Sex

Fantom Kiler (1998)

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How many Pollacks does it take to make Fantom Kiler? I don’t have the answer. Regardless, Fantom Kiler — yes, that’s right, only one L — has to be the single most fucked-up movie I’ve ever seen.

In a bus station, two bumbling janitors — one of whom looks like Super Mario, so we’ll call the other one Luigi, for the sake of balance — push their mops and imagine what all the women there look like naked. Among them is a skinny brunette, who then slips in front of them and rejects Mario’s painful advances. So he imagines the woman walking through a spooky forest at night, gradually losing her pieces of clothing to tree branches and barbed wire before she is stark naked, whereupon she meets Fantom Kiler. With his trenchcoat and bandaged face, he looks exactly like Darkman, except you can’t see his eyes. He slashes her body all over and rapes her with a knife.

Back in reality, Mario (who resembles SNL’s Seth Meyers with a fake mustache) is in his office (since when do janitors have offices?) when the new cleaning woman arrives. She comes to work in the acceptable maid attire — namely, a short tube top that barely covers her breasts and cut-off shorts. Much to Mario’s delight, she starts scrubbing things up in suggestive positions, often exposing her breasts. Then she offers to demonstrate why she is the reigning Miss Butt Beautiful and does something with a wooden spoon that I just can’t bring myself to put into words; let’s just say “spoontang” and leave it at that. Then Mario dreams she meets the Fantom Kiler. She dies, while buck naked.

This cycle repeats, with Fantom Kiler ready to “kile” any naked woman he meets. He picks up one blonde in a car, which then conveniently stalls. While checking the oil, the Fantom Killer needs a rag, so the hussy offers her pantyhose. Oops, she isn’t wearing any, so she takes off her shirt, too. Her shorts mysteriously disappear, only to reappear underneath the car, thus not only allowing the viewer to see what her gynecologist sees in horrifying close-up, but also allowing Fantom Kiler the prime opportunity to ram a metal spike all up in her pooper with a mallet.

This goes on and on, later with Ms. Spoontang reappearing to get intimate with Fantom Kiler’s mop handle. Then Mario, too wrapped up in his imagination, chokes on a peanut and dies. And so does the Fantom Kiler. Meanwhile, Luigi has been investigating this string of murders, even though they were all in the mind of Mario, who again, met his untimely demise by choking on a peanut.

I know you think I just made all this up, but I swear to you I did not. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988)

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Back in 1981, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris released a searing, exciting and sometimes frightening documentary about L.A’s then-burgeoning punk-rock movement. The Decline of Western Civilization told the tales of the bands responsible for that music’s rise to infamy, most memorably including a pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag and The Germs.

Seven years later, a new kind of music dominated L.A’s scene, inspiring Spheeris to once again pick up her camera, but what she found resulted in a completely different kind of film. If the first Decline was a dramatic look at a movement filled with disaffected youth producing the sonic equivalent of their own dissatisfaction and inner torment, Part II: The Metal Years turned out to be a comedy about a bunch of shiftless douchebags who liked to wear makeup and get laid.

Its subtitle is somewhat misleading, since the bulk of the acts under view here are of the glam variety, leaving just Megadeth for those who take their metal seriously. A few legends pop in and out during the interviews (including Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Lemmy, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons), but for the most part, we’re left with clueless wannabes (like the members of Odin, who insist they’ll only be satisfied until they’re as big as Led Zeppelin or The Beatles. I wonder how that worked out for them?), along with a few almost-weres (London, Faster Pussycat) and Poison (who almost inexplicably come of as sweet, self-aware dudes).

At some point, Spheeris clearly grasped the absurdity of the culture she was documenting and went with it. She films her interview with Stanley with him in bed with three centerfolds, while Simmons’ is conducted in a lingerie shop filled with browsing Playmates. She interviews Ozzy while he makes breakfast (!) and even if he comes off far more coherent and cogent than you’d expect, she still gets away with inserting a fake shot of him spilling orange juice to depict his obvious brain damage.

It’s all very entertaining, but — just like the culture being documented — it’s essentially pointless: what happens when a filmmaker shines a spotlight and finds out that there’s truly nothing there. But then again, The Metal Years was directly responsible for Spheeris being hired to make Wayne’s World, so it at least has one good reason to exist. —Allan Mott

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Thriller

The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

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I knew I was going to dig The Black Belly of the Tarantula from the opening credits, which depict a beautiful woman, fully nude, getting a professional massage under the unmistakable bed of Ennio Morricone music. To address the title, this giallo really should have used a wasp instead of a spider, given its subject matter and midway explanation. But hell, I get it: “Tarantula” sounds way cooler and way scarier.

Anyway, the movie: Someone is killing off Italy’s hottest naked women. We see little more than his (her?) mannequin-esque hands. This wasp (not WASP) fellow employs a one-two punch: first, a needle to the back of the neck of his victims to paralyze them, followed by a knife to the tum-tum for the kill. They’re alive and aware of the whole bloody ordeal, but physically unable to move. That’s hardcore!

Investigating the murders is Inspector Tellini, played by Giancarlo Giannini, whom I always get confused with Marcello Mastroianni, but that’s my problem, not the movie’s. Directed by Paolo Cavara (Mondo Cane), it has little wrong with it. Definitely near the top is Barbara Bach somehow managing to hide all her good parts, while all the other ladies in waiting (to die) have no such problem.

Interestingly, she’s one of three James Bond girls in the cast, alongside Thunderballer Claudine Auger and Barbara Bouchet from the 1967 version of Casino Royale. All are as Royale-y sexy as this thriller is twisted. The one scene with an actual tarantula and a pair of tongs gave me the shivers. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

Another Thin Man (1939)  

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Adding a baby into a successful series is usually a shark-jump. You might think that would especially be the case when the series is about a jet-setting couple comprised of a drunken detective and his hot, angelically understanding wife, but you’d be underestimating two things.
 
First, never sell short the power of rich people to get other folks to raise their kids. It works on Days of Our Lives, and there’s no reason it can’t work for Nick and Nora Charles. I always loved how you could watch a soap opera for three months and not realize that one of the main characters had kids until the nanny escorted the little darlings into the room for a check-in. Likewise, the Thin Man series is about Nick’s swigging vodka and solving crimes, not spooning baby food and changing diapers. No one wants to see that; least of all Nick.

Of course, this being a mystery series, the nanny has a secret past. And it may just be connected to the person who’s threatening the life of the grumpy, old colonel who manages Nora’s money. Since the Colonel doesn’t want the police involved (rich people never want the police involved, making it convenient for the writers), he asks Nick to help.

Second, don’t underestimate the chemistry. Nick and Nora have loads of it, and by God, so do they and their kid. He may only get trotted out occasionally, but when he does, William Powell and Myrna Loy make you believe that they love that squishy baby. There’s genuine, unironic fondness when Nick kisses his son or when all three family members crash on the bed for a snooze. And that makes Nick’s concern over his family’s safety feel very real when it’s threatened.
 
In many ways, Another Thin Man is the darkest of the series so far. This third installment is still very, very funny — especially Nick’s battle with the Colonel over whether or not Nick’s going to be sober — but the stakes are higher with family involved. For the first time, Nick becomes personally invested in a case instead of just seeing it as a fun mental exercise, and that makes Another Thin Man extremely interesting to watch. —Michael May

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Horror

Stagefright (1987)

You know that rock musical for the stage? The one that begins with a mop-headed hooker being pulled into an alley by a man in a giant owl head who does flips? And a Marilyn Monroe lookalike playing the sax while her dress billows up? No? Good, because it only exists in Stagefright, so you passed the liar test.

The Italian horror film follows the foibles of the cast and crew attempting to mount this ambitious production. Rehearsals aren’t going great, and that’s before their troupe is infiltrated by a crazed killer. A wardrobe lackey is the first to be murdered (in the face!), and the director eats up the idea of using the publicity to his advantage, because he’s in dire need of a hit.

That’s before he and the thesps get locked in the theater with the killer, who’s now using the aforementioned owl head as his trademark, so take that, hockey mask! Members of the musical get stabbed, drilled, sawed and axed, and they all wonder who, who could it be? (That’s an owl pun.) Meanwhile, the oblivious cops sit outside, talking about James Dean and Popeye.

With its behind-the-scenes setting most of us never see, Stagefright feels more unique than it would otherwise. (The owl head doesn’t hurt, either.) As with many ’80s Italian horrors, it’s heavily stylized — read: MTV-influenced and, therefore, awfully and wonderfully dated. Director Michele Soavi (The Church) hails from the Dario Argento school of filmmaking, so people bleed and get torn apart in graphically gruesome ways. It’s slow as first, but once the killings started, I was prepped to cry, “Bravo! Bravo!” —Rod Lott

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