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Based on a Chester Himes novel, Cotton stars Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge as Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, two police detectives whose detached cynicism is only matched by their sense of justice. Viewed by the black citizens they serve as Uncle Toms in cahoots with a racist police force, and by their white co-workers as black troublemakers who don’t know their place, they’re classic outsiders who aren’t above breaking the rules (and law) to do what they know is right.

In this case, it’s finding the $87,000 “stolen” from crooked Rev. Deke O’Malley (Calvin Lockhart), who has promised credulous investors that their funds are going to the construction of a boat to take them back to Africa and away from the racism they have to deal with everyday. Once it’s determined that the money has been hidden in a bale of cotton retrieved by kindly street person, Uncle Bud (Redd Foxx), the race is on between Johnson and Jones to find it before the bad guys.

Despite touching on some rather heavy social themes, director/co-writer Davis keeps the tone light and often comic, thanks to the efforts of his talented cast. The soundtrack also features standout work by Galt MacDermott and is worth buying on its own. Two years later, St. Jacques and Cambridge reprised the roles in Come Back, Charleston Blue, a sequel Davis on which chose not to work. —Allan Mott

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Seven years after the death of his wife, sad single dad Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi, War) is under pressure to remarry, but afraid he’ll be unable to find his true ideal in his middle age. He agrees to an odd ruse by which he’ll pretend to be auditioning women for a movie, so he can bombard them with a litany of questions, and then hone in on his favorite later.

That chosen one is 24-year-old former ballet dancer Asami (Eihi Shiina, Tokyo Gore Police). Abused as a child, the quiet, mild-mannered and plainly pretty woman barely can make eye contact; nonetheless, Aoyama is smitten. He’ll soon wish he weren’t, because this girl is a freak. And not in the bedroom way.

Audition is one of those movies that would be best to see going in completely cold, because Japanese maverick Takashi Miike lulls you into thinking his film will be about something else, only to slam you into something quite the opposite more than hour into it. Unfortunately, you can’t, because the freaking posters and DVD covers give the twist away; however, the pain is not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. In other words, it’s no Guinea Pig, and thank God.

Mind you, it’s still powerful and tough to forget. You’ll never eat a bowl of dog vomit again. —Rod Lott

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Kerwin and his roomies smoke banana peels, dump manure confetti on a gym full of dancers, and meet a hippie artist with a fake parrot on his shoulder wearing a button that reads “STONED” (the parrot, not the artist). One of Kerwin’s roommates is traumatized by trains, so he tries to derail one by smearing pats of butter on the tracks.

Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House) sits on a toilet filled with gasoline and it explodes. While home for Christmas vacation, Kerwin throws flaming tires from a moving car with elfin pal David Caruso, and his mom cooks their family dog in her new microwave.

If you’re looking for a story arc, don’t; that requires having a story first. The soundtrack boasts actual hits from The Box Tops, Steppenwolf, The Mamas and the Papas, The Rascals and Booker T, among others. Getting Wasted is a framework rather than an actual movie, but then, most movies don’t have a grade-school drug dealer, now, do they? —Rod Lott

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She’s also struggling with the guilt piled upon her by her twin sister, Dominique, especially when Danielle brings home a date (Lisle Wilson, The Incredible Melting Man), which also irks Danielle’s jealous ex-husband, the odd-looking (to say the least) Emil (Bill Finley, Eaten Alive).

It’s difficult to discuss Sisters without spoiling the story’s several twists, so I won’t go beyond details further than Danielle’s across-the-street apartment neighbor, journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt, TV’s Soap, saddled with horrible ’70s hair), witnessing a murder through the window. This allows De Palma to explore his other cinematic obsession: voyeurism.

Call him a Hitchcock rip-off artist if you like, but to do so would be to short-change yourself from a gripping mystery made all the more disturbing by Bernard Herrmann’s score. De Palma established his split-screen storytelling device here — not just a gimmick, but an effective tool to tighten the screws of suspense on his audience. And that he can wield a considerable amount of tension out of a simple act of icing a cake is … well, icing on the cake. —Rod Lott

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In the ’60s, the franchise ran out of ways to have white people plunder the jungle so Tarzan could stop them. Actually, they ran out of new ways to tell that story in the ’40s; it just took them another 20 years to do something about it. And it took Sean Connery to show them how.

The popularity of the James Bond movies created countless rip-offs and spoofs, but none more awesome than the 007-influenced Tarzan films, especially the ones starring former pro linebacker Mike Henry, in which a dapper, literate Tarzan visited the jungles of the world, making friends and fighting crime. Valley of Gold was the first of such films and opens with him arriving in Mexico, suited up, and met at the airport by villainous goons à la Dr. No.

It’s a short trip from there to giant beverages, grenade bolas, forming a tracking team of wild animals, discovering a lost civilization, and swinging through the trees to a tune that would make Austin Powers jealous. —Michael May

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