All posts by Rod Lott

Mystery

The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961)

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Criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse isn’t the only one who returns in, well, The Return of Dr. Mabuse. So does Gert Fröbe, Goldfinger himself, as Inspector Lohmann. Having to cancel a fishing trip he was looking forward to so much that he patted his wife’s prodigious rear, Lohmann investigates the murder of a man to keep incriminating evidence from coming to light.

It should surprise no one that Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss, Mill of the Stone Women) is behind it all. The pro villain is also behind a new narcotic that, when injected, turns prisoners into hypno-slaves — all the better to overtake the local atomic power plant. If only Lohmann can stop him! It should surprise no one that Lohmann can, albeit with the assistance of an FBI agent (Lex Barker, after five swings as Tarzan) and a comely photographer (Daliah Lavi, 1965’s Ten Little Indians).

More fun than the previous film, Fritz Lang’s The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, Harald Reinl’s mean franchise debut with Return boasts a bevy of exploitable elements, from rudimentary car chases to a runaway train. You might think the highlight of this lean and kinda Eurocrime pic is the blind man meeting his end between a brick wall and a truck grill, but you’d be wrong. That honor goes to the floozy who gets flambéd by a flamethrower — in front of the Bimbo Bar, no less! —Rod Lott

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Action

Fight or Flight (2024)

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What I remember most from John Wick: Chapter 2 is the sequence of so many assassins receiving and reacting to news of a fresh bounty on the hero’s well-coiffed head. Something tells me the screenwriters of Fight or Flight do, too — that “something” being the setup for their action pic. It’s one that never clears the creative tarmac, perhaps burdened by the weight of so many F-bombs as punchlines.

Continuing his comeback bid since fronting M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap last year, Josh Hartnett goes bleached-blond and boozy as Lucas Reyes, an ex-Secret Service agent living the low life in Bangkok. He’s unofficially reactivated by his former superior/lover (Katee Sackhoff, Oculus) to capture an enigmatic “black hat terrorist” named The Ghost, who’s tracked boarding a flight outta Bangkok and bound for San Francisco.

With word of The Ghost’s bounty spread like MAGAspiracies across the dark web, the double-decker jet is positively packed with killers eager for an easy payday. Plus — and isn’t this wacky — there’s a price on Lucas’ head, too! With that little wrinkle, Fight or Flight jams itself into your eyes and ears as a plane-set Bullet Train, but wit, thrills and invention apparently have been confiscated by TSA.

Hartnett does what he can, which is make the film at least watchable. His weary personality is the second-best thing the movie has going for it, just behind Marko Zaror (John Wick: Chapter 4), the martial-arts B-movie icon who delights in a too-brief bit as an opponent Hartnett tussles with in a too-large airplane bathroom. Zaror always gets to show his moves, but comedic chops? Fight or Flight could use more of his energy, rather than dispatching him quickly for prolonged retread nonsense. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The Surfer (2024)

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As The Beach Boys once sang, catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world. But what happens when you’re prevented from catching a wave, much less a break? That’s the dilemma facing Nicolas Cage’s title character in The Surfer, a single-location thriller shot on the Australian oceanside.

Playing a successful businessman in the throes of a divorce, he’s taken a mental health day to surf with his teen son (Finn Little, Those Who Wish Me Dead) at a special place: by the house he’s purchasing. It’s where the surfer grew up, mere steps from the sacred sand. Trouble is, the beach is overrun by a gang of bullies who operate by a simple code: “Don’t live ’ere, don’t surf ’ere!”

Led by a red-robed and crispy-tanned Julian McMahon (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), the hooligans deny the surfer entry and steal his board. Running recon from the parking lot atop the hill, the surfer attempts to reclaim what’s his, physically and spiritually, only to be outsmarted at every turn. Just when you think the surfer can’t sink any lower in his attempt to answer the mythic call of the waves, glug glug glug.

With shades of Frank Perry’s The Swimmer, but more akin to Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs at high tide, The Surfer finds Irish director Lorcan Finnegan paying off the visual promise he displayed in Vivarium, a great concept rendered too obtuse — and boring — for its own good. Getting out of that 2019 film’s house and into nature does wonders for him, as well as working with someone else’s script, here by TV writer Thomas Martin, who finds the comedic in the tragic. Vibrant photography from The Babadook cinematographer Radek Ladczuk helps immerse us within Cage’s sun-soaked delirium, prompting questions of how much of what we’re seeing may just be imagined.

One hopes Cage’s much-publicized tax troubles are nearing rearview-mirror status so the supremely gifted actor can continue his comeback tour toward relevance with projects like this and other recents (e.g., Longlegs, Dream Scenario, Color Out of Space) and far, far away from every straight-to-VOD actioner shot in New Orleans. Ever since the 2018 phantasmagoria known as Mandy, I’ve noticed members of the younger generation clamoring for a Cage Freak-Out™ in each picture — and then losing their shit when it arrives. They’ll be pleased to know Finnegan sates their appetite with our hero’s shouted demand of one oppressor, “Eat the rat! Eat it!” 

Hey, whatever gets their butts into seats. Especially for this winner with an ethereal final shot that hits like a missile of emotion. Hang 10. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Vulcanizadora (2024)

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It’s difficult to discuss what a movie like Vulcanizadora is about without ruining it for everyone else. So let’s not spoil things! I’ll keep this brief.

Marty (Joshua Burge, 2015’s The Revenant) is a perennial sad sack. His friend, Derek, is a motormouth with a chunk of hair that looks like it leapt from his cranium, clung to his chin and died. The salt to Marty’s vinegar, Derek is played by the film’s writer, director and editor, Joel Potrykus.

Armed with cheap fireworks and a canteen of Jägermeister, they’re taking their first steps on a camping trip like no other, deep into a Michigan forest. Thus begins a slackerpalooza of junk food, spank mags, candle lighters, petty arguments and the stark reality they were ill-prepared for adulthood, so they’ve essentially stayed children.

Their mission? Yes, they actually have one, but this secret sequel to Potrykus’ Buzzard is not about to spoon-feed you those details until it’s damn well ready. And once it is, you won’t be.

Vulcanizadora (Spanish for “tire repair shop,” which figures into the stealth plot) arrives more twisted than a box of garlic knots from the corner store freezer. A two-hander for a majority of its running time, this M-80 of an indie revels in comedy as black as it is bleak. I can’t help but admire what Potrykus achieves in this daring high-wire act. Love it or loathe it, no one is likely to shake its memory. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations (Revised and Updated)

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Other than perhaps the practitioners behind them, nobody gets the film novelization better than S.M. Guariento. He acknowledges the general public’s dismissal of the oft-maligned publishing arm (“What the kazoo is to music, so is the novelization to prose,” he writes), then spends 530 pages of Light Into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations proving those people wrong.

Like any art form, you encounter both good and bad in the novelization; the joy is finding is what works for you. Guariento’s book is all about his discovery through several dozen examples. First published in 2019, his tome remains held in high regard by yours truly as a thoroughly engaging blend of scholarship and obsession.

Now, a half-decade later, it’s even more so as a Revised and Updated edition with 50 more pages, including an updated intro, several expanded chapters (most notably, The Incredible Melting Man), more cover art and — as if all that weren’t enough — an all-new index and outro. The latter includes Guariento’s list of the 10 best and brings the reader up to speed on his subject’s current resurgence via Severin Films and Encyclopocalypse Publications’ paperbacks for B-horror VHS favorites that never got the novelization treatment.

It bears repeating: more cover art. From thumbnails to full-page images, the hundreds upon hundreds of images are reason enough to merit a purchase, but what struck me the first time around remains: how splendidly written it is — no fandom-level first draft here.

Read my original review for a more in-depth look at the contents. As with that first volume, this Revised and Updated run comes in two flavors: the DeLuxe Edition in full, vibrant color and a more-affordable Midnight offering in black and white. —Rod Lott

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