So memorable is Bernard Herrmann’s whistled theme to Twisted Nerve that Quentin Tarantino wisely appropriated it to equal unsettling effect in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. While good, the British thriller itself is not close to being as “sticky.”

Hywel Bennett lost his penis in 1971’s Percy, but here, he loses his mind. As Martin, the young man fancies shifting into an alternate personality — that of the 6-year-old Georgie — in order to weasel his way into the life of Susan (Hayley Mills, The Parent Trap), a beautiful, 17-year-old librarian.

It works. In a real credibility-strainer, no matter the lengths taken by the screenplay to set it up, he goes to live with her for a week in the boardinghouse run by Susan’s single MILF (Billie Whitelaw, The Omen). Ingratiating himself to the fellow residents, Georgie refers to himself in the third person, laughs at burps, makes nonsensical jokes (“Batman is a fat man, ha-ha!”) and eventually dabbles in fatal stabbings.

Twisted Nerve is pinched by the permissiveness of its times. While it can do little more than hint at Martin’s suppressed homosexual urges and the Oedipal draw Whitelaw’s character feels toward Georgie, it operates on the theory that “mongolism” (now called Down syndrome) equates to psychopathic. Today, we know that’s not just poor science, but pure offense.

The title refers to “a ganglion gone awry,” and although director Roy Boulting (There’s a Girl in My Soup) is able to keep the film on its rails (thanks to the performances), it does become less and less special the more it drones on. It could be twice as suspenseful by losing a quarter of its two hours. —Rod Lott

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The late, great critic Roger Ebert wrote, “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.” Meaning it isn’t the story that’s ultimately important in storytelling, but how it is told. For example, The Birth of a Nation is both riveting and disgustingly racist. Could Left Behind pull off the same trick? After all, I’m hardly the target audience.

What it is about: Based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ best-selling, 16-book series of fundamentalist thrillers, Left Behind concerns those who are “left behind” after the Christian Rapture. With all believers absent with leave, the Antichrist starts his ascension, and only a few brave souls understand the peril.

Having read the first book, I can say it fails Ebert’s axiom with honors. It’s a fear-mongering rant against the deadly horrors of secular humanism, a leaden tome of speechifying dullness incapable of creating even the mildest of tension or interest, mostly due to a complete lack of authorial talent. It’s so tedious it can’t even be enjoyed as camp. Can the movie succeed where the book failed?

How it is about it: Such a wingnut-fundamentalist film probably scared off potential stars, but placing faith (as it were) in the acting prowess of TV’s Mike Seaver? Kirk Cameron has all the heft of a vacuous teen idol whose 15 minutes ended 20 years ago.

Yes, it’s arguably unfair to tar him with the sheer awfulness of his Growing Pains sitcom fame, but boy, howdy, it’s both easy and entirely accurate. (What, Stephen Baldwin wasn’t available?) Beyond Cameron’s black hole of charisma, there’s a cast of D-list television actors and slumming Canadian talent. I’ve seen better acting in low-rent lawyer commercials.

Directing-wise? Same issue. Don’t blame the budget; Michael Tolkin’s brilliant 1991 film, The Rapture, posits a biblical apocalypse, yet still manages to be intellectually and emotionally thrilling on a budget less than that of your average TBS sitcom. No such luck here with one Vic Sarin: We’re talking Uwe Boll levels of incompetence. It’s monotonous, dreary and, cinematically speaking, ugly, flat and bland.

In the end, Left Behind is a preachy and insulting hunk of dull so awful it could only appeals to zealots, so unpleasant it may convince believers to leave the church. It’s an excruciatingly bad story, told in the least interesting manner possible.

And worse than all that? It’s as boring as sin. —Corey Redekop

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The grandaddy of all disaster flicks, Airport established the modern-day template that spawned many a towering inferno and Poseidon adventures, not to mention three of its own sequels. While time has granted it a thick layer of kitsch unintended by its makers, the movie still soars high as an all-star hoot.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey — who also wrote Zero Hour!, which Airplane! spoofed as mercilessly as this — the dramatic thriller is as sprawling as its cast. It’s so jam-packed and jumbo-sized that no true lead emerges, but Burt Lancaster (The Osterman Weekend) ostensibly is as Mel Bakersfeld, whose marriage is fraught with as many problems as the Chicago airport he manages. For one, the noise from passing jets rattles nearby homes; for another, the worst storm in six years has him and his co-workers gobsmacked with stress.

The biggest problem is that the Boeing 707 piloted by Capt. Demerest (Dean Martin, hic!) has among its passengers a mad bomber (Van Heflin, Shane) and, perhaps more annoying, a perennial stowaway in a manipulative li’l old lady (Helen Hayes, whose Oscar win for this qualifies as an all-time AMPAS joke). Crowding the running time are George Kennedy, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Gary Collins and seemingly everyone except you and me.

Director George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) has so much on his plate that the terrorism angle doesn’t really shift into gear until the second hour, meaning that the first is all setup — perhaps even an info dump, introducing character after character, subplot after subplot, and sometimes even cramming several into the screen at once with multiple splits. That he keeps this soap opera of the skies from crash-landing — until the script calls for it, of course — is quite an admirable feat. Airport should not be as much fun as it is. —Rod Lott

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Young and single, Molly (Millie Perkins, At Close Range) works in a bar. She lives with her sister (Vanessa Brown, The Bad and the Beautiful), a welfare mother of two boys who worship the sea-sailing grandfather they never met and who was lost to the waters 15 years prior. Molly’s own feelings toward her old man are conflicted; after all, he did have a sexual relationship with her.

Needless to say, Molly’s one screwed-up chick — an utterly weird woman whose dark psyche is explored in the utterly weird The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

She experiences detailed fantasies — so twisted they qualify as hallucinations — of slaughtering musclemen on the beach and the shirtless shaving guy on a television commercial for razors. The first sign that there may be more to Molly’s mind games is when she imagines draining two superstar football players of their lifeblood by slicing the Achilles tendon, only to wake up the next morning and learn that the athletes have been murdered.

Director Matt Cimber is working with a higher caliber of material than he’s used to (i.e. Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold), so it’s evident to the viewer that there’s a lot going on here, even if Cimber can’t quite communicate it. He tries, but with its oblique narrative and psychological subtext, he’s in too far over his head. Perkins gives a good performance, although the script (by then-husband Robert Thom, Death Race 2000) requires her to spend too much of it naked. For all her onscreen sacrifice, the ending does her no justice, striking a dour note — and one that feels like a cop-out.

Still, it’s different, and because different is good, the psychological thriller is worth a look. Just watch out for the TV clown. —Rod Lott

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Amid other liquids, one practically can smell the dribbles of J&B through the screen of The Sister of Ursula, a title that tells you nothing and means only slightly more. It refers to Dagmar Beyne (Stefania D’Amario, Zombie), who’s not quite the main character, yet neither is her sibling, Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi, Suspiria). In fact, no character is developed properly enough to emerge as the lead.

Searching for their estranged mother after their father’s death, the two stop at a seaside hotel in Italy with majestic views and vistas and nightclub singer Stella Shining (Yvonne Harlow). Despite such amenities, Dagmar doesn’t want to stay: “Terrible things are going to happen,” she says. “I see blood.” She’s so certain that she herself will be murdered — not the most ideal of travel companions.

Terrible things do happen, to both the viewer and to the movie’s slutty female characters. Members of the latter group are slain by a killer in requisite black gloves, offed by a … well, a rather unique tool, let’s say. I won’t spoil it, but the shadow knows. The first to go is a prostitute who plies her trade underneath a decidedly unsexy Donald Duck poster.

Promiscuity reigns in this sleazy little thriller by writer/director Enzo Milioni, and each time people go at it, they do so to the tune of the same sax-fueled ballad of the damned. It’s meant to signal sexy, Pavlovian-style, yet is so overused, it will have an opposite effect on viewers. Milioni expended all his energy on these scenes, to the detriment of everything else. Unless you’re just looking for skin, there’s nothing to see here, folks; please move along. —Rod Lott

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