Rum Punch (1992)

IFC recently spent a few weeks running Jackie Brown (1997) with the same frequency AMC airs The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Even so, I never managed to catch the thing from the beginning, and always ended up distracted from the ending. On the other hand, that copy of Rum Punch (1992) lurking on the shelf the past couple years was a lot easier to catch from the beginning.

Stewardess Jackie Burke (Pam Grier, who for some reason Leonard keeps describing as a blonde) has been just down-on-her-luck enough to fall into the snares of gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), acting as mule for his illegal cash during Caribbean hops. Until, that is, she's made by a couple ATF operatives (Michaels Keaton and Bowen, respectively) looking to bust Ordell, and who complicate matters by finding cocaine tucked among the cash bundles in her flight bag. Robbie uses the services of bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to bail her out. By exactly the sort of coincidence that often happens in crime novels, Cherry happens to be the employer of another associate of Ordell, Louis Gara (Robert DeNiro). Forster bails Grier, only to experience sexual tension during the car ride to her apartment, and even more once within the apartment, where she puts some classic soul on the turntable, just so there's no confusion. Tarantino is uncharacteristically coy here, whereas Leonard has no trouble getting down to business, shattered liquor glasses and everything. Anyway, turns out Grier has an idea to double-cross Jackson, give him over to the feds, make away scott-free with the money. Forster isn't so sure, or at least scrunches his face in order to play it that way. DeNiro whiles away the hours with stoned surfer chick Melanie (Bridget Fonda), who has Ordell in her double-cross-hairs as well. It all comes down to a tense shell-game finale -- who's got the money in which bag? -- that allows Leonard to explore the darker edge of a simple modern-day motivation: I'm getting long in the tooth, chances are slimming, how do I get what I really want in life? The book also features a massacre at a compound belonging to a neo-Nazi gun nut that I can't believe Tarantino omitted; maybe he already had Inglourious Basterds (2009) in mind and didn't want the two films to cover the same ground, or something. On the other hand, it's like Leonard wrote his dialogue with Samuel L. Jackson in mind. And since there's another novel (The Switch, 1978) featuring the characters of Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, I know this won't be my last go-round with ol' Elmore.

But, figures: Since I finished this book, IFC hasn't shown Jackie Brown once.

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Ex-con Danny Ocean is out to even the score with Las Vegas casino owner Terry Benedict, who's now dating his, Ocean's, ex-wife Tess. The goal is straightforward: rob three casino resorts all sharing the same underground money vault, on fight night when the coffers will be stuffed. This is no simple smash-n-grab, however: Ocean and his buddy Rusty, bankrolled by a rival casino magnate, put together an offbeat team of experts -- pickpockets, explosives and surveillance geniuses, model builders, acrobats -- each assigned a specific task in the overall scheme. Casinos being somewhat protective of their on-hand cash, there are arcane, ridiculously elaborate security measures which must be overcome or disabled without alerting Benedict and his army of watchful goons that criminals are right beneath their impeccably mannered noses. Decadently stylish, sexy, and fun, just like Vegas itself -- and the team of diverse actors (including but in no way limited to Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Elliott Gould, Bernie Mac) is having so much obvious fun, what George Clooney said about the Rat Pack-stocked original is equally true here: "You'd pay money just to watch those guys sit around and drink coffee." So what if the caper ultimately hinges on a couple of unlikely events and improbably timed coincidences? Or does it... The reveal at the end, laying out how the team tricked not only Benedict but also the audience into believing their "multiple cons" are anything other than smoke and mirrors designed to fool the casino goons into doing all the heavy lifting, is classic sleight of hand, if not downright slick dealing from the bottom of the deck. (Extra points for hilarious Trojan Horse usage of those ubiquitous escort brochures and "lady card" handouts that plague pedestrians along the Strip.) Still, this movie leaves burning questions: Does Clooney ever look disheveled, even when he's disheveled? Why is Brad Pitt so hungry? What is the ongoing appeal of Julia Roberts? The world may never know. Followed by imaginatively titled sequels Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen.

The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

A giant beast, answering to the name of Utam, stomps the natives flat in some remote Himalayan location that definitely isn't Shangri-La. Greed-headed entrepreneurs scheme to relocate said beast to the city so they can make some moolah. Samantha, an animal-loving white lady in a leather (!!!) bikini swings from vine-to-vine and pontificates the ramifications of the whole affair. Low-rent mashup of elements from King Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949), and Tarzan (1932), timed to piggy-back off the "success" of the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis-model Kong. Throw in some insipid love triangles (including, no kidding, a jealous Utam), some stoned-looking leopards battling sluggish full-bellied pythons, Utam foaming at the mouth like a spoiled Trump at every opportunity, and the best I'm-Just-Sucking-Out-The-Poison scene this side of Alex Cox's Straight to Hell (1987), maybe you won't even mind how cars randomly explode as if the backseats are stuffed with C4. (Samantha's perilously skimpy bikini top, ever threatening to flop off, is an additional distraction.) A conspiracy of back-projected mayhem, clumsy editing, and inappropriate canned music keeps everything stumbling towards the inevitable moment when Utam straddles a skyscraper and shakes his fists at the helicopters circling his noggin. Once again, when the monkey die, nobody cry. AKA Goliathon, AKA Xing Xing Wang. Call it whatever you want, call it a jalapeno-stuffed lychee, when the end credits roll you still won't understand the coppery aftertaste in your mouth.

Super 8 (2011)

A group of geeky suburban preteens led by Charles (he of the camera and vision) and Joe (he of the makeup skills and the Dead Mom) sneak up to the old train depot one school night circa 1979 to surreptitiously film a scene for their ongoing 8mm zombie epic. They've even managed to convince Alice, a hottie from homeroom, to play a crucial supporting role (turns out she's a natural actress, the only one on set, which never hurts). A train approaches, Charles yells "Production value!" and calls for action, but the kids get a little more than they bargain for: their science teacher Dr. Woodward drives his truck onto the tracks, causing a ridiculously massive and elaborate (not to mention fiery) derailment. In the resulting rubble, Joe finds a stash of small white cubes that look like Rubik skeletons; he pockets one just as Shadowy Authority Figures begin arriving at the catastrophe. The kids make their escape -- though not, of course, before being warned by the dying Dr. Woodward they must never speak of this event lest they and their parents be killed. In the days that follow, while the super-8 footage from that night is processed out of town, the mystery of the crash deepens as Joe's dad Jackson (also the deputy sheriff) is stonewalled by the government's cleanup crew; he's additionally frustrated with Joe's burgeoning involvement with Alice (who happens to be the daughter of the man he blames for his wife's/Joe's mom's death). Charles keeps filming, using the train wreck as background for his zombie invasion project, though actual stranger things (see what I did there?) begin happening in town: engines vanish from all the vehicles in a used car lot; bizarre lights are seen in the town graveyard; that weird little cube punches a hole in Joe's bedroom wall so it can fly up and start pecking at the side of the water tower. Once the kids break into Dr. Woodward's storage locker of confiscated property and secret papers, they might find answers -- but can they do it before the Government forces an evacuation and burns down the whole town to erase the mystery forever?

J.J. Abrams may well be the modern master of the Plot Hole, but he has the decency to stuff said holes with enough nostalgic flavor and warm callbacks to other films that it just doesn't matter. He's not crafting cinematic greatness, he's banging out a popcorn movie and he's totally not ashamed of it. Super 8 is quilted from the career of Steven Spielberg (whose company produced), recalling Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the evacuation from town as the Army sweeps in to control the narrative; the final scenes), E.T. the Extraterrestrial (alien stranded far from home), and The Goonies (the kids always know what's up!) though Abrams tosses in his own familiar devices (fictitious documents that provide the key to the plot; all those damn coronas). But chiefly, he accurately recalls a specific time and place better than Spielberg ever could while actually standing in that specific time and place. And let's not even mention Ready Player One (2018), okay?

Full disclosure, I'm in the bullseye of Super 8's target audience: Not only did I traipse in exactly such semi-miserable looking middle class suburbs during the late 1970s, trying to lose myself in afternoon-TV creature features, SnapTite monster models, and comic books, I was part of a small group of likewise fanboys who made 8mm films as a hobby, using a silent Bell & Howell rig to animate our Star Wars action figures (eventually setting them on fire, anticipating the excessive explosions in this film by more than 30 years). My aim back then was to be the kid from Disney's Mystery in Dracula's Castle (which featured a lighthouse instead of a castle, no real mystery to speak of, and certainly no Dracula), stumbling upon some Important Adult Event while out filming in the neighborhood. Abrams is careful, subtle with his cinematic wish fulfillment exercise: no beating the audience over the head with a knowingly packed soundtrack of groovy late-70s tracks; you've got to like a movie that knows just how to use Alan O'Day's "Undercover Angel." A pretty simple come-of-age-&-let-things-go story; things get heavy handed towards the end, but most everything works. Some critics espouse that the best films work like dreams -- non-linear and functioning more off emotion than logic. Super 8 is like those dreams which capture us near the moment of waking, when we know we're dreaming but are still willing to go along with the ride.

Cave Dwellers (1984)

Some old wizard name of Akronos has discovered how to split the atom, but an evil army is coming to take that technology from him in order to conquer the world. The cowardly wizard could use this "Geometric Nucleus" to defend himself, but noooo -- he dispatches his daughter Mila to go find the warrior Ator (Miles O'Keeffe), his former student. Cue the trials and tribulations involved in getting there, not the least of which are sunglasses-wearing evil soldiers who take Akronos hostage. Once roused from his hammock, Ator pulls a hang-glider from his back pocket and commences tossing bombs on the invaders surrounding the castle. Don't think about where the bombs came from, don't think about where the bombs came from.... Incomprehensible Italian sword-and-sorcery mess cut from the fabric of Conan's loincloth, this is a sequel to a 1982 movie, Ator L'invincibile, mercifully not in circulation. Fodder for one of the better Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. Watch this only if you miss your saving throw vs. crap.

Pod People (1983)

A hunter stumbles into a womb-like cave containing a clutch of alien eggs, which he destroys without a second thought -- doing little for the attitude of the mother, who proceeds upon a tri-state killing spree to avenge the loss of her offspring. All but one, that is -- discovered by young Tommy, who takes the egg home, where it hatches into a baby Philly Phanatic that Tommy dubs "Trumpy." Trumpy hoovers peanuts and popcorn by the bucket before developing a taste for hamsters. Meanwhile, the mother alien slaughters a rock band practicing nearby, just like Grendel does to the partying Danes in John Gardner's eponymous novel -- see, Grendel is metaphor for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, so all the loud partying and singing drive it nuts, and it slays everybody just to shut them up, what with their self-limiting structures of conscious communication gumming up the works anyway. Like Grendel, the mama alien is eventually killed by somebody or other, but not before she thins out the human population, and Trumpy escapes into the woods to provide for the possibility of a sequel. Bizarro spaghetti-SF-schlock combination of E.T. the Extraterrestrial (which director Juan Simon is explicitly ripping off) and Dumbo (which he is not).

More (1969)

Stefan is a mathematics student on self-imposed sabbatical. In Paris he commits a little burglary to raise cash, then heads south to Ibiza to commence a doomed love affair with Estelle. Warnings from friends fall on deaf ears, but soon enough Stefan learns the truth: Estelle is a heroin addict. [insert: organ stinger, 3 seconds] She promises to stop using, but her late-night dalliances with Wolf, the local supplier, continue. Stefan moves them to a villa on the other side of the island where they smoke hashish and take LSD and enjoy the blisteringly refracted sunlight because it's the 1960s, maaaaaan. Guess what: the cure doesn't take, and Estelle is back on the same horse she was riding before she fell off and it trampled her, or whatever. People in this movie are always saying things like "Groovy man, let's get high..." and that's when the dialog is comprehensible at all. If people had conversations like the conversations had in this film, we'd all be on drugs just to cope. Supposedly now a cult classic in Europe, on the order of Easy Rider (1969) in the US. The first of three films for which Pink Floyd provided the soundtrack, which is about the only thing More has to recommend it to modern audiences. And that's not much. So, how about a little less, please?

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

Texarkana filmmaker Charles Pierce's first project was a low-budget "documentary" about the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot-esque creature roaming the bottomlands and swamps of the Texas/Arkansas border. The film collects various accounts of encounters with the creature, local legends and campfire tales tied together by a folksy narrator recounting how the creature scared him as a child and wondering if the thing is still lurking in the woods. Local citizens and landowners spin yarns of spotting the monster while on squirrel hunts and driving at night on lonely roads; at one point, a hunt is organized but once the dogs catch a whiff of the hideous thing, they go no farther. The centerpieces of the film are two disturbing scenes involving late-night attacks, one on a trailer where three teenage girls have a slumber party, the other on an isolated farmhouse rented by two young couples; the latter attack is a recreation of a newspaper account, but both occurrences too closely resemble archetypal "damsel in distress" horror-movie scenarios to carry much credibility. Hoax or not? One old salty codger, living for decades in a shack deep in the swamp, claims he's never seen any such creature. What is beyond dispute: despite the extraordinarily low budget (the movie was filmed on a borrowed 16mm camera, and it shows), or perhaps because of it, Boggy Creek is very effective at delivering some low-grade thrills. Pierce -- savvy to catch the Bigfoot craze in full swing, not long after the release of the infamous Patterson Film -- lovingly showcased the eerie shadows and sounds of the remote swamps in such a way that, sure, a shaggy 8-foot-tall monster seems plausible. And the fleeting glimpses of the creature, never fully revealed and often only heard, are just right. A huge hit at the drive-in theaters of the era, this was an undeniable influence on later films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Reefer Madness (1936)

Filmed as Tell Your Children by a church coalition -- intended as an educational treatise on the dangers of drug use, concerned/easily frightened parents the target audience -- the footage was re-edited by savvy investors and the retitled Reefer Madness became an underground classic on college campuses and the midnight movie circuit during the 1970s. A bizarre pastiche of blatant misinformation, clunky scripting, and campy overacting; no plot, just thinly connected vignettes detailing the criminal hi-jinks "marihuana" inspires among fiendish "hop-heads," including but not limited to: unmarried cohabitation, misadventure by automobile, rape, suicide, murder, and (shudder) jitterbugging. Scandal! At least the drug dealers, in their snappy suits and fedoras, look respectable. Why, you'd never know the evil at your doorstep, dressed up all fancy, just like the Devil himself is apt to be.... The 'Rifftrax' edition from Legend Films includes commentary from Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)

In a distant quadrant of space, an ongoing war between humans and Cylons --sentient, human-like cybernetic creatures -- enters its endgame following a sneak nuclear attack on human outposts (the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and primary planet Caprica), which are thoroughly destroyed. A handful of survivors escape by taking to whatever ships are nearby. This cobbled fleet falls under the stewardship of the only remaining warship, the Battlestar Galactica, and its beleaguered commander, Admiral Adama. Newly-elected President Laura Roslin, battling cancer and susceptible to drug-induced visions, instructs the skeptical Adama to chart a course for the legendary lost Thirteenth Colony (Planet Earth, duh) guided only by religious artifacts and vague prophesy derived from ancient polytheistic scriptures. Adama is grumpy about it, but follows orders, understanding that people need a more constructive, positive goal than merely maintaining their desperate flight from the relentless Cylons. They need to find a new home.

The mortal plight of these 50,000-odd remaining human beings is counterbalanced by the schemes and needs of the Cylons. They are a race eons old; twelve clone "models" of Cylon are known to exist, but only seven have been identified. The "Final Five" models have critical internal, subconscious knowledge of their racial genesis, but are scattered among the remaining human population, their memories erased and masked by new identities. To fulfill their destiny and forward their monotheistic system of religion/prophesy, the Cylons want to reunite with the Final Five, find their own way to Earth, and establish a permanent home world. But the "Significant Seven" are themselves divided about how to proceed: do they simply destroy the remaining humans (so the Final Five will then "download" into new clone bodies on their Resurrection Hub)? Or do they use, even team with, the humans to collectively find Earth and, eventually, peace? Even their primary pawn, human scientist Gaius Baltar, can't keep their machinations in order -- not that he tries much, being so sidetracked by his lust for Cylon Model #6 he can no longer tell reality from dream. A condition that may very well define the end (or is it the beginning?) of the Human Race....

War and Peace set in outer space; a serious SF drama about war, politics, culture, race, and the miraculous, unknowable nature of God. Showrunners David Eick and Ronald Moore remain philosophically pliable throughout, challenging viewers to pick a side, then painting the Cylons the same shade of Human as all the other human characters. Much that the 1970s-era show took for granted, this version cultivates and explores, building a world that supports two conflicting religions, neither of which can survive direct confrontation. This became problematic when it came to scripting an ending for the series, but the great strength of the overall Galactica narrative is in the questions it raises, less so the answers provided. Joss Whedon: "It's so passionate, textured, complex, subversive, and challenging that it dwarfs everything on TV."

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Detective Sam Spade is hired by va-voom redhead Brigid O'Shaughnessy to find her sister ... only she doesn't have a sister, and people connected to the case keep winding up dead: a cargo ship's captain, a guy named Thursby, even Spade's business partner Archer. What's an amoral PI to do? Get to the bottom of it, of course, and in this case what everybody's chasing is a jewel-encrusted statuette of a black bird, paid in retribution by the Knights Templar to the King of Spain. Hooey, maybe -- but the bodies keep stacking up, so keeps Spade shifting allegiances in order to remain one step ahead of the law. John Huston's enduring take on Dashiell Hammett's quintessential grifter tale is still a hoot after eight decades. Humphrey Bogart is to Sam Spade what Boris Karloff is to Frankenstein's Monster. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet turn in equally iconic performances as villains each looking to catch the mysterious Falcon for themselves. The penultimate scene, as the principals conspire to get their story straight for the authorities (and to hell with whatever really happened) is the greatest send-up of cozy butler-did-it mysteries ever concocted -- takes place in a parlor, even. Play it again, Sam.

Slither (2006)

Small-town lawman Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion, having a blast) is charged with protecting the province of Wheelsy just as a meteor lands and a space bug with a mission -- a reproductive mission -- hatches. Freakin' alien terrorist cells, I tell you what. The critter isn't choosy for a mate, picking the first target of opportunity, happens to be town boss Grant Grant, out in the woods with his mistress Brenda since his wife back home (the lovely Starla, who also happens to be Pardy's old unrequited love) won't give him any, boo hoo. Take a pinch of Alien (1979), a dash of Die Monster Die (1965), garnish liberally with some From Beyond (1986), next thing you know Grant has mutated into a giant space slug and taken up stealing raw meat so he can feed Brenda, whom he's tucked away in an abandoned barn while she... gestates. Not to give it away, an unholy rain of brain-eating space slugs ensues. Something for everyone. Lovecraftian homage to creature features of yore; James Gunn's witty script and direction target the funny bone as much as the gross-out gizzard. This is how a dud becomes an underground cult classic.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997)

Errol Morris documentary focuses on four oddballs: a sculptor of topiary hedges, a lion tamer, an engineer who builds insect-like robots, and the world's foremost expert on the mole rat. Morris crosscuts footage of his subjects weighing in on what their obsessions mean to them with bizarre stock footage from old newsreels, educational films, and cartoons, then layers dialogue from one subject over visual footage of another -- disorienting techniques that deliver unusual punctuation, and uncover common ground between these disparate men and their works. What first seems a kooky conceit gone wrong slowly gels into a deeper meditation about how our passions shape our lives. Sublime, weird, hilarious, moving.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Reliably inaccurate psychic Criswell clears his throat and warns audiences of "grave robbers from outer space" (the film's working title) as this Z-grade masterpiece from Ed Wood kicks off. Airline pilots report flying aluminum foil pie-tins wobbling through the California skies. Innocent gravediggers are brutally attacked by thin-waisted creature-feature movie host Vampira. At some point, police inspector Tor Johnson becomes a zombie (plot twist: no one can tell the difference). Bela Legosi dies in real life, does not become a zombie, is replaced by the director's chiropractor (plot twist: everyone can tell the difference). Cops scratch their foreheads with their revolvers and stumble over cardboard tombstones while muttering dialogue so inept, it doubles back to a Zen-like grace: "It's tough to find something when you don't know what you're looking for." Fey aliens wrestle with cheap prop curtains and cross their arms in salute just before their own zombies choke them to death. Smart viewers seek solace in illicit medication. A classic of its kind, as the kids say.

The House that Dripped Blood (1971)

Robert Bloch-scripted anthology film from the always excellent Amicus Productions centers around a sinister rental property and the misfortunes of those who reside there. In "Method for Murder," a thriller writer (Denholm Elliott) is literally pestered by his latest creation, a dastardly strangler named Dominic. He is believed only by Stephen King, who cribs the idea for his novel The Dark Half. Meanwhile, Peter Cushing obsesses over a "Waxworks" museum where one of the displays resembles a former paramour. That Salome was a real head case, turns out. In "Sweets to the Sweet," Christopher Lee plays a frosty widow/father who disallows his daughter any toys or even friendship with other children; her new tutor takes umbrage but soon learns about the voodoo she do. Finally, a prissy horror film actor (Jon Pertwee) searches a curio shop for suitable vampire attire for his next picture. But "The Cape" he purchases is a little too realistic, as his co-star already knows, beautiful bloodsucker that she is. Fun atmosphere, brisk storytelling, numerous genre in-jokes, including several swipes taken at contemporary critics who complained about Hammer's typical gore and violence; at one point while wandering the wax museum, Cushing strolls dismissively past a figure of his co-star Lee as Dracula. But it's Pertwee who gets the best stuff, at one point mulling a mantle portrait of himself in his Doctor Who garb. The framing device -- a Scotland Yard officer investigating the disappearance of Pertwee's character -- has a weak payoff, but the individual stories are what counts.

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The first of Hammer's Frankenstein series (and the only to feature Christopher Lee as the semi-titular Monster, though Peter Cushing would recur as Victor Frankenstein) also marks the start of the studio's long run of horror classics, establishing production aesthetics that continue to influence filmmakers. Dodging Universal at every turn (lawsuits awaited if the new film in any way resembled their iconic versions), Sangster's screenplay cribbed much from Mary Shelley's novel which had been discarded by James Whale, focusing on Frankenstein's immoral studies, propensity to murder, and descent into Mad Science rather than on the monster he creates, a mere symptom of his true ills. Terence Fisher's film is a feast for the eyes, summoning a deeply Gothic atmosphere straight away. Phil Leakey's creature make-up veered considerably from Jack Pierce's famous Karloff applications; the Creature suffers a more stitched-up, gruesome visage. Tame by latter-day standards, this tale of dark deeds and harsh consequences was initially panned for violence and gore by critics missing the film's subtle nuances: Was the Monster a figment of murderous Frankenstein's imagination? Or is his former accomplice Paul Krempe simply getting the last laugh as the Baron is led to the scaffold, the place where he acquired so many of the parts that went into his work? A cornerstone of modern horror.

Evilspeak (1981)

Coopersmith (a suitably miserable-looking Clint Howard) is admitted to a private military academy as a kind of charity case following the deaths of his parents. This being the kind of military academy where the hoary personnel in charge slyly approve of cadets torturing the underachievers, Coopersmith has a rough time of it. For punishment duty (though his crimes, beyond clumsiness, and lateness to class attributable to his classmates stealing his alarm clock, are never disclosed) he is sent to the basement of the abbey to "clean up." The school custodian, an old drunkard named Sarge who happens to live in said basement, doesn't much like this, but what the hell, it leaves him more time for whiskey. Besides, Coopersmith is mostly out of sight, especially after discovering a sub-basement filled with books of black magic. He steals a Tandy TRS-80 from the computer lab, lugs it down to his newfound lair, finds an electrical outlet in a cave otherwise illuminated only by the light of black candles, and starts coding passages from those dusty old pentagram-decorated books into the mainframe. The computer answers! The earliest version of the Internet was a gateway to a Hellmouth, who knew? Some brand of Satan worship ensues, wax dummies spurt red syrup, and at some point a nude woman in a bathtub gets eaten by possessed pigs, I kid you not. A lot of bad data went into the screenplay; garbage in, garbage out.

Heat (1995)

Career detective Hanna (Al Pacino) is hot on the trail of career criminal McCauley (Robert De Niro), who is busy assembling a team for that proverbial Last Big Job. But then an extravagantly botched armed car robbery leaves three security officers dead and a stooge named Waingro on the lam, running not only from the cops but from a revenge-seeking McCauley himself. Waingro enlists a money-laundering banker, burned on a previous job, to take McCauley out of play. Meanwhile, Hanna's marriage disintegrates (stop me if you've heard this before, he's a cop obsessed with being a cop) even as McCauley falls for a bookstore clerk/graphic artist; gee-willikers, maybe they can escape together, to the Good Life... Michael Mann's thriller seems to have been built around two standout sequences: a ridiculously complicated midday shoot-out in downtown LA, and a hushed, tense conversation between McCauley and Hanna in a coffee shop. The rest is bloated static (including, critically, the final showdown on an airport runway). An all-star cast is generally wasted on zest-less characters, Dennis Haysbert in particular. Overrated, disposable exercise in by-the-numbers con-man fiction.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Doctors around London are being picked off one by one, the modes of death bizarre (rabid bats, grisly exsanguinations, a deadly head-crushing vice disguised as a frog mask, hungry locusts -- to name but four). Inspector Trout, assigned to the case, cannot help but think the same psychopath is behind them all. He's ridiculed for it throughout his department, but his hunch is correct -- all the expired doctors had a single case in common: they operated on the victim of a long-ago car crash, Victoria Phibes (B-queen Caroline Munro) who died during surgery. Trout's theory that her husband, Anton Phibes, is seeking revenge on the attending surgeons is marred by one simple fact: Phibes died in the accident, long before his wife got to the operating table.

Or did he? Vincent Price turns in one of his more outlandish performances (and all without moving his lips) as a demented cross between a mad scientist and a serial killer. In the years since his disfiguring accident, Phibes has been plotting his revenge, which follows (for no good reason, other than it provides for interesting murders) the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Trout gets hip to this after Phibes drops one of his pendant glyphs, used in the ritualistic killings, and has it interpreted by a Jewish scholar. Between strikes, Phibes hides in his creepy mansion, belting out show tunes on his pipe organ while his lovely but silent assistant Vulnavia looks on. Kind of a precursor to Seven (1995) when you think about it. Stunning psychedelic set dressing as well as a healthy dose of intentional humor (mainly involving the bumbling detectives) on the part of director Robert Fuest have made this a deserved camp classic.

The Host [Gwoemul] (2006)

Following a formaldehyde dump into the Han River, a dinosaur-creature emerges from the depths, hungry for man-flesh. Was it activated by the toxic waste, or created by it? Does it matter? This vintage monster-movie formula is an excellent mix of comedy and dysfunctional family pathos as, after snacking on several full-size humans, the monster drags young schoolgirl Hyun-seo underwater, presumably as a treat for later. Trapped in the creature's lair, deep in the, uh, bowels of the city sewer system, Hyun-seo finds a cellphone and manages to alert her waste-case father, Gang-du, to the fact that she's alive and could need a little rescue -- though naturally the signal breaks up, the phone goes dead, just before she can reveal her location. Another hurdle: any contact with the creature means you're the carrier of a deadly, contagious virus -- and Gang-du got up-close and personal with the beast during its initial riverbank rampage. Agents in hazmat uniforms track him down, isolate him, instigate a series of torturous tests ... while Hyun-seo, awaiting rescue from her sewer hidey-hole, can't escape the snapping jaws of the hungry beast forever ... Perfect drive-in fodder. The formula satisfies and never strains beneath its own weight, or takes itself too seriously, even when offering pointed social commentary (the formaldehyde dumping and Agent Orange allusions are well grounded in actual events) -- just enough originality and genuine jump-scares to keep the proceedings fresh. Compare this to the wretched Godzilla (1998) for a good lesson in the right and wrong ways to make a latter-day Creature Feature.