If you were to check the leaderboard for comedies about illegal cross-country road races, you’d find that The Gumball Rally is firmly in the #2 spot. Trailing behind Paul Bartel’s Cannonball (which is even better if you imagine it as an unofficial prequel to Death Race 2000), it’s still miles ahead of Hal Needham’s The Cannonball Run series, which are classic examples of how movies that were obviously a lot of fun to film, usually aren’t a lot of fun to watch. (And if you’re wondering about Speed Zone, everyone involved in that fiasco died crashing into the wall or, at least, they wish they did).

Starring Michael Sarrazin as a wealthy businessman who relieves his existential boredom by running an annual underground race from New York City to Long Beach, Calif., the film follows the same loose, character-based structure of all those other films (a mold whose origins can be traced directly to Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World).

Although The Gumball Rally lacks the star power of Needham’s films, its lack of recognizable celebrities is mitigated by the fact that its cast actually made the effort to inhabit likable characters, rather than just mug shamelessly until the director announced it was time to get back to the hotel and par-tay.

Director/writer Charles Bail keeps the film light and slightly cartoony, and although some moments don’t quite work, the majority of the film moves as quickly as the vehicles it depicts right until the finish line. —Allan Mott

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You know how people (maybe even you) go apeshit over the Harry Potter movies? I don’t get it. That’s not to say it’s wrong — just not for me. When it comes to children’s-oriented fantasy, the vastly underrated Lemony Snicket movie is more my taste, and no one could be more surprised about that than me, because this adaptation looked like typical Jim Carrey crap.

Instead, it’s anything but. An admirably restrained Carrey plays the balding, fiendish Count Olaf, a would-be actor who lives in a spooky castle and becomes the legal guardian of three young children (a jailbait Emily Browning among them) distantly related to him, recently orphaned by a house fire. Olaf is no Super Nanny, but he’s eager to get his hands on their immense inheritance. But the kids escape, bouncing from one obscure relative to the next, with Olaf on their tail and sporting different disguises.

The chase isn’t as interesting as the film’s Tim Burton-esque bleakness and pervading sense of dark humor, both welcome elements to what could have been sheer kiddie junk (as the rather sly opening parodies, with a crudely animated “The Littlest Elf” cartoon). And I’d wager that the closing credits may be the most amazing cinema has ever seen.

Too bad this tanked, because I would’ve loved to see the sequels. That’s rather, er, unfortunate. *rimshot* —Rod Lott

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Ask any priapic teenage boy with an ounce of imagination what he would do if he could become invisible, and chances are, he’d blush so hard he’d actually achieve an ironic moment of flaccidity.

It’s a shame, then, that the filmmakers responsible for School Spirit didn’t ask a teenage boy to write their script, since it is as impotent an example of the teen titty comedy as the ’80s ever produced.

Made by the same East Indian investors who gave us the insane Sho Kosugi fiasco Nine Deaths of the Ninja, the film tells the tale of Billy Batson (Tom Nolan), a college cut-up who becomes the titular spirit when an emergency-condom run leads to a seemingly fatal car crash. With just a few hours left before he has to follow his spirit guide uncle into the light, Billy’s tangible ghost makes a valiant effort to get laid one last time — first with the frosty Elizabeth Foxx (in a performance that is the very definition of “leggy”) and then with convent-raised, French girl Daniele Arnaud — while also making an effort to honor the sacred college tradition of “Hog Day.”

Sadly, the movie’s chief gimmick is little more than an afterthought and Billy spends far more time as a regular douchebag than an invisible voyeur. The boredom is occasionally relieved by a fun performance from Marta Kober, who seems to be channeling Tatum O’Neal in her role as the dean’s braless jailbait daughter, but she alone can’t overcome everyone else’s lethargic disinterest. —Allan Mott

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As much as you may love movies, you’re human and only have so much time. Some movies are simply going to fall by the wayside, never to be seen by your eyes. That’s okay. You’re not a bad person. Unless you’re Rod Lott (the creator of this site) and that movie is Da’ Booty Shop. In that case, you’re going to suffer eternal torment in Hades for what you did.

See, a while back, someone sent a DVD copy of that film to Rod to review and he decided he could live the whole rest of his life without doing so. I mocked him for his refusal and suggested he was a coward. In retaliation, he sent it to me and dared me to watch and review it. And I did, first in video form (see below) and now here in print. Does this make me a better person than him? Yes. Yes it does.

An “urban comedy” (that means it’s about black people), Da’ Booty Shop recounts the adventures of a stripper named Yolanda (Trina McGee), who reluctantly inherits the responsibilities of an “urban” hair salon (that means it’s for black people) after her brother (Marcello Thedford) is sent to jail for undisclosed reasons. Yolanda is an idiot and is no way prepared to deal with the mess her brother has left for her to deal with. For some reason, she decides to hire her stripper friends to work at the salon, and it all ends happily.

The plot is unimportant. All that matters is that Da’ Booty Shop really sucks and I was man enough to watch it and someone else wasn’t. Remember that. I know I will. —Allan Mott

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A zombie virus breaks out in the lab, and a team of military specialists goes in to take control of the situation, in Zombie Strippers. Of course, they do a piss-poor job and someone who’s been infected escapes and heads for the nearest illegal strip club, Rhino’s, owned by a fast-talking sleazoid named Ian Essko (Robert Englund).

The girls are a mixed lot containing a virgin from Sartre, Neb.; nasty rivals; one who reads Nietzsche (after she becomes the walking dead, she says, “Now this stuff makes so much more sense”) and star attraction Kat (Jenna Jameson). The male audience goes nuts for the girls after they become zombies, and the limbo bimbos turn into the super-strippers.

The picture was written, directed, shot and edited by Jay Lee, with dialogue assistance from Zarathustra. Supposedly inspired by Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, in which everyone is eager to conform by becoming the title beast, Lee’s script is a grab bag of horror movie parodies — one zombie begging to be shot in the head is a dead-on poke at The Fly — and some kind of commentary on people who love the dead a little too much. As if that’s even possible.

Mostly, however, the whole thing is an upraised middle finger pointed at mainstream filmmakers who enjoy slumming by making imitation down-and-dirty exploitation movies while maintaining their memberships in the Cahiers du Cinéma fan club. You ain’t gonna catch Robert De Niro in the sequel to this puppy. —Doug Bentin

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