The tagline to Lisa Frankenstein, “Dig up someone special,” perfectly encapsulates this irreverent, Grand Guignol teen rom-com. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda Williams, the film plays like a spiritual sequel to Cody’s previous supernatural outing, Jennifer’s Body, with its goofy tone, magnificent dialogue and comical gore (even with a PG-13 rating, it goes pretty hard). Overall, the film plays like a mad scientist’s unholy mashup of Heathers and the works of early career Tim Burton. 

The narrative follows Lisa, a social misfit who finds herself living in a nuclear-esque family after her widowed father remarries. She’s haunted by the death of her mother, who was ax-murdered by a home intruder only months prior. Lisa spends much of her time in an abandoned cemetery near her home, where she makes wax-paper rubbings of the various old tombstones. Her favorite is a grave marker for a young, unmarried man with a bust of his Victorian visage on top, with whom she has one-way conversations.

Lisa’s life becomes super-complicated when the young dead man gets reanimated during a freak, mysterious storm, and fairly quickly professes his love for her. Problem is, Lisa is hung up on her school’s lit-mag editor, and doesn’t like her new undead friend that way. Still, she vows to keep him hidden in her room and help him in any way she can — even if that means getting up to some nefarious deeds in the process. 

Williams just happens to be the late Robin Williams’ daughter, and her directorial debut features a dark sense of humor similar to his. The two leads, Kathryn Newton as Lisa and Cole Sprouse as the creature, handle the material as expertly as their newcomer director and veteran screenwriter. Though Lisa Frankenstein clearly is intended for a younger audience, adults will deeply enjoy this film as well, especially if they remember all too well what it’s like to be a misunderstood teenager in a world that seems hellbent against them.—Christopher Shultz

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For lovers of wacky plots, goopy 1980s-inspired practical effects and prog rock, Destroy All Neighbors delivers the goods. The Shudder original film follows William (Jonah Ray, Netflix’s Mystery Science Theater 3000), an aspiring musician toiling away at his magnum opus, a spacey prog album he’s been fine-tuning for years. His girlfriend, Emily (Kiran Deol, Seven Psychopaths), supports William’s endeavors, even as she grows tired of his excuses for not finishing the record. His latest distraction is new neighbor Vlad (Alex Winter, aka Bill from the Bill & Ted films), who plays loud techno music all hours of the day while noisily working out. 

The racket becomes unbearable for William, so he works up the nerve to confront Vlad face to face, but through a series of mishaps ends up accidentally decapitating the man. Rather than go to the police, William first dismembers then disposes of the corpse — or at least he tries.

Vlad, it turns out, can still talk and control his severed limbs, and he continues tormenting William, returning to his apartment after being dumped in the woods. Fortunately, the pair manage to bury the hatchet and become friends. Unfortunately, keeping one murder secret inevitably means William has to kill again. From there, the bodies start piling up. 

Writers Mike Benner, Jared Logan and Charlies A. Pieper, along with director Josh Forbes (Contracted: Phase 2), craft a tale that need not be taken too seriously. The film is deeply silly in the best ways possible. It’s a gorier Bugs Bunny cartoon, a less perverse Re-Animator. Ray particularly shines as the hapless William, while Winter, using a thick Romanian accent and wearing prosthetics so heavy he’s unrecognizable, quite literally disappears into his role. Hollywood veteran Gabe Bartalos designed Winter’s makeup, and his resume includes work on Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Frankenhooker and several Leprechaun films, to name just a few. 

With just under an hour and a half runtime, Destroy All Neighbors is a quick, hilarious and gory good time. Put it on when you want something goofy and gross, but not too heavy. —Christopher Shultz

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It’s Sabado Noche Fever! Aye-aye-ai!

Produced for Mexico’s Agrasánchez Studios, but filmed in my mother’s hometown of Brownsville, Texas, the disco-fied culture of the late 1970s is shot and filtered through the grainy Mexican film industry to create the dance-music-drenched fever dream, Discotec fin de Semana, released one year after dance fever had taken America by storm.

In its aftermath, Discotec has all the best low-budget set pieces, a bumpin’ age-30-for-18 cast and a dance floor-burning soundtrack, with discotheque versions of “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Disco Heat” and “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.” Out of sight!

It’s a typical high school day, with the dancing b-ball player and the rich chauffeured student trying to win the heart of studious Susana (Silvia Pasquel). This is all well and good, but after the extended scene about the public school bus system, they all set out for a night of (mostly amateurish) disco dancing.

Between all the sex-comedy tropes of horny teens getting it on in a parked car, there is dangerous drag racing, current CB language, mustached scolding teachers, bleeping censored language, a Peter Frampton poster and a stereotypical grandma getting down with her bad self. Superbad!

Of course, it all culminates in a badly choreographed dance contest, but not before a seemingly epic knife fight at the beach!

Truly, more of a South-of-the-Border American Graffiti than a downscale take on Saturday Night Fever, Discotec fin de Semana is a Mexican love letter to the non-New York ritualized dance denizens — with their off-brand shirts and ill-advised moves — waltzing about the Texas moonlight.

Either way, it’s better than John Travolta’s Urban Cowboy. —Louis Fowler

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Often cited as a forerunner to the meta likes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Midnight Movie Massacre exists as a playful ribbing of old B movies. Nonetheless, the film squanders that premise — one so simple, it should be can’t-miss.

One night in 1956, Kansas City’s Granada Theater packs moviegoers in to watch the sci-fi serial Space Patrol (which was actually a TV show) starring Robert Clarke and Ann Robinson. Meanwhile, off the big screen, a gelatinous, tentacled alien invades the bijou to kill the patrons.

As story goes, that’s all this Massacre offers, leaving a wide berth for jokes, more jokes and also jokes involving the various patrons and their various body parts and functions thereof. They include a poodle-skirted woman with balloon-sized breasts (Lori Davis, The Bikini Open 5), an obese family lugging enormous trays of concessions and, up in the balcony, a sneezing girl constantly pulling gunk from her nostrils like a magician to a chain of colored hankies. 

Amid this vacuum of comedy, two characters stand out for their overly insipid nature. One is a fat nerd (Vince Cabrera) obsessing over a foxy sweater girl (Tamara Sue Hill) only he can see: “Holy Toledo, look at those milk bottles! She’s a one-woman dairy farm! I can’t go in there, I’ve got a boner! … I bet she’s got nipples like flapjacks! … My dick’s harder than Chinese arithmetic!”

The other, cowboy Tex (Brad Bittiker), longs to lay his date (Susan Murphy): “Oh, darlin’, my one-eyed muff torpedo wants to go to Tuna Land tonight. .. Howazbout a little stink on the dink, baby duck?”   

If co-directors Mark Stock and Larry Jacobs hold nostalgia for the single-screen moviegoing experience — and casting has-beens Clarke (The Hideous Sun Demon) and Robinson (1953’s The War of the Worlds) suggests as much — it’s lost within the tacky, lowest-level humor. Although credited to four writers, the lines play like someone’s sixth grader gave his dad’s script a “polish” as a prank … and no one noticed or bothered. Not even the movie within the movie is immune to such prepubescent chicanery: “Probing devices were penetrating Uranus to crack its dark and hidden interior.”

Preceded by trailers for Cat-Women from the Moon and Devil Girl from Mars, the Space Patrol portion aims for a lighthearted lampoon, but isn’t funny enough (if funny at all) to function properly, like the titular segment of Amazon Women on the Moon does with aplomb. Between Midnight Movie Massacre’s halves, what’s projected is slightly less dreadful than the in-theater gags, which are the dregs of failed camp. —Rod Lott

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Aboard a cruise ship, cheapskate crook Rooney (Don Gordon, Bullitt) poses as a doctor in order to con an aristocrat (Massimo Serato, Killer Nun) out of his considerable wealth. Making Rooney’s job easier is that his mark loves to gamble. 

Meanwhile, Rooney hopes to get into the bikini bottoms of an incomparably beautiful passenger (Torso’s Suzy Kendall, suntanned within an inch of, well, every inch).

Okay, so The Gamblers isn’t exactly Dostoevsky. 

Except — surprise! — it is! Writer/director Ron Winston (Banning) based his film on the Russian novelist’s 1866 follow-up to Crime and Punishment. Liberties have been taken. (Or so I assume. I don’t read Dostoevsky unless eight pages of full-color photos of Kendall come inserted at the book’s midpoint.)

With the story fresh from celebrating its first century at the time, the third-act twist is obvious as soon the first act puts its players in place. Obviousness notwithstanding, The Gamblers reveals itself as a more-than-capable caper as bubbly as the champagne its characters imbibe, with a jaunty score to match, courtesy of Mel Brooks’ regular composer, John Morris. 

With dated but delightful support from Richard Ng (Winners & Sinners) in his first feature, the comedy is featherweight-light until the last couple of minutes. At that point, Winston seems to realize he’s wasted Kendall on level by eye candy, and ends The Gamblers with a grand, unearned romantic gesture. From what I gather, that’s the kind of scenario that happens among people more attractive than you, gallivanting about more attractive places you’ll never be able to visit. —Rod Lott

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