Boobies. In a word, that’s What the Peeper Saw.

In the British pervo-chiller, the Peeping Tom in question is named Marcus (Mark Lester, Oliver!), a 12-year-old just home from boarding school, presumably due to a chickenpox outbreak. This gives Marcus an opportunity to finally meet his hot stepmother, Elise (Britt Ekland, The Man with the Golden Gun), and perhaps even bond with her, since Dad is stuck in Paris. As the saying goes, while the cat’s away, the mice will feel up New Mom.

To be honest, she doesn’t exactly discourage the “attention,” either. In fact, the day after Marcus reaches from his bubble bath to cop a clothed feel, Elise practically rushes to towel him off as he emerges from the pool. That’s nothing compared to the movie’s most infamous scene, in which Elise strips nude for the tween in exchange for information. (For all the unsimulated squeezes she endures in an hour and a half, poor Britt deserved hazard pay.)

But, hey, S-E-X is only part of Peeper’s picture. Its real thrills — benign they may be — stem from Elise’s increasing suspicion that Marcus may have murdered his own mother years ago, which means she may be next. And thus unfolds a tale of mistrust, jealousy, voyeurism and pussycat torture.

And it’s not like Elise hinders the kid’s psychopathic tendencies, either: “Hello, genius. What are you reading? De Sade?” she cracks. “Did you love your mother?”

Bottom line: Elise may have been born without maternal instincts, but Marcus is, unquestionably, one odd duck. So is this flick, co-written and co-directed by Andrea Bianchi, who, believe it or not, went even more unnerving in the department of incestuous overtones with 1981’s Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror. If you’ve seen that slice of zombie sleaze, you know The Scene. (And if you don’t, you owe yourself a nip of rectification.)

For all its bizarre themes and, um, touches, What the Peeper Saw barely qualifies for one viewing. Bianchi and cohort James Kelley (The Beast in the Cellar) appear to have written themselves into such a corner, they decided the best route for a wrap-up was to go off the rails. En route to the end credits, they deliver an utterly baffling ending that, while leaving questions floating, at least retains the film’s oh-so-sour disposition. —Rod Lott

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Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes, best known as Julie, Your Cruise Director on TV’s The Love Boat) is your stereotypical big-haired anchor for the local news in Miami, except for her bad habit of cutting off her male counterpart and going off-script to editorialize about the serial rapist/killer terrorizing the city. As she tells her boyfriend, “This rapist thing is really getting to me!”

And how. Spotting a suspicious fat guy (John DiSanti, The Presidio) changing clothes in their twin-tower apartment building’s parking garage, Jane assumes he’s the hosiery-headed culprit, starts sniffing around his business and eventually gives him the Rear Window treatment.

Eyes of a Stranger, as if you needed telling, is no Rear Window. Nor is it supposed to be. Ken Wiederhorn, director of the Nazi-zombie chiller Shock Waves (clips of which can be seen on the tubes of a couple of characters), knows he’s making a B-level psycho-thriller — no more, no less — and thus makes Eyes watchable. For all its genericness, it’s almost comfort food in how utterly every-step-predictable it plays, right down to each victim’s teasing display of nudity and other elements watered-down from the era’s slashers.

That he gets a good performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Machinist), however, as Jane’s blind and deaf sister, seems accidental. That’s all her. —Rod Lott

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Recipe for a Long Weekend? Easy!
• Ingredients: one bickering married couple.
• Place in: car for road trip to Australian beach.
• Add: some really pissed-off wildlife.
• Serves: ’em right!

In this well-regarded, man-vs.-nature chunk of Ozploitation, Peter (John Hargreaves, Sky Pirates) and Marcia (Briony Behets, 1980’s Nightmares) attempt to repair the shambles of their shit-can marriage by going on a holiday — that’s “vacation,” Yanks — of smokin’, swimmin’, sunnin’, shootin’ and maybe — just maybe — sexin’! You know it’s not going to go well because they barely can stand each other’s presence, run over a kangaroo, trespass on private property, throw trash in the ocean, chop down trees for the hell of it and bring his-and-her Adidas jackets.

Halfway through, an eagle attacks — not without damn good reason — and Long Weekend becomes an Aussie version of William Girdler’s Day of the Animals, but with even more of an ecological message (i.e. “humans are assholes”) — so much so that Rachel Carson might see the film as a screwball comedy.

A hint of the supernatural is at work here, and honestly, director Colin Eggleston (Cassandra) should have employed much more of that and much less of the spouse’s verbal firebombs (“self-indulgent maggot”). Peter’s a jerk; Marcia’s a jerk; and their dog, Cricket, is the only likable character. You may even root for the canine to turn against his masters.

Why not, Cricket? Every other member of the animal kingdom does. That very conceit is what sells viewers on embarking on a Long Weekend, yet the film doesn’t use it enough. Eggleston seems more interested in hammering home an obvious point by cutting away to ants swarming over bacon in increasing stages of decomposition. As Marcia herself bursts, “Spare me the grotty symbolism!”

Aside: Did Everett De Roche write every horror-thriller pic that made its way from Down Under to the United States? Besides this, he penned Patrick, Road Games and Razorback … —Rod Lott

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Who among us left 2007’s Vacancy with a burning desire to learn the backstory, e.g. “I’d sure enjoy that more if only I knew how the snuff-film killer became a snuff-film killer”? Me neither, which may explain why Sony Pictures sent the prequel directly to DVD, if not made it expressly for that medium. Here’s the thing, though: Stupid subtitle and all, Vacancy 2: The First Cut is pretty good, or at least good enough. Even denied stars Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, not to mention director Nimród Antal, it’s as satisfying as that original sleeper hit.

Title screens inform us that Vacancy 2 depicts the demise of the inaugural batch of victims among some 200 snuff videos found at Meadow View Inn when authorities shut the place down for good. The way director Eric Bross (Vampire Bats) sets this up, you’re forgiven in advance for thinking the proceedings will play out as found footage. Luckily, they do not, charting its antagonists’ progression from mere Peeping Toms into Mansion Family members bitten by the cinema-vérité bug.

At the out-of-the-way motel, Gordon (David Moscow, Big’s mini-Tom Hanks all grown up) and partner-in-crime Reece (Brian Klugman, Cloverfield) have rigged a room to tape couples’ sexual romps, copies of which they sell on the underground market. When one “Mr. Smith” (Scott Anderson, reprising his killer role) checks in with a prostitute — only to penetrate her with a knife, as opposed to … y’know — they gain a third partner and leap from homemade porn to the only genre more despicable.

Enter two relocating Chicagoans, played by the perennially underrated Agnes Bruckner (TV’s Anna Nicole) and Trevor Wright (2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams), and third-wheel friend Arjay Smith (Be Kind Rewind). Checking into Gordon and Reece’s cheap motel under the dead of buzzing neon, they’re told, “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to scream” … and yet they stay anyway.

Suspense is kept at a mild boil for a good two-thirds of the running time. As expected — a little too expected, given the flash-forward prologue and prequel concept — the film degenerates from a perfunctory thriller into a rote contraption of who can stab and/or shoot whom first. Like father, like son. —Rod Lott

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At least at press time, Non-Stop stands as the second of three collaborations between Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra; 2011’s Unknown and 2015’s Run All Night are the others. The streak running through this thriller triumvirate? Vanilla flavoring.

On a New York flight of 150 passengers bound for London, air marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) temporarily has to shelve his ongoing love affair with booze — oh, sweet booze! — when, halfway over the Atlantic Ocean, he receives a series of threatening text messages on his supposedly secured-line phone. They aren’t your everyday threatening texts, either, like “OMG ur so fat” or “imma block u on instagram” or “saw yr mom on tinder #gonnahitdat!” Nope, these digi-missives are of the stop-the-presses, sound-the-alarms, batten-down-the-hatches variety: from a terrorist! Maybe even — gulp! — terrorists, plural!

With each superimposed onscreen in a gimmick that quickly grows old from sheer overuse, the texts warn that if a million bucks per passenger — that’s $150 million total for those of you not paying attention and/or with appalling multiplication skills — isn’t wired to an account within 20 minutes … well, the passenger count goes down to 149. Repeat for every 20 minutes thereafter. Making things worse, said account is in Bill’s name, meaning that whoever is pulling the scheme’s strings has framed the marshal for hijacking.

Simple enough, right? As a federal agent barks over the phone to our — hic! — sexagenarian hero, “We will not negotiate with terrorists,” and they think that’s you, Billy Boy! Neeson has played this part so often, with only slight variations, since his career resurgence as Aging Badass with 2008’s Taken; the difference here is that Taken took viewers somewhere.

For Non-Stop’s first half, that vanilla tastes delicious enough, with Collet-Serra unapologetically building a high-stakes, high-altitude, high-gloss, high-concept whodunit — and whosdoingit — set in the unfriendly skies. Once the tone veers into action territory, vanilla’s generic nature seeps to the forefront, leaving viewers wishing more resided on the surface: chocolate sauce, gummy worms, butter brickle — hell, even granola! By then, the film loses all its fuel, drifting into a scenario so tired and seen-it-all-before, Non-Stop could be retitled Airport 2014.

While the studio-funded flick no doubt gave the great Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights) a paycheck a few zeroes above her usual indie gigs, the raise wasn’t accompanied by an opportunity to do anything but be Bill’s eventual arm dressing. Doomed to similar standing-’round status are The Strain’s Corey Stoll and, as the nervous-Nellie flight attendants, Michelle Dockery (TV’s Downton Abbey) and Lupita Nyong’o (then a newly minted Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave). I won’t name the one supporting character who is given a hunk of meat to chew, because his casting proves detrimental — not because he’s a bad actor (because he isn’t), but because if you’re familiar with his filmography, the minute he appears is the minute you’ll think, “Oh, he did it.” And he did. —Rod Lott

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