Made for television just before the disaster subgenre began to collapse, Mayday at 40,000 Feet! — exclamation theirs — is as you would expect: a transparent wannabe member of the Airport franchise. Robert Butler, who later directed a bigger-budgeted plane-in-peril flick in 1997’s Turbulence, certainly works Mayday’s soapy suds into a lather.

On the film’s L.A.-departing flight in question, the cockpit is chock full o’ chaos. The pilot (David Janssen, Two-Minute Warning) is distracted AF with his possibly cancerous wife (Jane Powell, The Female Animal) undergoing breast surgery. The co-pilot (Christopher George, Enter the Ninja) is distracted AF after spontaneously proposing to an old flame (Margaret Blye, The Entity) among the clouds after reconnecting during the Salt Lake City layover. And the navigator (“Dandy” Don Meredith, Terror on the 40th Floor) is distracted AF by the sexy new stewardess (Airport 1975 stew Christopher Norris), even though the guys note, “she still has her baby fat.” More attentive to measurements than coordinates, he and his acts of sexual harassment make a great case for a retitling of Horny at 40,000 Feet!

And yet, the crew cries “Mayday!” after a handcuffed prisoner (Marjoe Gortner, Earthquake) manages to wrestle the gun from the old, crusty, heart attack-prone U.S. Marshal (Broderick Crawford, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover) escorting him to NYC, and promptly puts a bullet through a couple of people, as well as the lavatory wall. Oh, if only an alcoholic asshole doctor (Ray Milland, Cave In!) were aboard!

Adapted from Austin Ferguson’s novel Jet Stream, the efficiently entertaining telepic greatly benefits from Gortner’s crazed performance, closely lifting it to the theatrical atmosphere in which it wants to be. (Although I’m uncertain how Butler snuck Gortner’s uttering of the N-word past CBS’ standards and practices.) Mayday shows its seams most whenever the camera moves about the cabin, as the aircraft appears to house maybe 20 passengers. Its prime-time conception further reveals itself in external shots of the fuselage, where the production half-assedly added the fictional Transcon Airways brand with such inconsistent kerning, it reads “T R A N SCON.” Perhaps some foxy flight attendant walked by? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

The need for incel-inspirational cinema is at an all-time high and, sadly, there are only so many Jokers to go around. It’s probably the perfect time in our frayed culture to finally recognize the virginal granddaddy of all sex-denied psycho-bro flicks, 1985’s The Boys Next Door.

Starring two perfectly cast Brat Pack heartthrobs (Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield) as a pair of dudes who are sick of all the fuckin’ foreigners, fuckin’ homosexuals and fuckin’ women diseasing up their Angelino wonderland. Before you can say “Don’t tread on me,” they’re laying waste to various minorities groups all over town, mostly with an ill-advised tiger-blood smirk.

Sometime between Suburbia and Dudes, this socially irresponsible gem was surprisingly directed by Penelope Spheeris for, of course, New World Pictures. While the movie aims to have “social relevance,” it’s actually somewhat troubling as Spheeris (and screenwriters Glen Morgan and James Wong of X-Files fame) seemingly wants us to sympathize with the plight of these young white males as they shoot, stab and slam the heads of every non-straight white male they encounter.

That’s not very punk rock, guys.

Released at the absolute height of the Reagan-era “Make my day” attitude that was once a loaded gun barrel of pure machismo, today, in light of the normalization of these hateful atrocities all over America, this pair of jerk-off jokers are probably better left in their smelly dorm rooms, trolling message boards and leaving racist YouTube comments. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.