The UFO Incident (1975)

Based on a purported true story, The UFO Incident dramatizes the alien abduction of Barney and Betty Hill on Sept. 19, 1961, in New Hampshire — rural New Hampshire, of course.

After their close encounter of the made-for-TV kind, Barney (James Earl Jones, Exorcist II: The Heretic) and Betty (Estelle Parsons, Bonnie and Clyde) have amnesia, but also enough of a memory to not want to discuss it. Easier said than done since Betty experiences nightmares out the wazoo, while Barney sprouts warts on his groin.

Under hypnosis, however, they start to recall specific details of What Went Down on that silver saucer — no anal probe mentioned, but Betty shares taking a pregnancy test by way of a needle through the navel.

For the remainder of the telepic, director Richard A. Colla (Fuzz) cuts between Jones and Parsons’ separate sessions with the doctor (Barnard Hughes, The Lost Boys) and flashbacks to the night in question. While the visitors may look silly by today’s standards, youngsters watching live in ’75 were collectively traumatized. It’s hard to convey how much more powerful and terrifying a quick and partial glimpse could be when “pause” and “rewind” weren’t buttons on the remote control.

What’s most interesting are not these sequences aboard the ship, but the Hills’ recounting of such, thanks to Jones’ and Parsons’ skills as stage-trained actors. Jones in particular is able to go from sweat to full-on snot and tears on cue. Although I’m uncertain whether Betty is supposed to be as “special” as portrayed, there’s no denying Parsons sells her character’s unconditional love for Barney, a barrel of a man.

I’d even argue the movie works best before they undergo hypnosis, when Colla simply lets us into their normal life, including the everyday challenges they face from mankind. That the couple’s biracial aspect goes without comment makes The UFO Incident more progressive than the tube offered at the time, outside of a Norman Lear sitcom. —Rod Lott

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The Acid House (1998)

Arguably, The Acid House wouldn’t exist without the international phenomenon of Trainspotting two years earlier. While both are based on Irvine Welsh books, The Acid House is an anthology and arrives adapted by Welsh himself, so “cunt” utterances abound.

“The Granton Star Cause” details the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day of Boab (Stephen McCole, Rushmore). In quick succession, the “lumpen proletariat malcontent” gets booted from his soccer football team, kicked out of his family’s house, dumped by his girlfriend, thrown in jail and fired from work. Nursing his wounds in a pub — where else? — he meets God (Maurice Roëves, Judge Dredd), who gives him the powers of revenge … albeit as a housefly. Let the scatological parade begin!

Joviality downshifts into “The Soft Touch,” a working-class love-ish story of newlyweds/new parents Johnny and Catriona (Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd and Doom Patrol’s Michelle Gomez, providing the movie’s strongest performances). Here, Welsh dwells in Mike Leigh kitchen-sink squalor, detailing Johnny’s heartbreaking misery as a skeevy, alpha neighbor (Gary McCormack, Valhalla Rising) moves into their building and near-immediately into Catriona. More depressing than funny, the segment at least gives the film an emotional core — one best exemplified by the shoegaze melody of Belle & Sebastian’s “Leave Home,” a number so moving, the soundtrack uses it twice.

Finally, there’s the titular story, starring Ewen Bremner, practically reprising his Trainspotting role of Spud. In a body-swap scenario Hollywood wouldn’t dare touch, his Coco does a hit of acid and switches souls with a newborn baby — no explanation given or needed. Via an animatronic infant more unsettling than those of most horror films, Coco thoroughly enjoys breastfeeding, asks Mum (Jemma Redgrave, Dream Demon) for a beej and pleasures himself from his crib as his parents get frisky in the sheets.

Like “Granton,” this third bit revels in shock value and succeeds, even if first-feature director Paul McGuigan (Victor Frankenstein) lets it go on so long, it’s perilously close to schoolyard juvenilia. Then again, with arrested development running a throughline, that may be the point. To varying degrees, each story overstays its optimal welcome, leaving The Acid House too loose and unfocused to become a classic for the UK’s chemical generation, yet diverting enough for one go-round. Scottish accents come unvarnished, so lest the likes of “nippy wee winger” and “daft sow” reside atop your tongue, subtitles are encouraged. —Rod Lott

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Express to Terror (1979)

Don’t judge a movie by its cover. In the case of Express to Terror, the reason is because it’s actually the feature-length pilot of NBC’s legendarily colossal failure of a television series, Supertrain, which lasted all of nine episodes. (Okay, now you can judge it.)

Possessing a boner for rail travel, the CEO of TransAllied Corporation (Keenan Wynn, The Crowded Sky) accepts the U.S. Department of Transportation’s request to construct an atomic-powered choo-choo train with unlabeled gumdrop-button controls to make it go coast to coast in 36 hours. The end result, aka Supertrain, is so luxurious, it has everything: a bar, a gym, a sauna, a swimming pool, a discotheque, red carpet, an elevator, Nina Talbot and a flaming hairstylist with two electric dryers!

Well, almost everything — as we learn, it lacks ashtrays, Maalox and suspense.

Add “competent security” to the list, considering Supertrain’s maiden voyage is fraught with repeated attempts on the life of Mike (crooner Steve Lawrence), a gambling-addicted passenger in debt to the mob. Meanwhile, Mike falls for the ditzy, abused wife (Char Fontane, The Night the Bridge Fell Down) of his would-be assassin (Don Stroud, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off). Mike’s dandy, Peaky Blinders-capped pal (Don Meredith, Mayday at 40,000 Feet!) condemns the romance, because she looks like she “reads Corn Flakes boxes.” (To be fair, he’s not wrong.)

Also aboard Supertrain are Stella Stevens, George Hamilton, Robert Alda, Vicki Lawrence and Fred Williamson. None sticks out because all play second fiddle — if not relegated to last chair — to Steve Lawrence’s pickle of a primary storyline. He brings all the intensity and nuance he would to his finest performance: as himself, hosting TV’s Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders. Only if director Dan Curtis (Burnt Offerings) were helming a game show could his leading man fit snugly in the role’s demands.

By comparison, The Love Boat looks like James A. Michener. Strangely, this disaster-adjacent pilot is written by two people who should have known — or typed — better: soon-to-be Oscar-winning scribe Earl W. Wallace (Witness) and crime-fiction icon Donald E. Westlake. Whether they were just taking a check or network interference gummed up the works, Express to Terror is, ending aside, slow enough to qualify as a sedative. All a-snore! —Rod Lott

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Cool World (1992)

As hot as sex kitten Kim Basinger was/is, the cartoon version of her in Cool World, Holli Would, might be a bit better, if only for the way she cockteases anthropomorphic dogs, cats and a young Brad Pitt. Yowza! According to the ads, “Holli would if she could …”

Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World really adapts the video of the Rolling Stones’ “Harlem Shuffle” by way of a cheap skin flick, leading to a great good okay movie. Coming out of the clink for, I guess, murder, artist Jack (Gabriel Byrne) drives around his comic studio and comic shop, letting all the early ’90s nerds know graphic artists drives girls crazy, especially Holli.

From his mostly drawn Cool World, Holli entices Jack to cross over into our world primarily by using sex as a weapon (to be fair, so was Kim Basinger). On her tail is Pitt — whose acting talent was apparently not always there — as a 1940s cop who has to take her down, as well as a few abrasive — but very Bakshi-lite — cartoons.

The breathy intonations aside, trailblazing animator Bakshi created a new playground in 1992, but sadly, everybody instead was watching progeny like Tiny Toon Adventures, The Ren & Stimpy Show and other post-ironic viewing. Meanwhile, Cool World was a smutty sex comedy, as was the custom in ’92. Monkeybone vibes, anyone?

Byrne is mostly fine and Pitt is all about the baby blues, but the selling point is the miniskirted Basinger, animated or not. But what I really dug was the closer tune, “Real Cool World” by David Bowie; maybe the movie should’ve been about some puppets? —Louis Fowler

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Mega Manor (1987)

Attention, salesmen the world over: One particular bank in Scotland has an incentive program that bests any “president’s club” event. In exchange for your hard work, it buses you to a weeklong retreat at Mega Boob Manor — so named because it’s staffed by women with royally large chests.

The butter-faced ladies pamper and pleasure the guys. They play squash and they squash. They ride exercise bikes and they ride. They soak in Jacuzzis and they soak. They squirt water guns and they squirt. You get the picture. Because individual literal fantasies are catered to, we witness a burglary during a shower, a licking of “fruit and cream from the body of Sally” and an old man’s face getting bitch-slapped by 10 heavy bags of hanging flesh.

Meanwhile, the men’s suspicious wives rightly assume the worst and take revenge by bedding their husbands’ boss. He mercifully puts this wicked monstrosity of mammaries to bed by breaking the fourth wall: “Oh, no, that’s the end.”

All of the above occurs as hamster-wheel instrumentals by The Pync Brothers (whoever they are) blare; just imagine if The Art of Noise were commissioned to score a children’s educational video on farm animals.

Also known by the titillating title of Miss-Adventures at Mega Boob Manor, Mega Manor is the movie equivalent of second base. Despite being directed by UK hardcore pornographer Peter Kay (Carrie Potter and the Philosopher’s Bone), sex is absent from this slab of erotic comedy. There’s so much breast-squeezing, the guys likely got carpal tunnel syndrome. Only three actors — Pat Wynn, Lynda White and Janie Hamilton — allowed their names in the credits. I can’t imagine why. —Ed Donovan

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