A planet where apes evolved from men? That strange, sci-fi concept of Ted Post’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes is mere child’s play compared to bizarreness of the director’s outré exercise in suburban horror that is The Baby. Dudes, this one’s colored in all shades of fucked-up.

Newly widowed social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer, The Loved One) is assigned to investigate the Wadsworth family, headed by a frowny, chain-smoking matriarch (Ruth Roman, Strangers on a Train). Mrs. Wadsworth lives with her two daughters and one son, which isn’t all that odd until you realize that the boy, her “Baby,” isn’t a baby at all, but a fully grown adult (David Manzy) who never matured beyond infancy. He wears diapers and all.

Initially repulsed, Ann starts to ignore most of her other clients to visit this special case. She recommends Baby be put in a clinic — a suggestion that, to Mrs. Wadsworth, goes over about as well as that 10th vodka tonic. Weirdness grows as Baby cajoles his naive teen babysitter (“What kind of question is that? Of course I’m wearing panties. Don’t I always?”) into breast-feeding him on the job.

It all leads to an expected tragic ending, but what is not expected is how disturbing The Baby feels as a whole. It’s not just Baby’s chalkboard-nails crying fits that bother, but an overall pervading sense of unease, and yet somehow, this thing earned a PG rating. Unlike most horror films of the 1970s, it’s not fun — just remarkably confounding and unsettling. I recommend giving it a watch, if only so I’m not the only one so agitated afterward. —Rod Lott

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Hangman’s Curse is perhaps the world’s first Christian paranormal teen mystery spooker, and as expected, it’s so bad, it’s good — a crazy combo of The Omega Code, The X-Files and Spy Kids, with elements of Heathers and Arachnophobia thrown in just to muddy up an already messy mix.

David Keith and Mel Harris star as the parental units of the Springfield family, a gypsy-like clan roving the country in an RV with their twin teenage children, Elisha and Elijah, and Max, the drug-sniffing dog, all working together as The Veritas Project, a crack freelance undercover investigations team. They’re hired by a public high school to uncover the truth behind a series of mysterious deaths that has so far claimed the lives of three football players. The bullied Goth kids — depicted as Satanists, of course — explain that the soul of a kid who hung himself in the school years ago is getting revenge on all classroom tormentors.

Donning baseball cap and spectacles, Keith unconvincingly goes incognito as the school janitor, while Harris looks at evidence under microscopes and calls for the assistance of a nutty professor, played by Frank Peretti, author of the book on which the film is based. I can understand cutting him a little slack since these characters are his and all, but Peretti is no actor and seems to think the dramatic narrative is sturdy enough to support his decision to channel Bruce Dern, Jerry Lewis and Prof. Irwin Corey, inadvertently providing many funny moments. (The honor for the funniest, however, goes to the scene in which virginal Elisha wraps a snake around her neck and comments, “It reminds me of a boyfriend I once dated.”)

The kids are the real stars of the ham-fisted, underlit, amateurishly acted film, especially Elisha (Leighton Meester, TV’s Gossip Girl), who exclaims “Oh, snaps!” whenever something doesn’t go her way — like plunging down an air duct and landing in the nest of hybrid killer spiders. The tumble and resulting bites nearly kill her, but she’s saved by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. (Oh, and a fresh dose of anti-venom, but that doesn’t get near as much credit.)

Whom did the Christian backers hire to helm their cinematic testament of God’s love? Rafal Zielinski, director of such noted church faves as all three Screwballs titty flicks, of course. They also couldn’t have picked a better example for the sanctity of marriage than Harris, who’s such a firm believer, she’s been hitched five times. —Rod Lott

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Among the handful of movies released by the late-aughts-resurrected Hammer Films, The Woman in Black is the one that feels most like the old-school Hammer that film fans the world over hold near and dear to their hearts. (Let Me In, however, remains the best.) It’s low-key and Gothic, and relies little on special effects to get viewers scared.

Based upon a slim novel by Susan Hill that already earned an adaptation by British television in 1989, this new Woman has the fortunate status of having a leading man in Daniel Radcliffe, in his first post-Harry Potter role. You’ll quickly forget he was a boy wizard; here, he’s a lawyer and father of one little boy, and still grieving over the death of his wife during childbirth — so much so that he’s more than a tad suicidal.

His employer sends him to one of those out-of-the-way villages where everybody knows about — but dare not go there, much less speak of — the mansion known as Eel Marsh House. His duty is to sort through the paperwork of its newly deceased owner so her will can be settled, but he spends more time investigating the expansive home’s strange noises and the fleeting appearance of the title character, whose visage fleets about his peripheral vision.

But not ours. Although used sparingly by director James Watkins (Eden Lake), the ghost gets right up in our faces to provide effective jolts in line with the recent Insidious, which also preferred practical effects over the all-too-easy (and all-too-artificial) computer-generated ones. That the specter at this film’s center has a rep for sending children to their death raises the stakes in an already eerie tale. Atmosphere abounds, expressing a visual chill to match the physical one moving up your spine. —Rod Lott

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Taking reality TV to its logical, inevitable extreme, Slashers is presented as a live Japanese game show, in which six American contestants are trapped in a maze for an hour and a half with three masked serial killers. Whoever — if anyone — is left standing at the end wins a $12 million booty. There are no rules, other than trying to stay alive.

The cameraman follows the contestants as they’re chased by Dr. Ripper, Preacherman and Chainsaw Charlie, whose redneck accent, red hair and Alfred E. Neuman mask make him a dead ringer for comedian Carrot Top. Running and running are Tough Black Guy, Fat Hispanic Guy Who Sounds Exactly Like Dennis Franz, Asshole Frat White Guy, Whiny Jewish Girl Who Keeps Losing Her Shirt, Hot Model Girl Who Runs Around in Her Bra, and Tough Butchy Girl with Multiple Sclerosis.

The concept is original, the sets are impressive, the gore is good ’n’ gory and, best of all, there are a few true jolts. Essentially, there are only two drawbacks to Slashers:
1) the idea of having only one cameraman following six people is absurd, and
2) all the contestants are terrible actors. And I mean terrible — awful, stinky terrible.

But Slashers is worthy viewing, primarily because it’s the rare shot-on-video feature that doesn’t overreach and pretend to be a slick, glossy thriller. A live show would be shot on video rather than film, so director Maurice Devereaux is able to use that to his advantage, given a low, low budget. Extra credit is awarded for its dead-on parodies of Japanese television. —Rod Lott

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A remake of the Japanese 2002 film of the same name, Dark Water has its share of spooky elements and is a rather effective creepy thriller — right up until the time you realize that it’s not really Dark Water at all, but rather a liquefied version of The Ring or Ringu or whatever you wanna call it.
 
That’s not coincidental. Both Dark Water and Ringu are based on novels by Kôji Suzuki. As a result, the film adaptations, like the author, go to the same well once too often.
 
Checklist the similarities:
• A single mother trying to do the best she can and battling self-doubt as she raises her quasi-psychic child.
• A constant, relentless rain; at least The Ring had the good sense to make the locale Seattle.
• A creepy dead girl, victimized by bad parenting and now in the market for a new mommy figure.
• Oh, and lots of yucky, dark H20 and something involving a well or a water tank or any other water receptacle you can think of.
 
As the single mom, Jennifer Connelly does a fine job, and the supporting cast — led by Tim Roth and John C. Reilly — is equally terrific. But an awful lot of horror-flick cliches lead to a wholly unsatisfying conclusion here. It’s a bummer, too, because director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) does a masterful job with the atmospherics. —Phil Bacharach

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