Alpha Dog (2006)

The murder of a 15-year-old boy at the center of Alpha Dog is rendered all the more tragic because it is so totally, utterly senseless. While the teenagers who populate the story fancy themselves as street-smart, they appear to be engaging in make-believe until it is too late – a bunch of self-styled tough guys barreling toward a bloody climax no one is quite smart enough to foresee.

Writer/director Nick Cassavetes fiddles with some names, dates and locations, but essentially Alpha Dog follows a real-life drama that played out in L.A.’s West Hills, late in the summer of 2000. California prosecutors allege that drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood ordered the kidnapping and slaying of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz after the boy’s older brother failed to pay a $1,200 debt. Four young men were convicted in the shooting death, but Hollywood, then 20, skipped out of the country and subsequently became one of the youngest people on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list before his eventual capture.

In the tale’s jump to film, Hollywood becomes Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch); Markowitz becomes Zack Mazursky (Anton Yelchin); and Zack’s no-good older brother, the one who gets on Johnny’s bad side, is Jake (Ben Foster). We’ve seen variations of this story many times, of course; delinquent youths and senseless violence have been fueling movies since before Glenn Ford picked up a piece of chalk in The Blackboard Jungle. But Alpha Dog does a tidy job of illustrating characters who feel authentic and defy expectations.

Johnny Truelove is a prime example. Although his suburban home is decked out with high-tech gadgetry and such gangsta accoutrements as a blown-up photo of Al Pacino’s Scarface, the diminutive Johnny is a decidedly confrontation-averse kingpin. As tensions escalate, Jake breaks into Johnny’s home and leaves a turd on the living room carpet. An armed Johnny silently watches the intruder, cowering behind a door. Johnny is far more interested in acting the part of badass than actually being one.

The young cast rises to the occasion. Foster is particularly exciting to watch. With the exception of one ill-conceived fight scene in which he suddenly becomes a cut-rate Jackie Chan, Foster brilliantly evokes volatility and danger. Another notable performance comes from singer Justin Timberlake as Frankie Ballenbacher, one of Johnny’s underlings. No one will confuse Frankie for a tragic character, but he’s the closest Alpha Dog comes to having one – a somewhat dense dude given the duty of watching Zack and who subsequently becomes a substitute big brother for the hostage.

Cassavetes (John Q) enlivens proceedings with directorial flourishes. Some of it works, some not so much. He successfully underscores scenes with an air of fatalism; in one nifty gimmick, Cassavetes employs periodic freeze frames in which written text identifies a character by his or her eventual witness number.

Easily the picture’s strangest inclusion is a scenery-chewing Sharon Stone as Zack’s mother. Like the fat suit in which she’s ensconced, the performance is shameless and bloated – and particularly gross when you consider that the mother of the real-life murder victim reportedly attempted suicide after Alpha Dog’s theatrical release. —Phil Bacharach

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Santo vs. Doctor Death (1973)

Mexico’s favorite son, the masked wrestler Santo (Santo), heads to Spain to compete in the world championship. Thanks to Interpol meddling, he’s forced to side-hustle as a secret agent to thwart the fine-art forgeries of Dr. Robert Mann (George Rigaud, Horror Express). Because Santo vs. Doctor Bob would make a terrible title, the Mexploitation film is called Santo vs. Doctor Death.

Assisting Santo is plainclothes Interpol Agent 9004, but you can call him Paul (Carlos Romero Marchent, Cut-Throats Nine). Soon, they learn Dr. Mann has more going on than copying precious masterworks; he’s also killing off precious models after he’s done growing tumors in their hot bods. (I promise that makes sense in context.)

This may be heresy to others’ eyes and ears, but I found Santo vs. Doctor Death to be in peak condition when it’s not wasting time in the wrestling ring, whereas seeing Santo slam a chair into an enemy’s face elicits a primal thrill. That’s because director and co-writer Rafael Romero Marchent (Sartana Kills Them All) keeps the 007-esque adventure zippy. In a standout scene, Santo and a henchman spar amid public urinals — more than four decades before Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill did so in Mission: Impossible — Fallout.

From unsolicited surgeries and acid baths to threats with a jar of scorpions, the proceedings play like expert pulp. Best representing that dime-mag aesthetic is a sequence in the booby-trapped bowels of Dr. Mann’s castle. It’s honestly a shame Doctor Death remains Rafael’s only Santo movie. Certainly, other opportunities existed, with this being one of eight Santo pics in ’73 alone. —Rod Lott

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Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders (2022)

Creepy old asshole Jon Voight plays creepy old asshole Ellison Betts, patriarch and Big Pharma magnate. For his 80th birthday, he invites his human possessions children and their families to his murder castle palatial estate. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (From Paris with Love) is the heir apparent, while Will Sasso (2012’s The Three Stooges) wants none of that BS. If the casting of those two as brothers seems far-fetched, just you wait.

A mysterious gift arrives for the shindig. Like all presents in screens big and small, the box is not sealed in any way, lest three seconds be wasted on watching someone rip paper. One lift o’ its lid reveals a handsomely designed game that shares the film’s title (and logo treatment): Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders. It comes complete with a Jigsaw-esque voice barking cryptic orders over the mansion’s PA system, I guess.

What transpires is a one-by-one thinning of the Betts clan, as they’re put through a series of challenges involving secret rooms and booby traps. Sean McNamara (director of more Baby Genuises sequels than one should affix his name to) gives us a cockamamie mix of Saw filtered through the dysfunctional family dynamics of HBO’s Succession, minus the latter’s all-around brilliance. Or the former’s commitment to its formula, for that matter.

Barely mustering enough of a damn that sitting in a wheelchair requires, Voight goes whole-hog à la Anaconda, taking a tone no one else in the cast dares, because it’s not called for. Everyone else modulates to the proper level, except when asked to feign extreme pain. On that note, Legacy Murders’ standout scenes include Sasso losing a heel and a cat losing all nine lives to a whirling sink disposal.

As slick as that kitchen appliance after the fact, but lacking the kung-fu grip to squeeze any juice past the first 30 minutes, this is not a sequel to Abel Ferrara’s Dangerous Game, the 1993 pairing of Harvey Keitel and Madonna. In case you were wondering. —Rod Lott

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Prey of the Jaguar (1996)

Covert operative-turned-family man Derek Leigh (Maxwell Caulfield) leads the good life. Having shunned busting drug cartels, he now spends his time on menial construction gigs, his dorky family and harvesting quite the porn-star mustache. But when Bandera (Trevor Goddard, 1995’s Mortal Kombat), a criminal he helped put behind bars, makes a prison break and slaughters his fam in payback, ol’ Derek again turns to kickin’ villain booty.

The style in which he does so, however, sets Prey of the Jaguar apart fron your standard, direct-to-video revenge thriller. Caulfield consults an Asian kung-fu master (John Fujioka, American Ninja) for training, purchases a crossbow and dart guns, and dons a homemade costume to become a superhero named — pause for dramatic effect — The Jaguar.

Hobbling along in plastic, smeared face paint and ViewMaster goggles, he looks like RoboCop costumed by TG&Y. Sharing a trait with Caulfield’s Grease 2 character, The Jaguar’s also a cool rider, scouting about town on a sleek black motorcycle, even though this film doesn’t have the budget to fill the Kawasaki Ninja with gas so we can see it move.

Caulfield gives an expertly poor performance as the unwitting, yet comfortably quick-quipping crimefighter. When Leigh informs his Remo Williams-esque mentor that (in so many words) his to-buy list will be much, much shorter this Christmas, he hugs a punching bag and collapses into unconvincing sobs. Then there’s the matter of the hard-to-swallow dialogue, too, like when Jag confronts his nemesis’ henchman:

Jaguar: “Tell Bandera he better learn to pray, because now he is!”
Henchie: “What?”
Jaguar: “Prey!”

Prey of the Jaguar trots out all the clichés; among them, the enemy who makes a bullseye in darts just as he vows to kill the hero, and the inevitable good-guy-saved-when-bad-guy-gets-shot-in-the-back-by-surprise-supporting-character climax. It also trots out the inexplicable, like a ponytailed Stacy Keach cameo or an ultra-secret government spy agency running reports on a dot-matrix printer.

In the hands of hack director David DeCoteau (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), Prey cannot be taken seriously, not even when it offs the protagonist’s wife and kid. The setup and credit sequence scream “syndicated TV movie,” while Caulfield jumping around (subbed in part by obvious stunt doubles with longer hair) like a Ritalin kid on Halloween is the nail in the credibility coffin.

Following other Z-level DTV heroes like Black Scorpion and The Demolitionist, this Jaguar is another dumb-fun example of why superhero movies are tough to tackle without tens of millions of dollars. —Rod Lott

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Deathcember (2019)

Since childhood, I’ve admired the concept of the advent calendar more than using one — a case of each door revealing “That’s it?”-level disappointment after so much buildup. That feeling extends to Deathcember, a festive horror anthology constructed as such a calendar, with a short from a different director (Ruggero Deodato, Lucky McKee and Trent Haaga the most recognizable) waiting behind each of 24 numbered items in a 3-D environment.

The stories actually number more than two dozen if you count those nestled within the end credits, so Deathcember even betrays its own approach. It’s not like the Dominic Saxl-conceived collection faced a Sophie’s Choice of inclusion, because so few segments register as entertaining.

I counted three that do. The comedic “All Sales Fatal” pits a meek store clerk against an entitled customer (B-movie royalty Tiffany Shepis, Victor Crowley) attempting to return an item without a receipt. “December the 19th” pays homage to the ’80s slasher with gory results at an ice-skating rink. And putting a Santa spin on Reservoir Dogs is “X-mas on Fire”; cleverly, the jewelry heist leader is played by Steven E. de Souza, co-writer of the classic Christmas movie Die Hard.

On the spectrum’s other end sits “Aurora,” a pointless slice of sci-fi seemingly taken from a video game trailer. While “Crappy Christmas: Operation Christ Child” consists of wonderfully done stop-motion animation, it does so to depict clergy members repeatedly raping a young turd (yes, “turd,” not “turk”). Ha-ha?

Commendably, the movie’s two and a half hours run the gamut of genres, from the giallo and a rape revenger to a black-and-white Western and a silent Hunchback of Notre Dame parody. With so many tries at bat, it’s improbable for every piece to succeed, but it’s not out of the question to expect more hits than misses (as The ABCs of Death and its sequel achieved). And yet, a wide majority of Deathcember’s doors ring empty, either lacking a payoff, misjudging their scope or failing to tell a story at all. —Rod Lott

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