Of all the sci-fi flicks to rip-off, filled with a lone alien, multiple guttings, large explosions and little to no story, one of the best is Predator. But, thinking outside that pine box, Split Second decided to go a different route and do Predator 2. Well, okay.

Sometime in the near future — and now far past! — Great Britain of 2008, prescient global warming has turned the isles into one big, dirty swimming pool. Puffy Rutger Hauer is burnt-out cop Harley Stone, a foreign-exchange officer who lives on chocolates, coffee and the long-lasting regret of his partner dying at the hands of a 10-foot-tall beast with a taste for human hearts. But can you blame him?

Armed with psychic powers left unexplored, he’s partnered with pencil-pushing nerd Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan). This mismatched duo slogs through a soggy England with generous hand cannons and shotguns, trying to protect the vapid Kim Cattrall from what turns out to be a rat-loving, tide-drenched version of Satan, here an ineffectual representation of absolute evil, but a great clone of a Xenomorph.

Also, at one point, Stone refers to a dog as a “dickhead” and then questions it as the witness to a murder in a nightclub that rock legend Ian Dury runs. Maybe that should have been the movie …

For years, I mistook this flick for the Dolph Lundgren favorite I Come in Peace (“You go in pieces …”), like a cinematic idiot. And while I was sure I would be disappointed by this, I happy to report that Split Second is unapologetic in its constant writhing in wet trash, an art form that only Tony Maylam, director of the equally trashy The Burning, could ever achieve. —Louis Fowler

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Fritz Leiber Jr. was a moderately popular speculative writer whose novels and stories were adapted for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV series and films such as Burn, Witch, Burn and Weird Woman. His 1942 tale “The Hill and the Hole” is also the basis for this recent atmospheric indie flick of the same name, a bizarre yarn of the Southwest that hard to fully grasp, but harder to quit watching.

Archeologist Tom (Liam Kelly), working for the Bureau of Land Management out in the deserted desert of New Mexico, finds a topographical anomaly: an oversized hill completely missing from area maps. Seems that the locals will do anything to protect that mysterious mound, including walloping Tom upside the head and leaving him for dead.

He narrowly escapes, but is met with strange characters and stranger scenarios, most of which are impossible to tell if they’re due to the town or Tom’s possible brain damage. Basic discussions turn into psychic breakdowns; local characters turn into conspiracy theories; and that hill, as you could guess, ain’t what it seems to be.

To be honest, I still don’t know what it is.

Visually, The Hill and the Hole is a gorgeous slice of oddball Americana, capturing a fever dream where everything is ordinary, but the closer you look, out of the ordinary. Everything, that is, except for the mostly amateurish acting that, at times, can lead to more wincing than wonderment.

Still, this low-budget flick is an idiosyncratic and incongruous sojourn to the deepest recesses — literally — of a perplexing pile of dirt, a brain-boiler that will leave far more questions than answers, but I suspect that was probably the point. At least I hope it is. —Louis Fowler

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Dead Dicks does itself no favor with that title, suggesting a farce the dark-humored film never quite becomes, or a piece of juvenilia the speculative sci-fi picture is clearly too mature to be. It may attract the wrong kind of audience. It may set the curious up to be profoundly disappointed. It deserves better.

Said title refers to Richie (Heston Horwin, Rock Steady Row) and the three carbon-copy corpses of himself littered about his pigsty apartment. A starving artist with debilitating mental health issues, he has successfully killed himself thrice, even if each demise immediately results in a reborn Richie emerging buck-naked (and explicitly uncircumcised) through the giant vagina that is his bedroom wall.

Wait, what?

His ever-supportive, long-suffering sister, Becca (Jillian Harris), shares your reaction when she arrives Richie’s place to check on him. Processing the unprocessable, she is torn between helping him and getting him help, which don’t always overlap.

Every mention I’ve seen of Dead Dicks thus far name-checks Groundhog Day, but with several versions of Richie sharing the cramped quarters, I would argue the Canadian indie shares more thematically with another Harold Ramis film: Multiplicity starring Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton and Michael Keaton. But again, I stress that despite parts that may be funny, Dead Dicks is no comedy … unless comedies have started carrying suicide-prevention PSAs before minute one.

In their feature directorial debut, scribes Chris Bavota and Lee Paula Springer make a loud splash with a high-concept mindfuck operating on little more than two brave, believable performances and the hard-charging assault of Tusk & Bruiser’s melodic post-rock to chart their arc. Although the second half can’t match the energy of the first, ingenuity reigns throughout. —Rod Lott

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Whoever is ultimately responsible for Attack of the Super Monsters has to have been that kid at the convenience store or fast-food restaurant who fills his soda cup with a little bit of Pepsi, then a little bit of Mountain Dew, then Dr Pepper, then orange and on down, leaving no spigot unspat. How else to explain the Japanese import’s incessant roulette-wheel use of live-action footage, cel animation, stop-motion animation and miniatures, sometimes all in the same scene? It’s a combustible, schizophrenic mix that will wring the brain of anyone who no longer expects applause for a bowel movement.

When our 21st-century world needs defense from reawakened prehistoric foes, our collective fate rests in the hands of the four-person Gemini Command, 50% of whom are ineffectual. Siblings Jim and Gem Starbuck are kinda cool, what with bionic chips that allow for temporary body-merging (!) and shape-shifting and all. But Jerry is pudgy and, therefore, clumsy, while Wally is a scaredy-cat nerd with a mullet and a literal sloth for a best friend. These two are the Far East’s response to Zan and Jayna.

Thrill to the Battle of the Planets-style exploits of Gemini Command as the team embarks on four separate, seam-showing episodes adventures, scripted Mad Libs-style:
• a Tyrannosaurus rex uses a laser to command cartoon dogs to “DESTROY! DESTROY!”
• a pterodactyl telepathically commands rubber bats to “KILL ALL HUMANS!”
• a stegosaurus telepathically commands cartoon rats to “ATTACK! ATTACK! USE YOUR TEETH!”
• a triceratops doing things for himself wreaks havoc and barks, “DIEEEEE!”

Please note that in all the above, our heroes are animated, while their opponents are men in kaiju suits. Also please note that from a management standpoint, the stegosaurus gives the most clear and actionable direction to those under his employ.

Attack of the Super Monsters is not wanting for action, that’s for certain, and the amalgamation offers images you’ve never seen before, such as a T. rex laughing maniacally. But some things aren’t meant to be viewed — I’m putting this up there with, say, the sun — and any initial sugar rush quickly slows to a diabetic coma, leaving one longing for the heady wit and deep pathos of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. —Rod Lott

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In the Jules Verne adaptation The Fabulous Journey to the Centre of the Earth, one word in the Spanish production’s title is grossly inaccurate. Can you guess which?

After acquiring a map purported to share the whereabouts of you-know-what, Professor Otto Lindenbrock (Kenneth More, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw) embarks on a mission to you-know-where, by way of Mount Sneffels — a landmark that could not sound more stupid, except that it does with each subsequent utterance. Accompanying the professor are nancy-boy Axel (Pep Munné, Girl with the Golden Panties), who narrates, and muscle-for-rent Hans (Pieces’ Frank Braña), who is paid in sheep. Inviting herself is Glabuen (Ivonne Sentis, China 9, Liberty 37), who is not only the professor’s rock-collecting niece, but Axel’s girlfriend.

Although Juan Piquer Simón (the aforementioned Pieces) went to the lengths of helming his film in an actual cave, don’t expect any sort of spatial geography, other than knowing the characters want to descend. At one point, Axel’s voice-over mentions “an exciting adventure,” despite no proof of such onscreen. And I say that knowing full well the movie features such sights as giant mushrooms, man-eating tortoises, cave-dwelling dinosaurs, bath-toy sea monsters, a Kmart King Kong and a lava-spewing volcano — and yet, very little of all of the above. It’s a real patience-frayer.

In terms of production design, costuming and men’s grooming habits, Simón nails the 19th-century look, although the cast’s prim-and-proper affectations and behaviors suggest a setting more Hereford than Hamburg. Performance-wise, More is the most grounded; Munné and Sentis, overly theatrical; and Spanish cinema legend Jack Taylor (Edge of the Axe) literally sits through much of his minor role.

While Fabulous Journey (aka Where Time Began) is not the worst Verne adaptation I’ve seen, it’s photo-finish close. With feasible naïveté, it hews so faithfully to the novel that it emerges stuffy and starched. Lob whichever insults you’d like at Simón’s other, less respectable Verne picture, 1981’s Mystery on Monster Island, but boring, it is not. —Rod Lott

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