All collagen and silicone, Carmen Electra got her first lead role thanks to The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven. A superhero film before such a thing was in vogue, it merges The Crow, Deliverance and anything ever shot in that sketchy wooded area by every neighborhood. She plays McKenna, a vengeful hussy selected to carry on the longstanding tradition of a Native American tribe. Or something like that.

It begins with her sister, Emma (Shauna Sand, former Playboy Playmate and former human), pursued by the local womanizing redneck (Michael Stadvec, The Dentist) in a town full of womanizing rednecks. He kills her to get his grubby hands on her necklace, which grants the wearer mystical tribal powers, but before expiring, she hides it under a couple of leaves. Why she didn’t use the jewelry’s functionality to escape harm, we’re not supposed to ask.

Upon hearing the news of Emma’s death, McKenna moves back home. Her old flame, Henry (Tim Bagley, The Mask), is now sheriff. He’s shacking up in a mobile home with Nora (Debra Xavier, American Vampire), who may as well be named Whora. Henry ditches her for McKenna faster than a budget divorce, naturally driving Nora to take up meth.

Meanwhile, McKenna sees visions of Natives in her bedroom, beckoning her to become “the chosen one.” (Are Carmen and the devil walkin’ side by side?) Putting in repeat visits is the spirit of Emma, whose vocal delivery leads viewers to believe director Lawrence Lanoff (Playboy: Babes of Baywatch) instructed Sand, “Hey, do your Kathy Ireland.”

So that Legend of the Raven can last longer than 30 minutes, McKenna gives in to the ghosts and wears the necklace, thus imbuing her with aforementioned mystical tribal powers. Suddenly, she’s excitedly licking her dinner plate and dry-humping the air around her. Soon, she and Henry have music-video montage lovin’. When they go at it again, it’s with a half-gallon of milk, which made me want to swear off the moo juice.

An hour into this opus, McKenna finally dons a costume as Indigenous superhero The Raven — which is to say she wears a skin-tight silver spandex onesie, complemented with spiked and steel accessories. Inversely, Nora resurfaces as an out-and-out comic-book villainess in black leather and a yard-sale Lone Ranger mask. They have a poorly choreographed fight to the overacted finish.

Continuity is absent from The Chosen One, as is a logical script. I didn’t even get to mention the subplot about the Route 33 serial killer (Lanoff himself). And check out the cutaway of birds in flight … as one poops. This is the rare movie that dares to play the line “How ’bout a knuckle sandwich?” entirely straight.

At the end, McKenna and Henry agree to eat a cow. The whole experience is best summed up by exclaiming, “Crazy. Froot Loopin’ crazy!” — a line cribbed from the Decampitated trailer preceding this Raven. Nevermore. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In a cargo ship leaving the Philippines for Busan, Korean detectives chaperone a boatload of extradited criminals. And, unknowingly, one desecrated corpse of a science-abetted super soldier with his eyes stapled shut. God forbid some rogue agent gets the not-so-bright idea to reanimate that thing!

The vehicle-bound prisoners have distinct personalities, like in Con Air. They take over the boat and hold people hostage, like in Under Siege. Someone does resurrect that Frankensteinian beast built to be virtually indestructible, like Wolverine in X-Men Origins. It even hunts its human prey in thermal vision — in color! — like Predator.

Despite these blockbuster similarities and influences, the magic of Project Wolf Hunting is how fresh it feels. In high concept and shiny sheen, it suggests a graphic novel adapted to live-action perfection; as puny prisoners are punched across long distances, you can imagine the edges of comic-book panels being burst to convey such brutal force. Yet the South Korean film’s source material is the brain of its writer and director, Kim Hongsun (2014’s The Con Artists.)

Train to Busan’s Choi Gwi-hwa may not look menacing in real life, but as Alpha, the awakened military experiment, he’s a hulking machine of intimidation. One swing of his arm can — and does — amputate another’s. He pummels through people as if their bodies were Baggies. Folks, this movie is violent. It might even spill more blood than Sam Raimi’s first two Evil Dead chapters combined. In not holding back, Hongsun delivers audience-pleasing, sphincter-clenching action on a grand scale. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

If Christopher Bickel’s Bad Girls fails to hook you in its first five minutes, here’s a list of things you must despise seeing in movies: attractive women in their underwear, attractive women out of their underwear, violent strip club robberies, car chases, car crashes, coke trips, acid trips, violent convenience store robberies, violent bar fights and violent deer collisions.

After murdering their instantly former employer and taking “a shitload of money and drugs,” three exotic dancers make a run for the Mexico border: the blonde Carolyn (Shelby Lois Guinn), the Black Mitzi Anne (Sanethia Dresch) and brunette leader Val (Morgan Shaley Renew), she of the double-height eyebrows. As one citizen tells the TV news, “They’re just like Bonnie and Clyde, but they’re all Bonnie and there’s three of ’em!”

With Bah-stun accents, bad puns and broken beer bottles galore, the ladies go from one brutal encounter to another. No male is spared, at least of humiliation, from a blue-balled frat boy to a white supremacist running a 24-hour donut and ammo shop. Stops are made for shows by bands like Christmas Tits and Poltergasm, if only to kidnap their members. The movie is one long chase, with two federal agents (Dove Dupree and Mike Amason) on their tails. “We’re gonna find ’em, fuck ’em, fry ’em and forget ’em!” vows the nasal spray-addicted agent to his partner. “Figuratively!”

Obviously influenced by Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bickel (The Theta Girl) moves his sophomore film at a jet-propulsion pace, rarely slowing to take a breath. Although stocked with music I wouldn’t listen to, the soundtrack matches the girls’ spring-loaded antics by going into Dexedrine-aggro mode, as does Bickle’s Natural Born Killers-styled editing of excess and overlays. The overall energy he conjures help mitigate deficiencies in a repetitive story and the purposely campy performances. It’s a ride, for sure, and one that dares to kill its babies. Not figuratively! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In ’60s cinema, Italian superhero movies were 2 lire a dozen. However, only one is from the guy who would give cinema a naked Amazonian girl impaled anus-to-mouth on a spiked pole. Working under the Americanized moniker Roger Rockefeller, future Cannibal Holocaust chaos agent Ruggero Deodato wrote and directed Fenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen early in his career.

Mauro Parenti (Justine de Sade) stars as Guy Norton, bearded count by day, Parisian superhero by, well, day. Norton exhibits primo sartorial choices that go out the window when costumed as his crimefighting alter ego. As Fenomenal (Italian for “phenomenal,” if you haven’t guessed), he’s dressed all in black, save for his hands and belt buckle; capping the outfit are sensible shoes on his fleet feet and pantyhose over his head. Super powers are nil, but he can legibly write his name inside a briefcase to trick a thieving bandit.

Fresh from foiling a heroin ring at sea, Fenomenal is tasked with hunting for an ancient relic, the whereabouts of which are hidden in hieroglyphics on the mask of ol’ King Tut, currently on exhibition. Villainous Gregory Falco (Gordon Mitchell, White Fire) wants his hands on it. A woman named Mike (Enter the Devil’s Lucretia Love, Parenti’s soon-to-be spouse) wants her hands on Norton; she introduces herself as being the daughter of “the canned meat king.”

Because Bruno Nicolai’s score is seasoned with jaunty “ba-da-bah-bah-bah” ziggalybops, none of Treasure of Tutankamen is to be taken seriously — good to know since logic is negligible. People get double-crossed; take the pic’s word for it when you’re told. A Eurospy staple, fun is had with all kinds of transportation — cars, speedboats, yachts, helicopters, wheelchairs — but the best scene is something right out of the Matt Helm pictures: Fenomenal fights a fez-wearing goon in a ladies’ sauna. As towel-torsoed women run and scream, Feno dodges thrown chairs and punches.

Phenomenal? Hardly. But it’s passable, as long as you know it’s no second coming of Danger: Diabolik. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mexico’s favorite son, the masked wrestler Santo (Santo), heads to Spain to compete in the world championship. Thanks to Interpol meddling, he’s forced to side-hustle as a secret agent to thwart the fine-art forgeries of Dr. Robert Mann (George Rigaud, Horror Express). Because Santo vs. Doctor Bob would make a terrible title, the Mexploitation film is called Santo vs. Doctor Death.

Assisting Santo is plainclothes Interpol Agent 9004, but you can call him Paul (Carlos Romero Marchent, Cut-Throats Nine). Soon, they learn Dr. Mann has more going on than copying precious masterworks; he’s also killing off precious models after he’s done growing tumors in their hot bods. (I promise that makes sense in context.)

This may be heresy to others’ eyes and ears, but I found Santo vs. Doctor Death to be in peak condition when it’s not wasting time in the wrestling ring, whereas seeing Santo slam a chair into an enemy’s face elicits a primal thrill. That’s because director and co-writer Rafael Romero Marchent (Sartana Kills Them All) keeps the 007-esque adventure zippy. In a standout scene, Santo and a henchman spar amid public urinals — more than four decades before Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill did so in Mission: Impossible — Fallout.

From unsolicited surgeries and acid baths to threats with a jar of scorpions, the proceedings play like expert pulp. Best representing that dime-mag aesthetic is a sequence in the booby-trapped bowels of Dr. Mann’s castle. It’s honestly a shame Doctor Death remains Rafael’s only Santo movie. Certainly, other opportunities existed, with this being one of eight Santo pics in ’73 alone. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.