I think that, if I was born a couple of decades earlier, I would have been a pretty good hippie cult leader, you know, minus all the murder; just me and a bunch of groovy runaways, kicking back on a deserted movie set and eating out of dumpsters while trying to reach universal oneness … sounds like far-out time to me.

That’s probably why I never fully understood Charles Manson or the notorious 1969 murders he was behind; sure, you can go with the de facto notion that he’s a fucking lunatic, but he probably would have had it so much better, possibly for the rest of his life, if he hadn’t ordered his followers to go out and kill due to a record producer not wanting to record his mostly lousy tunes.

It’s a line of thought that the mediocre flick Charlie Says could get behind, I’m sure. Starring Merritt Wever as Karlene Faith, a fully invested prison teacher who comes to know Manson’s so-called girls — Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins — and their undying devotion to Charlie, who took the classic pimp-game strategy and added a skewed version of Christianity to it to give his lost followers something to believe in.

Director Mary Harron (American Psycho) does a good job of keeping the usual histrionics of the girls to a bare minimum — something many other Manson filmmakers seem to go absolutely crazy themselves with. The real sore spot of the movie is with ol’ Charlie himself, played by the flaccid Matt Smith, complete with a laughable beard and wig, but maybe that was the point.

Sadly, while the ’60s are long over and so is my chance to be a cult leader, Charlie Says is thankfully the wishful-thinking flick that tells me I would probably screw it all up just as bad — if not worse, yikes — as Manson did. Believe me: Even the most minor of power corrupts, especially in me, absolutely. —Louis Fowler

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From the Wahl Clipper Corporation, How to Choose, Grow & Style the Perfect Beard or Mustache is about welding and soldering. Ha! I kid. It’s about big, bushy collections of face pubes.

As the VHS instructional tape begins, it looks like you’re in for wacky pratfalls galore as some poor schmo gets water sprayed in his face in his own bathroom, and Home Improvement sidekick Richard Karn bursts in without knocking to save the day with a Wahl clipper! But these shenanigans last all of 30 seconds, whereupon Karn vamooses in favor of an elongated lesson facial hair lesson subtitled in Spanish. It’s kind of like back in junior high when you’d be invited to a “free” pizza “party,” only to discover you had to sit through a lecture on Jesus.

The “how-to” here is accompanied by image after image of thick-necked Bigfoot-type guys trimming their beards. One sleazeball with a bolo looks like he worked the evening shift at Radio Shack. One fat guy combs out his scraggly, multicolored beard, and I swear he was going to find bits of stew.

Then some “Draw Tippy!”-style illustrations demonstrate how a mustache and/or beard can enhance the faces of various effeminate males. You can play this game at home with one of those dime-store magnetic-dust face toys. The narrator said something about “will not leave a gummy residue,” which will do nothing to allay your fears. —Rod Lott

For me, at least, Fight Club is a wholly overrated movie. On the other hand, the Bollywood remake (reimagining?) Fight Club: Members Only, is a woefully underrated flick.

Definitely my preferred vision of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, mostly because it has little to nothing to do with Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Members Only starts off with a group of chill dudes hanging out at a college student union or possibly a mall food court, getting sudden inspiration to start an underground fight club after seeing a rather mild argument on campus.

Additionally, one of the guys tries to sing “Happy Birthday” to his dad, but dad rejects him in favor of his high-powered corporate work, which I completely understand — he’s right in the middle of a meeting, kid. To deal with this deserved rejection, his buddies take him to get down at a nightclub where the DJ plays them their own smartly choreographed theme song, conveniently preserved on scratchable wax for such occasions.

After staging a couple of these smartly choreographed fights, at different empty warehouses and abandoned pools around town — where they charge a hefty fee, mind you — they get busted by the cops, much to the dismay of various relatives, including the old uncle who runs a nightclub that’s being bullied by the local gangsters.

The guys suddenly decide to open up a Western-themed club in the middle of nowhere — still within the first 45 minutes or so of a 147 minute film — the movie buoyantly goes from Fight Club: Members Only to Road House: Members Only, which I’m still very good with, probably more than I should be.

In addition to all the catchy songs and infectious dance moves by the gang and the assorted starlets they have romantic subplots with — so many subplots — there are other great scenes that the original Fight Club could’ve deftly used, like when the guys are setting up their new nightclub to a hilarious montage of wacky behavior; I know that I didn’t see Tyler Durden accidentally spilling a can of paint on Robert Paulson’s head, and let’s be honest, it sure could’ve used it. —Louis Fowler

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After new student Sarah T.’s (Linda Blair) hopes are dashed when she fails to make it into the glee club, she begins a staggering road to faux-drunkenness in the classic made-for-TV melodrama Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic. Made at a time when open liquor was practically its own food group, it doesn’t help that Sarah walks around Hollywood with her deadbeat dad (Larry Hagman) as he’s slugging brews out of a paper cup.

Things start looking up when she duets with Mark Hamill on a Carole King song, but with congratulatory booze passed around at the wildest shindig you ever did see — they’ve got a party sub! — things get really crazy when Sarah T. smashes a plate of far too much potato salad into a rival’s chest after a rather cutting comment about Raquel Welch and how she eats all of her potato salad. While for most of us that would be a real popularity killer, but, because of her alcoholism, Sarah T. is now the most fun girl in school, especially among the chunky kids who carry their lunch in a ratty brown sack and still say “Far out!” Far out!

At home, though, things get worse as she’s not only busted for boozing while babysitting, but inadvertently get her nice old maid fired. Luckily, by the end of the film, Sarah T. goes to a teen-centered Alcoholics Anonymous and, after listening to a junior alkie spill his guts, mostly gets her life back on track — the drunken horseback-riding into oncoming traffic helped too, I’m sure.

Directed by Richard Donner in what feels like the one true sequel to The Omen — dominus tequilium — the facts about teen drinking are clumsily presented to the parents watching at home with their kids, while the kids are given plenty of great tips on how to score booze and not let Mom and Dad find out about it. Sadly, I had to learn that college. And it wasn’t booze, it was Doritos.

Just call me Louis F., I guess. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Somewhere in the Caribbean, psychotic pot farmer and arms dealer Charlie Davis (Bruce Bennett, The Alligator People) is The Fiend of Dope Island, who physically abuses the native slaves he calls his employees. (Comparisons to Michael Fassbender’s Oscar-nominated role in 12 Years a Slave are not out of line.) Meanwhile, right-hand man David (Robert Bray, My Gun Is Quick) tries to right his boss’ wrongs. Besides being the only white guy on the payroll, David stands out for wearing a yacht captain’s hat as if he’s the top half missing from an “& Tennille” marquee.

One day at the isle’s bamboo-walled cantina (and the movie’s primary set), in sashays Glory La Verne (Queen of Outer Space’s Tania Velia, billed here as “the Yugoslavian bombshell”), a shapely firecracker Charlie has hired to perform hoochie-coochie dances for his viewing pleasure to the point of literal exhaustion for her — a weakened state making it all the easier for him to attempt rape.

Although directorial duties fell to oater specialist Nate Watt (Hopalong Cassidy Returns, et al.), the script was co-written by Bennett, who sure gave himself a meaty part as the antagonist. Seeing him bark orders — each punctuated with the crack of his trusty whip — is one thing, but Bennett is at his ham-hock best during the dance numbers, maniacally laughing and feverishly bongoing his way into an orgiastic frenzy as Glory shakes her groove thang. Dope Island may be nothing more than a melodrama, but his Reefer Madness-styled overdelivery infuses the picture with a nutty flavor, kicking it over into the stuff of many a men’s adventure magazine cover. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.