Made for television just before the disaster subgenre began to collapse, Mayday at 40,000 Feet! — exclamation theirs — is as you would expect: a transparent wannabe member of the Airport franchise. Robert Butler, who later directed a bigger-budgeted plane-in-peril flick in 1997’s Turbulence, certainly works Mayday’s soapy suds into a lather.

On the film’s L.A.-departing flight in question, the cockpit is chock full o’ chaos. The pilot (David Janssen, Two-Minute Warning) is distracted AF with his possibly cancerous wife (Jane Powell, The Female Animal) undergoing breast surgery. The co-pilot (Christopher George, Enter the Ninja) is distracted AF after spontaneously proposing to an old flame (Margaret Blye, The Entity) among the clouds after reconnecting during the Salt Lake City layover. And the navigator (“Dandy” Don Meredith, Terror on the 40th Floor) is distracted AF by the sexy new stewardess (Airport 1975 stew Christopher Norris), even though the guys note, “she still has her baby fat.” More attentive to measurements than coordinates, he and his acts of sexual harassment make a great case for a retitling of Horny at 40,000 Feet!

And yet, the crew cries “Mayday!” after a handcuffed prisoner (Marjoe Gortner, Earthquake) manages to wrestle the gun from the old, crusty, heart attack-prone U.S. Marshal (Broderick Crawford, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover) escorting him to NYC, and promptly puts a bullet through a couple of people, as well as the lavatory wall. Oh, if only an alcoholic asshole doctor (Ray Milland, Cave In!) were aboard!

Adapted from Austin Ferguson’s novel Jet Stream, the efficiently entertaining telepic greatly benefits from Gortner’s crazed performance, closely lifting it to the theatrical atmosphere in which it wants to be. (Although I’m uncertain how Butler snuck Gortner’s uttering of the N-word past CBS’ standards and practices.) Mayday shows its seams most whenever the camera moves about the cabin, as the aircraft appears to house maybe 20 passengers. Its prime-time conception further reveals itself in external shots of the fuselage, where the production half-assedly added the fictional Transcon Airways brand with such inconsistent kerning, it reads “T R A N SCON.” Perhaps some foxy flight attendant walked by? —Rod Lott

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The need for incel-inspirational cinema is at an all-time high and, sadly, there are only so many Jokers to go around. It’s probably the perfect time in our frayed culture to finally recognize the virginal granddaddy of all sex-denied psycho-bro flicks, 1985’s The Boys Next Door.

Starring two perfectly cast Brat Pack heartthrobs (Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield) as a pair of dudes who are sick of all the fuckin’ foreigners, fuckin’ homosexuals and fuckin’ women diseasing up their Angelino wonderland. Before you can say “Don’t tread on me,” they’re laying waste to various minorities groups all over town, mostly with an ill-advised tiger-blood smirk.

Sometime between Suburbia and Dudes, this socially irresponsible gem was surprisingly directed by Penelope Spheeris for, of course, New World Pictures. While the movie aims to have “social relevance,” it’s actually somewhat troubling as Spheeris (and screenwriters Glen Morgan and James Wong of X-Files fame) seemingly wants us to sympathize with the plight of these young white males as they shoot, stab and slam the heads of every non-straight white male they encounter.

That’s not very punk rock, guys.

Released at the absolute height of the Reagan-era “Make my day” attitude that was once a loaded gun barrel of pure machismo, today, in light of the normalization of these hateful atrocities all over America, this pair of jerk-off jokers are probably better left in their smelly dorm rooms, trolling message boards and leaving racist YouTube comments. —Louis Fowler

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From first frame, depicting a serene-scened snow globe shattering under the weight of a passing garbage truck, René Manzor’s Dial Code Santa Claus lets you know it’s not your ordinary Christmas movie. And not just because it’s French.

Thomas is not your ordinary 9-year-old, either. As played by Manzor’s son, Alain Lalanne, he’s a whiz at all things technological and mechanical, a wannabe Rambo and the owner of a most unfortunate kid mullet. Living in a mansion with his toy-exec mother (Brigitte Fossey, Forbidden Games) and his diabetic, half-blind grandfather (The Double Life of Veronique’s Louis Ducreux), Thomas lives the life of Riley, worrying about little beyond whether Santa is a mere myth.

He learns the truth in the worst way possible — on Christmas Eve, no less. After Thomas’ mom fires a temp Santa for slapping a child, that creepy Kris Kringle (Patrick Floersheim, Roman Polanski’s Frantic) wastes no time in descending on the home for revenge. Truly psychotic and possibly pedophiliac, Fake Santa stalks the kid from room to room; in response, the resourceful Thomas uses the home advantage to his, well, advantage, by navigating its labyrinthian passages to lure his pursuer into booby traps.

Comparisons to Home Alone are preordained, although the clever and cunning Dial (also known under the tags of Game Over, Deadly Games and 36.15 Code Père Noël) predates that John Hughes megahit and is not a comedy, although Manzor skillfully dupes viewers into thinking it will be. Then it adopts the malevolence of the Joan Collins segment of Amicus’ Tales from the Crypt feature, with the camera often aligned at Thomas’ level to help sell the boy’s sense of terror; it works. Inevitably, Manzor cannot sustain the breakneck pacing all the way to the finish line — and that’s just fine, because in slowing down, he allows Lalanne to do something Macaulay Culkin never could: act. —Rod Lott

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With their parents perishing in a car wreck, military-base teens Loren (Shannon Presby, Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer) and Abby MacWilliams (Lori Loughlin, Back to the Beach) move to Florida to live with their slovenly Uncle Charlie (Eddie Jones, Invasion U.S.A.). They earn their keep by helping get his decrepit, two-bit amusement park, Santa Funland, off the ground.

They earn something else, too: the ire of the local gang of high school hick thugs, led by the drug-dealing Dutra (James Spader, Avengers: Age of Ultron), all for one unreasonable reason: Abby won’t go out with them. Outraged at this affront to their rapey overtures, Dutra and his fellow detritus pledge to make the MacWilliams siblings pay — quite literally with their lives, after a couple rounds of garden-variety vandalism fail to convince Abby to put out. It all culminates as the viewer would hope: on the after-hours grounds of Santa Funland, with the villains using shotguns and our heroes using jerry-rigged carnival rides.

This late left turn into terror shouldn’t surprise anyone, seeing how The New Kids is directed by Sean S. Cunningham, he of the landmark slasher Friday the 13th. Now, James Spader is no Jason Voorhees, which is to say that while the former’s villainous turn failed to achieve the latter’s icon status, the actor is absolutely slimy to the point of serpentine — a petulant, entitled alpha male whose assholiness resonates even more today with a realism the supernatural slayer Jason can’t even hope to match (not that he would).

As intense as Spader is, treating the B movie as A material (as was his wont), Presby is nearly as magnetic – a surprise since The New Kids marks his film debut, and doubly a surprise since he never did another. In fact, his acting career — all four years of it — ended with the ’85 calendar. Slow-motion shots of his athleticism aside, presumably to showcase his package, Presby has more presence than his ultimately famous screen sister. Among the supporting cast in too-small parts are Eric Stoltz (Anaconda) as a super-dweeb and Tom Atkins (Halloween III: Season of the Witch) as the ill-fated MacWilliams patriarch.

Cunningham’s instincts have always been stronger as producer than director, so he seems mostly disinterested in Stephen Gyllenhaal’s script until the finale places him back within his comfort zone. Viewers will not only sense it, but may think likewise. —Rod Lott

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One of the weapons utilized in Scream for Help is a Swiss Army knife — fitting for the film’s all-purpose refusal to commit to one genre. Ultimately, it’s a thriller, as sleazy as it cheesy. Would you expect anything less from Death Wish director Michael Winner?

At 17, Christie Cromwell (Rachael Kelly) is a regular Nancy Drew in Guess jeans. As she details in her diary (and narrates to us), she’s convinced her stepdad, Paul (David Allen Brooks, The Kindred), is trying to kill her mother (Marie Masters, Slayground) for her wealth. As becomes irrefutable with each increasingly ludicrous scenario, she’s not wrong.

After the film devotes about an hour to Christie’s snooping and sleuthing, screenwriter Todd Holland (1985’s Fright Night) turns the tables into a siege picture, as Paul and his posse trap the Cromwell ladies in their own house. Luckily, Christie holds the home-court advantage, although throughout Help, the girl is at turns crafty and clumsy, per the needs of the story beats, and Kelly (who never graced a movie before or since) makes an impression as the bratty but well-meaning heroine.

Having recruited Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page to score Death Wish II two years prior, Winner this time procures Zep’s John Paul Jones to provide the soundtrack. But it also finds Winner returning to the well for his reputation of being cruel to his female characters. The nudity required of Lolita Lorre (as Paul’s mistress) is udderly utterly humiliating, and when Christie loses her virginity (to her BFF’s BF, played by How I Got into College’s Corey Parker), she emerges from the sheets in horror at the amount of blood — and no wonder, as it appears she has pressed her palm into a full tray of red paint. One wonders if Winner cackled at himself for costuming the underage girl in a shirt emblazoned with the word “MUFFS.” (Probably.)

There’s another thing one wonders, as Christie relies on a bicycle and Polaroid camera as her tools of reconnaissance: What would Brian De Palma do? Better, to be certain, but I’d be lying to suggest I didn’t thoroughly enjoy Scream for Help as is. —Rod Lott

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