Peter Locke Movies

Alexandre Aja directs this remake of Wes Craven's film The Hills Have Eyes. In this update, a family is taking a cross-country road trip when their trailer breaks down, leaving them stranded in the desert of New Mexico. There, they find themselves under attack by the savage "hill people," who were deformed by radiation during nuclear testing. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

Snuff-Movie, an outing by the celebrated music video-director-turned-horror maestro Bernard Rose (Paperhouse, Candyman), references both the Charles Manson/Sharon Tate murders and Michael Findlay's notorious grindhouse film Snuff (1974), in its tale of a slasher movie director's involvement with off-camera butchering. Jeroen Krabbé stars as Boris Arkadin, the popular creator of stomach-churning cinematic gore fests. His life takes a dark turn late one evening in 1975, when, after a private screening of his latest opus, a group of maniacs turn up at his mansion and slaughter all of the overnight guests -- including Boris' pregnant wife, Mary (Lisa Enos). Cut to the present day, in London. A young actress, Wendy (also played by Enos), decides to audition for one of Arkadin's films, and accepts the director's subsequent invitation (despite the admonitions of her boyfriend, Andy) to stay at the Arkadin mansion overnight. Soon, Andy is wracked with horror to discover that additional murders are occurring and being broadcast live, online. But are these homicides real or simply staged contrivances for another film? Teri Harrison and Alastair Mackenzie co-star; Rose authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Director and screenwriter James Toback used his own experiences as a college student in the 1960s as the basis for this drama about a present-day student athlete who's bitten off more than he can chew. Alan Jensen (Adrian Grenier) is a college sophomore struggling to keep up with an unusually busy schedule -- while studying philosophy as a Harvard undergrad, he's also a point guard on the school's basketball team, and is juggling two girlfriends, cheerleader Cindy Bandolini (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Chesney (Joey Lauren Adams), a professor ten years his senior. As Alan tries to stay on top of his classes and keep his love life sorted out, he receives some bad news from his parents -- a tornado has devastated their home, and they need $100,000 to rebuild. Alan wants to help his parents, and as it happens, Cindy's father is a Mafia boss tied in with a number of powerful bookies. Cindy uses her family's connection to put Alan in touch with Teddy (Eric Stoltz), a bookie who's willing to give Alan $100,000 in exchange for throwing a few games and shaving some points. Cindy also uses her dad's bankroll to place a quarter-million dollar bet on the upcoming Harvard-Dartmouth game, certain Alan can ensure a predictable outcome. But when the games don't go quite the way Alan expected, despite his best worst effort, he finds himself in dutch with the Mafia, while also attracting the attention of FBI agents who've been investigating Teddy and his associates. Amidst this chaos, Alan hops a jet home to give his parents the ill-gotten $100,000, and on the flight back decides to relax mid-flight by dropping a heroic dose of LSD, which turns out not to be one of his better ideas. Harvard Man was originally intended to star Leonardo DiCaprio as Alan, but after the project was put on hold in 1994, DiCaprio rocketed to fame in Titanic, which priced himself out of the project by the time James Toback was able to return to it years later. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Charles Band has been making horror movies in Rumania for several years, so it should come as no surprise to find his local collaborators, associate producer Vlad Paunescu and costume designer Oana Paunescu, among the crew of this ambitious historical epic from The Kushner-Locke Company and director Joe Chappelle (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers). It's an impressive attempt at rehabilitating the image of Vlad Tepes (Rudolf Martin), the famous Transylvanian prince who inspired Bram Stoker as the model for his vampiric count in the novel Dracula. That's part of the problem with Chappelle's film, because Martin plays Vlad as a sultry, pouting romantic figure in the Frank Langella mode rather than as a man who might have been capable of such astonishing savagery and physical strength on a battlefield. He pouts for money from the King of Hungary (Roger Daltrey being out-pouted for once), romances Jane March, speaks in a petulant growl, and generally looks like he'd be more at home on the dancefloor of a chic discotheque than on a corpse-strewn battlefield. Only the unavoidable feeling that he might be a vampire (he isn't) makes him seem even remotely threatening or dangerous. The rest of the film is better, with authentic-looking locations, some surprising gore, and nicely-handled battle scenes. Peter Weller comes off the best among the cast, playing the creepy Father Stefan with a suitable gravity and authority. It is very difficult to take the historical Dracula away from the vampire legends after over a century of Stoker-inspired over 150 films, but Chappelle and his cast make a game effort, and if they don't exactly succeed in removing the shadow of the vampire from their heroic prince, they have at least produced a rousing entertainment which is far better than anyone had a right to expect. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, Nydia (Thalia) was born in New York City to a family of Puerto Rican immigrants who run a restaurant. Nydia is on summer vacation after her freshman year at Boston University, and comes home to discover things are not well with the family business; customers have not been coming around, and unless they start coming back, the family will be in serious trouble. Word in the neighborhood has it that Fat Tony (Robert Costanzo), a local Mob boss, is on the outs with his superiors and is expected to be the victim of a Mob hit. Nydia's brother Ricky (Rick Gonzalez) gets an idea -- if Fat Tony gets whacked in their restaurant, the publicity would be invaluable, so he invites Fat Tony to dine there every day on the house. Fat Tony takes Ricky up on the offer, and sure enough, Fat Tony becomes the victim of a Mob hit, with curious crime devotees packing the restaurant from then on. However, since Fat Tony had been hanging out at the restaurant, some of his former associates get the idea that Ricky had a hand in the double dealings that helped get Fat Tony killed, and soon Ricky gets a visit from some very ill-tempered gangsters. Meanwhile, Nydia has convinced her college boyfriend Chris (Richard Hillman), who studies at Harvard, that she's actually the daughter of a wealthy family from Argentina -- which leaves her with a lot of explaining to do when Chris shows up. Mambo Café also stars Paul Rodriguez, Danny Aiello, and Rosana De Soto. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Despite the efforts of her sleazy attorney, Mr. Butz (David Alan Grier), teen drug dealer/car thief Crystal (Natasha Lyonne) is sentenced to a 25-year prison term, the first segment of which will be served in a youth correctional facility where she will be treated for her rampant bulimia. There, in-between binge/purge marathons with her fellow eating-disordered inmates and relentless harassment of the hapless authorities, she fends off the lesbian advances of her psychotic cellmate, Cyclona (Maria Celedonio), a serial killer who's just received a life sentence. The two escape together and embark on a cross-country road trip in search of Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo), the beneficent nun who protected Cyclona from the sexual predations of her family during her troubled childhood south of the border. Where writer/director Matthew Bright's original Freeway was a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway 2 riffs on Hansel and Gretel; it borrows only the trailer-park trappings of the earlier film, making the titular allusion to automobiles somewhat tenuous. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Swing is the story of working-class friends who escape their bleak Liverpool lives to launch a swing band. Martin (Hugo Speer) spends two years in jail for his brother. When he gets out, he is handed two years of unopened love letters and a piece of advice: get a job or end up back in jail. Nothing much has changed back home during his absence. His sax-playing cell-mate Jack is the only sage person to guide him. Martin decides to start his own band. He recruits bassist Buddy, a skirt-chasing football star and drummer, and Oi, an ex-skinhead. The brass section is made up of barflies who owe his dad a favor. But one person who can lead the band to success is the beautiful singer Joan (Lisa Stansfield), the love of Martin's life who is now married to Martin's arresting officer and is not sure if the band is another one of Martin's hopeless dreams. Martin convinces everyone that the dream is worth fighting for. Despite a raid by Joan's jealous husband, the band's gig is a success and a recording contract is on its way. Then the police find out that Martin's brother backed the band with stolen money. Martin is back in jail, but this time when he comes out, he has Jack with him and Joan is waiting with the whole band to start again. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

After the success of shock-jock Howard Stern's Private Parts, shock-TV host Jerry Springer made his own foray into celluloid. Fictionalizing only the name of his television show (what is normally called the The Jerry Springer Show, is now called "The Jerry Show"), Springer plays himself as a man who fronts a chair-throwing, dog-and-pony trash TV strip which gets high ratings in the backwoods, armpit communities of America. The story revolves around two sets of guests coming to Los Angeles to be on the show. First, the Zorzak family has slutty 19-year-old Angel (Jaime Pressly), sleeping with her stepdad (Michael Dudikoff). When her mom (Molly Hagan) finds out, she seeks revenge by sleeping with Angel's fiancé, Willie (Ashley Holbrook). The second group consists of Starletta (Wendy Raquel Robinson), who caught her man, Demond (Michael Jai White), sleeping with her best friend, Vonda (Tangie Ambrose). This makes all of them perfect for stardom on The Jerry Show. As all these guests arrive for their big day on national television, more chaos ensues with Springer getting propositioned by Angel and her mother. Even crew members show their stripes by getting involved in the sexual escapades with the guests. The whole scenario is finally brought to a knockdown, gender-bending finale live on national television -- right where it belongs. ~ Chris Gore, All Movie Guide

Adam Rifkin wrote and directed this comedy that begins at a Los Angeles dinner party when unmarried, unattached novelist Art Witz (Jason Alexander with hair) argues that couples actually live in a state of denial and cannot maintain monogamous relationships. The plotline diverges to examine the lives of couples at the dinner party, including Isaac and Claudia (Ryan Alosio and Amy Yasbeck), who have an agreement to keep their affairs secret. Medical student Sophie (Leah Lail) sees a professor when she's not with her husband, attorney Joel (Jonathan Silverman), a fan of "Oriental" massages. Despite an upcoming marriage to pregnant Sammie (Christine Taylor), chef Sam (Patrick Dempsey) can't stop looking at pornography. Shown at the 1998 Seattle Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Dominique Swain stars as spoiled, small-town high-school senior, 18-year-old Andrea Marr, who lives with her parents in an upscale suburb of Porter City, Washington -- where Andrea and her gal pals make the scene at various concerts and clubs. Before the summer ends and an Ivy League school takes her East, the virginal and somewhat confused Andrea hopes to achieve sexual satisfaction. She chooses Kevin (Channon Roe), but the encounter isn't quite what she was expecting, perhaps because she's more attracted to rocker Todd Sparrow (Sean Patrick Flanery). Absorbing advice from her friend Rebecca (Summer Phoenix), she plots a course of action and drops Kevin. After she succeeds in linking with her one-and-only, it's not long before she's disappointed to find that Sparrow has flown the coop. Swain's effective voiceover narration contrasts her careful plans with her impulsive actions. Shown in the market section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In this youthful fantasy, a 12-year-old boy is unfortunate enough to have his wish granted to have a golden touch. At first it is a fine talent indeed. However, the dark side of his power appears when he accidentally turns his beloved grandmother into a solid gold statue. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

While Neal Cassady never gained fame as a writer, he was a pivotal figure among the Beat poets and novelists of the 1950s. A close friend of most of the seminal figures in the Beat movement, Cassady's free-wheeling, larger-than-life personality was a major influence on Jack Kerouac, who used him as the inspiration for the character Dean Moriarity in On the Road, and he was a founding member of Ken Kesey's post-Beat, pre-hippie "Merry Pranksters," driving their now-famous psychedelic bus (whose destination, then as now, was "Furthur"). The Last Time I Committed Suicide is loosely based on several incidents from Cassady's life, as well as an eight-page letter that he wrote to Kerouac about some complicated events in his love life. In the late 1940s, 20-year-old Cassady (Thomas Jane) was living in Denver and working the late shift at a tire factory when he became involved with Joan (Claire Forlani), a sad young woman with a suicidal bent, and befriended Harry (Keanu Reeves), a cheerful but past-his-prime alcoholic. Cassady also found himself the target of the affections of Cherry Mary (Gretchen Mol), a sexy 16-year-old whose mother, Mrs. Greenway (Christine Rose), doesn't much care for him; he also encountered Ben (Adrien Brody), a shy young poet whose interest in Cassady seemed to be more than just literary. Footage of the real Neal Cassady can be found in the documentary on the Beat Movement, The Source. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide