Love it or loathe it, The Last Horror Film earns a smidgen of admiration for reportedly shooting “guerrilla style” at the Cannes Film Festival. How much of it qualifies as surreptitious is up for debate. What there is no question about is how unappealing Maniac’s Joe Spinell is in the lead role — kinda the movie’s whole point!

Looking not unlike the third Mario Brother, Spinell sweats his way through the part of Vinny, the schlubby Big Apple cabbie obsessed with actress Jana Bates — completely understandable since she is played by Caroline Munro (Jess Franco’s Faceless), here rocking truly garish blonde highlights. Vinny harbors delusions of Jana starring in his “next” film (as if upskirt and keyhole reels count as a debut). Enabled by the trades listing her whereabouts during the fest, Vinny follows — okay, stalks — the object of his unwanted affection to France, where her handlers and producers start getting murdered for responding to anonymous, cryptic messages asking for a meeting at a specific time and place. Zut alors!

Lousy black-and-white camera in hand, Vinny is able to gain entrance into the Cannes hot spots. That his amateur footage serves as a “movie” within the movie lends Last a touch of the meta. Director David Winters (Space Mutiny) still has turned in a fairly sloppy and silly slasher with all the focus of today’s internet-nutured tween.

More or less playing herself and draped on the arm of then-husband Judd Hamilton (her Starcrash co-star and this picture’s co-writer), Munro excels at being gorgeous, while Spinell is … well, something else. Greasy to the point of grotesque, he plays the lonesome loser to the hilt — not always with skill or subtlety, but nonetheless to that damn hilt. He is most entertaining in his run-and-cry reaction to being teased by surgically altered skinny-dippers. Why, it’s enough to make Vinny flee for the arms of his mama — portrayed, incidentally, by Spinell’s actual mother, Mary, who participates in the movie’s certifiably witless groaner of an ending. That said ending is more of a quick-joke button (think Laugh-In, minus any rib-tickling) reveals Winter and company to be creatively bankrupt.

If The Last Horror Film works, it does so just barely. Its existence is justified not as a movie, but as a time capsule for the movies, capturing pause-worthy glimpses of Cannes glitz, tits and hits. Future generations curious about the fest’s circus-like marketplace at the dawn of VHS domination can turn to it to learn how select titles were sold, promoted and advertised, from Superman III and For Your Eyes Only to Invaders of the Lost Gold and Emanuelle, Queen of the Desert. —Rod Lott

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Hop aboard the Train to Busan, although I certainly can understand any hesitation on your part. After suffering through so many awful films of the undead, I had no desire to see yet another zombie movie. Especially a Korean one that is two hours long. Nothing against the Koreans — or any Asian people — but they are known for letting running times overstay their welcome, so when a film hurts, the pain is extended.

But seriously, all aboard! Because Train to Busan not only subverted my expectations, but exceeded them. It is an instant classic of zombie cinema, as well as Eastern Hemisphere horror.

Leaving the station in Seoul, the KTX 101 bullet train is bound for the port city of Busan, some 200 miles away. Fund manager Seok Woo (Gong Yoo, The Suspect) is on it, to deliver his adorable moppet daughter (Kim Soo-ahn, the 2014 omnibus Mad Sad Bad) to her mother, from whom he is divorced — and bitterly so. Just before the doors close, a very special passenger stumbles on undetected: one infected with a killer virus that … hell, you already know the symptoms and the side effects.

The resulting outbreak threatens to decimate the entire passenger list, which includes a baseball team, a lone cheerleader, an expectant couple, a selfish CEO, two elderly sisters and one stowaway hobo. Do not get too attached, because the film’s ballsy bid to play for keeps means anyone can succumb to a bite and transform into herky-jerky, convulsing meat sacks. The zombies of Busan are fast on their feet and operate with the horde mentality of those in World War Z — a solid comparison, given how action-driven both engines are. Another is the Korean/English co-production Snowpiercer, as each follows passengers making their way from the back of the train forward, but in Busan’s battle between the haves and the have-nots, the “not” refers to disease rather than dollars.

If the undead offer nothing new — and they do not — the film at least feels fresh because the major characters are not written as stock archetypes; they are fleshed out (no pun intended) like real people, flaws and all. For example, our hero? He’s a shitty father. And thank goodness, because otherwise, Soo-ahn — all of 9 or 10 at the time — would not be gifted with the same role; her performance is astonishing, judging by any age. If the final two scenes don’t strike you emotionally, that’s on you, not the movie — the brainchild of animation vet Yeon Sang-ho (including Seoul Station, something of a prequel), making a remarkably assured and accomplished directorial debut in the live-action format. —Rod Lott

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Research suggests that more women enjoy horror movies than men, and while I have yet to encounter supporting evidence in my life, the construct of XX is well overdue: an anthology film directed by the fairer sex.

Utilizing wordless, doll-centric sequences of stop-motion animation in lieu of a wraparound, XX begins the picture proper with Jovanka Vuckovic’s “The Box,” which is not to be confused with the 2009 Richard Kelly film. Working from a short story by the uncompromising Jack Ketchum, Vuckovic (author of Zombies!: An Illustrated History of the Undead) charts the increasing unease of a suburban wife and mother (Natalie Brown, TV’s The Strain) whose comfortable and idyllic existence is upended when her son, after glimpsing inside a stranger’s parcel on the train, loses his appetite … for good. Brown gives a strong performance built upon quiet helplessness as this mysterious, undiagnosed ailment then affects her daughter and husband in short order.

Better known as Grammy-winning art rocker St. Vincent, Annie Clark makes her directorial debut — and impressively so — with “The Birthday Party.” Shifting to a polar-opposite tone, Clark’s soiree follows Mary (Heavenly Creatures’ Melanie Lynskey, great as always) as she prepares for her little girl’s big celebration, mostly by attempting to hide the newly discovered, freshly deceased body of her husband. The tale essentially stands as a one-joke number, but since the joke is rooted in gallows humor, I dare not fault it. Also worth cheering: the ever-versatile Lindsay Burdge (The Invitation) as Mary’s stuck-up neighbor.

Next comes the intense exhortation of “Don’t Fall,” from XX ringleader and portmanteau vet Roxanne Benjamin, a contributor to Southbound (as well as producer of that project and the three V/H/S pix). In fact, this segment of two camping couples and one ferocious threat feels as if it could have made its home in Southbound. The most classically scare-rigged of the bunch, “Don’t Fall” is also the odd (wo)man out, in the sense — and this is not a negative — that it is unconcerned with exploring the inherent challenges of being a mother.

Nowhere is that concept clearer than Karyn Kusama’s “Her Only Living Son,” about a tired, middle-aged single mom (a wonderful Christina Kirk, Along Came Polly) forever struggling to make ends meet and do what’s right for her unappreciative teen son, Andy (Kyle Allen, TV’s The Path), even if that entails moving from town to town to keep his father from finding them.

The crux of XX can be found in “Son,” in an unassuming bit that finds Andy curiously licking a fleck of bloody yolk from an egg he’s cracked open: All at once, viewers get an acknowledgment of womanhood, a comment upon it and, this being horror, an icky act designed to elicit cringes.

I’d argue — okay, perhaps “argue” is too strong a word — that not one of the four talented ladies in charge here yet qualifies as a known-quantity director within the genre, although between the mis-sold Jennifer’s Body and the rather sly (and aforementioned) The Invitation, Kusama comes closest. But it’s not exactly as if they’ve been handed the opportunities, so XX marks a vital step toward sharing the wealth of material, and this batch is so varied from segment to segment, no story feels repetitive. Beyond spearheading the film, kudos are due to Benjamin (will someone please give her an entire feature?) for sticking to V/H/S’s indie-minded template of not explaining every detail; the beauty is that things are more memorable and unsettling and rewarding when their pieces remain a mystery — you know, just like women themselves. —Rod Lott

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Didn’t see 2013’s The Invoking? That’s okay — it’s not a prerequisite for watching The Invoking 2: Paranormal Events. Hell, to be honest, you could forgo any 10-minute chunk of this sequel and still track right along with it. That’s because this 2015 follow-up is a sequel in name only and is an anthology, which the original was not.

As with producer Jesse Baget’s Monsterland, Zombieworld and All Hallows’ Eve 2, this movie is a faux anthology, in that it collects pre-existing short films, presents them as a whole and calls it a day. Yet The Invoking 2 feels sloppier and less satisfying, because this time around, Baget and company don’t even bother to include a wraparound device. At least they deliver the subtitle-promised Paranormal Events: eight of them, to be exact.

From Smoked helmer Jamie DeWolf, the opening U-Turn follows an inebriated redneck — he’s just a good ol’ boy, never meanin’ no harm — who picks up a pretty little filly standing along Highway 116 at night. She’s wet (not that way), mute and just points … toward his fate! In Insane, from Zombieworld contributor Adam O’Brien, a location-scouting filmmaker gets a nighty-night tour of a sanitarium that’s been abandoned for 32 years … or has it? Next, Jay Holben, an All Hallows’ Eve 2 alum, depicts a spooky evening of a woman home Alone … or is she?

You get the drill and you know how things go. You certainly do in the longest short, Natal, in which Corey Norman (Monsterland) shows what happens when hot, young things go camping for the weekend: never anything good. Amid all the predictability, only two segments stand out, and one of them, Jamie Root’s Melissa, is as unimaginative as them all, but legitimately creepy and over and done with in the time it takes to jump-scare.

That leaves Do Not Disturb as the best of the bunch. From Nailbiter director Patrick Rea, it holes up in a Kansas hotel room with an on-the-loose serial killer who gets the strangest dish from room service: a woman’s head, out the mouth of which pop out cards imprinted with answers of the questions he poses. Hey, whatever works! —Rod Lott

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Bats is like every other animal-attack flick that fortifies the Syfy broadcast lineup, except that this one somehow hit theaters first. It’s bad.

Really bad.

Lou Diamond Phillips bad.

Because of a “secret government project” — a device all screenwriters employ when they wish to weasel their way out of credible explanations — a Texas desert town is overrun with thousands of lethal, hideously deformed bats. They don’t look so much like bats as they do Ghoulies with wings. Not that viewers get to see them all that well, as during scenes of supposed action, director Louis Morneau (Werewolf: The Beast Among Us) shakes the camera as violently as drunk nannies do with babies.

Cleavage-baring Dina Meyer (Saw) has all the answers as resident bat expert Dr. Sheila Casper, while Cliffhanger’s Leon — just Leon, thanks — serves as her minority sidekick, saying lots of things that we’re supposed to find hilarious, like, “I’ve been doin’ some thinkin’ … and this shit is fucked-up!” Together, with big-belt-buckled Sheriff Kimsey (Phillips, 2000’s Supernova), they get into predictable, laughable, CGI bat attacks and grapple with predictable, laughable lines of dialogue (courtesy of eventual Skyfall scribe John Logan), including:
• “Wait a minute! You’re telling me a bat did this?”
• “But bats don’t kill people. This can’t be!”
• “We’ve gotta evacuate this entire town!”

Early in the movie, we get a brief and decidedly out-of-place cutaway shot of Phillips visibly grimacing, as if the camera caught him messing his britches, and Morneau opted to keep it. I’m glad he did, because it’s a moment most priceless and thereby, unlike the bulk of Bats, engaging. I’ve been doing some thinking … and this shit is fucked-up. —Rod Lott

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