Mystery

Ring of Fear (1954)

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Now that circuses have been shamed out of existence, members of the next generation may be curious what they missed. On the basis of Ring of Fear, a good third of which is circus footage, not a damn thing.

As he does in the Abbott and Costello jungle jam, Africa Screams, top-billed circus mogul Clyde Beatty plays his charisma-free self, bringing (per the credits) “the entire Clyde Beatty Circus” to town. The citizens are agog at Beatty’s arrival, as if they’re getting a Costco.

Paying particular attention to the news is Dublin O’Malley (Sean McClory, The Day of the Wolves), Beatty’s former “ring director,” now in a mental institution following an unexplained incident in Iwo Jima. Dublin talks to a photograph of Beatty’s trapeze artist, Valerie (Marian Carr, Kiss Me Deadly); once upon a time, she returned Dublin’s now-delusionary pining.

Informed Valerie’s now married to a “top aerialist,” Dublin punches his way out of the asylum and, hopefully, back into her heart. (It’s tough to blame the poor chap once we finally see Valerie in all her animal-print voluptuousness.) Dublin’s plan is to get rehired with Beatty’s circus … and then sabotage it from within by rigging the big cat rope to force “accidents,” preferably fatal. For help, he recruits Twitchy (Emmett Lynn, Skirts Ahoy!), an illiterate clown.

As injuries pile past the point of coinkydink, Beatty’s right-hand man (Pat O’Brien, Billy Jack Goes to Washington) hires an investigator, bestselling mystery novelist Mickey Spillane, playing bestselling mystery novelist Mickey Spillane. Never mind asking a practitioner of detective fiction to solve a crime is like soliciting Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James for a blowjob, because Spillane has more screen presence than any cast member, save Carr.

Produced by John Wayne, this CinemaScope programmer is directed with indifference by James Edward Grant (the Duke’s Angel and the Badman) and improbably by the legendary William Wellman (1937’s A Star Is Born), sans credit. All the pedigree can’t make up for three-ring crowd shots bumping next to blurry stock footage, ridiculous dialogue (“You stupid, unconscious blithering idiot, you!”), weak acting by lead McClory and weakest acting by Beatty, whose bewildering response to a death is a toothy grin and shake of the head.

Also unable to save Ring of Fear from a pedestrian fate? The Thing from Another World’s Kenneth Tobey, any number of Flying Wallendas and Pedro the Kangaroo. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

London in the Raw (1964)

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In examining the Swinging Sixties’ shift on England’s capital, the narrator of the mondomentuary London in the Raw posits, “Can anything shake a city like London?” Let’s use a stripped-down version of the scientific method to test that hypothesis.

Sample data captured by a roving camera includes gamblers, prostitutes, health nuts, tin whistlers, fez wearers, belly dancers, nude models, scamming barflies, drink-recycling barkeeps, Whisky a’GoGo clubgoers, acupuncture patients and hobos rendered unintelligible by cough syrup.

Particular attention has been paid to a bald man undergoing a hair transplant in bloody, trypophobic, punch-excision detail. However grotesque, it’s nothing compared to the dirty beatniks dining on moist cat food straight from the can. Then, tired from his intrepid reportage — or perhaps giving up on topping that — Arnold Louis Miller (Take Off Your Clothes and Live) turns his research into a filmed pub crawl, complete with full song performances from jazz singers.

After a thorough review and parsing of data collected, I conclude that the city of London cannot be shaken, but it can be lulled to sleep, no matter the number of nipples. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

WatchUsDie.com (2001)

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On the website WatchUsDorm.com, seven sexy supposed co-eds have their every move livestreamed 24/7 to the delight of chronic masturbators everywhere.

And in the movie WatchUsDie.com, the WatchUsDorm.com vacancy rate increases by one as a Noh-masked killer dispatches them, bimbo by bimbo. It’s the opportune time for new girl Brenna (one-timer Jennifer Cooper) to move in, seeing how she’s secretly a journalist going undercover to write a juicy exposé.

With Bambi eyes and an open mouth suggesting a constant mental state of golly-gee-willikers, Brenna joins a Noah’s Ark of i-candy, including an Asian massage therapist, a French maid, a fortune teller, a master of Conan the Barbarian-style swordplay and, saving the breast for last, a stripper named Amber Coldbath (because Amber Coldshower is too on-the-nose?). Played by Playboy Cyber Girl (remember those?) Amy Miller with so much boop-oop-a-doop that even Judy Landers would cringe, Amber is a Bill Ward cartoon in human form, dutifully prancing around in push-up bra and silk panties like a more bubbly (yet more coherent) Anna Nicole. She and the others are introduced to viewers by onscreen text that’s part Playmate Data Sheet, part spy dossier and all TMI.

As the murders occur, frat boys, perspiring incels and concerned Billie Bird types remain glued (but by what?) to their monitors. (How they manage to see anything on the pixelated, postage stamp-sized feed captured from angles befitting bank security cameras, one-time director Ryan Woo doesn’t address.) From strategically placed high heels to electricity-rigged hot tubs, who’s responsible for these instruments of doom? Could it be Even (Doug Blimline), the himbo handyman? Or the owner, the greasy goombah they call Falconer (Peter Vita)? Only the team of Agatha Christie and Joe Francis know for sure.

Just kidding — it’s exactly who Woo and Keith W. Strandberg (screenwriter of the No Retreat, No Surrender trilogy) set it up to be, right along with the awkward underlining of Breena’s otherwise outta-nowhere sign-language skills. That’s how foreshadowing works.

If WatchUsDie weren’t so harebrained in construction and execution that it comes off like its own parody, its icky invite to delight in the ladies’ looks as much as the way they look with their face bashed against bath tile, viewing might require a shower afterward — and not the Coldshower kind. Enjoy the film on that level, because there is no suspense beyond whether the dial-up modem in the opening credits will drop its connection.

Wait, that’s not entirely true; I kinda wanted to see if Miller would lose playing Strip Clue. —Rod Lott

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Action

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1992)

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The first two Maniac Cop flicks, while not great cinema, are pretty fun movies to waste the afternoon with. But Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence? Yeesh!

Mere hours after Matt Cordell, the undead maniac cop in question, is laid to rest, he’s resurrected by a voodoo priest for reasons never fully explained. Now Cordell skulks around corners and other badly lit areas for much of the film.

That leaves us with Robert Davi, back as Detective McKinney, throwing around terrible one-liners and even worse come-ons, mostly to an anonymous doctor treating his cop friend — and maniac cop paramour — who was recently shot by, of all people, Jackie Earle Haley and his pharmacist girlfriend.

Before you can scream “What the hell is going on here!” at your television set, somehow Davi and the doctor end up on city streets with Cordell driving a flaming machine of vehicular death. The film’s main selling point, while at first is pretty cool, wears out its welcome out after a repetitive few minutes as the running time is stretched as far as it can possibly go.

Over the course of my life, I had many chances to watch this Cop entry and never did, as something always seemed “off” about it. Apparently, I was right: The rights were bought up by the absolutely terrible Joel Soisson, with a threadbare plot by Larry Cohen — written while he was driving! — and not directed by William Lustig, who walked off after a day of shooting. It’s now credited to Alan Smithee.

In the end, the only people looking like they’re having any fun are Davi and the Maniac Cop, Robert Z’Dar. If I needed something positive to say, good for them. I hope those paychecks were all right, even though I doubt it. —Louis Fowler

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Horror

The Oracle (1985)

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A year before Witchboard bewitched enough audiences to beget follow-ups and facsimiles, Roberta Findlay (Tenement) summoned similiar subject matter in The Oracle, but with nary a witch nor a board. Here, the evil antique in question appears to be the painted hand of a child mannequin clutching a calligraphy feather long enough to have been plucked from Captain Hook’s hat. Preloaded with ink, it scrawls simple messages from the beyond (e.g., “Help me” and “Nooo”) onto stationery. Its penmanship is ghastly.

When mousy housewife Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) finds it in the basement of her apartment building, the label on her overalls is practically her reaction: “OshKosh B’Gosh.” The kindly Italian maintenance man (Chris Maria De Koron, in full “I make-a the pizza!” mode) encourages her to keep it, not realizing it will ruin Christmas for her and her asshole husband (Scrambled Feet’s Roger Neil, who looks like an attempt to clone Tom Atkins at a Duane Reade photo counter).

After Jennifer communicates with the spirit world, results include a poltergeist tantrum, a runaway car, animalistic snarls in the elevator, claws emerging from the trash chute, things glowing Listerine-green — not coincidentally, all fit Findlay’s threadbare norm. That’s hardly a negative; rather, the in-camera action allows The Oracle to hit the sweet spot of ’80s indie horror, goofball faults and all.

Ending excepted, the money shot comes when a character stabs his own arms as he hallucinates them covered by tiny creatures — unmoving rubber things from a kid’s Fright Factory set (ages 8+, batteries not included). That Findlay puts more of her stamp on the single scene she could graft onto a porno — a hooker slaughtered by an androgynous killer (Pam La Testa, Findlay’s Blood Sisters) — says how little she cares for the horror genre. However, as framed by her XXX Liquid A$$ets collaborator R. Allen Leider, the story beams are just solid enough to overcome the director’s evident disdain.

For someone who never acted before or since, Powers brings what matters most: lungs. Has anyone ever screamed more on film? Hopefully a few of her cries were for a lozenge (“Riiiicolaaa!“), because they clearly weren’t asking for less dowdy dresses that didn’t look swiped from a community college production of Anne of Green Gables. —Rod Lott

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