All posts by Rod Lott

Comedy

Survive Style 5+ (2004)

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A recurring bit in Survive Style 5+ finds hitman Vinnie Jones asking each person he may or may not execute, “What is your function in life?” It’s a question the Japanese film itself cannot answer. As its nonsensical moniker suggests, logic commits harakiri. Mind you, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Set in the run-up to Christmas Eve, five stories separately unfurl their setups before interconnecting thereafter to varying degrees of success. Aside from Jones (Snatch) and his interpreter (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Cloud), we meet three young burglars, and a man (Tadanobu Asano, 2021’s Mortal Kombat) constantly fighting with his wife (Reika Hashimoto, Blind Beast vs Dwarf) because she won’t stay dead no matter how many times he murders and buries her.

An advertising executive (Kyôko Koizumi, Tokyo Sonata) constantly churns out ideas for concepts that amuse herself, but not her clients, one of whom is played by legendary Street Fighter Sonny Chiba.

Finally, a hardworking family man (Ittoku Kishibe, The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi) is stuck thinking — and acting like — he’s a chicken after the hypnotist (Hiroshi Abe, Godzilla 2000) dies in the middle of his stage show. Although Kishibe’s mantle is hardly bare, he deserved an award for diving in headfirst, no matter how ridiculous.

As absurdist as it is go-for-broke, Survive Style 5+ is one of those movies better experienced than described. In fact, its state of delirium seems designed to resist description. Prior to this energy-to-burn omnibus, Gen Sekiguchi directed shorts and commercials, which may be why none of his debut feature’s segments quite lands with a satiating payoff. Among the quintet, the chicken dad comes close, but I know that’s strictly my adoration for Cake’s cover of “I Will Survive” talking.

When Survive Style 5+ works, as in the action-packed battles of spouses Hashimoto and Asano, it casts a spell. And when it doesn’t? Well, to jostle back to Jones’ pre-assassination inquiry of purpose, his unluckiest targets are swiftly dismissed and dispatched with a curt “You’re not necessary.” I wish Sekiguchi asked himself the same and excised the burgling trio — the one story that adds or offers nothing. As is, the movie stands at two hours, which can be death for a comedy, even a bizarro one operating by its own intermittent rules. Survive Style 4+ might have had fewer negatives as a result. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Ice Cream Man (2026)

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Baylen Bay, the fictional setting of Ice Cream Man, looks to be the dictionary definition of “idyllic.” Since the movie is directed by Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), you know that’s pure facade. Like, one block over, perhaps a young Kyle MacLachlan is stumbling upon an ant-laden ear in the grass.

On Roth’s block, however, the suburb’s children are all abuzz over the new dispenser of frozen desserts (Ari Millen, TV’s Orphan Black), whose truck blasts a Silver Shamrock-esque earworm of a jingle. Once kids eat his treats, they’re susceptible to an act of Weapons-style witchery hearing that tune unlocks: mass parricide.

Thanks to his lactose intolerance, our preteen protagonist (Charlie Zeltzer, a real find) is spared. He spends the last two-thirds of the movie under siege in school — shades of 2014’s Cooties — as his classmates prey upon anyone not following the Pied Piper of Popsicles. (“Is this some kind of Zombie Pajama Day Challenge?” asks one confused faculty member.)

This is Ice Cream Man’s demarcation point, as Roth, unshackled from an MPA rating, goes whole-hog on the gore — so soupy, so chunky — that you’re either in or long gone. I’d be the latter, if not for Roth and co-writer Noah Belson stirring in an equal amount of gallows humor. Sight gags get increasingly ghoulish, like a stairwell sight of two kids playing a game of Operation using a teacher as the bulb-nosed board.

Despite sharing a title and a tagline, this scoop of goop isn’t a remake of the 1995 Clint Howard vehicle. Call this one Children of the Cones — or, if you’re hip to the Brits, Children of the Corneo. Bound to offend more people than it delights, Roth’s exercise in splatstick with sprinkles feels less fully formed than his usual work, perhaps as a self-imposed challenge or an idea he simply needed to knock out of his system. I’m glad he did if that’s the case, although he’s capable of more than this flavor allows. Still, if only all genre throwaways were canny enough to visually reference Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, with neither a stretch. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026)

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At first glance, The Samurai and the Prisoner, a literary adaptation set in late 16th-century Japan, hardly seems like horror/thriller auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s usual cup of sake. Within a few minutes, when it suddenly reveals itself as a murder mystery, all makes sense.

The film takes place almost entirely at a castle ruled by Lord Murashige (Masahiro Motoki, 1999’s Gemini), who’s already anxious about an imminent enemy siege when a young visitor is found dead. The boy appears to have been shot with an arrow, yet no weapon is located. It’s almost a locked-room puzzle, if not for a mere 3-inch gap.

To crack this case, Murashige leans on his adversary’s envoy, Kanbei (Masaki Suda, Kurosawa’s Cloud), held captive in the castle’s dungeon, to pore over the clues and form a hypothesis. Kanbei’s deductive skills prove excellent — I mean, he’s got the time — and three more devious crimes will confound the castle before the end. If managing all that chaos isn’t enough for m’lord, he does so while grieving the loss of his true love: a precious tea urn. 

Understated humor like that is layered throughout, most notably in an extended bit concerning a slain general’s head; Murashige is uncertain which clan can claim the honor of killing because, as a soldier reasons, “We were fighting in the dark, no names were given.” 

Obsessed with matters of ritual and religion and oneupmanship, the picture is as meticulously crafted as it is purposely episodic. As the weather turns, a new whodunit presents itself for Murashige to pass to Kanbei to solve, making The Samurai and the Prisoner far from an ordinary costume epic, even if those majestic visuals and powerful lead performances suggest otherwise. Its two-point-five hours move quickly, although no pace can completely hide the occasional meandering. —Rod Lott

In theaters, expanding Aug. 7 and 14.

Thriller

The Man in the Back Seat (1961)

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As Batman famously noted, “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” And some nights, as the crooks of this Brit crime corker learn, you just can’t get rid of the unconscious bookie handcuffed to the briefcase full of cash you just stole from the doggie races. 

A year before playing robbers in Vernon Sewell’s acclaimed thriller Strongroom, Derrin Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner play the robbers of/in Sewell’s The Man in the Back Seat. Harry Locke (The Creeping Flesh) essays the title character, spending almost the entire 57 minutes knocked-out — and likely handing a template to Terry Kiser to utilize nearly four decades later in Weekend at Bernie’s. In contrast, Nesbit and Faulkner, meanwhile, spend much of the movie attempting to find the proper tool to separate the gentlemen from their riches. 

Emerging from the mind of Edgar Wallace, that job is easier said than done, not to mention a fool’s errand. At every turn, their simple quest is hampered by one inconvenience or another, from a flat tire and lack of adequate parking to nosy coppers and a nosier wife (Carol White, Something Big). That qualifies it as a “one crazy night” picture à la After Hours — only not funny. 

Nor is meant to be. It’s a sober example of crime-doesn’t-pay cinema from the bottom half of the bills, with a short detour into British kitchen-sink drama when White is involved. Back Seat bends the rules of reality in its abrupt conclusion, heralded by SUDDEN! BLARING! TRUMPETS! — an unexpected kick to your movie-watching pants. —Rod Lott

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Sex

Behind Locked Doors (1968)

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Creeper-peeper boobie movies abound in regional ’60s sinema. Charles Romine’s Behind Locked Doors, however, is unique, if only because the roughie’s villain resembles what would happen if Henry Kissinger crawled into Seth Brundle’s telepod without noticing Isaac Asimov curled up in the window.

The hypothetical result is Mr. Bradley (Daniel Garth), a former mortician turned sex researcher. We’re not talking legit and credentialed like Kinsey or Masters and Johnson, but suspicious and self-studying like that one cousin or uncle your family pretends no longer exists.

We meet the binoculars-equipped Mr. Bradley spying on a barn of hipsters frugging to what sounds like Neal Hefti’s Batman TV theme song. In the hayloft, Mr. Bradley saves the pretty, pert Ann (Eve Reeves) from beatnik rape by whacking the guy with a pitchfork. Ever the gentleman, Bradley even re-hooks her brassiere!

When the party ends, Ann and lesbian co-worker Terry (Joyce Danner) find their convertible mysteriously drained of gasoline. Good thing Mr. Bradley lives nearby so they can stay the night! It’s good only for him, so Ann and Terry can unwillingly participate in his science experiment. It entails being tied to a bed, whipped and subjected to eugenic inquiries such as, “What nationality were your parents?”

Bradley’s unstated hypothesis is if he removes his Hef robe, oils his carpeted chest and Pooh belly, then forces intercourse upon the women … I dunno, they won’t die? And if they do, well, that’s what the basement dungeon is for. There, previous subjects eternally pose topless in unconvincing rigor mortis. Upkeep on their corpses, like daily dusting, falls to the property’s requisite handyman of questionable IQ (Ivan Agar, Shriek of the Mutilated).

With Romine (the Bill Shatner-hosted weirdumentary Mysteries of the Gods) customarily packing in extended sequences of rug-cutting and breast exploration, this horror-tinged Harry Novak production (Hitch Hike to Hell, Rattlers, Kiss Me Quick!, et al.) goes the route of the rote, save for two surprises. One being that, in contrast to the sinister doings, Behind Locked Doors is shot with bright colors; the dungeon is especially vibrant, as if Orgy of the Dead were being shot 10 feet away. The second is Reeves isn’t more voluptuous without clothing. That’s exploitation for you. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.