Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Birthday (2004)

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Although he has certainly given us many reasons not to, don’t let Corey Feldman keep you from celebrating The Birthday. The running time, too long by a quarter, might take care of that. 

Resurrected from oblivion by Jordan Peele, this 20-year-old film went unreleased after earning good notices on the festival circuit. It’s positioned as “the most amazing 117 minutes in the life of Norman Forrester,” a New York pizzeria employee (Feldman) who resides on the social ladder’s lower rungs. Not so for his spoiled, snooty longtime girlfriend, Alison (Erica Prior, Second Name), who comes from money. 

At a lavish birthday for her father (Jack Taylor, Pieces) at the grand hotel he owns, Norman is to meet Alison’s parents for the first time. Needless to say, he’s a nervous wreck. We’ve all been there, feeling like the fate of the world rests on our shoulders. 

Except here, it does. 

We know instantly that something about the night feels “off” for Norman, but it takes an hour to get to the why. Ironically, this first, more enigmatic half is close to terrific — as cartoony as it is menacing, bristling with the enough quirky energy as if retroactively campaigning to be the fifth segment of Four Rooms.

As the bombastic secrets spilled forth with hour 2, so goes the wind from these sails. Until the abrupt end, Norman’s extended nightmare starts to resemble a run on a treadmill, forever heading toward a destination without achieving an inch forward; that may be why the movie feels an act short of the standard three. The Birthday bears that first-film lack of discipline in wanting to throw everything into the mix in case another chance never comes. As unrestrained as Eugenio Mira’s hand is here, he had it figured out by his junior effort, the short, taut, high-concept hitman thriller Grand Piano.

And as for Feldman, his voice for Norman is a real choice, but he commits and delivers. It’s unfortunate The Birthday didn’t see release before now, because he’s given something the tabloid fixture hasn’t had since the days of Stand by Me: an honest-to-God role. —Rod Lott

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Sex

Turn of the Blade (1994)

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Kelly (Crystal Owens, Riders in the Storm) is not just a struggling actress, but a struggling wife. Her photographer husband, Sam (the bland David Christensen, Shandra: The Jungle Girl), doesn’t even have sex with her anymore, because he’s always tooling around in his darkroom for hours, seeing what develops.

While rehearsing for a play, Kelly gets good news from her stereotypical agent — you know the type: wears Hawaiian shirts, speaks in a brash New Yawk accent, loudly smacks pastrami — about a movie role. As Kelly tells Sam about the gig, their discussion doubles as a meta description for Turn of the Blade:

Sam: “So what kind of movie is this exactly?”
Kelly: “Your usual low-budget erotic thriller.”
Sam: “And what part do you play?”
Kelly (after a dramatic pause): “The victim.” 

The next scene isn’t as winking. If anything, it may be stalling:

Sam: “I’m sorry.”
Kelly: “What for?”
Sam: “I’m just sorry.” 

He should be! What with burying his blue-balled self in the breasts of a helicopter pilot named Wendy (Julie Horvath). In true erotic-thriller fashion, she: a) gets too attached, and b) is crazy. We know the latter is true before her behavior grows erratic, because c’mon, what normal person sits in bed with a cockatoo perched on her shoulder?

Meanwhile, Kelly starts to receive threatening phone calls.

Turns out, Turn of the Blade isn’t your usual low-budget erotic thriller after all, despite the sloppy, “sexy” sax score, which sounds like David Sanborn downed two whole Slippery Nipples before entering the studio. First, rather than choosing a pair of words at random, its title is a helicopter pun. Carrying the whirlybird theme further, the title rotates — and between fonts at that!

Second, where’s the nudity? I’ll answer that: The scenes exist — you just have to know where to look. And you’ll want to. A remarkably beautiful woman, Owens is perfect to lead this type of thing. Applying the icing to her own cake, she’s a decent actress.

On the other hand, in the villainous Other Woman role, Horvath is talking cardboard. It’s not a shock to learn this remains her sole acting credit. Her best moments aren’t even while serving as one corner of the love triangle, but in black-and-white flashbacks to her wedding day. That’s when her brand-new hub (Robert Owen) kills the mood of their limo ride en route to their Vegas honeymoon by having the driver pull over to help a stranded lady in short shorts (Daniella Rich, Diary of a Sex Addict). He not only puts the attractive stranger in the limo’s private area for the newlyweds, but offers her champagne! In her white bridal dress, Wendy stews red.

It’s hard to hate a picture that begins with the line, “You slept with him, didn’t you? You homewrecking little slut!” But let’s not kid ourselves: Turn of the Blade is a third-rate Fatal Attraction with a final-minute reveal not designed to make you bust out laughing, yet does.

One assumes director and co-writer Bryan Michael Stoller (Dragon Fury II) didn’t intend for Sam to bump another car while parking his Jeep, or for viewers to notice that Wendy’s husband’s gravestone bears two huge typos. After this initial feature about chasing tail, Stoller pivoted to Christian movies about an animal known for chasing its tail: First Dog, The Amazing Wizard of Paws and Santa Stole Our Dog! (exclamation 100% not ours). —Rod Lott

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Horror

Strange Behavior (1981)

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Something odd is happening in the tiny town of Galesburg, Illinois (actually a convincingly rural Auckland, New Zealand), and it’s up to local police chief John Brady (frequent Robert Altman collaborator Michael Murphy) to figure out what’s going on. There has been a string of grisly murder of late, all seemingly committed by different individuals. One corpse is discovered in a field dressed and mocked up to resemble a scarecrow.

John begins to suspect a research lab at the nearby university might be involved, but what he doesn’t know is his son, Pete (Dan Shor, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), has signed up to be the latest guinea pig for the lab’s bizarre mind control experiments, conducted by the suspicious Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis, Innerspace). Will Pete become the next murder victim, or will Parkinson’s experiments turn him into another killer? Louise Fletcher (Exorcist II: The Heretic) and Marc McClure (Superman) also star.

Released as Dead Kids in its native New Zealand and elsewhere, Strange Behavior serves up a unique blend of sci-fi-horror intrigue and slasher-grade kills. There’s also a suspenseful scene involving a hypodermic needle to the eye that will make viewers squirm, as well as a knife-wielding maniac in an oversized Tor Johnson mask. All of this set to a mesmerizing electronic score by Tangerine Dream.

Director Michael Laughlin co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Condon, who would go on to have a successful Hollywood directorial career, helming Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls and a pair of Twilight films, among other works. The pair would reunite two years later for Strange Invaders, which involved aliens and was the second in an intended “Strange” trilogy, the third of which sadly never came to be. —Christopher Shultz

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Action

The Charisma Killers (2024)

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Meet The Charisma Killers. Are they assassins by trade? They are.

Do they have cool names like Rope, Psycho and One-Hit Hustle? They do.

Is “Never have kids!” one of the group’s rules? It is.

Are they killers with charisma? Or killers of charisma? The jury’s still out!

Their de facto Professor X is an old man (Vernon Wells, The Road Warrior) who runs the team from his living room. Dying of brain cancer, he gives his seven charges one final assignment, worth $40 million: Kill the city’s incoming sleazeball police captain (Chris Moss, Sex Court: The Movie) at the forthcoming inauguration. Heck, while they’re at it, mow down anyone in attendance: “He who kills the most wins.”

Multihyphenate moviemaker Michael Matteo Rossi’s The Charisma Killers has too many killers. It doesn’t help that the only female members (Wild Things: Foursome’s Marnette Patterson and Dawn’s Jackie Moore), both blonde and leggy, look near-identical. Rather than move forward with what he spends 20 minutes establishing, Rossi (Misogynist) bides time by venturing off in several side stories, each as thin as the Twizzlers consumed by the meatheadiest of the group. Like a TV series pilot, we’re introduced to even more characters — like Kingpin vixen Vanessa Angel as the captain’s wife or Instagram eye candy Antje Utgaard in sexy swimwear — who have, at best, next to nothing to do.

Then we reach the home stretch: the new captain’s Big Public Event. Commendably delirious, this worth-the-watch sequence shows our professionals murderers making good on doing bad. We’re talking dozens of deaths, with more rounds whizzing through the air than at an explosion at the Pillsbury factory. A portion of these last 15 minutes provide a lot of rat-a-tat-tat after a lack of razzamatazz. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Pumpkin Karver (2006)

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First things first: I have no idea why The Pumpkin Karver chooses to misspell its own title. It’s about a carver who moves to a small town named Carver, with nary a K in sight.

That’s where clean teen Jonathan (Michael Zara) moves with his big sister, Lynn (WWE Diva Amy Weber), for a fresh start. See, a year earlier, Lynn’s asshole boyfriend, Alec (David J. Wright, TV’s Sons of Anarchy), pulled a mean prank on Halloween night by donning a truly creepy pumpkin mask, locking Lynn in her garage and coming toward her with a knife. Thinking it real, Lynn screamed, and Jonathan ceased carving his pumpkin (not a euphemism) to save his sis by fatally stabbing the guy. Sucks to be Alec.

Anyway, a year later, they pull into Carver, where the population hovers around 666 — enough for the local teens to have a blowout kegger and dress in their best Austin Powers costumes. Jonathan is smitten by Lynn’s single friend Tammy (Minka Kelly, Blackwater Lane), even though she wears a beret and says a lot of things that could get you thrown into special ed.

Threatening to snuff out their burgeoning love is that Jonathan is forever tormented by visions of Alec in the aforementioned mask. (Let us pause to note the Slipknot-esque visage on the movie’s cover thankfully appears nowhere.) Worse, someone is killing the partiers — and, in the cases of obnoxious, toga-clad Pauly Shore stand-ins Spinner (Alex Weed) and Bonedaddy (David Phillips), not soon enough.

With the victims’ faces sporting a gourd-ready rictus, are these murders the work of a resurrected Alec? Or perhaps the weird old pumpkin farmer (Terrence Evans, 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) who shares his expert karving carving techniques and tools with Jonathan? (Whoever it is, props for choosing a theme and sticking with it. And adding the shoved-in-mouth candle? Chef’s kiss.)

If the internet is to be believed, Robert Mann’s movie served as something of a gateway horror for impressionable tweens and early teens in the era of straight-to-DVD trash proliferation. I can see why. With its Halloween-driven storyline, pumpkin-patch backdrop and slasher setup, The Pumpkin Karver is practically built to court and foster viewers’ growing nostalgia, clouding how silly it actually is. I gained little from watching, but I don’t regret the experience, either. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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