While watching, I had planned to write that Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again must have made Robert Louis Stevenson turn over in his grave, but Jerry Belson’s goof on the 19th-century author’s arguably most famous tale takes care of that in its final scene. It’s one of many unashamedly dopey gags in this unheralded R-rated gem.

Bug-eyed Mark Blankfield (Dracula: Dead and Loving It) is Dr. Daniel Jekyll, resident superstar surgeon at Our Lady of Pain & Suffering. Despite having it all, including an engagement to the hospital boss’ conceited daughter (Bess Armstrong, Jaws 3-D), Jekyll announces his retirement from surgery to dedicate his brilliant mind to drug research. This being the early ’80s, that includes the recreational kind — namely, cocaine … and lots of it.

Falling asleep with a straw up his nose, Jekyll accidentally snorts a sparkling white powder in the lab that transforms him into a spastic sex maniac, an unleashed id with disco duds, animal instincts and a lone gold tooth. While in this unruly state of Hyde, he couples with a prostitute named Ivy (Krista Errickson, Mortal Passions) and snorts more lines than can be found in a geometry textbook. Such hedonistic activities threaten to derail his professional and personal lives — all three of them.

To my off-guard surprise, Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again is very funny — often laugh-out-loud hilarious, such as Jekyll’s meet-and-treat cute with Ivy, who checks into the emergency room due to a “foreign object” lodged in her vagina. (Trust me.) Working as a broad parody, Jekyll bears more of the National Lampoon stamp than the humor magazine’s official movie that same year, Class Reunion. (The Lampoon staff had to be envious of Jekyll‘s breast-enlargement scene in particular. Speaking of, Elvira alter ego Cassandra Peterson and her right “gazonga” have supporting roles as a surgical nurse and her right “gazonga,” respectively.)

Belson (vet of many a classic sitcom, most notably The Odd Couple) and his three co-writers deserve credit for putting laughs on the page, especially in the tricky realm of drug humor. They realize — as so few of today’s filmmakers do (*cough* Seth Rogen *cough*) — that getting high can’t be the beginning and the end of the joke; something more has to be done with it, and they do. But Blankfield is the largest reason the movie works as well as it does. He’s a terrific physical comedian, and his dual performance here can’t be experienced without seeing a lot of Jim Carrey at the peak of his Ace Ventura/The Mask commercial ascent. Based on this film alone, Blankfield should have been every bit the star. —Rod Lott

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Indie zomcom The Walking Deceased has a couple of things working in its favor: Writer and star Tim Ogletree (Supernatural Activity) nails the neurotic delivery of Jesse Eisenberg, while A Haunted House resident Dave Sheridan, here spoofing the sheriff protagonist of TV’s The Walking Dead, channels Andrew Lincoln’s drawl-call of “Carrrrrlllll!” so well, it makes up for the forced visual intimacy of the man’s taint.

But two rights doth not a movie make. As a comedy, Deceased comes perilously close to being just that. Only every 20th joke making some kind of landing keeps the toe tag from being knotted. As a spoof movie, it’s awfully grim in tone, which sticks out all the more since the gags fail to fly at a rat-a-tat-tat pace. In their day, Airplane! pilots Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker would know how to wring laughs from an apocalypse without the result feeling dreary itself. So where’s the levity? An extended sequence of the cast cutting loose with bong hits doesn’t cut it — not here, not ever.

As if you didn’t surmise already, first-time director Scott Dow’s The Walking Deceased is a parody of zombie films, by way of television’s enormously popular The Walking Dead as the primary template. Dow and Ogletree have added characters who allow them to crib from Zombieland and Warm Bodies (both essentially comedies at rotting-face value), but strangely lets the mammoth target World War Z off the hook, despite that blockbuster outgrossing both those source titles combined … and then tens of millions beyond that. Smidgens of Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead make their way into a scene or two without positive impact.

In The Walking Deceased, the event of mass extinction already has occurred, and the main story kicks off 29 days later. Get it? Do or don’t, that throwaway wink is indicative of the low level at which the flick strives to operate, and is too content to stay. —Rod Lott

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Aren’t you sick of those half-assed, would-be creature features in which the entire experience is the title? You know the ones: Pick one animal from Column A, then another from Column B, and pat ourselves on the back for our “best thing ever” hipsterism, i.e. Sharknado, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, Dinocroc, Pteracuda, Piranhaconda, Sharknado 2, et al.

Me, too. Well, Zombeavers is nothing like that. Zombeavers is a tool of goodness. For 85 minutes, I felt pure joy. And upon a second viewing, I felt that all over again. It’s a real-deal motion picture — not a time-slot filler that aims no higher than to be a Twitter trending topic. I loved it.

Three sorority sisters (headed by Dumb and Dumber To standout Rachel Melvin) head to a cabin in the woods for a weekend escape. Their respective boyfriends crash the party. And so does a colony of beavers, rendered radiated and mutated by an errant barrel of toxic waste. Leave it to the beavers to spoil the collegians’ trip of tanning bods and guzzling booze and swappin’ spit.

Several aspects keep Zombeavers blissfully afloat, including scene-stealing supporting turns from Rex Linn (TV’s CSI: Miami) and — believe it — white-bread pop singer John Mayer.

But the main reason is that the horror comedy is like a PB&J: It sells both sides. It earns its “Ewww”s for every lost limb and spewed fluid, and yet it never loses sight of being a joke-delivery vehicle — a screamingly funny one at that. No winking at the camera, no has-been cameos, no self-referential BS; following in the muddy, bloody footsteps of Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, director/co-scripter Jordan Rubin (a writing vet of several years’ worth of MTV Movie Awards) strikes that delicate balance of tone that allows the film to be deliberately campy without becoming a joke itself. —Rod Lott

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Rob Corddry does a good job of playing a total jerk. Too good, in fact — like, the Laurence Olivier of assholes — and it makes Hot Tub Time Machine 2 an oppressive experience. Without John Cusack returning to anchor the ensemble, the group dynamic that worked well (enough) in 2010’s original Hot Tub Time Machine is thrown off — way off — and not even the addition of Adam Scott (TV’s Parks and Recreation) can save it.

Ideally, characters should interact with one another in a way that achieves balance, so that those best in small doses remain in small doses. Here, it’s like that jerk kid on the school playground who would jump off the teeter-totter while you were at the highest point in the air, so you would come crashing to the ground with too little notice to do anything about it.

As HTTM2 opens, fatuous Lou (Corddry, Sex Tape) is swimming in millions from co-opting the best business ideas since the first film’s time trip. Nick (Craig Robinson, This Is the End) is swimming in millions from co-opting all the hit songs since. And Lou’s loser son, Jacob (Clark Duke, Kick-Ass 2), is still a loser, having co-opted nothing. Success-to-excess turns to tragedy when Lou is shot in the penis (ha) by an unknown assailant at his own shindig. To save him and his junk, the trio leaps into the titular dimension-trippin’ Jacuzzi for another rollicking adventure in history.

Immediately, two things go wrong:
1. Instead of going back in time to prevent the violent act, they accidentally jettison 10 years forward.
2. Comedy does not travel with them.

Not everything should be sequelized. The original HTTM was just clever enough in tweaking the collective nipple of 80s sex comedies to surpass being a one-joke movie — with its title being that joke, of course. By contrast, HTTM2 actually is a one-joke movie — one good joke, at least; featured prominently in the trailer, it involves the TV series Fringe.

What returning director Steve Pink and lone credited screenwriter Josh Heald (one of three during the first dip) consider to be jokes simply do not translate as humorous, no matter how many times they trot them out. All of them lazy and low-hanging, these gags fall into three categories:
1. saying “fuck” simply for the sake of saying “fuck”: 145 times in 93 minutes.
2. gay panic and/or fear of anal rape to the point of homophobia.
3. stoner references that assume their mere mention is the setup, delivery and punch line, all in one. —Rod Lott

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Should you be fortunate enough not to know the meaning of the term “dirty Sanchez,” I want to tell you two things:
1. Hi, Mom!
2. You will abhor this movie.

And if the phrase does reside within your vocabulary bank, you may abhor it anyway. As far as I know, Dirty Sanchez: The Movie is the only DVD release to come with its own branded barf bag, tucked into the case; its inclusion is fitting.

What the Jackass crew is to America, the Dirty Sanchez boys are to Great Britain, except that I truly love the Jackass movies. Among the four rabble-rousers of Sanchez, none possesses the likability of a Johnny Knoxville to help mitigate the utter douchebaggery of others. Combined with thought going into the pranks, having a Knoxville on the team makes all the difference. (The Jackass solo projects of Steve-O and especially Bam Margera support this theory.)

To quote one of the multitatted Sanchez-ers, “God, you kids will do some stupid things.” And not a one works as funny.

Those things include piercing a fingernail with a dart, squirting chili sauce into the eyes, Super Glue-ing one’s nostrils shut, shooting a pellet gun at one’s own penis and other acts of bodily harm. Unlike Jackass, this gang targets only one another; gone and missed are elaborate, Allen Funt-flavored gags that involve unsuspecting members of the public. (Sanchez plays “Guess the Ladyboy” in Thailand, but those dancers are willing participants, right down to showing the dong.)

In their place? Straight-up urinating — full stream ahead — on a slumbering cohort and allowing one’s face to be the recipient of another man’s shat-out beer enema. The “highlight” centers around one Sanchez teammate submitting to liposuction while awake, and the resulting sucked-out fat later gets knocked back in a shot glass and slurped up with a spoon. Of course the waste doesn’t stay down long, being vomited back up and into a waiting bucket; such is the circle of life. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.