Granted, there aren’t that many movies in existence concerned with a monster born from a man’s anal tract, yet it’s finally nice to see one without Jeremy Piven. Rimshot! But seriously, folks …

Independently funded because of course it is, the dark comedy Bad Milo! casts Ken Marino (TV’s Childrens Hospital) as Duncan, a tightly wound company man with some serious intestinal issues. While the official medical diagnosis is polyps — “a trooper in your pooper,” says the doc — the real issue is that his intestines play home to a squatty creature with big, cute eyes that belie a carnivorous killer instinct.

Whenever Duncan gets stressed-out, which is often, out of his butt plops the beast, nicknamed Milo. While Duncan remains unconscious from the sheer exhaustion and pain of passing a toddler-sized critter, Milo turns one of Duncan’s co-workers into a bloody, poopy pulp. Authorities blame a rabid raccoon, which our protagonist is keen to go along with, because hey, who’s going to believe a story about an anus demon?

Director/co-writer Jacob Vaughan hopes we will, and Marino and company do their straight-faced damnedest to sell it. Because they take the silly story seriously, the admittedly erratic Bad Milo! works a sliver more often than not. Playing against type as Duncan’s dowdy wife, Gillian Jacobs (TV’s Community) is right in step with Marino (who deserves some kind of awards commendation for total commitment to his initial shitting-Milo scene), but the show is stolen by comedian Kumail Nanjiani (Hell Baby) in his small role as the too-young lover of Duncan’s oversexed mother (Mary Kay Place, The Big Chill).

Toilet humor isn’t for everyone, yet oddly, Bad Milo! seems cleaner than its raunchy, R-rated brothers, likely because the jokes are delivered as black as bile. —Rod Lott

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Some would argue that Jean-Claude Van Damme has been doing comedy his entire career — he just didn’t realize it. Whichever side of the argument you fall, there’s no denying Welcome to the Jungle is Van Damme’s first intentional comedy — not a bad step toward a redemption/comeback that started with 2008’s self-aware JCVD and enlisting in 2012’s The Expendables 2.

So what if his role is really just an extended cameo? In being open to poking fun at himself, he’s genuinely enjoyable as Storm Rothschild, a past attendee of web-design classes at DeVry University and current he-man leader of team-building corporate retreats. Storm’s latest clients are the dysfunctional denizens of an advertising agency where young pup Chris (Adam Brody, Scream 4) is constantly bullied — not to mention having his good ideas stolen — by douche-tastic senior VP Phil (Rob Huebel, Hell Baby).

Storm flies the gang via rickety aircraft to a jungle island, where they are stranded when the old coot of a pilot croaks. Phil is so power-mad that he practically wills a Lord of the Flies scenario into existence, while Chris tries to overcome his wimpy rep and keep the peace among his co-workers, particularly his über-luminous office crush (Megan Boone, TV’s The Blacklist).

A mix of tribal trouble and the more relatable office politics, Welcome to the Jungle never quite finds a stride with which director Rob Meltzer is comfortable. Laughs are present, albeit all front-loaded and operating only as internal chuckles. I suspect few were in freshman Jeff Kauffmann’s script, since so many land by Huebel’s sheer force of delivery alone. (If you dislike his Human Giant style of comedy, don’t even bother.) The large cast, which underuses Kristen Schaal (TV’s Flight of the Conchords), is nonetheless incredibly game and genial, making the mild disappointment at least pleasingly painless. Plus, there’s a tiger. —Rod Lott

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Social-issues auteur Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg) really cut loose with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a comedy that bears no agenda beyond driving its superficial plot. Perhaps feeling guilty that the project wasn’t Important Enough, the crusty Kramer couldn’t resist bloating the material into an epic 202 minutes that begin with one of those old-fashioned musical overtures that play against a blank screen. It’s about the only moment of respite.

The goofs get going when a crook (Jimmy Durante) accidentally drives off a cliff; coming to his aid are five fellow drivers (played by, in ascending order of irritation, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney). Just before croaking, the dying man tells them that $350,000 — an amount that seems positively quaint today — is buried under “a big W” in a California state park. His news sets off a veritable rat race to snag the loot first; because the money is stolen, a bulldog-faced cop (Spencer Tracy) monitors their progress.

Problems and hangers-on pile up in equal numbers along the way, per rules of the slapstick subgenre. The sheer size of the cast is so big — and so loud, thanks to Ethel Merman — that Mad World‘s imitators curl like Shrinky Dinks in comparison. Had the adjective “zany” not existed beforehand, Kramer’s comedy would coin it — and likely concurrent with the occasion of a paint can landing atop someone’s noggin.

But is the film funny? Personally, if not for the final set piece that violently hurls the leading men off an uncontrollable fire ladder, I’d say no. I suppose that once upon a time in Hollywood, the sights of cars weaving, people yelling, objects falling, structures collapsing and Dick Shawn gyrating automatically translated into laughter. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they, Meemaw? —Rod Lott

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Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans real estate is cheap, thereby allowing Jack (Rob Corddry, Hot Tub Time Machine) and his pregnant-with-twins wife, Vanessa (Leslie Bibb, Law Abiding Citizen) to snatch up a spacious, historic fixer-upper for a song. It’s in a neighborhood that people don’t know even exists — well, white people — but those who do have given the residence a pet name: House of Blood, on account of all the murders that have taken place there.

The threat to life comes not from outside, but from within, as the place is reputedly haunted. That would make sense, given Vanessa’s sudden bad habits and demonic vocalizations. (Pay no mind to the hairy, bloated, naked creature that attempts oral sex — that’s just a wandering patient from the nursing-care facility down the street.) Dispatched by the Vatican to exorcise Jack and Vanessa’s home are two Italian priests (co-writers/directors Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon) with a penchant for chain-smoking and orgasmic consumption of po’ boys. Says one of the holy men to our expectant parents/new homeowners, “I can assure you the devil is real … and he is a dick.”

Let it be said, as if it needed telling, that Hell Baby is a horror spoof of the possession picture, especially those involving evil children. Whether you find it successful depends less upon your tolerance for grown adults playing “catch” with a newborn and more upon that for the Garant/Lennon team, creators of TV’s Reno! 911; its theatrical spin-off, Reno! 911: Miami; and arguably the best ping-pong/kung-fu hybrid the big screen has seen, Balls of Fury — all scattershot, but with just enough hits to make the misses worthwhile. The same goes here, traversing hilarious highs and lagging lows.

As the least interesting pieces of a rather tightly contained cast, Garant/Lennon’s men of the collar are responsible for many of the misses. Stealing the show is Keegan-Michael Key (Role Models) as a friendly African-American living in Jack and Vanessa’s crawlspace; stopping it cold is Riki Lindhome (2009’s The Last House on the Left) as Vanessa’s bubbly Wiccan sister. It’s not the fault of Lindhome, a rather talent comedian, but the script. I felt embarrassed for her in her character’s introductory scene, which requires the actress to be completely, totally, full-frontal, shaved-pube nude for three minutes and no point. —Rod Lott

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Former Intelligence Counter Espionage agent Matt Helm (Dean Martin, post-Rat Pack) sees superbly stacked women everywhere: his dreams, his morning bath, his breakfast — hell, everywhere. So omnipresent are these lovely ladies that not only does he often have to ask, “You have been vaccinated?,” but that viewers of The Silencers may forget that director Phil Karlson (Walking Tall) has included a spy half to his spy comedy.

The first of four films based ever so loosely on Donald Hamilton’s series of Gold Medal adventure novels, The Silencers is more an impressive collage of décolletage than a bundle of laughs (sample joke: “If you were an Indian, Custer would still be alive!”), but the two styles make a fine pair nonetheless. For a 007 spoof, you could do much worse, and not much better.

As for that espionage portion of the formula, Helm reluctantly retires from retirement in order to save the world from Operation Fallout, for which a defecting American scientist delivers a tape to a villainous organization’s secret underground HQ for nefarious nuclear purposes. Said org is headed by the Fu Manchu-esque Tung-Tze, played by Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) under what looks like judiciously applied layers of CoverGirl LashBlast.

Helping Helm and his Grampa turtleneck infiltrate the lair is Gail Hendricks, a klutzy fellow agent who may be a double-crosser, but wow, what a double! She’s played by Stella Stevens (1963’s The Nutty Professor) at her peak of hotness, so it’s no wonder Helm literally yanks her clothes clean off her body. As foxy as Gail may be — and she is — she’s hardly the only poker stoking Helm’s fire; pouring over in Pathécolor loveliness are Nancy Kovack (Jason and the Argonauts), Daliah Lavi (1967’s Casino Royale), Beverly Adams (How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), legendary leggy dancer Cyd Charisse and so many more.

The end shot, which features Helm in bed with no fewer than 10 perfectly doable and well-rounded “Slaygirls,” promised audiences that Helm would return in a sequel titled The Ambushers. Against all odds, someone on set actually was sober enough to write that down and follow through. —Rod Lott

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