All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Art of the Dead (2019)

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In the late 1970s to early 1980s, it seems like you couldn’t pass an intersection without seeing the original pop-up shop: some guy selling velvet paintings propped against his van. Remember those? 

Good. Now cast aside all assumptions of reality and imagine the dude’s entire inventory were worth half a million bucks. Now imagine the perfect person to broker that sale were Tara Reid. Now you’re prepared for Art of the Dead, from writer/director Rolfe Kanefsky (The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man).

The gaudy and gauche oils at this horror movie’s necrotic heart depict the seven deadly sins as represented by animals. All come from the brush of the appropriately named Dorian Wilde (Danny Tesla, Attack of the Unknown), who looks like a cross between Frank Zappa and a haberdashery. Wilde’s septet of “masterpieces” — at best, they scream high school art class — is in high demand, despite making people go nuts upon gazing. The prologue illustrates just how, with a cameoing Richard Grieco (Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill!) slaughtering his family.

After outbidding others for the cursed collection, members of the Wilson family find out its downside fast. The goat painting makes Mom (Jessica Morris, Reel Evil) so horny, she fucks a goat — or an NBA-mascot facsimile of one. The snake artwork makes Sis (Cynthia Aileen Strahan, TV’s The Offer) give herself a boob job — using the torn-off breasts of her bully. The frog one makes her brother (newcomer Zachary Chyz) paint the nude body of a sex worker (Sarah French, That’s a Wrap) — with words like “WHORE CUNT SLUT BITCH.” 

Too much? But but but I haven’t even gotten to Wilde creating canvases from the skin of a prostitute! And paint from her blood to match! It’s like Ray Bradbury’s legendary short story “The Veldt,” but with 100% more demon-tonguing.

Yes, Art of the Dead is completely preposterous in premise, yet I can’t deny the appeal of its gimmick. Luckily, the film puts you in the proper frame of mind upfront with the credit “a Rolfe Kanefsky flick,” rather than “film” or “movie” or “picture” or another Pauline Kael-friendly synonym.

Even if it hadn’t, is anyone in danger of taking this Mahal Empire production seriously? If so, then they’re not paying attention to the auction worker who drinks from a hose until his belly literally explodes. Or the priest with a milky eye. Or the twin kids turning into giant snails. Or the snakes earning credits as “Hisser” and “Pumpkin.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

The Perils of Pauline (1967)

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A contemporary adaptation of the iconic 1914 serial, The Perils of Pauline is one Hail Mary of an action comedy, patched together from three episodes of an intended TV series canceled before it could air. The production attempted to capitalize on the mad, mod, quasi-parodic pop sensation known as ABC’s Batman — and boy, is that evident, for good and ill. 

Aging out of the orphanage that’s raised her since infancy, the virginal Pauline (Blue Hawaii cutie Pamela Austin) enters the real world and gets into and out of one scrape after another. Her trouble begins in Africa, where she tutors a 12-year-old royal prince (Rick Natoli, Hang Your Hat on the Wind) who wants her for his harem. The kid’s so horny, he chases her around the palace. She’s also pursued by tigers, dangled over a pit of stock-footage sharks and kidnapped by a gorilla — twice! 

From the sewers to the high seas to even outer space, Pauline’s inadvertent adventures find her pursued by the three über-wealthy men, including Terry-Thomas (The Vault of Horror) and Edward Everett Horton (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World). But the only one who has her heart is an age-appropriate fellow orphan (’nilla crooner Pat Boone), who spends a chunk of Perils in a block of ice floating in the ocean. Trust me; it’s a long story, figuratively and literally. 

Innocence personified, Pauline doesn’t go chasing waterfalls; they just seem to find her. Every time she faces danger, the parlor piano music kicks in and the film is sped up, all the better to ape its chapter-play origins. Pre-“talkies,” silent films, including serials like The Perils of Pauline, relied on exaggerated physicality to help impart emotions. That performative spirit haunts this update through barn-broad slapstick — a style that pays off in the whimsically entertaining prologue, then lacks ingenuity thereafter. The real cliffhanger is how much of your bat-time you’ll cede before changing the bat-channel.

Try as the producers might to cobble the individual eps into a functional feature, it just doesn’t work in the more demanding format of cinema — even the semi-spoofy kind. Prestige TV, Pauline ’67 was not. Adam West’s Batman influence notwithstanding, this flick lands amid the female-fronted, spy-fi likes of Fathom, Modesty Blaise and Deadlier Than the Male. As with Pauline, each is a sexed-up send-up of pre-existing IP … and we know how those turned out: best viewed via their posters. —Rod Lott

Action

Kingkong Is Coming Back (2024)

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Thanks to the People’s Republic of China, Kingkong Is Coming Back! And copyright lawyers are nowhere in sight! 

That’s right: Kingkong, one word, as if that qualifies as ethical and saves the keisters of all involved parties from the threat of litigation. Still, this so-called “giant” gorilla isn’t large enough to hold anyone in the palm of his hand. Imagine a primate the size of Harambe after going without Mounjaro shots for six months, including year-end holidays. Also, his face gives “durrrrrr.”

Story? I mean, I guess. A mineral exploration team in the mountains is ordered by their bald, bad benefactor to stop searching for mines and capture the ape. Or else their families will pay … in blood. (This movie should pay … in steep tariffs.)

You might predict ’kong (not Kong) will save our scientists. You will not predict the movie’s other freak of nature: a veritable Tarzan Boy raised in the wild. Clad in long hair and short loincloth, he moves and flies and flits and spins and scales like he’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Encino Man. The kid also punches and kicks CGI wolves that cast highly unnatural shadows. 

From Youku, China’s equivalent of The Asylum, Kingkong Is Coming Back is cheaper than cheaply made, with poorly layered effects that scream “rush job” (or “加急工作!” per the Google machine). Although sitting at 63 minutes, they are a punishing 63 minutes, capped by an anti-ending that’s written like a transition into an actual ending. Take the title’s passive voice as a sign of the action’s quality. —Rod Lott

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

UFO (2018)

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And now for the movie in which Gillian Anderson helps investigate a government cover-up of flying saucers … yet doesn’t play an FBI agent!

Rumors of a UFO sighting at a nearby airport fire up Derek (Alex Sharp, How to Talk to Girls at Parties), a brilliant University of Cincinnati student who witnessed such a close encounter as a wee lad. What the feds deny, the socially awkward genius obsesses over trying to prove … using math! Naturally, he thinks exposing the truth is more important than paying attention to the one female who shows interest in him — despite her being Ella Purnell (TV’s Fallout), out of his league by a good 20,000 of them. 

Imagine Roy Neary crunching numbers instead of mashing taters, and you’re vibing with the sober tone of Ryan Eslinger’s procedural. Despite math running front and center throughout UFO’s plotting, knowing it as a viewer matters not an iota, so you can enjoy the conspiracy thriller aspect of it all, no matter your GPA. (That said, if you’ve waited decades for the fine-structure constant to get its due onscreen, holy crap, are you in for a treat!)

Anderson, whose mere presence brings The X-Files to mind whether she likes it or not, fills the supporting role of Derek’s professor. Rather than the usual rah-rah feel-good mentor the movies usually turn educators into, she can barely tolerate Derek. He is less than appealing, which is perhaps part of Eslinger’s intent in not following usual sci-fi tropes. No little green men here — just lanky, pasty-white ones. You may even want the FBI, led by the always fine David Strathairn (L.A. Confidential), to catch the meddling kid. 

UFO is nothing to phone home about, but it’s a solid surprise, good for one watch. Eslinger — whose first film, Madness and Genius, also dealt in equations — does a more than credible job of making an unbelievable tale seem as though it’s based on true events. (Psst: It is!) —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Spider (2023)

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Fret not, Pather Panchali! Your status as the icon of Indian cinema remains unabated and unchallenged by the screen’s introduction of Mustafa in Farhan M. Khan’s Spider. It’s 59 minutes of digital video garbage.

As played by Afzaal Nabi, a name you need not remember, Mustafa is a “chartered accountant” for a pharmaceutical company, a fact you need not remember because Mustafa keeps bringing it up. Professional though he may be, he’s dressed like either a cabbie or a Newsie.

Per the result of an abduction, he’s also stranded in a “forest” (actually a rural road with well-tread tire path) and stalked by a giant arachnid (actually a test-level animation of what looks like an ant with an extra pair of legs). Like Tom Hardy in Locke, Mustafa spends the bulk of Spider stuck in a car, albeit one that cannot move.

Also like Tom Hardy in Locke, much of this movie is yelling at people on the phone. Mustafa calls his country’s version of 911, the police, his boss, his wife, her friend and, finally, his mom, to whom he says, “You used to cook me sweet noodles!” (And to his son, via an awkward goodbye video: “I wanted you to grow up and wear my clothes and have a fight with me.” Huh?) 

Now, unlike Tom Hardy in Locke, Mustafa reads the vehicle owner’s manual, eats one page and takes a couple of naps — all riveting. Then it just kinda stops.

But what about the spiders? They’re largely incidental. Even if Khan got a buddy to do the effects for free, he overspent. —Rod Lott