Horror

Slashers (2001)

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Taking reality TV to its logical, inevitable extreme, Slashers is presented as a live Japanese game show, in which six American contestants are trapped in a maze for an hour and a half with three masked serial killers. Whoever — if anyone — is left standing at the end wins a $12 million booty. There are no rules, other than trying to stay alive.

The cameraman follows the contestants as they’re chased by Dr. Ripper, Preacherman and Chainsaw Charlie, whose redneck accent, red hair and Alfred E. Neuman mask make him a dead ringer for comedian Carrot Top. Running and running are Tough Black Guy, Fat Hispanic Guy Who Sounds Exactly Like Dennis Franz, Asshole Frat White Guy, Whiny Jewish Girl Who Keeps Losing Her Shirt, Hot Model Girl Who Runs Around in Her Bra, and Tough Butchy Girl with Multiple Sclerosis.

The concept is original, the sets are impressive, the gore is good ’n’ gory and, best of all, there are a few true jolts. Essentially, there are only two drawbacks to Slashers:
1) the idea of having only one cameraman following six people is absurd, and
2) all the contestants are terrible actors. And I mean terrible — awful, stinky terrible.

But Slashers is worthy viewing, primarily because it’s the rare shot-on-video feature that doesn’t overreach and pretend to be a slick, glossy thriller. A live show would be shot on video rather than film, so director Maurice Devereaux is able to use that to his advantage, given a low, low budget. Extra credit is awarded for its dead-on parodies of Japanese television. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Maximum Overdrive (1986)

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Stephen King never should have been allowed to direct, but we have Maximum Overdrive in our lives anyway. It’s about how machines get minds of their own during a nine-day period in which the tail of a comet passes over Earth. And the movie is trash — occasionally enjoyable trash, but trash nonetheless.

If you were to judge Overdrive from its first 15 minutes only, it’d be an awesome spectacle of technology gone mad. A drawbridge opens on its own without warning, causing a major car smash-up and Marla Maples getting smashed by a watermelon. A steamroller bursts onto the field of a Little League game, shortly after the coach is felled by a soda machine violently shooting out pop cans like cannonballs. A waitress is attacked by an electric knife. A black guy gets turned extra-crispy by a video game.

But then there’s the rest of the running time to contend with, as fry cook Emilio Estevez and company — including Yeardley Smith, the voice of The Simpsons‘ Lisa Simpson, best heard and not seen — hole themselves up in a truck stop while the semis — including one with a Green Goblin face on its front grill — circle outside without drivers, awaiting fresh prey.

This is where Overdrive — remade for TV in 1997 as the inferior Trucks — downshifts into severe repetition, drawing out its scenario to the point where it ceases to be fun, even the mindless kind. Although I like the clever touch of the runaway ice cream truck eerily playing “King of the Road,” the bombastic AC/DC score is enough to make one pull out his hair. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

The Queens (1966)

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Italy is home to some of the sexiest women in the world. So why does less than a fourth of the crazed-hormone comedy anthology The Queens satisfy? Cartoon credit interstitials depict a super-horny guy, which will have to pass for amusement in this Italian/French co-production telling four tales of the female species’ comely powers over the male.

First, Queen Sabina (Monica Vitti, Modesty Blaise) is saved from rape by a passing motorist. As he gives her a ride, she teases him with her cleavage and legs and moaning, which drives him to madness, to the point where he pulls over to chase her. And another motorist drives by to save her, but instead of continuing the cycle, the tables are turned.

Queen Armenia (Claudia Cardinale, Once Upon a Time in the West) is a poor and incredibly manipulative woman who endangers infants, much to the chagrin of a visiting physician. Queen Elena (Raquel Welch at her va-va-voomiest) flirts with a married man in her kitchen; a fizzing Alka-Seltzer tablet is this film’s “train going through a tunnel.”

Finally — and I do mean finally — Queen Marta (Capucine — not a capuchin monkey, but the Pink Panther actress) is a professor’s wife who toys with a servant at a lavish party, being passionate one moment (“Bite me until I’m out of my mind!”) and ice-cold the next — an apt description for the film itself. So much promise exists, so little actually works. Underwritten and underwhelming, this crown is fatally rusted. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Dark Water (2005)  

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A remake of the Japanese 2002 film of the same name, Dark Water has its share of spooky elements and is a rather effective creepy thriller — right up until the time you realize that it’s not really Dark Water at all, but rather a liquefied version of The Ring or Ringu or whatever you wanna call it.
 
That’s not coincidental. Both Dark Water and Ringu are based on novels by Kôji Suzuki. As a result, the film adaptations, like the author, go to the same well once too often.
 
Checklist the similarities:
• A single mother trying to do the best she can and battling self-doubt as she raises her quasi-psychic child.
• A constant, relentless rain; at least The Ring had the good sense to make the locale Seattle.
• A creepy dead girl, victimized by bad parenting and now in the market for a new mommy figure.
• Oh, and lots of yucky, dark H20 and something involving a well or a water tank or any other water receptacle you can think of.
 
As the single mom, Jennifer Connelly does a fine job, and the supporting cast — led by Tim Roth and John C. Reilly — is equally terrific. But an awful lot of horror-flick cliches lead to a wholly unsatisfying conclusion here. It’s a bummer, too, because director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) does a masterful job with the atmospherics. —Phil Bacharach

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Martial Arts

Deadly Kick (1976)

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Deadly Kick is the greatest Sonny Chiba film Sonny Chiba never made. Five Fingers of Death’s Lo Lieh directs and stars in the over-the-top fight film as an alcoholic loser with a wispy mustache. His name sounds like Marion, so we’ll just call him that. As the movie begins, he’s drowning his sorrows in drink after discovering his wife turning tricks. When he sees her being roughed up by whom I presume are her pimps, he holds up his hands like they’re monster claws and starts doing all sorts of animal-style kung fu, complete with sound effects and quick cuts to the animals — tiger, eagle and snakes — going apeshit on human flesh.

Through a flashback, we learn why Marion is so fucked-up: He fought his rival for the hand of their karate teacher’s daughter in marriage, and lost. Naturally, he responds by raping her … and then poking out her eyes immediately after orgasm! Back in the present day, the violence continues, with a man losing his forearm to a ninja star and another burning to death in a car. A semblance of a plot forms, involving $10 million, a nuclear bomb and a gray-haired kingpin in a gold lamé suit who has an underground headquarters accessible via mine shaft.

Plot schmot — Marion’s too busy making it with his new girlfriend. Sniffing her newly removed panties, he proclaims, “Smells better than whiskey!” One frame-filling sequence has him milking her nipple without using his hands, and he refers himself as “king of the nether regions.”

But they get into trouble, too, finding themselves chained to his-and-her guillotines. They’re saved by Marion’s rival, for reasons not well explained, but not necessary for your enjoyment of the film. In fact, the complete ludicrousness enhances it. To further complicate things, the woman Marion blinded comes back after five years to settle the score. She’s been practicing kung fu with the help of a little girl who jumps around with bells on a string as some sort of code to let her know what’s what and where. Marion doesn’t like getting his ass kicked by a blind chick, so he kills the kid!

Meanwhile, Marion’s true love is tied up naked in the bad guy’s lair, whipped and vagina-sworded all to the laughing delight of a dinner party. Marion busts in, pulls out an adversary’s intestines, throws them in the face of another and then chokes him with it. Then, rather anticlimactically, he pushes the head villain through a wall, which leaves an exact outline of the poor old guy, arms in flailing position and all.

With all the bad guys dead, Marion and his rival have to settle their festering differences, which is where the weirdo supernatural leaf-blowing aspects of the film come into play. Marion learns why the movie is called Deadly Kick. Then they go snow-sledding. —Rod Lott

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