Dean Martin plays Matt Helm (or vice versa) for the fourth and final time in The Wrecking Crew, the most lackadaisical of the series, yet mojo-charging all the same. Sixties spy spoofs are the true chicken soup for the 21st-century battered soul.

In Denmark, a billion bucks of American gold bars get poached from a train headed for London. It’s all the doing of Count Contini (Nigel Green, The Skull), whose name sounds like a brand of low-cost marinara, whose head resembles a salt-and-peppered Will Ferrell, and whose voice pronounces “schedule” as “shed-ule” a lot, so you know he’s a pompous ass. So that news of the heist doesn’t spread and send the world’s financial markets into a friggin’ death spiral, the United States’ Intelligence Counter Espionage agency (ICE for short) makes the bullion’s retrieval a one-man job. The man is Helm, natch, and he’s given only 48 hours to complete the task.

Pulled away from a sex picnic with his harem of “Slaymates,” Helm immediately is briefed and jetted to Copenhagen, but he’s not deployed without mission-aiding mechanisms. In fact, he’s given three: a camera that shoots a flume of knockout gas, handkerchiefs that explode upon impact when thrown and, deadliest of all, Sharon Tate! The Valley of the Dolls doll exhibits considerable comic flair as ICE-assigned assistant Freya, although director Phil Karlson’s gambit to shield her beauty from audiences is laughable, for reasons not involving pratfalls and one-liners. Carlson (absent from the series since, um, helming the first one, 1966’s The Silencers) even pulls the ol’ trick of equating glasses and hair buns with frumpiness, thereby asking us to believe Tate is beautiful and/or sexy only when she Rapunzels her hair, and shakes and shimmies her rear in extreme close-up.

Giving Tate a run for her moneymaker are a never-more-hourglassy Elke Sommer (House of Exorcism) as Contini’s partner in crime, Tina Louise (SST: Death Flight) in a largely wordless appearance and Nancy Kwan (Wonder Women) as — hold your horses — Yu Rang.

A running gag has Helm croon parodic ditties in his head upon meeting each lovely. (A sample: “If your sweetheart puts a pistol in her bed / You’ll do better sleeping with your Uncle Fred.”) Another running gag has Helm being unable to do the deed with any of them, but certainly not for a lack of trying. Nearly every line of dialogue Martin utters to the fairer sex is not just dripping in innuendo, but also rolled in crushed Rohypnol; in today’s climate, any one of them would earn him a write-up from ICE’s HR department, which would have put the brakes on the secret agent’s career. In real life, the 007-a-go-go Helm movies were put out to pasture after The Wrecking Crew’s release. The closing credits promise Matt Helm would return in The Ravagers. He did not. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

It is hard to believe there was a time in this country when Americans shelled out thousands of dollars not just to drive vans as a primary mode of transportation, but to emblazon them with airbrushed fantasies of mermaids and Mickey Mouse and more, all of which look to have been dictated to a slumming Frank Frazetta by a toddler who forgot to take his Ritalin that morning. And yet here, to serve as historical record (and little else) is proof: Supervan. It is a movie that is likable against odds stacked higher than used tires.

Otherwise known as Vandora, the Supervan is a solar-powered, souped-up four-wheeler of the future, today! Designed for the film by Batmobile builder George Barris, who cameos as himself, the Supervan is the great white-and-red hope for the idealistic, yet unemployed Clint Morgan (Mark Schneider, The Premonition) to score the $5,000 prize up for grabs at the second annual Non-National Invitational Freak Out. (Results after feeding that through our patent-pending Outdated Slang Translator: “van contest.”) Consisting of events ranging from the “show-and-shine” and “wiggle-woggle” to its climactic mudslide competition, the Freak Out is sponsored by the corrupt Mid America Motors Corporation, whose cigar-chomping CEO, T.B. Trenton (Morgan Woodward, Final Chapter: Walking Tall), seeks to rig the games with his firm’s new gas guzzler, the Trenton Trucker.

Adding a wrinkle to this hackneyed conflict is that en route to the Freak Out, Clint saves a cute woman named Karen (Katie Saylor, Invasion of the Bee Girls) from being gang-raped by bikers, and she instantly assumes the plot position as our youthful hero’s stock sidekick-cum-girlfriend … despite being Trenton’s daughter. The story grows no more complicated than that; viewers will find more depth in the carpeted interior of any given van on display.

Directed by Lamar Card, who gave us the following year’s equally novel Disco Fever, Supervan is less a movie than an opportunity to show off enough bitchin’ rides and braless babes to capitalize on the of-its-time trend of action-comedies rife with speed traps, sheriff’s deputies with high blood pressure and CB radio-speak that demands subtitles; interestingly, this Missouri-made picture beat the hicksploitation granddaddy, Smokey and the Bandit, to theaters by a matter of months. With seemingly endless scenes of driving and dicking around, it exudes the spirit and storytelling of a feature-length Mr. Microphone commercial, albeit one in which a car can blow another up via laser beam.

Card and his cast work hard for every joke, without precisely knowing the proper structure of one; each gag tends to be missing either the setup or the punchline. Similarly, secondary characters saunter in, free of context or introduction, then disappear without contributing to a payoff. Among them is a lisping trio of gay men vanpooling to the Freak Out, with the driver sporting a “MAN HANDLER USA” T-shirt and the dash littered with copies of Playgirl magazine. Somehow, Supervan finds room for a moment of sheer horror as a shapely wet T-shirt contestant is embraced by none other than Charles Bukowski. Clutching a pull-tab beer and with his belly having escaped to the outside of his shirt, the legendarily alcohol-soaked poet looks more unkempt than any wrecked vehicle of your choice among all 91 minutes. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Perhaps the time was right for a horror comedy about a crazed practitioner of the custodial arts. So God gives you The Janitor — often laugh-out-loud funny and more often gleefully offensive.

In this tiny-budgeted labor of love from California, a dumpy janitor named Lionel (Honest Trailers mastermind Andy Signore) works at the offices of Generico Corporation, where members of the workforce either scorn him or ignore him, naturally. He carries a torch for a female employee who is repulsed by his very mop-pushing presence. It’s enough to drive a guy mad.

Lionel’s ambitions do not end in the halls of Generico; his dream is to ply his no-diploma-required trade at a college sorority house. He’s about to get his big break, until his janitorial partner/mentor, Mr. Growbo (Bruce Cronander, The Poughkeepsie Tapes), sweeps swoops in to steal the position out of spite, feeling despondent and betrayed by Lionel’s desire to leave. It’s enough to drive a guy even madder. At that point, Lionel — who by now already has terminated a few co-workers — embarks on a full-blown sorority house massacre.

A mix of raunchy comedy and messy splatter, The Janitor is so over-the-top, one wonders if there was a tiled ceiling to begin with. For example, Lionel has to cover up a homicide by lubricating his hand with spit in order to jerk off a fresh corpse. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before decapitating a hooker,” scolds Growbo; it’s a long story.

For a piece of self-financed microcinema, The Janitor bears quite the coat of polish while also looking back in the well-Windexed mirror. The gore effects are H.G. Lewis-level terrific, while Russ Meyer fans will appreciate the gargantuan helpings of gratuitous nudity. Co-written and co-directed by Signore and TJ Nordaker, the movie reminded me of 1989’s infamous Las Vegas Blood Bath, yet entirely self-aware. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Many a 1980s teen comedy chronicled the wacky lengths to which horny teens would go on their quest to lose their virginity. Today, those boys and girls — and the real-life boys and girls who viewed those movies on HBO and VHS, often surreptitiously — are adults and have become parents of their own sex-crazed children, so it makes sense for 21st-century Hollywood to turn the well-worn trope on its, um, head. In fact, Blockers may be the first film to focus on Mom and Dad’s efforts to rein in the young ones’ genitalia.

It’s senior prom night for a trio of lifelong besties, and the blondest, whitest one (Kathryn Newton, Paranormal Activity 4), wants to make the special event extra-special by popping her proverbial cherry at the hotel after-party. Her pals (relative newcomers Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon) decide they want in on the action as well. As millennials are wont to do, they make it official by christening it with its own hashtag: “#SEXPACT2018.”

Intercepting the girls’ emoji-laden group text of penetration plans, their respective parents (Vacation’s Leslie Mann, Trainwreck’s John Cena and Sisters’ Ike Barinholtz) aim to cock-block their daughters and their prom dates. Can you blame them? As a father myself, I cannot, especially since one boy ingests enough drugs to fail a month of pee tests, while another wears a fedora.

Blockers is one of those raunchy mainstream comedies rendered nearly superfluous by its tell-it-all trailer, which chronologically ticks through many laugh-baiting scenes like a highlight reel — most notably, a butt-chugging beer competition between young and old. Other audience-pleasing bids are saved for the actual feature, but all share a troubling element: They’re not as funny as they should be. Each lacks the payoff that first-time director Kay Cannon sets up, over and over. From in-limo vomiting to blindfolded sex play, the sequences end abruptly, like a DJ fading out a Top 40 pop hit before the song reaches its bridge. The Pitch Perfect movies she wrote contain more laughs, not to mention bite, so long as you do not confuse R-rated talk with, er, balls (and you shouldn’t).

To be fair, Cannon didn’t pen Blockers, which is credited to brothers Brian and Jim Kehoe. If the siblings’ script amuses, but is hardly a gem sparkling with wit, our three grown-up leads do their best to give it a polish. Mann, Cena and Barinholtz may not operate with clockwork timing, but they’re likable one and all. Cena shines in particular, deliberately railing against the pro-wrasslin’ persona that made him a star by playing a goofball whose heart is larger than both biceps. Although you wouldn’t know it from his extended cameo in winter’s Daddy’s Home 2, he continues to be something of an American treasure in the big, dumb American comedy genre. Here’s hoping his next starring role leans into his charm, and away from his big, dumb anus. —Rod Lott

Nebbish comedian Tommy Noonan (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) stretches to play a nebbish actor named Tommy Noonan. He’s unemployed, too, until he’s hired by high-class stripper Saxie Symbol (Mamie Van Doren, Sex Kittens Go to College) for an unusual weekly gig: to go to the psychiatrist for her and her two platonic roomies, narcissistic model Bruce (John Cronin, Twist Around the Clock) and car salesman Joe (Paul Gilbert, Women of the Prehistoric Planet).

See, shrink appointments are cost-prohibitive, and Saxie, Bruce and Joe reason that if they relay their neuroses to Tommy, he can attend for all of them. (Why they need to hire him at $60 a week when one of them could do the same would be a gaping plot hole, but that requires plot.) Tommy agrees and plops upon the couch of psychiatrist Dr. Myra Von (Ziva Rodann, Pharaoh’s Curse) to spend 20 minutes on the problems of each of his employers. However, being an actor, Tommy does so while imitating their voices and mannerisms, thus leading Dr. Von to see him as a special kind of schizophrenic: one worth studying. Don’t ask, but an incident involving a nudie magazine and spilled coffee causes their closed-circuit session to hit boob tubes nationwide, instantly vaulting Tommy to national celebrity status.

Are you laughing yet? You won’t. Directed and co-written by Noonan as a follow-up to Promises! Promises!, his 1963 hit with Jayne Mansfield, 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt is a sex comedy that has aged so poorly, no discernible laughs remain — and that’s assuming it had any with which to begin. Given the lack of permissiveness of the times, it also has no sex. Sure, MVD is sexy AF, and Noonan’s camera offers peekaboo glimpses of her famous bosom, including a scene that finds the starlet literally bathing in beer. As with her striptease numbers, this sequence is lovingly rendered in color, whereas the bulk of the picture was shot in much cheaper black-and-white stock.

Playing less like a movie and more like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for its creator, 3 Nuts is not the sharpest tool in the sex-comedy shed. While harmless, it also is utterly charmless. Arguably, the most interesting about it is that its production design is credited to one Carroll Ballard, future director of the G-rated future-glue movie The Black Stallion! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.