Martial Arts

Battle Creek Brawl (1980)

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Also known as The Big Brawl, the not-set-at-Kellogg’s-HQ Battle Creek Brawl represents Jackie Chan’s first — and ill-fated — attempt to break into American cinema. Although it shows signs of his trademark humor and acrobatics, it’s not a fitting vehicle for his talents.

In 1930s Chicago, which looks every bit 1980, Chan’s Jerry Kwan protects his father’s restaurant from the neighborhood mob — a premise lifted wholesale from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon. Scraping to get by, he and his sexy American girlfriend, Nancy (Kristine DeBell, Meatballs), enter anything-goes roller-rink contests to score quick, easy cash.

Liking what he sees, local goon Dominici (José Ferrer, Exo Man) kidnaps Nancy, forcing Jerry to participate in Texas’ annual Battle Creek free-for-all street fight — a “brawl,” if you will — in which he must punch and kick his way through a succession of burly men. This includes the ever-dreaded bald dude with a handlebar mustache and the fright-inducing, knee-quivering name of Kiss (H.B. Haggerty, Hollywood Vice Squad’s Tank).

Decent action sequences exist, from the aforementioned roller-skate madness (making for a crazy 10 minutes) to an early scuffle in which Jerry tries not to fight, but fails (trust me, that makes sense when you see it). Despite that, this Brawl doesn’t benefit from an utterly cheap look and color palette limited to every shade of brown. Can you believe director Robert Clouse is the same guy who gave us a martial arts all-timer in Enter the Dragon?

You sure can, if you’ve seen Clouse’s in-between work, like Force: Five, Golden Needles and/or The Ultimate Warrior. As Battle Creek Brawl stands — and wobbles — it’s a most minor entry on Chan’s filmography, yet not the all-out disaster its nil impact may have led you to believe. —Rod Lott

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Kitchen Sink

The Other Side of the Mirror (1973)

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WTFAfter announcing her engagement, the sheltered Ana (Emma Cohen, Horror Rises from the Tomb) is shattered to learn how her widowed father takes the news: by squeezing his head through a noose and taking one giant leap off a chair. (Dramatic much, Pops?) Given the dead dad is played by the bug-eyed Howard Vernon (Revenge in the House of Usher), the sight of him hanging with tongue jutting makes him look like an emoji.

It’s not intended as funny, of course, nor is the Jess Franco film another of his bugaboo fright fests. Instead, The Other Side of the Mirror is a Euro-arty examination of grief with brief touches of the psychosexual and briefer hints at the supernatural.

Unable to marry after tragedy, the guilt-ridden Ana flees her comfy, seaside mansion life to hobnob with the Portugal art crowd in the city. Falling into bed with a number of partners, however, proves deadly, with each man meeting the business end of well-kept cutlery. She’s like a black widow without the vows … but is dear ol’ Dad bidding her post-bedding acts? That one of her victims is the director (Ramiro Oliveros, The Swamp of the Ravens) of a production of Medea is not accidental; in fact, it’s Oedipal.

Classy yet spotty, Mirror finds Franco showing restraint from his usual zooms-and-wombs affairs. The movie ambles; one scene holds a hypnotic power, while the next dissipates into apathy. In many ways, it reads like a less-effective revisit of his Venus in Furs, complete with jazz. And therein lies Mirror’s highlight: Cohen’s cooing rendition of “Madeira Love,” backed by a live band and thankfully shown in full. If only the whole were as groovy. —Rod Lott

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Cube Zero (2004)

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Vincenzo Natali’s minimalist sci-fi cult hit, 1997’s Cube, had such a killer concept — people wake in an apparently escape-free maze of cubes, many of which are booby-trapped — it didn’t need repeating. Proving lightning doesn’t strike twice, the Natali-less Cube 2: Hypercube simply tried to do the same thing again, leading to disappointment. Turns out, you can’t follow Cube.

So for Cube Zero, writer/director/producer Ernie Barbarash (Stir of Echoes 2: The Homecoming) goes backward and behind the scenes. As a prequel, it’s only partly concerned with an all-new group of anonymous, amnesiac prisoners trying to navigate through the high-tech hell without being burned, chopped, melted or turned into ground beef. Instead, the focus is on the cube’s employees who carry out orders from management they know will cause harm to the maze dwellers without knowing the “why.”

One technician (Zachary Bennett, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day) starts to question his job and the morals behind it — and hey, what took ya so long? After believing one attractive participant (Stephanie Moore, Urban Legends: Final Cut) is there entirely against her will, he takes an extreme measure that seems out of character, but action is action.

Even with a one-eyed supporting character who’s way over the top and a last-minute plot twist that veers toward the silly, Cube Zero emerges as a much better series entry than Cube 2 could ever dream of. It’s also notably gorier than either of its predecessors, and builds upon the mythology without getting caught in the abstraction of it all. Now, whether the original film needed further explanation … —Rod Lott

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Western

Buck and the Preacher (1972)

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When I was recently hospitalized, I became a fan of the Western genre. It harks back to the time I watched them with my father was I was a kid. Sure, I was more drawn to the anti-hero type, but it was one of the only times I bonded with him. One of his favorites was the 1972’s Buck and the Preacher, respectively starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in the title roles.

Having been through emancipation, slaves try for a better life during westward expansion. Buck (Poitier) is a wagon master, trying to take a party to the west. However, they cross paths with a cadre of dirty racists — creeping parties of white pissants who try to take them down, maiming and killing all. Buck teams with the Preacher (Belafonte), doling out two-fisted vengeance along the way, with help from an Indigenous tribe. Out of sight!

Poitier and Belafonte are a dynamite duo, giving a new spin on the slightly unmatched platonic couplings; despite being a gruff loner, Poitier is no-nonsense, trying to get these people to their new home, while Belafonte is a religious huckster who goes against type.

What I really like is the film’s score by jazz musician Benny Carter. His twanging riffs have a real lustrous sheen in the wah-wah category, giving the whole soundtrack a real chugging atmosphere. Much like the film, I can’t say enough about it. —Louis Fowler

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Comedy

The Day After Halloween (2022)

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For me, the day after Halloween is one of regret, over the sheer multitude of peanut butter cups and gummy confections consumed. For the roommates of The Day After Halloween, it’s one of confusion — as in, why is a dead girl in our bathtub? Until they’ve answered that question, regret remains TBD.

Shot in Pennsylvania, the shaggy-dog indie comedy follows Addison (Danny Schluck, writer and co-producer) and Hayes (Brandon DeLany, Air: The Musical) as they spend Saturday, Nov. 1 (obvs), piecing together substance-fragmented memories of the previous night’s debauchery. Their back-and-forth glimpses gradually allow us to know Addison and Hayes (uh, Moonlighting much?) beyond the duties of running The Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Addison is a smart-ass slob, irresponsibility personified; Hayes is the more adult of the two, yet pressured by an outta-his-league girlfriend (model Aimee Fogelman) to gain enough ambition — fun-sized, even — to attend college.

With its blackout-cum-befuddlement concept, comparisons to The Hangover trilogy are inevitable and merited; however, the influence looming largest over The Day After Halloween is Clerks. To its detriment, Schluck’s script trafficks in Kevin Smith’s droll, smarmy, too-knowing patter, so everyone’s conversations amount to a stand-up routine for an audience of one or two. You hear it in discussions of everything from ALF to anuses, Raggedy Andy to rape and Jehovah’s Witnesses to jerk-off patterns.

That said, as with Smith, it scores a base hit every now and then, whether pegging older women as “brutal beasts fueled by white wine and Pilates” or a crafting an action plan to deal with the tub corpse: “We’re gonna need tools, duct tape and a fuck-ton of Febreze.” One thing Schluck and first-time director Chad Ostrum have going for them is an element of surprise: Yeah, it takes a turn. In the end, The Day After Halloween is just engaging enough to like, yet clearly made with more love than transferred to viewers. —Rod Lott

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