Driving the most airbrushed van in the history of paint, five teenagers go camping in an out-of-the-way cemetery. The grounds feature decrepit buildings, Gothic statues and more fog than John Carpenter’s The Fog and its remake combined. It’s also, as the kids discover upon waking in the middle of the night, home to a tavern, complete with sausages inside and a neon sign for Miller High Life out front.

The tavern keeper (Lino Salemme, Demonia), who has a blinking red eye and ends sentences with overly gregarious belly laughs, tells them if they can survive until dawn in the cursed crypt below, they’ll win a booty of riches. (That’s the strangest twist on the Big Texan’s 72 oz. steak dinner challenge I’ve ever heard.) Because Graveyard Disturbance otherwise would be a short subject, the teens accept.

Roaming the catacombs from room to tomb, they run across rats, spiders, hanging vampires, zombies with herpes sores, an oversized eyeball with optic nerve still attached, maggot-strewn screws and diarrhea-streaked walls. These sets are the film’s high point, casting an appropriate spooky vibe.

I just wish director Lamberto Bava (Demons) had treated the story seriously instead of an Italian Scooby-Doo. The attempts at humor fail — and hard — killing real potential. Worse, pieces unintended to elicit laughs do, notably when the quintet’s most level-headed member (Lea Martino, Bava’s You’ll Die at Midnight) complains, “I like fun things: candy, Christmas carols, Woody Allen!” That line hasn’t aged well, nor has Graveyard Disturbance as a whole. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Corbin Bernsen already had played a periodontic psychopath in 1994’s Appointment for a Killing when he took on the title role of The Dentist. Whereas the earlier film was a thriller made for TV, this slasher pic was built for the playground of VHS and cable, so Bernsen really gets to go for the gusto. And the guts.

A clean freak and control freak in equal measure, Dr. Alan Feinstone loses his goddamn mind after glimpsing his trophy wife (Linda Hoffman, Face/Off) going down on the greasy pool repairman (Michael Stadvec, The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven). At his dental practice with its pink-pastel walls, Dr. F takes his rage out on his patients, from accidentally slicing open a child’s gumline to purposely sexually assaulting a starlet (Christa Sauls, Ghost Rock) while she’s zonked on a nitrous oxide overdose. Her agent is a sweater-over-the-shoulder yuppie played by Mark Ruffalo, who most certainly leaves this off his CV.

The Dentist exists to see Dr. Feinstone exact much tooth and tongue trauma, and each successive checkup gets grislier. By the time he gets an overly zealous IRS agent (Earl Boen, The Terminator) into the chair, the movie finally feels comfortable with becoming the Re-Animator reunion it is for creatives Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon. Yet that’s also when it concludes — too little, too soon. They’re capable of better.

At least Bernsen (The Yeti) is fiercely committed to his role, unafraid to do the worst while looking his best. The Dentist 2 followed. Alas, a crossover film with Dr. Giggles did not. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Some microcinema efforts are made with so little dough, they appear to be shot in a garage. James L. Edward’s Trivial absolutely is, and doesn’t even try to hide the fact. Nor does it need to, because the movie is about a crazed woman broadcasting an underground game show across the internet, directly from, yep, her garage.

Conveniently, that’s why Edwards also can get away with the copy-shop vinyl banner behind his star’s head. I’m honestly impressed he sprang for grommets!

Laurel Edmonds (Sasha Graham, The Vicious Sweet) is our hostess with the mostest — loose screws, that is. Her kidnapped and bound contestants take turns answering questions like:
• What’s the only food that doesn’t spoil?
• Which animal has three vaginas?
• Who here knowingly spread an STD to multiple partners? 

Get an answer wrong, get your face cut. Get three answers wrong, get killed. (For the record, the respective answers are “honey,” “kangaroo” and “girrrrrl, don’t look at me.”)

Edwards himself (over-)plays the reigning champion, an obnoxious, sexist, alcoholic motel clerk in a distracting, overly curled Danny McBride-style mullet wig. The lone female contestant is Shianne Daye, who gets a “Special Appearance By” credit. Since she’s not a known quantity, I don’t know why she merits such a shout-out, other than perhaps Edwards’ undying appreciation for their explicit sex scenes in his directorial debut, Her Name Was Christa.

I appreciate how he creatively weaves in public-domain footage from quiz shows of yesteryear like Beat the Clock, both in the credit sequence and as cutaway reaction shots that served as HBO’s Dream On differentiator. Yet it’s not enough to detract from Trivial’s obvious problem: It’s ceaseless in repetition, more or less composed of five back-to-back episodes. Remove the mutilation and we’re essentially watching round after round of bar trivia.

Minute by minute, the reason to tune in to Trivial is Graham’s winning star turn as a wine o’clock MILF clearly working through Some Shit. Almost invisibly disarming, she marries the looks of Mariksa Hargitay with the sassy, sexy personality of Jennifer Tilly, minus the helium. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or Makeflix.