Rules of garlic and sunlight rules still apply, but Modern Vampires, from Forbidden Zone director Richard Elfman, is an unconventional vampire film, both fresh and funny.

Here, the bloodsuckers take residence in the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel and visit a nightclub where humans are kept in cages until feeding time. Looking like he finally comprehends the words in a script, Starship Troopers‘ Casper Van Dien stars as Dallas, a cigar-smoking vampire who takes a trailer-trash vamp (Natasha Gregson Wagner, Urban Legend) under his, um, wing.

But the subplot is what really makes this comedy fly: Vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (a crazed Rod Steiger, Mars Attacks!) comes to L.A. and is forced to take out an ad to find an assistant. The only applicant is gang member Time Bomb (Gabriel Casseus, Black Dog), a Crip who is at first reluctant to complete the duties of his job: namely, driving a stake through a vampire’s heart. “Man, I’m on probation!” he protests. “I don’t wanna fuck that up!”

Count Dracula himself is played by Robert Pastorelli (TV’s Murphy Brown), while other creatures of the night are Udo Kier and Kim Cattrall. Yep, she’s slutty in this one, too, and when she’s raped by gang members, they turn into the world’s first black vampires — a distinction of which they’re awfully proud. This humorous take on the vampire legend was written by the talented Matthew Bright, who infused equal amounts of humor and horror into his wicked Little Red Riding Hood update, 1996’s Freeway. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Among all the Porky’s rip-offs and T&A romps of the era, Screwballs strikes me as one of the most repellent. Basically, the “plot” is this: At the world’s most depressing-looking high school, four or five guys — I really can’t remember; they were all overly horny — make a bet at who will be able to see the breasts of popular virgin Purity Busch (Linda Speciale). Yep, that name is as clever as Screwballs gets — sorry, Bootsie Goodhead and Principal Stuckoff — which is to say, not at all.

Oh, what a different movie Screwballs might have been had it stuck to this plot! Instead, it goes off on so many illogical tangents that we have the tragic tale of a boy who gets his penis stuck in a bowling ball, or the ironic spectacle of a slut’s gelatinous chest pressed up against the back window of a van.

In the end, our zeroes — skilled they are at staging free breast exams at school — succeed, by blowing Purity’s clothes off with a giant fan at an assembly. With patriotic music blaring in a way the composer certainly never intended, Purity’s not-that-great-to-be-honest bosom is shown in full close-up as the end credits roll.

What, no epilogue to tie up all the nagging loose ends? No jokey “where are they now?” titles? I wish we could measure how far back Screwballs set the women’s movement, but the fact that it was co-written by a woman (Linda Shayne, who played the aforementioned Bootsie) certainly pushes it back even further. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Only one film in history is endorsed by California’s San Leandro Police Department — and I mean endorsed via an introduction that’s actually part of the movie, with the police chief addressing the camera when he’s not looking down to read his lines. That lucky sonofabitch is Kindergarten Ninja.

Or, if you prefer, as the DVD label reads in all caps, “KIDNERGARDEN NINJA.”

Former San Francisco 49ers wide receiver and two-time Super Bowl champion Dwight Clark stars as former San Francisco Gold Rush football star Blade Steel, a playboy who manages a stable of at least 10 sex partners, uses “Hey, do you like French fries?” as a surefire pickup line and keeps a cooler of beer in his convertible. The latter helps earn him a DUI, but an argument can be made that fighting outside a Payless ShoeSource marks his true low point — either way, a judge assigns him to 90 days of community service at a children’s sports program.

Meanwhile, in heaven, where the likes of Elvis Presley and Charlie Chaplin engage in stick fighting, Bruce Lee (Anthony Chan) must intervene in Blade’s life to become an angel. Thus, at a dojo where everyone drinks Coca-Cola Classic, Blade learns karate from a blind master (George Chung) named the Chosen Wan. Get it?

Such high-kickin’ skills will come in handy when Blade faces Hector Machette (Juan Chapa, Fight to Win), a drug dealer slinging the hot new street narcotic, Buzz. However, the cops aren’t too happy to have Blade’s assistance: “Hey, I don’t need no washed-up wide receiver vigilante tryin’ to play policeman out here.”

Needless to say, Blade Steel does not become a ninja as the title hints, and he barely spends any time with the kids. He’s too busy romancing their teacher, Miss Linda (Suzanne Stanke), a goody-two-shoes who’s co-opted Peter Pan’s hairstyle. Together they go to a karaoke club that clearly is some crew member’s living room.

This no-budget, shot-on-video movie will give viewers plenty to laugh at, but not in the way Chan and Chung intended. Doubling as the director and screenwriter, respectively, the two men are in on the joke — it’s just the wrong joke. They think Kindergarten Ninja is hilarious; it’s not. It is painfully inept on all levels imaginable, particularly with its wooden performers. On the scale of gridiron vets turning to acting, Clark may be the worst; by comparison, Hunter‘s Fred Dryer would excite Joseph Papp.

Kindergarten Ninja ends with an unrealized threat (“The End … for now”); a shout-out to Hot 97.7 Radio; and a reel of bloopers, as if the entire project weren’t one in itself. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

More thought went into titling this movie than went into scripting it. I picture the latter happening this way: Writer/director Craig Moss (whose previous turd, aptly titled Breaking Wind, spoofed the Twilight franchise with a kindergartener’s wit) writes the names of dozens of currently popular films, TV shows, TV commercials, celebrities and other pop-culture items on pieces of paper. Then he puts them in a paper bag and pulls out about two dozen at random. Moss then shoehorns awful parodies of each in about 80 minutes’ time.

Among his many “targets” are the Subway ad for $5 footlong subs, a dead Steve Jobs and the pottery scene from Ghost. Yes, Ghost, the movie from 1990.

As if you needed to be told, the results are either painfully awful or awfully painful. Also as if you needed to be told, 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — by and large, and in theory — exists to make fun of a batch of recent horror films, primarily of the found-footage nature. But in order to make fun of something, jokes are needed, which Moss forever confuses with his two obsessions: anal and genital activity.

In the latter department — and this list by no means approaches being comprehensive — 30 Nights features:
• a garden gnome being humped;
• a pool heater being penetrated;
• a dog performing fellatio on his owner;
• an infant performing cunnilingus on a teen girl;
• a ghost having sex with the lead actress (Reno 911!: Miami‘s Kathryn Fiore, for whom you will feel great sorrow and embarrassment); and
• every viewer being raped.

“It’s not even funny anymore!” complains a ghost at one point (with a British accent, because accents equal comedy?). He’s right … and also wrong: This movie never was funny to begin with. What Moss makes qualifies as an insult to lowbrow humor. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I can’t recall an A-list comedy that works so hard at being relentlessly offensive as Movie 43. Hugh Jackman dons not adamantium claws, but neck testicles. Anna Faris radiates not cluelessness, but coprophilia. Terrence Howard discusses not how hard it is for a pimp, but how long be the black man’s dick.

For a slight majority of the running time, however, Movie 43 forgets to attach jokes to those shocks.

A compilation of shorts bearing no connection to one another other than earning that R rating and pushing it as close to NC-17 as it can get, the film was long-delayed and then ignored. For all its many faults, it’s still watchable.

After all, where else can you see so many Oscar winners and nominees do things that would leave older members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences aghast? Things like:
• Kate Winslet with soup-drenched nuts pressed against her face?
• Naomi Watts making a move on her teenaged son?
• and certainly taking the cake — or avocado, as the case may be — Halle Berry mixing guacamole with her right breast?

In delivering sketch after sketch, Movie 43 is structured like Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women on the Women, with one big difference: Not counting three commercials and a superhero speed-dating bit (stolen by Jason Sudeikis’ horndog Batman), it’s not parodying anything. It’s merely presenting gags (sometimes literal) without context or purpose.

Yet I enjoyed experiencing it; there’s something fascinating about seeing such star-studded material fail, landing with a cruel thud before your eyes. The final sequence, directed by Super‘s James Gunn and involving a profane cartoon cat, makes any pain worth the temporary suffering. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.