Up first is the best, Michel Gondry’s “Interior Design,” in which an aspiring filmmaker (Ryo Case) and his supportive but ignored girlfriend (Ayako Fujitani of the ’90s Gamera revival films) crash in the tiny Tokyo apartment of her pal (Ayumi Ito, Gantz II: Perfect Answer) while in town for his screening. When their transitionary lives prove too much for her to handle, the would-be director’s neglected partner undergoes an out-of-left-field change to feel useful, but I won’t spoil what. I will, however, hereby forgive Monsieur Gondry for The Green Hornet, based upon the infectious charm and creativity of this captivating short.

Why is it that most triptych flicks seem to place the weakest segment in the middle? Such is the case with “Merde.” From Leos Carax (Pola X), it concerns the titular creature (Denis Lavant) who has all of Tokyo in a tizzy. He’s a milky-eyed, manhole-dwelling mutant who steals crutches from the handicapped and throws cigarette butts at babies. The initial scenes, clearly taking a page or two from Godzilla, are funny. Then, with a court scene that feels like actual jury duty, it grows interminable. I wanted to commit seppuku.

Finally, there’s the partly successful “Shaking Tokyo” by Joon-ho Bong (The Host). The tale centers on a hermit (Teruyuki Kagawa, Sukiyaki Western Django) who hasn’t left his home in 10 years. His life is all about ordering pizza, reading magazines and falling asleep while defecating. He hates contact with people and sunlight. The idea is intriguing, both in the movie and real life; on many a frenzied day, I could go for a solitary agenda of pizza and pooping. Who’s with me? —Rod Lott

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But having just sat through the unmolested director’s cut for which he took full credit, I’m having difficulty imagining how much worse that other version could be. I say this because the film I watched is so relentlessly mediocre, it’s hard to figure out how it could ever be edited into an outright Smithee-worthy disaster. As is, Ruby simply doesn’t take enough risks to ever be that bad.

Pointlessly set in 1951 (a fact easily forgotten given how little effort is made to convincingly convey the period), Ruby is a supernatural gangster revenge thriller with a mute teenage girl thrown into the mix just so the producers could throw Exorcist and Omen references into the trailer. A post-Carrie Piper Laurie looks fabulous as the title character — a washed-up singer/moll who runs a drive-in 16 years after the father of her daughter was gunned down by the other members of his gang — but overplays the part to the precipice of campy embarrassment.

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough of her performance to turn the film into a so-bad-it’s-good classic à la Mommie Dearest. Instead, Ruby is the least satisfying kind of bad film there is: a dull, unimaginative one. Which is something of which even Alan Smithee would be ashamed. —Allan Mott

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It’s a damned shame, given how frenetic the first film was a mere one year before. I suspect both Gantz chapters — birthed from a presumably never-ending manga, it bears mentioning — were shot back-to-back, as the original film ended in a cliffhanger. In hindsight, I’d rather have my questions of what would happen go unanswered, if the imperfect Perfect Answer is the lame response.

Although I give returning director Shinsuke Sato immense credit for not doing the same thing twice, I found myself pining for at least the mission-after-mission, go-get-this-goon structure to stick its head into the proceedings. In its place is a plot twist that the big, black ball called Gantz has up and changed the rules of his own game, thus pitting the black leather-costumed “contestants” against one another. Never underestimate the love of a human heart to fracture a team.

A couple of zippy sequences exist, primarily a mowdown-cum-showdown amid a crowded, speeding subway train. But the finale is sappy; the rogue’s gallery of aliens, missing; the electric charge sent down your cinematic spine, startlingly weak. So underwhelming and disappointing is this immediate follow-up, the experience is like licking the top of an old 9-volt battery to see if it has any sign of life left. —Rod Lott

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At a topless club with a built-in ceiling swing, one performer/prostitute Monica Weston (also Mell) proves a dead ringer for Susan, but with blonde hair, green eyes and healthier lungs. Mell stuns as unbelievably, lip-biting sexy in this role; during their first lovemaking session, she has to unclamp George’s hand from her breast and force his digits southward.

But just what is going on? Can George figure it out before the cops find enough evidence to put him behind bars and possibly on death row? And since this thing is titled Perversion Story — and comes from ’69, haw-haw — how much nudity can we expect? Enough, my horny readers, as the flesh of the movie’s ladies are as curvy and on display as San Francisco’s famously steep and winding roads, but this is no porno.

The aforementioned coupling between George and Jane is shot ingeniously from the mattress’ POV, with flesh pressed right up against the screen. But Perversion Story has much more on its mind than mere pumping and pulchritude — writer/director Lucio Fulci has cooked up a corker of a plot at the film’s chewy center, even more complex than the thriller genre generally demands. It proves the man could do much more than gross us out, and that it’s a shame he didn’t do it more often. —Rod Lott

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They miss us, guys, and they’re ready for some lovin. So what we’re gonna do is this: We’re going to send three, handsome, Captain Kirk-esque woman-tamers into space so the Venusians can capture and fall in love with them. We’ll also throw in a middle-aged scientist because it’ll be hilariously awkward when he’s sitting by himself while the good-looking astronauts are making out with Zsa Zsa and her two, hot friends around the campfire. Don’t worry about him, though. He’ll totally get mobbed by sex-starved babes once the revolution’s over and all the women realize that the three attractive guys are spoken for.
 
So, fellas, contact NASA today and tell them you want to be an astronaut. The future’s going to be amazing. —Michael May

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In “The Hitch,” a man picks up a female hitchhiker during a rash of area killings. The comedic “A Man and His Finger” shows what happens when a guy accidentally chops off one of his digits, which sports a mind of its own. “Inside” focuses on a young woman who … well, hell, I’m still unsure — it’s that narratively challenged. “Shadows of the Dead” suggests the end of the world will be brought about by zombies, and those inspired by George Romero, predictably.

“Mister Eryams” follows a church-contracted investigator of ghosts, examining reports of apparitions in a woman’s home. A clinically depressed chain smoker experiences “Disturbances” in her home, including dolls that do harm. A chemical meant to combat the West Nile virus backfires in “Song of the Dead,” resulting in, yep, more Romero zombies, but also a truly terrible song belted out by a fresh victim.

And not a single segment is worth watching. This is amateur-hour (literally) stuff, less concerned with storytelling than pulling off a gross-out special effect. The occasional good idea is hampered by botched execution, and while some may chalk that up to budgetary restraints, I blame a deficiency of creativity. An argument against DIY filmmaking, these works are the worst. —Rod Lott

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In other words, this is definitely not Left Behind.

Mimi Rogers plays a bored telephone operator who has grown weary of her empty life of sexual promiscuity. Following a series of conversations and epiphanies, she becomes “born again” and convinces her lover (David Duchovny, with mullet) to join in her conversion. For a time, they are happy, but then he is killed by a disgruntled employee and she finds her faith tested by a series of signs from God that eventually convince her to murder her daughter.

Unable to kill herself, she is saved from imprisonment by the titular event, only to face the near-impossible choice of loving the deity who caused her so much pain or spending the rest of eternity in desolate isolation.

Tolkin largely gets away with the heavy-handedness of his thesis, thanks to dollops of near-exploitation levels of sex and violence, combined with very deliberate, almost dreamlike pacing. But the film ultimately succeeds thanks to Rogers’ amazing, career-defining performance, which allows us to understand the decisions her character makes from beginning to end, concluding with the most devastating act of cinematic defiance I’ve ever seen. —Allan Mott

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The true focus is Luca, whose hobbies appear to be cheating on his wife, greasing his hair and head-butting both people and inanimate objects — he’s not choosy. Although guilty of many things, he’s actually innocent of the crime for which Team Silva/Strode has been summoned, but hey, it allows Strode to push over an automobile like he’s the Incredible Hulk.

Violent, exciting and flush with oversized lapels, The Italian Connection has just about everything you could want from a Eurocrime effort: a swanky instrumental theme, topless go-go dancing, full-frontal whores, lots of face-slapping and cheek-pinching, a limping auto repairman, a junkyard explosion, one gratuitous blue Afro wig and one dead kitty cat. (As gruesome as that sounds, it proves Di Leo does not pussyfoot around.

He proves himself aptly hard-boiled with a sawmill scuffle, then outdoes himself later in the film’s high point: an absolutely dynamic car chase sequence that vies for the all-time best. So high are its stakes that it briefly becomes a foot chase before getting back to wheels, but only with one car. That’s because the pursuer is hanging on to the driver’s-side door. This flick plays for keeps, and keep it, you’ll want to. —Rod Lott

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2. chase atop a moving elevated train

3. two guys try to stick up a bar full of cops

4. a female police robot named the Prowler

5. someone getting thrown over a boat

6. sax-and-synth ’80s music —Rod Lott

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Mind you, I’m not complaining. Cozzi took Alien‘s elements of the outer-space eggs and stomach bursting, and ran with them. When you have an effect as cool as an exploding gut, why use it only once? Why not a dozen times? You certainly get your money’s worth. Just ignore the stupid ending.

The intestinal problems start in New York City, when a ghost ship from the tropics wanders into port without a crew — alive, anyway. The conditions the investigating authorities find the seamen in will put you off deli meats for the day. And in boxes bearing a coffee company’s logo are slimy, green eggs that pulsate. Posits one investigator, “It could be somethin’ like a giant squash or an avocado or some kind of mango!”

Despite the decrepit-flesh buffet they’ve just witnessed, another investigator thinks it best to pick the egg up. Let the tummy troubles begin! Who cares if the actors suddenly look pregnant before their midsection blows? Cozzi had the good sense to shoot them all in slo-mo. The eggs even emit a pre-kablooey sound, like sea lions orgasming. Speaking of sound, the great Goblin provides the synth-tactic soundtrack, which is good considering how slowly the film’s final third moves. —Rod Lott

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Well, could have been worse. Could have been Firebirds Cage.

The rest of the flick’s a mixed bag. Patrick Lussier’s direction is competent (I’d expect nothing more or less from the maker of Dracula 2000), but the effects, while perhaps more effective in 3-D, are far too cheesy in 2-D, and needlessly distract from the action. The scene that’s most often remembered, Cage killing bad guys left and right while humping a hottie, was done far better in the Clive Owen blast, Shoot ‘Em Up.

Two elements elevate Drive Angry: Amber Heard and William Fichtner. Heard takes a potentially nothing role that by all rights should have been Megan Foxed into nonexistence, and actually brings grit, spark and humor to the part of a waitress unwittingly caught up in Cage’s antics. Fichtner, meanwhile, is pure wonderment as The Accountant, a demon sent to bring Cage back to Hell. Effortlessly capturing menace and boredom in equal parts, wandering through each scene with bemused detachment, he truly is the next Christopher Walken. Had he gone up against Snake Eyes Cage, we would have had a minor genre classic, instead of merely an okay ride. —Corey Redekop

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Taking his latest find back to his bachelor pad, a 1600s monastery owned by his family, Hugo introduces her to his bald, mute robed goon of a servant with a limp, Dorgo (Gerardo Zepeda, El Topo), who’s “obedient and as faithful as a cat” and not too shabby in the cooking department, either; according to Hugo, “meat is his specialty.” (Dorgo also gets a hard-on for a stethoscope, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Anyhow, Hugo’s date is going along swimmingly, until a cat interrupts the meal. At that point, our angered, bearded douche hurls the helpless animal over a ridiculously tall chain-link fence, on the other side of which stand hundreds — or perhaps 1,000, hmmm? — of felines, meowing their precious widdle paws off. So Hugo grinds his girl up and feeds fistfuls of the ground round to the kitties. (Oh, but not the head! That goes in his basement collection.)

The script then plops Hugo back into the chopper to spy in on babes in pointy-boob bikinis, and pick the next one to fuck ‘n’ chuck. For a guy who gets so much bed action, Hugo’s sex scenes should be better, but Cardona’s camera zooms in on the noses of polar bears and other stuffed heads on the wall, which don’t mean nothin’. (I apologize for quoting Richard Marx; it’ll never happen again.) —Rod Lott

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Coincidentally, vacationing there at the same time is Ted Nickerson (Frankie Thomas, TV’s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet), Nancy’s clumsy, platonic-for-now pal who quickly tires of her investigating nature: “Now, look, will ya cut the bubble-gum talk and give?” (I’m not sure what his problem is; he’s the one wearing a sweater with a hand-drawn sailboat on it, surrounded by random names like Butch Hogan, Darby McGraw, Popeye, Jimmy, Jiggs, Jeepers Creepers and Fanny W.)

I expected Nancy to get herself involved in crazy farm shenanigans; I didn’t expect to encounter one of the era’s cringing African-American dumb-goon stereotypes. Here, it’s in the form of Apollo (Willie Best, aka Sleep ‘n’ Eat, The Ghost Breakers), who tries to hide a hot roasted chicken up his shirt and pass off the pain with, “I guess I jes’ born jitterbug.” Almost as bad, he’s terrified of ghosts, which causes Apollo to burst through fences when Ted is accidentally covered in flour. Repeat: flour.

Racism aside, franchise director William Clemens has a knack for staging some lively set pieces that double as both action and physical comedy, from Nancy and Ted running from a live bull (caveat: via sped-up film) to trying to land a biplane after the pilot bails. Loop-de-loops ensue. As far as patience goes, Trouble Shooter is no trouble at all. —Rod Lott

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Not onboard with this arrangement? Spike (Clive Owen), an ex-SAS agent with a glass eye and runty mustache. He wants to protect his boys, so he’s all about tracking down Danny Boy. During their first of several tussles, Spike bites Danny, who responds with one considerable ball punch.

Directed by first-timer Gary McKendry and based on a true story, the 1980s-set Killer Elite represents brainier fare for Statham than his bread-and-butter style of Transporter-tainment. But the script is a bit too muddled, making it tough to follow at times. The end result is the Stath’s least-satisfying action vehicle since 2007′s War.

But watch him use a loaf of bread for a silencer! Leap from rooftop to rooftop as if he were the bald Jackie Chan! Jump out a second-story window while tied to a fucking chair! Take part in car chases! Put the moves on Yvonne Strahotski Strahovski! Again, plant that fist into Clive’s dangling nads! Yes, it’s not without its moments, and even may improve upon a second viewing. —Rod Lott

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Masked murderer Marcus (David Backus, Priest) can’t get over the fact that after their parents were killed some 20 rough-odd years prior, his 5-year-old sister, Audrey, was adopted and he wasn’t. While she got to play with Barbies, he had to be molested by a priest and made a mockery of by other kids. So he tracks down Aud (Diane Foster, who also co-produced), strings her up, rips open her blouse and tortures her. Sibs!

This relationship isn’t much different than the one between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode of the exalted Halloween franchise, except that Marcus speaks (mostly about Jesus and pain and suffering — y’know, the usual) and, quite thoughtfully, wears a tie while on his rampage of rivalry. There’s not much more to it than that, with writer/director Matt Farnsworth filtering in pieces of the backstory on a need-to-know basis between instances of bloodletting. That savagery, however, is executed (pun intended) quite well.

In fact, the overpowering aggro-metal music notwithstanding, The Orphan Killer is one of the most impressive pure DIY horror films I’ve seen, if not the most. Marcus isn’t likely to be the next horror icon — neither are Victor Crowley, ChromeSkull, Babyface and the other touted wanna-be Vorheeses — but Backus certainly succeeds in making him repugnant. Foster, exuding a Scarlett Johansson/Elizabeth Olsen quality, plays her wounded heroine role to the hilt. Her efforts are worth it, given Farnsworth’s slick, yet brutal direction and top-notch effects that make this squarely not for the squeamish. —Rod Lott

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Welcome to Cop in Drag, an Italian crime comedy so broad, you could study its cartography. With the prime suspect being The Blue Gay’s prima donna, the cocaine-eyed Giraldi goes undercover in the club. Rather than don drag himself, he forces that indignity on his rotund sidekick, Venticello (uni-monikered Bombolo), the subject of many a slap.

About the height of the humor is Venticello being forced to eat cat food. (Hey, just because it’s the height doesn’t mean it’s funny.) As you’d expect, the majority of jokes fall into the category of “potential to offend,” with “fairy,” “fruit,” “fag” and other derogatory terms that don’t start with F batted about
by the people for whom we’re supposed to root. A subplot has Mrs. Giraldi mistaking her husband for a homosexual, and you kinda wish the bickering spouses would go back to shaking their newborn baby.

Apparently, the Giraldi series was a big hit among Italians, with the franchise numbering 11 entries. While Cop in Drag certainly is watchable and capable of generating a few smiles (mostly at its own expense), Bruno Corbucci’s effort made me long for the comparative smarts and subtlety of his brother Sergio’s Super Fuzz. Italy’s Tootsie, this ain’t. —Rod Lott

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After all these years, the swanky spread is still taken care of by Maville (Lola Gaos, Blood Castle), the elderly maid, who now has (reluctant) help from her orphaned niece, Julie (Pat Ondiviela), a former drug-doin’ prostitute. From the start, Geneviève witnesses what others brush off as hallucinations: a snake in her bed, a hobo in her bathtub — why, it’s almost as if someone is trying to scare her to death!

Spoiler alert: As John Cougar Mellencamp once sang, “I need a lover who won’t drive me crazy.” If I got as much action as Naschy gives himself in Panic Beats, my unit would be worn to a nub. As befitting of such a sex-fueled, greed-driven set-up, it’s as if everyone has an evil-off in a race to be the last asshole standing.

The whole bloody affair ends with a predictable comeuppance, but a perfectly gory one. Bright and colorful, the Spanish splatter is amped up in an effort to keep pace with the era’s slasher films of the other hemisphere. Although no stupid teenager, Naschy makes for a strong-willed presence in front of the camera, and clearly has a ball behind it, orchestrating one gruesome scene after another, at a pace faster than his more famous efforts. If you’re into the man at all, just Beat it. —Rod Lott

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But this is what happens when you hire David Lynch, that most idiosyncratic and nonlinear of directors, to adapt Frank Herbert’s dense, sci-fi classic. Lynch pares the plot of a space messiah on a desert planet past the bare essentials to a series of stunning images, tying them together with the most convoluted of narratives, goofy dialogue and aggressively uneven special effects — the first appearance of a sand worm is a classic, but the poor use of green screen would make modern Asylum mockbusters blush with shame.

Yet within Dune lie the seeds of something much greater. Watch as the Guild Space Navigator (an effects wonder) speaks through a grotesque vaginal slit. Gaze upon Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan), his face swollen with boils, hovering beneath a shower of oil. Listen to the absurd rock score by Toto, which under no circumstance should work, yet does so gloriously. View the premature birth of a mutated reverend mother from the inside of the womb.

Dune, again, is ridiculous, with a game cast vastly more talented than necessary. However, by watching it, you glimpse the nightmarish vision of a director who just needed a chance to express himself outside the narrative demands of others. If nothing else, it makes you wonder what Lynch (who was approached) would have made of Return of the Jedi. I bet the Ewoks would have been far more feral, festooned with gaping wounds. —Corey Redekop

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When he accidentally snags a mermaid (Ann Blyth) while fishing, he kidnaps her and takes her back to live in his lavishly deep fish pond right under his wife’s nose. Polly suspects something’s up, but she thinks he’s having an affair with a local hussy. Not that Polly has a lot of moral ground to stand on, since she’s been having secret lunches with the village cad.
 
It’s a depressing marriage you can’t really blame poor Powell for wanting out of, but it’s weird and creepy that he picks a mute, childlike (albeit heartbreakingly beautiful) mermaid to cheat with. When he seduces her by teaching her to kiss, it’s more Humbert Humbert than Captain Kirk. Although he goes back to Polly at the end — mermaids don’t have vaginas — you can’t help feeling that nobody gets a happy ending in this one.  —Michael May

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The Mummy spin-off series now numbers as many flicks as its source material, to the point where no connection between the two can be felt. Like 2008′s The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior, this one was made for the direct-to-DVD market, but so awful are these franchise-bleeding efforts that I find them awfully fun. Where else can you find elephants, hair extensions and MMA fighter Kimbo Slice all in one spot?

This Mathayus (Sands of Oblivion‘s Victor Webster, taking over from Michael Copon, who took over from The Rock), looking not unlike John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, travels with the aforementioned Olaf (Bostin Christopher, Otis), who loudly belches four times as they seek the Book of the Dead. Oh, that ol’ thing?

Reiné turns this bungle in the jungle (and occasional CGI dunes) into a slick, but sitcomy entry in the sword-and-sorcery genre, flush with anachronistic punch lines like “Well, I’ll be dipped in donkey dung!” However simplistic the Thai-lensed prequel sequel is, one element struck me as particularly difficult: whether Ron Perlman or Billy Zane loses more credibility here. Perlman’s basically playing the same long-haired goof as he did in the Conan the Barbarian reboot, but Zane’s king offers that he has “palace monkeys to wipe my bottom,” prompting a mental image I can’t unsee, so advantage: Zane. His brand of acting — dubbed “bowel-movement face” — would take that cake every time. —Rod Lott

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When this is not done right away, said message is passed on to sexy stew Yvette Mimieux via napkin. Then the crew’s all like, “Holy shit, a paper product? This guy must be for real.” Directed by master of disaster John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, 1976′s King Kong), Skyjacked stars Charlton Heston as the clenched-teeth hero pilot, Capt. Hank O’Hara, who you know isn’t gonna take this crap. On the ground, Claude Akins tries to help: “Trust your soul to God, captain, because your ass belongs to me.” (I don’t think he was making a pass, but with Sheriff Lobo, you never know.)

As was de rigueur for the all-star disaster genre, this one’s rife with subplots, such as Mariette Hartley about to give birth, or Walter Pidgeon’s senator trying not to appear like an out-of-touch D.C. asshole by rapping with Rosey Grier about such alien concepts as “rock” and “jazz.”

Both as engaging and lasting as a complimentary package of dry-roasted peanuts, Skyjacked clearly comes from a different era. The clear giveaways include:
• The token black guy’s name? Why, Mr. Brown, of course.
• Heston smokes a pipe in the cockpit.
• When the plane’s passengers board, they look relaxed and prepped for fun. —Rod Lott

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Next up, “Cut,” a movie-set piece about an actor (Won-hie Lim) taking revenge on his director (Byung-hun Lee, I Saw the Devil) by Park Chan-wook. Although it gets points for injections of black comedy that actually work, “Cut” isn’t as strong a tale as one would expect, coming from the man who made the bee’s knees of all vengeance pictures, Oldboy.

In fact, given the level of directorial talent involved, this entire project should be better than it is. Visually, it’s superb across the board, but when I see the word “extreme,” I don’t think “tone poems,” which is really what I’d peg the final story as. Directed by Takashi Miike (Audition), “The Box” illustrates why it’s not nice to lock a human being into one. The segment drags. Actually, they all do — at roughly 40 minutes, each is too long.

Not so strangely, a sequel exists, 3 Extremes II. Strangely, it actually predates this one by a couple of years. They do things differently on the other side of the world. Like boiling fetuses with cabbage, which Chan needlessly expanded into a full feature all its own, Dumplings, later that year. —Rod Lott

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In the prologue, a guy toys with woman by tearing off her bikini top, for which he’s punished by succumbing to flesh eaters of the title. But it’s really about a for-hire pilot (Byron Sanders) whose plane and passengers become stranded on an unprotected island. Their first night marooned, he tells his fare — an alcoholic actress (Rita Morley) and her comely assistant (Barbara Wilkin, who looks fantastic in a bra) — “I can assure you, we are in for a good pounding.”

And how! Their horrors begins by finding a whole human skeleton on the beach, grasping that aforementioned bikini top. Then there’s the glowing fish bones. It’s all due to the “silver stuff” in the water that results in some nifty, surprisingly gory effects on the skin it touches. A beatnik (Ray Tudor) wearing rope sandals doesn’t heed their warnings at first: “Where’s the love, Max? Don’t tell me about that ugly jazz!”

If you think the Nazis may have something to do with it, apply now for your Flick Attack gold star! The person behind it all explains as much when he contracts diarrhea of the mouth. The movie’s 87 minutes spew just as quickly, and the sicko in me wishes the thing were in bloody color. —Rod Lott

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The Rev. Rhee (Bong Soo Han, The Kentucky Fried Movie) runs an island cult full of trust-fund babies and silver spooners who sign over their inheritances. After a hired assassin fails to kill him, a wheelchair-bound U.S. senator approaches poufy-haired tuffie Martin (kickboxer Joe Lewis) to rescue his daughter (Amanda Wyss, A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Tina) from Rhee and his 50 guards. Martin says he can do the task with the help of five … Force: Five!

They include poncho-clad Billy Ortega (kickboxer Benny Urquidez); big, black cyclist Lockjaw (Sonny Barnes, Gymkata); Aussie pool hustler Ezekiel (The Octagon‘s Richard Norton, here looking like Hulk Hogan dressing as Matthew McConaughey’s Dazed and Confused character for Halloween); and Laurie (Pam Huntington), the one with the tits, all the better to distract evil minions. Each is introduced with his own fight scene, karate-kicking an entire group of thugs, except for Laurie, who appears in an open silk robe. For Clouse, this counts as character development.

After busting ace chopper pilot Willard (Ron Hayden) out of prison to join the covert mission — wait, wait, wouldn’t that make this Force: Six? — the team infiltrates the Rhee compound — home to an underground maze complete with live bull! — and proceeds to beat the living shit out of everybody. One guy gets it with a saw blade, prompting Ezekiel to quip, “Thank God for Black & Decker!”

This is not as much fun as it sounds. I actually got bored with all the punching and Wilhelm screams. Ultimately, it’s too Clouse for comfort. —Rod Lott

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Mom’s happy to see Michael (take a drink every time you feel an incest vibe; you’ll die before the end) and wishes he’d visit more often, but he refuses: “I’m always on the move, you know. Like a gypsy.” That’s probably a good thing, because Michael’s friends start getting killed. Who’s the black-gloved killer? It may be tough to tell at first, because everyone but the dog wears black gloves.

The final film for The Horrible Dr. Hichcock director Riccardo Freda, the so-nasty-it’s-nice Murder Obsession colorfully plays with all the elements that make a giallo great, from a bloody beheading to showcasing the nude body of Black Emanuelle herself, Laura Gemser, no less than three times, including her first encounter with the unknown psychopath, who attempts to drown her in the bathtub.

The best scene, however, is an extended nightmare sequence, which we see as Deborah relates its surreal details to her uncaring boyfriend. Among other things, she runs into a giant spider web, complete with giant spider; gets her chest scratched by bushes she pushes her way through; finds snakes at her feet; becomes tied to a post by some white-robed crusty faces who vomit green froth; and then is felt up by that oversized arachnid — all while she’s wearing a tissue-thin nightie. That’s commitment, kids. —Rod Lott

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Said title refers to Ortega (not related to the taco shells), a man who seems to have it all: a job with Interpol, a good head of hair, both arms, and a blonde American wife (Jody Kay) who writes children’s books, sleeps with a doll and basically acts as if she’s been kicked in the head. Yes, for Ortega (Franco Guerrero), life’s a pretty sweet fruit. Then coke-dealing, Caucasian crime boss Edwards (Nigel Hogge) wants his diary back from the cops, and orders Mrs. Ortega dead; his pantyhose-masked minions stab her fatally, then take Ortega’s left limb just for shits and giggles.

As spoiled by that title, Ortega isn’t about to take his handicap lightly. Trained by the Philippines’ equivalent of Tommy Lee Jones, he becomes a ruthless warrior, albeit one with a sleeve flopping around. Ortega then goes hunting for Edwards (“What balls!”), whose boat bears a swastika and who keeps a henchman on staff whose sole purpose is to act as a human thesaurus. (His lone African-American henchman is dubbed by a redneck.)

In this thrilla from Manila, everyone points and looks greasy sweaty. On one hand (pun not intended), it isn’t exploitative like, say, Hong Kong’s infamous The Crippled Masters, because in real life, Guerrero doesn’t park in handicapped spots. On the other hand (pun still not intended, pinky swear), one wishes it were, so it’d be a ton more fun. As is, it’s just a-little-more-than-passable fun. —Rod Lott

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An expansion of a fake trailer entered in a contest for the enjoyably unhinged Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez pair-up Grindhouse, Hobo operates on a budget that wouldn’t have paid for Kurt Russell’s pomade. Using most of its cash on an actual actor, Rutger fuckin’ Hauer, the movie apparently spent the rest on blood and entrails. There isn’t one area on the human body that isn’t brutalized in Hobo’s 86 minutes; there isn’t one obscenity in the English language unmuttered; there isn’t one depravity unseen.

But you also get a surprising amount of flair. Director Jason Eisener is a real talent, using a grittily gorgeous color palette that recalls giallo at its most vivid, and if his script is intentionally silly, it also has a sly wit (at one point, a newspaper headline reads, “Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change”). While the movie is constantly cranked to 11, Eisener takes everything to another level altogether with The Plague, a pair of armor-clad hit men who may or may not have killed Jesus Christ (if a freeze-frame of their lair is any indication).

Finally, we have Hauer, a pro relishing every moment and owing the screen. It’s his show, and he is glorious. His impassioned speech on the troubles of life, given to a hospital-room filled with newborn babies who get more and more terrified as his rant continues, is some sort of classic. —Corey Redekop

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Ignoring all journalism ethics, Nancy throws the concept of being unbiased out the window so she can work to free the woman she’s just sure is wrongly imprisoned: “Isn’t it a whopper?” In doing so, Nancy gets in a fender-bender, drives dangerously, meets a boxer named Soxie, and even eats breakfast cereal annoyingly. You know, come to think of it, Nancy’s kind of a manipulative nag, but boy, she sure can solve a mystery!

The second of the four-film series proves as frothy and accessible as the first, if you can get past the Asian stereotype who pops up at a Chinese restaurant where Nancy and friends are short by 65 cents. Thus, she, Ted (Frankie Thomas, whose character is suddenly no longer named Ned), Ted’s little sister and her pal Killer literally sing for their supper, and the crowd digs Killer’s killer Donald Duck impression.

The sequence serves no other purpose than to wedge in a musical number, which audiences of the era apparently ate up. Crack open the Flick Attack fortune cookie for my verdict: “I’ll allow it.” (Also, your lucky numbers are 07, 16, 33 and 84.) —Rod Lott

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Forty years later, the location of this massacre is the destination of choice for a trio of truly obnoxious fraternity assholes, their virgin pledge, two girlfriends and the super-cute, sarcastic Goth girl who’s just like the woman I imagined I’d end up marrying back when I was 14. (It didn’t happen.)

The trouble starts when super-cute Goth girl is sacrificed by a quartet of pathetic Satanists, which causes the demons that necessitated the previous massacre to rise up from wherever they went the last time this all went down. In the end, the only person who can stop the demons from raising the Antichrist is the hot, 50-something version of the hot schoolgirl who took care of the problem the first time.

Needless to say, Barbeau is truly awesome as the foul-mouthed, liquored-up, tight-jeans-wearing demon slayer and is — along with The Convent’s sly sense of humor — the main reason to ignore the its obvious deficits and give it a chance. Clearly inspired by Night of the Demons and Evil Dead 2, The Convent is better than the former and nowhere close to the latter, which is exactly how it should be in a fair and just world such as our own. —Allan Mott

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“He vanished, into thin air,” a baffled Helen relates to her doctor, who answers, “Inside your vagina?” Then he, too, tries to molest her, and is, er, snatched up as well. Same goes for her stepfather when he tries to put the moves on her. Once Helen’s private parts start talking to her (“Feed me!”), she tries to silence it by spraying bleach all up in there.

And when that doesn’t work, she simply gives in and becomes a ho-bag to keep her vagina satisfied. About the most graphic it gets is when a john can’t get his now-ridiculously elongated tongue loose from that which exists between her legs. The image is like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon … well, if not for the vagina dentata plot, the rampant nudity, the exploitation of women, the rough language, and all that other stuff.

Originally titled Penetration Angst, this shit- shot-on-video snorer is hardly the first talking-vag flick (Chatterbox, anyone?), but it’s definitely the worst. “What a fucking mess!” screams one woman with about eight agonizing minutes left to go. My sentiments exactly. —Rod Lott

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As Ken, he and fellow journalist Jenny (pretty Peggy Neal, The X from Outer Space) attend an underwater, press-only demonstration of the Navy’s new, state-of-the-art homing torpedo, the Bloodhound, the shape of a man flashes across the screen. What could it be?

Later, Ken and Jenny check it out by boating over to the island where atomic waste products are dumped and get their answer: shiny, silver Sleestak-like creatures with crossed eyes too close together, mouths that do not move, and no genitals whatsoever.

And 3,000 feet below underwater city ruled by Dr. Rufus Moore (Erik Neilson), they respond to turns of the dial, i.e. “WORK” and “FIGHT.” There, madman Moore changes the physical structure of humans into these mutated gill-men. That gives way to weird sequences of stop-motion arm pustules, perhaps topped only by cool scenes of underwater miniatures action, as only the Toei Company could do. —Rod Lott

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Here, a shuttle mission goes awry when the spider on board for experimental purposes goes crazy and kills the crew. The shuttle crash-lands at an Area 51-sorta place, where some annoying college newspaper reporter and her two pals — a hacker geek and a photographer who uses a point-and-shoot number — are snooping around for a story. (For the three leads, Mosquito director Gary Jones cast three of L.A.’s most unappealing young actors, resembling the poor man’s Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser and Chris O’Donnell, respectively.)

They enter the shuttle wreckage and then the bowels of the secret base, only to find themselves trapped and menaced by this very angry, very aggressive, big-ass spider, who seems to be growing in size at an alarming rate. The U.S. Army’s also running around looking for the thing, so the movie quickly becomes a mix of Aliens and, um, itself. Created by KNB, the spider effects are mostly pretty cool, especially in the balls-out finale, where the eight-legged creature terrorizes a retirement home — excuse us, we mean college campus — in broad daylight.

What’s not so hot is the by-the-numbers screenplay, which seems to have been assembled using every stock line from the horror genre. To wit: “We’ve got to stop it!,” “You go that way,” “Let’s get out of here!,” “Save yourself!” and the ever-popular, spoken-too-soon “I think we made it!” Although it doesn’t quite know when to quit, you’ll be cheesily entertained for most of Spiders’ running time. While it’s not scary, a lot of the arachnid’s appearances gave me the shivers. (Aside: See if you can spot all the vaginal imagery in the spider’s mouth.) —Rod Lott

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While Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th follows the same A-to-B pattern as Scary Movie, parodying many of the same scenes and even using some of the same jokes, it’s not as funny as its predecessor, which, quite frankly, isn’t exactly a laugh riot itself.

Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, looking pudgy and threatening to squeak out of her strapless blouses, has the Courtney Cox role as a sexpot reporter to Tom Arnold’s doofus of a security guard. It’s pretty sad when someone like Arnold makes the rest of the cast look like amateurs — including a pre-Dexter Julie Benz — but it’s true. Cameo appearances are put in by Academy Award winner Shirley Jones and, on the other end of the spectrum, rapper Coolio.

Aside from the obvious references to Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and the entire teen-horror genre, Shriek also includes nods to entertainment as varied as Baywatch, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Porky’s, Reservoir Dogs (providing one of the film’s two true laughs), The Incredible Hulk, Mission: Impossible, Child’s Play and other movies far better than this one. —Rod Lott

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The Hoff is D’Artagnan, who’s so serious about the freelance swashbucklin’ gig that he lives in a castle and eats chickens whole, with no utensils. Alison Doody (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is Athos, aka sultry-voiced radio host Dr. Love. Frilly-haired German Thomas Gottschalk (Think Big) is Porthos, who wears a Team Mickey sweatshirt and can dunk his head in a fish tank for the count of 100. The trio rides tandem on Harleys and takes orders from antique store owner Treville (John Rhys-Davies).

Then there’s Burt Aramis (Cheech Marin), the stereotypical Mexican thief who fences VCRs and jewelry, and ends conversations with the baffling “It’s been a slice!” When he steals the fabled titular item that’s passed down from generation to generation, he has no choice but to join them in their adventures, which include saving a kidnapped 9-year-old boy whose captors feed him dog food on white bread. Two other missions come their way, including one with Corbin Bernsen acting coked-out, which strengthen our “failed TV series” theory.

Directed by Pee-wee’s Playhouse resident Jambi, John Paragon, who co-wrote with 24 creator Joel Surnow, Ring of the Musketeers is a bad idea from the start that gets worse with each aching minute. It would be even without the scene in which the Hoff gives an impromptu one-man synth concert on a trailer in an alleyway when he should be stopping a commercial airline flight from crashing, then backflips his way into a kicking tussle. Priorities. —Rod Lott

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New to the prison plot is Carmen (Airport stewardess Ena Hartman, this flick’s de facto Pam Grier). She first meets a junkie doctor (pre-Magnum Tom Selleck), then the 39ish other inmates, including Magnum partner Roger E. Mosley, Lost in Space refugee Marta Kristen and Vega$ showgirl Phyllis Davis. The few women are forced to “entertain” several of the men each night, per the orders of psychotic, self-appointed leader Bobby (Sean Kenney, The Corpse Grinders).

Turns out there’s another gang on the island, led by Don Marshall (TV’s Land of the Giants) and comprised of the “good” bad guys (except for the guy who tries to rape Phyllis, who retaliates by rubbing honey on his penis around a hive of bees). They plot to take down Bobby and his crew with homemade poisoned darts and grenades; the latter gets used on a guy in an outhouse: “That dude just took his last crap.”

War ensues, and you win. Exploitation director/co-writer Stephanie Rothman (The Student Nurses) delivered a career best with this adventure-focused twist on the women-in-prison film. It’s not smart by any means, but it works, and that’s all you’ll ask of it … well, and nudity from the dishy Davis, and you’ll get that, too. —Rod Lott

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In 2011, J.J. Abrams settled for consensual reach-around, and the result was Super 8 and a $127 million domestic gross.

Super 8 is so rooted in such early Spielbergian fare as Close Encounters, E.T. and The Goonies that one almost could take issue with it being credited as Abrams’ first film as director not based on an existing property, following his hits with Mission: Impossible III and the Star Trek reboot. It throws in every element in the Spielberg playbook, from the single-parent family to looking up at the sky in awe, mouth properly agape.

Not that that’s a bad thing, when it’s done this well. A group of kids shooting a zombie epic on Super 8 film witnesses a spectacular midnight train wreck during the summer of 1979. Said wreck unleashes a spider-like alien that proceeds to wreck their tiny town, taking all the microwave ovens and sending all the dogs fleeing to surrounding counties.

With hardly a clear glimpse of the creature from another planet, Super 8 is best when it’s barely concerned with the beast. The film’s “scares” are more feel-good than frightening (think Gremlins). And contrary to the belief of Abrams’ unflinching cultists, there’s no mystery to the picture, except why Ron Eldard agreed to wear the Gérard Depardieu wig the entire time. —Rod Lott

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Anyhoo, the Munsters have an afternoon outing to the all-new Chamber of Horrors, where the wax figures include the Wolf Man, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Munsters themselves. However, the figures are actually robots programmed to embark on midnight crime sprees — the brainchild of one appropriately named Dr. Diablo (Sid Caesar, who jabbers and yammers as if members of the Great Depression generation may be watching).

After the city is terrorized, Herman (Fred Gwynne) and Grandpa (Al Lewis) are wrongly accused and thrown in jail. Their cellmate (Airplane! jive talker Al White) has an Afro comb and a bad attitude — he calls Herman “honky.” Post-escape, Herman and Grandpa try to convince the authorities of Dr. Diablo’s master plan to pull a heist of Egyptian artifacts on Halloween. The cops won’t have any of it, except for the young one (Peter Fox, Mother’s Day), but only because he wants in the pants of Marilyn Munster (Jo McDonnell, The Octagon).

Padded with a worthless trip to Transylvania and creating a running gag for in-town Cousin Phantom of the Opera (Bob Hastings), this act of Revenge directed by Don Weiss (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini) is pretty predictable, right down to where the commercials appeared. But it’s not without its amusing bits, such as when Herman destroys the police station because a bee flies up his sleeve. Or when Lily decorates their Halloween tree with bottles of poison. Or when Herman is shocked with 2,000 volts, causing steam to shoot out his ears. Why, yes, I was easily amused. —Rod Lott

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These showdowns take place amid graphic overlays sporting samurai, gladiator and apocalyptic themes, and are the brainchild of GQ-dressed Logan (Samuel L. Jackson), the kind of rich guy who has Asian women on a giant swing behind his dining table. He’s so taken by the inexplicable victories of our Death Dealer, Logan agrees to let him take on the games’ hooded, ax-wielding Executioner (Johnny Messner, Running Scared), who beheads each round’s loser.

Lutz’s big emotional scene is hysterical, partly because of the bits of corn hanging out of his overstuffed mouth. Not that I think he can act; he can’t. The guy is all scowl. By contrast, we know Jackson can act; he just chooses not to. He’s clearly in his “whore for a paycheck” mode.

A mix of Death Race, The Condemned and the decade’s dozen other movies centered on televised murder matches, Arena is an unintentionally goofy garbage pail of an action flick. Yet if trash is what you’re hungry for, dive in. Jackson sure did — he chews so much fat in this thing, he could become Samuel XL Jackson. —Rod Lott

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The film certainly pokes fun at his image, as Fulci more or less plays himself, a middle-aged bearded man who wears sweaters over shirt and tie, wears glasses and makes really sick flicks where the gallons of spilled blood look like someone bought red paint in bulk. In this meta work, where Fulci is “overcome with a sense of repulsion,” he visually links onscreen acts of horrific violence with eating raw meat — a chunk of flesh equals stark tartare.

Pretty quickly, Fulci goes mad as the felonious behavior of his films seeps into his daily life and he experiences disturbing visions, like the slaying of a whore in broad daylight (and a nipple-muncher under the cloak of darkness), and an orgy in which a billiards player redefines “corner pocket” with the nude woman draped across the pool table. Many, many clips from his previous films — from Sodoma’s Ghost to Touch of Death — are utilized.

It’s all very nasty stuff, that even heavy use of Edvard Grieg’s classical-music hit “In the Hall of the Mountain King” can’t serve as a reliable salve. It really is like a proto-Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, but one that most video viewers won’t have the stomach to take. I can’t say I really blame them. —Rod Lott

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Cowboys. Cowboys. Cowboys. Pow-pow-pow! Cowboys. Cowboys. Cowboys. Cowboys. Aliens! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Splash! Aliens! Cowboys. Cowboys. Indians! Cowboys. Aliens. Cowboys. Aliens. Cowboys.

Cowboys. Cowboys. Aliens. Cowboys. Indians. Cowboys. Cowboys. Dynamite. Kaboom! Aliens! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Aliens! Dead horses. Zap-zap-zap! Cowboys. Aliens! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Pow! Cowboys. Cowboys. Indians. Aliens! Pow-pow-pow! Cowboys. Aliens! Aliens! Holy shit, aliens! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Blast off! KA-BLOOEY!

Cowboys. Boredom. —Rod Lott

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Lucci plays Jessica Jones, the vaguely ethnic-looking owner of an exclusive country club whose members all enjoy incredible prosperity and fortune. This is because she’s Satan, and the club’s members all have sold their souls to her for pool privileges. Everyone in the local community thinks she’s awesome, except for Robert Urich, who’s just been hired by Kevin McCarthy’s tech firm to develop a new space suit for NASA.

Urich is forced to watch helplessly as his wife (Joanna Cassidy) and kids (Barrett Oliver and Soleil Moon-Frye) are corrupted by Jones’ influence and sell their souls to her behind his back. Without any other option, he does what any good father would do: Don his experimental space suit and go down straight to Hell to rescue them. It goes without saying that he is able to do so by defeating Lucci through the eternal power of love.

Those of you familiar with Craven’s oeuvre know some films on his résumé that exist purely to pay the bills. Of these, Invitation To Hell is nowhere near the worst (Deadly Friend and The Hills Have Eyes Part II are tied for that title), but like all of the others, it’s clear he wasn’t prepared to do anything but the bare minimum to keep the money folks happy. Unlike 1978’s Stranger in Our House, which proved he could transcend the TV medium if he wanted to, Hell ranges from limp to laughable. His game cast does the best they can with the material, but it isn’t enough to save the film from descending into the kind of unintentional camp that can only come from a talented director working with a script he obviously thinks is ridiculous. —Allan Mott

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From then on, she turns her affections (and ultimately, her pelvis) toward Carl, leading the hopeless and heartbroken Edgar to kill his pal and bury him in the floorboards. Soon, he’s haunted by the sound of Carl’s beating heart, so Edgar cuts it out of the corpse. But even after that, the sound plagues him, and it’s neither a dripping faucet nor ticking clock.

Whether you’ve read the original story or not, you know how it goes from there, and that’s why the movie holds no suspense. But it’s made well, in a crisp, buttoned-up, British style, co-written by Brian Clemens, who brought equal class to so many Avengers episodes. More thrillered up than Poe intended, director Ernest Morris’ film comes with a “surprise” ending. —Rod Lott

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Getting no help from “that conceited tweet-tweet” police Capt. Tweedy (Frank Orth), Nancy enlists the help of platonic pal Ned Nickerson (Frankie Thomas), the clumsy neighbor boy with the side-swirly haircut and propensity to drop tools on his toes. He’s also a dud in overall social skills, according to Nancy: “You’re about as chivalrous as an oyster!”

In the climax, Nancy threatens the bad guys with a gun, holding it with disgust as if it were a penis.

The squeaky-clean, super-efficient mystery involves chasing a pigeon carrying a secret message; slapstick with a wrench; dressing Ned in drag, disguised as a nurse; and communicating via the cutting-edge technology of Morse code. Speaking of dated, the flick is filled with now-odd slang, like “Aw, stop disturbin’ the molecules!” Even when presented in context, that made no sense to me, but like the rest of the hour-long adventure, I sure did enjoy it. —Rod Lott

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Pieces vet Edmund Purdom partially directs and stars as Inspector Harris, hot on the trail of the masked maniac slaying the aforementioned hobos and the occasional blonde sex worker. Frustrated at the lack of clues are a victim’s daughter (Alien 2: On Earth‘s Belinda Mayne, who cries, “My father’s just been murdered. I can’t concentrate!”) and her boyfriend (Gerry Sundquist, Boarding School), a street-corner flutist who comes under suspicion.

Scream queen Caroline Munro appears in one scene as herself, singing a synthy-sweet pop number onstage while caressing her inviting curves in a slinky, sequined red dress that sparkles as bright as her bedroom eyes. (Er, please excuse me for a couple of minutes. … Okay, I’m back.)

Consider this 86-minute exercise in holiday horror a gift from schlock producer Dick Randall. Like his earlier Pieces, the slasher is a mess about messes, bearing his distinctive stamp of delightful but highly watchable incompetence that rolls around in nonsense scripting, gory violence and gratuitous nudity. We’ll call it the bow on top. —Rod Lott

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When the enterprising Jekyll tests his experimental serum, he transforms (sometimes startling without the use of makeup or camera tricks) into Hyde, a hairy, snaggletoothed, horny creature with a taste for blood, prostitutes and the blood of prostitutes. Neither the police nor Jekyll’s fiancée take too kindly to this development.

The best thing about this version is Rouben Mamoulian’s direction, which looks innovative even today through his unique use of subjective camera, split-screens and framing of certain shots. It’s way ahead of its time. The film kind of peters out in the last half-hour and I’m bothered by the way everyone pronounces the doc’s name as “JEEK-ul,” but this is still a great old horror movie through and through. —Rod Lott

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The oddly named and miscast Gaspard Ulliel plays the young Hannibal, orphaned after Nazis kill his parents and out for the blood of the soldiers who slaughtered and ate his little sister eight years prior. Stepping into a role made famous by Anthony Hopkins is no easy feat, but Ulliel doesn’t have anything going for him but the ability to cop an evil sneer. He neither sounds nor looks like Hopkins’ take on the character. In fact, if we’re going to play dopplegänger, he most resembles Saturday Night Live alum Ana Gasteyer.

The only scenes that resonate are those in which Hannibal exacts his revenge, and we’re made to cheer him along. Yet they’re not built with any shocks; they simply go through the motions. And what to make of his third-act transformation into Action Hero, leaping atop ships to save Gong Li? At least on the page, scenes like this can’t look silly.

Director Peter Webber’s film at times looks beautiful, almost classier than a genre exercise like this should. I’m sure when Jonathan Demme lensed The Silence of the Lambs, he had no idea it would nominated for an Academy Award, much less take home the top five, but Webber and company act as though they’re intending on a sweep. In going so serious, Rising lacks any sense of diabolical fun that so endeared us to Lecter before, no matter the medium. —Rod Lott

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Thankfully, the rest of the movie is pretty entertaining, too. Wood plays the title character, a bored banker’s wife whose previous attempts at creating excitement by stealing from her wealthy peers culminates in her robbing her own husband’s bank. She confesses her crimes to her tortured analyst (a pre-Producers Dick Shawn), who has little success keeping his love for her a secret. On her trail is clever police detective Peter Falk, who becomes just as smitten by his chief suspect as everyone else.

Directed by Love Story‘s Arthur Hiller, Penelope is one of those divine, cotton-candy concoctions that only could have come from late studio-era Hollywood. The script manages to be sly and occasionally sophisticated, while also remaining broadly funny. The fun really begins when Penelope confesses her crimes in order to save a falsely accused streetwalker, and no one believes her. This leads to a brilliant scene where Lou Jacobi and Lila Kedrova try to blackmail her by linking her to the yellow Givenchy suit she wore during the robbery (I told you the crime-com took her wardrobe extremely seriously), only to become frightened and confused when she’s thrilled to discover such evidence exists.

A flop when it was released, Penelope is much better than its vague reputation suggests. If it were simply a good excuse to watch its gorgeous star given the full-on Hollywood-glamour treatment, then that would be enough. That the result is genuinely fun to watch is just more icing on a perfectly decorated cake. —Allan Mott

Anyway, while donating sperm, they hear of a woman (Juliette Lewis) who is being paid big bucks by a multimillionaire family to carry their child. Hearing that little “ka-ching” in their head, they kidnap her and hold her ransom for something like $15 million. Of course, things don’t go as smoothly as they planned, because otherwise, this would be a short subject. And maybe it should have been.

On their tail are Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt as Lewis’ expensive-suit-wearing bodyguards. Also on their tail is James Caan, who never once moves his neck. Also also on their tail is Geoffrey Lewis, for reasons that simply clutter up what should have been a simple story. And we haven’t even gotten to the cops.

After a strong start (albeit containing more utterances of “fuck” than the entire running time of Next Friday) and a painfully slow middle, Gun reaches a less-than-rousing conclusion in a whorehouse shootout, with bullets a-flyin’ as a doctor performs an emergency C-section on Lewis. At least I haven’t seen that before. Not that I want to see it again. No Way. —Rod Lott

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But of all of them, Point Blank is the one that serves as an object lesson for how far a man may fall before redemption. Not, sadly, a remake of the dynamic Lee Marvin classic (catch The Limey for that, sort of), this Point Blank is a painful slog through a third-rate Die Hard plot, enlivened only by moments of sincerely funny attempts to convince the audience that Rourke is a martial artist.

In a performance that defines the phrase “go fuck yourself,” Rourke is Rudy Ray (either the worst or greatest name in action-movie history), a former mercenary called into action when a group of escaped convicts, including his brother, takes over a shopping mall. Mickey mumbles and grunts inarticulately, then goes in, his skin glistening with what I presume to be … oil? God, I hope it’s oil.

What follows are scenes of action so inept, they are tailor-made for YouTube clips. And, yes, the filmmakers honestly expect us to believe that the slab of greased ham that is Rourke is backflipping his way out of Danny Trejo’s line of fire. Not even Trejo, or even the great James Gammon, can save this. Here’s a good drinking game: Take a shot every time Mickey completes a full sentence. You’ll barely get a buzz on. —Corey Redekop

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A Paranormal Activity-type flick of near-startling inactivity, Grave Encounters begins on a high note, with a straight-faced lampoon of every single crappy “reality” show featuring would-be ghost hunters. Here, the team totaling five aims to shoot its sixth episode overnight while locked inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where hundreds of lobotomies were performed on mental patients many moons ago.

With Sean Rogerson doing a fine job of portraying the host as a total douche (to a point of tangible annoyance), the requisite strange stuff begins to happen following a belabored setup. This includes a woman’s hair being pulled, a window opening on its own, a door slamming on its own, and so on. Things only ramp up at the tail end, but either are highly reminiscent of scenes from other movies — most notably, [REC] and the House on Haunted Hill remake — or are acted so amateurishly, what is meant as horror comes off as humor.

There are two good moments, both of which add up to less than five seconds. The only thing “Vicious” is the film’s apparent lack of vocabulary; most of the dialogue is written with three words: “fuck,” “shit” and “Matt.”

I spit on your Grave Encounters. —Rod Lott

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It helps that the film takes on the one horror cliché I truly, truly, truly hate with all of my heart: asshole victims. For a horror film to be frightening, a filmmaker must provoke empathy, not disgust. Make us care about your characters and we’ll tense up whenever they’re threatened. Make us loathe them and we’ll happily cheer on the maniac who’s supposed to scare us. Problem is doing the former is a lot harder than the latter, so most filmmakers don’t even bother to try.

Tucker & Dale takes on this cliché by turning the frat-asshole douche-cunts horror movies typically expect us to care about and making them the villains. Our heroes are the titular friendly buddies, whose lack of style and social pretensions could be confused from a distance as something out of Deliverance. Both are in the woods to work on Tucker’s fixer-upper of a vacation home, but when they fish an unconscious coed (Katrina Bowden of TV’s 30 Rock) out of the river, her idiot friends assume they’re kidnapping her, and accidentally kill themselves in various gruesome ways trying to “rescue” her.

From the beginning, it’s easy to see where the film is going and it never deviates from that path, but that doesn’t stop it from being a really fun time. Most of this is due to the wonderful performances by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine as the title characters. Both bring a sweetness and innocence to their roles that make them every bit as sympathetic as a horror movie victim should be. —Allan Mott

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To turn back the clock a bit, the titular abode belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Corsini (Cannibal Holocaust‘s Paolo Paoloni and Damned in Venice‘s Bettine Milne), an elderly couple who have used their wealth to fill their mansion with 70 years’ worth of antique clocks. They also have their nephew and niece there, off in a separate room where they can rot in relative peace, even with the railroad spikes that protrude from their necks.

Enter three young ruffians: two guys, one girl. These shoplifting, pot-smoking, cat-in-plastic-bag-trapping punks burst into the place to rob the Corsinis blind, but accidentally kill them, too. At the moment of the old geezers’ murder, the clocks freeze. Soon, their hands inexplicably move backward, thereby enabling the deceased Corsinis to take their revenge. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Goreophobes need not bother setting a date for this one, as it’s brutal and bloody as Fulci’s famed filmography. Once the senior citizens start to lash back as their uninvited guests, The House of Clocks isn’t located that far from The House by the Cemetery or any of the director’s other zombie works. This one isn’t as good as those, but his fans will enjoy its over-the-top bloodletting. If you thought the “spring forward” portion of daylight saving time was a shock to your system, imagine how bad it would be under this roof. —Rod Lott

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Unfortunately, Kronsberg was screwed out of the sequel, Any Which Way You Can (aka the other one with the fucking orangutan), so he decided to get even by writing and directing a movie that upped the ape ante to the power of three. In place of one of the world’s biggest movie stars, he cast the dumb boxer guy from TV’s Taxi and teamed him up with the short rude guy from — and this seems like it probably wasn’t a coincidence — TV’s Taxi.

In Going Ape!, Tony Danza plays a ne’er-do-well con man left in charge of a trio of redheaded primates after his circus-owning father passes away. If he can successfully tend to them for three years, he stands to inherent a $5 million fortune; if not, he’s shit out of luck. Helping out is Danny DeVito, his father’s Italian (?) assistant, and Stacey Nelkin, his super-cute, super-stacked girlfriend who breaks up with him at least 10 times in the course of the picture. Also along for the ride is Jessica Walter as Nelkin’s MILF-y mom, who’s mostly there to rile up DeVito and be robbed of her dignity.

Most of the nominal plot is spent on incompetent attempts by various interested parties to harm the apes, climaxing in a hospital chase sequence. A scene involving an attractive female cadaver seems completely out of place in a movie that should have been aimed at the youngest of children, but is too simultaneously adult and juvenile to appeal to anyone. Going Ape! flopped so badly, Danza had to wait eight years before headlining another terrible feature (She’s Out of Control), but he fared better than Kronsberg, who never earned another IMDb credit. —Allan Mott

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