Three scenes utterly traumatized me as a youngster:
1. the reveal of the “star child” in 2001: A Space Odyssey (nightmarish!);
2. the rabbit attack in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (that was a lot of blood); and
3. the finale of Disney’s The Black Hole, wherein an ostensibly family-friendly flick suddenly goes medieval and takes a trek through literal Hell. After 80 minutes of cinematic sci-fi — ending with the entire cast being sucked into the eponymous hole — Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell, Deep Impact), imprisoned within the armor of his killer robot, stands guard over a blasted hellscape as tortured souls trudge down pathways carved into a flaming mountain range.

Today, the scene is a cinematic curiosity, a weird and unforeseen side trek into Christian mythology that barely makes contextual sense. But back then? Schell’s eyes suddenly peering out from the furnace-red eye slit of his mechanical beast damaged the 8-year-old me worse than anything. Forget the Bible; the Hell of The Black Hole is what almost scared me into belief.

Past that, The Black Hole is an unbalanced amalgamation of Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney cutesiness and horror. On the plus side, you’ve got an admittedly awesome-looking hole in space, some pretty terrific effects, a terrifying mute demon robot that performs what surely counts as the only disembowelment to appear in a Disney film (bloodless though it is) and a John Barry score better than the film 90 percent of the time and more suitable for Monday Night Football for the other 10.

Veering into the mediocre, there are floating-by-wire R2-D2s (voiced by Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens, and the most interesting characters); a script as thin as watered-down tapioca; robot soldiers that make the battle droids of Phantom Menace seem like crack shots; and one of those Airport/Poseidon Adventure disaster film “let’s give a bunch of B-movie actors some work” casts: the magnetic Schell, the stern Robert Forster, the perky Yvette Mimieux, the twitchy Anthony Perkins, the grumpy Ernest Borgnine and the takes-up-physical-space Joseph Bottoms. And an ending where the filmmakers must have just thrown up their hands and said, “What the hell, I guess you can breathe in outer space, sure.”

On the whole, not great. But still worth seeing for some startling imagery, fascinatingly manipulative scenes (oh, how my youngest sister bawled when old B.O.B. died), and again, that just balls-out crazy ending. I’ll be good from now on, Daddy! I promise! Don’t let the Satanbot kill me!

P.S.: Is it just me, or is Event Horizon a remake? —Corey Redekop

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The classic, Old English epic poem known as Beowulf saw a surprising resurgence in popularity in 1999 with Seamus Heaney’s new translation; that same year’s film adaptation of Beowulf is in no such danger, but its fantasy brand of cheese actually tastes quite enjoyable.

The inhabitants of a big, spooky castle are under constant threat of attack by a ghost demon named Grendle, who likes to eat people. Their saving grace comes in the form of a visiting mysterious stranger named Beowulf, played by Christopher Lambert, Highlander refugee and graduate of the Angry Whisper School of Acting.

Beowulf has a gift of sensing danger, so he knows when the monster is near. The beast is mostly a CGI creature given a wavy effect that looks like someone dragged a big magnet across your TV screen. The fight scenes — set to a techno score by Juno Reactor — alternately ape those found in Mortal Kombat, The Matrix and Evil Dead II. Beowulf also busts out some Gymkata fight moves. Assisting Beowulf is a foxy brunette (Rhona Mitra, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) who has a name, but I didn’t catch it because her bosoms threaten to break free the entire film.

Now, I don’t know how faithful this superheroic take on Beowulf is to the source material, as the piece of literature was a chore to get through in high school, but I’m pretty sure if the castle dudes were being visited in their dreams by a horny Playboy Playmate, I would’ve remembered, and maybe even aced the test. The filmmakers end up dubbing the Playmate (Layla Roberts, Miss October 1997); maybe director Graham Baker (Alien Nation) should’ve done Lambert while they were at it so we could understand him once and for all. —Rod Lott

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So nonlinear that calling it nonlinear doesn’t cut it, the Hong Kong oddity The Invincible Space Streaker has nothing to do with space, and there’s no streaker. But here’s what goes down, or as much I was able to decipher from its truncated-English subtitles (“I order you kill him!”): After a hard day at grade school, about two dozen little boys go to a local watering hole and remove their little-boy pants to go skinny-dipping. This odd group activity is halted by the appearance of a mystical guy with a stereotypical bad haircut. He’s dressed in a robe that makes him look like Dr. Strange, except that I don’t recall the Marvel Comics character having ever enjoyed an eyeful of undescended testicles during an afternoon romp.

Anyhow, this creepy doctor convinces roughly half the kids to follow him to this lab by using a poster of a superhero as bait, presumably because candy — the favored tool of kidnappers the world over — sucks ass in Asian countries. Doc promises to turn them all into “superman” (lowercase), but once the first kid is wired into a crazy contraption in the evil lair, it’s clear there will be no kid-to-superman transformations.

Instead, Doc changes the first boy into a cute capuchin monkey. The other children react via frightened subtitles: “It’s the monkey! Not superman!” Another kid becomes a pot-bellied pig. A third boy is on the road to mutation when his full-bladdered friend yanks down his shorts and pees all over Doc’s face and the machine. (And it’s no special effect, either, as the camera horrifyingly details.) These two tots manage to escape, but the one whose transformation was interrupted by the ol’ stream-of-urine-as-means-of-distraction trick finds himself turned into a masked superhero. His costume is an unsettling blend of Boba Fett, Evel Knievel, The Fly and Liberace. He kicks bad guys and then there’s an elaborate (at least by the standards set forth thus far) motorcycle chase.

Then there’s more fighting as the hero fights a walking bug, several guys on choppers and, for a split second, what appears to be a man in a wolf costume. Pee-Pee Boy helps out by discovering the joys of explosives, and then promptly dies in a slow-motion scene highly reminiscent of Willem Dafoe’s death in Platoon. This makes the hero angry enough to zap the crap out of the bad guys to emerge victorious. Why he didn’t do that in the first place and thus spare his best friend’s life is beyond me. But all the little boys celebrate this triumph by taking another nude group swim, as the title card screams, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMING!” —Rod Lott

By all measurable standards, I should wholly love Priest. Take the plot of The Searchers, add a generous portion of cinematic/literary dystopia (equal parts Judge Dredd, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Equilibrium and whatever else you have on hand), throw in some classic Western tropes, blend with actors I admire, top off with monsters and neat visuals, and stir.

And voila! Half-baked mash. I don’t expect greatness, but shouldn’t there be at least a soupçon of pulpy fun watching futuristic holy warriors kick vampire ass? Why is this so limp?

Hard to fault the actors. Paul Bettany (Legion) as “the priest with no name” is terrific (he should play bad-ass far more often). Karl Urban’s human/vampire villain has no real logic, but the Star Trek reboot star is a pro. Cam Gigandet (Pandorum) is a vacuum, but doesn’t have to carry much weight. Brad Dourif, Maggie Q, Mädchen Amick and Christopher Plummer, meanwhile, do what they can with nothing.

It’s all down to script and direction — hey, who’d’ve thunk? The screenplay is all high-concept and soggy-toast dialogue; any true grit has been PG-13’d down to nothing. The vampires don’t make sense; they’re considered intelligent (they’ve been confined to reservations, kind of an obvious analogy), yet here they’re unthinking, feral CGI beasts. It’s a mystery why anyone would want to become one (many do try); it’d be like yearning to be one of the bugs from Starship Troopers.

The direction by Scott Stewart (retiming with Bettany after 2010’s Legion) is all visual flair with no sense of pacing. Priest looks great, but even at 80 minutes (taking out the seven minutes of credits), it drags. When an animated opening is the only section to create any real tension, you’ve got a problem.

Note to Hollywood: I’d like to formally suggest Urban play the gunslinger should Stephen King’s Dark Tower series ever see film; snarling from beneath a flat-brimmed hat, clad in boots and black duster, Urban is Roland to a T. —Corey Redekop

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If not for representing the public’s first look at the work of Ray Harryhausen kids Dennis Muren and David Allen, it’s likely Equinox would be lost to the ages. It’s an early line on the résumé for so many others, too, including animator Jim Danforth, co-star Frank Bonner (later to achieve sitcom immortality as WKRP in Cincinnati’s Herb Tarlek) and even Ed Begley Jr. (as an assistant cameraman).

Produced (and padded) by schlockmeister Jack H. Harris (The Blob) from Muren and friends’ homemade effort of 1967, the film sends four teenagers to the mountains for reasons that are twofold: One couple has planned a picnic, while David (one-timer Edward Connell) has been summoned there by his geology professor (sci-fi author Fritz Leiber Jr.).

The teens enter a cave, wherein a cackling old man in plaid gives them a book filled with weird symbols, multiple languages and a backward Lord’s Prayer. Needless to say, the tome is damned, and its readers inadvertently unlock a dimensional gateway. Before long, they’re throwing rocks at a growling beast and being tormented by a winged demon. Those monsters are animated via stop-motion, whereas the not-so-jolly green giant in a loincloth is an actor made large and in charge through forced perspective.

Pay no attention to the ladies being depicted as barely smart enough to operate a camera (“Boy, you could grow up to be a real fussbudget,” says Bonner); Equinox is only interested in the couples’ ongoing tussles with the various creatures, all of which are rendered impressively, even if the art is dead by today’s standards.

Equinox has one thing going for it that bests millions of dollars worth of CGI: a DIY aesthetic. On weekends, Muren and company made that cool movie you and your neighborhood pals always talked about doing, but never had the resources or energy. Its creativity trumps its numerous imperfections, making it impossible to wish the project ill will. —Rod Lott

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