Thriller

Model House (2024)

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After famous model Bella Baylor (Zombeavers’ Lexi Atkins) is mowed down by a car, new and naive model Zoe (Cory Anne Roberts) is called into replacement duty on a bikini shoot. Part of that entails rooming with her fellow tanned-and-toned mannequins in a rented home which gives this film its double-meaning title of Model House.  

Their first night may prove to be the end of their days, as the pad is invaded by gun-totaling criminals in comedy and tragedy masks. The felons (Scout Taylor-Compton and Piranha 3DD’s Chris Zylka) demand the models swindle social-media followers out of a million bucks by posting a donation link to the Bella Baylor Family Foundation — a nonexistent charity that’s actually an offshore account. Do it for the ’gram. 

With Model House, music video veteran Derek Pike follows up his directorial debut, the inauspicious made-for-Lifetime Kidnapping in the Grand Canyon, with something in no danger of airing on that women-centric cable channel. Not when the models, save Zoe, are so transparently portrayed as intellectually vapid; one is all into OnlyFans, while the most insufferable has named her breasts Kylie and Kendall … and can’t wait to show them. 

Recently seen trespassing across another suburban threshold in A Creature Was Stirring, Taylor-Compton may be top-billed, but Model House’s blueprint showcases Roberts (an actual contestant on TV’s America’s Next Top Model) in her first movie role. While competent, she and the others are helpless to keep the whole thing from being stolen by Randy Wayne (Hellraiser: Judgment), also one of the producers, in an amusing recurring bit as an in-denial ex. 

Although slickly made, the movie isn’t successful. Pike’s own script fails him by going serious after a casually comedic, playfully self-aware setup suggesting a twist on the Slumber Party Massacre template. What follows is not that, but paint-by-numbers content nearly as tedious as the influencers it depicts. Pike shot this modestly budgeted thriller in the cost-effective environs of Oklahoma City. That the Sooner State capital is passed off as Los Angeles is hysterical, considering how only about four people dot the street. If you’re willing to buy that, perhaps you’ll swallow the rest? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

Blackwater Lane (2024)

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Driving one stormy night, university professor Cass Anderson (Minka Kelly, 2011’s The Roommate) passes a car on the roadside. Behind the wheel, a woman appears asleep, so Cass continues toward home. The next morning, she learns the woman was not only dead, but murdered!

Soon after, strange figures appear in and outside the mega mansion in which Cass and her husband (Dermot Mulroney, Scream IV) live. She receives mysterious phone calls ridden with static. Worse, she seems not to remember things that others in her immediate circle — like her best friend (Maggie Grace, The Hurricane Heist) — do. 

Guilt? Haunting? Something else? 

At its foundation, Blackwater Lane is built on the reliable structure of Gothic fiction: the hysterical woman with creaky mansion to match. This house, so big it practically has a moat, is in a remodeling phase (no word If that includes yellow wallpaper), so plastic tarps make the place feel anything but homey. Donning an array of cozy turtlenecks and high-thread nightgowns, Kelly wears the imperiled-wife role well. She’s a better actress than she’s given credit for. Now that she’s aged out of the ingenue phase of her career — you know, back when she was the stuff of lad mags like Stuff — perhaps others can see that. 

Although it’s based closely on The Breakdown, a 2017 novel by B.A. Paris, Blackwater Lane reminds me of other movies — specifically, of Psychosis, a Charisma Carpenter vehicle with similar themes, and generally, made-for-cable thrillers of the early ’90s. That latter group is not necessarily a bad thing when its members include Frank Darabont’s Buried Alive, Mick Garris’ Psycho IV: The Beginning, Tobe Hooper’s I’m Dangerous Tonight and Phedon Papamichael’s (who?) Sketch Artist — high-gloss pulp trash one and all, each watchable, of course. 

The major problem is this mystery from Jeff Celentano (1998’s Gunshy) is a half-hour too long for a solution not just so easily sussed out by Act 2’s dawn, but teased obliviously ad nauseam thereafter, underestimating viewers’ intelligence. On the page, its machinations likely aren’t the giveaways that the visual medium can’t help but highlight. Then again, I haven’t read the book. Maybe bromidic dialogue like “Well, it’s a mistake. She’s mistaken!” comes straight from the source? —Rod Lott

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Comedy

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990)

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When a group of bikers kill an occultist during a satanic ritual, the occultist transfers his spirit into a damaged motorcycle left behind by the bikers, creating the titular vehicle. Why is the occultist’s spirit a vampire? “Why not?” the filmmakers retort. This movie isn’t exactly meant to make sense so much as make you laugh and entertain you, goals it achieves in spades.

Written by Mycal Miller and John Wolskel, and directed by Dirk Campbell, I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle centers on Noddy (Neil Morrissey), who buys the possessed bike, unaware of its vampiric tendencies. Noddy lives with his girlfriend (Amanda Noar), whom he lies to about its price, establishing their relationship as totally healthy.

The motorcycle’s first victim is Noddy’s friend Buzzer (Daniel Peacock), who steals its fuel cap for unknown reasons (perhaps he’s simply a kleptomaniac?). The motorcycle doesn’t take kindly to this theft, and makes a bloody mess of Buzzer in retribution. This leads Noddy to contact Inspector Cleaver (Michael Elphick), a man who reeks of garlic — a gag that, without giving too much away, pays off in the end). It also leads to a nightmare Noddy has about Buzzer and a talking turd (really).

It should be clear Vampire Motorcycle is more comedy than horror, but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in horror elements. Namely, the film is super gory, as the bloodsucking bike racks up a higher body count than Christine or any other possessed-vehicle movie could ever dream of. It also features an ass-kicking priest played by C-3PO himself, Anthony Daniels, that predates Peter Jackson’s iteration of the character in Braindead (aka Dead Alive) by two years. If you’re a fan of that film, as well as the Evil Dead movies — or any other pictures that trade in splatter for laughs — you’ll no doubt love I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. —Christopher Shultz

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Action

Chameleons (1989)

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Mere months after Tim Burton’s Batman dominated not just the box office, but American cultural consciousness, ABC responded with Chameleons, a pilot movie for a new superhero series directly influenced by the Dynamic Duo. Just swap out Batman for one Captain Chameleon, replace Robin with the Paraclete of Justice, trade in the Batmobile for the Car-meleon and, well, there’s a reason you’ve never heard of this. 

Dozens, actually — only one of which has the nation wondering what a goddamn Paraclete is. 

In his last feature, swashbuckling legend Stewart Granger (1950’s King Solomon’s Mines) plays elderly publishing magnate Jason Carr, who moonlights as the Paraclete of Justice … but not for long, as black-robed, computer-voiced cult members kill him, staging his death as a heart attack “in bed with a sleazy hooker.” 

Carr’s sanitarium-patient granddaughter, Shelly (Crystal Bernard, Slumber Party Massacre II), investigates with the occasional help of Captain Chameleon (Marcus Gilbert, Army of Darkness). To justify his name, CC dons an invisibility cape and changes his costume’s color with the turn of a belt buckle that looks like a Trivial Pursuit piece with all six wedges filled. Presumably unrelated to lizard camouflage, he also ziplines to jaunty harpsichord music. Meanwhile, Shelly conducts undercover work posing as a prostitute. 

From prolific TV creator Glen A. Larson (Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, et al.), Chameleons is woefully out of touch. It’s like Larson’s knowledge of superheroes began and ended with Archie Comics’ Pureheart the Powerful. Bernard’s Shelly is all curls and homespun homilies, like a proto-Reba. 

As a result, no one cared; a series did not follow. Karma, Chameleons. —Rod Lott

Martial Arts

House of Traps (1982)

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Pay no attention to House of Traps’ opening narration, which throws more names than at viewers than its actors hurl metal darts and spears. The multigenerational mishmash of backstory gets spewed so quickly, not even Rain Man could keep up.

Ultimately, this is all that matters:
• House of Traps indeed features a house of traps.
• It’s a Shaw Brothers production.

At the heavily guarded House of Traps, a stolen jade horse is hidden alongside other purloined treasures of the imperial court. Everybody wants to get their hands on that horsey booty. To do so, they “only” need to ascend the levels of the foreboding abode, so named for such automated amenities as — ADT, take note! — floor spikes, razor stairs, swinging blades, sliding walls, pop-up jails and something called the “deadly copper net trap,” which might send a rush of blood to Jigsaw’s crotch.

Speaking of cocks, one gets slammed onto a bed of nails. Speaking of animals, the fighters all have cool names like Black Fox and River Rat. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a character stands on the side of good or evil; if a voice sounds in urgent need of a deliciously soothing Luden’s, that’s a telltale sign for “villain.”

With martial arts movies, I’m most drawn to those with unique concepts. From that standpoint, House of Traps is tough to beat. From Crippled Masters to Five Deadly Venoms, director Chang Cheh made this style his bread and butter. While generously demoing the lethal devices throughout, he saves the bulk for the third-act showdown. Needless to say, it’s a real ass-kicker!

As usual, characters dine at a restaurant where wine is kept in what may as well be an outdoor planter, and there’s also an old man with a beard so uncomfortably long and wispy, it could double as a crumb duster. Unique to this film, he’s terrified by comedy and tragedy theatrical masks, as well as acts of turtle magic. —Rod Lott

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