Who is killing the skanky strippers of the miserably dank Rock Bottom strip club? Middle-aged hottie cop Cody Sheehan (Kay Lenz, 1986’s House) goes undercover to find out. During her investigation and to her surprise, she realizes she likes removing her clothes before the lustful gaze of strangers. (Not to my surprise, I liked her removing her clothes, too.)

When she first performs, it’s both demeaning and laughable, yet Sheehan is egged on by her earring-wearing detective partner (a barely emoting Greg Evigan, DeepStar Six). And kicking off the final decade of his long career, Norman Fell (Mr. Roper of TV’s Three’s Company) is the cigar-chewing club owner who demands his dancers stay topless for a full 30 seconds — a stand-in for executive producer Roger Corman, perhaps?

Coming from Corman, the movie should be more fun. Despite an intriguing (if purely exploitative) premise, Stripped to Kill begins with several strikes against it, not the least of which is being visually hampered. As with virtually all of Corman’s Concorde output, Stripped is shot flat and murky — not the finest choice for a film taking place mostly at night, especially one built upon copious nudity.

Under actress-turned-director Katt Shea Ruben (for example, going from Hollywood Hot Tubs to Poison Ivy), Kill slows to a near-crawl, partially because every character but Sheehan is repellent. Even the film holds contempt for them; the strippers’ dressing room is marked “SLUTS.” Lenz, long a terrific actress, deserved a better showcase; to her credit, she acts as if it were all the same. —Rod Lott

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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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