You can’t argue with a good snake movie, especially one with the balls big enough to kill not one, but two innocent moppets before the opening credits are even set to roll. Producer Harry Novak’s slithering beast of an animal-attack movie, Rattlers, does just that.

In addition, it also has snakes kill a dog and a chicken. One farm boy takes a pair of fangs to the face. A screaming housewife runs through her abode, finding the scaly bastards in every room. Finally, a marble-mouthed herpetologist (Time Walker’s Sam Chew Jr.) and his ethnically mysterious companion stumble upon the snakes’ underground nest where, lucky for them, the reptiles have created tunnels big enough for humans to waltz through upright and freely.

Although the sheer pleasure of seeing a parade of stupid people get bitten becomes muted by a talk-heavy Act 3 and an abbreviated, anticlimactic ending, these Rattlers aren’t for show — they kick ass. Nonetheless, Rattlers marked the first and next-to-last movie for director John McCauley, who followed this up with an even more dangerous project: the Danny Bonaduce vehicle The Deadly Intruder. —Rod Lott

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Based on supposedly “actual accounts” that I do not believe for a second, Deliver Us from Evil casts Eric Bana (Hanna) as NYPD Sgt. Ralph Sarchie, who investigates a string of spooky shit. He and his partner, Butler (Joel McHale of TV’s Community, playing against type in a backwards ball cap and an Alice in Chains T-shirt), are left perplexed at the inhumanity they find, such as at The Bronx Zoo, where a woman quite literally has thrown her kid to the lions.

It gives nothing away to say that the crimes are linked and grow increasingly twisted — like, kitty-on-a-crucifix twisted. It gives nothing away to say that for Sarchie, these unspeakable acts take a real toll on the ol’ home life with the preggo wifey (Olivia Munn, Mortdecai). It gives nothing away — in fact, you expect it — to say that satanic forces are at work. On that note, an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramírez, The Counselor) comes to the aid of Sarchie and Butler.

Remove the ensuing exorcism angle, and Scott Derrickson’s film exudes the feel of other true-crime dramas about Big Apple law enforcement — Serpico, The Super Cops, The French Connection — in a gritty adherence to reality, especially in portraying a police career as fraught with perpetual misery. The deeper the movie dives into demonic territory, however, the more I was reminded of 1990’s The First Power, that forgettable Lou Diamond Phillips vehicle of yore.

Despite Derrickson’s previous experience with scares (Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose), Deliver Us from Evil arrives nearly empty-handed in that department. I say “nearly” because there’s this scene of a roly-poly owl stuffed animal that terrorizes Sarchie’s daughter by doing things it shouldn’t be able to do (read: move). And then there’s the soundtrack, which unloads a lot of tunes by The Doors, a band I can’t stand. In fact, The Doors’ music becomes a bona fide plot point, keeping the Jim Morrison estate awash in royalty payments. To my ears, that’s frightening. —Rod Lott

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From the start of his highly peculiar and “100% medically accurate” franchise, writer/director/producer Tom Six promised that The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) would make the previous two films appear tame. While I disagree with that statement — for sheer gross-outs, 2011’s The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) still takes the urinal cake — Six has succeeded in making this concluding chapter as unique as II was to the 2009 original.

For this bitter-tasting end, Six goes meta, casting the madmen of parts I and II as the co-leads of III, albeit playing completely different characters who comment upon those movies and their mouth-to-anus concept as a hole. Er, excuse me: as a whole. All the action goes down (as it were) at Texas’ most inefficiently and ineffectively run penitentiary, the George H.W. Bush State Prison. That concrete jungle is ruled with a Teutonic fist by the vile, megalomaniacal Bill Boss (the first Centipede’s Dieter Laser, still channeling Christopher Walken and a lizard), a bald bully of a man who takes less pleasure in sexually harassing his secretary (porn star Bree Olson, Not Bill Cosby XXX: Puddin’ My Dick Where It Don’t Belong) than he does torturing his inmates: waterboarding, castration, breaking a guy’s “masturbation arm.”

Boss’ predilection for abuse negatively impacts the facility’s medical budget, thus annoying its roly-poly accountant, Dwight (Laurence R. Harvey, Centipede II’s miserable copycat). As a solution toward solvency, Dwight pushes Boss to consider taking a cue from the Human Centipede films and build their own 500-prisoner version as “the ultimate deterrent.” Posits Dwight, “It’s brilliant! We don’t gotta deal with their shit no more. They just gotta deal with each others’.”

That the Centipede trilogy isn’t for everyone is an understatement, but its poopy-and-goopy reputation as irredeemable trash has been overstated by those who never have seen it, never planned to and never will. As abhorrent as you think them to be — and I’m not denying their explicitness in shock value, although more goes unseen than you’d expect — there’s an art to them. Really. And it does not lie beneath the surface, either.

In this capper, what Six — who plays himself, brought in to consult for the en masse surgical procedure — has amped up is not the red-and-brown gore, but the black comedy. Every minute of this Final Sequence is played for laughs as a post-Guantanamo satire of capital punishment, criminal rehabilitation, politics for profit and, to a lesser degree, meme culture. Whereas the first film actually showed remarkable restraint (believe it), going over-the-top is entirely Six’s point here. And the point is more than made; the message is impossible to miss. That it is told with jokes about stoma and Chron’s disease attached is … well, “brave” is one word for it.

With Final Sequence’s final sequence, the trilogy achieves closure, even if that leaves us with an infinite loop. And sew it goes … —Rod Lott

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At least one positive emerged from the heavy-metal hysteria of the ’80s: We got a pretty goofy movie satirizing the whole thing — albeit at featherweight — in Trick or Treat. Directed by actor Charles Martin Smith (1987’s The Untouchables), the schlocky Dino De Laurentiis production centers on the kind of misfit teen Smith became famous for playing in George Lucas’ American Graffiti. That 1973 film’s nerdy Toad may as well be this 1986 film’s Eddie.

But the part belongs to Marc Price, then still ripe in his second-banana role as Skippy on TV’s Family Ties. Eddie wouldn’t dare sit near Skippy on the bus, but both are outcasts all the same. Eddie’s attic room is practically wallpapered with posters of the hair-metal bands in which he finds escape from daily abuse by preppy bully Tim (Doug Savant, the token gay of TV’s Melrose Place), but outright worship is reserved for Satan-loving singer Sammi Curr (former Solid Gold dancer Tony Fields). Moments after writing Curr a gushing fan letter, which he signs “Ragman,” Eddie learns via the TV news that his idol has perished in a hotel fire. Bummed out, Eddie seeks solace in the local rock DJ (Kiss front man Gene Simmons, sans makeup), who gifts the boy with a valuable slab of vinyl: the only pressing of Curr’s Songs in the Key of Death.

Playing the record from “rock’s chosen warrior” backward, Eddie not only hears personal messages from Curr emanating through his stereo speakers — he summons him from the dead! With half his mug burned and blistered, but spiked mullet intact, the resurrected Curr looks like Two-Face for the Kerrang! set. At first he helps Eddie exact revenge through high-school high jinks, but quickly takes things too far; the best example gives us Trick or Treat’s most memorable scene: Tim’s girlfriend (Elise Richards, Valet Girls) being stripped, fondled and plateaued by green mist swirling from a Walkman playing Curr’s lost album on cassette. Is it live or is it Memorex? (The second most memorable bit is Savant’s near-tears line reading in the aftermath: “He put Genie in the hospital with his voodoo witchcraft! Or whatever the hell it is!” Trust me: You gotta be there.)

Bearing only a minimal connection to the title-tied holiday of Halloween, Trick or Treat aims for subversion by casting metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, a real-life target of the Parents Music Resource Center, as a man of the cloth preaching against the evils of rock ’n’ roll, yet the movie goes no further than that. All the time Smith and the script spent trying to turn Curr into the next Freddy Krueger (by way of Penelope Spheeris) should have been invested in making our supposed hero more than a petulant mouth-breather, coming up with more imaginative ways for Eddie and his crush (Lisa Orgolini, Born to Ride) to defeat Curr than the ol’ laundry hamper/flushed toilet combo, and writing a conclusion that wrapped up well before Trick enters a cycle of repetition — or, as the music industry calls it, heavy rotation. —Rod Lott

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Presented by some organization calling itself The October Society, Tales of Halloween makes a bid for annual play with an anthology of 10 stories, each by a director whose name is likely familiar to the horror faithful. More treats exist than tricks, and the whole party is hosted (although almost exclusively through a vocal performance) by scream queen Adrienne Barbeau in full Foggy DJ mode.

The Hills Run Red’s Dave Parker leads the parade with “Sweet Tooth,” relaying the urban legend of a child who was allowed to trick-or-treat, but never to consume his loot. The ending is predictable, but comfortable, and the segment houses one genuine scare. By contrast, Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II through IV) goes for straight comedy — complete with cringe-inducing cartoon SFX — in “The Night Billy Raised Hell.” Its highlight is Rocky Horror Picture Show alum Barry Bostwick’s game portrayal of a devil introducing a child to the wonderful world of All Hallows’ Eve prank-pulling.

Adam Gierasch (2009’s Night of the Demons remake) pulls a “Trick” of four adults under siege in the dead of night, while Grace’s Paul Solet reworks the Western into a modern-day BMX bike chase in the wanting “The Weak and the Wicked.” Tales creator Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate) gets things bouncing back with “Grimm Grinning Ghost.” It’s another urban-legend story, this of a dead woman who comes back to taunt the living — namely, Starry Eyes starlet Alex Essoe. Its final shot provides a welcome jolt.

Lucky McKee (May) goes “Ding Dong” with an equally amusing and confusing look at how a couple (Filth’s Pollyanna McIntosh and The Devil’s Carnival’s Marc Senter) unable to conceive copes with a constant stream of children at their door. (Spoiler: not well.) Splatterpunk pioneer John Skipp teams with Andrew Kasch (Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy) to declare “This Means War,” as neighbors James Duval (Go) and comedian Dana Gould do battle via their very different yard decorations; results are tragic for them, funny for us.

With “Friday the 31st,” Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!) pays tribute to Friday the 13th with a Jason Voorhees-esque slasher, Sam Raimi-style shenanigans and stop-motion animation — a winning mix. Abominable helmer Ryan Schifrin (son of the legendary Lalo, who composed Tales’ theme) reworks an O. Henry classic into “The Ransom of Rusty Rex,” in which two crooks kidnap the Tigger-masked tot of a wealthy man (played by An American Werewolf in London helmer John Landis) in hopes of scoring a $5 million ransom. The key word is “hopes,” as the tables so deliciously turn.

Finally, they’ve gone and saved the best for last: “Bad Seed.” It begins with a pumpkin carver making a real “monsterpiece” of a gourd … that somehow comes to life, chomps off its creator’s head and goes on to terrorize the town. Although we’re not used to seeing something this lighthearted from Neil Marshall (The Descent), perhaps we should start; it’s a well-concocted, good-humored riot that weaves in elements and characters from several of the nine previous chapters.

Even with nearly a dozen cooks, Tales of Halloween benefits from a cohesive look. Cameos abound, including such genre stalwarts as Sleepaway Camper Felissa Rose, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 final girl Caroline Williams, the ever-Insidious Lin Shaye, frequent Stephen King adapter Mick Garris (donning the iconic half-mask of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s operatic Phantom), Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon (dressed as Sherlock Holmes!), that film’s Barbara Crampton and Hatchet man Adam Green. And that’s just for starters! So much footage of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is here and there that it practically merits a cast credit itself.

This Halloween love letter — written in a tube of fake vampire blood, one assumes — ends with the credit, “Animals were not hurt during the production, but we sure killed a lot of pumpkins.” Normally I detest these “cute” disclaimer jokes, but here, it’s 100% in the project’s celebratory spirit. As with Michael Dougherty’s similarly enthused Trick ’r Treat goodie bag of 2007, seasonal repeatability is assured. —Rod Lott

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