October 12, 2001:

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

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DING-A-LING-LESS

W/D: Onur Tukel; with Kirk Wilson, Robert Longstreet. (81 min., 35mm)

A comedy that begs to be clasped to the collective bosom and fondled forthwith, Ding-a-Ling-LESS tells the woeful tale of a 28-year-old man with a noticeable absence of manhood. His quest to surgically enhance his nonexistent genitalia and the confounding results thereof are, ah, touching in the extreme, and the film's poker-faced tone only serves to underscore the nonsensical melodrama unfolding onscreen. Balzac's La Comédie Humaine it ain't, but still charming in its own special, special way. -- M.S.

(10/11, 11:30pm, Driskill; 10/14, 9:30pm, Driskill)

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LETHAL FORCE

W/D: Alvin Ecarma; with Frank Prather, Cash Flagg, Jr. (75 min., video)

"You should have died when he killed you!" Absurdities like that litter this breathless action-flick satire like intestinal loops at a zombie rodeo, proving once and for all that "good" and "funny" don't have to be synonymous for either to succeed. Director/writer/producer/editor Ecarma, however, generates much of both in Lethal Force, which skewers everyone from John Woo to QT amid comically gushing exit wounds and hyper-spastic martial arts sequences that must be seen to be disbelieved. -- M.S.

(10/13, midnight, Dobie; 10/17, 9:15pm, Dobie)