Bug – 2006, Germany/US, 102m. Director: William Friedkin.
Popcorn – 1991, Canada/US, 91m. Director: Mark Herrier.
Zombie Island Massacre – 1984, US, 88m. Director: John Carter.
BUG (2006) Damaged waitress Agnes (Ashley Judd), haunted by the disappearance of her child a decade earlier, fears for her safety (and sanity) when she learns of the release of her abusive ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr.) from prison. In need of some company, Agnes shacks up in a seedy motel room with a drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon), an AWOL soldier who was part of a secret government science project that infected him with microscopic bugs. Agnes allows Peter’s paranoia to “infect” her, and the two begin to develop mysterious skin rashes, which Peter says are caused by the bugs and must be cut out—in one harrowing scene, Peter removes several teeth with pliers. Ultimately, Peter and Agnes cover their room in tinfoil and bug zappers, fall in love, and the two realize they were just made for each other. An unconventional film (based on Tracy Letts’s stage play), Bug might have been ignored by audiences upon release, but proves a rewarding experience for the adventurous viewer. Judd sheds her Hollywood glamor (and clothes) to deliver a powerhouse performance. B (Currently streaming on Pluto TV.)
POPCORN (1991) A Charles Manson-like filmmaker named Lanyard Gates doesn’t take kindly to his critics and in retaliation kills his family on stage at a screening of his latest work—before burning down the theater. Fifteen years later, a group of film students holding an all-night horror movie marathon at the abandoned Dreamland theater are targeted by the apparently still-alive Gates, who turns the likenesses of his victims into masks in order to hide his Freddy Kruegeresque visage. Aspiring filmmaker Maggie (Jill Schoelen)—whose dreams bare a striking resemblance to Gates’s unfinished movie, Possessor—comes to the realization she’s Gates’s long lost daughter, and Daddy has returned to finish his cinematic masterpiece. Or has he? Style is something Popcorn has a lot of, which is good since the film doesn’t make a lick of sense and raises more questions than it answers. How does the killer seemingly obtain supernatural powers? Where did he get all of the advanced equipment to fashion his high-tech masks? In what world would a Southern California college’s film department only house seven students? The viewer can ultimately forgive the writers for their lack of logic because the film is entertaining and often suspenseful. An uncredited Alan Ormsby (who’s written everything from Paul Schrader’s Cat People to Porky’s II) directed the films-within-the-film, as well as wrote the screenplay under the name Tod Hackett—undoubtedly a loving tribute to Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust. B (Currently streaming on AMC/Prime and Shudder.)
ZOMBIE ISLAND MASSACRE (1984) Several nondescript couples on vacation are witness to a Caribbean voodoo ceremony where a dead body is brought back to life. One of the couples wonders off into the nearby jungle for some unscheduled nooky, but is killed off by an unseen figure with a wheezing problem. The rest of the vacationers get stranded when their bus breaks down, giving the mysterious wheezer prime opportunity to dispatch more victims. In a truly bogus twist, the noisy killer turns out not to be a zombie but a plot orchestrated by a local drug cartel—the voodoo ceremony was a ruse created to spike tourism. The biggest sin Zombie Island Massacre commits isn’t its misleading title but the listless plot that meanders to the point of exhaustion—the movie’s relatively scant 88 minutes feels like 128. Snails move faster than this snoozer. A Current Affair reporter Rita Jenrette bares her breasts, but her real claim to fame is ex-husband John Jenrette, a former politician involved in the Abscam scandal of the late seventies. D– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)