Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans real estate is cheap, thereby allowing Jack (Rob Corddry, Hot Tub Time Machine) and his pregnant-with-twins wife, Vanessa (Leslie Bibb, Law Abiding Citizen) to snatch up a spacious, historic fixer-upper for a song. It’s in a neighborhood that people don’t know even exists — well, white people — but those who do have given the residence a pet name: House of Blood, on account of all the murders that have taken place there.

The threat to life comes not from outside, but from within, as the place is reputedly haunted. That would make sense, given Vanessa’s sudden bad habits and demonic vocalizations. (Pay no mind to the hairy, bloated, naked creature that attempts oral sex — that’s just a wandering patient from the nursing-care facility down the street.) Dispatched by the Vatican to exorcise Jack and Vanessa’s home are two Italian priests (co-writers/directors Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon) with a penchant for chain-smoking and orgasmic consumption of po’ boys. Says one of the holy men to our expectant parents/new homeowners, “I can assure you the devil is real … and he is a dick.”

Let it be said, as if it needed telling, that Hell Baby is a horror spoof of the possession picture, especially those involving evil children. Whether you find it successful depends less upon your tolerance for grown adults playing “catch” with a newborn and more upon that for the Garant/Lennon team, creators of TV’s Reno! 911; its theatrical spin-off, Reno! 911: Miami; and arguably the best ping-pong/kung-fu hybrid the big screen has seen, Balls of Fury — all scattershot, but with just enough hits to make the misses worthwhile. The same goes here, traversing hilarious highs and lagging lows.

As the least interesting pieces of a rather tightly contained cast, Garant/Lennon’s men of the collar are responsible for many of the misses. Stealing the show is Keegan-Michael Key (Role Models) as a friendly African-American living in Jack and Vanessa’s crawlspace; stopping it cold is Riki Lindhome (2009’s The Last House on the Left) as Vanessa’s bubbly Wiccan sister. It’s not the fault of Lindhome, a rather talent comedian, but the script. I felt embarrassed for her in her character’s introductory scene, which requires the actress to be completely, totally, full-frontal, shaved-pube nude for three minutes and no point. —Rod Lott

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Former Intelligence Counter Espionage agent Matt Helm (Dean Martin, post-Rat Pack) sees superbly stacked women everywhere: his dreams, his morning bath, his breakfast — hell, everywhere. So omnipresent are these lovely ladies that not only does he often have to ask, “You have been vaccinated?,” but that viewers of The Silencers may forget that director Phil Karlson (Walking Tall) has included a spy half to his spy comedy.

The first of four films based ever so loosely on Donald Hamilton’s series of Gold Medal adventure novels, The Silencers is more an impressive collage of décolletage than a bundle of laughs (sample joke: “If you were an Indian, Custer would still be alive!”), but the two styles make a fine pair nonetheless. For a 007 spoof, you could do much worse, and not much better.

As for that espionage portion of the formula, Helm reluctantly retires from retirement in order to save the world from Operation Fallout, for which a defecting American scientist delivers a tape to a villainous organization’s secret underground HQ for nefarious nuclear purposes. Said org is headed by the Fu Manchu-esque Tung-Tze, played by Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) under what looks like judiciously applied layers of CoverGirl LashBlast.

Helping Helm and his Grampa turtleneck infiltrate the lair is Gail Hendricks, a klutzy fellow agent who may be a double-crosser, but wow, what a double! She’s played by Stella Stevens (1963’s The Nutty Professor) at her peak of hotness, so it’s no wonder Helm literally yanks her clothes clean off her body. As foxy as Gail may be — and she is — she’s hardly the only poker stoking Helm’s fire; pouring over in Pathécolor loveliness are Nancy Kovack (Jason and the Argonauts), Daliah Lavi (1967’s Casino Royale), Beverly Adams (How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), legendary leggy dancer Cyd Charisse and so many more.

The end shot, which features Helm in bed with no fewer than 10 perfectly doable and well-rounded “Slaygirls,” promised audiences that Helm would return in a sequel titled The Ambushers. Against all odds, someone on set actually was sober enough to write that down and follow through. —Rod Lott

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