My Son, the Vampire should win the prize for the most misleading title in the history of cinema. Not only is there no son, but no vampire, either. Sure, Bela Lugosi plays a character who calls himself The Vampire, but that’s just backstory.

He believes himself to be descended from a famous vampire and likes to wear a tuxedo while sleeping in his coffin. The Vampire is actually just a non-bloodsucking mad scientist named Von Housen who’s created a killer robot that he wants to use to take over the world. Which, you know, is still pretty awesome. My Son, the Vampire may have a misleading title, but that doesn’t mean it … um, sucks.

It’s the last film in Britain’s Old Mother Riley series in which a cross-dressing Arthur Lucan plays an elderly, Irish woman in a variety of outlandish situations. Other titles include Old Mother Riley MP, Old Mother Riley’s Ghosts and Old Mother Riley’s Jungle Treasure. Which still doesn’t explain whose son The Vampire is supposed to be. Because if he’s Mother Riley’s, that makes Von Housen’s flirting with her even creepier than it already is. The last thing anyone wants to see is Lugosi hooking up with Lucan.

But it’s creepy in a good way. My Son, the Vampire is nothing if not fun. Lucan is hilarious and the movie’s got some genuinely funny gags, an insane musical number that comes from nowhere, Lugosi hamming it up like I’ve never seen him do (and I’ve seen a lot of Lugosi films), and more slapstick than you can shake a Stooge at. —Michael May

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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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