Before he was the Bad Lieutenant, Harvey Keitel played another bad lieutenant in the Italian-made Corrupt (aka Bad Cop II, Copkiller, Order of Death and an easy paycheck) as Lt. Fred O’Connor.

He works in the narcotics division, where members of his team have been offed by a cop killer. When Leo Smith (John Lydon, aka Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten) shows up at his apartment and claims to be the culprit, O’Connor gets all Keitel on his ass, tying him up and holding him hostage in his bathroom.

Corrupt is one of those psychological cat-and-mouse games where the tables are continually (but not surprisingly) being turned. Unfortunately, when the fortunes shift from Keitel’s character to Lydon’s, the movie grows tiresome (not to mention confusing, as their interaction borders on a homosexual relationship, as does the one between Keitel and his secret live-in cop roomie).

As evil as his O’Connor becomes, it’s hard not to root for Keitel throughout the whole thing — namely because he’s not Lydon, who comes off as a snot-nosed, insufferable prick whose acting is annoying as his music (yeah, I said it). Speaking of music, Ennio Morricone’s score? Not among his best. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Oh, those Eyes of Laura Mars and the things they see! As played by Faye Dunaway, her Network Oscar still fairly fresh, Ms. Mars is a photographer by trade whose violent, sexual, trashy shots court an equal share of hype and hysteria, and best can be described as something you’d expect to see in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, should the lingerie purveyor ever publish a catalog post-doomsday.

With a ridiculous amount of media attention showered on her book-release party — complete with live, televised footage from the red carpet — Laura’s big night is deflated by news of the mysterious murder of her book’s editor. It’s merely the first in a series of stabbings to come.

That Laura “sees” the homicides happening in her mind is problematic enough. (That Dunaway plays it like the proverbial deer in the headlights is another.) That the crimes are staged to match some of her photos is worse. Investigating is a police detective (Tommy Lee Jones in the unibrow-and-hair-helmet phase of his career) for whom she starts to fall, despite being a suspect.

As directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), the film is as expected: a workmanlike thriller sporting as much gloss as the pages of fashion mags that pay Laura’s utility bills. But as dreamt up and co-written by Halloween maestro John Carpenter, it’s a real disappointment. His made-for-TV movie of the same year, Someone’s Watching Me!, generates considerably more suspense at half the star wattage. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Larry Cohen does his best Brian De Palma imitation with Special Effects, which is to say a poor one. Perhaps the only special thing about this minor effort is that, more than any other of the filmmaker’s works, the movie demonstrates he’s better at conceiving ideas than birthing them. This one’s certainly no Q; it’s a Zzzzz.

In her first role post-Ms. 45, Zoe Tamerlis plays Mary Jean, a naive, Oklahoma-to-Manhattan actress who cheats on her hick husband, Keefe (Brad Rijn, Smithereens) with a down-and-out film director she’s just met. He’s Neville (Talk Radio’s Eric Bogosian, speaking out of his mouth’s left side), who feeds her the line, “I think we should do a slow dissolve to the bedroom.” It works, and while writhing in the pink satin sheets, Neville strangles her to death.

Rather than become the prime suspect, Neville cannily deflects suspicion by making a movie about the murder, with the intent to pin the crime on the yokel spouse who agrees to play himself. Essaying the role of Mary Jean is her dead ringer, Elaine (also Tamerlis), a clothes sorter at the Salvation Army.

Sounds absurd, right? It should, for Special Effects is a messy bundle of story threads Cohen doesn’t bother to unravel before attempting to connect. If he had, I suspect the film would remain too ludicrous to swallow; Rijn and Tamerlis’ near-amateurish performances wouldn’t be remedied by even the sharpest script. With touches like Neville choking someone with 35mm film and asking, “Who made your head? Carlo Rambaldi?,” the movie must be intended as some industry-insider statement, but what the statement says is as mysterious as the entire premise is muddled.

Aside from a quick visual joke referencing Tootsie, Special Effects bears precious little of Cohen’s clever sensibilities. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Nick Dunn (John Bromfield, Revenge of the Creature) is the worst kind of used-car salesman: honest. His sales position at the Big John lot is eradicated after he lets a $700 MG sale collapse because he points out all its safety features, or lack thereof.

Dangling wads of cash, a flashy man named Markel (Ralph Clanton, 1950’s Cyrano de Bergerac) hires Dunn for one of his lots in a deal that seems to good to be true. That’s because, as Dunn is informed by a nosy detective (Dabbs Greer, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it’s a “real cozy hot car racket” for stolen vehicles. Being a square-jawed, stand-up guy, Dunn quits … but then asks for the gig back when a hospitalization of his infant son for some vague malady forces him to change his tune.

Steered with no-nonsense efficiency by Western TV director Don McDougall, Hot Cars runs exactly one full hour, giving the story no time to idle. It’s a nice, tidy forgotten chunk of noir with a booming Les Baxter score and winning tough-guy dialogue, even for the dames: “I’ve got broad shoulders, Nick. I’ll even let you cry on one of them.”

That line is spoken by Markel’s mink-wrapped, big-bosomed, kept-blonde hussy (the hubba-hubba Scopitone fantasy girl Joi Lansing) who tests Nick’s loyalty to the wedding ring ’round his finger. And speaking of dangerous curves, the film famously ends with a thrilling fistfight-to-the-death on a moving roller coaster. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Part of Spain’s Films to Keep You Awake series, A Christmas Tale takes place in December 1985, and the year can’t be coincidental. That summer saw the release of the Steven Spielberg production The Goonies, which this film so closely resembles it’s like the unauthorized Spielbergian-tribute counterpart to J.J. Abrams’ official one in Super 8.

With virtually no apparent parental supervision, four tween boys and one girl ride bikes and hang out and watch VHS tapes. One day in the woods, they happen upon a deep pit, into which has fallen a grubby woman in a Santa Claus suit. Upon learning from the TV news that she’s the “extremely dangerous” bank robber Rebeca Expósito (Maru Valdivielso, Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt), they decide against helping the injured fugitive to safety, but for keeping her as their “secret pet.”

They even get a crash course in extortion, exploiting her hunger to learn the whereabouts of the millions she stole. An escape, however, is only a matter of time, and Rebeca’s shuffling, ax-dragging body chasing them through an abandoned amusement park reminds the kids of Zombie Invasion, a film-within-the-film (starring Beyond Re-Animator‘s luscious Elsa Pataky) whose rules of undead-killing they appropriate to get out of their particular pickle alive.

The only thing running more heavily through A Christmas Tale (aka Xmas Tale) than danger is nostalgia. These kids play Milton Bradley’s Simon, worship Star Wars, and rewind the crane-kick climax of The Karate Kid in amazement. That’s not to suggest the film doesn’t have balls; [REC] franchise director Paco Plaza appears all too happy to burst out the gore when it’s called for, and the ending leans more naughty than nice. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.