Four female influencers have gone missing. So zaftig true-crime enthusiast Distal Marrow and her furrowed brow take a deep dive into the case for her live podcast, Embracing the Paradox. It’s the perfect opportunity for Distal (Jessica Dawn Willis, Death 4 Dinner) to regain listeners and appease her boss/aunt Camilla (Danielle Harris, The Last Boy Scout), all of whom are tired of recent cryptid-leaning content.

When Distal receives all-hours clues and calls from the likely perpetrator who calls himself NOOSPLEHDEENI (read it backward), the local cops want her help, but she turns them down and goes back to podcasting. Here’s the problem with a movie largely about podcasting — and this goes double when it concerns a heroine living alone in an isolated cabin: It makes for a lot of tell, don’t show. With little Marrow has to show is held until its final frustrating minutes, long after you’ve discerned what’s actually up. 

Marrow marks a family affair between Willis and her husband, Mitch McLeod (2019’s Silhouette). He directs and co-wrote the screenplay with her and Beasts of 42nd Street novelist Preston Fassel. Together, they’ve hatched a good idea that doesn’t quite come to fruition, despite obvious care applied toward the craft. “Pacing is vital,” the caller schools Distal at one point. “Allow the story to unravel organically. Introduce the characters. Create tension.” The latter element doesn’t come through, which is odd considering the film is inspired by actual events you want to know more about. —Rod Lott

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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

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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

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