Action

Checkered Flag or Crash (1977)

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A Filipino version of the Cannonball Run, the Manila 1000 is a three-day, off-road race involving everything from jeeps and dune buggies to stock cars and stocky Joe Don Baker (The Living Daylights) as driver Walkaway Madden. It also features motorcycles — or “motor-sickles,” if you wish to pronounce it as does race promoter Bo Cochran, played by Larry Hagman (TV’s Dallas) in a hat pilfered from Carmen Sandiego’s entry hall.

Before the start, in a setup soon to be swiped by Safari 3000, a plucky journalist from Stratus magazine (Susan Sarandon, the same year she did The Great Smokey Roadblock) pokes her nose around for a story, so Cochran forces Madden to let her ride shotgun. Dressed in a lumpy-butt jumpsuit that’s less Evel Knievel and more Elvis ’77, Madden is furious, like, “A yucky woman? Phooey!” so you just know they’ll bicker and bitch until they fall into something approximating love or lust. Worry not — we’re spared the sight of a Sarandon/Baker sammie.

Storywise, Checkered Flag or Crash actively works against itself, as if settling to let Harlan Sanders’ boot-scootin’ theme song do all the plotting: “Checkered flag or crash / Goin’ for the heavy green, gonna beat ’em / Checkered flag or crash / There ain’t no in between / So do me right, you damn machine.”

The slight variation from that outline arrives with news of an upcoming stretch of the route suddenly becoming impassable … so Cochran doubles the prize money. This should clear the way for director Alan Gibson (The Satanic Rites of Dracula) to turn in a film that feels faster and more dangerous, yet over and over again, he demonstrates how ill-suited he is for the job.

From Macon County Line’s Alan Vint to Playboy centerfold Daina House as a masked rider, Gibson has all the ingredients within reach to make a rip-roarin’, race-brained hicksploitation pic. Instead, he botches the recipe with confusing staging and editorial choices that are particularly flabbergasting for this subgenre — for instance, slowing down and removing frames from some of the more extreme-speed stunts, which is a technique one level above a photo flipbook.

Plus, with pacing akin to the driving skills of my late, not-so-great stepgrandmother — lay on the accelerator, let up, lay on the accelerator, let up, ad infinitum — you’re better off watching an autocentric film that wastes more gas than it wastes your time. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Mother Schmuckers (2021)

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Abandon hope, all ye who enter Mother Schmuckers, Belgium’s answer to Dumb and Dumber. The leads, played by filmmaking brothers Lenny and Harpo Guit, are even the human equivalent of Lloyd Christmas’ “most annoying sound in the world.”

As perpetually hungry, poverty-stricken brothers Issachar (who looks like Emo Philips had sex with Elijah Wood) and Zabulon (who doesn’t), the Guits lose their mother’s beloved dog, January Jack. That’s it for a story; the boys just run around town, finding shenanigans at every turn: playing with a loaded gun, eating a maggot-ridden burger, dancing in a music video. In the highlight, as it were,
Issachar uses unconvincing carpet scraps to pass for a dog to gain access into a club — uh-oh, it’s a bestiality club, yuk yuk!

Mother Schmuckers shows its stripes in the opening scene, where Issachar and Zabulon cook poop. When executed well, gross-out comedy can garner laughs so large, they strain your stomach muscles. That’s not the case here; the Guits present the situation without real jokes attached. This is not a case of European humor failing to translate to this stupid American’s brain or offending my delicate sensibilities, as Denmark’s Klown is as riotous as they come, and France’s recent Mandibles is full of laugh-aloud moments, too.

By contrast, Mother Schmuckers simply is not funny because the Guits don’t push the bits beyond merely presenting them, and that’s not enough. I laughed exactly once, at someone’s apt summation of Issachar: “He looks like a Playmobil.” At least the movie is pretty much over with after 65 minutes — a tiresome stretch in any language for gags this flat and contemptible. Comparisons to John Waters are unfair to John Waters. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Meander (2020)

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Pity poor Lisa. She wakes in what looks to be a high-tech air duct, but with no idea where she is, how she got there or why. Only the gadget encircling her wrist — part flashlight, part timepiece — gives her an indication: It’s not good.

Sure enough, Lisa (Gaia Weiss, The Legend of Hercules) is part of a truly twisted game, forced to crawl through a maze of pipes of varying circumference — none comfortable for her or the Meander viewer. That goes double when the pipes start retracting in size as she scurries through.

You could say if a saving grace exists for her, it’s that the pipes aren’t loaded with surprise traps!

But you’d be wrong, because the pipes are loaded with surprise traps: fire, water, acid, wire and — take a breath; you’ll need it — much, much more.

Little dialogue notwithstanding, how can a film consisting almost entirely of a woman maneuvering her way through dark, tight passageways be compelling? Doesn’t matter, because Hostile writer and director Mathieu Turi succeeds with just that — perhaps too well, as Meander quickly grows so increasingly claustrophobic, I had to look away a few times just in case my daily dose of Lisinopril weren’t strong enough to keep my blood pressure at a manageable level.

I had no such reaction to watching Ryan Reynolds or Stephen Dorff trapped in their respective wooden coffin and car trunk for the whole of their also-respective Buried and Brake. But there’s something about Meander that elicits raw panic; going out on a limb, I’m guessing it’s the potential to get stuck. The inability to turn around. The absence of knowledge of what lie ahead. The praying it’s not a sharp curve. Hell, the poster alone sends me into a loop-de-loop of anxiety.

Comparisons to Cube and Saw are not only inevitable, but well-founded, as Turi merges the core ideas of both without fully imitating either, yet reaching a final scene that may disappoint most. One element of Meander, however, is incontrovertible: the sheer bravery of Weiss in her performance and as a performer. She made me feel every inch of confinement to a point of oppression; even with the element of make-believe, I don’t know how she did it. —Rod Lott

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Action

Zindy the Swamp Boy (1973)

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It’s all in the family for Zindy the Swamp Boy, a kiddie matinee like no other. That’s because el familia en cuestion is Mexploitation royalty, with René Cardona Jr. writing and producing, and René Cardona III starring. Then around 9 or 10, RC3 plays the title role of the orphaned kid who lives in a jungle shack with his flute and his fugitive grandfather, played by his actual one, René Cardona Sr., who also directs!

Given the trio’s collective filmographies of inappropriate inanities, can you tell which of the 10 scenes below actually happen in Zindy the Swamp Boy? Select all that apply.

1. Zindy shares a bed with his chimpanzee companion, Toribio, who can row a canoe.

2. Zindy rubs Toribio’s head and says, “You know what I’m saying: You’re all mine. All mine.”

3. Zindy asks Grandpa what’s wrong with sleeping naked.

4. Zindy keeps a pet tarantula named Cooka and a pet snake named Rufina.

5. Zindy and Toribio collaborate to trap a turkey in a rudimentary cage.

6. Grandpa drowns in quicksand, but has the temerity to leave his hat floating behind.

7. Finding an unconscious girl in the jungle, Zindy exclaims, “A woman!” before ordering Toribio to help drag her body back to the shack.

8. Back at the shack, Zindy orders Toribio to undress the girl as he retrieves Grandpa’s scalpel: “We’ll have to open her belly.”

9. Put out by his shack guest’s request for sugar in her coffee, Zindy wrestles and stabs a crocodile to death.

10. Zindy is killed by a puma.

Answer key: If you left any of the above unchecked — even just one — you are a failure. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017)

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For Open Water 3: Cage Dive, the jerry-rigged franchise goes the found-footage route. With (not real) news reports and interview excerpts interspersed, the movie presents itself as a millennial trio’s ill-fated audition tape for the (also not real) Guts and Glory reality show. This being an Open Water entry (albeit after the fact), we get guts — the glory, not so much.

Our wannabe influencers are Josh; his brother, Jeff; and Jeff’s girlfriend, Megan. Jeff (Joel Hogan) even plans to pop the question to Megan (Megan Peta Hill, Broil) on the show, unaware she’s cheating on him … with Josh (Josh Potthoff). Oh, brother!

In addition to riding a roller coaster — wow, real daring there, kids — the audition tape includes a cage dive with sharks in Australia. All’s well until a Poseidon-lite tidal wave tips the boat over, sending all aboard tumbling into the salty bowl of broth known as the Pacific Ocean. Feeding time!

Sharksploitation cognoscenti deem Open Water 3 to be lackluster, but I disagree. While the movie isn’t exactly swimming in originality, director Gerald Rascionato (2021’s Claw) uses found footage organically rather than a gimmick; furthermore, he stages a couple of solid jump scares and an equal number of extended scenes of unease.

I suspect Cage Dive’s negative numbers largely derive from viewers’ annoyance with the vapid narcissists at its chewy human center. Make no mistake: They are annoying, but isn’t that how it should be? Ever since the original Open Water showed moviegoers that even the protagonists we like have no chance to see shoreline again, isn’t their demise the specific appeal of the sequels? (Call it the Voorhees effect.) Something tells me Rascionato agrees — to be clear, that “something” is the scene in which Megan accidentally kills an innocent person with a flare. —Rod Lott

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