Lurkers (1988)

lurkersEver since she was a 10-year-old blonde, the brunette Cathy has seen visions throughout New York City. In the day, it could be a granola-looking woman wrapped in thrift-store duds or a little girl who looks like she came in fourth place in the Heather O’Rourke look-alike contest. In the night, however, Cathy sees Lurkers: superimposed faces and bodies of “horrible old people” surrounding her bed.

Nonetheless, Cathy (Christine Moore, Prime Evil) survives such hauntings — not to mention abuse from and nearly getting stabbed by her shrew of a mother — and becomes a professional cello player who enjoys sexual congress with her fiancé, Bob (Gary Warner, also from Prime Evil), a photographer who looks like Lou Reed. Although she thinks he’s the bee’s knees because he “protects” her while she sleeps, Bob is really a cad who’ll stain the sheets of anything with fallopian tubes. And you think the elderly are horrible, Cathy?

lurkers1As becomes increasingly obvious to everyone but our big-haired heroine, Bob is involved in some deeply sordid dealings. Such acts come to light approximately at the point of Lurkers when, out of nowhere, a beefy man with a sledgehammer (Tom Billett, Bad Girls Dormitory) appears and flattens the melon of a random screaming woman in the streets. Cathy witnesses this, then immediately attends a party where no one believes her likely story.

That’s when director Roberta Findlay (of, yep, Prime Evil) seems to have tired of the course her film heretofore has taken for a good hour or so and switches gears. This could be because across her decades of work, Findlay is not known for having much use for story, which Lurkers actually possesses — okay, so it’s in piecemeal, but a start is a start. Her touch is all over this one: rough setups, questionable angles and unbalanced performances.

For what it is, Lurkers looks pretty good, benefitting from the decade’s love of bright colors; therefore, I suspect it’s visually sturdier than Findlay’s porn work, although one can sense this movie could become an X-rated pomp at any moment. After all, on display are pink sheets, overgrown ferns, crucified homosexuals in bondage gear and, above all else, lingerie models talking junk bonds and index futures while undressing. —Rod Lott

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The Hunted (1995)

huntedA computer-chip salesman walks into a bar. We’ll call him Paul. He’s a New Yorker in Tokyo for business, but now it’s time for pleasure, so he sidles up beside a pretty local girl and starts chatting her up. She drinks too much sake and he offers to take her to dinner and a drum concert. Later that night, he walks her back to her hotel room like a gentleman and starts to leave. But she tells him to stay, so he does. She strips him down to his boxers, which have pictures of “piggies” on them. But she has steamy sex with him, anyway, right there in the room’s built-in hot tub. After orgasm, she’s decapitated by a ninja. I guess that’s the punch line.

Whatever the case, it’s certainly the setup for The Hunted, arguably the American major studios’ final attempt at turning Highlander‘s Christopher Lambert into a bona fide action star. His Paul is unable to save his bedroom conquest (Joan Chen, TV’s Twin Peaks) from having her head separated from the torso, but he’s lucky to survive himself, after having his skin penetrated by a poison-tipped shuriken.

hunted1For witnessing the murder and living to tell the cops about it, Paul is targeted by Kinjo the killer ninja (John Lone, The Shadow), who belongs to a ninja cult. With the help of descendants of a samurai family (9 Souls‘ Yoshio Harada and Shogun‘s Yôko Shimada), Paul in turn sets his sights on Kinjo, thereby proving the adage true: The hunter indeed becomes The Hunted.

“You’ve seen too many samurai movies,” a detective tells Paul just prior to taking a ninja arrow through the larynx, and certainly J.F. Lawton has seen plenty of them, too. Clearly, the writer/director (Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death) enjoyed marrying the worlds of the Far East and the far-fetched Hollywood actioner; it shows most in two slick set pieces: a hospital siege and a swords-a-slingin’ scuffle aboard a moving bullet train. That doesn’t mean the whole is an exciting one, however; only in bits and pieces does The Hunted live up to Lawton’s own standards. That said, Lambert can claim it as one of his best. —Rod Lott

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The Penny Dreadful Picture Show (2012)

pennydreadfulpicTransparent in its efforts to be a Halloween viewing staple, The Penny Dreadful Picture Show pays homage to the horror anthology while attempting to revive it. Bearing a titular hostess who looks Raggedy Ann in rehab, the scrappy, all-hands-on-deck project exhibits a spirit as impressive as its production values.

In an old-fashioned movie theater — palatial and abandoned — the squeaky Penny Dreadful (Transmorphers’ Eliza Swenson, one of this Show’s writers, directors and producers, not to mention providing the Danny Elfman-esque score) invites a succession of Internet dates over to screen horror films (i.e. the three stories). Also in the sparse audience are Penny’s doll collection and her two co-hosts: a zombie named Ned (Collin Galyean, House of Bones) and a wolf boy named Wolfboy (Dillon Geyselaers).

pennydreadfulpic1Up first is “Slash in the Box,” woefully short, yet dead-on in recapturing that Tales from the Crypt feel. “The Morning After” finds Alice (Samantha Soule) unable to recall the previous night’s events, but certain that she’s not quite herself. Its Mad Men-retro look provides an interesting backdrop to a well-worn theme.

The final “feature” is “The Slaughter House,” which puts a twist on the ol’ plot of car trouble amid a cannibal family (albeit one addicted to Pepsi products). Lending star power are Sid Haig, in a character not too far removed from his in House of 1000 Corpses, and Re-Animator‘s Jeffrey Combs, at first unrecognizable in a party hat, cape and wheelchair. While hardly politically correct, his performance is an absolute riot.

A segment about Boy Scouts on a camping trip from hell was cut — and rightly so, as perusers of the DVD’s extras will find, because while its sense of humor is equal, its sense of pacing is not. Violent without being vile, The Penny Dreadful Picture Show ends before you want it to, but seems eager and open to sequelize itself, which I encourage. —Rod Lott

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The Mad Bomber (1973)

madbomberAlthough known for movies with overgrown critters (i.e. Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, Earth vs. the Spider and so many more), writer/director/producer Bert I. Gordon flirted with reality — comparatively, at least — in 1973’s The Mad Bomber.

Also known by the nonsensical and inaccurate title of The Police Connection, the film casts Chuck Connors (Tourist Trap) as William Dorn, a bespectacled man with a strong moral code when it comes to keeping the city clean, showing respect for others and honoring sales in grocery circulars, yet has no problem blowing innocent strangers to kibbles and bits with his homemade bombs of dynamite sticks and alarm clocks. Placed into unassuming brown bags and dropped off at such locales as a high school, a mental hospital and a women’s lib meeting (!), the contraptions wreak terror throughout L.A.

madbomber1At that middle spot, Dorn unknowingly gains an eyewitness to his crimes: serial rapist George Fromley (Neville Brand, Eaten Alive), whose M.O. is taping shut the mouths of his victims, then ripping off their tops to let their breasts fly free. For Lt. Minneli (Vince Edwards, Cellar Dweller), the key to identifying the bomber is nabbing Fromley. Pleads the lieutenant to the police chief, “Let me blanket the city with policewomen just asking to be raped! I’ll bring him in!” (Cue a montage of handsy, horny men going hormonally insane on various ladies strutting their stuff in the dead of night.)

Even with such cuckoo elements as Dorn trying to kill Minneli with a sidecar-equipped motorcycle, and Fromley masturbating to nudie loops of his own wife, The Mad Bomber is played more or less straight, especially by Gordon’s unrestrained standards. Its mix of crime-story grit and exploitation-film sleaze works exceedingly well on such low expectations. Yep, it’s dynamite. —Rod Lott

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Italian Crime Filmography, 1968-1980

italiancrimeTo call Roberto Curti’s book an Italian Crime Filmography, 1968-1980 is to do it a bit of disservice. Yes, the McFarland & Company trade paperback qualifies as a reference book, but by definition, a “filmography” is merely a list, and this is far more than that.

Across a heavy 332 pages, the Italian film critic Curti covers a lot of Eurocrime ground from the country shaped famously like a boot: 13 years worth, to be exact, from 1968 to 1980. Such movies existed before the earlier date, of course, but the author pinpoints that year as the beginning of the subgenre’s peak period, due both to real-life political events and the financial wane of the almighty spaghetti Western.

An introduction addresses the Italian crime pictures before ’68 at the book’s opening and then the ones after ’80 near the book’s end. These bookends provide nice context and closure, but it’s the meat between that really matters.

Here, going year by year — and then alphabetically within those — Curti runs through a good 220 or so films. A cursory plot summary merits a mercifully brief paragraph before a full piece that doubles as essay and review, and this is why “filmography” doesn’t cut it. Curti offers incredible insight and credible criticism throughout, and reading his book is like gaining additional perspective on the titles you’ve seen and compiling recommendations on those you haven’t … yet.

Per McFarland’s usual treatment of film books, poster art and still photos are hardly in short supply. Bravo! —Rod Lott

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