Imagine Alien. Now imagine Alien if the creature were designed not by H.R. Giger, but In-N-Out Burger. That’s Spaceship Terror. No one claims it is good for you, but if you’re in the mood for it, damn, does it hit the spot! (And it’s just as messy — maybe it should have been titled Star Gores.)

Written, directed, produced, edited and everythinged by rookie filmmaker Harry Tchinski, Spaceship Terror opens with half a dozen peeps going on a trip in what will be their least favorite rocket ship, because the craft crashes on a nearby desolate planet. Seeking medical attention for the injured lone male, the ladies come upon a large vessel whose moniker is stenciled in capital red letters. Asks one of the women rhetorically, “Who’d name their spaceship Terror?”

Answer: Capt. Terror (Jay Wesley Cochran, The Catechism Cataclysm), an obese psychopath with a tube up his nose, a retractable harpoon gun in his hands and a pink-pantied Asian girl (Emma Lee Nguyen, Teenage Kung Fu Cottontails) trapped in his lair for the last two years. She fills in the new arrivals: “You’re on a death ship! You’re all going to die!”

Elaborating after that fine “how do you do,” she explains that Capt. Terror likes to play hide-and-seek for keeps, with his guests forced to trudge winding, booby-trapped hallways while being pursued by him, his itchy trigger finger and/or his rapey other parts. However, Cap plays fair, giving a count-of-50 head start and, per each death, another piece of the code needed to unlock Terror’s escape pod. With such a twisted game, Capt. Terror is not unlike Saw’s villainous Jigsaw, minus the moral compass, Ivy League diction and the ability to turn down Winchell’s crullers.

Spaceship Terror knows exactly who it wants its audience to be and caters accordingly. (Capt. Terror must be right in sync, cranking the ship’s heat to 120˚ F so the ladies have to strip to sweat-damp skivvies.) With outrageous gore sequences that seek to disgust as they delight — the double de-ankling, the mammary trauma, et al. — the no-budget epic is not for the easily offended. Perhaps I’m the only sick bastard to detect a touch of black comedy in the proceedings, but the flick makes no apologies for the grindhouse cesspool in which it wades.

The acting would leave something to be desired, if performances were a concern. They are not; vehicles like Spaceship Terror are about creative kills, and Capt. Terror, an imposing figure who would be right at home in a Rob Zombie film, delivers. With excellent makeup effects (CGI effects, much less so) and nasty fun, the outer-space slasher is a scrappy work Tchinski can be proud of — not possessive-name-above-the-title proud, but proud nonetheless. (It’s a little early to brand oneself à la John Carpenter.) If Tchinski bows at the big-box VHS heyday as I suspect, further travels of Capt. Terror in the near and exploitable future would not be out of the question. —Rod Lott

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Avengers, assemble! For the inevitable, super-sized sequel, of course: Avengers: Age of Ultron. The 2012 original, Marvel’s The Avengers, burst into the world box office’s rarified billion-dollar club, so what one critic in Bumfuck, Flyover State, thinks about this follow-up matters not at all.

That said, in case you’re curious, I found Age of Ultron to be more satisfying than its big brother. Much more.

Like Iron Man 3, however, footing is found only after the shakiest of starts. Here, it’s a real show-off sequence of all six of Earth’s mightiest heroes fending off enemy soldiers. Although made to look like an unbroken tracking shot, it’s so obviously and overly computer-generated that it appears like a cartoon. Downshifting to slow motion to draw even more attention to itself, one angle in particular all but reaches from the screen to give fanboys a quick, collective wank (à la See You Next Wednesday’s “Feel-Around” experience).

Subsequent skirmishes — and Age of Ultron has many — are staged better. The screenplay, by returning director Joss Whedon, threatens our Avengers team from within after Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. in his sixth go-round with the character) covertly completes Ultron, an artificial-intelligence project intended for global defense. However, the AI (voiced by James Spader of TV’s The Blacklist at his most Spadery, which is to say terrific) decides, as it boots to life, that it doesn’t like what it’s been programmed to do, so it zigs instead of zags, thereby aiming to annihilate mankind. Even in a movie predicated upon our suspended disbelief in green giants and thunder gods and unfrozen American army men, Ultron’s insufficiently explained 180 is a completely stupid plot-starter. To call it otherwise is to deny the elephant in the room, even after the stench of pachyderm poo has grown overwhelming.

Forgive — but do not forget, because it’s poor and lazy writing, period — and let the sci-fi spectacle act its Age, because Whedon was able to right some of the predecessor’s wrongs. This sophomore outing sports a livelier, more interesting villain and better utilizes each major player without having the superhero soufflé feel overstuffed. That in itself is a Hulk-sized accomplishment, given that rather than trim the roster, Whedon expanded it to include many more. He’s roped in do-gooders from connected Marvel movies and added a few newcomers, notably Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, evil twins played by 2014’s Godzilla couple Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Of the original teammates, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) benefit most from the widened scope.

This Avengers adventure still has troubles — too many quips, too many in-joke nudges, too much Cobie Smulders — yet achieves what the first film could not for me: engagement and excitement. —Rod Lott

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In 1442, by order of the sultan, the Turkish army enslaved and conscripted 1,000 boys from Transylvania. (Why all the underage soldiers? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.) Out of that group, the prologue of Dracula Untold tells, one emerged as a “warrior so fierce”: Vlad the Impaler, not yet known as Dracula, not yet a vampire.

In fact, returning to Transylvania as a prince of peace, Vlad (Luke Evans, Fast & Furious 6) is a family man with a wife (Sarah Gadon, Antiviral) and towheaded tot (Art Parkinson, TV’s Game of Thrones). That sweet life comes under threat when Turkish warlord Mehmed (Dominic Cooper, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) comes calling to revive that old “recruitment” process of 1,000 boys, Vlad’s included.

What’s a dad like Vlad to? Kick Mehmet’s ass. How? By climbing Broken Tooth Mountain, atop which a vampire (an eerie Charles Dance, Alien 3) lives, ready to imbue Vlad with a shortlist of superpowers:
1. the strength of 100 men,
2. the speed of a falling star,
3. dominion o’er the night and all its creatures,
4. and good ol’ immortality.

The downside? Just an unquenchable thirst for human blood. Vlad decides to submit to vampirism anyway. Oh, shit, sorry: Spoiler alert.

With his deep-red cape and symmetrical-patterned coat of armor, Vlad 2.0 looks and acts very much like a comic-book hero; ergo, Dracula Untold is his origin story — his birth on Krypton, his bite from a radioactive spider. Here, Vlad is rendered the original “bat man,” morphing his body into a belfry’s worth of bats to leap from one point to another in a fraction of the time. This provides him an upper hand on the battlefield, and us with an admittedly cool effect, surpassed only by an ashes-ashes-all-fall-down finale. Having infected blood proves so advantageous in war that Vlad passes it out to his fellow fighters like frat boys discovering Red Bull (“It’s got wings, bro! Wings!”).

Freshman director Gary Shore does an admirable job of shoehorning plenty of atmosphere into what is first and foremost an FX extravaganza. More commendable, newbie screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless bring a comparatively fresh take on Bram Stoker’s oft-filmed creation. Dracula Untold truly is unlike any other Dracula movie before it because it could get away with dropping the famous name altogether — but what would be the marquee value in that?

With almost all trappings of horror scraped away, the film is an action-laden, sword-slinging fantasy: a fanged 300. It’s also Universal Pictures’ initial step in rebooting its classic monsters for a shared-universe franchise to follow the mighty Marvel template of moneymaking moviemaking. While not so good as to be great — Evans’ flowing locks are more noticeable than his performance — it’s a solid start. —Rod Lott

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Hypothetical question: It’s the year 1996, and alien beings, cleverly disguised as humans, are destroying the earth for their own selfish needs. Who you gonna call? No, not Rowdy Roddy Piper; he sacrificed himself a few years back (that’s a They Live reference, BTW). Also, 1996 Will Smith is busy saving the world from other alien overlords (Independence Day), and 1996 Jack Nicholson has his hands full with yet another xenomorphic conflict (Mars Attacks!).

Who else you got? If you’ve guessed “Pudgy Charlie Sheen” … congratulations?

The Arrival, the third alien invasion movie of 1996, made little impact upon its release. It wielded neither the star wattage nor big budget of its higher-profile kin, and its special effects are best described as “eh, pretty good, all things considered.” But, much like spiritual soulmate They Live, its subtext makes it increasingly relevant, even if it’s too long and has all the visual élan of an episode of T.J. Hooker.

David Twohy (the Riddick trilogy) was a neophyte director here, and it shows; his lackluster pacing drags The Arrival out way longer than it needs to be. His writing is stronger, full of smart people sounding smart while doing smart things (and a few dumb things, because tension), and by layering in themes of climate change and environmental devastation, he (like John Carpenter with — again — They Live) transforms a slight B movie into something more topical and thought-provoking.

Sadly, most of the actors can barely muster interest, with only the passionate climatologist played by Lindsay Crouse (House of Games) making a true impression (so, obviously, she dies). Ron Silver (Timecop) is comatose as the baddie, Teri Polo (the Meet the Parents trilogy) is blandness personified as Girlfriend Character, and Sheen only rouses at the finale as his put-upon astronomer becomes more and more unhinged.

Sheen is also leagues away from the ripped and shredded physique he showed off in Hot Shots! Part Deux, which actually works in the movie’s favor. Be honest: Aren’t we all tired of movie scientists who also resemble GQ catalog models? Sheen’s corporeal puffiness adds a level of verisimilitude to The Arrival that his sleepy performance sadly cannot match. —Corey Redekop

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Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem begins where 2004’s Alien vs. Predator left off: with the miracle of birth! To be precise, an Alien-style chestburster rises from the womb-like corpse of a Predator — behold, the PredAlien! (Seriously, that’s what 20th Century Fox calls it.) This milestone occurs in space, aboard a Predator ship (PredShip?), which the newborn causes to crash-land on Earth, thereby loosing the Predators’ jarred collection of live Alien facehuggers on the quaint, quiet town of Gunnison, Colo.

Following the spacecraft’s distress signal to our planet is a clean-up Predator (Ian Whyte, The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power) whose figurative job is to mop up the mess left behind using explosives and a beaker of blue acid. He makes that damned clicking sound while going about his business. Skirmishes occur amid the great outdoors, but also in the town’s sewer system, nuclear power plant, high school pool and hospital — woe be to the visibly already-pregnant woman who gets mouth-raped by the PredAlien.

VFX wunderkinds Colin and Greg Strause (Skyline) spend the first act of their feature-directing debut setting up members of their expendable human cast — an ex-con, a pizza delivery boy, an Iraq War vet, the customary cop and so on — and the next two acts knockin’ ’em down. To my surprise, they do a much better job establishing those earlier stages than in dishing out Requiem’s supposed meat. That the characters are introduced with so little personality should tell all about the degree to which the brothers’ film disappoints, especially in the only area in which their target audience gives a damn. They’re no Paul W.S. Anderson.

Requiem might be a fanboy’s dream if we could see the sequences that justify the “vs.” portion of the title. For whatever reason — perhaps to mask some digital seams? — these scenes appear unforgivably dark on disc just as they did in theaters; they’re even trickier for the eye to decipher than the movie’s “what is that?” one-sheet. The Strauses work from a through-the-motions script by Shane Salerno (2000’s Shaft remake), whose coda sets up a never-made third film. Neither Anderson’s original nor the Strauses’ sequel were able to meet the inherent potential of this spin-off franchise, but the Strause boys really squandered it. —Rod Lott

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