Gantz II: Perfect Answer (2011)

After a two-minute “previously on Gantz” type of intro, something one may construe as action goes down in Gantz II: Perfect Answer. It’s too little, too late, however, and followed by even more slog, until an ungodly walking running time of two hours and 21 minutes is reached. The whole of Japan should know better.

It’s a damned shame, given how frenetic the first film was a mere one year before. I suspect both Gantz chapters — birthed from a presumably never-ending manga, it bears mentioning — were shot back-to-back, as the original film ended in a cliffhanger. In hindsight, I’d rather have my questions of what would happen go unanswered, if the imperfect Perfect Answer is the lame response.

Although I give returning director Shinsuke Sato immense credit for not doing the same thing twice, I found myself pining for at least the mission-after-mission, go-get-this-goon structure to stick its head into the proceedings. In its place is a plot twist that the big, black ball called Gantz has up and changed the rules of his own game, thus pitting the black leather-costumed “contestants” against one another. Never underestimate the love of a human heart to fracture a team.

A couple of zippy sequences exist, primarily a mowdown-cum-showdown amid a crowded, speeding subway train. But the finale is sappy; the rogue’s gallery of aliens, missing; the electric charge sent down your cinematic spine, startlingly weak. So underwhelming and disappointing is this immediate follow-up, the experience is like licking the top of an old 9-volt battery to see if it has any sign of life left. —Rod Lott

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Perversion Story (1969)

Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel, Belle du Jour) puts his San Francisco clinic and publicity tricks over everything, from his credibility to his homely, heavily asthmatic wife, Susan (Marisa Mell, Danger: Diabolik). While Dr. G is off administering, ahem, gynecological treatment to nude photographer Jane (Elsa Martinelli, Hatari!), he receives news of Susan’s death. Although she hated her hubbie, Susan leaves him with a surprise $2 million insurance policy, which would fix the clinic’s financial problems, except it sure looks fishy to the authorities.

At a topless club with a built-in ceiling swing, one performer/prostitute Monica Weston (also Mell) proves a dead ringer for Susan, but with blonde hair, green eyes and healthier lungs. Mell stuns as unbelievably, lip-biting sexy in this role; during their first lovemaking session, she has to unclamp George’s hand from her breast and force his digits southward.

But just what is going on? Can George figure it out before the cops find enough evidence to put him behind bars and possibly on death row? And since this thing is titled Perversion Story — and comes from ’69, haw-haw — how much nudity can we expect? Enough, my horny readers, as the flesh of the movie’s ladies are as curvy and on display as San Francisco’s famously steep and winding roads, but this is no porno.

The aforementioned coupling between George and Jane is shot ingeniously from the mattress’ POV, with flesh pressed right up against the screen. But Perversion Story has much more on its mind than mere pumping and pulchritude — writer/director Lucio Fulci has cooked up a corker of a plot at the film’s chewy center, even more complex than the thriller genre generally demands. It proves the man could do much more than gross us out, and that it’s a shame he didn’t do it more often. —Rod Lott

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Fangoria Blood Drive (2004)

Hosted by Rob Zombie (if appearing on the DVD menu counts), Fangoria Blood Drive presents an hour’s worth of horror shorts that represent the cream of the crop in a contest held by the splatter-movie magazine. Judging by the results, the deadline should have been extended, maybe by years.

In “The Hitch,” a man picks up a female hitchhiker during a rash of area killings. The comedic “A Man and His Finger” shows what happens when a guy accidentally chops off one of his digits, which sports a mind of its own. “Inside” focuses on a young woman who … well, hell, I’m still unsure — it’s that narratively challenged. “Shadows of the Dead” suggests the end of the world will be brought about by zombies, and those inspired by George Romero, predictably.

“Mister Eryams” follows a church-contracted investigator of ghosts, examining reports of apparitions in a woman’s home. A clinically depressed chain smoker experiences “Disturbances” in her home, including dolls that do harm. A chemical meant to combat the West Nile virus backfires in “Song of the Dead,” resulting in, yep, more Romero zombies, but also a truly terrible song belted out by a fresh victim.

And not a single segment is worth watching. This is amateur-hour (literally) stuff, less concerned with storytelling than pulling off a gross-out special effect. The occasional good idea is hampered by botched execution, and while some may chalk that up to budgetary restraints, I blame a deficiency of creativity. An argument against DIY filmmaking, these works are the worst. —Rod Lott

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The Rapture (1991)

In retrospect, it seems amazing that writer/director Michael Tolkin was able to get The Rapture made. In the history of mainstream American filmmaking, it’s hard to come up with another example of a film that persuasively argues that even if the God worshipped by millions of evangelical Christians does exist, he/she/it is far too cruel and capricious to actually deserve their devotion.

In other words, this is definitely not Left Behind.

Mimi Rogers plays a bored telephone operator who has grown weary of her empty life of sexual promiscuity. Following a series of conversations and epiphanies, she becomes “born again” and convinces her lover (David Duchovny, with mullet) to join in her conversion. For a time, they are happy, but then he is killed by a disgruntled employee and she finds her faith tested by a series of signs from God that eventually convince her to murder her daughter.

Unable to kill herself, she is saved from imprisonment by the titular event, only to face the near-impossible choice of loving the deity who caused her so much pain or spending the rest of eternity in desolate isolation.

Tolkin largely gets away with the heavy-handedness of his thesis, thanks to dollops of near-exploitation levels of sex and violence, combined with very deliberate, almost dreamlike pacing. But the film ultimately succeeds thanks to Rogers’ amazing, career-defining performance, which allows us to understand the decisions her character makes from beginning to end, concluding with the most devastating act of cinematic defiance I’ve ever seen. —Allan Mott

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