You’re a talented metallurgical engineer. (Just go with me here.) You’re blowing the whistle on your bosses for defrauding the federal government and putting troops’ lives at risk. You’re told you’re a dead man for doing so. You’re set to testify against them in mere days. You’re under witness protection. You’ve already survived one attempt on your life via the ol’ “phony mail carrier with a gun” routine. And yet you purposely leave the safe house to attend a previously scheduled picnic with friends and family, in public.

You, sir, are a goddamn idiot who deserves to eat lead.

However, producer Irwin Allen, never met a patently absurd setup he could not milk for a telefilm buck. And after fires, floods and rock slides, the Master of Disaster was down to arguably his most incredulous concept yet: being stuck in a cable car. Ladies and gentlemen, you are Hanging by a Thread.

The trouble begins when engineer Paul Craig (Sam Groom, Deadly Eyes) decides to ditch the protective care of the feds — by himself, by his own choice and for the night so he may accompany his son, Tommy (Michael Sharrett, Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend), on a private picnic atop a mountain accessible only via aerial tram. Not happy to see Paul show up is his ex-wife, Ellen (Donna Mills, Allen’s Fire); in turn, Paul is not happy to see her being pawed by his old friend, Alan (Bert Convy, The Cannonball Run), to whom Ellen is now engaged. The members of this love triangle — and the other eager picnickers (one played by Valley of the Dolls’ Patty Duke) — were such perennial partiers, they formed their own WASPs’ nest, called the Uptowners’ Club.

Being a fatuous, wealthy douche who lives to show off and bend others to his bank-enabled will, Alan gives the go-ahead to board the tram, despite a doozy of an approaching thunderstorm. Wouldn’t you know it, lightning strikes the cables and fries some metal doohickey, effectively stranding the group approximately 7,500 in the air. With high winds preventing copter rescue, the plot pits Paul against Alan in a race to nut up and Be a Hero, Just for One Day. Although we’re barely an hour into this three-hour-plus armchair gripper, Paul handily wins, because Alan’s alcoholism gets the *hic!* better of him; rather than take swift action, Alan takes increasingly larger swigs from a heretofore hidden flask as big as his head.

So how do vowel-deprived director Georg Fenady (Cave In!) and scripter Adrian Spies (The Ordeal of Patty Hearst) fill the time before Paul inevitably saves the day? If you guessed “play Win, Lose or Draw,” I like where your head’s at, but you’re eight years off. The answer: flashbacks, natch! Each adult gets his or her turn to mentally turn back the clock and revisit closeted skeletons such as framing a family member for corporate malfeasance, coveting thy neighbor’s wife and that time they got so shit-faced, they murdered Doug Llewelyn of TV’s People’s Court. Now that was a party!

And so is Hanging by a Thread, even with so many signs suggesting otherwise: specifically, the daunting running time, the cockamamie concept and all that Convy. Yet as the soap bubbles and bubbles to a fine moisturizing lather, the made-for-TV movie gets by on its sheer unhipness and the surprisingly strong work from Groom. When at the end, the brakeless car careens downward toward the starting point and an uncertain fate for all involved (bringing new meaning to the phrase “exit through the gift shop”), I’ll admit I felt my toes tense just a tad — like Speed with flared collars, dumber characters and a better view. —Rod Lott

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Nearly a quarter-century before he famously dared Washington, D.C. to pry his rifle “from my cold, dead hands,” Charlton Heston tried to separate a sniper from his weapon of choice in the sports-world thriller Two-Minute Warning. Talk about a political flip-flop!

In his fourth disaster film (following Skyjacked, Airport 1975 and Earthquake), Heston stars as Capt. Peter Holly, in charge of the LAPD’s plan to foil a gunman’s plot to open fire on the L.A. Memorial Coliseum’s crowd assembled for a championship football game. Perched atop a scoreboard and in preparatory mode, the sniper (Warren Miller, Married to the Mob) is glimpsed first by the camera blimp overhead. Cops are alerted, and enter Holly and SWAT Sgt. Button (John Cassavetes, Rosemary’s Baby). The two talk strategy and mention no fewer than three times the unfortunate maintenance man who got “butt-stroked off the ladder.”

The sniper’s target? Oh, just about 100,000 pigskin fans, but to guess who will bite the bullet(s), place your bets on the bleachers’ numerous famous faces, including Walter Pidgeon (Forbidden Planet) as a pickpocket, Jack Klugman (TV’s Quincy, M.E.) as a gambler and Beau Bridges (Max Payne) as a hothead father who slaps the shit out of his young son for revealing Dad’s employment status (read: not) to the pennant salesman. Playing themselves are Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, Merv Griffin and Andy Sidaris, then an Emmy-winning sports director vs. the Russ Meyer of action flicks he would become.

Per disaster-genre regulations, director Larry Peerce (1989’s Wired) continuously revisits the dozen or so subplots like so many spinning plates. It’s tough to tire of a film that walks that tightrope in double time. It is easy, however, to tire of Two-Minute Warning’s maddeningly repetitive musical cue. I forgive Peerce for dropping the needle on it so often, because the eventual melee triggered by the villain’s squeezed trigger is a smorgasbord of fallen (and falling) spectators. —Rod Lott

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Based on the evidence that is The Break-In, we may assume that do-it-all filmmaker Justin Doescher saw Paranormal Activity — and perhaps even one or more of its sequels — and said aloud to himself, “Heck, I can do that!”

But he cannot. The Break-In is a rank-amateur, found-footage thriller that deserves to stay lost.

Built upon the flimsy-even-for-fiction premise that Jeff Anderson (Doescher, who also wrote, directed and produced) has a cool new phone and feels the need to record his every move, the movie presents itself as a week’s worth of police evidence. With a rash of recent burglaries plaguing the neighborhood, Jeff installs a security system to better protect his fiancée, Melissa (Maggie Binkley), and their unborn child. Cameras keep tabs on exactly four rooms: the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room and the “lounge room” (known to the rest of the civilized world as “a lounge”).

Whenever the movie’s POV shifts away from Jeff and his goddamn phone (not often enough) and to these security cams, the screen denotes which room we’re looking at, presumably in case viewers are unable to process obvious visual cues that a bed indicates a bedroom; a refrigerator means a kitchen; and so on. But mostly, The Break-In is Jeff yammering away as he eats dinner, shops for a crib, takes out the recycling — you know, the special moments to preserve for Baby!

Whether he is by himself or with “my boy”/best friend/next-door neighbor/fellow athletics-obsessed meathead man-child Steve (J.P. Veizaga, 10 Rules for Sleeping Around); with Melissa, who applies glitter to her eyelids, yet works as a teacher and not a stripper; or with the buzz-cut Det. Garcia (Ted Fernandez, at once the standout performer and the screen’s least convincing police detective), Jeff records it all.

The way in which Doescher tells his story is maddening: He speaks all the exposition, as if he were reading stage directions from a script. Despite the writer’s axiom of “show, don’t tell,” Doescher figures, “Hey, why not both?” In essence, he narrates actions that need no narration, shares information that needs no sharing and, most damning, externalizes his internal thoughts, as if he does not trust his audience to know that, for example, seeing Melissa stretching in workout clothes and sunglasses on the front porch suggests that a run either has happened or is about to happen.

And to say anything “happens” in the no-budget microindie is being awfully kind. On occasion, we get a glimpse of some mysterious figure in the corner of the frame or far in the background, yet what all that leads up is no mystery: It’s right there in the title! How a found-footage project possibly could capture a dream sequence, however, there’s your mystery.

Many a found-footage film falls flat, but The Break-In usurps the likes of The Gallows and 8213: Gacy House as the subgenre’s worst. If a sports bar could make a movie, the result would be The Break-In. And yet it’s all out of cheese fries, so what’s the point? —Rod Lott

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To call Cyclone by that title is disingenuous on the part of René Cardona Jr., considering that weather event takes up little more than his film’s opening. Then again, what was Cardona (Guyana: Cult of the Damned) if not a second-generation shameless opportunist? Of course he would go with Cyclone! When you’re marketing a Mexploitation action-thriller, that name puts butts in seats; The Glass-Bottom Boat does not.

One year before venturing into The Bermuda Triangle, Cardona set sail with Cyclone, a veritable companion piece largely taking place aboard a sightseeing boat full of Hollywood has-beens (as was Tinseltown’s Towering wont), including Killer Cop’s Arthur Kennedy as a priest; Baby Doll’s Carroll Baker as a spoiled, rich lady traveling with a tiny dog; and, just prior to securing that long-running TV gig on Hart to Hart, Lionel Stander as … well, as whatever an ape and a Troll Doll might resemble after drunkenly stumbling into David Cronenberg’s Brundlefly machine.

Anyway, about that fierce, fake-looking tropical storm: It’s over and done with rather quickly, all in service of a survival story that strands the aforementioned ship of fools (read: tourists) in the middle of the ocean and under the ever-sweltering sun with next to no supplies. Just because most of the movie is stuck on the high seas does not mean it’s stuck in a rut. Quite the opposite, the flick gets “gooder” as hope of rescue dwindles. How else were Cardona and co-writer Carlos Valdemar (Vacation of Terror) supposed to get to the cannibalism? Or the human buffet for the circling sharks? Or the (awfully realistic-looking) murder of Baker’s prized pooch when she breaks the ration rules by attempting to give it drinkable water?

Oh, you wanted restraint? Hey, at least he didn’t kill the baby that’s born amid all the suffering and despair. The way the just-birthed (but somehow placenta-free) infant gets passed in a circle, from hungry stranger to hungry stranger, you’ll half-expect Cardona to go there … and be fully disappointed when he doesn’t. And yet, the answer to the question, “Is this Cardona film worth watching?” is the same answer to the question, “Is Hugo Stiglitz in it?” For enthusiasts of the disaster genre — particularly those who prefer their entries served up clinically insane — Cyclone is a time-suck definitely worth the sacrifice. —Rod Lott

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Life at the Death Valley Insect Ranch — or Worm Ranch, depending on which sub-Kinko’s sign you read — is pretty sweet for heterosexual live-in pals Jason and Ralph. Respectively played by Sole Survivor’s Al Valletta and Pets’ Mike Cartel (also this film’s writer/director/editor), the guys are enjoying a day of drinking beer, shooting guns and wearing denim when they see something unusual in the distance. Moseying over to investigate, they discover a freshly dug grave containing a beautiful blonde woman nude in a coffin, but still possessing a pulse. (If only she could lend that to the script.)

Because Ralph and Jason are stand-up guys, they aim to do the right thing; unfortunately, before they get the chance, they are kidnapped by a gang of women and held against their will at the ladies’ secluded compound. With names like Torchy, Pepper and Vampire, these tough gals would radiate the fight-’em-or-fuck-’em nature of the classic Russ Meyer vixen, if Cartel had given them personalities, not to mention distinguishing traits beyond the obvious “the fat one.” Forcing the assistance of Jason and Ralph, the abductors plot revenge for their buried-alive sister via stealing a suitcase of plutonium from their enemies’ carefully guarded warehouse.

Let me be clear: Despite that case and its radioactive contents, Runaway Nightmare is no Kiss Me Deadly. Whereas Robert Aldrich’s 1955 noir classic concerned private detective Mike Hammer, this indie centers around two guys as dumb as a box of hammers.

Apparently considering himself quite the wisecracker, Cartel wrote himself a stream of one-liners neither humorous nor appropriate for the situation or established tone. If viewers do laugh, it will be for inadvertent reasons — namely, painful silences and lines delivered so awkwardly, they barely resemble how we as humans speak. A perfect example of Nightmare‘s mix of debilitated pacing and stunted attempts at comic relief can be found in a brief exchange between Ralph and one of his captors:

Woman: “Hey, I’m trying to communicate! I’m into sunshine, awareness, good karma, vibes and witchcraft.”
Ralph: “Well … we do have a lot in common.”
Woman: “I’d like to mix our blood.”

All that bit lacks is Jo Anne Worley popping through a trapdoor just long enough to mug at the camera and say, “Sock it to me!”

Suspense? Only if you care how high the score will go on a pinball machine played midway through the picture. Cartel takes his setup — one of “Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought it would happen to me …” — to nowhere particularly intriguing, yet the movie finishes as mildly likable for its substantial deficiencies. It’s like a shaggy dog you wouldn’t mind having around, if only it were trained to stop licking your skin and dirty-pawing at your just-pressed pants. —Rod Lott

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