After nailing down a cool half-mil on his debut, novelist Paul Martin (Udo Kier, Flesh for Frankenstein) is having a tough time writing his sophomore book. Even after hiding himself and his typewriter in the British countryside House on Straw Hill, he’s only slightly more productive as an author than The Shining’s Jack Torrance.

With deadline looming, Paul hires a typist to whom he can dictate, and off the train pops Linda (Linda Hayden, Taste the Blood of Dracula), a pretty young thing who packs a dildo in her suitcase — not that Paul can cast much judgment, as he dons latex surgical gloves for his sexual trysts with his shapely ginger girlfriend, Suzanne (UK sex symbol Fiona Richmond, History of the World: Part I).

Linda proves as skilled at her job as she is at self-pleasuring, which she does often throughout the picture, but having her around is not good for Paul’s fragile mental health. He keeps experiencing visions of a grisly, bloody death, sometimes during the most inopportune times (such as, say, while Suzanne writhes atop his unit like an Olympic gymnast). Just what the hell is going on?

Viewers will wonder, as writer/director James Kenelm Clarke (Let’s Get Laid) keeps the film’s secret under his hat for a little too long. It becomes evident once you realize how little story is at work, with a lot of sex and violence to pad it out — not for nothing did The House on Straw Hill stake a claim on the dreaded “video nasties” list in the regressive-repressive 1980s (often under its alternate title of the apt Trauma).

In exchange for sticking it out, audiences are rewarded with a sick little thriller in which Paul’s freakouts are so heavily laden with dream imagery and actions don’t always adhere to logic that one wonders if the entire film isn’t a facade of sorts. For example, what kind of woman is raped at gunpoint by two guys — one of whom sports a T-shirt reading, “I Am a Vampyre,” no less — yet able to brush off such an act as if nothing happened? You’ll get the answer, actually; note that I have not accused Clarke’s work of possessing good taste. —Rod Lott

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If Drive were the only film by Nicolas Winding Refn you have seen, you might approach his follow-up, Only God Forgives, with the expectations of it being just like that Ryan Gosling vehicle. While that’s understandable, it’s also wrong.

While Gosling, neon and brutal violence all return from that 2011 instant crime classic to front this Bangkok-set crime drama, the similarities end there. Gosling’s soft-spoken Julian may be a drug smuggler, but he’s a saint compared to his brother, Billy (Tom Burke, Donkey Punch), who is murdered after raping and killing a 16-year-old prostitute.

Flying in from America upon hearing the news is the cold-hearted Crystal (a frighteningly good Kristin Scott Thomas, Gosford Park), their tigress of a mother coming to avenge her fallen cub. (Her character’s animal-print dress can’t be accidental.) Her consideration of Julian as the inferior child is not an opinion she hides — rather, she revels in it — yet Crystal still counts on him to bring down those men responsible for Billy’s bloody end — namely, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm, The Hangover Part II) the corrupt cop who travels with a very sharp sword he’s not afraid to use.

Using all the fluorescent colors in the Crayola box, Refn is in no rush to draw his tale of good vs. evil; characters often move at literal half-speed. By design, the story is rather simplistic — the moral code of the 12th-century samurai basted in a contemporary dressing. With Refn, what’s most important is not the depth of the tale but how it’s told, and Only God Forgives more resembles David Lynch than Drive. To that end, its calculated visuals can lull the viewer into a trance of sublimity. I get why so many will hate it; I’m just grateful I’m not one of them. —Rod Lott

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Jaws producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck returned to plumb the then-shallow well of Peter Benchley novels for another round of ocean-set thrills. The result was The Island, so waterlogged it’s hardly worth even thinking about. Not one moment approaches the spine-tingling suspense promised by the film’s nerve-shattering poster.

After 600 boats have vanished within three years in the Caribbean waters, magazine writer Blair Maynard (Michael Caine, who would later star, ironically enough, in Jaws: The Revenge) is dying to pursue the story. Because the divorced dad has his 12-year-old son (Jeffrey Frank, in his one and only feature) for the weekend, Blair tricks the kid into going to Florida with him by promising a trip to Disney World.

That never happens; instead, they get trapped in a real-life variation of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction after crash-landing on an island — er, the island — where actual pirates separate Justin from his father, under the orders of their leader (David Warner, The Omen). While Blair is tortured with leeches, Justin is all-too-easily brainwashed into turning against dear Dad.

One method used to turn Justin is sleep deprivation, which is what the bulk of the film feels like. Boasting scenery galore, it’s nonetheless exceedingly dull and slow-moving. Director Michael Ritchie had a flair for comedy (Fletch, The Bad News Bears, Smile), not chills, but he can’t shoulder the blame for the biggest nonmoving part: the screenplay, penned by Benchley himself. It could use some Carl Gottlieb. —Rod Lott

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Hunger for some near-future games? Joining the likes of such government-sanctioned bloodsports as Death Race 2000 and Battle Royale is The Purge, an annual, 12-hour amnesty of rape, murder and what have you— that one night of the year in which you’re allowed to “release the beast,” so to speak, without fear of legal reprisal.

By the year 2022, when this film takes place, the rates of crime and unemployment in the United States have become all but nonexistent and are kept in check by The Purge, practically a national holiday. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke, Sinister) has made a fortune from selling security systems, which shows in the palatial abode he shares with his beautiful wife (Lena Headey, 300) and their two children. Because their high-tech home can go into fortress mode at the push of a button, they’re pretty nonplussed by The Purge; it’s just another night in front of the TV.

All that changes when their son (Max Burkholder, Daddy Day Care) stupidly decides to allow a homeless African-American man (Edwin Hodge, 2012’s Red Dawn) inside after lockdown. The desperate stranger’s pursuers — spoiled rich kids donning private-school blazers, eerie face masks and a swath of entitled arrogance — are so eager to satisfy their savage desires, they’ll do anything to infiltrate the Sandin residence.

With that, the movie shifts into becoming Assault on Gated Neighborhood 13.

The sophomore film of writer/director James DeMonaco (Staten Island), The Purge possesses a preposterous premise that would work better if it set up adequately and if he moved his characters from beat to beat in ways that resembled logic, even judged by speculative fiction’s more forgiving terms. Therefore, I found myself only half-invested in what should be a slam-dunk take on the home-invasion thriller. It’s a slick piece of work and deserves points for having the balls to make an unexpected turn it actually sticks with, but wouldn’t take more than minor tinkering to emerge as so much better than strictly average. —Rod Lott

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The first thing I noticed when I first watched the cult made-for-TV thriller Bad Ronald was that its catchy and evocative title isn’t entirely apt. While the titular character does a bunch of stuff that accurately can be described as the opposite of good, he is also — as portrayed by Scott Jacoby (Return to Horror High) — far too sympathetic to dismiss as just another horror villain, which ultimately gives the movie a sense of pathos you don’t usually find in the genre.

A sensitive, imaginative young man with a fiercely loyal and protective mother, Ronald finds himself wanted by the police after he angrily lashes out at a taunting young neighbor girl and causes her accidental death. Terrified that he might be sent to prison, his mother (Planet of the Apes’ Kim Hunter in a typically great performance) hatches a plan that involves their turning their downstairs bathroom into a secret hiding place where Ronald can stow away until its safe for the two of them to leave town.

The plan goes awry when she dies during a necessary gall bladder operation and the house is sold to Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott and their three cute blonde daughters. Already a bit loopy from his enforced isolation and the news of his mom’s death, Ronald becomes convinced that the youngest daughter is the princess of Atranta, the fantasy kingdom that has become his escape away from his terrible reality.

At just 70 minutes, Bad Ronald never has time to be boring and, in fact, probably could have benefited from an extra 10 minutes of character development to better justify the act of violence that sets the plot in motion. Beyond that, it is a surprisingly moving film with a highly effective premise and definitely one worth seeking out. —Allan Mott

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