Down Nova Scotia way, the po-po are on strike due to a labor dispute, so crime runs rampant, primarily under the grip of the New Order — not the band, although that would be something. Of blue collars and unfettered ignorance, the loose collection of garden-variety fascists take advantage of the lawless land — at least as far as the night on which Siege is set — by terrorizing a friendly neighborhood gay bar known as The Crypt. (Oh, it’s right next to Thrifty’s Just Pants; you can’t miss it.)

When the bartender is accidentally killed, the New Order homophobes call in their fixer, Cabe (Doug Lennox, Police Academy), a strong, mostly silent type in black leather and silencer to match. To dissuade the bar patrons from reporting what they’ve seen, Cabe executes them one by one. Except for the one who gets away: Daniel (Terry-David Després).

Pronounced “Danielle,” Daniel runs and runs like Lola to the relative safety of an ugly, three-story apartment building, where he’s saved by the couple Horatio and Barbara (Winter a-Go-Go’s Tom Nardini and Echoes in the Darkness’ Brenda Bazinet, respectively). The remainder of the film entails the despicable New Order’s efforts to penetrate the couple’s threshold to nab the “fruit pie,” even if it means positioning a sniper across the street.

Siege so deftly plays with simple a “what if?” scenario that it quickly doesn’t matter we know nothing about Horatio and Barbara, such as why they have two blind students (Meatballs campers Keith Knight and Jack Blum, aka Fink and Spaz) just hanging out in their shithole of a pad. And why does their medicine cabinet lead into the unit of their next-door neighbor, Chester (Daryl Haney, Lords of the Deep)? I’ll answer that: Because it gives our heroes a unique home advantage, as does Chester’s proficiency at making dirty bombs and other tools of the terrorism trade.

Also known under the yawner title Self Defense, the Canadian production from co-directors Paul Donovan (Def-Con 4) and Maura O’Connell is taut and ingenious — the kind of thriller that works best then seen with an audience, but you’ll love all the same if watched alone. It’s as if Roberta Findlay’s Tenement had a moral code; Mr. Wizard harbored a Death Wish; and the Westboro Baptist Church participated in The Purge. Siege is all that and more. See it! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

For Murder Weapon, one of David DeCoteau’s first mainstream films after a half-decade in gay porn, the director goes incognito via his “Ellen Cabot” nom de plume. However, there’s no mistaking DeCoteau’s penny-stretching, runtime-padding work from the get-go: a superfluous 10-minute wordless prologue that at least establishes, re-establishes and establishes again one character’s fondness for rubbing and re-rubbing and rubbing again tanning lotion onto her big-haired, big-breasted self.

To celebrate their simultaneous release from a sanitarium, mafia princesses Amy (Karen Russell, Vice Academy) and BFF Dawn (Linnea Quigley, DeCoteau’s Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama ) invite all their boyfriends — ex and current — over to their house. Except for the metal rocker (Mike Jacobs Jr., DeCoteau’s American Rampage), who looks like Jerry Seinfeld dressed as Mötley Crüe for Halloween, they appear entirely interchangeable. One of them (Allen First, also American Rampage) has a shaving fetish and convinces Amy to let him Schick her legs while she sits on the toilet.

Then the guys start to get killed, in bursts of gore so unexpected that the first instance — sledgehammer, meet head — is bound to catch you off-guard, even though I just told you. That makes Murder Weapon unique among the DeCoteau oeuvre and, amazingly, the unpredictability doesn’t stop there. Now, that doesn’t mean he fails to deliver his usual completely gratuitous and entirely overlong softcore sex scenes; in fact, each starlet gets her turn, with Quigley’s being the most memorable. Russell may be more beautiful, but only Quigley gives a rousing round of what appears to be “seizure sex,” concluding with nipples so out-and-about, they look like pop-up turkey timers.

For virtually any other movie featuring a post-Carol Burnett Show Lyle Waggoner (Danger USA), mentioning Lyle Waggoner’s appearance would be among its 10 most odd elements. Not with Murder Weapon, so strange it almost approaches a surrealistic genius of happy accidents. Knowing what I know now, wondering what the flick would be stripped of all abnormalities is something I don’t want to consider. To borrow a quote from Amy, it “makes my tits shrink just thinking about it.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.