Originally broadcast on Oct. 31, 1987, the WNUF Halloween Special has to be the craziest live television program since the medium’s invention. Or rather, it would be, if only it were real.

Actually a movie made to resemble — really resemble — a local newscast of the chroma key-happy era, WNUF is a damned fine hoax. Masterminded by writer/director/producer Chris LaMartina (Call Girl of Cthulhu), the show parodies and draws obvious influence from Geraldo Rivera’s infamous satanic-panic “exposé” of ’88. Here, mustachioed TV 28 reporter Frank Stewart (a thoroughly winning Paul Fahrenkopf, President’s Day) is on assignment at the Webber House, boarded up for 20 years after its owners were murdered by their Ouija-using son, whose evil spirit is said to haunt the abandoned home ever since.

Following WNUF’s nightly newscast — complete with seasonal stories from a cop providing trick-or-treat safety tips to a dentist paying kids to relinquish their loot for cash — the dogged Frank explores the Webber House with the assistance of the Bergers, a paranormal-investigating couple (played by Brian St. August and Helenmary Bell), who are to conduct a live, call-in séance. The Bergers clearly are spoofs of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the controversial duo involved in the real-life Amityville Horror and more recently immortalized and fictionalized in 2013’s The Conjuring.

As satisfying as the story of Frank’s on-the-spot reporting is, the reason WNUF stands out as a unique viewing experience is the lengths to which LaMartina and his co-conspirators go to make their Halloween Special meet its conceit of being a time-capsule relic. Sporting no credits, the program begins as an old VHS tape would: the word “PLAY” appearing in the corner of a bright-blue screen and an image whose quality has degenerated with each viewing and the passing of the years. And boy, do the commercials sell it; the local-looking ads are so well-done — which is to say they are hokey and no-budget — that one would be right at home wedged within breaks of any given syndicated sitcom rerun.

These words from our sponsors include several Halloween-themed spots (“With prices so low, you’ll think we’re out of our gourds!”), plus PSAs, political-attack ads and 30-second pitches for ambulance-chasing attorneys, public events, a 1-900 line, a computer store — even tampons! The ones advertising TV 28’s other programs — from the mummy-shuffling-amok movie Sarcophagus to some sci-fi series titled Galaxy Pilot and the Lazer Brigade — ring particularly choice. To further pull that proverbial wool, some ads get repeated, only to be fast-forwarded through by whomever is controlling the signal.

I’d be curious to watch the WNUF Halloween Special with unsuspecting friends, to see how long it would take before they got the joke, assuming they would. LaMartina and friends have achieved perfection in imperfection, making the Special truly that — a cult classic worthy of annual viewing. —Rod Lott

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Rey Ciso, the editor of The Editor, has cut some killer movies: suspense pics such as The Mirror and the Guillotine and The Cat with the Velvet Blade. So dedicated is he to his craft that he continues chopping film despite having only one good hand, having accidentally sliced off the other one’s fingers while working feverishly on a previous project.

The wooden appendage he wears as a replacement is functional enough, but he’s not what he used to be — a shadow of his former self, a “cripple” in the eyes of fellow crew members, an embarrassment to his whorish wife (Paz de la Huerta, Nurse 3D). Now a punch line and a punching bag, Rey (Adam Brooks, the film’s co-director with Matthew Kennedy) finds himself unfairly fingered when the talent begins being slaughtered by a masked killer similar to the villain in the flick on which they’re working. He may take lives, but at least they are lost with impeccable style.

Although it takes its cues from Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, the 1970s-set The Editor is a comedy — another pitch-perfect pastiche from the five guys behind Astron-6, the retro-recreationist kids of the 1980s VHS era. The Canadian filmmaking collective made its name through many hysterical shorts that ape a specific genre to a tonal T, before doing the same at feature length, first with 2011’s Manborg and, later that year, Father’s Day.

As those films respectively send up post-apocalyptic science fiction and the revenge thriller, so does The Editor with its punctured eye on the giallo. As always, the gang nails the elements of its “target”; here, that means music by Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti, Argento’s unmistakable color gels, and even going so far as to dub the entire film so the dialogue and mouth movement are never quite in sync.

In a departure from Astron-6’s prior work, however, The Editor may perplex viewers unaccustomed to the Italian source material. So specific are its references that the movie could be — and likely will be — off-putting to the unfamiliar; it’s the team’s least accessible picture yet. That might be Astron-6’s “fault,” but the loss is all the consumer’s. Yet even for those who can recite the Argento filmography in chronological order and in reverse, The Editor’s ending feels like an irrational rush job, as if Brooks, Kennedy and co-writer Conor Sweeney had no clue how to take their surreal story to a stopping point. I just wish it had concluded as Manborg had: with an uproarious fake trailer for another cleverly executed Astron-6 joint. —Rod Lott

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Remember how annoying the drama students at your high school were with their Jim Carrey impressions and no “off” switch? That’s nothing compared to the 12-year-old equivalent running for 93 agonizing minutes and passed off as an actual movie: Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective.

Carrey’s comic creation — foisted upon an unsuspecting public in 1994’s surprise smash Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, then quickly followed up by the less grating Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls one year later — is nowhere to be found. But his chunky son, Ace Junior, is. As played by Josh Flitter (Big Momma’s House 2), the “meddling kid” (his own words, mind you) lives with his zookeeper mom (A League of Their Own’s Ann Cusack, for whom I feel sorrow, taking over the Courteney Cox role). I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it, too: deadbeat dad, right? Well, probably, but as Mrs. Ventura puts it, the official word is that Dad disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

Like father, like son — not in the department of mysterious absences and related lousy excuses, but an undying love of animals and an undiagnosed social disorder. Ace Junior eats his meals from a dog bowl and drinks from a toilet bowl. The nominal story plops the brat in his first “real” case: locating the whereabouts of Ting Tang, the zoo’s stolen (man in an obvious, frightening) panda (costume). Until this mystery, the kid has made his rep tracking down lost household pets, from your average dogs and cats (“Yikes! Tabby’s been nabbied!”) to more exotic companions, like a skunk, which he attempts to subdue by farting in its face — one of three flatulence gags the movie offers in the initial 16 minutes alone.

Best known for 1993’s peculiarly beloved The Sandlot, writer/director David Mickey Evans practically dares us not to loathe his young star from first frame, saddling him with the lines, “I’ve got you now! That’s it, my little misunderstood friend! Nibble the powdery cinnamon bliss!” Fast-forward (hypothetically speaking, because you are not watching this one) to the courtroom scene in which Ace Junior appropriates A Few Good Men’s iconic “You can’t handle the truth!” speech, and Flitter is so amped-up insufferable, you’ve already dug out that old embossing label maker from the kitchen drawer, just so you can slap “TRYING TOO HARD” to his visage onscreen.

Poor Flitter was old enough to know what he was doing, but too young to know how it would play on our side of the camera: like a friggin’ train wreck. He was merely the caboose to Evans’ overencouraging engine, but — and I would never hit a child — you’ll want to punch him all the same. —Rod Lott

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Unlucky in love, career cop Cooper (Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line) is nonetheless married, albeit only to police protocol. So anal-retentive is she on duty that when Cooper hears a young man excitedly tell his friends that he calls “shotgun,” she takes it as a threat to public safety and tases him. Ha.

A redemptive shot arrives for Coop when she is assigned to help escort a cartel narc and his wife to Dallas to testify against a Colombian drug lord. Upon pickup, however, the narc is murdered — ha? — leaving his rich-bitch insta-widow (Sofia Vergara, Machete Kills) in Cooper’s care, with the bad guys in … wait for it … Hot Pursuit!

Like Midnight Run stripped of testosterone and edge, the chilly Hot Pursuit is a broad comedy in both senses of the phrases. Witless and nutless, the material is far beneath an actress of Witherspoon’s talent. We know she can do comedy (for proof, see Alexander Payne’s Election), but she’s chosen not to be funny here (nor has anyone) and she’s even on board as a producer! Meanwhile, Vergara, the tube’s reigning sex bomb thanks to the ratings juggernaut that is Modern Family, proves as shrill as she is shapely, yelling her sub-sitcom lines with a ferocity that makes Kevin Hart look shy and reserved.

For such a female-powered production, directed by The Proposal’s Anne Fletcher, Hot Pursuit comes packed with gender politics oddly out-of-sync with the times. For example, (attempted) punch lines are built upon such cavemen-era concepts as “Periods are icky!” and “Policewomen look like lesbians!” Ha and ha, respectively.

When your end-credit bloopers can’t even pull a smile out of the viewer, something is horribly, irrevocably wrong. (Just ask Burt Reynolds, Reese.) Let the record show that while I ironed shirts as the Blu-ray spun and purred, I found watching the movie to be the least desirable of the two tasks. Kill me now. —Rod Lott

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Without having the National Lampoon name affixed to it, the 2015 Vacation has its cake and eats it, too, serving as both remake and reboot. Whether it’s as successful as the ’83 original is almost beside the point. That Chevy Chase vehicle is a true comedy classic; to try to top it would be futile, so Horrible Bosses screenwriters-turned-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein don’t. They simply aim to be funny.

Chase’s bumbling, well-meaning patriarch, Clark W. Griswold, drove all four previous Vacations. This time, son Rusty graduates to man the wheel. All grown up, Rusty (The Hangover trilogy’s Ed Helms, again doing the Ed Helms character, which he does well) is a pilot with a budget airlines who, like his father, just wants to spend more time with his wife, Debbie (Anchorman’s Christina Applegate, filling the Beverly D’Angelo spousal role with aplomb), and their two ever-warring sons (The Amazing Spider-Man’s Skyler Gisondo and A Haunted House 2’s Steele Stebbins). Overhearing Debbie complain of dreading yet another annual trek to a cabin, Rusty decides to revisit his most memorable trip as a child: going from Chicago to California’s Walley World theme park.

So with an Albanian Tartan Prancer subbing for the ol’ Wagon Queen Family Truckster, Rusty and fam head west, stopping in Texas to see Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann, The Change-Up), and her too-perfect husband (Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth). Also on the agenda, intended or not: vehicular pursuits, near-fatal white-water rafting, definitely fatal cow herding, Seal sing-alongs, sexual high jinks, suspect motels, much puke. Like father, like son.

The result is funnier and more satisfying than any of the sequels, America’s perennial Christmas favorite included. That said, one wishes Daley and Goldstein had tightened the screws on this ball, since many scenes could exist as stand-alone sketches vs. being part of a throughline. They tackle the beats of the original without gluing them into a unified whole. When Clark Griswold flipped the eff out in the original, it rang true as an eventual point on the story arc; when Rusty does the same here, the effect is lost because it feels as if a box is being checked rather than a scene receiving proper setup. So fractured is the film, I suspect the editor’s desktop trash can houses several gigabytes of excised scenes.

Still, I laughed, and a lot. From the opening strains of Lindsey Buckingham’s still-catchy “Holiday Road” theme, I immediately felt nostalgic, which Daley and Goldstein not only intended, but manufactured, given their movie’s surplus of callbacks to Harold Ramis’ playfully ribald original. (The depression caused by a late subplot may not have been on purpose.) The jokes of the ’15 Vacation may spring from a meaner place — witness the new version of the iconic Christie Brinkley gag, for instance — but they tend to make their marks, often enough that Chase’s own (sad) cameo in the third act is entirely unnecessary. —Rod Lott