Movie Nation

The best “What might have been” documentaries about musicians that disappeared (“Searching for Sugar Man”), bands that fell “just shy of making it (“Anvil!”) are the ones that have the best explanations, excuses and screw-ups that reveal how they missed that big brass ring — record deals, big tours, wealth and fame.

“40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie” has a doozy. Several doozies.

And when your biggest fan from way-back-when is a big-shot TV writer and producer, the world’s going to hear those excuses and laugh along with you as you relate the ways you set out to NOT make it.

Lee Aronsohn has a resume littered with hit series, from “Who’s the Boss?” to “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men.” But when he was in college in Boulder, Colorado in the ’70s, there was this band that he’s never been able to get out of his head.

Magic Music was a quintet of singer/guitarists, flutist, tabla, spoons and banjo players, a self-described “hippie jam band” with Eagles harmonizing, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band bluegrass chops and a cult following. Aronsohn decided he’d track them down, round them up and put on a reunion show.

And he’d get the answer to his burning question, “Why didn’t you guys ever break out?”

They had a meeting with Tree Publishing, one of the most famous music publishers in Nashville and all of North America. They wouldn’t sign the deal because they were put off by the guy’s shoes. They were denied an arranged meeting with big time Capital Records in LA, kicked out for showing up barefoot.

Booted from a Cat Stevens tour here, abandoning a record in mid-recording there, these guys — “not a business mind among us” — had their shots, even though listening to their music you can hear what managers, music biz professionals and others heard — “You haven’t written a hit record” or a song that could become a hit. Titles like “Mole’s Stumble” were never going to get them on the charts.

Not that “I just wanna be like the animals, I wanna live close to the ground, I just wanna be like the Indian, and see my Maker all around me,” doesn’t have a late-hippie/John Denver “Rocky Mountain High” vibe to it.

But Aronsohn gets beyond the “what might have beens” and into the lives they were living then, “back to the land” hippies living on a commune, then basically creating their own, calling converted school buses “home” in El Dorado Canyon, Pagosa Springs and other remote corners of the mountains outside of Boulder.

They’d tour, play bars, make music, fall in love and bring women into their lifestyle. And every so often, they’d get a shot, only to be told “You need a drummer” or something else they didn’t want to hear.

Egos got in the way, a need to be pure and “not contrived,” and then life happened. Some fell out, all moved away and yet they pretty much stayed in touch.

“The Magic Music Movie” is  interesting as music and cultural history, tracking the band from flannel and overalls protest folk to bluegrass, against a backdrop of Vietnam, Watergate, marijuana and Earth Day. But where the film is fascinating is the ways it examines the wandering lives of working musicians who stay in touch with the tunes even as life goes on.

One later toured with Carole King. Another played in Vegas backup bands. One cut records and had hits in Europe, one tried disco, one sailed off to Mexico, playing with expats where he settled. One became a cabin and “tiny house” builder, another a visual artist; marriages, families, divorces, drugs, alcoholism — and 40 years later, they could still hit the harmonies and put on a reunion worth preserving on film.

Maybe that’s a happy ending, even if they and their fans are wistful for what might have been. But few bands can claim a better collection of “Funny story about why we didn’t” anecdotes than Magic Music.

MPAA Rating: unrated, drug and alcohol use and abuse discussed

Cast: Chris Daniels, Bill Makepeace, Lynn Poyer, Greg Sparre, Will Luckey, George Cahill, Rob Galloway, Kevin Milburn

Credits:Directed by Lee Aronsohn. A Magic Music release.

Running time: 1:39

Probably not as funny as the trailers suggest, and considering the budget is in the $150 million range, “funny” isn’t all they were going for to begin with.

A late summer popcorn pic is always an iffy gamble, but “Guardians” and “Signs” opened at about this time of this month, and made a mint.

Love the Brit, Chinese, Kiwi, Icelandic plus Rainn, Page Kennedy and Ruby Rose cover-all-the-bases casting. The “check box” diversity is a bit obvious on paper, but as we’ve seen in the “Star Wars” movies, its what you give everybody to do and how good they are at  it that counts. Hope of “Rogue One,” in other words, not those other ones.

And Jason Statham seems to be in on the joke these days, which is a blessing. The embargo on reviews for this picture, which I dare say is screening for critics and select fans EVERYwhere tonight, is 7pm EDT Wed.

Stay tuned for further developments.

“Dog Days” is like a romantic comedy Garry Marshall didn’t get to make. He did the sappy “Valentine’s Day,” “New Year’s Eve” and “Mother’s Day.” But here’s actor turned director Ken Marino (“How to be a Latin Lover”) to get us through the summer with a large ensemble of lovers brought together, or keeping love alive, through dogs.

Like Marshall’s later films, it’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny. But an engaging cast — human and canine — give it, and us, almost enough warm-and-fuzzies to get by.

Nina Dobrev (of “Flatliners”) is the cute, wrapped-too-tight hostess of “Wake Up LA” who only loosens up when her wolfhound looking boy Sam falls for the pitbullish pet of ex-footballer turned co-host Jimmy (Tone Bell, flip and charming).

Dax (Adam Pally) is the irresponsible musician who learns to responsibility when he has to take care of his sister’s dog when she has twins.

Vanessa Hudgens plays Tara, the barista with the hots for Hot Vet (Michael Cassidy), who thinks her shot just improved when she takes in a dumpster chihuahua. The nerd running the local no-kill shelter (Jon Bass, funny) pines for her.

New adoptive parents (Eva Longoria and Rob Corddry) are having no luck at all getting through to their new little girl until they find a stray pug. Unfortunately, the lonely widower (Ron Cephas Jones, terrific) lost the dog, and his “punk” pizza delivery boy (Finn Wolfhard) is guiltily helping him look for her. 

The dogs are here to get in the way, open hearts and facilitate the human coupling, all of which play out in exceedingly predictable ways.

The funniest scenes feature comic Tig Notaro as a deadpan doggie therapist whose “real” patient is the TV anchor — “Someone needs to get out there” isn’t really meant for your doggie, dearie.

Dobrev and Hudgens are lightly charming, Longoria plays concerned mom without a lot of spark (Corddry has nothing funny to say or do), Thomas Lennon plays the brother in law and new-twins-daddy and finds a laugh here and there.

But the script needed a LOT more, not more drug jokes or “phallic” gags (one of each, as this is a “family” film). Maybe lines like this one Pally utters at a whiny setter.

“There’d better be a boy in a well for you to be freaking out like this.”

MPAA Rating: PG for rude and suggestive content, and for language

Cast: Nina Dobrev, Vanessa Hudgens, Eva Longoria, Ron Cephas Jones, Rob Corddry, Tone Bell, Finn Wolfhard, Adam Pally, Tig Notaro, Thomas Lennon

Credits:Directed by Ken Marino, script by Erica Oyama, Elissa Matsueda. An LD Entertainment release.

Running time:

You see enough bad horror movies in a row, you start losing faith in the genre. Then one comes along that startles, impresses and even touches you, and you forget all the many ways everything else you’ve seen lately has gone wrong.

“Down a Dark Hall” gets one huge thing right that’s a common failing of most horror — pathos. It makes you care and makes you feel, even though what you’re watching is just a clever mashup of ghost story tropes, a “genre picture” in every sense of the word.

That it works should come as no surprise. Uma Thurman makes a great villain, and AnnaSophia Robb has proven to be one of the best child actresses of her generation.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés gave us the harrowing “Buried” and the creepily intriguing “Red Light,” and gives the film a European sensibility.

And what brought them all together? A film about seriously messed-up girls menaced in a seriously chilling girl’s boarding school, a film based on a novel by the Grande Dame of YA Frights, Lois Duncan of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Kit (Robb) is a polished liar, also an arsonist and heaven knows what else that’s detailed on her rap sheet. She lost her dad very young and she’s never gotten over it, never forgiven the world.

We meet her as she’s about to be kicked out of school. Her parents are desperate enough to try this school that an elegant, European-accented recruiter Dr. Sinclair (Jodhi May) suggests — Blackwood.

“Girls like me end up on meds,” she hisses to the recruiter. But before she knows it Miss Anger Management Issues is packed off to the boondocks, to stately, forbidding and  historic Blackwood Hall.

It’s a lovely setting where painting, writing and music are vital elements of the curriculum.

“At Blackwood, we believe beauty enriches the spirit,” headmistress Madame Duret (Thurman) purrs to Kit while her parents are there. But the moment they’re gone, Kit sees the place is empty, that it has wiring and lighting problems.

And when the rest of the students arrive, it turns out there are only five, including Kit — with a student-teacher ratio that any prep school would envy. The instructors include Madame Duret (painting), Dr. Sinclair (writing) and Madame Duret’s hunky son (Noah Silver) who teaches music.

The “special” girls? Edgy Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman), eager-to-please Ashley (Taylor Russell) and delicate flower Sierra (Rosie Day) are just a bit off. Bullying Veronica (Victoria Moroles) and perpetually pissed Kit are the ones who look like they truly belong in this baroque “prison.”

But the instruction takes hold, even with that feuding duo. This girl is a “natural” at math, that one a gifted painter, one’s a born poet. And Kit? She never knew she could play the piano like that.

It’s Madame Duret’s “results” that first spook Kit. The manic way Sierra wields a brush, the dead-eyed automaton Izzy turns to when solving a proof, the way Kit herself plays until her fingers bleed.

Then, there are those wraiths she sees in the shadows. And there are a lot of shadows, especially in the “closed off” wing of Blackwood Hall. You remember. “Wiring problems.”

I wasn’t so much conscious of Cortés ratcheting up suspense as absorbed by the milieu, the brittle chemistry and funny/testy banter among the girls and the mystery that Kit is trying to figure out.  Robb, ranging from irked to enraged and rebellious to terrified, makes Kit’s journey a fraught one we take with someone we instantly root for.

Moroles gives Veronica her own Threat Level in the midst of all this, all menace and out of f—-s to give attitude.

Thurman, oily accent dripping with menace, is no Disney villain here. She’s real world dangerous, vulpine, callous, keeping supernatural secret threats from her pupils. And for those occasions where she’s not scary enough, there’s the obligatory Russian disciplinarian (Rebecca Front) to grab you by the hair and restore order.

“Down a Dark Hall” never transcends its genre and only rarely manages surprise. But a superb cast, a reliably spooking setting, good effects, decent frights and just a hint of “culture” make it a pleasant break from under-budgeted crap and endless “Annabelle/Insidious” sequels.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, terror and violence, some language including a sexual reference, and smoking

Cast: AnnaSophia Robb, Uma Thurman, Victoria Moroles, Jodhi May, Noah Silver

Credits:Directed by Rodrigo Cortés, script by Michael Goldbach and Chris Sparling, based on a novel by Lois Duncan. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:36

“House of Deadly Secrets” gives the world, at long last, a haunted house movie for the HGTV Age — a house flipping that goes terribly, horrifically wrong.

Maggie and Ava are mother and daughter who move into this lovely Arts and Crafts era two story house with lots of beautiful wood floors, exposed beams, stairs.

“Family entanglements” kept the house on the market, or so says the too-helpful neighbor  (Patty McCormack) when Maggie (Angie Peterson) asks.

But newly-divorced Maggie is spooked, pretty much from the start. She gets up in the middle of the night to chase a bearded homeless squatter who has been sleeping downstairs. She runs back to that neighbor, who is caring for a mute invalid, for more house-flipper questions.

“Windows seem to open and close on their own…for my own piece of mind, is there any history I should know about, someone DYING in the home?”

Man, all the “Fixer Upper” and “Flip or Flop,” “Flipping Vegas” and “First Time Flippers” episodes the girlfriend makes me sit through, they NEVER let on that haunting is a standard business hazard. Not even on “Zombie House Flipping.”

But Maggie goes right to the supernatural solution to her worries. Sure enough, there’s a story, a girl who disappeared there years and years ago. That realtor’s going to get an earful.

“We’re making friends with the neighbors…and the ghosts!”

But that neighbor isn’t who she seems. The mute stroke victim tries to warn them, tapping on the windows, mumbling. At least the realtor’s the first one to get it. “Sylvia” really wants that house.

Let the “accidents” begin.

“Let me make you breakfast!”

There are few sins as mortal to a “horror” film as giving away your secrets too easily, and “House of Deadly Secrets” goes straight to hell in a hurry. So much is explained, pointed out and underlined in the first act that it’s going to take a whopper or three to pull this clunker into “scary” territory.

It bends towards ridiculous and takes on the tone of a dark comedy with some of the accidents and deaths.

McCormack, who has a career stretching back to “Playhouse 90” and “The Golden Age of Television,” might have taken on a lip-smacking Lin Shaye glee in Sylvia’s malevolence, but the direction and tone of the movie holds her back.

Suspense? Barely a moment of it.

Director Doug Campbell, famed for TV’s “Stalked by My Mother” and “Stalked by My Doctor” and “Stalked by My Neighbor” and “Stalked by My Doctor: The Return,” can’t get a handle on dark comedy. Which is odd, considering those credits. That leaves him with a duller-than-dull thriller.

But if nothing else, he and the screenwriters are to be praised for what is apparently house-flipping’s dirtiest little secret. Repainting that “fixer upper” doesn’t chase away the bad mojo, and they know it.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, graphic violence

Cast: Angie Peterson, Violet Hicks, Philip Boyd, Patty McCormack

Credits:Directed by Doug Campbell, script by Andrea Canning, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Stuart. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

Taron Egerton and Emma Roberts and Ansel Elgort are the stars, young “Greed is good” hustlers in the Go Go ’80s of LA.

But it’s Spacey, bewigged and wicked, who got this one pulled from theatrical release and onto Amazon Prime, then added back in for a limited Aug. 17 release.

The image that stopped me in my tracks in this trailer wasn’t the alarming “possession” makeup — which is scary in its own right.

It’s the presence of Michael Ironside. Horror filmmakers are very sentimental about hiring their idols, be they Lynn Shaye or Lance Henricksen, or the guy who starred in “Scanners,” way back in the day. No release date for this one, but the period piece “Heretiks” may have what it takes to get theatrical distribution.

In “Death of a Nation,” Dinesh D’Souza laments the end of the “American Experiment,” brought low by racism, xenophobia, unlimited Koch Brothers money and gerrymandering, finally embracing its deplorable “Id” by putting a racist Russian puppet in the White House.

Nah. But that’s about as factual as the Punjabi Pinocchio of the Lunatic Right’s own pronouncements in “Death of a Nation,” a laugh-out-loud lie, almost from start to finish.

Seriously, if you haven’t fallen in the sticky aisles of whatever 9/10’s empty multiplex is showing this latest abortion by the Mengele of Moronic Political thought long before he equates Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, and then to Donald Trump — who pardoned him for his election fixing scheme of a few years back-–  you probably are worried that your walker won’t help you get back up.

Because before that D’Souza, a pathological, well-connected hustler whose well-financed defense against corruption charges couldn’t keep him out of prison because he was guilty as hell, and stupid about it, has argued that “The South became more Republican as racism ended.” Oh REALLY? He’s quoted a Nixon campaign adviser  who swore there was no “Southern Strategy” (Sure, we believe that, too.) that reformed the GOP as a racist xenophobic and Fundamentalist cult guaranteed to win “The Solid South” in general elections, and that the Nazis were inspired by and emboldened by the Democrats in America to start work on their Master Race.

The opening image of “Death of a Nation” is a recreation of Hitler’s last day — suicide and all. That’s right, a guy trying to distance today’s fascist, Nazi-sympathizing, treason-enabling GOP from “Nazi” and “fascist” labels sentimentalizes the Nazis, brands them as “progressives,” and then has the gall to visit the grave of Sophie Scholl, of the German White Rose resistance group to Hitler’s regime.

It’s a good thing D’Souza abandoned any belief in karma when he emigrated to America, because that’s all that keeps the real Scholl from reaching up from her grave and strangling his chinless neck.

Yeah, the “Punjabi” crack crossed the line, but hey, you make your bed with bigots, you get what you asked for.

Throughout “Death of a Nation,” which has the usual attacks on wingnut boogeymen the Clintons, “Antifa” and George Soros and the third act “patriotic” performances by D’Souza approved singers (an African American choir, ironically), the man finds himself coddling Nazis. Why is he so much more comfortable cozying up to American “alt right” swastika fan Richard Spencer, than any Democrat? Because he’s a gutless hack who flees “real” debate. He’d rather hang with those who don’t challenge his comfort zone or question his honesty/intelligence.

Not that he doesn’t interrupt Spencer when Mr. Alt Right rips into Reagan or corrects D’Souza’s hilariously dishonest insistence of “Republican vs Democrat” thru-lines, when the real connection between Andrew Jackson Democrats and Roy Moore Republicans is racism, capitalist “control” of working people, backwoods “conservatism.”

D’Souza cherry picks quotes from major academics, but as always, builds his standard array of straw-man arguments on the backs of D-list “thinkers” from the U.S. and Germany. He abandons context for quotes about FDR and others, leaves The GOP Great Depression, “Mein Kampf” loving Joe McCarthy and decades of outspoken GOP bigots, then and now, out of his narrative. Because. Well. Because.

There’s a whole half hour of Trump 2016 nostalgia to buck up the faithful. But the film’s focus might be a head-scratcher, pondering why D’Souza is talking so much about “resistance” and moral high ground in a testing time, with his sorts of people/corporations/oligarchs/fascists in charge of most state governments and all three branches of the hated Federal government.

But he can look out into his own audience, and into his savior Trump’s, and see the reckoning to come. They’re not just sending their money to Nigerian princes any more, and indictments are starting to pile up for their voted-in idols. And QAnon  theories, “emails” and “pizzagate” won’t save them.

They’re out of touch, forever blaming the wrong people and party for their ignorance, poverty and moral bankruptcy and that gloomy future facing their kids. Their icon, put in power with Russian effort and Russian money (through the bankrupt NRA) is about to be indicted.

D’Souza is prepping these folks for the fall, and for his NEXT next book, which they will buy but not be able to get through, and his next movie — which they will applaud, in their ever shrinking numbers — because who thought putting this rhymes-with-Mitt movie in over a thousand theaters was a good idea (it’s bombing)?  D’Souza’s on to the next hustle and con.

Maybe it’ll be about “straws” and “sucking away our freedom.” 

Most hilarious of all is how eagerly they’ll await, in the fury and fog of Alex Jones and Fox News, the next affirmation that they’ve been right all along — that the dentist WAS putting microphones in their fillings, fluoride WAS a Communist plot, that billionaires (Not Trump, who isn’t one.) were their FRIENDS and brown, black and yellow people and foreigners were their inferiors. Except for the one they agree with.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for strong thematic material including violence/disturbing images, some language and brief drug use

Cast: Dinesh D’Souza, Richard Spencer, Pavel Kríz, Victoria Chilap

Credits:Directed by  Dinesh D’Souza, Bruce Schooley, script by Dinesh D’Souza. A Pure Flix release.

Running time: 1:48

Sometimes, you have to re-visit the Internet Movie Database just to be sure whether Uwe Boll has made good on his latest promise/threat to retire.

Because disciples and acolytes of the Worst Director of Our Times (Sorry, Tommy Wiseau) are everywhere.

Justin Lee has three movies out this summer. “Big Legend” was his shot at a bigfoot horror picture, scenic but inept in the extreme. And with September brings the threatened release of a Western, “Any Bullet Will Do.”

He makes films in the northwest, and he even has what you could call a repertory company — actors who work on film after film as he cranks them out in Montana, Washington state and points in between.

But Lee is one of those directors with the wherewithal to get a movie made, and none of the talent to warrant anyone encouraging his efforts in this direction. Seriously, I hope he isn’t blowing through his parents’ retirement with this garbage.

You don’t want reviews to turn too personal, and there was little point stomping “Big Legend” into pulp. I mean, the guy gives the ancient King of the Bs, Lance Henriksen, work. But Lee shows signs of getting worse, film by film.

He isn’t getting the hint.

“A Reckoning” is badly-acted, colorfully costumed (freshly dry-cleaned, in the dirty dusty bloody Old West), incompetently-plotted and inanely directed, a Western fiasco of the cut-rate order in which its writer-director thinks having an Old West town elder (Henricksen) rail at “an act of violence instilled upon us...yet again” and similar assaults against the English language, is going to ring in the listener’s ears like poetry. Line after line like this grimaces through the early scenes.

The secret to Lee’s “success” must mean he makes a great pitch. “Reckoning” seems promising enough, about a human-devouring monster terrorizing 1871 coastal Washington. A woman’s husband is murdered, and the locals “heard he wasn’t all there” when he was found.

Mary, his widow (played by the facial-expression-impaired June Dietrich) declares before Breck (Henriksen) and Miss Maple and the whole community that “I aim to kill the man who took my husband from me.”

No suggestion that “this is insane,” followed by “it’s not ladylike” can stop her.

“Your heart burns with a vengeance that could fuel the fires of Hell,” says Miss Maple (veteran character actress Meg Foster). She must see something the camera doesn’t.

What follows is a static pursuit through the wild Northwest, with Mary following no recognizable trail, just occasionally running afoul of the mountain man/murderer Jebediah (Todd A. Robinson) something-or-other.

Dull shoot-outs accompany their encounters.

He’s not the cannibal Mary is looking for, and the lack of trail, evidence of victims and her own woodlands naivete make one wonder how this tinhorn is ever going to find a killer, even if he is “as big as a mountain and mean as a bear.”

When she reaches the Pacific, she lets us see her compass for the first time. Dear, it’s the Pacific. To your left is South to San Francisco, to your right is north to Seattle, Canada and Alaska. Straight ahead? Swim.

Lee lets things plod and plod along through cliff-strewn coastlines, rainforest waterfalls and dense woods. An 80 minute movie with endless longueurs, that squanders this much screen time between action sequences, is beyond trying one’s patience.

And when there is action, hey, we’ve got to have a little blood splatter on the lens. A tip — people who do that make it a short-edit, with the next image seen through a clean lens (Nowadays, lots of filmmakers do this lens-spatter digitally).

Not here. Lee spatters the lens and then makes it a longer take, blood still there as the camera pans down, after the violence has ended. Holy Uwe Boll.

Chance encounters, where strangers “know” Mary and her quest because “Word travels fast in these parts. Sometimes, faster’n the wind itself.”

And then? Hell’s bells, an “Alas, poor Yorick” after-dinner finale.

Whoever is giving this guy financing is throwing good money after bad. The actors taking role after role in his films (Kevin Makely seems to be Lee’s muse) will be deleting this from their resumes. There’s nothing they do on camera in this that would make a calling card for a next job with anybody in the business. It’s embarrassing.

So no more “Nice try,” no more “Better luck next time.” I’d watch most anything calling itself a Western, but  you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

That’s why I’m trotting out the dread rating that I rarely use more than once or twice a year — no stars, zero, zip — blank — out of four. It isn’t a career killer (the guy has projects lined up into next year). But it should be cause to think about work-shopping scripts, working with a tougher producer or just…stopping until you figure out what the hell you’re doing.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: June Dietrich, Kevin Makely, Todd A. Robinson, Meg Foster, Lance Henriksen

Credits: Written and directed by Justin Lee. A VegaBaby/Sony release.

Running time: 1:20

A solitary, bloodied old man, fleeing across the desert flats who suddenly stops, resigned to his fate.

A rifle shot, punched through his right eye, finishes him off.

“Happy Hunting” is a thriller built around such spare, fraught images, under-played scenes set in the trailers, beat-up SUVs and half-ruined houses of the Great Rural Emptying Out of America.

riter-directors  Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson conjure up a savagely minimalist scenario, horror set in the grim, dry and reactionary American West of xenophobic gun nuts, half-derelict houses, a dust-caked convenience store, roadhouse and motel — a dead end decorated with only the odd burst or arterial spray.

Warren gets a call, and we learn everything we need to from half-sentences overhearing one side of a phone conversation.

“Habla Ingles? English? Yeah…I knew her…it’s been…Shit. How did she die?”

And “You sure it’s mine?”

Warren, played by Aussie actor Martin Dingle Wall, is a low-life and low-volume drug dealer, a drunk with the shakes. That doesn’t help when he’s trying to hustle a couple of rednecks.

A few bloody moments later, he’s on the run, bodies left in his wake, AR-15 rounds zipping by his head.

Where to run to, way out there in the wastelands of the West?  To the border, with only a stop at “last gas” Bedford Flats in his way.

Warren experiences a waking nightmare of horror, a not-quite-recovering alcoholic staggering towards his destiny, interrupted by this desert hole where “everything is fair game,” a town “founded by the Bedford Corporation, a hunting town.”

“Stayin’, or passin’ through?” Everybody wants to know. Even at the helpful AA meeting chances upon. “Stayin’ for the Festival?”

What’s that? Turns out, there’s a touch of “The Purge” to this late night “festival” frolic. “Remember where we came from,” the sheriff (Gary Sturm) lectures. “We are a town of hunters, and even though the great herds may be gone…”

Well, man is still “the most dangerous game.”

Gun culture, survival of the well-armed and murderous, an NRA wet dream plays out in this hellhole where these in-bred Confederate flag-wavers can’t admit why “the big game died out.” No, you shot it all. Not that the further-drying salt flats give any hope that climate change will allow wildlife to come back.

Now they’re hunting their socially undesirable neighbors, the drunk junkie stranger and anybody else no one would miss.

“It’s just once a year…brings the community together. It’s not like an everyday thing.”

And they’re keeping score and capturing it on an old school camcorder.

It’s a sadistic film of elaborate traps and clumsy ones, lapses in logic and nothing anyone should spend more than a few seconds overthinking.

And for all its righteous, satiric rage, it tends to unravel in the last act.

But Wall makes a riveting anti-hero, sort of a dark side of Luke Wilson, stumbling forth, suffering, hallucinating with feeling, fighting back and meting out rough justice.

“Most Dangerous Game” — men hunting men — has proven one of the most durable plots in the cinema. Ice-T did one, with Gary Busey.

Even Andy Griffith had a go at a version of it, a TV movie of a Robb White novel that stole O.Henry’s concept.

I can’t say this is one of the best, too grim and gory. But it does get a down and dirty job done.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, drug abuse

Cast: Martin Dingle Wall, Kenny Wormald, Connor Williams, Ken Lally

Credits: Written and directed by Joe Dietsch, Louie Gibson. A Waterstone/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30