Kitchen Sink

Side Show (1981)

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WTF

Lance Kerwin, God rest his soul, was the master of losing his virginity on prime-time TV: first on a controversial episode of the celebrated James at 15 series, then again in the rightly uncelebrated telepic Side Show. (Did he ball a vampire in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot? My memory’s not what it used to be.)

With an open mouth forever stuck on flabbergasted mode, Kerwin plays Nick, a 16-year-old runaway and puppeteer with a killer Jimmy Durante impression right down to the last “ha-cha-cha-cha.” Back when those were marketable skills, that’s enough to earn him a spot in the traveling circus. In the freak show tent of the traveling circus, that is, but a job’s a job — and then some, with the fringe benefit of seduction by the luscious, post-Scorchy (and grown adult) Connie Stevens!

Directed by actor William Conrad after his long run on Cannon, Side Show offers little for viewers to grasp between the murder occurring in the final stretch and Nick’s intro (via Red Buttons, When Time Ran Out …) to his co-workers: the tall lady, the fat lady, the snake lady, the tattooed lady, the sword swallower, the man with no face and a little-people couple with the last name Tiny. With respect to the latter, the movie’s big conflict is whether Nick can finagle a reunion with their normal-sized son so the Tinys can meet their granddaughter. Can your nerves stand it?

Pay no attention to the entirely misleading VHS box art that sells this particularly low-wattage melodramatic number as some kind of slasher. Its horrors are, at best, the clowns, trained chimps and Stevens’ soon-abandoned Hungarian accent. Still, in concept, Side Show gives producers Sid and Marty Krofft their version of Freaks. Just don’t expect the brothers to employ their usual brand of Saturday-psychedelia disturbia, ladies and gentlemen — neither the encephalitic H.R. Pufnstuf nor the monstrosities of D.C. Follies. —Rod Lott

Horror

Close Calls (2017)

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While Dad’s out dining with his bitchy new girlfriend, troubled teenaged girl Morgan is grounded and home alone — well, almost home alone, if not for her invalid grandmother. 

So the prodigiously chested Morgan (Jordan Phipps, Amazon Hot Box) ditches her shirt immediately and hangs out in a red bra. Between bong rips and asthma inhaler hits, she receives creepy, increasingly obscene phone calls, likely from her incel stalker. 

The sitter-in-peril flick is an exploitation staple. Close Calls may be the only one to dare go this far. I don’t mean in content; I mean in literal running time. 

Look, as a heterosexual male, let me say unequivocally that I love boobs. But let me also say unequivocally there is no reason — none! Not even those! — for Close Calls to play out for 128 minutes. On one hand, I get that writer/director Richard Stringham (who also worked with Phipps on that year’s 10/31 anthology) would want to showcase his lovely leading lady and her special effects as much as possible. The camera placement makes that clear, especially when her face isn’t even in frame.

On the other, needless scenes litter and clutter the movie — often a problem of directors making the leap from shorts to their first feature, which is the case with Close Calls. It needs to be tight in order to be taut. For example, what does a scene of Morgan pleasuring herself add? Nothing, except for the squish-squish-squish SFX, which are more than a bit much.

So is that twist ending, which emerges from nowhere and goes to the same place. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Knight Chills (2001)

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If you think watching people play Dungeons & Dragons is boring, Knight Chills would like to have a word with you. Now, you’re correct and the shot-on-video movie is dead wrong, but Knight Chills wants a word nonetheless. It’s either not listening or doesn’t care an iota. You’re going to see some serious, no-move-spared RPGing, dammit.

Once a week, a handful of students meet for D&Ding in the basement of a teacher (Tim Jeffrey) who doubles as dungeon master: “The scent of nutmeg is overwhelming.” John (Michael Rene Walton, Superfights) is one of the regulars, despite being openly ridiculed and bullied by the others. John’s dogged attendance might have something to do with fellow gamer Brooke (Laura Tidwell) looking like a layaway-plan Jessica Chastain.

After Brooke soundly rejects John’s date offer in front of the others, he dons the full regalia — from armor to sword — of his gaming character, Sir Kallio, and embarks on a killing spree of vengeance. Even with “Sir Kallio” being a name one shouldn’t speak in the presence of others, Knight Chills’ premise is terrific for a slasher movie, yet near-instantly squandered by first-/last-time director Katherine Hicks.

Although each kill is different, milady, that variety across homicides isn’t enough to offset the mind-numbing scenes of seemingly eternal game play. The scent of something is overwhelming, all right, but it sure ain’t nutmeg. Zero hit points. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Godzilla 1985 (1985)

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With a revisit of Godzilla 1985, the biggest question isn’t why it took Toho more than a decade to bring the king of the monsters back from retirement. The biggest question also isn’t why it ignores the 14 sequels following the 1954 original Godzilla. Rather, the biggest question is why the opening introduces some kind of flying tick the size of an Igloo ice chest, only for it to never reappear.

At least that’s my biggest question. More serious G-fans may wonder otherwise, like, “This was the first Godzilla movie you saw in full?” It sure was! Before I could drive, it took some convincing for my mom to rent it for me. New World Pictures’ VHS release had Marv Newland’s immortal Bambi Meets Godzilla cartoon playing upfront, too.

But to answer the inquiries posed in paragraph one: Who cares when Raymond Burr is back! Returning for the first and last time since the Americanized franchise-starter, Burr (Gorilla at Large) is the barrel-chested newspaperman Steven (née Steve) Martin. Also returning: Godzilla, re-emerging in Japan after all these years, taking out a Russian sub in the process. The Russkies blame the U.S., not the big lizard, thereby stoking nuclear fears.

As the lone Western Hemisphere-based survivor of Godzilla’s initial stampede three decades prior — you know, before the world discovered color — Martin is summoned to the Pentagon as an adviser. The Pentagon is played by a darkened room, plus one hallway to allow for product placement for Dr Pepper, so misunderstood.

That’s about all the “story” Godzilla 1985 requires. The Japanese authorities employ bird chirps to lure our favorite kaiju into a volcano; luckily, Godzilla takes a detour to stomp the shit out of downtown Tokyo first — the film’s raison d’être. Having previously performed assistant duties on King Kong vs. Godzilla and others, director Koji Hashimoto understands his simple mission and rises to the occasion: Showcase the nice model work and get out of the way.

By contrast, the Burr/Pentagon/American footage handled by R.J. Kizer (Hell Comes to Frogtown) is all passive spectatorship. However, it does allow for the introduction of, despite his red hair, a U.S. military major (Travis Swords, Pink Cadillac) who milks his second-banana status for all it’s worth. For example, while monitoring the sitch in Japan, he notes, “That’s quite an urban renewal program they’ve got going over there.” He’s not wrong. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.

Thriller

Mute Witness (1995)

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Considered a “lost classic” of sorts, Anthony Waller’s 1995 horror-thriller, Mute Witness, is now enjoying a renaissance.

A slick, Hitchcockian genre-bender, the narrative follows Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute makeup artist working on a low-budget slasher in Moscow alongside her sister, Karen (Fay Ripley), and Karen’s director boyfriend, Andy (Evan Richards). The movie’s opening scene is a brilliant film-within-a-film, whereby we see a woman terrorized by a knife-wielding escapee from a mental institution — a clear and gentle lampooning of slasher conventions that continues throughout Mute Witness, making it another meta title before Scream made the convention cool a year later.

The plot really picks up when Billy gets accidentally locked inside the film studio for the night. She hears men speaking Russian and, moving toward them, spies cameraman Lyosha (Sergei Karlenkov) and actor Arkadi (Igor Volkov) shooting a porno with a blonde actress (Larisa Khusnullina). Billy watches, at first amused, but when the action turns violent, she becomes worried. That’s when Arkadi pulls a knife from under a pillow and brutally stabs the actress to death, prompting Billy to silently scream in terror and run. She hits a coat rack on her way out of the room, making just enough noise to alert Lyosha and Arkadi that someone might’ve been watching them make their snuff film.

What follows is a classic slasher chase scene, with the men searching the building for their interloper, and Billy craftily hiding from them as she looks for a way out. It’s an extended and tense sequence executed with expertise by Waller, and it’s only a precursor to the delightful twists and turns the film packs into its hour-and-a-half runtime.

Mute Witness isn’t just a wild ride in terms of its action, it’s also by turns hilarious, in particular when involving scenes with Andy, the inept and spoiled American filmmaker whose constant gaslighting of Billy generates uncomfortable forms of horror all its own. There’s also a “Mystery Guest Star” who shows up about midway through, whose role is brief but delightfully memorable. The plot may thicken a little too much for some viewers, making the proceedings a bit convoluted, but if you remember that the point is loving homage (and sometimes spoof), rather than to create a thoroughly serious slasher-mystery-thriller, then you’re bound to have a good time with the film. —Christopher Shultz

Get it at Amazon.

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