One of the more memorable sketches in 1987’s Amazon Women on the Moon comes right before the end credits: A lonely guy named Ray comes home from the video store with an unusual rental: a personalized, POV tape of a super-foxy sex bomb who speaks directly to the camera, dropping his name as she drops her clothes and writhes in bed. Now, expand those five minutes by about 2,000%, don’t play them for laughs, swap the intercourse for conversation — well, most of it — and you have Rent-a-Pal.

Set in the dawn of the 1990s, Rent-a-Pal gives us a grim look at David (Brian Landis Folkins, The Creep Behind the Camera), a middle-aged beta male in dire need of a companion. Living as a stereotype in the basement of his elderly, invalid mother’s home, he tries video dating, but finds no interested parties. In a moment of despair, he purchases a VHS tape titled Rent-a-Pal from the bargain bin. Its tagline reads, “Meet your new best friend, ‘Andy.’ He talks to you, he listens to you, he understands you.”

They forgot “He manipulates you.”

As played against type by Stand by Me’s Wil Wheaton, Andy asks questions to the watcher, followed by pauses of silence as if listening. For the socially deprived David, it’s enough. He plays the tape until he wears out the heads — and wears on our nerves — because he craves the attachment, however artificial.

Or is it? Because when David finally meets a woman (Amy Rutledge, Neighbor) who appreciates his company, and vice versa, Andy doesn’t like becoming the proverbial third wheel and makes his opinion known. What writer and first-time director Jon Stevenson does best is not revealing how much of what Andy says comes from the tape or David’s head, leaving it to us to discern. Their friendship is warped and increasingly disturbing, qualifying David for membership in the same cinematic losers’ league as Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle or Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom — initially sympathetic characters who test our loyalty as they slide down the spray-butter-slippery slope of deteriorating mental health.

From the start, Folkins earns viewers’ pity, then disdain as he starts screwing up his clear chance at the happiness eluding him for so long. Rutledge is terrific in what is essentially the Rosemarie DeWitt role of the voice of reason, and Wheaton terrifying as either the puppet master behind David’s actions or David’s imagined scapegoat for such. You be the judge. With humor as dark as its tension, Rent-a-Pal isn’t trying to win friends or influence people; the right people will click with its message and see how eerily it holds true today, subbing one technological advance for another. —Rod Lott

In the VHS bonanza, Slash Dance earned an audience on the basis of a title that rode the coattails leg warmers of Flashdance and box art that promised a flesh-filled slasher film. In reality, it’s a low-wattage thriller with zero nudity and even less welding. Well, at least they weren’t lying about the lycra.

As several actresses and dancers go missing after auditions at a shoebox of a theater, LAPD cop Tori Raines (former GLOW wrestler Cindy Maranne) goes undercover there — or at least in theory, since she fails to operate under a pseudonym — in hopes of cracking the case. As luck would have it, she is one of five ladies selected for the musical, which apparently consists of one song, sounding strikingly similar to “Alley Cat.” Prepare to hear it on what may as well be a loop, as writer/director James Shyman (Hollywood’s New Blood) includes multiple rehearsal scenes — so many that the murder-mystery aspect of the plot gets bumped to subplot status to make way for his homemade, unofficial remake of A Chorus Line.

Still, Slash Dance has a little going for it, one being Maranne’s performance. Like her by-the-book cop character, it has a just-the-facts approach that suggests she’s a total pro; whether the movie turns out shoddy, she’s going to treat it as if she were playing both Cagney and Lacey. Compare her work to Jay Richardson (Illegal Affairs) as the police captain, a role he essays with just enough — okay, more than enough — of a shit-eating grin to let viewers know he knows how this thing will turn out, so why exert more than the bare minimum, atonality be damned?

Either not getting the memo or not caring in the slightest is the second highlight, Joel Von Ornsteiner (Mutant Hunt). As Amos, the theater owner’s mentally challenged brother, he steals the show with the kind of character Ben Stiller would play in various forms across the single season (1992-93) of his late, great sketch series. With all the swagger of a Sweathog and affecting a voice that fluctuates between innocence and insolence, Amos lets loose with one unfiltered and accidental bon mot after another, from “Shouldn’t you be out wiggling your butt … and not your tongue” to “Maybe he’s out someplace looking for a place to flop his dick out.” What a feeling! —Rod Lott

Get it at Verboden Video.