I knew I was going to dig The Black Belly of the Tarantula from the opening credits, which depict a beautiful woman, fully nude, getting a professional massage under the unmistakable bed of Ennio Morricone music. To address the title, this giallo really should have used a wasp instead of a spider, given its subject matter and midway explanation. But hell, I get it: “Tarantula” sounds way cooler and way scarier.

Anyway, the movie: Someone is killing off Italy’s hottest naked women. We see little more than his (her?) mannequin-esque hands. This wasp (not WASP) fellow employs a one-two punch: first, a needle to the back of the neck of his victims to paralyze them, followed by a knife to the tum-tum for the kill. They’re alive and aware of the whole bloody ordeal, but physically unable to move. That’s hardcore!

Investigating the murders is Inspector Tellini, played by Giancarlo Giannini, whom I always get confused with Marcello Mastroianni, but that’s my problem, not the movie’s. Directed by Paolo Cavara (Mondo Cane), it has little wrong with it. Definitely near the top is Barbara Bach somehow managing to hide all her good parts, while all the other ladies in waiting (to die) have no such problem.

Interestingly, she’s one of three James Bond girls in the cast, alongside Thunderballer Claudine Auger and Barbara Bouchet from the 1967 version of Casino Royale. All are as Royale-y sexy as this thriller is twisted. The one scene with an actual tarantula and a pair of tongs gave me the shivers. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

After the super-hot, high-fashion model Celine (Elsa Pataky of Fast Five) disappears one night in Italy, her almost-as-hot sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner, Mrs. Roman Polanski), persuades goateed FBI inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) to help find her. In a voice that apes Columbo, he agrees, but only because he suspects she’s been abducted by a serial killer he’s there to track.

Said slayer is known as Yellow, so dubbed for his jaundiced skin that’s a shade or two away from full-on Oompa-Loompa. He’s a cabbie who dresses in a hoodie and an Axl Rose bandana. He sucks on a pacifier, reads pornographic comics and talks like Gollum. He only kills young, beautiful, young foreigners, making them ugly in various ways, like planting a hammer to a forehead. You know, the
get-shit-done stuff.

Giallo was greeted with critical scorn, but I believe if it had any other director’s name affixed but Dario Argento, response may have been better. Not that it’s great, but it’s more serviceable than your average Hollywood killer thriller. Plus, all of the horror maestro’s signature touches are intact: vivid colors, uncomfortable close-ups, unflinching gore.

Okay, so the ending is anticlimactic, and Yellow a real goofball of a villain, but nothing so awful that Brody need bad-mouth it to the press and attempt to have his name removed from it. Of all the misbegotten projects he could have disowned after winning an Oscar — The Village, The Jacket, King Kong — and this is the one he sticks his nose up at? And that’s one prodigious beak! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

After The Beverly Hillbillies went off the air, Max Baer Jr. couldn’t find work, so we wrote and produced his own vehicle in the Southern-fried scare tale Macon County Line. The Hail Mary pass worked and, by gum, Jethro, you done made yourself a fine picture show!

Supposedly based on a true story from the early 1950s, the AIP hit follows the bad-boy Dixon brothers (real-life siblings Jesse and Alan Vint) as they drive oft-shirtless through the Deep South, up to no good. We first meet them as one is screwing someone’s old lady for six bucks, then watch as they ditch a diner check, pick up a free-spirited girl (Cheryl Waters) headed for Dallas, and have to spend some downtime in the titular Georgia site when their car suffers some mechanical failures. They’ll be lucky to leave alive.

For the first two-thirds, the film plays like a redneck quasi-comedy that might be titled The Felonious Misadventures of Cooter and Banjo. Then it takes a sharp right turn into thriller-ville as the town’s racist sheriff (Baer) gets mighty pissed when his wife is raped and murdered, and goes after the Dixons, even though they had nothing to do with it.

As the unapologetically flawed man of the law, Baer gives a great performance, as does lil’ Leif Garrett as his son, not to mention the brothers Vint. Enjoy that acting while the plot seemingly meanders, because admittedly, it takes a while before anything of significance happens. Once it does, however, it makes for some memorable, tension-filled moments that are hard to shake. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Had star Erika Christensen actually gone all the way and bared her considerable assets, Swimfan might have something to recommend. (Am I being too vague here? Apologies. I totally mean her very large boobs.) Instead, it’s a laughable, teenage take on Fatal Attraction. Its dumb title is hardly the worst thing about it.

Bring It On’s Jesse Bradford stars as Ben, a high school stud with a swimming scholarship practically sticking out the side of his Speedo and a girlfriend in the other (Roswell beanpole Shiri Appleby). One day a new girl named Madison Bell (ol’ chipmunk-cheeked Christensen) comes to school, asks him to help with her locker, fucks him in the pool to say “thanks” and then won’t leave him alone, despite Ben’s increasing protests.

Wait, so what’s the problem here? I’m thinking back to when I was in high school. And if someone as cute and curvy as Christensen wanted to have sex with me and it meant she would show up at my house to look at old pictures with my mom or instant-message me while I was doing homework, so be it. ’Tis a very small price to pay for hot, chlorinated sex.

As Madison’s behavior grows more psychotic, Ben starts to fear for his life. Yeah, and? I’m supposed to root for this jock asshole? He takes advantage of an impressionable young girl and then throws her away because he’d rather stick it to a rail-thin waitress with raccoon eyes? Sorry, folks, but I just can’t sympathize. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Despite loads of young-French-blonde nudity courtesy of then-newcomer nymph Ludivine Sagnier, François Ozon’s Swimming Pool is merely a decent movie. It’s a virtually thrill-less thriller (purposely methodical, one assumes) about a lonely mystery writer with writer’s block (Charlotte Rampling) who goes to her publisher’s summer home in France to get her creative juices flowing.

It works until his highly promiscuous daughter (Sagnier) shows up and keeps the woman up all night with her loud orgasms. Then the girl kills someone and the writer doesn’t seem to mind because it’s good plot fodder. Then, in an effort to keep the crime covered up for the sake of the book, she beds an old sweaty gardener just after he’s mowed the yard. Eeewww!

The film is nicely shot, and I didn’t dislike it, but the ending left me with a “that’s it?” feeling. If you rent the unrated version, you get to see the girl blowing a French guy while Rampling throws rocks at them.

WARNING: But if you rent the unrated version, you also get full-frontal scraggly Rampling. WARNING: No matter which version you rent, you have to see a sleazy, dumpy French guy hanging out of his black cotton underwear. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.