All posts by Rod Lott

Sex

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967)

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Hot Thrills and Warm Chills is a no-frills affair of sexploitation malarkey, as three dames plot a jewelry heist during a Mardi Gras masquerade ball. (You know the one: where, at the stroke of midnight, someone is crowned “King Sex.”)

Texas director Dale Berry (Hip, Hot and 21) fails to depict the crime, presumably distracted what with all the parade footage, mirror prancing, stage dancing, stripper acts, makeout sessions, bedroom romps and pendulous breasts of Mars Needs Women abductee Bubbles Cash. As a character quips, “Once a nymph, always a nymph.”

It all takes place in New Orleans, “where babes and booze can be had with the wink of an eye.” That’s the only quick element in the black-and-white pic, all 67 minutes of which feel like 134. In sparkly britches with top to match, Rita Alexander (Fake-Out) ostensibly stars, but mostly just wiggles and wriggles like a worm suddenly cut in half.

Speaking of worms, the rug-cutting music by Dario De Mexico burrows in your ear in a big, bouncy way the movie itself cannot; not for nothing does it appear on — and arguably takes over — Something Weird Video’s Greatest Hits compilation album.

De Mexico’s language-challenged lyrics make more sense than Hot Thrills and Warm Chills‘ overdubbed dialogue. “Haven’t I see you somewhere before?” asks a woman to a guy who responds, “Maybe. I’ve been seen before.” Not seen: Russ Meyer regular Lorna Maitland, who gets top billing, despite being MIA. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

The Book of Beasts: Folklore, Popular Culture and Nigel Kneale’s ATV Horror Series

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Thanks to the recent resurgence of “folk horror,” one of Nigel Kneale’s more underappreciated works of British television, the single-season anthology series Beasts, finally has earned the attention and reputation it didn’t quite get in 1976. Case in point: Andrew Screen’s first book, The Book of Beasts: Folklore, Popular Culture and Nigel Kneale’s ATV Horror Series.

Published by Headpress, which already has a Kneale biography in print, the weighty tome embraces — and achieves — its mission to be the definitive text on the show. The only way it could surpass that would be inclusion of Beasts’ episodes themselves, whether through disc or download. As the song goes, you can’t always get you want.

But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. It certainly made my day of airport layovers and flight delays easier. If you’ve enjoyed Beasts, this book is just that. If you have yet to see it, I wouldn’t recommend reading until you do, because, c’mon, spoilers. (The ending of “The Baby” alone will thank you.) Luckily, it’s readily available.

For all six episodes (and “Murrain,” a 1975 one-off rightly considered to be an unofficial precursor), Screen doesn’t just dig; he excavates. Reading each chapter is like getting a DVD commentary so detailed — on-set information, post-airing reaction, every moment broadcast and each evolution from Kneale’s original script — it runs over the allotted time. For example, for “Special Offer,” a standout hour in which only a mousy grocery employee can see the mischievous critter she blames for items literally flying off shelves, Screen gives further context by exploring other telekinesis-themed works (yes, Carrie) and real-life reports of poltergeist activity of the time.

Going above and beyond, the author includes information on what viewers might have seen if Beasts had been granted a second season. Not a ton exists — in some instances, an episode title is all Kneale wrote — but where else would you find it?

Kneale’s name never will go unassociated with his most famous creation, the Quatermass franchise. But the celebrated screenwriter left behind such a remarkable body of work, other items not named The Stone Tape or The Year of the Sex Olympics deserve top-of-mind consideration, too. The Book of Beasts goes a long way to push a certain animal-themed series there — invisible dolphins, rat attacks and all. —Rod Lott

Get it at Headpress.

Horror

15 Cameras (2023)

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Of the myriad horror franchises alive and kicking today, I consider the 13 Cameras trilogy as the Little Franchise That Could. It’s so under the radar, you may not have realized the 2015 original birthed a sequel, let alone a pair now. Heck, it’s so under the radar, it brushes shoulders with the fighter pilots in Top Gun: Maverick whose planes hug the desert floor to sneak up on bombing the bad guys’ uranium plant, if the speed and gravitational pull don’t kill them first.

And if those things don’t, well, you know the peeping, pernicious Slumlord sure will try. Yep, like all serial killers worth their salt, the sweaty, antisocial Gerald now carries a media-friendly moniker. He’s also now played by James Babson (Ghost Team One) as a reasonable facsimile of Neville Archambault, who died way too young last year (and to whose memory this unexpected second sequel is dedicated).

If 14 Cameras took the linear route in continuing 13’s story, but from a differing vantage point, 15 Cameras takes an off-ramp to explore our nation’s current obsessions with true crime and social media. Closely intertwined, both essentially operate as extensions of the voyeurism in which the Slumlord specializes.

Cool girl Sky (Angela Wong Carbone, 2022’s Resurrection) is utterly, completely fascinated with the Slumlord’s still-raging reign of terror, as depicted on a Netflix-style documentary series. A large part of her inability to look away is because her new residence was one of his hidey-hole homes of homicide. Sky’s slacker husband, Cam (Will Madden, The Beta Test), seems immune to her morbid thrill of association … until he finds a secret room the cops somehow missed, with Gerald’s surveillance system across every corner of the duplex still fully operational.

Suddenly able to peep on his sister-in-law (Hilty Bowen, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates), Cam — oh, the irony of that name! — is equally transfixed. And when two hot college girls move in next door? You bet he’s binge-watching that livestream.

With this setup, director Danny Madden (Beast Beast) and writer PJ McCabe (who starred in 13 Cameras) make us complicit in Cam’s crimes. As viewers, we know Cam’s eye-in-the-sky (and -shower) actions are wrong — in bold, italics and all caps — yet there we are, wanting to witness every flickering, low-res frame as his eyeballs. Guilty, your honor!

Rather than merely rehash, the film builds on the previous chapters with clever turns, committed performances, tangible suspense and cameos from 13’s surviving victims (Brianne Moncrief and Jim Cummings). 15 Cameras culminates in an über-gruesome driller-killer of a scene that’ll leave horror enthusiasts happy and hopeful for a 16 Cameras. Logicless nomenclature aside, I’ll be ready to move in, provided the creative powers that be find yet another, um, angle from which to gaze. –Rod Lott

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Action

Hit List (1989)

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If William Lustig has a B-movie masterpiece, it’s neither Maniac nor Maniac Cop. I nominate his forgotten Hit List, a pulpy crime pic of economical gangster warfare in present-day, not-at-all-confidential L.A. With one of the tallest stacked character-actor casts a limited amount of money can buy, the coastal change does Lustig good.

Aging federal agent Mitchum (Charles Napier, 1997’s Steel) is on his requisite Last Case: babysitting greasy mobster Frank DeSalvo (Leo Rossi, 1981’s Halloween II) under protective custody before testifying in a grand jury against Teflon-coated heroin importer Vic Luca (Rip Torn, A Stranger Is Watching). DeSalvo’s child, Frank Jr., is none too pleased at having to hide at the safe house: “Dad, all dey got is microwave pancakes,” da kid sez like a pint-sized Pesci in training. “But dey ain’t got no microwave.”

Flapjacks excepted, DeSalvo’s biggest worry is the target on his head. See, Luca’s hired someone named Caleek, which sounds like the Wonder Twins’ monkey sidekick, to ice DeSalvo before court. As played by Lance Henriksen in a performance more bonkers than his Stone Cold turn, Caleek is a cat-burglin’ karate-chop assassin so badass, he brazenly drives a van with a “1 KILLR” vanity plate.

Caleek makes a big boo-boo in entering not the safe house, but the one across the street. Thus, unable to locate Frank, he kidnaps who he thinks is Frank Jr., but the child actually belongs to family man Jack Collins (Jan-Michael Vincent, Vigilante Force). In a flash, Collins shifts into Not Without My Alcohol Daughter mode, except with, y’know, a son.

With Collins forcing DeSalvo to join forces to get his kid back, Hit List shifts into a rip-roaring, Rip Torning buddy actioner without even bothering to push the clutch. Their shootout with Luca’s goons within a game of laser tag makes for an ingenious highlight, what with the underaged running around with imaginary zappers.

Video store customers at the time might recall Hit List for its car-crawler cover art, so incredible it practically drove off the rental shelves and into your heart. Unlike so many misleading VHS boxes, the scene shown actually appears in the movie. Lustig not only stages that scene, but showcases as it the climax in a parking garage as Collins attempts to flee Caleek, who climbs all over the moving car like a certain Teutonic cyborg. It’s a stellar action sequence, ending with a sick joke so obvious, yet so, so Lustig. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Goldsmith (2022)

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Italy’s The Goldsmith has a story so simple, it could be told within the span of a trailer. And it is.

A home invasion thriller with torture porn quietly hiding in the guest bedroom while the adults talk, Vincenzo Ricchiuto’s directorial debut centers on three ne’er-do-wells who plot to rob the titular kind, elderly jeweler, Antonio (Giuseppe Pambieri, The Legend of Sea Wolf). They’re tipped off that Antonio keeps a pricey lab in the remote abode he shares with his equally kind, equally elderly wife (Stefania Casini, 1977’s Suspiria).

As the criminals discover, the cats become the mice when Antonio trips an alarm, sealing them inside the room they so maliciously plundered moments before. Via A/V magic, the goldsmith teases and turns the felons against one another. And then a hidden door is discovered, revealing stairs leading down. What lies beneath? It’s not exactly Barbarian.

But like cubic zirconia trying to pass itself off as a diamond, enough of a resemblance is there. Bearing a touch of the brothers Grimm, it might work wonders as an episode of Tales from the Crypt, but prolonged arguments in an enclosed space don’t always make for great cinema. Many unnecessary scenes pad the length, like when a character explains (via flashbacks) what we as viewers already have surmised.

Ricchiuto has an eye for this sort of thing, giving it an all-pro visual polish. His script with Eaters’ Germano Tarricone, however, could rely on fewer clichés; three times, it pulls the ol’ trick of a tormented person conveniently within reach of a weapon their oppressor fails to notice. —Rod Lott

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