All posts by Rod Lott

Comedy

Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)

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In college, my dorm roommate, Randy, told me about a British horror spoof he’d once seen called Bloodbath at the House of Death. I’d never heard of it (this was pre-internet, folks) and thought maybe he was making it up, if not for one detail that struck me as too specific, too abstract and too hilarious: “The best thing is, the box says, ‘Starring Vincent Price as The Sinister Man’!”

For some reason, that made us laugh a lot.

Weeks later, my birthday rolled around. Randy gave me a brand-new VHS tape of Bloodbath from the budget-friendly Video Treasures label. Sure enough, atop the front cover, big block letters announced, “STARRING VINCENT PRICE AT THE SINISTER MAN.”

We laughed all over again. I guess you had to be there.

Nothing in the movie itself lived up to that. I remember being bored quickly and fast-forwarding to a scene Randy had hyped: where “the blonde floozy from Superman III gets her clothes ripped off by a ghost!” Even that disappointed, if only because Video Treasures’ LP-mode cassettes didn’t allow ideal clarity.

Now, nearly 35 years later, I can appreciate Bloodbath at the House of Death — and Pamela Stephenson’s toplessness — properly. She and fellow UK comic Kenny Everett headline the ramshackle rib-tickler as scientists investigating radioactive goings-on at Headstone Manor, where 18 people were brutally killed several years earlier.

And with that intentionally bare premise set, regular Everett writers Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron (who directs perfunctorily) hang parodies of Jaws, Alien, The Shining and others on it that, while not toothless, certainly don’t bite down hard. (The Carrie one is an inspired exception, with the Piper Laurie character beheaded by a can opener, slowly cranked turn by slowly cranked turn.)

In what amounts to an extended cameo, the legendary Price is game as the cult leader behind it all — the sinister man, some say. It’s a hoot to see him curse; his delivery of “You piss off!” is one for the ages, but his use of a gay slur hasn’t aged well.

As horror parodies go, Bloodbath resembles a more modern Carry On entry than this millennium’s Scary Movie series. The difference between their respective styles is far less than the distance separating their respective home countries; both offer an intelligent approach to comedy more stupid than, um, sinister. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Sleep (2023)

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So I snore. Yes, I hog the covers. And I may have even accidentally slapped my wife while jolting awake from a fight-or-flight nightmare.

But at no time have I ever suddenly sat up in bed in the dead of night and ominously uttered, “Someone’s inside,” with no elaboration or explanation. That’s just mean.

That’s just the beginning of the Korean thriller Sleep. In the nights that follow, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun, Parasite) debuts increasingly dangerous nocturnal habits, none of which he recalls once he wakes up. His suffering wife (Jung Yu-mi, Train to Busan), is perplexed. She’s also pregnant, so she needs the rest she’s not getting.

She certainly doesn’t need the stress and pressure brought by the situation, once their downstairs apartment neighbors complain of hearing screams of terror in the night.

Sleep marks the debut film as writer and director for Jason Yu, an assistant director for Bong Joon-hoo on Okja. That Yu’s former boss has endorsed this work as “the smartest debut” he’s seen in 10 years was all the convincing I needed to devote my time. While I wouldn’t necessarily second Bong’s superlative, Sleep is unmistakably sharp and cannily constructed, heralding Yu as a worthy protégé.

Twisty plotting notwithstanding, what makes Sleep work as well as it does is the easy rapport between Jung and Lee. (Sadly, Lee isn’t around to see his work, having committed suicide last year.) They feel real — completely believable as fresh spouses sharing a deep love and respect for one another. Without that caring bond to latch onto, the viewing public’s investment of concern into this more grounded Grudge would pale. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Amber Alert (2024)

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No longer a high school cheerleader trying to save the world, Hayden Panettiere tries to save just one little girl in the economical thriller Amber Alert. Suspense is as mild as hospital-cafeteria salsa packets, but hey, it’s there!

Jaq (Panettiere, Scream VI) cruises along as a rideshare passenger when the titular notification buzzes her phone. A 5-year-old has been kidnapped … and by someone whose vehicle matches the description of the one right in front of the one Jaq’s in! Turning into a veritable Nancy Drew, Jaq convinces her reluctant driver (Tyler James Williams, TV’s Abbott Elementary) to tail it.

If that setup sounds familiar, you’re not crazy: Kerry Bellessa’s Amber Alert is a remake of Kerry Bellessa’s own 2012 movie of the same name. In ditching the original’s found-footage format, this new version feels more open, even if it follows the same story beats. Again working with co-scripter Joshua Oram, Bellessa appears to relish the glow-up, showing a behind-the-camera competence he didn’t get to demo the first time around. Now, the film is more than a great idea.

The upgrade’s greatest asset? No longer are we stuck in a car with three annoying young people, one of whom existed solely to hold the camera. Panettiere and Williams share an instant likability, which helps Amber Alert get through the plot’s jankier choices. One of those is halting the momentum to prescribe a “why” for the childless Jaq going to such extremes, which is motivation we don’t need.

Call Amber Alert junk, but it’s well-made junk, like a made-for-cable movie that really, really tries. Asleep at the wheel, it is not. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Tenants (2024)

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Apartment life sounds like misery to me. After all, hell is other people. With “seven floors of terror,” Tenants takes this idea to heart. 

Its terrific credits sequence introduces us not only to the apartment building serving as the horror anthology’s setting, but a young woman (the appealing Mary O’Neil, 2023’s Malum) who emerges from a sac of goo in its parking garage. With no memory, she roams the halls, stairwells and other common areas in search of her sister; in doing so, encountering renters along the way, she threads the heptet of stories together. 

Most of them work, some even quite well. In the realm of body horror, a former child star (Christa Collins, Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman) attempts to get a gnarly rash under control while prepping for the audition of her life. On the darkly comedic side, the warring roommates played by Fayna Sanchez (OJ: The Musical) and Clarke Wolfe (Deathcember) yield as much of a ball as they do blood. 

My favorite, from Jonathan Louis Lewis (Black Devil Doll), crawls into creature-feature territory. It depicts a post-miscarriage woman (Tara Erickson, American Satan) finding quite the scary surprise while doing laundry.

In the middle of all these strange occurrences, Blake Reigle offers a welcome respite by unofficially adapting Eddie Murphy’s classic “Too bad we can’t stay!” bit from Delirious. Finally, O’Neil’s amnesiac wraparound earns a wrap-up in her efforts to evade a smoke monster and reach the top floor — more difficult to do when the building’s architect may have been M.C. Escher. 

Despite coming from four directors (including Sean Mesler and Psycho Storm Chaser’s Buz Wallick, both of whom wrote the screenplay with O’Neil, aka Mrs. Wallick), Tenants excels in visual and tonal consistency. This holds true even in the pair of segments that don’t properly pay off. It’s a lesson more low-budget horror anthologies — which number (too) many these days — would be wise to follow. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Lost in the Shuffle (2024)

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Now here’s a twist on the true crime genre: the solution to a 525-year-old murder mystery hidden in the art on a deck of cards. That’s what world-champ magician Shawn Farquhar believes, at least. In Lost in the Shuffle, documentarian Jon Ornoy follows Farquhar simultaneously investigating his theory and creating an elaborate card trick based on the crime. 

The cold case at hand (as it were) involves the suspicious death of France’s King Charles VIII, perhaps killed by his queen, Anne of Brittany. Farquhar’s quest takes him to Belgium, Britain and beyond, with the occasional and fully intentional tangent into magic theory. 

Ornoy and his globetrotting star almost magically transform deep-niche nerd shit into an engaging detective story, with wonderful animated segments subbing for reenactments. Although not as Da Vinci Code-y as initially set up, their symbol-conspiratorial Shuffle holds appeal to history geeks, homicide geeks, game geeks, travel geeks, sleight-of-hand geeks and even just process geeks.

To whichever group(s) among those you belong — and even if you find Farquhar’s ultimate assertion to be a mighty leap of assumption — you’ll probably fall into the movie’s net. —Rod Lott

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