For one of his myriad adaptations of Edgar Wallace works, brand-name producer Harry Alan Towers takes us to Hong Kong to meet Five Golden Dragons.

Our inadvertent tour guide is Bob Cummings (Beach Party) as American bachelor Bob Mitchell, whose sole purpose for hanging at the Hilton seems to be to charm the bikinis off the lovely women he meets. Through a roundabout way — one that the iconic Hitchcockian characters played by Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart knew all too well (and, in the latter case, too much) — Bob finds himself inexplicably implicated in the death of a man, soon followed by several more for heightened intrigue. He’s innocent, of course, but the local police inspector assigned to investigate (Roy Chiao, Bloodsport) isn’t easy to convince.

Who’s to blame? The members of the titular international syndicate that controls the illicit gold market. This society of “the most evil men the world has ever known” is so secretive, even its quintet of members don’t know one another. When they do meet, they lumber around in ill-fitting, parade-ready dragon heads that look utterly ridiculous instead of threatening.

The film’s marketing raised much ballyhoo over who was underneath those disguises, each “a great international star”: Christopher Lee (1959’s The Hound of the Baskervilles), Brian Donlevy (The Curse of the Fly), Dan Duryea (The Burglar) and George Raft (that year’s Casino Royale). Unhidden is the film’s most terrifying villain: Klaus Kinski (Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu) as Gert, chain-smoking his way through daily duties of assassination and intimidation.

A bumbling everyman, the affable Cummings was a big TV sitcom star at the time, and plays his lead role less like an action hero with global smarts and more like Bob Hope with a bubble gum habit. He cracks wise at every opportunity, even though said cracks elicit no laughs and the movie by Towers’ four-time collaborator Jeremy Summers (The Vengeance of Fu Manchu) is assuredly not a comedy, despite evidence to the contrary in one life-or-death chase sequence scored with slide whistles and bass drums.

I have no clue if Wallace’s source material was set in Hong Kong, but I do know Towers sure got his money’s worth shooting there, as the picture doubles as a big, bright travelogue that captures the flavor of the Chinese city’s exotic locales, indoors and out. Illuminating the foreground are three criminally beautiful women in Margaret Lee (Jess Franco’s Venus in Furs) and, playing sisters, the drop-dead gorgeous Maria Perschy (1972’s Murders in the Rue Morgue) and Towers’ wife, Maria Rohm (1974’s Ten Little Indians). Each had me mentally booking a one-way ticket. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Nick Jonas kisses his purity-ring days of the Jonas Brothers bye-bye with Careful What You Wish For, an erotic thriller so by-the-numbers and yet diluted, it may as well be titled Basic Instinct for Beginners.

Acting through a series of drooping bottom lips, the youngest Jo Bro headlines as Doug, a teenaged virgin home for summer vacation. He’s hired by investment banker Elliot Harper (Insidious: Chapter 3’s Dermot Mulroney, nailing the Rich Asshole part) to keep the man’s sailboat in tiptop shape for the insultingly low hourly wage of 12 bucks. An unmentioned fringe benefit: close proximity to Mr. Harper’s much younger trophy wife, Lena (Isabel Lucas, 2014’s The Loft), an overly lithe, living Barbie who thinks nothing of bathing in the nude in broad daylight in peekaboo showers on the public dock — a lot of prepositional phrases for such a simplistic setup.

Yes, of course they’re totally gonna do it. And of course Lena talks smack of her husband to Doug, saying, “You have no idea what he’s capable of.” And of course their affair will lead to mortal danger. Too faithfully, director Elizabeth Allen (Ramona and Beezus) follows the modern template of sex-infused noir throwbacks established by Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat, so that little of significance is new and plot turns can be spotted far in advance. What Allen does do differently is render the proceedings oddly sexless, meaning that while the movie is filled with couplings between Lena and Doug, nudity is limited to bare backsides and (if this even counts) rain turning Lena’s shirt see-through.

First-time feature screenwriter Chris Frisina juices the dialogue so that every line of Elliot’s is laced with elbow-jutting innuendo, from “Anything worth doing is worth doing all the way” to “This hasn’t been thoroughly caulked,” and the joke calls too much attention to itself to work. Frisina also appears to draw inspiration from Armageddon’s infamous animal-crackers seduction scene, with Doug rolling an Oreo cookie down Lena’s bare hips and legs. Restraint is shown by not allowing Doug to pull them open and lick the cream; somewhere, Michael Douglas volunteers to show this young pup how it’s done. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Someday, I’m convinced, a book — not just a chapter, but an entire book — will chronicle the amazing, without-precedent story of Snakes on a Plane. How the Internet convinced New Line Cinema to forgo the original title of Flight 121. How the Internet then convinced the studio to chase an R rating, specifically by adding a ready-to-bake catchphrase for star Samuel L. Jackson in the instantly immortal “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” How the Internet went meme-bonkers with anticipation for months leading up to the movie’s release. And then, after all that, how the Internet didn’t even bother to show up to see it.

And maybe that book will address the actual quality of the film, which is the one thing surrounding Snakes that often goes unmentioned. Instead, people talk of the “fan” videos, the “fan” T-shirts, the promotional trick where you could have (a recording of) Jackson place a phone call to whomever you wanted, the puzzle book tie-ins, the soundtrack album with the supremely silly theme by emo “supergroup” Cobra Starship. It’s almost as if everyone was so caught up in and/or beholden to the hype, they forgot a movie existed in its creamy center.

Yet one did! It’s fine, but nothing to write memes about.

Leaving Honolulu for Los Angeles, South Pacific flight 121 is carrying a Jennings Lang-worthy set of passengers and crew members, including an attendant on her final shift (Julianna Marguiles, Ghost Ship). Because FBI Agent Flynn (Jackson, The Hateful Eight) is court-chaperoning a dude-bro (Nathan Phillips, Chernobyl Diaries) who witnessed a mob hit, said mob has checked some killer baggage: deadly snakes hidden in boxes of pheromone-spiked flowers to get them all horny and hot-to-bite everybody, everywhere.

A kitty cat is first to go, which I’m totally onboard with, because that means it can’t leap from the shadows for a clichéd jump scare. Then they slither their way toward actual humans, from a couple angling for mile-high club membership to a poor guy who just needs to drain his bladder. (Takeaway: When your next flight is invaded by snakes, stay out of the restroom.)

What keeps the eventual chaos from being the fun it should be — especially with Final Destination 2’s David R. Ellis at the helm — is twofold: repetition as maddening as being grounded on the tarmac and the fact that the title creatures look so fake, they may as well be cartoons. Once Jackson has had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane, so have we … with yet another third or more on the horizon. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Hush (2016)

The Plot: A deaf woman (Kate Siegel, Oculus) is terrorized within her own remote home by a psychopath.

The Psychopath: He’s a stranger (John Gallagher Jr., 10 Cloverfield Lane) with a now-requisite, emotionless mask, but without a motive, backstory or explanation. He likes to stab things.

The Review: Like Wait Until Dark updated for the emoji crowd, Hush makes the most of its simple home-invasion premise until director/co-writer Mike Flanagan (Before I Wake) succumbs to wear-out, likely from leaping so many gaping plot holes. Pretty decent, until it’s not.

Emelie (2015)

The Plot: Three siblings are terrorized within their own suburban home by a psychopath while their parents are having a date night.

The Psychopath: Emelie (Sarah Bolger, The Lazarus Effect) poses as a babysitter, although she’s clearly not, what with such shenanigans as showing the kids Mom and Dad’s sex tape and changing her tampon in front of the tween boy (Joshua Rush, Mr. Peabody & Sherman). Oh, and plotting to steal the cutest, smallest tot.

The Review: The film marks the fictional feature debut of Michael Thelin. While I’d like to say I would not have suspected something this twisted from a man whose whose CV is dominated by emo-pop music videos and concerts (Paramore, All Time Low, Panic! At the Disco, et al.), the truth is I would not have suspected something this twisted from damn near anyone. A continual surprise, Emelie lets Bolger bid the family-friendly portion of her career adieu and the result sticks with you like shards of Jolly Ranchers on your teeth.

The Girl in the Photographs (2015)

The Plot: The townspeople of li’l ol’ Spearfish, S.D., are terrorized within their own quaint haven by a psychopath.

The Psychopath: He wears a now-requisite, emotionless mask. He likes to stab things — namely, young women, whose photos he snaps after killing them and posting them over town. Just wait until he discovers Instagram and Snapchat …

The Review: Delving into the “obscene and sinister” world of photography, this Girl represents a large leap upward in quality for director Nick Simon (Removal). While blonde Claudia Lee (Kick-Ass 2) is the star, Harold & Kumar’s Kal Penn steals the spotlight — and not always in a good way — as an insufferable shutterbug prick in the perv mode of Terry Richardson: “This gum tastes like garlic semen.” And despite strong flaws, this is a nasty piece of work. I dug it.

Left Behind (2014)

The Plot: Passengers of a commercial airliner — not to mention the populace of the entire planet — are terrorized by a mysterious event that makes true believers simultaneously vanish, leaving no trace but a pile of clothes (which is a funny effect to witness).

The Psychopath: In this case, it’s the film’s director, Vic Armstrong (the Dolph Lundgren vehicle Army of One), for inflicting this remake of the 2000 Kirk Cameron vehicle upon us, even if he did up the star wattage with Oscar winner Nicolas Cage as an unfaithful pilot who says things like, “If your mom’s gonna run away with another man, may as well be Jesus, huh?” Are your tax problems that bad, Nic?

The Review: Based on the crazy-popular series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind isn’t so much a movie as it is an exercise in End Times proselytization, seemingly cast with whoever happened to be in line Thursday night at Chick-fil-A and could pass a stringent affluence test. Except for the part where a one-man plane crashes into a mall parking lot, this visual sermon is abysmal, largely built upon the pilot’s daughter (Cassi Thomson, Grave Halloween) wandering aimlessly around town. Not since the previous Left Behind movie has The Rapture been this boring. —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.

After hitting his marketable peak with the 1976 Jaws imitation Mako: The Jaws of Death, Florida-based filmmaker William Grefé (Death Curse of Tartu) latched onto Deliverance’s hillbilly-hell vibe for Whiskey Mountain, his final feature. Although its depictions of the class battle between the rural and the (sub)urban may not make you squeal like a pig, the cut-rate thriller works all the same.

Diana (Roberta Collins, Caged Heat) and Bill (Christopher George, Pieces) are on the hunt for some 200 Confederate muskets her granddaddy supposedly buried up yonder in the North Carolina wilderness, durn near ’round Whiskey Mountain; before he died, he left a map to lead her to that fortune.

Bringing along camping equipment, motorcycles and their couple friends (Preston Pierce and Linda Borgeson of, respectively, Angels’ Wild Women and no other movie ever), Diana and Bill attract the ire of the local yokels just by being in their town. Challenged mentally and dentally, the rednecks harass the quartet to no end, setting fire to their camp as they sleep, attempting drowning in a raging river and, heck, even stealing a pair of women’s panties!

Swapping dueling banjos for an original Charlie Daniels tune, Whiskey Mountain stands mighty tall by the standards of the hicksploitation subgenre and regional indies overall. In a rather good way, Grefé catches us off-guard when the danger dial gets rudely cranked in the second half; see, he doesn’t have to do much to make his antagonists seem threatening, because general skeeviness tends to achieve that just fine by itself. And yet, he throws us for an arty loop with a double-rape scene that’s doubly disturbing because technically, we only hear it. All we are shown is a stationary series of Polaroids developing before our eyes; our mind fills in the rest. The effect is unsettling and raises the movie above the usual drive-in fodder, as does its purposely bitter final shot. —Rod Lott

Get it at Ballyhoo Motion Pictures.