Kurt Johnson Movies

Sid (director Joe Carnahan) and Bob (Dan Leis) are two down-on-their-luck, very fast-talking used car salesmen with a lot full of lemons and a gaping hole in their finances, when, at their most vulnerable, they are offered a deal: Park a cherry Pontiac LeMans convertible for two days...and they get $250,000. The catch is, "don't look, don't touch." The trunk is rigged to explode if they try to open it, and a sniper awaits them if they attempt to run off with it. On top of that is a trail of bodies stretching from South America to the car's delivery. Living in the shadow of Dan Woo (Dan Harlan), the giant car dealer down the street for whom Sid and Bob used to work, the boys have little choice. Hilarity and the FBI ensue. In the '90s it's Quentin Tarantino's world, we just watch the footage. Like a low-rent Faust on too much caffeine, director Joe Carnahan, armed with his car, his friends, and less than $8000, has made an energetic, eager-to-please debut to serve as his calling card to Hollywood. ~ Ron Wells, Rovi

In this low-budget horror film from director Thom Eberhardt, a beautiful advertising executive Denise Watson (Anita Skinner) is the sole survivor of an airplane crash in a remote wilderness area. As her haunting journey continues, Denise is attacked by cannibalistic zombies, and even her friends at home are affected. Eberhardt's film echoes the Australian thriller The Survivor in its set-up, but its tone is closer to Herk Harvey's classic Carnival of Souls without being nearly as interesting. Cult favorite Brinke Stevens appears briefly in a party scene. Eberhardt followed this uninvolving effort with the intriguing Night of the Comet before making the leap to mainstream films. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

This 1981 John Irvin picture constitutes an adaptation of Peter Straub's colossal, bestselling novel. The central plot -- shared by both book and film -- revolves around the four elderly members of the Chowder Society (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and John Houseman), who gather in each other's drawing rooms each winter to sip cognac and spin elaborate ghost stories. The four men also share a dark secret far more unsettling than fiction -- a secret which has literally come back to haunt them, as well as their own adult offspring. Each man is visited by a hideous specter bearing the likeness of a young woman (Alice Krige) they accidentally killed 50 years ago when spurning her mischievous sexual advances. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi