Primal Rage is a rare example of a horror movie that manages to create some degree of tension due entirely to a pre-production fuck-up. When the filmmakers decided not to cast the highly appealing soap star Sarah Buxton as their female lead, but instead as the female lead’s doomed roommate, they made it impossible for viewers not to agonize over the likelihood of her eventual fate — if only because she’s the only remotely sympathetic person in the entire picture. That her painful descent into madness and violent death is suggested to be an indirect punishment for a previous abortion only makes Rage that much more infuriating.

An Italian production shot in the States, the movie is about what happens when university professor Bo Svenson (sporting the most pathetic ponytail in the entire history of mad science) experiments on a monkey, which then goes on to bite a muckracking student journalist who contracts a contagious disease that turns all of its victims (all five of them) into zombie-like homicidal maniacs.

Written by Umberto Lenzi, the auteur responsible for the infamous Cannibal Ferox, and directed by Vittorio Rambaldi, the son of Oscar-winning E.T. FX artist Carlo Rambaldi, Primal Rage is — with the exception of one decapitation near the end — virtually gore-free and filled with cheap-looking effects.

Despite the film being ineffective even as unintentional camp, horror completists might want to watch it as a double feature with Slumber Party Massacre II, if only to make their way through star Patrick Lowe’s entire filmography in just one sitting. —Allan Mott

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Easily the best of three giant-croc offerings from 2007 — Primeval and Black Water being the others — Rogue is a semisolid slice of Ozploitation from Wolf Creek writer/director/producer Greg Mclean.

His near-two-hour tour plops viewers on a two-bit riverboat commanded by Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell, Pitch Black), an Aussie native who’s never left the territory and seems to love her life of driving tourists up and down the muddy waters of the outback. On the half-full voyage are, among others, a grieving widower; two married couples, one with a teen daughter (Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland); and an American magazine travel writer (Michael Vartan, TV’s Alias).

A flare for help diverts Ryan’s usual route into sacred land. Shortly after finding the flare’s source — ripped to pieces, of course — she and her passengers are bumped by one mega-mammoth crocodile onto a pocket of land. It’d be a safe spot until rescue if it weren’t located in a tidal river, making them sitting ducks at the mercy of ticking time.

A midpoint, midnight set piece in which they attempt to move to safer parts by traversing a rope hanging over the river is a real nerve-wracker, well-orchestrated by Mclean. It’s all downhill from there, mate, as the last third is occupied by a long, quiet stretch of Vartan attempting to outsmart a CGI creation. Had Mclean kept the monster mostly unseen, Rogue may have worked wonders for its entirety.

His camera captures some beautiful scenery of Northern Australia, but also some horrible conditions that make me never want to visit: the unrelenting heat, the ever-present flies, the ass crack of Avatar‘s Sam Worthington. I’ll continue to settle for vicarious, periodic trips to Outback Steakhouse. —Rod Lott

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Lil’ Audrey Rose, age 5, is killed within the first minute of the film that bears her name, burning to death with her mother in their overturned car, following a head-on collision on the highway. Several years later, a man in a novelty beard (Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs) is seen stalking the Templeton family all over New York City, from Central Park to their 11-year-old daughter’s private school.

What links the two events? As Elliot Hoover (Hopkins) tells Mr. and Mrs. Templeton (Rollerball‘s John Beck and Heartbreak Ridge‘s Marsha Mason) after persuading them to meet him, he firmly believes that the soul of his dead daughter, Audrey, resides in the body of their very much alive one, Ivy (Susan Swift, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, in a great child-actor performance). Naturally, the parents think he’s nucking futs, but you know, come to think of it, Ivy has been experiencing some violent nightmares. Soon, she’s throwing herself all over their West 67th apartment like she’s going for the gold at a gymnastics tourney, all while supposedly asleep.

Judging from his work helming 1963’s The Haunting and, to a lesser degree, 1949’s Curse of the Cat People, director Robert Wise once knew what worked in horror — especially that which is suggested rather than seen — but exhibits that skill only in Audrey‘s first half. Before taking a huge shift in story direction, Wise achieves a creepy uneasiness that will remind viewers of The Exorcist‘s early scenes, as an apple-cheeked only child not suffering from a lack of parental love and attention suddenly becomes inexplicably abnormal.

What kills the momentum? Hoover tries to convince the Templetons to allow him access to Ivy, in order to free Audrey’s soul that cries out for help. This leads to the film becoming a courtroom drama, like Kramer vs. Kramer for the pro-reincarnation community. Stock footage of funeral practices in India is about the least of the back half’s problems when one considers a lengthy hypnosis session and an ending so terrible, it’s insulting. Letting Frank De Felitta (The Entity) adapt his own novel was perhaps not so Wise, Bob. —Rod Lott

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In 1940, the entire population of Friar, N.H., scaled a mountain trail. Only one person survived, and he went crazy; the others 571 were found frozen, slaughtered or not found at all. Nearly 70 years later, a small group of obsessives follows the same path to unravel the mystery. Interesting premise you have there, YellowBrickRoad, and one you botched completely. Its crime is not being purposefully vague, but utterly boring.

Led by Teddy Barnes (Michael Laurino) and his wife, Melissa (Anessa Ramsey, The Signal), who plan on co-authoring a book on their subject, the group of eight take a hike — literally! — and unfortunately, it feels like one shot in real-time. After a long stretch, weird things start to happen to them — the kind a $500,000 budget can afford: Teddy having nightmares, a compass going willy-nilly, and all hearing music of the old-timey, juke-joint variety that used to score Betty Boop cartoon shorts.

One by one, step by step, the campers sloooooowly go bonkers, and periodic video interviews captured by a psych professor (Alex Draper, Mimic 2) demonstrate their increasing loss of memory and deteriorating spatial orientation. But that doesn’t count as anything “happening.” Little does until the final hour, when — spoiler alert — the mapmaker (Clark Freeman) rips off the leg of his sister (Cassidy Freeman, TV’s Smallville) after she runs off with a stinky hat he found along the trail while urinating. Swiper, no swiping!

Written and directed by feature first-timers Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton, YellowBrickRoad is like having a piping-hot slice of pizza placed in front of you, but being told not to eat it for a while: It looks good and smells good, yet when you finally take a bite, its lukewarm blandness has even your taste buds questioning whether it was worth the effort. The difference is that the movie is interminable, right up to the pointless, pretentious end. At least it’s not a found-footage film, but you’ll still want to click your heels.

Lordy, it’s the worst. As one of its taglines reads right on the DVD cover, “DO NOT FOLLOW.” You’ve been warned. —Rod Lott

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Three decades passed between the 10-year-old me being intrigued by the TV ads for The Boogens and actually being able to see the film. I wasn’t disappointed, because the little horror film is pretty solid. I should have expected as much, considering how many images from those 30-second commercials never left my mind. They were exactly as I remembered them.

The opening credits rely the backstory through vintage newspaper front pages: A small town in the Colorado Rockies briefly was a pay-dirt place for mining silver … until the “attacks” happened, and the mines were closed. Years later, they’re reopened, and the dynamite unleashes the Boogens — creatures that look like the evil spawn of a turtle and a giant spider, with tentacles spiked at the end for maximum neck-slashing action.

Although largely unseen until the picture’s end, the monsters take shelter in the basement of a house into which two young, virile hired hands (an extra-randy Jeff Harlan and Xanadu‘s Fred McCarren) move. Girlfriend Anne-Marie Martin (TV’s Sledge Hammer) and her pal Rebecca Balding (Silent Scream) come to visit, bringing along a yappy little dog that’s actually a darn good actor, as far as animals go. That they won’t all last until the end is a given, but how and in what order?

Despite its goofy, ooga-booga title — never spoken by any of the characters — the film takes itself at just the right level of seriousness; it’s not the piece of quick-buck schlock I feared it might be. Director James L. Conway (Hangar 18) tells the story earnestly, making it a welcome respite from the era’s slasher craze. Smarter than you’d think and lagging only in the middle, The Boogens recalls the creature features of yore — perhaps not with class, but definitely with ingenuity that belies its low budget. —Rod Lott

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