The first hour or so of Japanese superhero parody “Big Man Japan” resembles nothing of the sort. By the trembling, docu-esque eye of the camera, we follow Masaru Daisato, played by writer-director Hitoshi Matsumoto, a scruffy though nonetheless sexually ambiguous apparent loafer who struggles to mumble vague responses to the cameraman’s queries from behind the curtain of his unkempt mane while shoveling packaged food into his marble mouth. Aside from a stray cat that passes through from time to time, Masaru lives alone in borderline squalor. He alludes to a family, specifically, a daughter, whom he loves very much but is unable to see due to the demands of his work. You see, Masaru’s Big Man Japan, a sort of city guardian, who at a moment’s notice may be called by the government to battle destructive, villainous monsters to the death. It all sounds terribly romantic but, as Masaru and the film teach us, being Big Man Japan really isn’t what it used to be.

Through a series of montages of what appears to be decades-old footage, we learn that Masaru comes from a long lineage of Big Men Japan (Big Man Japans?), the most revered of whom was his father, whose heyday was for Japanese superheroes what the 80’s were to stockbrokers: freaking awesome. Everyone who was anyone was a superhero, and Masaru’s dad was the cream of the crop, hob-knobbing with dignitaries and toying with pretty film stars. So one can understand why young Masaru wished to follow in his daddy’s footsteps. Little did he know papa would wind up in a nursing home, demented out of his gourd due to overexposure to high voltage electricity. That’s the thing about being Big Man Japan - you have to get big – and in order to do that, you’ve got to shock yourself into oblivion, or until you’re about the size of a six-story building.

The acute health risk isn’t even the worst of his occupational hazards. There is, as I mentioned, its unpredictability, which was arguably the straw that broke his marriage’s back, not to mention the nail in the coffin for his fatherhood. Masaru mentions his daughter with deluded frequency, dissipated, unfocused joy and regret – these are, in my opinion, the film’s best moments, poignant and disturbingly real. Losing his child to his career and a crappy divorce settlement seems to be the true tragedy of his existence. Even still, he might’ve gotten past that if he were toasting sake with the president and banging the Japanese Marilyn Monroe, but the gig doesn’t even pay well, much less garner the affections of the rich and fabulous. The man’s eating noodles out of a baggie and paling around with a mangy, semi-domesticated feline! And what’s more, the public’s lost interest in him, spray-painting insults on the side of the house, if acknowledging him at all.

“Big Man Japan” has a lot of promise: the most fantastic special effects I’ve seen in ages, an original, touching premise and a unique approach, mixing media and genres to depict this bizarre tragicomedy. But, much like Masaru’s experience in his inherited post, in the end, it is not what I hoped it would be. I was looking for “funny” and mostly got “strange.” I wanted “heartwarming” and got “melancholy.” I yearned for “clever” and was handed “trippy.” In short, “Big Man Japan” is the overzealous acid trip of a Japanese fanboy. Not so terrible, it certainly has its moments, but not without its occupational hazards. It can go ahead and join the queue of hundreds of films that sloppily leave questions unanswered, plot points unresolved, and never quite figure out what they are. Who is Big Man Japan? What (the hell) is “Big Man Japan”? I guess we’ll never know.

In 1989, a tenuous year when the iron-pumpin’ 80’s were skidding full-stop into the spandex-sportin’ 90’s, the stars aligned with the combined power of action-comedy ham Kurt Russell and Mr. Rambo himself, Sylvester Stallone, to form a buddy-cop flick the likes of which the decade had never seen. Well, aside from “48 Hours.” And “Lethal Weapon.” Regardless, it’s a noteworthy piece of cinema.

Ray Tango (Stallone) and Gabriel Cash (Russell) are the two baddest narcs on the LA beat: Tango, a truly debonair class-act, naturally works the Beverly Hills circuit, while Cash, a muscle tee and black socks type of guy, patrols the seedier parts of town. They’re opposites. They’re rivals. They’re box office gold.

When drug lord Yves Perret (Jack Palance) gets a little sick and tired of them confiscating mountains of his blow, he vows to take them down. As opposed to, say, shooting them, he conspires to elaborately frame Tango and Cash for murder with irrefutable evidence proclaimed irrefutable by experts bribed to say so.  He’ll also bribe the prison board so the two cops wind up in a maximum security facility, where they’ll surely be killed in combat by one of the many narcotic-slinging blokes with an ax to grind they’ve put away over the years. Well, Perret’s plan goes awry, though later than one might expect. The two do in fact get convicted for voluntary manslaughter and, because they’re proud, untarnished members of the LAPD, receive the minimum sentence in a minimum security facility. However, the corrupt prison board affiliates do come through, acting against legislation and placing Tango and Cash in a maximum security prison where an angry mob of convicts does engage them in combat. But what Perret didn’t anticipate is Tango and Cash totally kicking ass. ‘Cause that’s what they do. They pulverize dozens of furious, beefy low-lives with the coolest, and, in Tango’s case, suavest, combat moves ever. Unfortunately, in the wake of their victory, our men are faced with the tricky task of staying alive trapped inside a prison filled with enemies, not to mention clearing their good names in the cold, hard eyes of the LAPD and nabbing the man who screwed them.

Despite the fact that viewers must stare down the giant, gaping hole in its plot - why in hell didn’t Perret just shoot them? - “Tango & Cash” is one wild and damn entertaining ride. Stallone and Russell are two peas in a action-packed pod. They’re complimenting sides of a ying yang. They’re two hands held up, frozen in a high-five so joyous you’ll squeal with glee and sing their praises as the credits roll.

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I’m often asked what my version of heaven is, a question to which I am equally dumbfounded and struck by its dreariness. Gee, I’d say naked, beautiful people soaking in a hot tub of beer for all eternity. Endless ice cream that can’t make your thighs fat. World peace. It’s impossible to respond creatively without sounding like a total douche. Why not flip that question on its head, I always think to myself, and ask what my version of hell is? A far more festive inquiry. Far more fun.

Not to be flippant or, say, cavalier in the face of eternal damnation, but today I’d have to say my own personal hell looks something like Consolidated, the robust, professional atmosphere that sets the scene for 1980  fan favorite “Nine to Five.”

It all starts when Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) arrives at the colossal office space, wide-eyed as a newborn bird, ready, for better or worse, to spread her wings in the great, big, corporate world, unconvinced of its dangers and cruelties despite the hairs standing straight up on her neck. She reveals to Violet (Lily Tomlin), her supervisor and the jaded battle-ax management plucked to train newcomers, that this new post at Consolidated will be her first job – ever – as she is just on the heels of a divorce. Apparently, her hubby ran off with his secretary while she was at home folding his tighty-whities to the ecstatic hum of her daytime soaps. Just when I’m wondering how in the heck this dodo landed such a cushy, secretarial gig when she types with two fingers and leaps out of her skin each time the phone rings, in saunters Franklin Hart, Jr., a.k.a. the boss man, who remarks on his excitement to have a pretty girl in the office for a change, well within earshot of Violet and several other female employees. Oh, no he didn’t! And if that’s not enough to make you picture Hart roasting on a metal spit, we’re also privy to a charming encounter with his secretary, Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), behind closed doors in his office, during which he pelts her with outrageous sexual advances, crawling behind her on the wall-to-wall carpeting as she shoos him off, scampering around his desk in her high-heeled pumps.

Circling back to hell, my vision, like Consolidated, includes fluorescent lighting, panty hose, ill-fitting heels, dowdy silk tops and brasseries, phones ringing off the hook and unflinchingly lecherous, appallingly unattractive employers for whom I am just another pair of ta tas in a sea of cardigan-clad typing machines. So you can imagine my glee when I sense the film taking a sinister turn towards revenge.  Eventually, Judy, Violet and Doralee commiserate over their plight, as I, an unexpected optimist tucked under a duvet, dreamily envision the rest of this fantastic film starring these three fantastic, legendary actresses sticking it to the Man in a comedic, offbeat version of “Working Girl.”

But then they get high.  Seriously.  They smoke a joint as part of their bonding efforts.  And the entire film unravels into an absurd, situational comedy that ultimately says nothing about sexual harassment in the workplace or protofeminism or even the three heroines. Instead, the ladies’ respective marijuana-induced revenge fantasies (miraculously? unfortunately?) come to life by nothing but freak, dumb luck and they have to figure out how to writhe their way out of a major pickle that could cost their jobs, maybe even their freedom. It sounds even more ridiculous written down.  As for me, I am too disappointed to laugh as I watch these wacky chicks fail to wage war on my personal hell.

Rosie Velez (Divine) is having a hell of a day. When Abel Wood (Tab Hunter), a destitute man’s Clint Eastwood, discovers her, she’s been lost in the desert in the Wild West for days, raped and pillaged by a group of sex-starved, toothless bandits, barely capable of putting one foot in front of the other, her fabulously corpulent frame panting in a sweat-drenched corset, her coarse, raven hair in complete disarray. Abel takes pity on her, heaving her onto the arse of his pony. After all, she’s just a lil’ ol’ aspiring dancehall girl, looking for a gig in the nearest saloon and Abel is on his way to the next town – a dump called Chili Verde - on a covert quest for some legendary hidden gold … he’s got some kind of a hunch that Chili Verde is the place.

Though she’s laying the daft, flirtatious chatter on pretty thick, Rosie’s not as innocent as she lets on. She was marooned in the desert, that much is true, but her intentions stretch far beyond singing for pennies in a drunkard’s hangout. She’s determined to find that gold! You see, for as long as Rosie can remember, there’s been a mysterious map tattooed on her derriere, which Rosie believes will reveal its location. The problem is, the map is incomplete – only half is depicted on her ample buttocks. While she’s managed to get a clear picture of it from descriptions dictated by her many lovers, Rosie still can’t be certain of the treasure’s whereabouts … but she’s got some kind of a hunch it’s nearby.

When Abel and Rosie finally stumble past the Chili Verde border, Marguerita Ventura (Lainie Kazan), the proprietress of the only establishment in town, a saloon-cum-whorehouse-cum-hotel, appropriately regards these new visitors with suspicion, though her suspicion is quickly upstaged by her lust for the strapping Abel Wood, whom she immediately drags out back and seduces in the outdoor shower, happily finding that he lives up to his name. Abel, in turn, finds a curious map tattooed on Miss Marguerita’s rump, an X-marks-the-spot he suspects to be the legendary gold, only – you guessed it – it’s incomplete. See where this is going?

It’s a tense ride, ladies and gentlemen, waiting for Abel to bite the bullet and bang Rosie, thereby discovering the other half of the map and the location of the treasure before they all tear each other to shreds, but I must say, operating under the assumption that director Paul Bartel, entire cast and crew were working through an obliterating high during its production, it’s a reasonably well-structured film with an unexpected, boisterous payoff. Also of note is a colorful subplot involving Rosie’s inadvertent tendency to murder her lovers, snapping their necks between her legs each time she climaxes from oral sex.  That aside, viewers must suffer through Bartel’s painfully campy take on the Western and some incredibly ill-advised musical numbers.

In retrospect, I think my problem with “Lust in the Dust” is in actuality my problem with my own sobriety whilst viewing “Lust in the Dust.” This flick would probably be a total hoot high; unfortunately for me I was dead-sober in bed with a box of crackers.

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Imagine, if you will, a world without Alzheimer’s. Loved ones stay where they are, knowing full well who they are. The middle-aged no longer jump to conclusions after momentarily forgetting their phone number or the names of their children. And all in all, the winter of one’s life is just a little less chilly. In “Deep Blue Sea,” Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows) finds a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately for the rest of the cast, it involves homicidal sharks.

On an isolated research lab somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, the gamine, young Doc Suzie discovers a protein in sharks’ brains capable of reviving human brain cells. Rather than extracting the antidote from the sharks already held captive on the premises, Suzie decides to cut corners and use gene therapy to harvest supersharks with greater brain masses to get more bang for her buck. Well, these supersharks are not only bigger, faster and stronger but also more intelligent. So intelligent, in fact, that your average human won’t outsmart them. And while Dr. Frankensexy toils away in a blind passion for Alzheimer’s, these brainiac sharks, none too pleased with their surroundings akin to a sort of underwater neo-concentration camp for fish, plot to wreak havoc on their captors, exacting a fierce, unbridled killing spree.

It all starts when Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) agrees to visit the site of one of his company’s medical research compounds after desperate urging from sexy Suzie. He choppers it over to the ocean base where employees Tom “Scoggs” Scoggins (Michael Rapaport) and Carter Blake (Thomas Jane) feed sharks to the supersharks. This is probably a little disconcerting for Russell but he follows Doc Suzie’s lead anyhow. Suzie gets the whole crew in a room to extract the magic brain protein goo from a subdued, strapped down supershark and then demonstrate its power on lagging human brain cells for Russell to behold. But she didn’t anticipate the tranquilizer to wear off and the supershark to shake free from the straps and swallow scientist Jim Whitlock’s (Stellan Skarsgard) arm. Paramedics arrive to airlift Whitlock out of there, but the supershark outsmarts them yet again, yanking at the dangling wire and flinging the chopper into the ocean base, causing it to erupt in a blaze, thereby slowly flooding the entire structure and leaving Russell, Suzie, Scoggs, Carter and the oblivious and carefree Chef Sherman “Preacher” Dudley (LL Cool Jay) to sink into a pit of ravenous monster sharks.

If you enjoy ridiculously convoluted plots and craploads of gratuitous gore, this movie will quickly soar to the top of your favorites list. But what struck me about “Deep Blue Sea” is its complete ignorance of its own absurdity – these actors truly believe in the depths of their souls they’re making a sleek, high-concept thriller – and at the same time, remarkably, nothing happens according to formula. The sexual tension between Doc Suzie and hunky Carter is never explored, self-righteous Russell doesn’t get his expected chance to play the hero and instead, Chef Preacher, who I could’ve sworn was meant solely for comic relief and shark bait, steps up to the plate and well, kind of saves the day.

Needless to say, there is never a dull moment in this wildly stupid flick and though you’ll absolutely want to hate it, it’s difficult to deny its triumphant watchability.

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It’s the near-future, or rather, 1979’s near-future envisioned by Ridley Scott. A commercial towing spacecraft called the Nostromo on its 10-month long return to earth is intercepted by what the astronauts inexplicably assume is an S.O.S. from a small, nearby planet. Contractually obligated to respond, they land on the freezing pile of rocks, suit up and investigate. The place appears pretty much lifeless, until Kane (John Hurt) lowers himself into an intricately constructed cave-like structure, where he finds a sea of large, glowing eggs. Rather than running for the hills while holding back vomit, Kane takes a closer look as an egg hatches before his eyes.

What the hell did Kane expect from a giant, reptilian egg nestled in the spooky depths of an unknown planet? A genetically modified kitten bursting forth in a cloud of iridescent confetti singing delightful show tunes? Nice going, Kane. What emerges instead is more like a cross between a baby octopus and a Chinese dragon with the speed and reflexes of a panther and a thirst for human blood. It springs from the slime and suctions itself to Kane’s face, thereby implanting a baby alien, which in due time breaks through his stomach and wreaks havoc on their spaceship. In a nutshell.

As this gargantuan disaster unfolds, I can all but help noticing that the whole, slimy mess could have been avoided had the astronauts adhered to the following simple rules:

1. If a peculiar sound not unlike a bovine going into labor blares through static on your spacecraft radio, for Christ’s sake, ignore it. The entire film hangs on the flimsy assumption that an indecipherable radio feed is in fact an S.O.S. from a defenseless planet in terror. I ask you: why immediately jump to the conclusion that could land you in a freezing pit of monster eggs? Nothing good comes of static. Best to keep on trucking and pretend you didn’t hear it.

2. Never bring a cat to outer space. For no known logical reason, the Nostromo has a resident pussy cat. A wily little thing that tends to scamper off right when danger is about to strike, causing various members of the crew to separate from the herd to retrieve the little bastard and return it to safety. There’s a flesh-eating, indestructible alien with absolutely no scruples at all on the loose and these morons are risking their own protection for a cat? Was this film sponsored by Peta? Come on, fellas. Space is no place for a furball.

3. Beware of rain on a spaceship: it’s more likely alien drool. When Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) is searching the craft for the stupid cat rather than watching his back, he passes under a sprinkling shower and takes a beat to forget about the cat, the alien, all that high-pressure impending doom and just relax, basking in its refreshing stream. Oh, Harry Dean. You’re playing an astronaut from the near future, for chrissakes. Wouldn’t you know that the presence of condensation - much less a full-blown rain shower - in outer space is supremely unusual, looking thusly upon such a shower with maybe just a hint of suspicion? Apparently not, since, in the time I could say “Look up you stupid, little man!” the salivating monster had already swallowed him. Next time you’re in space and so much as a drop hits your hairline, think back to remedial science class and run for your life.

4. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. This is more of a life lesson, but in the context of the film, I’ll just say that carnivorous aliens are not easy to kill, hence one should probably be certain it’s killed before stripping down to one’s skivvies and tooting one’s own horn.

While I’m here primarily to save lives, there is a teensy, tiny part of me that relishes the Nostromo astronauts’ rampaging stupidity, because this movie is really, really cool – despite ridiculous gaps in plot - just as it is. Ridley Scott directs with Hitchcockian flair, which, combined with its noble cast – Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto – elevates “Alien” from a silly B-movie to a deeply unsettling classic.

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Darryl Kerrigan is about as proud a homeowner as they come. Well, he’s certainly the proudest owner of a housing tract plunked on a toxic landfill just yards from a traffic-heavy runway at the international airport. He’s remarkably happy-go-lucky, an attitude that can only be interpreted by today’s cynical audiences as naïve and ridiculous. He gushes over his wife’s cooking and dubious “crafting” and unflinchingly supports the peculiar interests of his overgrown dependents, one of whom spends his days in jail, another in beauty school, another scouting for bargains in the paper and the youngest apparently doing nothing at all aside from narrating the entire story for us with unnecessary detail. Darryl’s rampaging, clumsy pride, for all its absurdity, is, after all, charming, if for no other reason than how truly rare it is for someone to be so completely content with what he has. So when the airport next door decides to compulsorily annex his property, this jaunty comedy morphs smack-dab into an avalanche of pain.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of compulsory acquisition, it’s basically the legal term for the government’s right to take your house out from under your ass. Even though the airport offers the Kerrigan family $70,000 for their quirky, little rat trap, Darryl cannot accept that it’s legal for them to take his home when it’s not for sale. He decides to fight the thing, hiring a bungling disaster of a lawyer, Dennis Denuto, who claims before a judge that the acquisition is in breach of the constitution. When the judge asks him to specify which section of the constitution, Denuto shrugs, doe-eyed, and says, “It’s just the vibe of the thing.”

With his prospects looking grim, Darryl and his family glumly prepare for a move. But they may unexpectedly get a second chance in Lawrence Hammill, a high profile lawyer who specializes in constitution law to whom Darryl once showed great kindness.

Though it may sound run-of-the-mill to those who came of age in the candy-sleek, explosive era of Michael Bay and Brett Ratner, “The Castle” expertly caters to the very common niche of anyone who’s ever been challenged to the point of unbearable exasperation, made to explain a position so obvious (to you) that you take it for granted, furious, suicidal beads of sweat diving from your brow as you shout something unbelievably stupid like, “Just - because!“ Nowadays, what with 99% of information amounting to total muck, it seems like basic, human emotion often gets stuck somewhere between Lindsay Lohan’s tweets and Michael Jackson’s Demerol prescription. Sometimes it takes a veteran, a spiritual guru, some acutely gifted individual or, in this case, a 1997 Australian comedy to articulate what most of us know in our hearts is the right thing. There is an invaluable difference between a house and a home and this film reminds us of that. And while it doesn’t offer huge laughs, hot chicks, flying sports cars or real estate porn, it does award a massive dose of reality in an amusing, sweet, little package.

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For years I’ve avoided action movies. It’s a particular brand of cinematic recipe that I find not only boring but distasteful: one part monotonous, cliché-spewing beefcake, one part stripper-esque leading lady no doubt posing as a nuclear physicist, one part nefarious foreigner playing to our xenophobic tastes, a dash of sweat-drenched wife beater, a sprinkling of ill-advised bicep tattoos, a handful of fatal car wrecks, 22 cups of bullets, and an edgy sex scene encrusted with explosions galore, the finished product inevitably riddled with plot holes. There’s always a point when the awareness of the fantasy sets in, when I’m made to identify with a trigger-happy womanizer, realize I’m really identifying with all of trigger-happy, womanizing America and am consequently so depressed by the debased ideals of my nation I vow to boycott the genre for good - that is, until some sucker tells me “Max Payne” is awesome and the cycle grudgingly resumes once again.

That being said, in honor of Tony Scott’s 1991 film, “The Last Boy Scout,” I’d do a strip-tease at an NRA conference.

Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) sums up the plot perfectly when he quips to Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis), “You must be the stupidest man on earth. You’re saving the life of the man who destroyed your career and avenging the death of the guy who f***ed your wife.” Stupid though it may be, the story holds up so well you don’t even realize it’s stupid until Dix takes that jab about ¾ through the film. It all starts long before Hallenbeck even meets Dix, when Hallenbeck’s partner (they’re both private investigators) suddenly dumps a case on him that takes him out of town. When he returns home a day early, his wife is caught off guard; Hallenbeck, a natural detective, realizes she’s stashing another man in the closet, who turns out to be none other than … his partner. He chases the half-dressed d-bag to his car and, just Hallenbeck’s luck, as soon as the guy turns on the ignition, the vehicle bursts into flames. Hallenbeck’s naturally a little shaken up, but that evening it’s business as usual and our man’s cool as a cucumber: he goes to a club to meet Cory (Halle Berry), the stripper who hired his partner to get some dirt on the owner of the L.A. Stallions football team. Thanks to Hallenbeck and his partner, she’s got the goods to blackmail him into giving her boyfriend, former quarterback Jimmy Dix, his job back. But when Cory gets gunned down outside the club, Hallenback figures it’s no coincidence: someone really doesn’t want them digging all up in the Stallions’ business. Instead of changing his name and leaving the country immediately (if not sooner), Hallenbeck teams up with Dix to nail the bastards behind the crimes who, as it turns out, have an elaborate scheme to frame Hallenbeck for the murder of Senator Baynard, a politician dead-set on cracking down on gambling, which will lose the Stallions “billions.”  Baynard is of course also the man who destroyed Hallenbeck’s career in Secret Service.

It’s certainly a bumpy ride but also a thoughtful and complex one. The dialogue (for an action flick) is off-the-charts witty, the stripper plays an actual stripper and she’s Halle Berry, and, while there are certainly explosions and bullets and car wrecks (oh my!), there are also dynamic, character-centric subplots, such as Hallenbeck’s fraught relationship with his teenaged daughter, Dix’s drug problem and Hallenbeck’s discovery of it, which tarnishes his perception of his favorite football star. The cherry on this sundae is that it’s all told through the smoky, cool-as-hell eye of Tony Scott, who may be whoreing out a lackluster remake at the moment, but in the early nineties, he could really sling it. “The Last Boy Scout” is a rare treasure from the age of Milli Vanilli definitely worth revisiting.

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Brett Eisenberg (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a disgruntled, low-level employee of a publishing house struggling to find the book that will get her the promotion she’s been coveting since her Editorial Assistant days. For that extra edge, Brett decides to attend an event hosted by Archie Knox (Alec Baldwin), one of the top publishers in New York, hoping to rub elbows with the big wig old enough to be her father. But Brett gets more than an elbow rub from Old Man Knox who, upon setting eyes on her, instantly wants to bang her.

A lavish, old New York-style montage of wining, dining and full-fledged flirting ensues, only to be topped off by Brett the Tease’s pathetic backpedaling, furiously waving the I-Have-A-Boyfriend flag, the yellow belly’s alternative to I’m-Not-Sure-I’m-Ready-to-Justify-the-Whoreish-Implications-of-This-to-Myself-Just-Yet. Luckily for Brett, Archie Knox isn’t about to get discouraged by a moronic, douchebag post-graduate named Jed flitting around Europe to find himself. On the contrary, Jed the Boyfriend is Archie Knox’s signal to turn up the heat: that means flattery, gifts, editorial advice, professional favors, more flattery and, finally, a succulent meal cooked to perfection at his mint townhouse are all in the cards for Brett. Once they’ve sufficiently swapped hopes, fears, embarrassing secrets, pretentious anecdotes, and seemingly endless pseudo-intellectual quips, Brett ultimately succumbs to Archie’s charm, dumps Jed, moves in with the uber-publisher and embarks on a torrid, frowned upon love affair, all the while balking at those frowns with the self-righteousness of a home-schooled fundamentalist. How dare you! We love each other!

This is one of those films that landed on my Netflix queue because I liked ‘30 Rock’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ so by the Netflix school of computation, I would surely enjoy this straight to DVD B-movie from 2007 starring Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar. In a way, Netflix was correct, at least superficially (I’ve found that Netflix is often correct superficially), because my first thought was, “Netflix, are you trying to make me fall over myself with glee?”

But then I watched it and the realization strangled me like a medieval girdle from the depths of hell: straight to DVD films go straight to DVD for a reason. I’d like to know what kind of bass-ackwards, politically incorrect humans created this piece of filth. Perhaps some male supremacist invented a time machine that fetched a production team consisting of Robert Chambers, a.ka. “The Preppy Killer” circa August 1986, Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco circa 1992, Anna Nicole Smith before she bit it, David Lutz as portrayed by Oliver Platt in the elegant and genius 1988 film, ‘Working Girl’ and maybe a couple of known sex offenders and traders from the New York Stock Exchange in the 1980’s, when rape in the workplace was commonplace, even passé. Yes, I’m sorry to say, despite the sunny DVD art, ‘Suburban Girl’ is pretty much a travesty, not only because it sets women back about twenty years, but because it fails to showcase Baldwin’s impeccable comedic skills and Gellar’s amazing martial arts skills – the whole logic behind Netflix’s suggestion of it in the first place.

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In this bizarre 1936 horror/family film, Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) escapes from lock up with an elderly scientist friend called Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) after several decades spent falsely imprisoned, framed by his former business partners. After climbing through thick forests, brush and swamps, the shifty glow of the cops’ flashlights never far behind them, the raggedy old chaps manage to make it to the scientist’s hideout, a disturbingly isolated log cabin, where his wife, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano), a doppelganger of the bride of Frankenstein, and her dimwitted, inbred assistant (her attribution, not mine) await. Though relieved to have finally found shelter, Lavond quickly discovers that what’s inside the log cabin is far more disturbing than its grim exterior; a gruesome lab of test tubes and electrical currents where Malita has continued the questionably ethical work of her husband during his absence. See, little did Lavond know, the scientist is obsessed by a dream of one day shrinking all of God’s living creatures to one-tenth their size in order to ensure that the earth’s resources will never run out. Pretty damn green of him! Unfortunately, the science is a little faulty.

As Lavond discovers, the couple has been experimenting on Saint Bernard dogs and, trial after trial, find that, though physically perfect, the dog cannot exist on one tenth of a brain. However, Marcel and Malita long ago found a loophole: while the dogs cannot think for themselves, they can take orders — telepathically! Before Lavond even processes this insanity, Marcel suffers a massive heart attack, his dying breath spent pleading Lavond to finish what he started. Meh, Lavond’s not so into that. BUT — as Malita drugs the dimwit and shrinks her in a desperate attempt to get Lavond on board, it dawns on him that he could use these shrunken slaves to get the ultimate revenge on the men who framed him.

So Lavond returns to his hometown — ol’ gay Paris — with Malita, the shrunken dimwit and their test tubes in tow, only to find his face on wanted signs all over the place. He disguises himself as an old woman to dodge the cops and they use a toyshop as a front for their human-shrinking plot: as the little old woman, Lavond intends to infiltrate his former business partners’ families, sell them the “dolls,” which will then be telepathically manipulated to wreak havoc on his traitors’ privileged worlds. Meanwhile, Lavond begins to visit his daughter who, as a result of his imprisonment, grew up a fatherless, destitute outcast with an axe to grind. Never revealing his true identity, Lavond uses the sweet, elderly woman disguise to forge a relationship with the child he never knew.

I mean, there’s just so much to work with. After all, this little-known horror film of the 1930’s did spawn some major family comedies of the 1990’s. But I’ll start with Lionel Barrymore’s transvestism. On a scale from Patrick Swayze in ‘Too Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar’ to Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie,’ Barrymore’s up with the Hoffmeister. I was also impressed with the quality of the special effects. I still have no idea how they made the shrunken people look so shrunken, but I’m pretty sure it involved expert superimposition and large-scale, immaculate models. That said, when Marcel the scientist displays his shrunken dogs, it’s like if you filmed someone dropping a chewed-up beanie baby on a table in a lump, cut away to an amazed reaction shot, and then returned to the table where a hologram Saint Bernard trotted around in the beanie baby’s place. But the most baffling quality to me is the film’s self-characterization as horror, when revenge — not pure, psychopathic evil — is Lavond’s only motivation to kill (we can all get behind that) and when there’s his pathetic love for his estranged daughter at the heart of the story. Horror films don’t have a heart, last I checked.

So yes, this film is ridiculous, but that does not make it bad — it’s inspiring! ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ ‘Weird Science,’ ‘White Chicks,’ ‘Psycho,’ at least three episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,’ ‘Honey, I Blew Up the Kids’ and ‘Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves’ were all direct descendants of’ ‘The Devil-Doll.’ And where would we be without those classics?