Ace Mask Movies

In this comedy-adventure for the family, Heather (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is a girl who can't stand her foster parents, so one day she runs away from home in order to track down her real mother. However, Heather's stepmother wants her back -- not because she cares about her, but because Heather is worth several million dollars, and she wants to make sure that she doesn't lose her meal ticket. Private detective Nick Frost (Howard Hesseman) is hired to find Heather and bring her back home, but it turns out that the stepmother has a trick up her sleeve -- once Nick finds Heather, rather than pay him, stepmom calls the FBI and tells them that Nick has kidnapped her daughter. Home for Christmas was originally released under the title Little Miss Millions. Jennifer Love Hewitt was 14 at the time -- a year away from her star-making role in the TV series Party of Five. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The depraved shenanigans at a sex clinic provide the plot of this erotic crime thriller from B-movie director Jim Wynorski. There is something sinister going at the Callister Sex Institute, a surrogate and sexual healing clinic run by therapist Scott Callister (Jay Richardson) and his bisexual wife Dr. Jessica Callister (Delia Sheppard). While investigating allegations of malfeasance, an undercover operative, Monica Waldman (Gail Harris) has been raped and murdered. Her boss, private eye Barry Mitchum (Nick Cassavetes) is determined to nail the Callisters, and so is Kay Egan (Tanya Roberts), whose sister committed suicide after being sexually assaulted at the clinic. After Barry and Kay discover they're after the same goal, they join forces to expose the Callisters, with Kay even going so far as to use her body in an effort to help Barry. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

In Transylvania Twist, producer Roger Corman and director Jim Wynorski make Mel Brooks movies look like Noël Coward drawing-room comedies. The film begins with nubile innocent Patty (Monique Gabrielle) being chasing through the woods by the Greatest Horror Hits of the 1980s --with Jason, Freddy Krueger, and Leatherface all vying for a piece of her. Robert Vaughn has the hammiest role as a vampire named Lord Byron Orlock. His ravishing niece Marissa (Teri Copley), an American singing star, arrives at Lord Byron's castle in Transylvania after the death of her father. Accompanying her is Dexter Ward (Rick Altman), her wise-cracking Donald O'Connor-inspired sidekick. What happens next involves a frantic search for a mysterious book that will raise "the evil one" from the dead. The flimsy plot serves as a handy clothesline on to which to hang self-referential parodies of the horror film genre, with time out for some clever editing of an appearance by long-dead Boris Karloff. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

A stranger in town has some big plans that could mean the end of humanity as we know it in this blend of comedy and sci-fi thrills. Nadine Story (Traci Lords) is a nurse working in the office of Dr. Rochelle (Ace Mask) when she encounters a very unusual patient -- the mysterious Mr. Johnson (Arthur Roberts), who is always dressed in black, wears dark sunglasses indoors and demands a blood transfusion. After Dr. Rochelle tests Johnson's blood, he's surprised to discover the man's body isn't producing blood in the usual manner, and Johnson hires Nadine to work in his home and give him regular transfusions. As Nadine fends off the advances of Johnson's ex-con chauffeur and go-fer Jeremy (Lenny Juliano), he discovers that people have a habit of showing up at Johnson's door but not going home again. With her help of her boyfriend, a motorcycle cop named Harry (Roger Lodge), Nadine discovers Johnson has a shocking secret -- he's an emissary from the planet Davanna, who is looking for a ready supply of human blood his people need to survive. Not Of This Earth was a remake of the 1957 film of the same name directed by Roger Corman, who served as executive producer for this version as well as distributing the picture. It was the first mainstream feature for former adult film actress Traci Lords, and features her last nude scene to date. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This high-tech spin on the slasher genre pits a group of sex-obsessed teens spending the night in a shopping mall against the mall's marauding robotic security guards -- whose programming turns homicidal after a bolt of lightning scrambles their control circuits. Director Jim Wynorski cut his exploitation teeth working for Roger Corman's legendary "B"-movie factory New World Pictures in the '70s and '80s, and this film's comic early scenes contain homages to that outfit's heyday -- with humorous cameos from Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov (reprising their characters Paul and Mary Bland from Bartel's Eating Raoul) and the ubiquitous Dick Miller. The majority of the film, however, is essentially a teens-in-jeopardy story, with the lethal bots unleashing their amped-up arsenal and bringing the victims to nasty ends amid buckets of gore -- such as the unforgettable moment when one woman's head is targeted by one of the droids and blown up like an overripe melon. (The shot is repeated during the end credits.) ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi