SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS (1971) **

A reporter named Gregory (Jean Sorel) is found comatose in the bushes.  He's still conscious, but his heartbeat is too faint to detect.  Presumed dead, the mortician prepares Gregory’s body for an autopsy.  He tries to get everyone's attention to stop the autopsy while wracking his brain to remember how he wound up in this predicament. 

The old “I'm not dead” yet cliché has been used by everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King.  Director Aldo (Who Saw Her Die?) Lado is neither.  Maybe that’s because Poe and King’s tales were short stories.  The morgue scenes are mildly amusing and sometimes effective, but the mystery surrounding his appearance on the autopsy table just isn't interesting enough to sustain a feature length movie. 

This is one of those thrillers that basically save all the horror for the final reel.  Even then, it's kind of a bust.  The big reveal is okay I suppose, but the autopsy finale is a big letdown. 

Mario (Man Hunt) Adorf is pretty good as Sorel’s buddy, but it’s Barbara Bach who leaves the biggest impression as his luscious girlfriend.  Unfortunately, she disappears much too quick and her presence is sorely missed.  Sorel doesn’t have much charisma or anything, but he does sport a wicked head of hair.  In fact, his hair looks better when he’s dead than most men do when they’re alive.

AKA:  Paralyzed.  AKA:  The Short Night of the Butterflies.  

BETTER WATCH OUT (2017) **

A babysitter (Olivia DeJonge) watches an awkward teenage boy (Levi Miller) while his parents are at a Christmas party.  He has a big crush on her, so he gets drunk on champagne and tries to put the moves on her.  Before long, they’re menaced by a psycho who makes threatening phone calls and vows to murder them if they leave the house.

To tell any more would ruin the surprise.  (Imagine if Bret Easton Ellis wrote a John Hughes Christmas movie and that might give you an idea of what to expect.)  Better Watch Out does have a rather good twist that occurs early on; right after the first act, in fact.  By placing the twist so early in the narrative, it doesn’t really leave the movie anywhere to go.  It also causes the tension to flatline and the plot quickly gets repetitive from there.  

There’s a ring of truth here if you’ve been a boy that’s too old to have a babysitter, and a hot one at that.  This was done slightly better than The Babysitter though.  Even though that movie was a bit more outrageous, it still found a nice balance between the sitter and the sittee.  

DeJonge has a Kristen Bell quality about her.  She’s especially good when trying to reason with her attacker.  Miller is a bit too annoying though.  While he plays the whiny teenager role adequately enough, he just isn’t up to the task later in the film.  At least Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen get some laughs as Miller’s kooky parents.

AKA:  Safe Neighborhood.

BREAKING POINT (1976) **

Bob Clark had an interesting filmography.  He could direct anything from horror classics like Deathdream and Black Christmas to family-friendly movies like A Christmas Story and Baby Geniuses.  From raunchy comedies like Porky’s 1 and 2 to unheralded masterpieces like Rhinestone and Turk 182.  He also made this ho-hum thriller.

Bo Svenson stars as a happily married family man who witnesses a Mob hit.  Robert Culp is the cop who gets Bo to testify against the assailants.  When the Mob comes after Bo’s family, Culp puts them in the witness protection program.  Even though he repeatedly tells them not to contact anyone from their “old” life, Bo’s stupid step kid calls his dad, which leads the mobsters right to them.  After his family is threatened, Bo finally decides to stop hiding and faces the mobsters on their own turf.

The look of the film is similar to Black Christmas.  (It even takes place at Christmas.)  The giggling hitman certainly sounds like the killer from that movie.  Whereas Clark’s ‘70s horror movies had a knack for invention and economical use of their low budgets, this one is content to rest on tired revenge clichés.  It’s competently made, but it just feels like Clark’s heart wasn’t in it.  

Svenson is decent enough in the lead.  He basically just plays Buford Pusser again, minus the redneck aspect (he even hits a guy with a 2x4 at one point).  Culp is usually magnetic, but even he has a time finding a way to breathe life into his cliched character (whose only plot function is to be constantly wrong).  John Colicos is unnecessarily hammy as the Mafioso who wants Svenson’s family dead and the lack of a quality villain further prevents the film from kicking into gear.

THE ZERO BOYS (1986) **

Daniel Hirsch and his friends play weekend warrior survivalist games in a ghost town.  The leader of the rival team puts his girlfriend (Kelli Maroney) up as the prize and Hirsch wins her hand.  After the game, Hirsch and his team stumbles upon an abandoned house and begin to party it up.  There just so happens to be a knife-wielding maniac on the premises who quickly puts the friends’ survivalist skills to the test.

Directed by Nico (Hired to Kill) Mastorakis, The Zero Boys is an unsuccessful blend of action and slasher movie.  It’s surprisingly more fun during the early scenes where the gun-toting heroes try to act macho.  It helps that a lot of their banter is genuinely funny.  Maroney is particularly fun to watch as the Final Girl of the piece.

The horror cliché elements are a long time coming, and when Mastorakis finally gets around to exploiting them, they come off a little weak.  Even though it takes a while before the killer starts doing his thing, the stalking sequences themselves have an appropriate amount of atmosphere (there’s lots of fog in some scenes).  Unfortunately, the horror scenes are frustratingly low on chills.  That’s mostly because a lot of the kills revolve around guns and hunting and not good old hacking and slashing.  I guess it’s novel seeing the heroes fighting back against the killer using machine guns.  That doesn’t mean it works though.

Hirsch gets the best line of the movie when he pins up a picture of Rambo and says, “Eat your heart out, Sly!”

SNAKEEATER’S REVENGE (1991) ***

Soldier (Lorenzo Lamas) witnesses two people overdose on cocaine cut with rat poison and decides to take matters into his own hands.  He knocks on the dealers’ door, guns them down, and is promptly arrested.  He is then sent to a mental institution where the other patients quickly take a shine to him.  They eventually agree to help him escape so he can burn the pushers’ operation to the ground.

Snakeeater’s Revenge is, of course, the sequel to Lorenzo Lamas’ immortal Snakeeater.  It’s not as off-the-chain awesome as the other entries in the series, but there’s plenty of fun to be had.  I mean it’s hard not to love a movie that has characters named Soldier, Torchy (Ron Palillo), and Speedboat (Larry B. Scott).  Besides, any film that can combine elements from Death Wish and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is OK by me.

While Snakeeater’s Revenge is more routine than its predecessor, it does have at least one jaw-dropping bonkers moment.  Naturally, I’m referring to the scene where Soldier faces off against a hulking opponent in what can only be described as Wheelchair Thunderdome.  If you thought the wheelchair race in Days of Thunder was awesome, wait till you get a load of this!

Snakeeater’s Revenge gives Lamas another opportunity to shine.  He gets plenty of funny one-liners and garners some laughs while flirting with his shrink.  (The ink blot scene is memorable.)  Scott makes for a likeable sidekick, but Kathleen Kinmont (Lama’s then-wife) isn’t really given anything to do as a detective on the case.

AKA:  Snake Eater 2:  The Drug Buster.  AKA:  Vengeance of Fire:  Cobra Killer 2.  AKA:  Soldier.  

WHITE OF THE EYE (1988) ** ½

Donald (Demon Seed) Cammell’s White of the Eye is a moody, experimental, and intriguing little serial killer thriller.  It also happens to be uneven, muddled, and frustrating as Hell.  One thing is for sure, only someone with a knack for anything-goes dreamlike madness like Cammell could’ve concocted it.

David Keith is a stereo installer in Tucson who has an odd gift for knowing exactly where to place speakers just by closing his eyes.  Even though he’s married to the luscious Cathy Moriarty, he still happens to mess around with his lonely, sexy clients.  When one of them winds up murdered by a serial killer, it makes Keith the prime suspect.

The big problem with White of the Eyes is its languid pacing.  Clocking in at almost two hours, it really drags in the middle and some of Cammell’s cinematic indulgences (like the extreme eyeball close-ups) can be grating at times.  Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, there are some sterling stalking sequences here, along with a handful of truly bizarre images that help to separate the film from dozens of similarly-themed thrillers.

The story itself is one-note and predictable.  Had it been lacking Cammell’s stylish flair, White of the Eye would have been instantly forgettable (save for some of Keith’s intense theatrics).  Cammell gives the murder set pieces a stylized kick.  The scene where the killer puts a woman in a pile driver like a wrestler is just so bonkers that it works.  Other sequences feel like they came out of an Italian giallo.

So, in the end, it’s a toss-up.  Come for the stylish murders, random weirdness, and Keith’s overacting.  If you can get past the boring flashbacks, Indian mumbo jumbo, and general lackadaisical pace, you just might like it.

WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971) *** ½

Gary Bond stars as an Australian teacher who goes on vacation to see his girlfriend during the Boxing Day holiday break.  He spends the night in a small town where the male citizens outnumber the women about a hundred to one.  That night, he loses all his money drinking and gambling and winds up stranded.  Bond soon learns that’s about all there is to do in the town and the male populace are only too eager to enable his dysfunctional macho behavior.

Directed by Ted Kotcheff, Wake in Fright isn’t so much of a horror film, but rather a filmed nightmare you can’t escape from.  The horror elements come from the psychological trappings of allowing your male id to run rampant without limits or repercussions.  Even though it was made over fifty years ago, it feels like the perfect commentary on today’s “toxic masculinity” atmosphere.

The scene where Bond is taken by some pals to go kangaroo hunting are sure to disturb most viewers.  Even then, there’s a comical detachment to the characters that makes their action even more disturbing.  I mean at one point; the men fight the roos hand-to-hand like Sylvester used to do in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Bond makes for an ideal leading man.  He has the charm of Chris Hemsworth mixed with the bland manliness of Richard Chamberlain.  He’s especially good during his scenes with the drunk doctor (Donald Pleasence, who is excellent) who encourages to let go and give in to his temptations.

In the ensuing years, Kotcheff proved he can work in just about any genre.  He’s done everything from comedy (Weekend at Bernie’s and Switching Channels) to late-night cable erotica (Red Shoe Diaries 3 and 5), but he’s probably best known for the immortal First Blood.  It’s a shame he didn’t do more weird and trippy films like this.  Then again, it’s a one-of-a-kind, hard to classify minor classic.  That kind of feat is hard to replicate.

AKA:  Backwater.  AKA:  Holiday in Hell.  AKA:  Outback.  AKA:  At the Edge of the World.