A few things I legitimately do not understand about the Canadian indie thriller Death Do Us Part:
• whether the scenes I scoffed at were supposed to elicit that response;
• if its real-life married leads — who also share credit as the film’s writers, producers and executive producers — realize they made every character patently odious;
• and how someone simultaneously can be a producer and an executive producer.

Those real-life married leads portray an about-to-be-wedded couple: the seriously uptight Kennedy (Julia Benson, née Anderson, Chupacabra vs. the Alamo) and, purely from a sexual standpoint, the seriously lucky Ryan (Peter Benson, Dead Rising: Watchtower). With each bringing one bestie and one family member, they rent a lake house overnight for a joint-gender stag party.

The six immediately are put off by the dead birds coating the porch, not to mention the creepy caretaker (Dave Collette, Intercessor: Another Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare); viewers are more apt to be put off by the snobbish and/or self-indulgent behavior of the sextet, especially Ryan’s perpetual frat buddy, Chet (Kyle Cassie, Lost Boys: The Tribe), who near-exclusively says things like this for the movie’s entirety: “Chicks: If they didn’t have tits, we’d throw rocks at ’em.” (Unfortunately, on-the-set glimpses of Cassie on the DVD’s making-of featurette suggest he’s not far removed from his character.)

You’ll want to hurl objects toward the bunch, regardless of organs. Chet’s asshole embodiment aside, Kennedy is a cold-hearted bitch, while Ryan is a contemptible cad who happens to be having an affair with his fiancée’s sister (Christine Chatelain, Final Destination), this trip included! He takes her from behind against a tree while on an afternoon excursion through the woods; unbeknownst to them, their animalistic act is witnessed by Kennedy’s clingy, needy BFF (Emilie Ullerup, Leprechaun: Origins), who also manages to observe Ryan scuffle with his ex-con cousin (Benjamin Ayres, Dead Before Dawn) over some so-far-secret criminal shenanigans.

For their own reasons, they’re all hateful — and I typically quite admire Ullerup’s and Lady Benson’s work — so it comes as a relief when someone gets around to axing them up. The film could be classified as a slasher (albeit a rather tame one) or a mystery (albeit an easily solved one) if feature-debuting director Nicholas Humphries grasped the material in order to guide it either way. As is, Death Do Us Part is merely a bunch of dot-to-dot clichés of the peeps-in-peril thriller, complete with the elbow-nudging “C’mon, it’s one night! What’s the worst that can happen?” You know the kind: no power, no phone, no car ignition, no imagination … and no need to subject yourself to this one. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

As Angel’s notorious tagline says (and says it all), “High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night.” Played with babyfaced conviction by Donna Wilkes (Jaws 2), the straight-A Molly ditches the pigtails and shortens the skirt for her extracurricular activities, turning tricks as “Angel” on Hollywood Boulevard. More or less orphaned, she feels she has no other choice. It’s a living …

… until it’s not. Currently, the nighttime streets are a feeding frenzy for a necrophiliac serial killer (John Diehl, Jurassic Park III) who slays only hookers, and a couple of Angel’s pleather-wearing colleagues already have fallen prey to his twisted desires, going from the mattress to the morgue. Assigned to crack the case is Lt. Andrews (Cliff Gorman, Night of the Juggler), who becomes something of a father figure to our title character in the process.

Forming a surrogate family along the Hollywood Walk of Fame is Angel’s greatest asset, particularly with the amusing performances from comedian Dick Shawn (1967’s The Producers) as a cross-dressing prostitute and Rory Calhoun (Motel Hell) as an aging, possibly mentally ill cowboy who roams the sidewalks as if he were El Lay’s unofficial deputy sheriff.

But family schamily — Angel ain’t no touchy-feely drama. Directed and co-written by sleaze specialist Robert Vincent O’Neill (The Psycho Lover), the crime thriller soaks in a general malaise of sickness, sin and dysfunction, and is energized by bursts of action. (Surprisingly, almost all of its bountiful female nudity takes place in the girls’ locker room at school than with the ladies of the night at work.) In other words, Angel, which spawned three sequels, is a quintessential ’80s product of New World Pictures. I miss the times when trash like this earned a wide release, even though I was too young at the time to see it. Luckily, its themes are still relevant because the world’s oldest profession … well, let’s just say its product remains in high demand. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In Airport ’77, the third in the Airport series, a private Boeing 747 is transporting the art collection and friend of multimillionaire Philip Stevens (James Stewart, Vertigo) to the opening of his new museum. Says Stevens to a throng of reporters, “It’s going to be a real wingding.”

Based on that jet alone, the old man ain’t joking! Under the control of Capt. Gallagher (Jack Lemmon, Glengarry Glen Ross), the aircraft boasts three luxurious levels that include bedrooms, office space, tabletop Pong, copies of Ebony magazine and even a blind lounge singer/pianist (motivational speaker Tom Sullivan) whose dark glasses look specially designed for Elton John to wear for an hour after getting his eyes dilated. Unbeknownst to Stevens, Gallagher or Gallagher’s mustache, the night flight also hosts a cadre of art thieves who gas the crew and passengers asleep so they can take over and make off with the priceless paintings. But art thieves do not double as ace pilots; a clipped wing sends the Boeing to the bottom of the ocean, square in the Bermuda Triangle — for no reason other than Trianglesploitation was a trend at the time.

With the submerged plane taking in water, Airport ’77 appears to be cribbing from The Poseidon Adventure of five years earlier. No stranger to the disaster genre, director Jerry Jameson (Raise the Titanic!) spends ’77’s second hour detailing and depicting the rescue efforts of Gallagher on the inside and the combined might of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard on the outside. However, this removes focus from the most fun part of these exercises in cinematic calamity: the all-star cast. This TV-looking sequel is as overstuffed as the rest, with faded idols (Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten), up-and-comers (Kathleen Quinlan, M. Emmet Walsh) and then-current leading ladies (Brenda Vaccaro, Lee Grant — the latter cutting the largest slice of the overacting pie). Returning as Joe Patroni, George Kennedy shows up just long enough to allow ’77 a direct connection to the previous two pictures.

Many of the actors’ clothes sport gaudy, checkered prints that create moiré patterns on your TV screen. Those have more life than poor Stewart, so folksy and noncommittal that one half-expects him to recite that poem about his dead dog. Haven’t heard it? Oh, it’s a real wingding. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Intones the narrator at the start of Frozen Scream, “Immortality? Why would anyone want to live forever in a world like this?” Mind you, because he states this as we see an attractive couple making out poolside under the stars and at a presumably pricey pad, you may be inclined to say, “Me! I do!”

But then, some goon bursts forth from the bushes and hammers the head of the dude half of the lovebird equation, then drowns the girl. Okay, Mr. Narrator, you have a point.

Directed by Frank Roach, whose only other credit is the obscure ’84 biker-revenger Nomad Riders, this gore-slathered thriller’s frosty cries of terror are triggered by black-robed guys bearing pornstaches, syringes and vaguely threatening greetings such as, “Judgment day! Time to pay your dues!” — at which point they clobber or slice their victim, or simply hold him/her down for a shot in the ol’ eyeball. Watching the plot clunk along is like getting orb-needled yourself for 85 minutes, and there’s no goddamn lollipop when it’s over! Plus, you’ve suddenly got AIDS!

Providing the narration — which often speaks over great swaths of dialogue, rendering the exchanges unintelligible — is Sgt. McGuire (Thomas McGowan, Die Hard Dracula), who’s investigating the disappearance of the two med students from paragraph one. McGuire’s detective work has him cross paths with Drs. Johnsson (Lee James, Cassandra) and Stanhope (Renee Harmon of Al Adamson’s Cinderella 2000), neither of whom seems on the up-’n’-up to Sarge. His hunch is valid; they’re busy trying to turn the living into the never-dead; the word “immortality” may be spoken more times than the movie has minutes.

In one of his drown-everything-else-out monologues, McGuire says of his suspects, “A pretty bad acting job, I’d say.” And how! Because Johnsson and Stanhope and their dull X-Acto blades are up to no good. Nor are James and Harmon; he’s an Aussie character actor whose voice appears to have dubbed by an African-American, while Harmon, who doubles as producer, has an indiscriminate accent thick enough to turn her lines indecipherable — even the ones not washed away by the diarrhetic narration.

But why pick on just those two? The acting is across-the-board deplorable — in some cases, so stilted that it attracts termites. Problems with the penny-ante production exist at the core, so even an influx of financial resources would not improve things. Frozen Scream is one tough sit. —Rod Lott

Get it at Vinegar Syndrome.

Extremely limited in range, Keanu Reeves works best when the film doesn’t ask him to do much more than brood, à la The Matrix or, more recently, John Wick. Eli Roth’s Knock Knock is not one of them. Reeves is severely miscast as family man Evan Webber, and his unease in the role is apparent when he interacts with his two children. Still, he’s likable and you want to see him succeed.

Nursing a shoulder injury and busy with his work as an architect, Evan is unable to accompany his artist wife (Ignacia Allamand, Roth’s The Green Inferno) and their two children for a beach weekend. He stays home and, one rainy night, toils on a design, smokes some dope and makes the mistake of answering the front door. There stand Genesis (Aftershock’s Lorenza Izzo, aka Mrs. Eli Roth) and Bel (Ana de Armas, Blind Alley), two young women, soaking wet and radiating sexuality. Feigning a need to use his phone, the girls enter Evan’s home and, soon enough, his pants. The morning after, they refuse to go.

It’s like the classic Saturday Night Live sketch with John Belushi as “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave” reworked into a kinky, psychosexual thriller, but really, it’s a thinly veiled remake of 1977’s Death Game, in which horny turns to horror for Seymour Cassel, thanks to Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp (who has a cameo here and serves as a producer). Overnight, Genesis and Bel do the same, morphing from fantasy tramps into nightmare fuel. Acting like the underaged children they now claim to be (read: blackmail), they wreck his house and threaten to wreck his life.

A little restraint would have been nice, but Roth lets the boorish chaos spin needlessly out of control; for instance, seeing Genesis chug pancake syrup from the bottle is one of those moments that takes viewers out of the movie. His grip on the earlier tension loosens as if he’s more interested in saying, “Dudes, look how hot my wife is!” As a result, the entire middle of Knock Knock does not work.

And then at the hour-and-16 mark, a bound Reeves is given an incredible monologue that immediately whiplashes the flick into pure camp — a perch in which it luckily stays through the wickedly funny final beat. In part, Reeves’ screamed, spittle-strewn speech: “Death? Death? You’re gonna kill me. You’re gonna fucking kill me. Why? Why! Because I fucked you? You fucked me! You fucked me! You came to my house! You came to me! I got you a car, I brought you your clothes, you took a fucking bubble bath! You wanted it! You wanted it! You came onto me! What was I supposed to do? You sucked my cock, you both fucking sucked my cock! It was free pizza! Free fucking pizza!”

I love free pizza. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.