Head Trauma (Tue., Sept. 19, 7 p.m., County Theater; Wed., Sept. 20, 7 p.m., Fri.-Sat., Sept. 22-23, midnight, Bryn Mawr Theater; Thu., Sept. 21, 7 p.m., Ambler Theater) It's easy to spot the borrowings in Lance Weiler's puzzle-box creeper: the faceless figures whose varispeed contortions evoke any number of recent J-horrors; the crumbling dwelling whose pocked floorboards yield a human tooth, just like the walls of Roman Polanski's apartment in The Tenant. But if you're going to steal from Polanski, why not steal from his best and most underrated film? And besides, like Weiler and Stefan Avalos' The Last Broadcast, which rode the post-Blair Witch wave of vid-shot docuhorror, Head Trauma is a canny capitalizer, effectively reproducing big-budget tricks on next to nothing.

Shedding his Superphan image, Vince Mola stars as George Walker, a scruffy middle-aged drifter who stumbles into town and finds his late grandmother has left him her house. Unfortunately, he's five years late, and the crumbling property is slated for imminent demolition, but that doesn't stop George from setting up his tent in an empty room and attempting to make something of his dilapidated inheritance. Not only is George menaced by a meathead neighbor (Jim Sullivan) who'd rather see the local eyesore reduced to rubble, but menacing visions keep sneaking into his dreams: a figure in a hooded parka, and a girl in a knit hat and scarf who is alternately forlorn and threatening.

The center of George's dreams, which eventually start to work their way into the real world, seems to be a traumatic car crash somewhere in his past — which is where the story started for Weiler as well. Inspired, if that's the word, by the splintered memory of a 1994 collision, Weiler makes George's house a repository of inner demons that threaten to boil up out of his muck-filled basement. Though the resolution of George's guilt, brought to a boil by a Pentecostal tract illustrated by Swamp Thing artist Steven Bissette, is a tad prosaic given the preceding sturm and drang, Mola's effective performance gives the scares real weight. Abetted by exceptionally creepy sound design, Head Trauma evokes real chills, although they're only skin deep.

Local music fans take note: The movie features a score by bitter, bitter weeks' Brian McTear and Amy Morrissey, and the Park the Van soundtrack (Capitol Years, Bardo Pond, etc.) promises to sync with the imminent DVD for a "special soundtrack experience."

The Guatemalan Handshake (Sat., Sept. 16, 7 p.m., free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St.) There are moments in Todd Rohal's indie fantasia when you think you might be in the presence of greatness — and moments when you just want to slap the motherfucker silly. Careening from lyrical idylls to spastic, shouting-in-the-lens quirkfest, Handshake deliberately frustrates the desire for any consistent narrative or tone. The biggest name in the cast is Will Oldham, playing a timid soul named Donald Turnupseed who walks into the woods after an electric disturbance caused by a minor mishap at nearby Three Mile Island seems to fry his brain. He leaves behind his wedge-shaped electric car and his best friend, a little red-haired girl named Turkeylegs. It hardly gets mannered after that, with Rohal pushing his untrained actors to their most gratingly outlandish. Like a cross between Gummo and Napoleon Dynamite, Handshake is a stylized freak show, well-shot and ill-conceived. Climaxing, appropriately enough, with a demolition derby, it's a smash-up of styles that will likely please everyone at some point and no one all the way through.

Chimes at Midnight/Don Quixote (Thu., Sept. 14, 8 p.m., free, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St.) In its second program devoted to the non-canon works of Orson Welles, Andrew's Video Vault cues up two lost masterpieces, one more fugitive than the other. (Screenings, as always, are on DVD.) Don Quixote, which Welles was forced to abandon for lack of funds, was knocked into shape only after his death, by exploitation legend Jesus Franco of all people. As such, it's more a blueprint than a finished film, though the shards are certainly enthralling. The real draw is Chimes, in which Welles traces the character of Falstaff through his many Shakespearean incarnations. Naturally, it is a role Welles was born to play, but his revisionist Shakespeare does no violence to the plays it excerpts. Rather, it's a tribute to the playwright's supple command and comic gifts, and to Welles' stature as an artist who can realize comedy and tragedy at once. Both films are out of circulation in the U.S., since legal problems plague Welles in death as they did in life, which makes this an opportunity worth seizing.

(sam@citypaper.net)