American Drive-In feels like its financiers watched 1976’s Drive-In and ordered, “Make that, but with boobs, ass and grass!”

Depicting one crazy night at SoCal’s City Lights Drive-In, Krishna Shah’s contemporary comedy centers on clean-teen country couple Bobbie Ann (Emily Longstreth, Private Resort) and Jack (Pat Kirton, The Staircase Murders). Jack promises a night to remember — and how!

Other recurring characters in this IBS-loose structure include a power-hungry councilman (John Rice, Time Chasers) attempting to bust marijuana dealers, a hefty family of four who exist only to gorge themselves on a bucket of KFC and fistfuls of spaghetti, and a little person (Phil Fondacaro, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) marveling at himself on the movie being played. That’d be Hard Rock Zombies, which Shah also directed.

Meanwhile, a hooker sets up shop on the grounds; a guy tries to get his prudish girlfriend to give him head; and the councilman’s scorchingly hot ’n’ horny daughter (Rhonda Snow, Shadows Run Black) sneaks away to get laid in a van. In the movie’s one concession (no pun intended) to Porky’s-brand prankery, her moaning and groaning get broadcast to every car speaker. It’s all as zany as a pair of Slinky Eyes, which the pic features.

And then things take such a dark and violent turn, you’ll diagnose it as bipolar: Bobbie Ann is kidnapped and molested by a greaser gang led by Sarge (Joel Bennett, Hellhole), on the hunt for “beaver.” It’s no stretch to categorize the climax as post-apocalyptic, demolition derby and all.

Until then, though, Shah captures a lot of the drive-in theaters’ nostalgic elements, which combine to make whatever was showing secondary: the snack bar, the playground, the door prizes and, yes, the nookie. That he does so with complete stupidity — and perhaps pure dumb luck — can’t be ignored, but for the era’s tits-and-zits formula, American Drive-In beats its more brainless peers. —Rod Lott

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Arguably, The Acid House wouldn’t exist without the international phenomenon of Trainspotting two years earlier. While both are based on Irvine Welsh books, The Acid House is an anthology and arrives adapted by Welsh himself, so “cunt” utterances abound.

“The Granton Star Cause” details the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day of Boab (Stephen McCole, Rushmore). In quick succession, the “lumpen proletariat malcontent” gets booted from his soccer football team, kicked out of his family’s house, dumped by his girlfriend, thrown in jail and fired from work. Nursing his wounds in a pub — where else? — he meets God (Maurice Roëves, Judge Dredd), who gives him the powers of revenge … albeit as a housefly. Let the scatological parade begin!

Joviality downshifts into “The Soft Touch,” a working-class love-ish story of newlyweds/new parents Johnny and Catriona (Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd and Doom Patrol’s Michelle Gomez, providing the movie’s strongest performances). Here, Welsh dwells in Mike Leigh kitchen-sink squalor, detailing Johnny’s heartbreaking misery as a skeevy, alpha neighbor (Gary McCormack, Valhalla Rising) moves into their building and near-immediately into Catriona. More depressing than funny, the segment at least gives the film an emotional core — one best exemplified by the shoegaze melody of Belle & Sebastian’s “Leave Home,” a number so moving, the soundtrack uses it twice.

Finally, there’s the titular story, starring Ewen Bremner, practically reprising his Trainspotting role of Spud. In a body-swap scenario Hollywood wouldn’t dare touch, his Coco does a hit of acid and switches souls with a newborn baby — no explanation given or needed. Via an animatronic infant more unsettling than those of most horror films, Coco thoroughly enjoys breastfeeding, asks Mum (Jemma Redgrave, Dream Demon) for a beej and pleasures himself from his crib as his parents get frisky in the sheets.

Like “Granton,” this third bit revels in shock value and succeeds, even if first-feature director Paul McGuigan (Victor Frankenstein) lets it go on so long, it’s perilously close to schoolyard juvenilia. Then again, with arrested development running a throughline, that may be the point. To varying degrees, each story overstays its optimal welcome, leaving The Acid House too loose and unfocused to become a classic for the UK’s chemical generation, yet diverting enough for one go-round. Scottish accents come unvarnished, so lest the likes of “nippy wee winger” and “daft sow” reside atop your tongue, subtitles are encouraged. —Rod Lott

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As hot as sex kitten Kim Basinger was/is, the cartoon version of her in Cool World, Holli Would, might be a bit better, if only for the way she cockteases anthropomorphic dogs, cats and a young Brad Pitt. Yowza! According to the ads, “Holli would if she could …”

Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World really adapts the video of the Rolling Stones’ “Harlem Shuffle” by way of a cheap skin flick, leading to a great good okay movie. Coming out of the clink for, I guess, murder, artist Jack (Gabriel Byrne) drives around his comic studio and comic shop, letting all the early ’90s nerds know graphic artists drives girls crazy, especially Holli.

From his mostly drawn Cool World, Holli entices Jack to cross over into our world primarily by using sex as a weapon (to be fair, so was Kim Basinger). On her tail is Pitt — whose acting talent was apparently not always there — as a 1940s cop who has to take her down, as well as a few abrasive — but very Bakshi-lite — cartoons.

The breathy intonations aside, trailblazing animator Bakshi created a new playground in 1992, but sadly, everybody instead was watching progeny like Tiny Toon Adventures, The Ren & Stimpy Show and other post-ironic viewing. Meanwhile, Cool World was a smutty sex comedy, as was the custom in ’92. Monkeybone vibes, anyone?

Byrne is mostly fine and Pitt is all about the baby blues, but the selling point is the miniskirted Basinger, animated or not. But what I really dug was the closer tune, “Real Cool World” by David Bowie; maybe the movie should’ve been about some puppets? —Louis Fowler

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For me, the day after Halloween is one of regret, over the sheer multitude of peanut butter cups and gummy confections consumed. For the roommates of The Day After Halloween, it’s one of confusion — as in, why is a dead girl in our bathtub? Until they’ve answered that question, regret remains TBD.

Shot in Pennsylvania, the shaggy-dog indie comedy follows Addison (Danny Schluck, writer and co-producer) and Hayes (Brandon DeLany, Air: The Musical) as they spend Saturday, Nov. 1 (obvs), piecing together substance-fragmented memories of the previous night’s debauchery. Their back-and-forth glimpses gradually allow us to know Addison and Hayes (uh, Moonlighting much?) beyond the duties of running The Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Addison is a smart-ass slob, irresponsibility personified; Hayes is the more adult of the two, yet pressured by an outta-his-league girlfriend (model Aimee Fogelman) to gain enough ambition — fun-sized, even — to attend college.

With its blackout-cum-befuddlement concept, comparisons to The Hangover trilogy are inevitable and merited; however, the influence looming largest over The Day After Halloween is Clerks. To its detriment, Schluck’s script trafficks in Kevin Smith’s droll, smarmy, too-knowing patter, so everyone’s conversations amount to a stand-up routine for an audience of one or two. You hear it in discussions of everything from ALF to anuses, Raggedy Andy to rape and Jehovah’s Witnesses to jerk-off patterns.

That said, as with Smith, it scores a base hit every now and then, whether pegging older women as “brutal beasts fueled by white wine and Pilates” or a crafting an action plan to deal with the tub corpse: “We’re gonna need tools, duct tape and a fuck-ton of Febreze.” One thing Schluck and first-time director Chad Ostrum have going for them is an element of surprise: Yeah, it takes a turn. In the end, The Day After Halloween is just engaging enough to like, yet clearly made with more love than transferred to viewers. —Rod Lott

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Exclamation his, Jim Wynorski’s Bigfoot or Bust! packs three scenarios — note I didn’t call them “stories” — into one lame-brained comedy. So similar are they, “Never the twain shall meet” need not apply:
• A large-breasted woman whose father died in a Bigfoot hunting expedition embarks on a Bigfoot hunting expedition.
• A large-breasted doctor and her large-breasted friends embark on a Bigfoot hunting expedition.
• Three large-breasted women from the future embark on a Bigfoot hunting expedition. But mostly for his giant turds.

Across all, the “joke” is Bigfoot (some guy in a Harry Knowles costume) is always around, usually peepin’! And the ladies don’t notice on account of their large breasts, ha!

For this sad, tired exercise, Wynorski has cast The Expendables of top-heavy starlets: Becky LeBeau, Gail Thackray, Rocky DeMarco, Cindy Lucas, Christine Nguyen, Tane McClure, Antonia Dorian and Deborah Dutch. All but Lisa London hail from booby movies of his past, including but by no means limited to Sorority House Massacre II, The Bare Wench Project and Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre.

While Bigfoot or Bust! digitally blurs out any instances of nudity, it remains T&A-minded, costuming the women in bikinis, bras and other push-up, skintight contraptions designed to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive. Because having no story requires heaps of padding, the shot-on-video flick asks them to jump on a trampoline (shown in slow motion, revealing an unforgivable frame rate) and perform endless stripteases, one of which begins in a row of Coldwater Canyon Park port-a-potties.

If you believe Thackray and LeBeau doing childish impressions of apes will be the most embarrassing moment, hang tight for Bigfoot bustin’ a move as the girls DJ some rockin’ tunes. And for the sped-up film. And for the cartoon sound effects. And for the fart noises. And for Wynorski pausing the movie to get pied in the face. And for the laugh track. (Speaking of, I found one genuine laugh: a surreal, single-shot throwaway cameo by internet urban legend Momo.)

Many online reviews and comments object to the women being “old” and, therefore, “unattractive.” That’s ridiculous. If you’re going to knock them for anything, it should be their acting. That said, Lucas possesses real comedic timing, and I think Nguyen actually can act. Among all 77 minutes, a great deal feels improvised. I long for the days when Wynorski made real movies with real plots, like — as the cover art reminds — Chopping Mall and The Return of Swamp Thing. As he proved right out the directorial gate with 1985’s The Lost Empire, he’s perfectly capable of making a feature that’s sexy, funny and, yes, written.

Although not a Bigfoot movie completist, I don’t exactly turn one down when a screening opportunity arises. Following Bigfoot or Bust!, I may need to enact a no-go policy for any made after the 1980s. I’m sure everyone had a blast shooting this one, but it doesn’t translate to the viewer. The finale could not come soon enough. When it does, it taunts, “THE END?” No, Jim, no. —Rod Lott

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