After his father’s tragic death in an auto accident, food vlogger Jeff Blake (Bret Lada, TV’s Alpha House) learns a nice surprise through an online ancestry service: He has a half-brother! Curious, Jeff drives to the rural, rundown farm to meet his heretofore unknown sibling, Andy Baker (Dustin Fontaine), the product of an affair.

Although they resemble one another, the two couldn’t be more different: Typical of a YouTube influencer/narcissist, Jeff is a preening, preppy ass, whereas Andy, in his denim overalls and overgrown beard, looks like “a live-action Berenstain Bear.”

Presented as a compilation of footage found by New Jersey police in 2020, The Andy Baker Tape captures the brothers from meeting day to falling out and beyond, all within a three-week span. Jeff’s hoping to score a Food Network show and enlists Andy for help as cameraman. Andy’s happy to oblige … until he senses disrespect. Still relative strangers, both clearly are working out issues in real time; they just need to — ahem — bury the hatchet.

Essentially a two-hander, The Andy Baker Tape is also that way behind the camera: Lada directed, Fontaine produced, and both talented actors shared scripting duties. A point in their favor is thriller’s compactness, bowing out shortly after the one-hour mark — and before wearing out the welcome. Without spoiling where it goes, the movie is all the more unsettling because the situation could happen — and has, as NBC’s Dateline and its ilk demonstrate week after week.

You’ve seen much worse COVID projects, but few better. And its last line is killer. —Rod Lott

Unequivocally, Party Line is the finest psycho thriller starring a prematurely balding, former Tiger Beat staple in eye makeup and a puffy shirt. That would be Leif Garrett (Macon County Line) as Seth, the whiny, wealthy brother of sexy, spoiled Angelina (Greta Blackburn, Savage Harbor). They have nothing better to do than repeatedly carry out a felonious, three-part scheme as if it were as frivolous as Taco Tuesday: They set up dates by dialing up party lines (the Tinder of their day); Angelina seduces them; then Seth straight-razors them before driving off in a sports car with the license plate “TEMT ME.”

Following a number of these acts of 976-evil, homicide detective Lt. Dan Bridges (Richard Hatch, TV’s Battlestar Galactica) is assigned the case. But because he’s a “dangerous, hotheaded jackass” who exercises both police brutality and illegal search-and-seizure, he’s assigned a buttoned-blouse partner (Shawn Weatherly, Amityville 1992: It’s About Time), a special investigator for the district attorney’s office, to keep tabs on him.

They eventually get a break thanks to a preteen girl (Patricia Patts, the voice of Peppermint Patty in several Peanuts cartoons) who calls the line for kicks. This babysitter has more bearing on the plot — and thus, more screen time — than Bridges’ captain, played by the iconic Richard Roundtree (Shaft, duh).

Seth harbors major mommy issues and sissy issues — the latter best exemplified by his rage-tearing the curtains off the rod as he watches a tanning Angelina rub her bikinied breasts. In this scene and all, Garrett’s performance is hysterical, in both the emotional and humorous definitions of the word.

As clearly as Seth is disturbed, Party Line is clearly a theatrical progenitor — although a weak one — of the ’90s VHS/cable erotic thriller revolution. Director William Webb (The Banker) lathers a prescient Animal Instincts coat of adults’ body paint atop his coupling of William Castle’s I Saw What You Did and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. You don’t even need the Blu-ray subtitles’ many instances of “(sexy saxophone music)” to recognize that.

Too hokey to be erotic or thrilling, Party Line boasts several pause-worthy moments (and I don’t mean the kind you think*). For instance, be sure to see:
* 37:30 for a cameo by the boom mike, moving more than either actor in the scene
* 41:18 to glimpse the fucking filthy bare feet of Bridges’ cop girlfriend (Marty Dudek, Martial Law), as if she’s not been pulling over speeders, but cleaning chimneys with Dick Van Dyke
* 1:01:33 for one of the era’s more brazen kid mullets (speaking of, Garrett’s hair suggests an odd combo of mullet, ‘fro and failed Rogaine)

Yes, of course “The party’s over” is one of the film’s final lines. —Rod Lott

*That said, gentlemen, check out 1:12:48 for Weatherly in a red satin dress more fiery than the 15-oz. “Party-Size!” bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

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From Mountaintop Motel Massacre director Jim McCullough Sr. and writer Jim McCullough Jr., the Shreveport, Louisiana-shot Video Murders posits a sad world in which single-dude schlubs watch homemade snuff tapes while eating Chinese takeout. At least that’s the case for David, played by Private Lessons pupil Eric Brown — the only remotely recognizable face in this cheap and dreary psycho thriller, unless Radio Shack Computer Center signage counts.

To a tinny score that sounds like TV’s Tales from the Darkside theme breeded with Sears’ 1975 Pong console, David’s hobby is renting, handcuffing and fatally choking hookers, in that order, all under the watchful eye of his VHS camera. Investigating detective Lt. Jerry Delvechio (John P. Fertitta, The Evictors) puts it best: “He’s a real freak!” In his first scene, Delvechio mentions David as the suspect in these serial killings without explaining how he knows.

Thirty minutes in, David attends a concert by The Insatiables, whose New Wave-coiffed lead sings, “He dreams in black and white.” This unassuming lyrics flips David’s switch like he’s The Manchurian Candidate, triggering flashbacks … from the past half-hour we just watched. Sadly, none are of what has to be regional cinema’s most incredible weather report.

Still, he manages to leave the club with a lonely, but still-too-cute-for-him receptionist (Virginia Loridans of the aforementioned Massacre) named Melissa Rivers. He treats her like she’s one of his disposable call girls, belching loudly near her face, holding her hostage and playing her Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13.

Thank God Delvechio has the foresight to hit up the greasy diner to get valuable info out of the registered nurse little person (one-timer Marti Anding Brooks as the dictionary-sounding Miriam Webster). Although David is responsible for the videoing and the murdering of Video Murders, the movie plays like a pilot for Lt. Delvechio — hopefully titled Delvechio — vying for space alongside McCloud and Columbo in The NBC Mystery Movie lineup. It never happened. Sorry about that, folks; back to you, Sylvia. —Rod Lott

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Watcher’s title could refer to the film’s protagonist, Julia (It Follows’ Maika Monroe), who moves to Bucharest with her husband, Francis (The Neon Demon’s Karl Glusman), despite not knowing the language. Thus, most conversations place her as an observer, an inactive participant in need of translation. However, Watcher being a horror thriller, it more likely refers to the guy across the street, who always seems to be staring into her apartment.

After she hears of nearby decapitations carried out by a serial killer called “The Spider,” Julia wonders if her fears of living in an alien country aren’t unfounded. If that neighbor might be the man she believes is following her in public. If the things that go bump in the night are perhaps not “things” at all …

For the suspense genre, an apartment building makes an ideal setting, as paranoia lives on every floor, even if its name isn’t on a single mail slot. Hell, Roman Polanski has used such a structure three times, including Rosemary’s Baby, which writer and director Chloe Okuno visually checks as Julia and Francis pass the aforementioned crime scene on their way home one night.

In just her first feature, Okuno makes all the right choices in depicting her heroine’s plights as newcomer and potential victim, with Monroe aptly pulling off both. Okuno’s conscious decision not to use subtitles during Romanian conversations puts viewers in Julia’s outsider wavelength. Equally discomforting is how Okuno shows the man throughout the first half: in a blur or with his full face blocked or out of frame, to keep tension at a gentle rolling boil. Although less patient audience members may start getting antsy, they’ll be jolted into silence by a dynamite final 10 minutes. —Rod Lott

What’s the matter with Kansas? Well, lots of things, but in the case of Dark Before Dawn, its farming community of Milo is being destroyed by corporate shenanigans. In the opening Senate subcommittee hearing that plays like a campaign ad full of phony testimonials, we hear the farmers’ plight. “I ain’t gettin’ a fair shake,” complains a guy who should be credited as Old Coot, if he weren’t already ID’d as one Francis Zickefoose.

Redneck reporter Roger Crandall (Paul Newsom, 1996’s Public Enemies) suspects much of the blame falls on the Dallas-based Farmcor (not Farmcorp, which would make sense). The company’s up to sumthin’ and, by gum, by minute 13, he has it all figger’d out: Farmcor is falsifying reports to control grain futures.” Then he’s killed, pushed off a tall metal thingamajig to his death (before dawn) in a grain elevator.

Crandall was correct; as Farmcor bigwig J.B. Watson (Morgan Woodward, Supervan) tells the board, he’s cooked up a 12 billion-buck plan that’ll allow them to snap up foreclosed farms for pennies, then sell bread for $6 a loaf! Crandall’s romantic partner, “big TV lady” Jessica, heads to Milo to investigate. For the record, Jessica is played by Reparata Mazzola, of whom three things should be noted:

1. She constituted one-third of Lady Flash, Barry Manilow’s backing vocalists.
2. This is not only her one try as actress, but her one try as screenwriter.
3. “Reparata Mazzola” sounds like either a cooking oil Florence Henderson might shill or a place where they fix wheels of cheese.

Anyway, Jessica’s snooping around is aided by yet another reporter (Buck Taylor, The Legend of the Lone Ranger) and yet another farmer, Jeff (Sonny Gibson, Underground Aces). Jeff’s John Deere mesh-backed cap is Dark Before Dawn’s equivalent of Superman’s chest insignia; heck, he even saves Jessica from being chopped up by a combine, six years after Superman III.

But he sure can’t squeeze a diamond out of this lump of coal. There’s an irrefutable reason moviegoers no longer see conspiracy thrillers centered around the price of wheat: because they didn’t see this one. Good reason exists there as well: because Dark Before Dawn is terribly dull, indolently written and hokily acted — an irrational, fist-measured mix of political chicanery and your local station’s 4 a.m. farm report. Other than one instance of bulldozer DUI, a scene of Silkwood-style intimidation night driving and a suicide by truck and tree at 85 mph, not much happens that isn’t told in dialogue rife with jibber-jabber about “subsidies,” “surplus,” “harvest,” “commodities” and “I’m interviewing the grain inspector this afternoon.”

Ben Johnson appears as the sheriff who says, “You ain’t got the brains of a soda cracker” with absolute conviction and professionalism, knowing his Last Picture Show Oscar can’t be repo’d. Rance Howard (Busted) carries out crop arson and other nefarious acts on behalf of Farmcor. Doug McClure (Satan’s Triangle) and Billy Drago (Delta Force 2) are also compensated, less for their acting skills than for having to shoot in the heat of Kansas and Oklahoma.

If Dark Before Dawn succeeds anywhere, it’s only as a piece of agri-agitprop. Robert Totten (1963’s The Quick and the Dead) directs its big speeches like he might approach a military recruiting video, but instead of trying to convince you to don a helmet and storm foreign land, it’s to don denim suspenders and plant legumes. —Rod Lott

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