All posts by Rod Lott

Action

Rage (1995)

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In a right-place/wrong-time scenario, family man and schoolteacher Alex Gainer gets kidnapped by an enigmatic tech company secretly developing a super-soldier serum. After injecting illegals in this clandestine experiment, the firm moves to perfect physical specimens like Gainer, seeing how he’s portrayed by British kickboxer and American straight-to-video action hero Gary Daniels.

Gainer has everything to lose, so when he’s framed as a cop killer, he’s willing to do anything to avoid capture and clear his name, like:
• steal an 18-wheeler to penetrate a police barricade
• then steal a school bus as a follow-up
• fight an S&M-practicing couple in their own kitchen
• scale a skyscraper while being shot at from a helicopter
• trust a TV journalist (Kenneth Tigar, Phantasm II) whose camerawoman (Jillian McWhirter, Strangeland) wears a vest that might be a Pizza Hut tablecloth

Rage isn’t content with stopping there. Perhaps out-Commandoing Commando, the climax’s all-out brawl takes place in a multilevel shopping mall with many, many plate-glass windows for Gainer and his pursuers to bust through — some in glorious slow motion. No freestanding table or merry-go-round in the place is spared, nor are the VHS shelves of the video rental store offering only PM Entertainment titles, like Zero Tolerance and C.I.A. Code Name: Alexa.

Naturally, Rage not only was built at the PM Entertainment action factory, but more than competently directed by PM co-founder Joseph Merhi. In its decade of pumping these scuffles-and-’splosions pics out for Friday-night Cinemax premieres, his production company caught flak as a purveyor of schlock, but that reputation wasn’t always warranted, with Rage serving as proof. Presumably, its price tag came in below seven figures, yet the movie doesn’t act like it; with actual scope and scale, Rage is barely discernible from lower-tier wide theatrical releases that year — I speak of Fair Game, Top Dog and The Hunted. The one glaring exception: the lack of a household name.

Not that Daniels didn’t try! Like many of his co-stars in The Expendables, where he played the antagonist, he may not have razor-sharp thespian skills, but he’s got something. In Rage, that’s apparent right away — not in a kablooey set piece, but in teaching second graders about monkeys, even if it takes a dark turn into Jeffrey Dahmer’s dietary choices. —Rod Lott

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Sex

The Golden Box (1970)

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Come spy with me, beckon Marsha Jordan and Ann Perry to curious viewers of The Golden Box, a secret-agent sexploitation caper from Her Odd Tastes director Don Davis. As a fan of Jordan, the Jayne Mansfield of ’60s softcore cinema, I was double-O ready for it.

In L.A., shortly after getting serviced while sitting on an all-gold toilet, the sideburnt musician Kirby (Forman Shane, College Girls Confidential) is shot dead by a mob enforcer. The murderer absconds with Kirby’s sheet music — actually an encoded record of the organization’s illegal wire transactions. In paragraphs of exposition he stays alive just long enough to blurt to the ladies before gurgling some ketchup, Kirby admits to skimming off the top of mob money.

With that, Diane and Donna (Jordan and Perry, respectively) embark on a mission to find Kirby’s killer, the silk-kerchiefed Slade (Jim Gentry, Hollywood Babylon). This endeavor takes them from Washington, D.C., to, um, Grand Rapids, Michigan, testing mattress-spring durability along the way. Scenes shot in the latter constitute Box’s most entertaining stretch (not involving the law of gravity), as our plump-chested pair tails Slade. At one point, to avoid being made, they duck into “one of those sexy adult movie theaters” showing none other than Jordan and Davis’ other 1970 collab, Marsha the Erotic Housewife! Amusingly taking the in-joke further, the box office gets a refund request.

Although its occasional change out of bedrooms and into the streets makes The Golden Box novel, it still isn’t remotely as fun as it sounds, not even with spinning interstitials à la TV’s Batman and the liberal spritz of a literal seltzer water bottle. Alas, this film marked Jordan and Davis’ fifth and final T&A team-up. Perhaps Jordan didn’t like sharing the spotlight with Perry (The Bellboy and the Playgirls)? Everything about Jordan is big — her hairdo, her personality, her line readings, her … well — so it’s not like she leaves much room onscreen for anyone or anything else. Her visual appeal aside, Box’s greatest asset is the score from Davis’ regular composers, Chet and Jim Moore; it’s as bouncy as its stars. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.

Thriller

Trauma Therapy: Psychosis (2023)

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Dubiously, Trauma Therapy: Psychosis bills itself as “the very final film for the late Tom Sizemore.” Yet at press time, IMDb shows he has 28 forthcoming titles in various stages of production, an alarming number of which co-star Bai Ling. But please don’t take any of that as a reason to watch this wretched sequel, easily one of 2023’s worst movies.

“Wait, sequel?” you say. I get it; I never heard of the original Trauma Therapy, either, but IMDb confirms its existence since 2019. Prior viewing is unnecessary, in part because Trauma Therapy: Psychosis appears to be templated: same scenario, different setting.

A few losers are chosen to attend an advanced-treatment retreat of The Vance Institute. It’s named for Tobin Vance, the world-leading self-help guru, so Zig Ziglar can go fuck himself. Many harboring unresolved Daddy/Mummy issues, the participants are yelled at by a scowling Vance (Tom Malloy, The Alphabet Killer) to face their fears in order to be the person they want to be. It’s basically like every episode of Oprah, if Oprah were a histrionic dude-bro in a hoodie.

The anti-Hippocratic challenges Vance puts his patients through involve hallucinogenic drugs and hungry leeches before escalating to being poisoned and forced to chase a rabbit with antidote-infused blood. If you haven’t already guessed, yes, Vance’s “therapy” methods play for keeps.

Trauma Therapy: Psychosis feels it exists because co-writers Malloy and David Josh Lawrence (who plays an undercover Vance Institute enforcer) caught Squid Game on Netflix and got really jelly: “We can afford half a dozen matching track suits, too, right?”

Flat, unoriginal and so listlessly paced it often appears actors are either waiting for their cues or counting to 10 between lines, Psychosis has some interesting imagery, but dreadful execution — perhaps the most botched since Mary, Queen of Scots. Speaking of bad head, in spliced-in interview segments, Sizemore’s talk-show host sports a Mohawk by way of Travis Bickle. You deserved better, Tom.

We all do. —Rod Lott

Documentary

We Kill for Love: The Lost World of the Erotic Thriller (2023)

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Danger, romance and seduction: the holy trinity of a now-extinct film subgenre that kept beautiful, busty women named Shannon employed for the better part of the 1990s. Besides the obvious visual attributes, what made those flicks tick? Where did they come from? More importantly, why did they disappear?

Filmmaker Anthony Penta answers all in his remarkable documentary, We Kill for Love: The Lost World of the Erotic Thriller, a penetrating deep dive into a VHS and Cinemax mainstay. From bioluminescence to tumescence, Zalman King to Jim Wynorksi, and Eyes belonging to the Bedroom and the Night, Penta explores wide terrain across an astounding number of movies, including Irresistible Impulse, Virtual Desire, Deadly Embrace and others with names seemingly spit out by the Tweed-O-Matic Instant Erotic Thriller Title Generator (see page 427 of Flick Attack Movie Arsenal: Book One). It’s anything but a surface-level look, surpassing what easily could have been a promotional puff piece.

In laying the foundation of the erotic thriller’s history, Penta’s main thrust draws a direct line from 1940s film noir to these sensibly financed suspensers of simulated sex. Don’t know why I never thought that before, but I’ll be damned if he isn’t right! The difference being I never wanted to see Barbara Stanwyck without clothes.

While it’s clear Penta loves these straight-to-video pictures, his perspective is hardly the only represented. In addition to heavy hitters like Kira Reed Lorsch and Athena Massey, we get a panoply of voices, resulting in filmmakers’ examinations, participants’ set reminiscences and academics’ feminist readings, both for and against. Clips abound as Penta and company discuss tropes you might have missed (overhead fans) and those impossible to escape your notice (“so many candles”). With Andrew Stevens, who deserves props for jump-starting the trend, and Monique Parent, who looks better than ever, among the storytellers, We Kill for Love continually fascinates. The research and grunt work behind its eight-year gestation period is all on the screen.

Personally, I found most erotic thrillers to be boring, but finding the occasional gem — say, Private Obsession, Animal Instincts and Body Chemistry — more than made up for the time spent getting dirty in the mines. We Kill for Love is never boring, and we’re talking about a cup that runneth over with 163 minutes. The documentary is so well-built and cut, viewers will be engaged for its entirety. Besides, it’s not the length that matters, right?

In the grand scheme that is film history, these movies were as fleeting as an orgasm. The big-budget icons like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct still enjoy life in our pop-culture conversation, yet the hundreds of sadly ephemeral imitators not constructed as star-studded blockbusters — your Sexual Roulette and your Turn of the Blade — are what Penta celebrates, because who else would? As Samantha Fox once sang, naughty girls need love, too. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Don’t Look Away (2023)

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Don’t knock Don’t Look Away for using what amounts to a life-size Ken doll — naked, but sans genitalia — as its lead bugaboo. Praise it for making that smart economical choice. Not only is a stationary villain cost-efficient, but incredibly effective. Scaring while not moving worked for that celebrated 2007 “Blink” episode of Doctor Who, and it continues to work for Annabelle, several sequels later.

Also, it’s the only horror movie I know of to rely on a Roomba to deliver a jump scare.

New Jersey law student Frankie (first-timer Kelly Bastard) and half a dozen of her closest friends are stalked and menaced — and some killed — by the eerie, nonverbal mannequin with a permagrin. “Like a Bloomingdale’s mannequin?” asks a cop. Or, as suggested by her platonic pal (Okja’s Michael Mitton), “one of those Reddit creepypasta things, like Slender Man.”

Yes and yes. All Frankie knows is that once you avert your gaze, the doll will kill you. (Hence the title.)

Its blind owner, who has peppermint gumballs for eyes, shows up to fill in the runaway mannequin’s backstory. As played by director Michael Bafaro (5G: The Reckoning), he explains between sips of joe, “I was having it shipped to my estate where I could bury it forever. Spare others from suffering the same tragic demise as my loved ones. I swore on their graves I would put an end to this. And by God, I will. Good coffee.”

Moving swiftly, unlike its evil automaton, this 110% oddball pic is great fun, reminiscent of bananas mid-’90s cable fare like Kevin S. Tenney’s Pinocchio’s Revenge, but with total paralysis. With Mitton as his co-scribe, Bafaro leans hard into their concept’s built-in absurdity. They’re no dummies; they knows their movie is going to elicit chuckles, but they’re also confident it will elicit the creeps, too. The acting lands as Don’t Look Away’s weakest link, as news of friends’ deaths are brushed away like laundry lint.

Naturally, the end hints at further slaughter ahead for the pantsless model. Barbie may have no current box-office equal, but this living doll poses a threat in body count. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.