Unlike the umpteen matinee-style pulp adventures whipped into production by Raiders of the Lost Ark’s runaway success, Jane and the Lost City had genuine pulp origins: as a newspaper comic. Norman Pett’s strip ran for more than 25 years in the UK’s Daily Mirror; Terry Marcel’s feature adaptation ran for, oh, 93 minutes on precious few theater screens.

Although built with a World War II plot, this cheeky British film’s first order of business is staying true to its source material: the accidental undressing of its plucky, pulchritudinous heroine, Jane (Kirsten Hughes). Half a dozen times in oft-ridiculous ways (one via capuchin monkey), Jane’s clothes are torn from her body, leaving her near-starkers, if not for the same pair of silk knickers and bra to match — somewhat remarkable for a PG-rated picture. It’s a childish sight gag and yet, goo-goo gaga. When I first saw it at age 16, I confess a lot of fast-forwarding involved.

On orders from Churchill (Richard Huggett, Slipstream), Jane accompanies a military colonel (Robin Bailey, Screamtime) and his derby-hatted servant (Graham Stark, Bloodbath at the House of Death) to beat the Nazis to locate the titular African jungle, riddled with diamonds and double entendres. Aiding them is toothy good guy Jungle Jack Buck (Flash Gordon himself, Sam J. Jones). Attempting to kill them are SS ballbuster Lola Pagola (Octopussy herself, Maud Adams) and her leopard beret-wearing henchman (comedian Jasper Carrott, The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball). Replete with Perils of Pauline energy, none of it is to be taken seriously.

Jane and the Lost City boasts the same production team as Hawk the Slayer, not that you’d notice. That 1980 fantasy is hardly gold, but it has action, whereas the frothy Jane is all reaction. Here, our heroes survive a plane crash, roaring rapids and an erupting volcano — just don’t expect to see any of that onscreen. Marcel appears to be working with a bottom line as thrifty as the threading of his leading lady’s dress. In that racy spirit, however, the sexy Hughes is her own special effect.

The mediocre New World Pictures affair is a study of contrasts: deliberately old-fashioned yet hopelessly out of touch; at once charmingly innocent and undeniably horny. You won’t love it, but you might not mind it. —Rod Lott

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Thanks to the People’s Republic of China, Kingkong Is Coming Back! And copyright lawyers are nowhere in sight! 

That’s right: Kingkong, one word, as if that qualifies as ethical and saves the keisters of all involved parties from the threat of litigation. Still, this so-called “giant” gorilla isn’t large enough to hold anyone in the palm of his hand. Imagine a primate the size of Harambe after going without Mounjaro shots for six months, including year-end holidays. Also, his face gives “durrrrrr.”

Story? I mean, I guess. A mineral exploration team in the mountains is ordered by their bald, bad benefactor to stop searching for mines and capture the ape. Or else their families will pay … in blood. (This movie should pay … in steep tariffs.)

You might predict ’kong (not Kong) will save our scientists. You will not predict the movie’s other freak of nature: a veritable Tarzan Boy raised in the wild. Clad in long hair and short loincloth, he moves and flies and flits and spins and scales like he’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Encino Man. The kid also punches and kicks CGI wolves that cast highly unnatural shadows. 

From Youku, China’s equivalent of The Asylum, Kingkong Is Coming Back is cheaper than cheaply made, with poorly layered effects that scream “rush job” (or “加急工作!” per the Google machine). Although sitting at 63 minutes, they are a punishing 63 minutes, capped by an anti-ending that’s written like a transition into an actual ending. Take the title’s passive voice as a sign of the action’s quality. —Rod Lott

Meet The Charisma Killers. Are they assassins by trade? They are.

Do they have cool names like Rope, Psycho and One-Hit Hustle? They do.

Is “Never have kids!” one of the group’s rules? It is.

Are they killers with charisma? Or killers of charisma? The jury’s still out!

Their de facto Professor X is an old man (Vernon Wells, The Road Warrior) who runs the team from his living room. Dying of brain cancer, he gives his seven charges one final assignment, worth $40 million: Kill the city’s incoming sleazeball police captain (Chris Moss, Sex Court: The Movie) at the forthcoming inauguration. Heck, while they’re at it, mow down anyone in attendance: “He who kills the most wins.”

Multihyphenate moviemaker Michael Matteo Rossi’s The Charisma Killers has too many killers. It doesn’t help that the only female members (Wild Things: Foursome’s Marnette Patterson and Dawn’s Jackie Moore), both blonde and leggy, look near-identical. Rather than move forward with what he spends 20 minutes establishing, Rossi (Misogynist) bides time by venturing off in several side stories, each as thin as the Twizzlers consumed by the meatheadiest of the group. Like a TV series pilot, we’re introduced to even more characters — like Kingpin vixen Vanessa Angel as the captain’s wife or Instagram eye candy Antje Utgaard in sexy swimwear — who have, at best, next to nothing to do.

Then we reach the home stretch: the new captain’s Big Public Event. Commendably delirious, this worth-the-watch sequence shows our professionals murderers making good on doing bad. We’re talking dozens of deaths, with more rounds whizzing through the air than at an explosion at the Pillsbury factory. A portion of these last 15 minutes provide a lot of rat-a-tat-tat after a lack of razzamatazz. —Rod Lott

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Several films and TV shows from the 1980s depicted punks as no-good scofflaws terrorizing God-fearing communities. From CHiPs to Police Academy 2 to Death Wish 3, these punks aren’t just misfits jaded at society — they are hardened criminals who will readily hold a switchblade to a helpless granny’s throat and rob her blind. However, venerable trash purveyors Troma may have taken evil punks to the most extreme end of the spectrum by casting them as surfing neo-Nazis in the 1987 exploitation classic Surf Nazis Must Die.

“Sometime in the future,” a massive earthquake ravages the California coast, leaving it vulnerable to roving gangs of surfers, including the Surf Nazis (they’re actually called this in the movie). Sources such as Wikipedia, IMDb and Letterboxd focus, by way of plot, on Eleanor “Mama” Washington (Gail Neely), a Black woman whose son is killed by the Surf Nazis in a hate crime; she breaks out of her retirement home to exact revenge.

While this is certainly the most concrete plot element the film has to offer, the bulk of Surf Nazis Must Die belongs to the punks themselves. We watch in a kind of voyeuristic way how they live — which entails roasting tiny pigs on the beach and lots of slow-mo surfing montages set to a pulsing synth score, not to mention the hate killings and general mockery of law and order. We even see that one of them, Smeg (Tom Shell), actually lives with his mom in the suburbs. In fact, that’s all these Nazis are, in the end: teenagers obsessed with the Third Reich.

Given all this attention devoted to the racist characters, one might assume the filmmakers — director Peter George and writer Jon Ayre — want us to sympathize with them and possibly even feel a little bad for them when, true to the film’s title, they get what’s coming to them. But no, in the end, they’re murderous scum Nazi punks, and we’re rooting for “Mama” to exact her vengeance. Those seeking a sober examination of neo-Nazism among California’s youth need look elsewhere. Surf Nazis Must Die embraces its exploitative nature completely, unashamed and uncaring if it offends.

And boy, does it offend. —Christopher Shultz

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Meth makers of America, c’mon: If you’re so paranoid that you’ve rigged your drug den with, say, a door tied to trigger a shotgun, maybe make sure the head it blows off doesn’t belong to the brother of a short-fused cop?

That’s advice from Flick Attack. First one’s free, kid.

Because if you don’t, here’s what happens: Trap House, motherfucker! Police detective Grant Pierce (Jaime M. Callica, 2021’s Hypnotic) is that cop — so fierce, he has the mystery of his dead sibling solved by minute 7. It’s the doing of the gas-masked man Lethan (Bruce Crawford, Alter), who cooks up crank in an abandoned slaughterhouse.

To dissuade authorities, thieves and basic lookie-loos, Lethan and his foxy partner (Gigi Saul Guerrero, V/H/S/85) have fashioned the place into a veritable Temple of Doom! Consider such booby-trapped built-in features as:
• a glue floor
• a room full of broken glass
• swinging cinder blocks
• spiked ceilings
• bear traps in the hallway
• mousetraps in the air ducts
• jets of scalding steam
• an invisible fence
• and more!

Aiding Pierce in his penetration of Lethan’s lair are a teenage dealer named Dibs (Peter Bundic, Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), a terrifying skinhead (a bonkers Michael Eklund, 2014’s Poker Night) and a couple other tweakers who exist for the sole purpose of allowing director Nicholas Humphries (2014’s Death Do Us Part) to demonstrate the aforementioned amenities.

Let’s not pretend that anyone watches Trap House for any other reason than to see the house do some trapping. It certainly was mine. (It sure wasn’t for crackerjack background dialogue like “Oh, man, I’m high.”) Blood and gore aside, it plays like series television, but for a testosterone-laced slice of Sawsploitation, one can do much worse.

Hell, for a “Tubi original,” one can do much, much worse. Humphries keeps this one watchable and, perhaps inadvertently, closed-captioning readable; as Pierce is pursued by addicts moving en masse like cannibal zombies, “[junkies grumbling]” appears as a subtitle — my new favorite subtitle, that is. —Rod Lott

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