Busted (1997)

Words you never wanted to see grouped in such an order, “directed by Corey Feldman,” adorn Busted, the thankfully lone such endeavor from the former Goonie. It aims — repeat: aims — to be a Naked Gun-style parody of cop movies, but comes off as being made by people who have never seen a comedy and know the genre only through eavesdropping. Perhaps Feldman himself sensed this, which explains Busted‘s double-barreled categorization as a spoof and a Skinemax entry. Jokes and boobs: Only one requires skill — well, post-scalpel.

Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, I hereby rescind every negative word I’ve sent your way.

Not content with calling the shots, Feldman also stars as a zany cop in a precinct of nothing but. Even zanier, to bring crime off the streets, his crew brings it into the station; pantyhose-faced purse snatchers roam the halls freely, while one jail cell is transformed into a bordello. The strategy is not unlike the “Hamsterdam” season of TV’s brilliant The Wire, and let that be the only time the two shall be tied. (Let this serve as my proactive public apology to David Simon.)

Story stops at setup: With a Peeping Tom on the loose — not to mention bank robbers and a bikini-clad woman crossing streets while holding a giant letter “J” (ugh) — the mayor (Rance Howard, Ticks) assigns a stern lady captain (Mariana Morgan, Exit to Eden) to keep the cops under control or else. Her hair bun is wound so tightly, you just know it’s going to be unfurled toward the end, revealing her as Total Hottie. (However, Feldman does not telegraph he then will violently remove all fabric in order to expose her breasts.)

With a reason to exist out of the way, it’s one unfunny joke after another, each increasing in flatness. They’re so poorly written, you can predict the punchline immediately upon hearing idioms like “show her the ropes” and “by the book.” To be fair, such gags come straight from the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker style, but it really is all in the delivery. For example, a police sketch of a stick figure can be funny under the proper circumstances, like as a quick cutaway; you don’t pass it around to every other character in a crowded shot to individually display and comment upon further. Your movie may be dirt-stupid, but viewers are not. (Okay, most viewers.)

In an extended boxing match, Feldman referees; for some reason, that requires him to pop one eye, turn his mouth diagonal and talk out one side of it, in an accent approximating … I dunno, Burgess Meredith? He does this not just for a line, which might be acceptable, but the entire scene. It’s painful viewing — more painful than a looped, slow-motion clip of Gage getting an up-close look at a semi in 1989’s Pet Sematary.

Another set piece finds Feldman wrestling a live gun from porn star Ron Jeremy. Who knows, that could be based on something the two did at a party in the Valley, and Feldman thought it’d be a hoot to throw in. If so, that’s more effort than he expended on masking the rag covering his genitals in a shower threesome (none) or where the top of the precinct’s set ends (also none).

Among other cameos, Julie Strain is on hand long enough to drop her towel; Todd Bridges, to remind you he’s still alive; and Elliott Gould, to embarrass his family and threaten his legacy. Corey Haim is also present, but only for a few random scenes. That’s because he reportedly walked upon learning his “friend” Feldman also had hired Haim’s alleged molester, Dominick Brascia (Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning).

Inadvertent or not, the one thing Busted does right is giving 1990s T&A royalty Monique Parent, Ava Fabian and Griffin Drew the rare opportunity to flex muscles beyond just the ones required to unhook their bras. They get to flex comedic muscles, too, even if that means fellating butter-rubbed corn on the cob. —Rod Lott

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Scare Zone (2009)

So, hypothetically speaking, how many rock-song montages should a movie be allowed to have? Because in Scare Zone, I counted seven, each with its actors and/or extras gesturing wildly for the camera while the likes of Soulguard, Hydrosonic and Orange Avenue rip through all the hitz* on the soundtrack!

Shot largely at Universal Studios Florida, Scare Zone is set at a three-nights-only haunted-house attraction — the Scare Zone Psycho-Splatter Raw-Topsy Slaughter Dungeon, to be specific. Run by Oliver (Simon Needham, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector), the rooms include a mad surgeon’s table, a vat of lye and poopy toilets, all of which are on the tour he gives to his new employees; from the sassy Black guy to the slutty blonde girl, all stereotypes are covered.

It doesn’t take long for writer/director Jon Binkowski (The Visitant) to thin his cast of unknowns, but those scenes have no sense of suspense — a common problem among low-rate slashers. Not so common: cartoon orchestration punctuating so many lines of dialogue and character movements. It’s almost as if Scare Zone is unsure whether it’s a horror movie or a comedy. Supporting that theory are visual throwaway gags, like the celebratory round of “Killer Lite” beer, and lame exchanges on the level of grade-school joke books, like:

“She told me about her family.”
“Yeah, who, the Addams Family?”

Scare Zone’s single grace is that in using the sets from Universal’s actual attraction at the time, it boasts production value for days (or 6.25% of one, if you dislike hyperbole). However, great sets aren’t enough to save a picture. Scare Zone remains, to borrow a phrase from Oliver, “juvenile tomfuckery.” I am looking forward to fall, though. —Rod Lott

*Misspelled on purpose, but appropriate for what sounds like Collective Soul, but watered down, then shrunk in the dryer.

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Row 19 (2021)

Last month, I took an overnight, eight-hour flight with mechanical issues, a significant delay in departure, spine-crunching seating to render sleep impossible, mayonnaise on the turkey sandwich “dinner,” Venom: Let There Be Carnage playing on the screen and a couple of passengers getting a little too mouthy about having to wear masks. All that’s to say today’s airlines make for a stressful, terrifying experience.

Sadly, Row 19 is neither. Unlike my seat, it’s by no means painful. For a supernatural spooker at 30,000 feet, the Russian film is at least more entertaining than America’s own, higher-profile Flight 7500. Its ultimate destination is what sinks it.

Twenty years after emerging as the lone survivor of a catastrophic plane crash, doctor and single mom Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova, Cosmoball) bravely takes off again. With her daughter (fellow Cosmoballer Marta Kessler) in tow and the same age as Katerina was at the time of tragedy, she boards a red eye with only about half a dozen passengers — I mean, unless you count the ghosts, spirits and other phantasmagorical stowaways eventually causing havoc.

What It All Means can be sussed out well before director Alexander Babaev (Bornless Ones, not to be confused with boneless ones at your neighborhood Buffalo Wild Wings) intends. Although Ivanova succeeds in selling the hell out of the concept and Babaev brings it in at a tidy 78 minutes (with credits), Row 19 lands as a rough and routine trip of terror. Barring a different language, the slick flick is nothing you haven’t seen before — especially if Flightplan is stamped in your cinematic passport. —Rod Lott

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The Private Lives of Adam & Eve (1960)

You may not find it in your version of the Bible, but on the eighth day, God created Mamie Van Doren. And He saw that she was good — very, very good.

So to me, it kinda makes sense to have her play the world’s first woman in Albert Zugsmith’s first sex comedy, The Private Lives of Adam & Eve. After all, it makes perfect sense to cast Mickey Rooney as Satan, a fancy way to say “himself.”

The film begins in black and white in present-day Paradise, Nevada, population 7. Van Doren’s Evie and husband Ad (Martin Milner, 1960’s 13 Ghosts) are among eight passengers on a bus headed for Reno. Also aboard is Rooney, resplendent in Col. Sanders regalia as a casino owner. All’s well until the 27-minute mark, when stock footage of flash floods and landslides forces them to take cover in a church. Ad and Evie pass the time with a shared dream, kicking the flick into “SpectaColor,” a fancy way to say “color.”

Cue the meat on Private Lives’ calcium-starved bones: a wacky take on the Book of Genesis. Ad, now Adam, frolics with animals as he runs around in his little Tarzan pants. Among his harem of sexy sinners named after days of the week — The Bellboy and the Playgirls’ June Wilkinson among them as Saturday — Rooney’s devil sends cat-eyed Lilith (foxy Fay Spain, 1957’s Dragstrip Girl) to seduce Adam over to the dark side. Tempting … until Adam gets a load of Evie — er, Eve — despite her long hair prodigiously pasted over her bosom.

An entire decade and a half have passed since my two-year stint teaching Sunday school, so I assume all of the above remains biblically accurate. Still, Zugsmith skirts the fact that Adam and Eve’s all-fruit diet would lead turn the Garden of Eden into one of chronic diarrhea.

If you can turn yourself away from trying to catch glue failing, you’ll note Van Doren’s adorable breathy lines: “Maybe next time we can have apples. Big … red … apples.” When Adam finally takes a bite, so does the movie, reverting to B&W and an ending that makes one wonder the point of the entire exercise.

As chaste as it is overly cast (with Tuesday Weld, Mel Torme and Paul Anka also taking part), The Private Lives of Adam & Eve is light of heart and dryer-lint disposable. Zugsmith and Van Doren reunited twice that year for the far more fun College Confidential and Sex Kittens Go to College. —Rod Lott

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Human Factors (2021)

Some weekends are made for a getaway; Jan and Nina soon wish they had just picked another. Mere minutes after the married ad execs arrive at their second home with their two children, their idyllic escape is the site of a home invasion.

Or is it? After all, Jan (Mark Waschke of the Netflix series Dark) was outside at the time and didn’t see a thing. Nina (Sabine Timoteo, Sarah Plays a Werewolf) was in the house but only saw a flash; nonetheless, she is beside herself with adrenaline and fright. By the time writer/director Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors concludes, both of their perspectives are revealed, as well a third from an identity I’ll leave unspoken.

The German film isn’t exactly Rashomon, but with each shift of the storyteller, Trocker peels back more layers in his characters and their respective secrets. If anything, it bears more resemblance to Force Majeure as the trust between spouses dissolves, with a tad of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games thrown in — the original or the remake, your choice.

While Human Factors shares their intelligence, but lacks their resonance, Trocker (The Eremites) does succeed in making his point of not everything being what initially seems. That includes learning his sophomore feature is not quite the thriller it sets itself up to be, particularly after an unbroken three-minute opening shot that’s a masterpiece of timing. I’ll contend that, too, may be by design. —Rod Lott

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