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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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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Beloved memories from your childhood are primed for slaughter again. As if the same cast members, stretch of UK property and general lackadaisical approach to the creative process don’t immediately give it away, the shilling-ante slasher Mary Had a Little Lamb emerges from the British colons of the British makers of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, likely the worst movie I’ve seen grace a theater screen. (What’s next, “Three Blind Mice”? Yes, now that you mention it.)

Carla (May Kelly) hosts a true-crime radio show on cases almost as cold as her ratings. On the verge of cancellation, she’s given one week to find fresher content … or else! With a posse of five tagalongs, Carla alights to the woodlands to investigate a missing couple. What her nose for news reveals is ghastly: a kooky crone named Mary (newcomer Christine Ann Nyland) who has a lamb for an adult son and constantly hums the titular nursery rhyme. What are the odds?

Actually, the lamb is an upright man-lamb who’s the product of rape and likes to kill people. Worse, he’s homeschooled.

The movie’s even more grueling second half entails the radio gang walking through overly dark corridors and stairwells while Lamb (as he/it’s credited) and his weapon of choice pursue them. Like the Pooh of the aforementioned turd, Lamb’s head is always stationary with no movable parts. It resembles an emaciated ALF with all of the skin diseases. Attempting to make this menacing, Gaston Alexander resorts to flailing arms and unintelligible gurgles and growls that echo within his mascot head of a costume. Think of a minotaur, but with glued tufts of mangy cotton where the bull noggin would be. Ewe.

After ripping off Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s legendary dinner scene, director Jason Arber (Divide by Zero) rips off Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s iconic ending … and then sticks with its truck for several more beats than even untrained editors know is allowable — so long, you expect a transition into anything but the closing credits. This is not Mary’s only instance of wasted time.

Being less pedestrian than Blood and Honey, this Lamb has a leg up on its relative. We’re talking by a minuscule amount, so be sure to go with something else. If you insist upon being fleeced, however, pair it not with a nice mint sauce, but loads of peppermint schnapps. —Rod Lott

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No hole-to-hole stitching required in the human centipede story Creepy Crawly. Known in its home country of Thailand as The One Hundred (as in legs, duh), the film lets not only many centipedes run loose, but also a rather large one that gains size as it inhabits — then discards — a string of human hosts.

Co-directed and co-written by Chalit Krileadmongkon (The Beast Below) and Pakphum Wongjinda (2015’s The Mirror), it all goes down in a hotel during the COVID-19 outbreak, so guests are under a strict, 14-day quarantine. Every guest ignores the rules when the ’pedes impede.

That includes our nominal leads, prawn-allergic pretty boy Leo (Mike Angelo of Renny Harlin’s The Misfits) and blood-disordered pretty girl Tevika (Chanya McClory, Sang Krasue 2); however, all the characters are minimally drawn. Around the time Leo and Tevika get heroic, the tongue-in-cheek creature feature in an enclosed setting becomes reminiscent of Stephen Sommers’ Deep Rising.

The idea of an insect possessing people is unique, as far as I recall. As the big bug instantly bewitches people, the risus sardonicus evil washing over their face looks inspired by Asian horror manga — the good kind, from masters like Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino. We also have tentacles, or something like it, purely for impalement purposes. Passable overall, how well Creepy Crawly works scene to scene tends to run in inverse proportion to usage of rush-rendered CGI. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.