As Johnny McFarley, the psycho preteen of The Paperboy, Marc Marut gives what may be the single worst performance ever by a child actor.

He’s cursed with Alfalfa freckles and the range of a dime-store water pistol, and everything Marut says or does as he obsesses over single-mom neighbor Melissa (Alexandra Paul, Christine) is downright laughable, thus negating any “horror” that Whispers director Douglas Jackson’s film purports to contain.

In one scene, Melissa comes home to find Johnny in her kitchen:

Melissa: “What are you doing here, Johnny?”
Johnny: “Apples! I’m peeling apples!”
Melissa: “Get out!
Johnny: “Aw, c’mon, won’t you make me an apple pie?”

Annnnnd scene. Later, Johnny flips his proverbial lid as he spies Melissa getting down ’n’ dirty with her boyfriend (William Katt, 1986’s House), and it’s an absolute riot, cementing Marut’s footnote status in modern North American cinema. —Rod Lott

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To mention the word “masterpiece” in the same breath as “Jess Franco” is like pairing “Chef Boyardee” and “gourmet.” Yet 1969’s Venus in Furs is often cited as the über-prolific director’s finest hour (and a half) — one awash in atmosphere, not acumen.

What happens to a beautiful woman after she’s murdered at a swank party? As the song goes, she’ll be waiting in Istanbul. On that Turkish city’s Black Sea shores, the corpse of Wanda Reed (Franco fave Maria Rohm, Eugenie) washes up in purple garters, her chest deeply sliced above the left breast. Finding her, jazz musician Jimmy Logan (James Darren, TV’s The Time Tunnel) immediately flashes back to the night before, when he discreetly watched her get stripped, whipped and stabbed by three fellow partygoers (one of whom is a millionaire playboy played by Nosferatu himself, Klaus Kinski).

The shock sends Jimmy fleeing to Rio — and to the bed of local club singer Rita (Barbara McNair, The Organization). Just as he’s able to take up his trumpet again, who should walk through the door but Wanda herself. Barring supernatural forces, how can that be? To Franco’s credit, you’ll want to know, but the answer is secondary to seeing Wanda exact her sexy revenge.

Venus in Furs’ strength lie in the unfailing hallucinatory vibe it exudes. While Jimmy’s sparse narration recalls pure pulp gumshoe, Franco employs every ’60s trick in the book: primary color gels, wavy screens, slowed-down film, sped-up film and so on. And then there’s Rohm, his most special effect of all. Despite her character being an instrument of death, she’s a captivating, sultry presence. —Rod Lott

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With his Psycho-tic tendencies intact, Robert Bloch puts enough of his stamp on 1962’s The Cabinet of Caligari that it feels less like a remake of the German Expressionist classic of four decades prior, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and more like an in-name-only extension of the earlier work’s themes.

Written by Bloch, but directed by workmanlike TV veteran Roger Kay, the thriller switches genders to make a woman the focus. While on a carefree drive, Jane (Glynis Johns, The Vault of Horror) experiences a flat tire and is forced to walk miles to the nearest home. It’s a beaut, too — an architectural marvel belonging to one Dr. Caligari, a weird-looking dude with Abe Lincoln-style facial hair, a revolving door leading into his office, a penchant for peeping and many, many probing questions about Jane’s sexual life, history and desires.

If she could up and leave, she would, but she’s trapped on his gated estate. She finds a sympathetic ear in Caligari’s friend, Paul (Dan O’Herlihy, RoboCop), but no means of escape. The place even has a garden maze with a fierce dog for a Minotaur. It’s enough to make her think Caligari intends to drive her insane.

The 1920 Caligari is remembered for its surreal sets, which Bloch and Kay do without until a third-act nightmare sequence; to no one’s surprise, it proves the highlight. With an assumedly low budget and first-time feature director, this update literally can’t afford to submit fully to the abstract visuals, so the amount it does offer is welcome without embarrassing itself.

Thus, the film stands on story (and a thoroughly amusing performance by Johns, who was far from the typical Hollywood starlet). It may not always click, but at least it’s about something — and about as far as they were allowed to take it for the times. That alone is admirable. —Rod Lott

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Should you choose to take a wine tour of Chile, pack a football helmet and an autograph book — the former in case of earthquakes; the latter because you just might run into Selena Gomez. That Spring Breakers starlet makes an uncredited cameo in Aftershock, a shaky quake pic more interested in a retching scale than the Richter one.

For the first third, director Nicolás López follows our tourists as they party hearty in an underground night club accessible via cable car. A couple of sisters bicker; one guy coaches another in the art of chasing tail; but if there’s a front-and-center character, it’s Gringo, played by Eli Roth (Inglourious Basterds), who also contributed to the screenplay and co-produces.

Roth’s creative stamp becomes evident once the republic starts to rumble. That’s when the Irwin Allen situation grows quite Hostel. Clubgoers are flattened by chunks of cement; flesh is penetrated by sharp objects. Against the grisly carnage, one guy’s search for his hand is played for laughs. Why, it’s enough to make a girl vomit, and we get that, too.

Once back above ground, our survivors find more obstacles awaiting their struggle to find safety: a riot, a tsunami, flames, rape, local gangs — and Gringo doesn’t speak any Spanish! ¡Ay, caramba! It all becomes unpleasant, but really, isn’t that Aftershock’s reason for being? Charlton Heston would be appalled, which is one argument for giving it a try. —Rod Lott

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From the makers of King Kong the following year, 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game is one of the most influential and imitated movies in history, and for good reason: It’s a splendid, Prohibition-era adventure with a concept that transcends time. And that concept is that, unequivocally, rich people are assholes.

Based on Richard Connell’s excellent 1924 short story of the same name, the RKO Radio Picture begins with a ship capsizing in shark-infested waters. The only survivor, Bob (Joel McCrea, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent), washes ashore on an island and arrives at the only home around, belonging to one Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks, Hitch’s The Man Who Knew Too Much of 1934). As if the host’s name isn’t scary enough, his door knocker is a demon holding a woman. In life, we call such things “a red flag.”

Zaroff is crazy, all right. Having lost his love of life, the man has resorted to big-game hunting, but hunting humans. Bob and another “guest,” the alluring Eve (Fay Wray, King Kong), are to be his latest prey. If they can survive from midnight to sunrise in the jungle, Zaroff will give them keys to the boathouse so they may float their way to freedom.

Bob and Eve believe staying alive is a swell idea, so they build traps in the hopes of turning the tables. And therein lies the fun. Utilizing a mix of backlot sets and rear-projection tricks, co-directors Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack pull off an exciting exercise exploring man’s inhumanity to man, via swamps and caves and dogs, and waterfalls for those dogs to tumble down. It’s not politically correct; it’s not meant to be. —Rod Lott

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