BEST WORST MOVIE

title: BEST WORST MOVIE
year: 2010
cast: George Hardy, Michael Stephenson, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Darren Ewing, Jason Steadman, Claudio Fragasso, Rosella Drudi, James M. Tate
director: Michael Stephenson
rating: ***1/2

A film in which I appear, as one of many fan/fanatics of the 1990 so-bad-it's-good horror flick TROLL2 (having written an unofficial sequel script), this documentary glosses over yesteryear's making of this amazingly terrible but hilariously engrossing gem while centering primarily on today's George Hardy, who played the patriarch of the "Waits" family who, swapping homes with a local "Nilbog" clan, battles the town's residents: a horde of goblins, not trolls. Hardy, a successful dentist in Alabama, got the role while practicing in Utah - the rest is history. The documentary, helmed by a mostly camera-obscured Michael Stephenson... who played "Joshua", the child actor who starred in the film... follows George at home: then as he greets fans at screenings across America, including an unsuccessful attempt at an autograph show overseas. While it's fun seeing (most of the) fellow cast members laughing about their past, it's Italian director Claudio Fragasso who steals the show as the essential antagonist... he's not sure why his movie's considered so bad, while Hardy and Stephenson embrace this phenomenon, using this documentary as an outlet: with captivating results.

THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR

year: 1970 cast: Eli Wallach, Deborah Winters, Julie Harris, Stephen McHattie rating: ***1/2

A psychedelic-era cult film about a suburban family with problems beneath the surface, headlined by rebellious teenager "Maxie," played by Deborah Winters who, when not freaking out on bad acid, scrutinizes her parent's shortcomings: like booze and hypocrisy.

Eli Wallach is terrific as the drink-after-work patriarch, as are Stephen McHattie as the hippie son and wife Julie Harris, whose hard-nosed lecture to Maxie in a mental institution provides an explosive, and perhaps even effective, climax. But it's Deborah Winters alone, who, with a brooding reserve as intense as the drug-induced tirades, provides an underlying "vibe" throughout: where anything can happen... at any time.

SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF

title: SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF

year: 1973

cast: Jim Brown, Ed McMahon, Don Stroud, Dick Anthony Williams, Gloria Hendry, Judy Brown, Adam Roarke

rating: ***1/2

The tag-line says it all: "The mob put a finger on Slaughter, so he gave them the finger right back... curled around a trigger!" Plot doesn't matter when you have Jim Brown, in this action-driven sequel, going from place to place killing bad guys. What carries most blaxploitation films, revenge, is essential here. Ed McMahon is surprisingly effective as the head baddie, Don Stroud his lethal henchman, James Brown provides a funky soundtrack that keeps things rolling while smooth pimp Dick Anthony Williams steals scenes as Brown's reluctant sidekick.

CLEOPATRA JONES

title: CLEOPATRA JONES

year: 1973

cast: Tamara Dobson, Bernie Casey, Shelley Winters, Paul Koslo

rating: **1/2

Shelley Winters, as a lesbian mobster bitch chewing scenery and her minions at the same time, isn't on screen enough: making the plight of Cleopatra Jones, a tall, black, badass Special Agent, a bit too breezy. Although there's decent action, including a fantastic car chase in a ditch, and topnotch talent like Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas, Michael Warren and Paul Koslo, our heroine needs more "flesh": perhaps a backstory on how she became what the baddies fear, giving the audience something deeper to root for.

SPLICE

title: SPLICE

year: 2010

year: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chaneac, David Hewlett

rating: **1/2

The names of the two scientists, "Clive" (for "Frankenstein" actor Colin Clive) and "Elsa" (ala Elsa Lanchester, "The Bride of Frankenstein") is a nod to laboratory-set horror films and a prediction of what's to come. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley create their own "monster" using animal, reptile and human DNA, thus resulting in a female creature resembling a Jurassic Park dilophosaurus till becoming a gorgeous winged teen bent on rebellion. It's involving till the last half hour when the couple move their untamed beast to a rural farmhouse, where there's not enough stuff to do, or people to kill.

TRACKS

title: TRACKS

year: 1977

cast: Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Taryn Swope, Zack Norman, Michael Emil

rating: **

Before settling into character-driven films where the camera stayed in one or two settings, allowing the viewer to "realize" a plot through documentary-like conversation, Henry Jaglom used this same device in a train odyssey with Dennis Hopper, during the height of his real life drug use, playing a Vietnam vet escorting a dead soldier's body for burial. Hopper's too old and spaced-out for a soldier, especially one lusted-upon by young college lass Taryn Swope: unrealistically forgiving for his sporadic eccentricities. A meandering journey that even Dean Stockwell, Zack Norman and Michael Emil (the last two starring in Jaglom's next road movie, SITTING DUCKS, with terrific results) can't save.

MAHOGANY

title: MAHOGANY

year: 1975

cast: Diana Ross, Anthony Perkins, Billy Dee Williams

rating: **

Odd pairing of eccentric Anthony Perkins, as a famously flitting photographer, and Diana Ross, as a would-be fashion designer stuck in a nowhere job... Perkins turning Ross into a famous model in Italy... is distracted with Ross's mundane relationship with Billy Dee Williams, a temperamental political climber in the slums of Chicago. "Mahogany" must choose between being Perkin's famous puppet or William's non-famous one. Her final choice is predictable, leading to a dull conclusion.

THAT MAN BOLT

title: THAT MAN BOLT

year: 1973

cast: Fred Williamson

rating: ***1/2

More Bond than Blaxploitation, this nifty adventure stars Fred Williamson as dapper badass Jefferson Bolt, with a lotta cash the bad guys want: but he's holding on no matter what's thrown at him. Ever-moving action makes up for a thin plot. Beautiful girls, a thug-ridden casino, big explosions on an island fortress: you can't ask for more... except maybe further adventures with the title character, which unfortunately never happened.

DEAD & BURIED

year: 1981 cast; James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Lisa Blount rating: ***

Eighties horror/suspense centers on a small town where dead folks return to life, but instead of becoming the typical moaning, sleepwalking zombies they're as normal as can be.

The local sheriff, James Farentino, investigates with sporadic advise from the elderly undertaker/plastic surgeon, Jack Albertson, but Melody Anderson, as Farantino's off-kilter stepford wife, and Lisa Blount (who died last week) as a gorgeous, and very lethal, hospital nurse, provide the real kicks.

Jolts of music occurring each time a dead person unexpectedly reemerges into society is effectively chilling. And while the ending is quite predictable, this is a "walking dead" flick with style, substance and originality.

TOY STORY 3

title: TOY STORY 3

year: 2010

voices: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty

rating: ****

The third (and possibly final) outing of the TOY STORY franchise is liken to an exploitation prison flick including the genre's staple elements: an evil warden, his ruthless henchmen, solitary confinement, and even good old fashion torture! The prison here is a daycare center, seeming like paradise at first and then becoming a nightmarish hellride our heroes must not only escape from, but their ultimate goal... to reach Andy's house before he ventures to college... adds suspenseful momentum equal, if not exceeding, the original. A prolonged death-impending sequence involving a flaming junkyard incinerator may be too intense for young children.