Christopher McQuarrie, Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Usual Suspects, made his directing debut with — now here’s a step up! — a thriller, centered on two low-life criminals. For The Way of the Gun, he wisely cast Benicio Del Toro as one of them and unwisely cast Ryan Phillippe as the other. I take issue with the latter’s casting because: a) he looks girlie, and b) he attempts an accent that is just so wrong and distracting, mainly because he’s invented his own new accent altogether!

Anyway, while donating sperm, they hear of a woman (Juliette Lewis) who is being paid big bucks by a multimillionaire family to carry their child. Hearing that little “ka-ching” in their head, they kidnap her and hold her ransom for something like $15 million. Of course, things don’t go as smoothly as they planned, because otherwise, this would be a short subject. And maybe it should have been.

On their tail are Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt as Lewis’ expensive-suit-wearing bodyguards. Also on their tail is James Caan, who never once moves his neck. Also also on their tail is Geoffrey Lewis, for reasons that simply clutter up what should have been a simple story. And we haven’t even gotten to the cops.

After a strong start (albeit containing more utterances of “fuck” than the entire running time of Next Friday) and a painfully slow middle, Gun reaches a less-than-rousing conclusion in a whorehouse shootout, with bullets a-flyin’ as a doctor performs an emergency C-section on Lewis. At least I haven’t seen that before. Not that I want to see it again. No Way. —Rod Lott

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One has to love how direct The French Sex Murders is, not only in title, but making good on that title. Viewers will get healthy doses of all three things in B producer Dick Randall’s shot at a giallo. Heck, the opening of a man leaping from his death (partly rendered in crude cartoon) from atop the Eiffel Tower is even repeated at the end. What scenery!

And I don’t mean just the Eiffel Tower, either, because much of the film is set in an exclusive Parisian brothel headed by Madame Colette (Anita Ekberg, La Dolce Vita). One of its hottest whores (Barbara Bouchet, Don’t Torture a Duckling) is discovered murdered, and her last client (Peter Martell, Death Walks at Midnight) is fingered for the crime. He accidentally beheads himself fleeing the police, yet the call-girl killings do not stop with his grisly death.

Inspector Pontaine (Humphrey Bogart lookalike Robert Sacchi, in his debut) continues to hunt for the real killer, taking him from the bosom of Lady Frankenstein‘s lovely Rosalba Neri to the laboratory of Professor Waldemar (Howard Vernon, The Awful Dr. Orlof), who proposes an intriguing theory.

The mystery is so easy to crack, it hardly qualifies as one. But that’s not the point; a giallo is less about the killer, and more about the kills. Director Ferdinando Merighi likes his so much that he shows you the exact same shot of the violent act in several times’ succession, but each in a different colored tint. He also shows you many women in the altogether nude, but keep in mind that some of them are French, which means their armpits match the drapes. —Rod Lott

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Rather than being a straight (no pun intended) adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel, Italy’s The Secret of Dorian Gray is credited as “a modern allegory based on the works of Oscar Wilde,” whose name the characters even drop. Ditch the Picture of Wilde’s title; give the greedy protagonist a Secret. Even more than one.

Set in London at the dawn of the ’70s, Dorian (Helmut Berger, The Damned) is a well-off, but level-headed 21-year-old who seems to have it all. He’s fallen in love with a virginal actress (Marie Liljedahl, The Seduction of Inga), doesn’t want for money, and enjoys his youthful good looks, which are freshly captured on an oil painting done by an artist pal (Richard Todd, Stage Fright).

When an arrogant art buyer (Herbert Lom, the Pink Panther franchise’s seven-time Dreyfus) admires the work and its shirtless subject, he notes, “one day, you will become an old and hideous puppet.” A suddenly overly vain Dorian responds that he wishes he could stay forever young while the painting ages, and lo and behold, that’s what happens … provided he delights in vice and immoral activity. The more he humps — no regard to either gender — the older his canvas visage gets, to the point where it resembles a zombie from an EC cover of Tales from the Crypt.

This is one big Piccadilly Circus version of an 1890 tale that only could have been made when it was, at the peak of the sexual revolution (just before the birth-control pill became available for all in the UK), but before anyone ever heard of AIDS. A gay club is not-so-subtly named The Black Cock, but the actual depiction of sex is less graphic than what the movie’s controversy (and porno-theater bookings) would suggest. In its swingin’, groovy, right-place-at-the-right-time world, this Secret is the finest interpretation of that Picture I’ve seen. —Rod Lott

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I’ve never seen a horror movie that makes me feel as anxious as having to walk past a group of unchaperoned teenagers, regardless of the situation or location. One on one, I have no problems with the adolescent set, but gathered together, I find they can be as terrifying as suddenly running into a pack of feral dogs. Hollywood has long understood the fear we “old fogies” have for those whippersnappers, and has been too happy to exploit it for excellent dramatic effect.

One of the best examples has to be Mark Lester’s Class of 1984, which has nothing to do with George Orwell’s book, but everything to do with all things awesome. In it, Perry King (TV’s Riptide) plays a handsome music teacher assigned to an urban hellhole of a high school controlled by a gang of psychopathic students whose extracurricular dabbling in drugs and prostitution are really just an excuse to indulge in what Alex DeLarge liked to call “a bit of the old ultraviolence.”

It takes about one class for King to get on the bad side of these ruffians, led by a gifted maniac played by Timothy Van Patten (Master Ninja). Unable to get any help from the school’s useless principal, the feud escalates an innocent student (a young Michael J. Fox) is stabbed and King’s pregnant wife is raped. King then proceeds to (understandably) freak the fuck out and go all Charles Bronson on the young punks’ asses in an insane showdown that’ll have you screaming “Fuck yeah!” more times than an unimaginative porn star faking her way to fame and fortune.

Definitely the best revenge flick from the ’80s that doesn’t star Linda Blair, Class of 1984 not only does for teenagers what Jaws did for oceans and Psycho did for showers, but it features a great performance by Roddy McDowell as another teacher pushed over the edge by his rowdy pupils, as well as a memorable theme song written and performed by Alice Cooper. —Allan Mott

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A brand-new groom strangles himself to death with his tie at his own wedding reception. A young woman running track experiences such a sudden jolt of speed that she literally can’t slow or stop until the bones snap out of her legs. On his wife’s 70th birthday, a man leaps through the window of their apartment building. Just before these acts, all three mention a “green monkey.” Call me crazy, but I think they just might be related.

Poison? No. Drugs? No. The Hypnotist? Hmmm … we may be on to something.

And for a while, this Japanese thriller is as well, as authorities attempt to draw the line that connects the three tragedies. What director Masayuki Ochiai does wrong is then steer the story from a procedural mystery to the supernatural element of the “creepy young girl” then so prevalent and in vogue among Asian cinema — and soon in American remakes. Even with accompanying surreal set design that suggests hiring Dr. Caligari as a contractor, what was interesting becomes unimaginative and tiresome. —Rod Lott

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