From Japan’s venerated Daiei studio, Yasuzô Masumura’s Irezumi wastes no time in setup, as young lovers Shinsuke and Otsuya run away from their village to elope against parental wishes. Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa, Navy Yokosuka Prison) is a lowly apprentice to a pawnbroker; Otsuya (Ayako Wakao, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo ) is that pawnbroker’s daughter, arranged to marry another man. To hide for the night, they stay at an inn run by Shinsuke’s friend Gonji (Fujio Suga, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons).

Happily ever after? Hardly. Gonji hires an assassin to kill Shinsuke and sells Otsuya to the wonderful world of prostitution. Her pimp (Asao Uchida, Samurai Reincarnation) orders a tattooist (Gaku Yamamoto, Zatoichi and the Chess Expert) to chloroform Otsuya and ink her back. He does just that, pouring his literal soul into an elaborate, shoulder-to-shoulder tat of an orb-weaving spider bearing a woman’s fanged head — the Peeing Calvin of the samurai era, I’m sure. When she awakes, he tells her the spider will gorge on the corpses of her lusty clients.

Boy, won’t the memoirs of this geisha be something else!

Although definitely categorizable as a “weird tale,” Irezumi never becomes what you expect it be, so don’t come looking for horror. Even with the obvious influence of Edgar Allan Poe — and, in turn, Edogawa Rampo, whose Blind Beast Masumura would adapt within three years — the stab-happy film stops shy of entering Kwaidan territory, instead taking the guise of melodrama and dipping itself into a vat of the perverse. Fantastical elements are lined up, but never called onto the field; the spider supposedly moves and grows with each kill, but Masumura ladles not even half a teaspoon of the supernatural. At least Hikaru Hayashi’s eerie musical score finally finds a visual match in the chilling penultimate shot.

Regardless of expectations, the vibrantly colored Irezumi is well worth the watch, as picturesque as Wakao is luminous. Her progressive performance provides the magic at which the script continually winks. —Rod Lott

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If you ever needed proof that watching teenagers engaging in unmarried intercourse is actually quite boring, here’s The Blue Lagoon for you and your pervert eyes.

Because I vaguely remember watching it as a small child with my parents in the early ’80s, I have occasionally flashed back to various scenes throughout my life, most notably the ingestion of deadly berries on a boat. (I don’t know why Mom and Dad were watching it so often. I hope because it was there on HBO and they were too lazy to change the channel. I hope.)

Sometime in the 1800s, on a boat bound for America, a fire breaks out. Two kids and a salty-dog seaman escape, only to land on a barren paradise filled with plenty of coconuts and bananas, with only the ominous drumming from a nearby tribe to keep them company when the old man dies of bloated drunkenness.

Thankfully, he taught the young boy — who grows up to be Christopher Atkins — how to make shelter and fish while the young girl — who grows up to be a still very young Brooke Shields — learns how to pout when things don’t go her way. Of course, as they get older, sex is discovered — taking up just as much of the film as the waterlogged swimming scenes — and a child is had, leading to most hilarious scenes of terrible parenting.

Directed by Grease’s Randal Kleiser, The Blue Lagoon was the start of what I’m terming his filmography’s “sandy vagina” trilogy, which included the worse Summer Lovers and North Shore. He eventually executive-produced the 1991 sequel, Return to the Blue Lagoon, a movie starring Milla Jovovich that I’m sure is far worse unless, of course, some zombies show up. I seriously doubt it. —Louis Fowler

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Frank Zappa was an absolute teetotaler in his life, apparently never once drinking alcohol or taking drugs. After viewing 200 Motels, his surrealist document of life on the road, it’s hard to believe that. Of course, as someone who never does those things either, maybe I would say that?

The portly Theodore Bikel is a mischievous master of ceremonies who narrates the story from inside an obvious sound studio while Ringo Starr, portraying Larry the Dwarf portraying Zappa himself, runs around creating all kinds of irritable mischief for the scraggly band, the Mothers of Invention.

Once the group lands in the fake (as it’s often referred to) town of Centerville, they get beaten up in a redneck bar, become part of an animated dental hygiene films, sexually harass topless groupies (who, honestly, seem to like the attention) and deal with Who drummer Keith Moon as a sexually aroused nun, true to form.

Of course, what’s really remembered about this film — if it is truly remembered — is possibly for the many musical interludes, often performed by Turtles founders Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They’re more than happy to take part in the cinematic debauchery, performing tunes like “Mystery Roach,” “Magic Fingers” and “Strictly Genteel,” backed by an obviously embarrassed London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Zappa’s music — and filmmaking, apparently — is a mishmash of genius-level idiocy, perfectly trolling the music world for, mostly, the 1970s. 200 Motels definitely reaches those somewhat lofty ambitions and then artistically smashes them with a mallet, probably for a song about pubic hair or something. —Louis Fowler

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Spring is here, and with the sights and sounds of rebirth — flowers blooming, birds chirping, anxious masses clamoring for vaccinations — come thoughts of baseball … well, at least if you happen to be a baseball fan. Any buff of the once-upon-a-time national pastime can rattle off their favorite baseball pictures, but how many know 1953’s Big Leaguer?

As light as a Wiffle ball and as pleasantly bland as a box of Cracker Jack, Big Leaguer marks a curious debut for director Robert Aldrich, who would go on to make some of the cruelest pictures of the 1950s and ’60s, including Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Dirty Dozen. But constrained by a modest budget and cliché-riddled screenplay, Aldrich let his decidedly less misanthropic side out to play.

To play ball, specifically. The setting is a Florida training camp for the New York Giants, where former third baseman John “Hans” Lobert, played by Edward G. Robinson, has the task of shepherding through a crop of 17- to 22-year-olds – none of whom, by the way, look younger than 28 — harboring big-league dreams.

But it feels petty to quibble about a dearth of age-appropriate actors — or a notable lack of Black baseballers, for that matter — when there is a bounty of stock characters. The prospects include wisecracking Julie (William Campbell), cocky pitcher Bobby (Richard Jaeckel) and gangly nice guy Tippy (Bill Crandall), who is living in the shadow of his ex-first baseman father. Vaguely patronizing comic relief is provided by Chuy (Lalo Rios), a friendly Cuban forever consulting his trusty book of English translation.

The most promising athlete of all is handsome Adam Polachuk (minor leaguer-turned-actor Jeff Richards), but the West Virginian’s near-constant brooding hints at deeper secrets. “From the moment he hit camp with the other kids,” says our sports reporter narrator (Paul Langton), “he was what the folks in baseball call a loner.” As coincidence would have it, even us laypeople know what a loner is. Hans’ pretty niece, Christy (Vera-Ellen), strikes up a romance with Adam and offers tough love to her beau.

Will Hans find that talented rookie who will have them cheering at the Polo Grounds? Will Tippy step out from the shadow of his dad? Will Adam cheer the eff up? Big Leaguer breaks no new ground, but its breezy disposition and hokey-but-agreeable tropes feel as warm and snug as a favorite catcher’s mitt. Robinson gets a chance to swing a bat and wax philosophically, stopping a card game to muse on what it means to be 18. “When you’re 18, you’re tomorrow morning,” Hans muses, gazing off into the distance. “You’re the world giving yourself another chance.”

Even Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell pops up for a cameo. Keep your expectations at double-A level and Big Leaguer is a ground rule double. —Phil Bacharach

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Not based on the same-named Prince song in which the Prince of Funk meets her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine, Darling Nikki is a transparent allegory of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, dripping in Day-Glo.

As played by co-writer/co-producer Nicole D’Angelo, Nikki works on a sexy cooking show called Edible Desires. She’s kind of like its Vanna White, if Pat Sajak were allowed to put things in her mouth. She’s also a loving girlfriend to the brilliant Ethan (Donnie Darko’s James Duval, here for name value), who’s very busy working on “something with binary sound waves.” And she’s also a prostitute, whose madame (Elana Krausz, 2017’s Ghost House) talks to a dog statue in her backyard.

“I knew you’d be quite popular,” the madame says as Nikki tucks a dirty wad of foreign bills into her cleavage. “Your parents would be so proud. If only they could see you now.” Indeed! Cue the montage of Nikki with various johns and fellow ladies, engaging in group sex, drinking champagne, having tickle fights, dancing in lingerie, being denied slices of Hickory Farms salami and, most unfortunately for the viewer, eating creamed corn in extreme close-up.

After being violently raped and left foaming at the mouth by a “mean man” some people call Maurice (Steve Polites, 2017’s Dementia 13), Nikki stumbles into an alternate reality. She gets there from the bathtub, thanks to what looks like a basket of Spree, adorned with the note “EAT ME.” Each time she takes one, it sparkles, sending her consciousness down the rabbit hole and to a near-death drowning once she comes to. (The movie’s “DRINK ME” equivalent is a mystery green liquid: Absinthe? Listerine? Hi-C Ecto Cooler?)

In the dreamworld, Nikki is dressed as a scorching-hot vixen version of Disney’s animated Alice. There, she encounters a giggling cat man who licks milk and himself, watches guys in drag and uses the flying guillotine. Back in the real world, events are hardly more lucid: While a celebratory Ethan has cracked the riddle of whatever he’s been doing with those pesky binary sound waves, Nikki’s having a flashback-cum-breakdown over being forced to eat cat food.

As with the other works of enigmatic director Gregory Hatanaka (Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance), Darling Nikki marks an unofficial-family affair, using his regular players and co-conspirators; chief among them is the ambitious D’Angelo, increasingly a behind-the-scenes player in Hatanaka’s unnaturally prolific Cinema Epoch productions. She’s written herself a showcase for her striking beauty and an imaginative mind, but the story … well, that’s another story. So many ideas are presented to their own detriment, with none given enough attention to bear fruit — perhaps impossible in an abbreviated showtime of 62 minutes.

Put in simplest terms, it doesn’t make any sense. Viewers are given only a sliver of a chance to get their bearings before things go — in Nikki’s own words — “batshit mental-ward crazy.” As with Hatanaka/D’Angelo’s Heartbeat (one of seven collaborations in 2020 alone), overstuffing leads to delirium, as things that aren’t supposed to be funny are, and things that are supposed to be funny aren’t. That may have you wish to borrow another sentence or two from Nikki’s lips — namely, “Oh, enough of this nonsense. … How do I get out here?” — but please, resist that urge. Though baffling and quarter-baked it may be, an earnestness shines through akin to charm. Or something with binary sound waves. —Rod Lott

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