Corbin Bernsen already had played a periodontic psychopath in 1994’s Appointment for a Killing when he took on the title role of The Dentist. Whereas the earlier film was a thriller made for TV, this slasher pic was built for the playground of VHS and cable, so Bernsen really gets to go for the gusto. And the guts.

A clean freak and control freak in equal measure, Dr. Alan Feinstone loses his goddamn mind after glimpsing his trophy wife (Linda Hoffman, Face/Off) going down on the greasy pool repairman (Michael Stadvec, The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven). At his dental practice with its pink-pastel walls, Dr. F takes his rage out on his patients, from accidentally slicing open a child’s gumline to purposely sexually assaulting a starlet (Christa Sauls, Ghost Rock) while she’s zonked on a nitrous oxide overdose. Her agent is a sweater-over-the-shoulder yuppie played by Mark Ruffalo, who most certainly leaves this off his CV.

The Dentist exists to see Dr. Feinstone exact much tooth and tongue trauma, and each successive checkup gets grislier. By the time he gets an overly zealous IRS agent (Earl Boen, The Terminator) into the chair, the movie finally feels comfortable with becoming the Re-Animator reunion it is for creatives Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon. Yet that’s also when it concludes — too little, too soon. They’re capable of better.

At least Bernsen (The Yeti) is fiercely committed to his role, unafraid to do the worst while looking his best. The Dentist 2 followed. Alas, a crossover film with Dr. Giggles did not. —Rod Lott

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Some microcinema efforts are made with so little dough, they appear to be shot in a garage. James L. Edward’s Trivial absolutely is, and doesn’t even try to hide the fact. Nor does it need to, because the movie is about a crazed woman broadcasting an underground game show across the internet, directly from, yep, her garage.

Conveniently, that’s why Edwards also can get away with the copy-shop vinyl banner behind his star’s head. I’m honestly impressed he sprang for grommets!

Laurel Edmonds (Sasha Graham, The Vicious Sweet) is our hostess with the mostest — loose screws, that is. Her kidnapped and bound contestants take turns answering questions like:
• What’s the only food that doesn’t spoil?
• Which animal has three vaginas?
• Who here knowingly spread an STD to multiple partners? 

Get an answer wrong, get your face cut. Get three answers wrong, get killed. (For the record, the respective answers are “honey,” “kangaroo” and “girrrrrl, don’t look at me.”)

Edwards himself (over-)plays the reigning champion, an obnoxious, sexist, alcoholic motel clerk in a distracting, overly curled Danny McBride-style mullet wig. The lone female contestant is Shianne Daye, who gets a “Special Appearance By” credit. Since she’s not a known quantity, I don’t know why she merits such a shout-out, other than perhaps Edwards’ undying appreciation for their explicit sex scenes in his directorial debut, Her Name Was Christa.

I appreciate how he creatively weaves in public-domain footage from quiz shows of yesteryear like Beat the Clock, both in the credit sequence and as cutaway reaction shots that served as HBO’s Dream On differentiator. Yet it’s not enough to detract from Trivial’s obvious problem: It’s ceaseless in repetition, more or less composed of five back-to-back episodes. Remove the mutilation and we’re essentially watching round after round of bar trivia.

Minute by minute, the reason to tune in to Trivial is Graham’s winning star turn as a wine o’clock MILF clearly working through Some Shit. Almost invisibly disarming, she marries the looks of Mariksa Hargitay with the sassy, sexy personality of Jennifer Tilly, minus the helium. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or Makeflix.

Apparently, the best way to work through your trauma is fighting giant spiders in Mizzou. Who knew? 

A year after a tragic fire on an amusement park dark ride kills her husband and child, a depressed woman (Lyndsy Fonseca, Kick-Ass 2) finds herself doing just that. Not intentionally, of course, but that’s what happens when the bus driver for your church camping trip takes you to the wrong canyon: one where bodies get yanked with enormous force — and not the fun kind inside, ahem, pitched tents. 

I’ve seen better spider movies in the past year than Don’t Move; I’ve seen worse, too. The notable difference here is its source material: the 2020 novel by Impractical Jokers’ James S. Murray, who co-writes, co-produces and appears in the film. His production company’s tagline is “Scary. Funny,” but the movie lacks a firm hold in both departments.

And to address the second adjective first, the jokes don’t land, despite committed, amusing delivery by Rob Riggle (Strays) and Tom Cavanaugh (TV’s Ed) as, respectively, the driver and pastor. Tonally, that tends to take the venom out of the pic’s overall bite, but one scene struck me as particularly, even diabolically creepy. It finds Fonseca and friends attempting to navigate their way through a web at night without triggering a strand; naturally, they fail and freeze as an oversized arachnid ever so slowly descends into frame, mere inches from her face. Don’t Move needed more of that flavor of menace to merit a reservations-free recommended spin. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

After a fisherman accidentally unleashes a 100-year-old skeleton from a floating coffin — and is strangled to death as thanks — a “world-famous” atomic energy scientist is brought in, because that’s just what you do in these situations.

As the skeleton claims more victims, it transforms into a bird-faced alien thing. We never get a full, clear look because The Horror from Beyond is shot in such stark black-and-white, you might as well call it ShadowVision. The creature’s power is creating a mighty wind by lifting its arms, not a leg.

This tall, hulking monstrosity crashes an outdoor costume party before heading to the local power station. But where will it strike from there? Lady scientist Maryann sure wants to know; in real time, we watch her painstakingly think things out on paper — letter by letter, line by line:

LAB
PARTY
POWER STA.
↓
?

Gripping! Resolution comes swiftly, once authorities man up and take a flamethrower to the place like it were Mikey Madison in a swimming pool on Cielo Drive.

A moody chiller from future Bloodsport helmer Newt Arnold, The Horror from Beyond wears its Filipino origins well, imaging what a crossover of the Blood Island and Aztec Mummy franchises might look (and sound and smell) like. In a cameo, Frankenstein’s monster has his pants fall to his ankles — something Guillermo del Toro didn’t have the balls to consider. —Rod Lott

Following the mysterious death of her sister, mushroom-haired journalist Keegan (Jo Ann Harris, Rape Squad) comes back to town to find answers. More questions arise, because a ski-masked murderer is on the loose, and he makes his decisions based on a literal roll of the dice for a monster-themed board game clearly colored by highlighters. Deadly Games, get it?

Upon meeting Keegan, the cop on the case (Sam Groom, Hanging by a Thread) investigates only how to crack open that reporter’s notebook, if you catch my drift. The cop is war buddies with the town loner (Steve Railsback, Turkey Shoot), who smokes cigarettes of Virginia Slims length despite severe asthma. So goes putting the pieces into place for this semi-slasher, kind of a Peyton Place take on masked-killer material. It doesn’t entirely work, but is interesting for toying with what was already a trite formula.

One of the game’s spaces reads, “Find harlot in pub.” I didn’t see one marked, “Drown Colleen Camp by tying her ankle to the swimming pool drain with a wire,” yet that happens. Keegan practically flirts with death by doing incredibly stupid things, like staying in her sister’s house alone overnight without bothering to repair the floor-to-ceiling window an intruder crashed through. At the very least, I’d Scotch-tape some cardboard or seams-ripped garbage bags before even so much thinking about taking a shower.

That may be the least annoying thing Keegan does. Harris’ performance screams “theater kid.” She’s constantly cracking jokes, talking to herself, muttering under her breath or basically never not flapping her gums. Combine Keegan’s inability to shut up with her high degree of self-absorption — her sister’s death seems to bother her so little, she doesn’t check in on her mother (June Lockhart, 1986’s Troll) until a day after rolling into town — and it’s utterly exhausting to watch.

When your Final Girl acts more unhinged than Railsback of all typecast people, that’s a problem! How much of Keegan’s oxygen-sucking, attention-whoring nonsense is Harris’ take or the work of neophyte writer/director Scott Mansfield, I know not. But Harris is so into it, I’m inclined to blame her.

What I can attribute to Mansfield (Imps*) are two truly impressive shots, both involving the eye, both worthy of a giallo, even if one is limited by effects available at the time and budget. Another memorable shot is Deadly Games’ final, for entirely other, perfectly bonkers reasons. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.