All posts by Rod Lott

Thriller

Femme Fatale (2002)

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Long derided for ripping off Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma instead entered the new millennium with an erotic thriller that looks like he’s ripping off Brian De Palma ripping off Alfred Hitchcock. I generally love the guy, but Femme Fatale is one of his worst pervo-mysterioso efforts (but not at bad as the utterly flaccid The Black Dahlia).

Rebecca Romjin (then using her brief “-Stamos” tag) stars as a double-crossing diamond thief who escapes her Parisian partners by assuming the identity of a dead woman. As that ruse starts to unravel, she attempts to use disgraced paparazzi photographer Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas, Desperado) to protect herself and make off with millions of dollars.

The plot is overly complex for a script so simple-minded, and seems to exist only for the clever, it-all-comes-together ending, rendered in De Palma’s usual slow-motion style. It’s a set piece that, like Fatale‘s opening bathroom seduction at the Cannes Film Festival, is the kind of thing that De Palma does so damned well. It’s everything in between that he does not so well, and as writer and director, he has no one to blame but himself.

Romjin actually acquits herself quite admirably and manages to bare her breasts. She gets a lot more dialogue than she did as blue-skinned seductress Mystique in the X-Men franchise; unfortunately, a lot of that dialogue is along the lines of “You don’t have to lick my ass — just fuck me!” —Rod Lott

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Comedy

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

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In the 1980s, we as a nation did some crazy things. We grooved to Toto. We bought “Baby on Board” signs. And we allowed the phrase “a Topps Chewing Gum Production” to appear on theater screens. I blame all the cocaine.

Until Tim Burton unleashed Mars Attacks!, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was the only film in cinema history based on trading cards. Rather than use a slew of the Cabbage Patch Kids parodic and puerile characters, this PG-rated adaptation hand-picked seven: Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston, Foul Phil, Nat Nerd, Messy Tessy, Ali Gator and Greaser Greg — respectively known for barfing, farting, pants-pooping, pants-peeing, snotting, eating toes and possessing a switchblade. They’re all played by little-people actors in bizarre costumes with minimal facial movement, rendering them more nightmarish than intended.

The Garbage Pail Kids live in a trash can carelessly contained within the detritus of Manzini’s Antiques, owned by the flamboyant, suspiciously single Cap’n Manzini (Anthony Newley, Doctor Dolittle). His lone employee is the 14-year-old apparently homeless orphan named Dodger (Mackenzie Astin, TV’s The Facts of Life), whose in-store scuffle with bullies accidentally lets the brats out of the can. Although Windy Winston greets Dodger by farting in his face, the boy becomes fast friends with the lot, yet pines for a frizzy-haired skank named Tangerine (telenovela actress Katie Barberi).

While helping Dodger nail Tangerine’s attention and affection through the power of trashy fashion, the Garbage Pail Kids are more interested in making mayhem. To wit, they steal a soda truck (“We’re the Pepsi generation!” exclaims Valerie), sneak into a movie theater to see Stoogemania (shown in clips to pad the running time and grant comparative sophistication), crash The Toughest Bar in the World (where Winston lets loose a toot so noxious, it removes the mustache from the bartender’s face), and watch Dodger bathe (but let’s not get into that).

Director/co-writer Rod Amateau (you can’t spell “amateur” without him!) made a legendarily bad film here, but it’s watchable in group jaw-dropping sections of mockery. For a movie made for children, it possesses several scenes of questionable taste, like having the Garbage Pail Kids rip off models’ dresses at Tangerine’s climactic fashion show. What’s worse: That the movie has its titular things sing an original song about teamwork or that Astin spends the third act in a little Chippendale’s bow tie? —Rod Lott

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Thriller

10 to Midnight (1983)

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Dressing down a pesky journalist in the first scene of 10 to Midnight, Charles Bronson’s Lt. Leo Kessler proclaims, “I’m a mean, selfish son of a bitch. And I know you want a story, but I want a killer, and what I want comes first!” I felt like cheering right then and there, and the title hadn’t yet appeared onscreen. The serial-killer police thriller comes from Bronson’s underrated ’80s run with Cannon Films and his fourth of nine collaborations with Conquest of the Planet of the Apes director J. Lee Thompson.

In this film’s case, the murderer is Warren (Gene Davis, The Hitcher), a young, creepy guy in a Members Only jacket who fixes typewriters for the office secretarial pool. He fancies himself quite the martial artist and ladies’ man. He’s definitely not the latter, because he gets rejected all the time, but gets his revenge by stabbing his busty jilters to death.

Examining the corpse of Warren’s latest victim, Kessler theorizes, “Well, if anybody does something like this, his knife has gotta be his penis.” Indeed, Warren’s M.O. is stripping nude before each and every kill, holding a sharp blade at genital height, all rapey-like. As Kessler inches closer to nabbing the scumball, said scumball targets the copper’s daughter (Lisa Eilbacher, Beverly Hills Cop), a student nurse — convenient for a cinematic massacre’s sake.

What makes 10 to Midnight great is not just Bronson being Bronson, but that his Kessler is deeply flawed. He’s not a supercop, but an imperfect man more interested in doing what’s right vs. what’s legal, which irks his idealistic, by-the-book partner Andrew Stevens (The Seduction). It’s also as if a slasher movie focused not on the Final Girl, but the investigating police detective, and Davis is absolutely hateful in his robotic-perv role.

Look for short bits by Kelly Preston in her movie debut and an artificial vagina. —Rod Lott

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Horror

YellowBrickRoad (2010)

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In 1940, the entire population of Friar, N.H., scaled a mountain trail. Only one person survived, and he went crazy; the others 571 were found frozen, slaughtered or not found at all. Nearly 70 years later, a small group of obsessives follows the same path to unravel the mystery. Interesting premise you have there, YellowBrickRoad, and one you botched completely. Its crime is not being purposefully vague, but utterly boring.

Led by Teddy Barnes (Michael Laurino) and his wife, Melissa (Anessa Ramsey, The Signal), who plan on co-authoring a book on their subject, the group of eight take a hike — literally! — and unfortunately, it feels like one shot in real-time. After a long stretch, weird things start to happen to them — the kind a $500,000 budget can afford: Teddy having nightmares, a compass going willy-nilly, and all hearing music of the old-timey, juke-joint variety that used to score Betty Boop cartoon shorts.

One by one, step by step, the campers sloooooowly go bonkers, and periodic video interviews captured by a psych professor (Alex Draper, Mimic 2) demonstrate their increasing loss of memory and deteriorating spatial orientation. But that doesn’t count as anything “happening.” Little does until the final hour, when — spoiler alert — the mapmaker (Clark Freeman) rips off the leg of his sister (Cassidy Freeman, TV’s Smallville) after she runs off with a stinky hat he found along the trail while urinating. Swiper, no swiping!

Written and directed by feature first-timers Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton, YellowBrickRoad is like having a piping-hot slice of pizza placed in front of you, but being told not to eat it for a while: It looks good and smells good, yet when you finally take a bite, its lukewarm blandness has even your taste buds questioning whether it was worth the effort. The difference is that the movie is interminable, right up to the pointless, pretentious end. At least it’s not a found-footage film, but you’ll still want to click your heels.

Lordy, it’s the worst. As one of its taglines reads right on the DVD cover, “DO NOT FOLLOW.” You’ve been warned. —Rod Lott

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