In the course of a single year, Werner Herzog has unleashed a pair of peculiar potboilers in quick succession: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL—NEW ORLEANS and MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE—two films that announce to their audience of devotees that we are now a far cry from the preferred rough country of FITZCARRALDO. Though the Urubamba River makes a guest plotline appearance in MY SON (on DVD September 14 from First Look), Herr Werner has traded in his Amazonian stamping grounds for the vastly bland urban wasteland of southern California, leading one to speculate that Herzog himself has now suddenly become the fish out of water for once, rather than the parade of hubristic protagonists from his films past.

Way back in 2006 at the dawn of the Xbox 360 era, Capcom ushered in the runaway smash hit DEAD RISING. Seeming passable at first glance, with the cover suggesting a potential DAWN OF THE DEAD ripoff, the game became a surprise success.

There’s little point in reiterating the massive impact STAR WARS had on pop culture post-1977—but rest assured, it changed everything. And on a very minor level, it kicked open the floodgates for everyone and their brothers to spit out low-budget space operas of every persuasion. Among these lower-rent clones was the Roger Corman-distributed Italian knockoff STARCRASH, a weird, impoverished but very cool bit of camp that had the cult cast of the decade: former child preacher Marjoe Gortner, future KNIGHT RIDER David Hasselhoff, MANIAC-to-be Joe Spinell and a very tasty Caroline Munro (pictured) as laser-gun-wielding galactic goddess and space smuggler Stella Star.

Here’s one of those movies that I might give two-and-three-quarter skulls to if the format allowed. But I’m giving FEAR OF CLOWNS 2 (available as a limited DVD and download at Amazon.com, coming to iTunes this fall) the benefit of the doubt upward because writer/director Kevin Kangas’ follow-up to his previous coulrophobia opus represents a step up from its already entertaining predecessor in a couple of significant areas.

SLAVIS, an e-book by author and screenwriter Garry Charles (pictured) that hits the web next week, is an enigmatic mystery involving clashing personalities and horrific supernatural beings. It involves a group of strangers who inadvertently find themselves confronting the end of the world, contending with an army of flesheating monsters.

SO BUTTONS PRESENTS: SO HORROR-BLE, from Alchemy Comix, is a quirky collection of short stories covering paranoia, night-walkers and the zombie apocalypse. Equally scary and funny, these fast-paced tales of terror are surefire bits of entertainment.

I try not to let the circumstances under which I see movies affect my reviews of them, but I must say that having viewed Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE in a screening room, it’s hard not to imagine that catching it in a packed house of enthusiastic fans would have enhanced the experience. Feel free to add a half-skull to the rating below if you plan to see it at a crowded late-night theatrical showing this weekend, perhaps enhanced by a Corona or tequila or two.