An alternate title for The Psycho Lover is The Loving Touch — one über-creepy appellation for a movie about a serial rapist whose on-the-job face is smashed underneath a heavy layer of pantyhose.

That felonious fellow is Marco (Frank Cuva, Game Show Models), who has trouble distinguishing his fantasies from reality. Meanwhile, motorboat enthusiast (in more ways than one) and psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Alden (Lawrence Montaigne, The Great Escape) wishes his fantasies were reality, because he’d like to shack up with his mistress, but his cock-blockin’ crone of a wife (Jo Anne Meredith, J.D.’s Revenge) refuses to grant him a divorce. That chaps the hide and boot-shaped sideburns of Kenneth so bad that he brainwashes Marco into making Mrs. Alden his next victim.

If that sounds at all icky, reserve judgment until you see the gangly homicide lieutenant (John Vincent, The Exotic Dreams of Casanova) who looks like Edgar Allan Poe discuss his police work: “You know, Doc, I’m like the proverbial bloodhound: I can smell him in this room and the hairs on my ass stand on end every time I catch his scent.”

No matter the name it plays under, The Psycho Lover is a sexploitation thriller after my own heart. Written, directed and produced by Robert Vincent O’Neill (creator of the Angel franchise), the picture has more on its dirty mind than most programmers of the era and budgetary level. By combining Dial M for Murder with The Manchurian Candidate — not to mention Hanes’ L’eggs line — he ended up with a twisty, inventive, enjoyable slice of sleaze. —Rod Lott

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At Stonehearst Asylum, the inmates are in charge. This crucial bit of info is unbeknownst to Dr. Newgate (Jim Sturgess, Cloud Atlas) when he arrives for training at the remote mountain institution, but hindsight might finger that cuckoo clock in his boss’ office as an eerie, aural clue. The joke practically writes itself. (Same goes for when the opening credits reveal Mel Gibson as a producer.)

Fetching pianist-cum-patient Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale, Underworld: Awakening) warns Newgate to leave the foggy grounds posthaste, but the young physician pays no heed to her admonition until it’s too damn late. Before long, he learns Stonehearst’s true staffers (Michael Caine among them) are locked in cages at the behest of the aforementioned “boss,” the insane-in-the-membrane Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley, Iron Man 3).

Oh, and there’s also an ogre.

Much more than Kingsley’s presence will remind viewers of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, as this exercise in Gothic trappings plays like a prequel — think Shutter Island: Ye Early Years. Like that 2010 thriller, Stonehearst Asylum comes well-crafted, yet deeply flawed. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s (very) short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” the film is largely inert despite sumptuous visuals and the confident hand of director Brad Anderson (The Call).

On the basis of his exquisite, highly recommended 2004 novel, the 1920s-set and similarly themed Inamorata, screenwriter Joe Gangemi would seem to be the ideal adapter of Poe’s material; unfortunately, the work is long-winded and gaseous without becoming offensive. Such an upward climb is its pacing that I gave Stonehearst three separate tries to hook me, yet I admitted defeat in that final run, throwing in the towel with one-fifth left to go. Shorn of some curlicue story turns, the film would feel far more spry, perhaps “within two shakes of a whore’s tail.” —Rod Lott

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Round and round goes the camera of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani in The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, the filmmaking duo’s follow-up to 2009’s acclaimed Amer. The relentless way in which their lens swirls and sways is most apropos, as the team exercises an obsession with circles for the duration of the hypnotic running time. Retinas, glasses, window frames, sink drains — Cattet and Forzani go out of their way to put the orb front and center.

The circle is not the only shape that sticks out. Those paying attention may note the resemblance of one unfortunate character’s head wound to a certain anatomical part limited to humanity’s fairer, better gender: “Hey, doesn’t that gash look just like a …”

Why, yes. Yes, it does. As the thriller’s climax makes clear, the uncanny similarity is no accident. In fact, geometrics stand alongside split screens and RGB saturation as just one of many tricks the writers/directors call upon constantly — too many and too often, as it turns out, as if they do not trust their own talents for storytelling of the most surreal and severe.

Straying a mere step or two from Amer’s thematic touchstones, the French-language Strange Color still relies on such Italian giallo giants as Dario Argento and Mario Bava for laying the visual foundation, but also dives even deeper into the psychosexual territory in which David Lynch has made one hell of a living. In its Gone Girl-gone-WTF setup, a man returns home to find not only his lady love missing, but the authorities’ suspicion falling squarely on himself. Instead of following that thread to a semi-satirical indictment of the mass media, Cattet and Forzani contain their tale to the couple’s apartment building — one in which residents snake underneath wallpaper as if it were skin; in which a black-gloved killer is as commonplace as a leaky pipe; in which orgasms are literally kaleidoscopic.

Before Strange Color unfurls toward a conclusion that’s frustrating only if you expect a work of linear fiction, viewers will understand why Cattet and Forzani chose to tell three stories within Amer’s omnibus framework: because thus far, they haven’t brewed large enough a batch of narrative to sustain to feature-length. But that’s hardly their top-priority; plot takes a backseat — if not a caboose — to their in-perpetuum whims of purposely awkward perspective, still-photo montages and other touches that toe dangerously close to the line of self-parody. Beginning with the title — and ending with it, too, in yet another circular motion — it’s not supposed to make sense; it’s all in the way the filmmakers probe and peek and peck. In other words, the movie can be filed under “style over substance,” but, damn, what style! —Rod Lott

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Grand Piano is the best Brian De Palma work in this millennium. It just happens to be directed by Spain’s Eugenio Mira.

Virtuoso pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood, 2012’s Maniac remake) has just begun tinkling the ivories at a classical concert when he notices a threatening note scrawled on his sheet music: Do what he’s told, or die. Because the message is written in red capital letters, Tom pays attention. Well, that, and because whoever left it has Tom’s fashion-model wife (Kerry Bishé, Red State) in his gun sights.

The culprit is Clem (John Cusack, The Raven), mostly heard and not seen. He communicates via earpiece, barking do-or-die orders at Tom throughout the event, including a demand to perform an über-difficult piece on which the pianist very publicly choked a few years prior. Mira gets Tom off the bench as the concert proceeds, which is ludicrous, yet Grand Piano embraces and thrives upon just that. As preposterous as it is pleasurable, the high-concept howler achieves an operatic quality of disbelief — all the better to ape De Palma’s swipes, split screens and stabbings. For fans of impossible suspense, it hits just the right note. —Rod Lott

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One year before he nearly shot an eye out in A Christmas Story, Ralph Billingsley deliberately attempted it in Death Valley — just not his own peepers. The tyke’s target is an economically depressed waiter named Hal (Stephen McHattie, Pontypool), whose slaughter of three tourists in an RV can be tied back to him, thanks to a frog pendant the curious boy pilfered from the scene of the crime.

Billingsley’s Billy leaves New York City for an Arizona vacation with his divorced mom (Catherine Hicks, Child’s Play) and her new beau (Paul Le Mat, Melvin and Howard), a land developer for whom cowboy gear is work clothes. While at an abandoned gold mine, Billy pokes his nose where he shouldn’t, thereby earning himself the top spot on Hal’s list of precocious kids to kill today.

Directed by Dick Richards (1986’s Heat) with a dearth of visual flair, Death Valley is a rather routine thriller of the psycho-on-the-loose variety. Thank goodness Richards cast Billingsley, because the boy’s natural presence is the film’s saving grace.

There’s so little to the story — all 87 minutes of it, including credits — that screenwriter Richard Rothstein (Universal Soldier) includes a rather lengthy scene with the sole purpose of underlining how fat the fat babysitter (Mary Steelsmith, H.O.T.S.) is: She’s so fat she eats a whole chocolate bar, then inhales an entire bag of Fritos, then goes out for a banana split, only to meet her doom by being lured into the shadows by a soda machine that spits out an irresistible free pop. It’s like a chunk of cheese upon a mouse trap, and it’s needless, embarrassing, cruel, demeaning and, oddly, the movie’s only note of nastiness. —Rod Lott

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