The Nest, directed by Terence H. Winkless

In The Nest, a group of small-town locals on an island off the coast of Washginton struggle to ward off an increasingly aggressive cockroach infestation. At first the menace is limited to handfuls of regular-sized bugs, but soon the townsfolk are forced to deal with larger and larger roach/animal hybrids. As you might expect there's an evil genetic-testing-obsessed corporation at the root of the problem. The practical creature effects are a highlight of the film, as is a bumpkin exterminator named Homer P. Byron (played with glorious dimwitted charm by Steven Davies).

The film is similar in many respects to another film I watched recently, Humanoids From the Deep. Both films feature small towns dealing with genetically mutated creatures, both start slow and build to various degrees of over-the-top payoffs (The Nest never quite reaches the nuttiness of Humanoids From The Deep's final act), and both feature a large cast of genuinely likeable lead characters who you hate to see get killed off. The similarities are likely due, at least in part, to the fact that both films were Roger Corman productions. In fact, The Nest takes at least two shots from Humanoids From The Deep and repackages them as part of the film (thanks to @btsjunkie for pointing out this connection).

The Nest was director Terence H. Winkless' first film. He went on to make a handful of action flicks in the 80s, including Bloodfist with Don 'The Dragon' Wilson and Rage and Honor with Cynthia Rothrock, before moving on to kiddie fare like Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (he directed 38 episodes, plus a few spinoffs) and Big Bad Beetleborgs. Winkless also - believe it or not - played the gorilla on The Banana Splits. He recently appears to have returned to his roots with films like Twice as Dead and Nightmare City 2035. For more information about Winkless' interesting career, check out Marty McKee's great interview at Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot.

Forbidden World, directed by Allan Holzman,1982

Forbidden World (aka Mutant) is a fairly basic "creature on a spaceship" flick that manages to mostly stick to the good stuff (namely alien-on-human carnage). Holzman makes a number of interesting cinematic choices, including showing the entire movie in abbreviated form both at the beginning and end of the film.

Jesse Vint - who appeared in many low-budget action-y movies and TV shows in the 70's and 80's - was an enjoyable good natured lead here, even if he does look like a slightly beefier version of Mac Davis. I particularly liked his devil-may-care approach to tracking down the creature on the ship, and his chuckle-fueled delivery of the line "Let's go bag ourselves a dingwapper!"

My favorite part of the film is a sad robot who unfortunately gets very little screentime. Its under-the-breath observation that "They turn me off when life's good & turn me on when they're up to their noses in life's bitter droppings" made me smile. I need to find a way to work the phrase "life's bitter droppings" into my conversational vocabulary.

Fermat's Room, directed by Luis Piedrahita & Rodrigo Sopeña, 2007

Fermat's Room sticks several mathematicians in a room and requires them to solve puzzles. Every time they fail to get an answer right, the room gets a bit smaller, courtesy of four massive hydraulic presses. As is wont to happen in this type of riddlesploitation/death-trap flick, the group must figure out why their host has brought them together and what their interpersonal connections are. As you might guess, everything is not as it first seems.

I'm a sucker for people-stuck-in-a-room-must-figure-out-their-connections-to-survive flicks. When they work, you get stuff like Saw or Cube. But even when they don't work - like in Chaos Theory - I still find the basic conceit inherently interesting. And for the most part, I enjoyed Fermat's Room. But for a film that is built around the concept of mathematics, the real weakness is the puzzles the alleged geniuses are required to solve. They aren't quite as simple as the bucket problem in Die Hard With A Vengeance, but they aren't much harder. And they don't really involve math at all. In fact, I either knew - or figured out - all of the answers before the main characters did. This is a relatively minor nitpick, however, because the alternative (watching them solve actual math problems) would get tedious very quickly.