Poor William Hurt. How does one go from being nominated for the Best Actor Oscar three years in a row to toplining a below-average virus thriller called Contaminated Man?

With a mullet that makes him look like a Foghat roadie, Hurt stars as David Whitman, a hazardous materials specialist for the United Nations. He’s called to a chemicals company in Budapest (economically enough), where veteran employee Joseph Müller (a bald Peter Weller, RoboCop) has just been downsized and taken revenge by unleashing some, like, really bad chemical stuff.

Unfortunately for Müller, he’s also gotten himself exposed to the stuff and becomes … wait for it … the Contaminated Man! Basically, this means he coughs a lot and everyone he touches grows pus-filled blisters and spews skim milk within the hour. All the viewer gets is an uninvolving, sub-Outbreak-type chase where Whitman tracks Müller from one public place to another. It all culminates in the latter filling a remote-control submarine with his infected blood and threatening to taint the water supply.

Director Anthony Hickox has done fun work before in pure B-movie mode (Waxwork), but this is not another notch in that belt. No, this is drab, bleak viewing, made all the more drab and bleak by being set in the aforementioned Budapest. Both actors deserve better. The only thing great about Contaminated Man is its title. —Rod Lott

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Chaos in the classroom used to mean something different than the school shootings of today. In Fernando Di Leo’s Naked Violence, it’s the rape and subsequent murder of a female teacher by her teen students — all boys, all juvenile delinquents. Di Leo shrewdly shoots them in unflattering close-up so viewers automatically responds to their greasy faces with disgust.

Police detective Lamberti (Pier Paolo Capponi, The Cat o’ Nine Tails) investigates. He has unusual interrogation methods, one of which is dousing the suspects’ chair with absinthe to upset them; the 85-percent-proof alcohol was downed by the boys at the time of the crime.

Under duress, one particularly troubled student lets slip the personal pronoun “she,” leading Lamberti to believe a woman masterminded the whole brutal act, from its inception to their stories of denial afterward. The truth is something else — in more ways than one, although the film’s “twist” is easily guessed, partially because of the director’s awkward blocking.

Known for brutal Eurocrime efforts like The Italian Connection, Di Leo comparatively presents a softer side with this procedural; it’s simply not as hard-hitting. Even the brutality of the act is shielded by the opening credits; when the sequence is repeated at the conclusion, it carries more weight — probably due to being soundtracked by obnoxious, off-putting metallic screeches.

“What’s wrong?” asks Lamberti’s boss in the final scene. “Aren’t you satisfied?” Eh, almost. —Rod Lott

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In 1888 England, Jack the Ripper (Paul Rossilli, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) pursues his hobby of whore-slaughtering, all while being pursued by the authorities. The police trap him on London Bridge, and Jack takes a presumably fatal plunge into the Thames.

In 1985 Lake Havasu, Ariz., of all places, said bridge has been relocated and rebuilt stone by stone, because hey, why not? Only one stone remains to be slipped into place, which is being saved for the dedication ceremony. A frizzy-haired tourist’s accidental drop of blood on said stone resurrects the Ripper, because hey, why not?

The answer is Terror at London Bridge, a made-for-NBC movie as notable for having a screenplay by Logan’s Run author William F. Nolan as for whom it stars: David Hasselhoff. Then nearing the end of his Knight Rider run for the net, the Hoff plays Don Gregory, a misfit cop from Chicago who disagrees with the theory that the town’s sudden string of murders is the work of “a road bum.”

Plucked from the peacock’s then-hit Hunter, Stepfanie Kramer gets the thankless role of Gregory’s love interest / Ripper’s target / distracting eye makeup-wearer. Adrienne Barbeau (Swamp Thing) has even less to do, other than being an unknowing participant in the viewers’ game of determining whether she, Kramer or Hasselhoff possesses the pouffiest hairdo.

Directed by prolific telepic vet E.W. Swackhamer (Death at Love House, Cocaine and Blue Eyes, The Oklahoma City Dolls, et al.), this Bridge is worth crossing for cheese’s sake, because hey, why not? As if you needed to be told, the prime-time filler has a funny idea for what qualifies as “terror,” which is exactly the reason it entertains, in a way its makers did not intend. —Rod Lott

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While saddled with a meaningless title that could be grafted to any ol’ thriller, Italian or otherwise, Cold Eyes of Fear stands above the fray from the start. Its beginning bears the kind of fake-out sequence that Brian De Palma soon would use as his bread and butter, yet it’s hardly the only cinematic trick director Enzo G. Castellari (The Inglorious Bastards) has in store.

Late one night, solicitor Peter Flower (Gianni Garko, Devil Fish) brings home a hot-to-trot woman (Giovanna Ralli, Sex with a Smile) for some sure-thing sex. The swanky pad really belongs to his uncle (Fernando Rey, The French Connection), but the elderly judge is stuck at courthouse working on a big case, giving Peter the privacy to put his, well, peter to use.

Unfortunately, Peter is doomed to spend the night blue-balled, because having a corpse fall beside you tends to throw water on the fire of ladies’ loins. Knife extended, a leather-clad killer is skulking about the house, seeking a file from the judge’s past. It’s all part of a plot to blow the man up with explosives.

A couple of twists are worked into the story, but I was more surprised by Castellari’s playtime with lighting and editing, which livens up both acts of violence and more routine stretches. For example, in one scene, he pushes the camera forward in fits timed with punches Peter takes to the stomach. Late in the film, Castellari dabbles in hallucinatory imagery; while it is out of place, it excites.

Ennio Morricone’s terrific-as-usual score ranges from playful (during an early arcade montage, shot handheld) to disturbing. The latter does most of the heavy lifting in building anxiety, as Cold Eyes of Fear is not particularly graphic. The blood in this one looks like smeared lipstick after a rather passionate make-out session — the one poor Peter never gets to complete. —Rod Lott

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In the mid-1990s, when erotic thrillers were all the rage, Playboy’s production group made a handful of direct-to-video movies to get in on summadat milky-white-behind action. First out of the gate from the House That Hugh Built was Cover Me. For coming from a nudie mag, it has far too much Elliott Gould.

Devilshly cute Courtney Taylor, who most notably vamped it up in Prom Night III: The Last Kiss, plays Holly, a gorgeous female cop who goes undercover as a centerfold model (and then, logically, a stripper) to snare Dimitri (soap regular Stephen Nichols), a serial killer who has cottoned to murdering gatefolds. Stranger than that, Dimitri seduces and then offs these torso-stapled beauts while he’s dressed in drag, replete with dripping makeup and bubbly voice.

Dimitri commits such acts because, as we are shown in grainy flashbacks, his momma used to force him into girls’ clothing as a child. Meanwhile, Holly won’t quit stripping because, as we are shown in slow-motion dance sequences, she realizes she actually likes having a wad of dirty dollar bills shoved into her panties by the hands of greasy strangers, dammit.

Directed by Michael Schroeder (Cyborg 2 and Cyborg 3), Cover Me is as laughable as Taylor is perky and scorching. Ironically, the film often garners its biggest inadvertent chuckles during its sex scenes, which feature intricate light shows, rear-projection images (not the anatomic kind of rear, mind you) and, when Schroeder feels like it, booby.

The Terminator’s Rick Rossovich was the lucky man who nabbed the role of Bobby, Holly’s cop boyfriend. Plumpy Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) yuks it up as Bobby’s partner until he gets strangled while sitting in his car. Corbin Bernsen (The Dentist) plays a porno king, and thoroughly convinced me of his oily nature. But it’s Taylor who rules the show, making it worth the watch. (Well, okay, just parts of it.) Whatever happened to her? —Rod Lott

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