In this film’s prologue, journalist Tom Nilson (Thomas Hunter, The Cassandra Crossing) sits at his desk to record an audio account of harrowing events he experienced in the past month, when a small passenger jet leaving Chile for Rio disappeared over the Amazon. Nilson teases that his story is “something extraordinary.” In reality, it’s a Jess Franco cheapie. And that’s not really a complaint.

Welcome to Utape Airlines X312 — Flight to Hell! One of the handful of passengers aboard is a big bank president (Siegfried Schürenberg, The College-Girl Murders) who’s fled his employer with millions in stolen jewels on his person — a fact not lost on the plane’s hijacker, inadvertently causing the craft to crash in the Brazilian jungle. On the ground, as the survivors attempt to make their way to safety, they’re chased by a band of revolutionaries led by Pedro, played by Franco regular Howard Vernon (Countess Perverse) in a visibly glued-on mustache that makes him look like Michael Shannon as a live-action Frito Bandito. And Utape employee Bill (Fernando Sancho, The Swamp of the Ravens) isn’t exactly making things easier on them, what with wanting the loot for himself and willing to murder to achieve that goal.

Characters are 100% recycled cardboard, with one defining characteristic — okay, maybe two, tops — to define them. They include a fey man (Antonio de Cabo, Franco’s Devil Hunter) with a tiny dog named Pepito, a grown Austrian woman (Gila von Weitershausen, Trenchcoat) forever clutching a teddy bear, a hot Spanish woman with built-in floatation devices (Esperanza Roy, It Happened at Nightmare Inn) and a rich American woman (Ewa Strömberg, Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos) who observes in broad daylight, “The moon is so romantic!” Earlier, right after X312’s rough landing, she says, “There have to be snakes and crocodiles, just like in the movies,” and dammit, she’s right!

From title and setup, X312 — Flight to Hell sounds as if a sweet little disaster film awaits your eyeballs, but let’s not kid ourselves. In such a confined space as the fuselage, Franco can’t engage in his goddamn zooms, so he gets this baby on the ground as soon as allows. That makes the movie fall into the category of jungle piffle. And, once more, that’s not really a complaint. —Rod Lott

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If the Fast and Furious movies are the cool jocks who get good grades and homecoming honors, then the Death Race films, Universal’s other gas-powered cash cow, are the near-invisible stoner kids who spend breaks between classes smoking outside. And this one, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, tries so little, he flunks woodshop.

In this fourth and fetid entry, the titular competition now takes place within the walls of The Sprawl, an 88,000-acre home to 220,000 hardened criminals. You do the math (because the target audience sure can’t). Metal-masked Frankenstein (Velislav Pavlov, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda) may be the prison sport’s reigning hero, but he’s no longer our main character — hell, he’s no longer the good guy, which seems pretty counterproductive, but whatev. That task falls to a not-up-to-it Zach McGowan (Dracula Untold) as Connor Gibson, a black-ops specialist sent undercover to take down Frankenstein and the race. This requires Connor to earn a contestant’s slot via a preliminary game of Capture the Keys, whose officials do not want “to see some MMA-submission bullshit.”

Fans of the previous Death Race pictures are bound to express disappointment with where director Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead) and co-writer Tony Giglio (S.W.A.T.: Under Siege) take their first turn at the direct-to-video franchise’s wheel: to something resembling fanfic, built upon the visual equivalent of STDs and self-pleasing dialogue like “Well, ain’t this a rainbow of fuckin’ ugly?” So skeevy and scuzzy is this “effort” that the returning character played by Danny Trejo (L.A. Slasher) appears to want little to do with it, spending most of his runtime literally watching the action from bed!

Early in, someone remarks that it doesn’t matter who’s behind Frankenstein’s mask, because duh, it’s a mask. However, Paul proves that theory untrue — Luke Goss, we hardly knew ye! — and not just because the mask looks positively Predatory this time around. The previous entries may be junk, but they are fun junk; this grimy, slimy one forgets and/or forgoes the fun. In its place? Decapitations, misogyny, face piercings, sub-Slipknot metal, Purge-level beatdowns, talk of taxes, more misogyny, dramatic rain fighting, Danny Glover, motocross, ziplining and some MMA-submission bullshit. —Rod Lott

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In today’s times, people aren’t exactly in the mood for a story about a vigilante with a penchant for gun violence, even if his targets really, really deserve it. Now, in the 1970s, absolutely, which is why the Charles Bronson-starring Death Wish clicked with audiences in 1974 and why the Bruce Willis-starring Death Wish of 2018 did not.

Career-upgraded from Bronson’s architect, Willis’ Paul Kersey is an emergency-room surgeon whose hands are utilized for saving lives, not taking them. That changes, as things are wont to do when a home invasion by a group of masked thugs shatters his picture-perfect suburban life, sending his college-bound daughter (newcomer Camila Morrone) into a coma and his loving wife (Elisabeth Shue, Piranha 3D) to the morgue.

Kersey’s switch from family man to grieving retaliator is rather abrupt and, as Willis plays him, near-indeterminable, as his joyless demeanor gives way to a joyless demeanor, but now with a hoodie. Because the film is directed by Eli Roth (The Green Inferno), Kersey’s kills do not stay as mere point-and-shoot affairs, but setups rather elaborate for its real-world grounding. While inching into Hostel territory, they seem to be two complexity notches too short for inclusion in a Final Destination sequel.

Paul Kersey was Bronson’s signature role, and still would be even if its many sequels did not exist; surgeon Paul Kersey will be a footnote in Willis’ eventual obit, even if a follow-up improbably comes to fruition, partly because he’s barely trying beyond showing up. (Compare that to The Magnificent Seven’s Vincent D’Onofrio, who, in a thankless and underwritten role as Kersey’s brother, clearly is chomping at the bit for a Real Part.) Yet that is not to say the remake is a bad film — just a remarkably average one. The disowned screenplay by Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces) offers no main villain, which makes the climax feel like none at all. Similarly, potential for satire is squandered when a subplot about a guns-and-ammo superstore is dropped as soon as it’s introduced.

As a result, the new Death Wish has none of the original’s power — just its “pow.” For that not-so-peaceful, uneasy feeling, your better bet is another picture also based on a Brian Garfield novel — just not the same one: the 2007 Kevin Bacon vehicle Death Sentence, from The Conjuring conjurer James Wan. —Rod Lott

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Prophetically titled, Half Past Dead was Steven Seagal’s last theatrical hurrah as an action hero. Either as a sign of desperation or as a self-deluded desire of demonstrating range, the former tuffie agreed to wear a ’do rag and play a Russian, yet eschewed any attempt at an accent. Leave that shit to Meryl, right?

Seagal’s Sasha Petrosevitch works undercover for the FBI. As the film opens, Sasha is introduced to a crime syndicate boss named Eckvall (but it sounded like “Eggfart”), helps take down an arrogant criminal (arrogant rapper Ja Rule, 2001’s The Fast and the Furious), almost dies for it (hence the title) and dons prison garb at New Alcatraz.

While Sasha is in the clinker, a bald bad guy (Bruce Weitz, Deep Impact) is scheduled to be executed for stealing $200 million in government gold bars, and the Supreme Court justice (Linda Thorson, Curtains) who helped put him away is there to witness. So naturally, a gang of would-be thieves drops in via helicopter and takes the justice hostage until the death-row inmate reveals where he’s hidden that loot.

The treasure hunters’ leaders are played by Morris Chestnut (2015’s Heist) and Nia Peeples (Werewolf: The Beast Among Us), who looks like she’s wearing the prototype for Sears’ Underworld collection and moves as if she were Michael Myers from Halloween.

This all results in an action free-for-all. Martial arts! Pornographic gunplay! Acrobatic swinging from chains! Guards thrown through glass! Story be damned! Written and directed by former actor Don Michael Paul (Rolling Vengeance), Half Past Dead seems interested only in being so slick that one could cook pancakes on it and not have them stick. Such an approach is admittedly entertaining, even when it’s absolutely absurd. —Rod Lott

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Traveling rodeo star Jeff Logan (Ross Hagen, Avenging Angel) has just lassoed a different kind of filly: a purty new wife! Her name is Connie (Sherry Jackson, Gunn), and the couple is still in the RV-rockin’ honeymoon phase when a lithesome figure from Jeff’s past pops up.

It’s his ex-girlfriend, Shayne, for whom he was not crying to come back. With perfectly coiffed blonde hair unbecoming of a Honda hellcat, not to mention belies a nail-tough demeanor, Shayne (Diane McBain, Wicked, Wicked) is the leader of the she-devils on wheels who call themselves The Mini-Skirt Mob.

Still harboring quite the lady boner for an nonreciprocal Jeff, who left any bad-boy longings in the dust, Shayne won’t let the two lovebirds alone. In fact, with an assist from Lon (Jeremy Slate, The Centerfold Girls), she’s rarin’ to split them asunder. Why, if she can’t have him, no one will — except the Grim Reaper!

I can’t speak for you, reader, but having two beautiful women fight over you? To the death? I can relate.

Shot in the arid Arizona desert by House of the Damned’s Maury Dexter, The Mini-Skirt Mob is one of the more toothless biker pics to emerge from the era when they actually were in vogue. Despite a significant plot point’s commonality with Lee Frost’s comparatively ballsy Chrome and Hot Leather (they also share space on the official DVD), the AIP offering feels like adults playing pretend — not that there’s really anything wrong with that when you’re revisiting the bones of a long-expired genre. McBain’s villain is presented more as someone to be jeered, rather than feared, as if a catfight is bound to break out at some point. And it does.

The most interesting element to The Mini-Skirt Mob is in its casting of two supporting characters, giving The Bad Seed child star Patty McCormack a grown-girl part as Shayne’s sassy sister, and future Repo Man Harry Dean Stanton an early film role as bad boy Spook, perpetual drunk and dangler of bikini tops. —Rod Lott

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