All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

2001 Maniacs (2005)

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Writer/director Tim Sullivan knows exactly what he’s doing with 2001 Maniacs: You need only wait maybe two minutes past the opening credits to get nudity, then 10 more for the plot to be fully established. A remake of H.G. Lewis’ infamous, influential Two Thousand Maniacs! of 1964, it unexpectedly plants you on the side opposite of the “heroes.” In other words, you can’t wait to see these assholes get killed.

Said assholes are frat boys on spring break; they’re the kind of guys who see and refer to women only as “pussy.” On their way to Daytona Beach, they and a few other students stupidly follow a homemade detour sign and end up at the ironically named Pleasant Valley, a small town ready to kick off its annual Guts N’ Glory Jubilee. Mayor Buckman (Robert Englund), he of the Confederate-flag eyepatch, insists they stay as the guests of honor.

That’s because, of course, they’re to be the main course of the barbecue for this cannibal clan. Via Buckman’s bevy of busty beauties, the boys succumb to their comely charms, only to end up on the business end of machines of torture. This allows Sullivan to go whole-hog in updating Lewis’ brand of Southern-fried splatter for the gorno generation.

But it’s not without a strong sense of humor, mostly effective, in the same vein as Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever (Roth serves as producer and provides a cameo), and some of it even qualifying as sharp satire on racial and regional stereotypes. If you have an open mind and don’t mind the mess, you’re apt to find 2001 Maniacs mighty tasty — perhaps even finger-lickin’ good. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Lola (1970)

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Isn’t statutory rape hilarious? No? Agreed. Tell that to Lola, an odd collaboration between director Richard Donner and star Charles Bronson, but this ain’t no action movie.

Instead, the comedy depicts a May-December romance between cusp-of-40 porno-novel writer Scott (Bronson) and 16-year-old Lola (Susan George). They meet in swingin’ London, where she lives with her parents, then get hitched to avoid him getting thrown in the pokey for poking an underage girl, and move back to his stomping grounds in New York City. There, he gets tossed in jail, anyway, but for a throwing punches at a protest.

Although they both proclaim to love one another deeply, their time apart is the beginning of the end. And good for him, because no sex would be worth being hitched to someone as brick-stupid as Lola. As Jim Dale’s theme song goes, she’s “pretty crazy, dizzy as a daisy,” with a squeaky voice that makes Teresa Ganzel seem like a Rhodes Scholar by comparison. “Darling, what’s a Puerto Rican?” asks Lola, who literally can’t remember how to look before crossing the street.

Helmed with that awfully dated, hippy-dippy, “now generation” feel, where skipped frames and slow-motion scenes equate to punchlines, Lola falls flat. Its original title was Twinky, changed for American distribution to avoid confusion with the tasty sponge cakes, I’m guessing, or to remind moviegoers of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita. It should be so lucky. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Pathology (2008)

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There’s not a single likable character in Marc Schölermann’s Pathology. Not a one! Ostensibly, the lead character of med student Ted Grey should be, but they cast Milo Ventimiglia. Oops! His brand of acting — squinting, really — only worked for him in TV’s Heroes, and nowhere else.

Ted’s new to the bestest pathology tract in the country, where his fellow students are all like, “to hell with the Hippocratic Oath — let’s fuck around and play some reindeer games with these here corpses, aight?” Their unofficial leader, Jake (Michael Weston), introduces Ted to the game they play after hours: autopsy! See, they kill random people and bring them in to see who can guess how they offed them. When did Quarters go out of style?

But, wait, there’s more! They also engage in group activities like smoking crack and having sex on the slabs. Why? The only good reason I can think of is because this was written by the reigning kings of over-the-top cinema, Neveldine/Taylor, who wrote and directed the Crank films and Gamer; it’s too bad they didn’t direct this one, too, because it could stand to be more outlandish. Redeeming quality: Ol’ Dr. Giggles himself, Larry Drake, pops up as a fat bastard credited as Fat Bastard.

It’s a mess — and not just because of all the bodies being cut open — but I get what Ventimiglia saw in the project: free feels. In the first scene, his hand slips underneath fiancée Alyssa Milano’s shirt and works itself all over her left boob; later, he’s all over the bared breasts of Lauren Lee Smith. It’s a living. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Medallion (2003)

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Hollywood has little clue what to do with Jackie Chan. Their ideas boil down to: a) pair him with a wacky black guy, and b) surround him with special effects. The first one works; the second one never will. There’s no point in hiring the world’s most renowned kung-fu acrobatic clown and dressing him up with lots of wires and CGI; if you’re going to do that, you might as well get, say, Tim Kazurinsky.

In the FX-laden crapfest The Medallion, Chan is a Hong Kong security specialist named Eddie, working with American Interpol agents to track down Julian Sands, obsessed with getting this medallion from a mystical Asian boy. It ends up in Chan’s nimble hands, but he gets killed in the process, but yet is revived by its supernatural powers. So now he can jump real high and fly like Superman. It’s lazy and uninspired, not to mention inane and embarrassing, like the montage of him dancing to “Twist and Shout.”

Normally, bad Chan scripts can be made bearable by the ad-libbing of a crazy partner. But Lee Evans is no Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson. As a most unlikely love interest is Claire Forlani, so bad you’ll be praying for the relative grace and panache of The Tuxedo’s Jennifer Love Hewitt. Not even the outtakes that play during the end credits are any good, although it is worth noting that it contains the third instance of Chan being interrupted by a cell phone (first spotted in the bloopers for Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights).

But that’s about all worth noting for this film, Chan’s absolute worst since breaking through on these shores in ’96. Even as a big Chan fan, I can safely say to avoid The Medallion at all costs. —Rod Lott

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