You can’t miss Treat Williams in Night of the Sharks. He’s the one wearing minimally buttoned Hawaiian shirts and a baseball cap emblazoned with a big, red “S” — which, it goes without saying, stands for “Shit, what did my agent get me into?” (Oh, just an Italian B movie to keep your tummy full before your mid-1990s comeback, Treat.)

Williams’ fisherman character, David Ziegler, lives the hammock-and-shack life on the Caribbean shore, complete with a bolo-wearing sidekick (Foxy Brown’s brother, Antonio Fargas). The plot ostensibly concerns Ziegler fighting for his life when his dumb brother sends him a CD encoded with all the secrets of a criminal overlord (John Steiner, Caligula) that many a goon will kill to keep. But director Tonino Ricci is no dummy (despite Thor the Conqueror’s evidence to the contrary); ergo, his movie is titled Night of the Sharks, not Disc of Incriminating Data.

Sharks do appear, although mostly in sunlight. In fact, a particular shark pesters Ziegler daily, not unlike an unchained Doberman on a USPS mail carrier’s route. It swims in shallow water around Ziegler’s boat; Ziegler shouts it’s a “son of a bitch”; the shark shouts back. From shot to shot and scene to scene, however, its fin changes shape. In close-up, it’s toothless. Not that you’ll mind.

Perhaps sensing Dead Heat was going to tank, Williams gobbled up an easy paycheck in semi-paradise, whether you consider that to be the Dominican Republic or in bed with Janet Agren (City of the Living Dead) as his still-hot-to-trot ex-wife. (It’s certainly not listening to the cancer-ravaged voice of Christopher Connelly, playing a priest in his final role.)

Sharksploitation pics often don’t climax in an all-out jungle war, but that just makes this junk that much more fun. They also often don’t contain genuine star wattage like Williams, who, ever the professional, appears to have taken this as seriously as his 1970s’ lead roles. Yes, even when he’s arguing with a shark — which, it goes without saying, ain’t the stuff of Sidney Lumet. —Rod Lott

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Of the many Smokey and the [Insert Noun Here] movies that followed Burt Reynolds’ Bandit box-office bonanza, Smokey & the Judge is arguably the most obscure. Oddly, it’s the only one that stars a music group with a Billboard hit: Hot, the R&B trio of Gwen Owens, Cathy Carson and Juanita Curiel.

Yeah, I hadn’t heard of them, either.

At any rate, their one and only movie (aka Makin’ It, Runnin’ Hot and Strong Together) follows the three ladies of Hot as they pursue chart stardom. Margo (Owens) and Carol (Carson) just have to get out of prison first. While behind bars, Carol responds to a computer dating ad by giving answers like “peanut butter underwear.” This matches her with Morris Levy (Darrow Igus, John Carpenter’s The Fog), who happens to be a talent manager and promises them an L.A. recording contract.

Once they’re out and joined by Carol’s pal Maria (Curiel), Morris books them into a dumpy bar where a construction worker in a hard hat brings his beer-drinking pet snake. With great voices to make up for no personalities, the girls are a hit with the crowd! If only they can keep from running afoul of the redneck sheriff (Gene Price), the corpulent judge (Joe Marmo, American Drive-In), their bitchy parole officer (A’leshia Brevard, TV’s Legend of the Superheroes) and other miscreants, they may just make it after all.

So much for story! The running time is padded with half a dozen more-than-competent song performances, plus weak car chases, a Volkswagen Bus explosion, a biplane explosion, non-exploding motorcycles, gas siphoning, dog pissing, hot pants wearing, Harper Valley P.T.A.-ready sex pranks and one aggressive act of pouring ketchup down the crotch of Hack-O-Lantern’s repellent Hy Pyke.

Just as Hot was a one-hit wonder (“Angel in Your Arms”), Smokey & the Judge is Dan Seeger’s only movie as director. Having edited Al Adamson’s Death Dimension, he’s as terrible behind the camera as you’d think. Although some of the jail scenes are shot in a genuine clinker, others clearly were done in an apartment, complete with a “NO TOUCHING” sign Sharpie’d by hand. None of this amounts to a recommendation, not even for nondiscerning hicksploitation fans. —Rod Lott

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So laid-back and limey that I can understand why all Americans hated it, The Avengers adaptation is simply misunderstood. It’s a decent movie as long as you know what to expect: the most British movie ever made by an American studio. Then again, the iconic 1960s TV series never went over all that well here, either, so I don’t know why the film’s reception would be any different.

Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman — he of the bowler hat, she of the catsuit — star as secret agents John Steed and Emma Peel. Prim, proper and pernicious, they join forces to take down Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery), maniacal designer of contraptions to control the world’s weather for handsome profits. While the UK sees torrential rainfall and mammoth tornadoes, our Avengers take time out for tea and macaroons.

De Wynter has a Peel clone on his side, as well as a group of thugs encased in teddy bear costumes every color of the rainbow. As absurd as this is, it has nothing on an attack by robotic killer beecopters or the brief (non)appearance of original Steed Patrick Macnee, now cameoing as the agency’s invisible archivist.

Although it doesn’t play as well as it thinks it does, The Avengers is still worthy entertainment. At a scant 90 minutes, it asks little of you to invest. Sadly, a lot of what director Jeremiah Chechik (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) shot — the most curvaceous scenes of Uma in that sexy suit included — hit the cutting-room floor. I’d like to think someday this will thrive as a cult item, but for now, it remains pegged as a creative catastrophe on the level of 1997’s Batman & Robin — a comparison most unfair. —Rod Lott

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Finnish director Jalmari Helander already has one modern cult classic under his belt with 2010’s twisted Christmas fantasy Rare Exports. He has another at the ready in Sisu.

As a title crawl explains, practically doubling as a synopsis, the word “sisu” means white-knuckled courage that comes forth only when all hope is lost. In 1944 Finland, a battle-scarred soldier (Helander regular Jorma Tommila, Big Game) deserts the war (WWII, you may have heard of it) and wanders the sprawling vistas of the wild with his trusty dog.

Lucking into a life-changing cache of gold, he needs all the sisu he can muster, which is a lot, when tanks and trucks of Nazis cross his path. (Understandably in today’s topsy-turvy world, it’s not enough for them to be Nazis; Helander makes them child-raping Nazis.) Led by an SS officer with the appropriate name of Helldorf (Aksel Hennie, The Martian), they’re rendered surface-level despicable — more characterization than they deserve.

From there, Sisu is one set piece after another, with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of bloody action. Painted with strokes as mythic as The Man with No Name, Mad Max and Rambo, our rumored-immortal hero exacts justice that’s swift, brutal and cathartic, whether navigating minefields or hanging on an ascendant plane via pickax; not for nothing was he known as a “one-man death squad” while under conscription. Helander knows just how to handle him: as a movie icon in the making, even if his exploits are one or two reels too long in the knocked-out tooth. —Rod Lott

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A rep-tarnished attorney in between at-law jobs, Ares gigging as a delivery driver. His shift’s last drop-off takes him to an address bearing the number 13, so you know something’s not on the up and up. He’s knocked out and awakes with timed C-4 explosives strapped to his chest.

Via earpiece, a Jigsaw-modulated voice gives Ares (Apostolis Totsikas) a series of missions to keep the device from detonating. The fun of Short Fuse is seeing the obstacles he’s thrown at — and in between — each step, from cops and gangsters to mines and even a booby-trapped exercise bike.

Co-directed by Andreas Lampropoulos and Kostas Skiftas, the film plays like Greece’s version of David R. Ellis’ 2004 breakneck thriller, Cellular. Totsikas even seems cast from the early-career Chris Evans hothead mold. No kidnapped Kim Basinger exists here, but Evgenia Dimitropoulou (The Two Faces of January) fills the distressed-damsel role with and more active participation.

With chases by wheel and by foot, gunfights galore and, yes, explosions aplenty, Short Fuse is less a white-knuckle experience, more a pleasant discovery. It may not knock your socks off, but your toes won’t get cold. —Rod Lott

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