Thriller

Captivity (2007)

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If every home came with a built-in Elisha Cuthbert, there’d be no housing crisis. The evil dude in Captivity keeps one in his basement, albeit against her will. Even though the movie stinks, I still want one. After all, I’ve seen The Girl Next Door. Four times. She looks like fun.

Here, she’s Jennifer, a high-fashion model who carries a poodle as an accessory. She’s supposed to be über-famous, yet she goes completely unnoticed in a crowded nightclub as she sips her roofie martini. She wakes up in the gloomy basement of her kidnapper, who has some mini-Saw games in store for her.

These sequences feel tacked-on, as if an afterthought. So does a midpoint revelation that Jennifer’s not alone: There’s a cute boy (Daniel Gillies) trapped in the adjoining room! This is convenient, because not only can they maybe help each other out, but also, sex can be had.

Larry Cohen co-wrote the script, which isn’t up to the level of his other thrillers of that era, Cellular and Phone Booth. But how to explain twice-Oscar-nominated director Roland Joffé at the helm? You can’t. He does bring a visual style to the show, but that’s about it. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

The Gumball Rally (1976)

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If you were to check the leaderboard for comedies about illegal cross-country road races, you’d find that The Gumball Rally is firmly in the #2 spot. Trailing behind Paul Bartel’s Cannonball (which is even better if you imagine it as an unofficial prequel to Death Race 2000), it’s still miles ahead of Hal Needham’s The Cannonball Run series, which are classic examples of how movies that were obviously a lot of fun to film, usually aren’t a lot of fun to watch. (And if you’re wondering about Speed Zone, everyone involved in that fiasco died crashing into the wall or, at least, they wish they did).

Starring Michael Sarrazin as a wealthy businessman who relieves his existential boredom by running an annual underground race from New York City to Long Beach, Calif., the film follows the same loose, character-based structure of all those other films (a mold whose origins can be traced directly to Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World).

Although The Gumball Rally lacks the star power of Needham’s films, its lack of recognizable celebrities is mitigated by the fact that its cast actually made the effort to inhabit likable characters, rather than just mug shamelessly until the director announced it was time to get back to the hotel and par-tay.

Director/writer Charles Bail keeps the film light and slightly cartoony, and although some moments don’t quite work, the majority of the film moves as quickly as the vehicles it depicts right until the finish line. —Allan Mott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Timeline (2003)

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Although it’s adapted from a swiftly paced Michael Crichton novel to which it stays fairly faithful, the stunningly weak Timeline is a dreadfully dull excuse for a sci-fi action thriller, not to mention a career low for director Richard Donner.

A group of graduate students is excavating an old castle in France when a strange message from their professor that carbon-dating suggests is 600 years old. Turns out the old coot has wayback-machined himself to the 14th century! The corporation behind the technology making it all possible recruits a few of the kids to go back in time as well to save him.

And how I wish I could go back in time to save myself two hours and four bucks. This is not a story — it’s an endlessly cycling collection of footage of knights falling down, students climbing out of houses, swords clanging, and our heroes checking their “countdown markers” to see how much time they have left to make their rescue. In the spirit of things, I kept checking the readout on my DVD player to see how much more crap was left to unload before the closing credits.

If I hadn’t read the novel beforehand, I never would. There are so many things wrong with this movie that I lost count. But I have mustered up enough energy to recall three:
• Scottish comedian Billy Connelly — Howard Hesseman’s replacement on Head of the Class — plays the professor. Do you remember how annoying it is to hear Connelly speak? Me, too. I’d leave him trapped, because even powerfully grating voices like his can’t travel six centuries.
• A.I.’s Frances O’Connor looks like an elf. And I don’t mean a cute elf, but a gnarly elf with food poisoning and gonorrhea.
• Paul Walker — the himbo star of The Fast and the Furious franchise — is a truly terrible actor. But he is prettier than any of the females in the movie, which is never a good sign. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

A Study in Terror (1965)

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Years before Bob Clark did the same with Murder by Decree, director James Hill pitted Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror, a more-than-servicable entry in Holmes pastiche cinema. Strange how it was promoted with a campaign comparing it to TV’s campy Batman, because the master detective is neither a superhero, nor is this film campy.

It is, however, surprisingly bloody for its time. And pretty good, although slow by today’s rough-and-tumble standards. In his lone appearance as Holmes, John Neville does a terrific job, almost as if he knew this was his one shot; Donald Houston is his Watson, and Robert Morley and Judi Dench are among the supporting players.

Plot? We’ve pretty much already said it. Like From Hell, it’s all about the Ripper ripping up — or stabbing, to be precise — London’s prostitutes. Here, their cups runneth over their corsets, and they’ll all pretty hot. Not so much once they get a knife through the neck, although some people are into that sort of thing.

Producer Herman Cohen cuts some corners, but not when it comes to splashing on ever-vibrant color. The game is afoot … and fun! —Rod Lott

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Horror

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

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Made-for-TV movies didn’t always suck. In the 1970s and very early ’80s, they were downright awesome. Just look at Duel, Gargoyles, Killdozer, Dead of Night and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark — solid, well-oiled genre flicks one and all. But the best of these spookshows was Frank De Felitta’s Dark Night of the Scarecrow (sorry, folks, but Trilogy of Terror is only one-third good).

Charles Durning headlines as Otis, a sweaty, pumpkin-assed small-town postman who’s also a closet alcoholic, big-time bigot and all-around loser. When the mentally handicapped Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake) carries the torn-up, near-lifeless body of a little girl to her mother, Otis and pals assume the worst and grab their guns.

Bubba’s mom hides him in the scarecrow on their farm field, but the vigilante mob finds him and shoots him dead. And for nothing: Bubba saved the little girl’s life; ’twas a vicious dog to blame for her bloodiness. D’oh! Just desserts arrive as a scarecrow comes a-knockin’ for vengeance, one by one. You might say they get the short end of the straw. (Insert rimshot here.)

So much of this movie has haunted me since I saw its CBS Saturday prime-time premiere at the age of 10. Nearly three decades later, it still holds up — sadly, so does the small-mindedness of its characters — as a creepy, effective slasher film, minus the slashing. You won’t miss it; this is a well-told story that gets its thrills the old-fashioned way: It earns them. This is a true horror treasure. —Rod Lott

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