But he wasn’t the only b-filmmaker of his era. There were others. These are the guys I find interesting, the ones who came and went, disappearing into relative obscurity, not unlike their respective outputs. Edward L. Montoro’s story is perhaps my favorite. He didn’t just fade away after a box office stinker left him penniless. No, he pocketed a cool million from his production company’s coffers and fled the country, never to be heard from again.

Last night I watched the Montoro-produced, “Jaws”-with-a-bear schlockfest, “Grizzly.” Made on a budget of $750,000, it ended up grossing $39 million at the box office in 1976. Not a bad haul, considering that it’s not a bear-y good movie. Now, I love “Jaws” ripoffs more than anything, but you can’t have a cute animal go on a rampage and expect your film to be scary. Bears are just too damn snuggly to be menacing. Even when the titular beast’s obviously fake paws are tearing people asunder, I still want to give him a big ol’ cuddle. In fact, when someone’s crushed to death in a bear hug (and he even pukes up blood like Quint in “Jaws”), I was like, “Yep, that’s how I want to go.” Loved to oblivion.

With “Grizzly” the largest independently-produced of the time (beaten two years later by the “Jaws”-with-a-guy-in-a-William-Shatner-mask flick, “Halloween”), you’d think Montoro and his production company, Film Ventures International, would share the profits with his collaborator, “Grizzly” director William Girdler. But, no, Montoro kept the film’s profits all to himself. This created some friction between himself and Girdler, who parted ways with the producer and directed the Leslie Nielsen-starring, “Day of the Animals,” a “Jaws”-with-a-shit-ton-of-forest-creatures knockoff. Guess what movie’s now at the top of my Netflix queue.

Failing to match his “Grizzly” success during the late-’70s, Montoro in 1980 acquired the rights to “Great White” (aka “The Last Shark”), a “Jaws”-with-a-Great-White-Shark dungheap, directed by Enzo G. Castellari; on a side note, Castellari had previously directed the original “Inglorious Bastards” in 1977, a movie that I made it about 15 minutes into before shutting it off, bored to tears. Universal Pictures, the studio that had released “Jaws,” sued Montoro for putting out a film that was a fairly blatant ripoff of their game-changing movie. If anyone was going to cynically cash-in on “Jaws,” it was going to be Universal, goddammit! The kangaroo courts sided with Universal, and “Great White” was pulled from theaters. It’s never been officially released on home video in the United States. I recently watched a bootleg of it that was subtitled in Japanese. Man, that’s distracting, subtitles in a foreign language.

Montoro’s final project was the 1984 movie, “Mutant,” which bombed for reasons that are baffling to me. I’d see a movie called “Mutant” at least a dozen times theatrically. In fact, “mutant” is probably my favorite word in the English language. Its failure, though, didn’t help FVI’s fortunes in the least. The company ultimately folded in ‘87, leaving the long-anticipated, George Clooney-starring(!) “Grizzly II: The Predator” unfinished; to date, the film has never been released.

Weathering a painful and expensive divorce, Montoro did was George Lucas should’ve done in ‘84: grabbed a pile of cash from his production company and left the country for good. No one’s seen or heard from him in over 25 years. I like to think he’s still out there, somewhere, stretching every last nickel of that million bucks as far as it can go. Maybe producing films in some banana republic.

Or, maybe he was eaten by a bear.

-Brad Lohan

And so, “Piranha 3D” is directly up my alley. I own the original, directed by Joe “Gremlins” Dante (Joe Dante’s middle name is actually “Gremlins”), and powered through James Cameron’s lamentable, Lance Henriksen-starring sequel; to its credit, the second installment does feature flying piranha.

Directed by French gorehound Alexandre Aja (“Haute Tension,” “The Hills Have Eyes” remake), “Piranha 3D” lives up to all the potential a movie titled “Piranha 3D” could possibly have.

Much to my horror, I found out after I’d already bought my ticket that the film wasn’t shot with stereoscopic cameras and only post-converted for 3D. But, the post-conversion isn’t  a disaster. What I’d been reading about hasty post-conversion jobs on films like “Clash of the Titans,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Last Airbender” was that the 3D effects are even worse than the movies themselves, making them essentially the worst parts of the Bible. “Piranha 3D” had a 3D consultant on the film during production, so I guess that made a bit of a difference. However, there is one shot where this kid appears to have two left arms. It ain’t “Avatar” is what I’m saying.

Elizabeth Shue stars in the film in the Roy Scheider role as the sheriff of Lake Victoria. It’s spring break, and the town looks like an episode of MTV’s “The Grind” — T&A and douchebags everywhere. After an earthquake opens up a prehistoric lake beneath Lake Victoria, freeing thousands of piranha that had long since been thought extinct, the resort becomes a literal bloodbath. The practical gore effects by Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero — two giants of the field — are first-rate. The CGI is like something out of a SyFy Original, but it isn’t like the original movie had convincing piranha even by 1978 standards.

Jerry O’Connell unleashes his inner-scumbag in a hilarious supporting role as a Joe Francis-esque filmmaker, shooting hot girl-on-girl action during Spring Break. Note: I had no idea who the hell Joe Francis was until I found out that he’d filed a lawsuit against Dimension Films for satirizing him in this movie.

Kudos to the filmmakers for somehow getting an R-rating slapped on this thing. It’s astonishing, the level of female nudity and graphic violence on display. Adult film star — and future Mrs. Brad Lohan — Gianna Michaels cameos as a topless and ill-fated parasailer. The mind reels at the thought of what the inevitable unrated version will have to offer. I’m thinking hot girl-on-piranha action.

-Brad Lohan

The first three “Spider-Man” films took a different approach to MJ’s introduction, making her Peter’s true love from minute one of the first film. It’d have been interesting if the filmmakers had rotated in other potential maidens fair in the subsequent films, since Kirsten Dunst is kind of a butter face and kind of a bad actress. What’s more, Peter’s relationships were generally shorter than mine until he tied the knot.

Well, the makers of the forthcoming “Spider-Man” sorta-reboot are taking a different approach to Peter’s romantic entanglements altogether by eliminating Mary Jane from the film entirely. I guess I’ll never get to see Emma Stone essay the role she was friggin’ born to play. Seriously, that gal is Mary Jane Watson. Do a Google Image search and tell me I’m wrong.

Before Peter Parker hit the jackpot with MJ, he dated Betty Brant at the Daily Bugle, his classmate Liz Allen and the ill-fated Gwen Stacy; he also hooked up with the Black Cat/Felicia Hardy, a bombshell whose breasts are so big, they have their own legal representation. The new film will probably have Gwen fill the MJ-shaped void in Peter’s life. Of course, the producers are shrouding the casting process in complete secrecy because that’s what movie producers do for really no good reason.

-Brad Lohan

Ugh, these movies.

It’s always depressing when an international star comes to the States and can’t connect with mainstream audiences because, well, the roles they get are in shitty movies. I’m looking at you, Chow Yun-Fat. Noomi Rapace is an amazing actress, but we’re in a really bleak period right now, a time I call “New New Nu Hollywood Rebooted in 3D by Hasbro LOL.” I hope she breaks through somehow. I’m just not sure if a worthy project is being floated past her at the moment.

-Brad Lohan

I just can’t think of any American or English actress that has the intensity that Noomi Rapace brings to the character in the Swedish film. There are lots of super-skinny girls out there, but none that are anywhere near as dangerous. Rooney Mara couldn’t even be convincingly emo in “Nightmare.” Frankly, I don’t know what David Fincher sees in her. I guess she must bring it in the forthcoming “Social Network.”

Even her name annoys me. Whenever I heard it, I imagine Alan Ruck in “Ferris Bueller,” shouting into the phone at Jeffrey Jones, “Roooooney…!” That’s how stupid this choice is. It makes me one of those people who has some annoying intertexual knowledge hangup.

-Brad Lohan

The film is about the titular soldiers of fortune, led by Stallone’s character, whose name is so ridiculously inappropriate (Barney Ross?!), I will simply call him Stallone in this review. When recruited by Bruce Willis to kill bad people on some spit of land in the Gulf of Mexico (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s elite team of commandos is busy), Stallone and his sidekick, Jason Statham, pose as wildlife photographers (LOL) to gather intel on a rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts), who’s backing a brutal military junta there. Stallone thinks maybe they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and yet, he and Statham still manage to kill approximately 41 soldiers — all of whom have CGI blood coursing through their veins — while escaping from the island. I’d say they have a pretty good shot at conquering the entire Southern Hemisphere if they put their minds to it.

After a heart-to-heart with Mickey Rourke — and when Mickey Rourke is your mentor, your movie’s awesome — Stallone decides to go back to the island to save the super-hot general’s daughter that he was forced to leave behind. He’s initially reluctant to bring the other Expendables: aforementioned Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews and Randy Couture, whose cauliflower ears make him look like a damn Smurf. But then he remembers the name of the team and decides, hey, it’s okay. Minus Dolph Lundgren, the loose cannon Expendable, they return to the island and proceed to waste some fools. The final third of the film is essentially one entire action sequence. Terry Crews has one spectacular moment to shine in a scene that’s reminiscent of they hallway fight in Chan Park-Wook’s “Oldboy,” but with an AA-12 automatic shotgun instead of a hammer.

Perhaps my only complaint about the film is that it isn’t more like a 1980s action film. Much of the cinematography is the standard, Paul Greengrass-wannabe shaky-cam bullshit that makes single combat hard to follow. The fight between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li — two expert martial arts IRL — is shot in tight, dimly-lit close-ups, taking away the wow-factor of having a really tall dude and a really fast dude get in a scrap. I already mentioned the CGI grue; were the cannon fodder soldiers squibbed instead, the multitudinous bullet hits would literally have more impact. Now I did like how Charisma Carpenter is in the film to give Jason Statham an excuse to beat up a basketball team, but her character’s woefully dropped after that. Statham deserves someone to ride off into the sunset with; a love interest character’s function is to be the hero’s reward for character growth.

I’ve always loved dinosaurs, so seeing grumpy old men like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis — albeit fleetingly — in a room together is as thrilling as watching “Jurassic Park.” Collectively, these action heroes have killed more people than cancer. The groundwork has been laid for an “Expendables” franchise, and I’d be more than happy to see these thunder lizards righting all the wrongs in the world while collecting Social Security in another sequel or two.

-Brad Lohan

I guess being married to Claudia Schiffer has given the guy a bit of an ego.

I would have to agree with Vaughn that there are too many superhero movies. I’m about as excited for “X-Men: First Class” as I would be for getting an oil change. And yet, audiences for the most part will continue to turn out in droves. I don’t think the genre’s going to go anywhere. It’s has its peaks (“The Dark Knight”) and its valleys (Vaughn’s criminally underappreciated “Kick-Ass”), but studios aren’t going to take any chances during the recession. They’ll only greenlight a mega-budget project that has a recognizable brand and some sort of pop cultural cache. It’s why we’re getting so many remakes. Audiences don’t take chances on anything, and so, neither to studios.

Never mind that “Inception” defied the odds and became a successful thinking-man’s action movie that’s based on an original premise. In a summer that’s been otherwise chock full of flotsam like the superhero junk heap “Jonah Hex,” it was an anomaly. Even so, “Inception” director Chris Nolan is ramping up his next movie, “Batman 3,” at this very moment. The business has hitched itself to the superhero wagon.

-Brad Lohan

Rambo: Why’d you come back?

Sarah: Waiting for you.

Rambo: I told you before, I can’t help you.

Sarah: Well, we need to go and help these people. We’re here to make a difference. We believe all lives are special.

Rambo: Some lives… some not.

Sarah: Really? If everyone thought like you, nothing would ever change.

Rambo: Nothing does change.

Sarah: Of course it does! Nothing stays the same!

Rambo: Live your life, ’cause you’ve got a good one.

Sarah: It’s what I’m trying to do!

Rambo: No, what you’re trying to do is change what is.

Sarah: And what is?

Rambo: Go home.

The subtext is so thick, you can cut it with a crudely-made machete forged in the fires of Rambo’s personal hell. Let me break the dialogue down, beat-for-beat, Robert McKee-style*.

Rambo: Why’d you come back? (Subtext: Why did you come back?)

Sarah: Waiting for you. (Subtext: I was waiting for you.)

Rambo: I told you before, I can’t help you. (Subtext: As I previously stated in an earlier conversation on the matter, I’m unable to assist you.)

Sarah: Well, we need to go and help these people. We’re here to make a difference. We believe all lives are special. (Subtext: Nevertheless, we feel obligated to provide aid to the Karen. We have come to make things unlike the way they are now. Our perspective is similar to Barney the Dinosaur’s when it comes to the value of every individual.)

Rambo: Some lives… some not. (Subtext: I disagree with you on that point. An individual’s specialness is relative, yet I will remain woefully vague in terms of how I would apply value to any given individual’s life.)

Sarah: Really? If everyone thought like you, nothing would ever change. (Subtext: Oh, yeah?! If we all shared your bullshitty libertarian outlook, things would just stay this screwed up forever and ever.)

Rambo: Nothing does change. (Subtext: Everyone is a bullshitty libertarian in the Rambo-verse.)

Sarah: Of course it does! Nothing stays the same! (Subtext: So wrong! It’s like Wings said, it’s “an ever-changing world which we live in.”)

Rambo: Live your life, ’cause you’ve got a good one. (Subtext: Since I’m unable to provide a counterpoint, I’m going to abruptly change the subject without a segue… Take it easy.)

Sarah: It’s what I’m trying to do! (Subtext: I’ve been taking it easy all this time!)

Rambo: No, what you’re trying to do is change what is. (Subtext: You voted for Obama, didn’t you?)

Sarah: And what is? (Subtext: Didn’t you?)

Rambo: Go home. (Subtext: Go home.)

As we can plainly see, it’s not what’s being said so much as what’s unsaid that makes this dialogue so powerful. I’m openly weeping as I type this. Rambo’s heart has hardened, and he’s reluctant to involve himself in situations that might require him to reenact the final scene from “The Wild Bunch” with a .50 caliber machine gun and a buttload of CGI blood. Despite Sarah’s efforts to reach him, only Rambo can summon the strength within himself to end the genocide in Burma by showing the junta what genocide really is! Man alive, this is screenwriting.

-Brad Lohan

*Robert McKee style is similar to reverse-cowgirl, but with a Human Centipede (First Sequence).

Liev Schreiber’s name was dropped when it came to finding Ms. Kidman a new husband. Then producers realized that Schreiber, though a terrific actor, cannot play a protagonist in any film, especially “Salt.” (Spoiler)

I actually saw “Salt” a couple weeks ago, and for some reason, I thought that Peter Sarsgaard was in the film. I’d seen the trailer a few times and imprinted in my memory that Sarsgaard was in the role that Schreiber actually plays. And so, I spent most of the movie wondering if Peter Sarsgaard and Liev Schreiber are in fact the same person, like Tom Sizemore and Micheal Madsen or Superman and Clark Kent. What does this have to do with Nicolas Cage? Absolutely nothing.

Shooting for “Trespass” has been delayed a few weeks, but the film will most certainly be inflicted on audiences sometime in 2011. Consider yourselves forewarned.

-Brad Lohan