After a whirlwind meeting-cum-courtship, blonde beaut Lilli (Abbey Heller) marries curiously mustachioed sculptor Emile Duvre (Robert Parsons), then goes straight from exchanging vows to embarking on a Honeymoon of Horror. Considering what follows, she should have had him sign a prenup, preferably one containing the phrase “promise not to kill you.”

After the couple lands in their love nest, those within their circle of friends begin to perish. The new Mrs. Duvre is not immune to murder attempts, either, most notably by gravity doing its thang on a giant metal globe objet d’art suspended above their swimming pool, because of course. And because all artists are weirdos with posses of weirdo pals, there is no shortage of suspects. Besides Emile himself (whose Euro accent signals viewers that he is not to be trusted), the culprit could be his mistress (Beverly Lane), his leering brother (Escape from Hell Island’s Alexander Panas, who also wrote the underwritten screenplay), a fellow sculptor who is blind, a spry dwarf and, last but not least, Hajmir (Vincent Petti), Emile’s turbaned live-in servant.

It is Hajmir who tells Lilli, “Madam is no doubt confused” — a statement applicable to anyone who dares watch. Befitting its later alternate title of Orgy of the Golden Nudes, the Florida-lensed indie is more interested in asses of lasses than knots of plot, despite the utilization of Monroe Myers (Adam Lost His Apple) as, more or less, Exposition Cop. Speaking of investigation, the movie is more mystery than horror, but because the ad man in me recognizes the power of alliteration in audience appeal, I’m letting that misnomer slide.

One could draw a direct line between this film and Blood Feast, and I don’t just mean on a map of the Sunshine State. The former traffics in the garish gore that Herschell Gordon Lewis pioneered one year prior, but with less panache (yes, panache) and considerably less in delivering what’s promised on its bill of goods. Honeymoon marks the lone shot at directing for Irwin Meyer, who plowed greener pastures as a producer of made-for-TV movies (e.g., 1998’s exclamation-theirs Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!), and one can see why.

Still, it’s not a vacuum of entertainment. Where else — in today’s society, especially — will one hear a woman speak the line “Yes, but he’s just a minor sex maniac” as a point of justification? —Rod Lott

Get it at Something Weird Video.

Another of producer Harry Alan Towers’ travelogue-esque tax write-offs masquerading as a creative project (see: Five Golden Dragons), the overly punctuated Code 7, Victim 5! casts five-time Tarzan Lex Barker as Steve Martin — neither the wild-and-crazy comedian, nor the Godzilla journalist, but an American private dick.

Apparently having left the “ain’t gonna play Sun City” pledge unsigned, Martin is summoned to South Africa by copper magnate Wexler (Walter Rilla, Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard) to investigate why the millionaire’s faithful butler has been murdered, and by whom — well, other than by men wearing cheap, Bozo-esque party masks. I’m not spilling, but the answer might have something to do with an old group photo of POWs, in which both Wexler and his no-longer-loyal servant are pictured.

With utilitarian direction from Robert Lynn, he of the rare espionage anthology Spies Against the World, the Technicolor Code has a lot going for it, beginning with a cold-blooded murder and a car chase down the winding roads that hug the cliffside — and that’s just the first 10 minutes! While we’re on the subject of huggable curves, because no Towers production of the era would be complete without offering two handfuls of lovely ladies, Martin gets a love interest in Wexler’s Danish secretary, Helga (Ann Smyrner, Reptilicus).

As if all those escapist elements weren’t enough, we also get a bare-knuckle brawl (in which Martin’s hair color magically changes from shot to shot, as Barker’s stunt double earns his pay), a shootout in underground caverns, a gorgeous underwater sequence (in which our scuba-geared leads are menaced by spear guns and a shark) and — for local flavor — a mondo-style bar scene featuring swarthy and shirtless gentlemen performing ill-advised tricks with needles and swords to the delight of drunken Caucasian tourists.

Narratively unremarkable, the film nonetheless delights as it plays — as should every international whodunit that cares enough to stage an ostrich stampede. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Until the Rocky Balboa and Rambo reboots saved his career, the aughts were not a good time to be Sylvester Stallone. Arguably, his nadir would come with D-Tox, aka Eye See You, a $55 million film deemed so toxic, it opened on one screen in the United States: at a discount theater on the fringes of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. I live there, and I have no idea why OKC was deigned the appropriate dumping ground. Hadn’t we suffered enough?

Detective Jake Malloy (Stallone) can’t seem to crack the case of the Saw-voiced serial killer who’s on quite the cop-slaying streak and whose M.O. is a power drill to the eyeball through your front door’s peephole. While Malloy is at the murder scene of the mystery man’s latest badged victim, the killer is making it personal by going after Malloy’s fiancée (Dina Meyer, Johnny Mnemonic). The ensuing grief sends our Italian Stallion toward the bottle, then over the frickin’ edge: He slits his left wrist in a suicide attempt. (In subsequent scenes, however, his right wrist is bandaged — perhaps a sign how little the filmmakers cared.)

To kick the shakes and get his life back on track, Malloy is sent to a Very Special Rehab Facility; run by a grizzled ex-cop (Kris Kristofferson, Big Top Pee-wee), the former military complex caters only to cops and is located in what seems to be a perpetual blizzard. But no matter how remote the facility, Malloy is unable to escape his demons, because when his fellow residents start showing up murdered, it’s clear the killer has followed him there.

Okay, so maybe it’s only clear once our hero spots “ICU” written on the underside of a corpse’s eyelids.

The closest Stallone has gotten to making a horror film (at least intentionally), D-Tox marked the sophomore feature for Jim Gillespie, who lucked out and broke big when his debut, I Know What You Did Last Summer, rode the immediate wave of the pop-culture tsunami that was Wes Craven’s Scream. Slasher elements are in place, right atop the machinations of an old-fashioned whodunit in Agatha Christie’s patented one-by-one mode, but the work simply does not work. (Two years later, Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters would fare far better utilizing a similar setup.) It’s a shame, too, because Gillespie was gifted with a ridiculously strong supporting cast for this type of film, including Tom Berenger (Major League), Jeffrey Wright (Source Code), Stephen Lang (Don’t Breathe), Charles S. Dutton (Alien 3), Courtney B. Vance (Office Christmas Party), Polly Walker (John Carter) and Robert Patrick (The Marine). Curiously absent among that list: suspense. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror comes to Shochiku for the venerable Japanese studio’s 120th anniversary with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s aptly named Creepy, a mystery-thriller purposely too close for comfort.

While we’re on the topic of anniversaries, one year has passed since the police detective Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Kazuo Umezu’s Horror Theater) nearly was killed by a crazed suspect during an unsuccessful hostage negotiation. Now a university professor of criminal psychology, Takakura and his homemaker wife, Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi, Ringu), make a fresh start by moving homes. The neighborhood doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome wagon. In fact, the guy next door, Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa of Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django), possesses such abhorrent social skills that it is he from which the film draws its name.

As Nishino unnerves the couple with his sheer awkwardness, unusually acting daughter (Ryôko Fujino, Solomon’s Perjury) and seemingly nonexistent wife, Takakura learns of an unsolved crime in a nearby town, in which three family members disappeared, leaving behind one very perplexed middle schooler (Haruna Kawaguchi, Screaming Class). Suspicious “as hell” and unable to leave the itch of his old profession unscratched, Takakura secretly teams with a former colleague (Masahiro Higashide, Parasyte: Part 1) to investigate the cold case.

Perhaps best known for 2001’s Pulse (which spawned 2006’s deficient Hollywood remake), Kurosawa is almost diabolical in his setup, taking delight in taking his time in winding us up the way a rubber band loops around a pencil. Once he lets go, after the first of two hours passes, the twists come fast and loose. Unfortunately, his handle on the material (which he co-adapted from the Yutaka Maekawa novel) escapes him, and incredulity shoves craft aside.

Ultimately, the Creepy vibe decomposes to the level of being merely languid, all because the final act has been built atop a wobbly, half-Shyamalan shock that simply does not work because it is completely out of character, at least from the information the viewer has been given. I’m surprised that a filmmaker with Kurosawa’s experience and reputation even would entertain the notion of trying to squeak it past his sophisticated audience. Then again, our lead character of Takakura isn’t much better, failing to see the forest for the trees, even when they’re labeled, respectively, “FOREST” and “TREES.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

No tombs exist in Jess Franco’s The Silence of the Tomb, but that omission is all fine and dandy, considering the cult-fave filmmaker does include something he often neglects: a plot. Bonus: It’s a lucid one at that!

A supposedly fabulous (and definitely fatuous) actress, Annette (Glenda Allen, Franco’s Dolls for Sale) invites all her superficial friends for a wine-and-dine weekend on the island she has purchased with her wealth and now calls home. Well, it’s home when she’s not on set or jet-setting the globe. Her bastard child with film director Jean-Paul (Francisco Acosta, Franco’s Kiss Me Killer) lives there, but is raised by Annette’s extremely jealous sister, Valerie (Montserrat Prous, Franco’s The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff), who serves as our unreliable narrator.

Collective weekend plans of fun in the sun (and sack) go awry when the child disappears from his bedroom, with a ransom note demanding 2 million pesos left in his place. Given the heavy privacy of and limited access to the island, the culprit must be among the 10 or so people sleeping under Annette’s roof — perhaps even Annette herself. But who? And why?

And then the murders begin.

In setting up Silence, writer/director/producer Franco uses Agatha Christie’s iconic And Then There Were None as his jumping-off point, but then veers wildly to give the whodunit his own stamp. The Franco faithful know that typically entails a streak of sexual perversity — just not in this instance. Nor is that cause for alarm, because while The Silence of the Tomb is colorfully accessible to mainstream audiences, this mystery is by no means conventional. From the leisurely score to breathtaking scenery (courtesy of Spain and the striking Prous), enough era-emblematic elements are present for the project to be unmistakably Franco’s, even if he kept it in his pants, so to speak, and even though the story originated in a novel by Enrique Jarnes. Franco changed the book where it counted, primarily to turn the reveal and subsequent explanation into something so ludicrous, we happily can attribute it only to Mr. Vampyros Lesbos himself. Well played, Jesús. —Rod Lott

Get it at Dorado Films.