Running second in a series of seven, the Japanese women-in-prison film known as Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 was way ahead of its time — and it still is!

The titular convict Scorpion (the largely mute Meiko Kaji, Lady Snowblood) — a nickname earned due to her gouging out the eye of the warden in this film’s predecessor, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion — is kept in an underground cell where she is habitually abused by guards. After a hard day of breaking rocks and getting raped, she manages an escape with her fellow convicts. They spend the rest of the film on the lam, and that’s about the extent of the plot.

But Jailhouse 41 turns wonderfully strange, oddly metaphorical and even supernatural, operating on its own brand of internal logic that’s indescribable.

Director Shunya Ito (who also helmed the series’ first installment and returned for its third, 1973’s even odder titled Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable) does more interesting things with color and sound than you’d typically find in an exploitation film. At times, I wasn’t quite sure this qualified as an exploitation film at all, as it contains some truly beautiful images — the blood-soaked waterfall comes to mind, predating The Shining’s famous slow-motion elevator shot. But then you see things like a naked prison guard with a log through his crotch to set you straight. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

No sooner has thieving murderer Joe Breezi (Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro) escaped from prison to sweet freedom than he kills a couple of farmers, stabbing one with the elderly guy’s own pitchfork. At least he has good reason: Joe needs their car to drive to the two-room countryside cottage in which he buried 300 million liras five years prior, underneath the fireplace.

Arriving at the cottage for the weekend are cad Sergio (Gianni Macchia, Inferno), his wife (Patrizia Behn) and her sister (Lorraine De Selle, Cannibal Ferox). Sergio’s cheating on the former with the much-hotter latter, Paola. When he goes out hunting and his wife heads into town to shop, that leaves Paola to sunbathe … and Joe to knock her out so he can start chipping away at the bricks.

Had he just waited a couple of days, Joe could have the place to himself — but then, we wouldn’t have a movie. And it’s an enjoyably sleazy movie. Clad in a wife-beater, blue jeans and white Keds, Joe rapes Paola when she comes to … and then professes to like it. De Selle spends a good half of the movie with nary a stitch; getting nearly as much screen time is John Travolta, via a poster above the couch.

Madness contains three additional sex scenes, with the first being the most explicit — surprisingly not involving gay icon Dallesandro. Let’s just say writer/director Fernando Di Leo (The Italian Connection) familiarizes the audience with Macchia and Behn’s taints. Don’t worry: Di Leo delivers his trademark violence, yet the weird thing is, you may find yourself rooting for Dallesandro and against his captives — not just because the actor has a palpable presence, but because the Italian-language film is written that way. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

When cast in the right role, which is rarely, Matthew McConaughey can be an electrifying onscreen presence. His breakthrough bit in 1993’s Dazed and Confused is one of those times; Killer Joe is another. He stars as the titular Texas full-time cop and freelance hit man in The Exorcist director William Friedkin’s second unconventional collaboration with screenwriter Tracy Letts (Bug), both adapted from Letts’ own stage plays.

Joe Cooper’s latest assignment comes from a low-life piece of trailer trash named Chris Smith (Speed Racer‘s Emile Hirsch), who hires Joe to kill his mother so he can pay off his debts with the “huge” $50,000 life insurance payout. The problem is Joe requires his $25K fee in advance, which Chris obviously doesn’t have. However, Joe is willing to waive his “no exceptions” rule in exchange for a retainer: specifically, Chris’ little sister, Dottie (Juno Temple, The Dark Knight Rises), a virgin who thinks killing their mom is “a good idea.”

Things don’t go as planned. Hell, things don’t go in any direction viewers would anticipate, giving the hick flick a coat of disturbia as thick as the Texas heat. Unease and discomfort saturate this twisted tale, and McConaughey is the unlikely vessel for its evil, as “menacing” is not one of the adjectives I’d readily affix to his name.

Likely to offend more people than it will seduce, Killer Joe at least makes its sick, inbred nature clear from scene one, as it hits you right in the face, somewhat literally, with the pubic thatch of Showgirls vet Gina Gershon. That’s kids’ stuff compared to the elongated final scene, in which McConaughey makes novel use of a food item that may have you swear off KFC for life. (Not for nothing is the redneck thriller rated NC-17.) Those still around will be thrown a polarizing, over-the-top ending that’ll have you hooting or cursing. I did the former. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Long derided for ripping off Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma instead entered the new millennium with an erotic thriller that looks like he’s ripping off Brian De Palma ripping off Alfred Hitchcock. I generally love the guy, but Femme Fatale is one of his worst pervo-mysterioso efforts (but not at bad as the utterly flaccid The Black Dahlia).

Rebecca Romjin (then using her brief “-Stamos” tag) stars as a double-crossing diamond thief who escapes her Parisian partners by assuming the identity of a dead woman. As that ruse starts to unravel, she attempts to use disgraced paparazzi photographer Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas, Desperado) to protect herself and make off with millions of dollars.

The plot is overly complex for a script so simple-minded, and seems to exist only for the clever, it-all-comes-together ending, rendered in De Palma’s usual slow-motion style. It’s a set piece that, like Fatale‘s opening bathroom seduction at the Cannes Film Festival, is the kind of thing that De Palma does so damned well. It’s everything in between that he does not so well, and as writer and director, he has no one to blame but himself.

Romjin actually acquits herself quite admirably and manages to bare her breasts. She gets a lot more dialogue than she did as blue-skinned seductress Mystique in the X-Men franchise; unfortunately, a lot of that dialogue is along the lines of “You don’t have to lick my ass — just fuck me!” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Dressing down a pesky journalist in the first scene of 10 to Midnight, Charles Bronson’s Lt. Leo Kessler proclaims, “I’m a mean, selfish son of a bitch. And I know you want a story, but I want a killer, and what I want comes first!” I felt like cheering right then and there, and the title hadn’t yet appeared onscreen. The serial-killer police thriller comes from Bronson’s underrated ’80s run with Cannon Films and his fourth of nine collaborations with Conquest of the Planet of the Apes director J. Lee Thompson.

In this film’s case, the murderer is Warren (Gene Davis, The Hitcher), a young, creepy guy in a Members Only jacket who fixes typewriters for the office secretarial pool. He fancies himself quite the martial artist and ladies’ man. He’s definitely not the latter, because he gets rejected all the time, but gets his revenge by stabbing his busty jilters to death.

Examining the corpse of Warren’s latest victim, Kessler theorizes, “Well, if anybody does something like this, his knife has gotta be his penis.” Indeed, Warren’s M.O. is stripping nude before each and every kill, holding a sharp blade at genital height, all rapey-like. As Kessler inches closer to nabbing the scumball, said scumball targets the copper’s daughter (Lisa Eilbacher, Beverly Hills Cop), a student nurse — convenient for a cinematic massacre’s sake.

What makes 10 to Midnight great is not just Bronson being Bronson, but that his Kessler is deeply flawed. He’s not a supercop, but an imperfect man more interested in doing what’s right vs. what’s legal, which irks his idealistic, by-the-book partner Andrew Stevens (The Seduction). It’s also as if a slasher movie focused not on the Final Girl, but the investigating police detective, and Davis is absolutely hateful in his robotic-perv role.

Look for short bits by Kelly Preston in her movie debut and an artificial vagina. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.