After you’ve made the best and worst Bruce Lee movies — Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, for the record — where is there left to go? One failed Jackie Chan flick later, director Robert Clouse did the math, and the result was Force: Five.

The Rev. Rhee (Bong Soo Han, The Kentucky Fried Movie) runs an island cult full of trust-fund babies and silver spooners who sign over their inheritances. After a hired assassin fails to kill him, a wheelchair-bound U.S. senator approaches poufy-haired tuffie Martin (kickboxer Joe Lewis) to rescue his daughter (Amanda Wyss, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Tina) from Rhee and his 50 guards. Martin says he can do the task with the help of five … Force: Five!

They include poncho-clad Billy Ortega (kickboxer Benny Urquidez); big, black cyclist Lockjaw (Sonny Barnes, Gymkata); Aussie pool hustler Ezekiel (The Octagon’s Richard Norton, here looking like Hulk Hogan dressing as Matthew McConaughey’s Dazed and Confused character for Halloween); and Laurie (Pam Huntington), the one with the tits, all the better to distract evil minions. Each is introduced with his own fight scene, karate-kicking an entire group of thugs, except for Laurie, who appears in an open silk robe. For Clouse, this counts as character development.

After busting ace chopper pilot Willard (Ron Hayden) out of prison to join the covert mission — wait, wait, wouldn’t that make this Force: Six? — the team infiltrates the Rhee compound — home to an underground maze complete with live bull! — and proceeds to beat the living shit out of everybody. One guy gets it with a saw blade, prompting Ezekiel to quip, “Thank God for Black & Decker!”

This is not as much fun as it sounds. I actually got bored with all the punching and Wilhelm screams. Ultimately, it’s too Clouse for comfort. —Rod Lott

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I don’t know whether Hobo with a Shotgun qualifies as an homage, a genuine grindhouse masterpiece or just the goriest, most degenerate Canadian film to ever play in decent theatres. But once you see it, you won’t forget it. And I wouldn’t want to; this tale of a homeless man pushed too far is worth it just for the line, “I’m gonna cut welfare checks outta your skin.”

An expansion of a fake trailer entered in a contest for the enjoyably unhinged Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez pair-up Grindhouse, Hobo operates on a budget that wouldn’t have paid for Kurt Russell’s pomade. Using most of its cash on an actual actor, Rutger fuckin’ Hauer, the movie apparently spent the rest on blood and entrails. There isn’t one area on the human body that isn’t brutalized in Hobo’s 86 minutes; there isn’t one obscenity in the English language unmuttered; there isn’t one depravity unseen.

But you also get a surprising amount of flair. Director Jason Eisener is a real talent, using a grittily gorgeous color palette that recalls giallo at its most vivid, and if his script is intentionally silly, it also has a sly wit (at one point, a newspaper headline reads, “Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change”). While the movie is constantly cranked to 11, Eisener takes everything to another level altogether with The Plague, a pair of armor-clad hit men who may or may not have killed Jesus Christ (if a freeze-frame of their lair is any indication).

Finally, we have Hauer, a pro relishing every moment and owing the screen. It’s his show, and he is glorious. His impassioned speech on the troubles of life, given to a hospital-room filled with newborn babies who get more and more terrified as his rant continues, is some sort of classic. —Corey Redekop

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Here’s how much of a true musketeer movie Ring of the Musketeers is: More than once in the end credits, it misspells the word as “muskateer.” But I’d expect nothing less from a feature film that appears to be a TV pilot with the next two episodes tacked on. Furthermore, it stars a mulleted and mustachioed David Hasselhoff as one of the Three Musketeers, but in modern-day Los Angeles.

The Hoff is D’Artagnan, who’s so serious about the freelance swashbucklin’ gig that he lives in a castle and eats chickens whole, with no utensils. Alison Doody (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is Athos, aka sultry-voiced radio host Dr. Love. Frilly-haired German Thomas Gottschalk (Think Big) is Porthos, who wears a Team Mickey sweatshirt and can dunk his head in a fish tank for the count of 100. The trio rides tandem on Harleys and takes orders from antique store owner Treville (John Rhys-Davies).

Then there’s Burt Aramis (Cheech Marin), the stereotypical Mexican thief who fences VCRs and jewelry, and ends conversations with the baffling “It’s been a slice!” When he steals the fabled titular item that’s passed down from generation to generation, he has no choice but to join them in their adventures, which include saving a kidnapped 9-year-old boy whose captors feed him dog food on white bread. Two other missions come their way, including one with Corbin Bernsen acting coked-out, which strengthen our “failed TV series” theory.

Directed by Pee-wee’s Playhouse resident Jambi, John Paragon, who co-wrote with 24 creator Joel Surnow, Ring of the Musketeers is a bad idea from the start that gets worse with each aching minute. It would be even without the scene in which the Hoff gives an impromptu one-man synth concert on a trailer in an alleyway when he should be stopping a commercial airline flight from crashing, then backflips his way into a kicking tussle. Priorities. —Rod Lott

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Lord of the Flies meets Battle of the Network Stars in Terminal Island. The title refers to an isle 40 miles off the coast, where convicted murderers are shipped to fend for themselves ’til death. There are neither walls, nor guards, but escape is impossible. Guess it’s also like Escape from L.A., but instead of Snake Plissken, you get snakes — all in the figurative sense.

New to the prison plot is Carmen (Airport stewardess Ena Hartman, this flick’s de facto Pam Grier). She first meets a junkie doctor (pre-Magnum Tom Selleck), then the 39ish other inmates, including Magnum partner Roger E. Mosley, Lost in Space refugee Marta Kristen and Vega$ showgirl Phyllis Davis. The few women are forced to “entertain” several of the men each night, per the orders of psychotic, self-appointed leader Bobby (Sean Kenney, The Corpse Grinders).

Turns out there’s another gang on the island, led by Don Marshall (TV’s Land of the Giants) and comprised of the “good” bad guys (except for the guy who tries to rape Phyllis, who retaliates by rubbing honey on his penis around a hive of bees). They plot to take down Bobby and his crew with homemade poisoned darts and grenades; the latter gets used on a guy in an outhouse: “That dude just took his last crap.”

War ensues, and you win. Exploitation director/co-writer Stephanie Rothman (The Student Nurses) delivered a career best with this adventure-focused twist on the women-in-prison film. It’s not smart by any means, but it works, and that’s all you’ll ask of it … well, and nudity from the dishy Davis, and you’ll get that, too. —Rod Lott

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Grieving over the accidental death of his preggo wife (Nina Dobrev, TV’s The Vampire Diaries), paramedic David Lord (Kellan Lutz, those fucking Twilight movies) is tricked into a motel room by a full-frontal skank (an oft-naked Katia Winter), whereupon he is zapped, caged, tortured and brainwashed into becoming the Death Dealer. As such, he will take part in Death Games, a series of brutal battles broadcast over the Internet. It’s beloved the world over, but particularly by the frat douches of Psi Epsilon who cheer every kill.

These showdowns take place amid graphic overlays sporting samurai, gladiator and apocalyptic themes, and are the brainchild of GQ-dressed Logan (Samuel L. Jackson), the kind of rich guy who has Asian women on a giant swing behind his dining table. He’s so taken by the inexplicable victories of our Death Dealer, Logan agrees to let him take on the games’ hooded, ax-wielding Executioner (Johnny Messner, Running Scared), who beheads each round’s loser.

Lutz’s big emotional scene is hysterical, partly because of the bits of corn hanging out of his overstuffed mouth. Not that I think he can act; he can’t. The guy is all scowl. By contrast, we know Jackson can act; he just chooses not to. He’s clearly in his “whore for a paycheck” mode.

A mix of Death Race, The Condemned and the decade’s dozen other movies centered on televised murder matches, Arena is an unintentionally goofy garbage pail of an action flick. Yet if trash is what you’re hungry for, dive in. Jackson sure did — he chews so much fat in this thing, he could become Samuel XL Jackson. —Rod Lott

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