After nailing down a cool half-mil on his debut, novelist Paul Martin (Udo Kier, Flesh for Frankenstein) is having a tough time writing his sophomore book. Even after hiding himself and his typewriter in the British countryside House on Straw Hill, he’s only slightly more productive as an author than The Shining’s Jack Torrance.

With deadline looming, Paul hires a typist to whom he can dictate, and off the train pops Linda (Linda Hayden, Taste the Blood of Dracula), a pretty young thing who packs a dildo in her suitcase — not that Paul can cast much judgment, as he dons latex surgical gloves for his sexual trysts with his shapely ginger girlfriend, Suzanne (UK sex symbol Fiona Richmond, History of the World: Part I).

Linda proves as skilled at her job as she is at self-pleasuring, which she does often throughout the picture, but having her around is not good for Paul’s fragile mental health. He keeps experiencing visions of a grisly, bloody death, sometimes during the most inopportune times (such as, say, while Suzanne writhes atop his unit like an Olympic gymnast). Just what the hell is going on?

Viewers will wonder, as writer/director James Kenelm Clarke (Let’s Get Laid) keeps the film’s secret under his hat for a little too long. It becomes evident once you realize how little story is at work, with a lot of sex and violence to pad it out — not for nothing did The House on Straw Hill stake a claim on the dreaded “video nasties” list in the regressive-repressive 1980s (often under its alternate title of the apt Trauma).

In exchange for sticking it out, audiences are rewarded with a sick little thriller in which Paul’s freakouts are so heavily laden with dream imagery and actions don’t always adhere to logic that one wonders if the entire film isn’t a facade of sorts. For example, what kind of woman is raped at gunpoint by two guys — one of whom sports a T-shirt reading, “I Am a Vampyre,” no less — yet able to brush off such an act as if nothing happened? You’ll get the answer, actually; note that I have not accused Clarke’s work of possessing good taste. —Rod Lott

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If Drive were the only film by Nicolas Winding Refn you have seen, you might approach his follow-up, Only God Forgives, with the expectations of it being just like that Ryan Gosling vehicle. While that’s understandable, it’s also wrong.

While Gosling, neon and brutal violence all return from that 2011 instant crime classic to front this Bangkok-set crime drama, the similarities end there. Gosling’s soft-spoken Julian may be a drug smuggler, but he’s a saint compared to his brother, Billy (Tom Burke, Donkey Punch), who is murdered after raping and killing a 16-year-old prostitute.

Flying in from America upon hearing the news is the cold-hearted Crystal (a frighteningly good Kristin Scott Thomas, Gosford Park), their tigress of a mother coming to avenge her fallen cub. (Her character’s animal-print dress can’t be accidental.) Her consideration of Julian as the inferior child is not an opinion she hides — rather, she revels in it — yet Crystal still counts on him to bring down those men responsible for Billy’s bloody end — namely, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm, The Hangover Part II) the corrupt cop who travels with a very sharp sword he’s not afraid to use.

Using all the fluorescent colors in the Crayola box, Refn is in no rush to draw his tale of good vs. evil; characters often move at literal half-speed. By design, the story is rather simplistic — the moral code of the 12th-century samurai basted in a contemporary dressing. With Refn, what’s most important is not the depth of the tale but how it’s told, and Only God Forgives more resembles David Lynch than Drive. To that end, its calculated visuals can lull the viewer into a trance of sublimity. I get why so many will hate it; I’m just grateful I’m not one of them. —Rod Lott

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