CULTPIX MONTH: Criminally Insane (1975)

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Filmed in San Francisco for what looks like the cost of a couple of cases of cheap beer and a trip to the butcher shop and clocking in at just over an hour, Nick Imllard’s Criminally Insane is the opposite of its alt title, Crazy Fat Ethel. It’s lean, mean and ready to pounce.

Meet Ethel Janowski (Priscilla Alden). She’s just been released from an asylum into the care of her long-suffering grandmother. The doctors think Ethel is cured. The doctors are wrong.

Ethel doesn’t want to reintegrate into society; she just wants to eat. Constant, non-stop, uninterrupted consumption. Soft-boiled eggs, whole loaves of bread, chocolate syrup straight from the bottle — if it fits on a plate, Ethel is shoving it down her throat.

The conflict arises when Grandma, concerned for both Ethel’s health and her own mounting grocery bills, decides to put a padlock on the refrigerator door. Big mistake. Huge. You don’t get between Ethel and her snacks. What follows is a slow-motion, butcher-knife-wielding rampage where Grandma (Jane Lambert), a local delivery boy and anyone else who dares step into the kitchen gets brutally, systematically eliminated.

Ethel isn’t just killing people; she’s hiding the bodies in the bedrooms, leading to a house full of flies, stench and the absolute peak of mid-70s drive-in atmosphere. With her heavy breathing, intense glares, and total commitment to the bit, Priscilla Alden created an unforgettable slasher icon before the slasher genre even had its official rules written. She doesn’t need a hockey mask or a dream world. She just needs a sharp object and an empty stomach.

This movie is ugly, poorly lit and has a music score that sounds like someone dropping a synthesizer down a flight of stairs. In short — I love it. Plus, you get George “Buck” Flower as a detective, blood with no wounds and the material that Millard would recycle into the sequel and the films Cemetery Sisters, Death Nurse and Death Nurse 2. 

You can watch this on Cultpix.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Penitentiary (1979)

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Every now and then, you run into a movie that doesn’t just want to tell you a story. It wants to grab you by the balls, kick your dick in the dirt and make you watch every single second of grit, sweat and survival it can muster.

Jamaa Fanaka didn’t just make a prison film with Penitentiary. He made an independent powerhouse that feels like a cross between an exploitation masterpiece, a Rocky-style sports melodrama and a hyper-real slice of late-70s street life.

If you’re looking for high-art subtlety, look elsewhere. But if you want pure, unfiltered cinematic adrenaline? Step right up to the cellblock.

Leon Isaac Kennedy stars as Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone, a hitchhiker who finds himself in the wrong place at the worst possible time. After getting mixed up in a diner brawl that ends in a fatality, Too Sweet gets railroaded by the system and thrown into the state pen.

Now, we’ve all seen prison flicks. But Fanaka, who shot large portions of this at the Lincoln Heights Jail in L.A., infuses the scenery with an exhausting, authentic claustrophobia. Too Sweet isn’t a hardened criminal. He’s just a guy who likes sugar in his coffee and wants to keep his head down. But the prison ecosystem doesn’t let anyone just exist.

Enter Half Dead, played with terrifying, scenery-chewing brilliance by Badja Djola. Half Dead is the cellblock kingpin, a mountain of a man who decides Too Sweet is his next target. The first third of this movie is an escalating, tension-filled nightmare as Too Sweet realizes he has exactly two options: submit or fight back with everything he has.

When the inevitable explosion happens, it’s brutal. Too Sweet stands his ground, uses his fists and catches the eye of the prison’s boxing coach, Ernie (Floyd Chatman). From there, the movie shifts gears into an underground boxing tournament where the ultimate prize isn’t just a trophy. It’s an early parole.

What elevates Penitentiary above standard grindhouse fare is Fanaka’s direction. As a graduate of the UCLA Film School (and part of the L.A. Rebellion movement), he doesn’t just shoot violence for the sake of a cheap thrill. He treats the boxing matches like gladiatorial theater. The camera gets right in the middle of the sweat, the flying spit and the thud of leather against ribs. Kennedy puts everything he has into the performance, looking genuinely exhausted and driven by pure survival instinct. The fight scenes took three days to film with no stunt doubles. Kennedy broke two of his ribs and lost two teeth.

It’s got that raw, independent edge where the budget might be low, but the ambition is scraping the ceiling. The soundtrack bumps with a gritty, funk-laden soul that keeps the energy moving even when the plot takes a breather to look at the institutional corruption keeping these men caged.

Somehow, the sequels are even better.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Parents (1989)

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Directed by Bob Balaban (yes, the guy from Christopher Guest comedies) and written by Christopher Hawthorne. Parents finds the Laemle family — Nick (Randy Quaid), Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) and Michael (Bryan Madorsky) moving into the California suburbs. Between seeing his parents making love and watching his father do an autopsy, Michael is a bit screwed up. His dreams are horrible and he believes his parents are cannibals. But what if he’s right?

But what can you do when your parents want to feed you the meat of your guidance counselor, Millie Dew (Sandy Dennis)?

The film’s most unsettling quality is its visual obsession with food. Director Bob Balaban utilized macro photography and heightened sound design to make the sound of a knife hitting a plate or the sight of a pot roast look like a crime scene. To make the mystery meat look particularly unappetizing and gelatinous, the production used a mix of brisket, food coloring and heavy amounts of glaze.

Siskel and Ebert disagreed on this; a big surprise was that Gene loved it and Roger didn’t. However, Ken Russell compared it to Blue Velvet and claimed that it was better than Lynch’s movie.

While Randy Quaid has certainly moved into legitimately weird territory in real life over the last decade, his performance in Parents is often cited by critics as a masterclass in repressed 1950s aggression. He isn’t playing crazy. He’s playing a man who is desperately trying to appear normal, which is much scarier.

You can watch this on Tubi.

GET WILD WITH DIA

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This Saturday, watch the show on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels at 8 PM EDT.

Want to know what we’ve shown before? Check out this list.

Have a request? Make it here.

Want to see one of the drink recipes from a past show? We have you covered.

Our first movie is Impulse, which you can watch on Tubi.

Here’s the cocktail for the first movie!

The Tampa Car Wash: Grindhouse directors loved shooting in Florida back then because the cheap tax breaks and blazing sun created a amazing contrast with sleazy, dark subject matter. To honor that garish, sun-drenched coastal look, you need a drink that looks like a swimming pool but punches like a con man. Let’s pour a Blue Lagoon—but we are changing the name to The Tampa Car Wash in honor of the movie’s infamous, bizarre automotive execution scene.

  • 1.5 oz. orange flavored vodka
  • .5 oz. blue curaçao
  • .75 oz. lemon juice
  • 4 oz. club soda
  1. Fill a tall highball or Collins glass to the brim with crushed or cubed ice. In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine the vodka, blue curaçao and fresh lemon juice. Shake hard for 10 seconds until ice-cold.
  2. Strain the electric blue mixture over the fresh ice into your glass. Top it off with club soda and watch the bubbles swirl.

The second movie is Black Roses, which is on Tubi.

The Stage Diver: To truly pay homage to the sleazy, loud, smoky energy of thios movie, we need to pull the Jägermeister right to the front of the stage. Jäger has cemented its status as the official liquid fuel of the American heavy metal scene, thanks to aggressive marketing targeting rock clubs and metal bands. This is a heavy, carbonated drink that flips the classic Jäger Bomb into a legitimate, dark, aromatic highball. It pairs the herbal bitterness of Jäger with the dark, spicy bite of cola and a sharp hit of fresh citrus to keep it loud.

  • 2 oz. Jägermeister
  • .5 oz. lime juice
  • 5 oz. cola
  • 2 dashes, Angostura bitters
  1. Take a heavy pint glass or a tall Collins glass and pack it completely with large, solid ice cubes. Pour the Jägermeister and fresh lime juice directly over the ice.
  2. Add 2 heavy dashes of Angostura bitters right onto the liquor. Slowly top the glass off with the dark cola. Let it fizz up violently to create a thick, tan, aromatic head at the top of the glass. Give it one quick, gentle stir from the bottom just to integrate the lime.

Can’t wait for Saturday!

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Paranoia (1969)

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Umberto Lenzi, come on down! We’re eager for you to shock us, titillate us, and perhaps even thrill us a bit. Oh, and you’ve brought Carroll Baker with you! Please, show us the tale you’ve crafted!

Released in Italy as Orgasmo, it was one of the first X-rated movies in the U.S., and the ads definitely played it up, especially because it featured Baker. She had left America as a single mother with two children, and her prospects in Hollywood weren’t great. In Italy, despite making movies that she said “What they think is wonderful is not what we might,” she found a career. Later, she would admit that it showed her an entirely different world and brought her back to feeling alive again.

What’s confusing is that Lenzi’s next movie was released as Paranoia in Italy and A Quiet Place to Kill in America.

I love this interview that she did with Tank Magazine, answering if she ever did any avant-garde projects: “Some of the films in Europe, of course, but a lot of them I haven’t even seen. The one I’m curious about is called Baba Yaga; it was a really far-out, wild, cartoonish sort of thing. I play the title character, a 1,500-year-old witch, and all my sisters were witches, too. I didn’t have to be completely naked, but in every Italian film, there was a scene where you had to show your breasts. Usually, I was talking on the telephone or reading a book. One day, they announced a nude scene – I couldn’t believe it. But the make-up artist and hairdresser were already there, dying the other girls’ pubic hair to match the hair on their heads.”

Baker plays Kathryn West, a glamorous American widow who retreats to a palatial Italian villa just weeks after her wealthy husband’s passing. She is the picture of fragile elegance, drowning in luxury and boredom until a handsome drifter named Peter (Lou Castel) breaks down at her gates.

The villa’s isolation quickly turns from a sanctuary into a playground for predators. Peter moves in, followed shortly by his sister, Eva (Colette Descombes). The dynamic is electric and immediately suspicious. As the siblings weave a web of sexual manipulation, the truth emerges: they aren’t related, and Kathryn isn’t their host—she’s their mark.

The film descends into a harrowing depiction of gaslighting, which is a term that gets used a lot these days. Trust me. This movie has real gaslighting. Peter and Eva keep Kathryn in a drug-induced stupor, fueling her with pills and booze while playing a haunting, discordant song on a loop to shatter her psyche. It is a proto-slasher psychological thriller where the weapon isn’t a knife, but the systematic erosion of a woman’s reality. But don’t worry. In the world of Lenzi, every sin eventually demands a receipt.

Caroll Baker started off as a Hollywood sex symbol before retreating to Europe, where she’d make Baba Yaga, So Sweet… So Perverse and The Sweet Body of Deborah, amongst others. Eventually, she’d move back to America and become a mature actress. As for Lenzi, he’d go on to make Eaten Alive, Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City and more.

If you appreciate melodramatic twists, layered narratives, and visually striking sex scenes, then it’s time to indulge in this film.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Other Hell (1981)

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If you think you’ve seen it all because you sat through The Devils or owned a bootleg of Killer Nun, Bruno Mattei is here to grab your rosary beads and yank you straight into the abyss. The Other Hell (originally L’altro inferno) isn’t just a movie; it’s a 90-minute assault on every Sunday School lesson you ever endured.

Get ready for a movie overflowing with blasphemy, shot at the Convento di Santa Priscilla in Rome (once owned by FIAT but now by the Secret Service). Then again, the print that Severin used for the Blu-ray was found behind a false wall in a Bologna nunnery! I sum up this movie with these three words: Not fucking around.

Written by Claudio Fragasso (Rats: The Night of Terror) and directed by Bruno Mattei (Seven Magnificent Gladiators, Robowar), this is a pull-no-punches nunsploitation shockfest. You think mother! was bad?  Then you are by no means ready for this one. A baby gets boiled alive, and that’s the very least of the shocks in store. And if you’re Catholic, well, get ready to go to confession.

Boasting a Goblin score stolen from Beyond the Darkness (actually from their albums Roller and Il fantastico viaggio del bagarozzo Mark; Fragasso said they had the band in the movie “as they were fashionable and asked them to write music for the film, but they asked for a lot of money, leading to the production to use stock music with a few modifications.” Mattei claimed that he was friends with their publisher, Carlo Bixio, who gave him the music he wanted.

The plot kicks off with Sister Cristina getting lost in the catacombs — never a good move in an Italian movie — where she finds Sister Assunta (Paola Montenero, Sylvie from A Bay of Blood) in a morgue laboratory. Assunta is busy embalming corpses and casually dropping lore about nuns fornicating with Satan and the mysterious murder of the previous Mother Superior, Sister Florence. Before you can say “Hail Mary,” Assunta goes into a supernatural trance, murders Cristina and then drops dead herself.

Mother Vincenza (Franca Stoppi, who was also in Beyond the Darkness) tries to play it off as an accident to Father Inardo (Andrea Aureli), but the gig is up when Sister Rosaria (Susanna Forgione) starts spraying blood from her mouth during communion and develops a case of terminal stigmata.

Enter Father Valerio (Carlo De Mejo, who survived City of the Living Dead only to end up here). He’s a scientific priest sent to investigate, but he spends most of his time clashing with Vincenza, who runs the convent like a fascist boot camp.

It turns out the convent’s basement isn’t just for storing communion wine. It’s housing Elisa (Francesca Carmeno), Vincenza’s illegitimate, horribly disfigured daughter, who was tossed into boiling water at birth by the former Mother Superior. Elisa didn’t die, though; she just developed Carrie-esque telekinetic powers, like making people strangle themselves with their own rosaries.

By the time we get to the finale, Vincenza has dropped the act, admitted she made a pact with the Devil and claimed Elisa is the literal daughter of Satan. It all ends in the morgue with resurrected corpses, psychic battles, and Father Valerio losing his mind. The final kicker? The Bishop shows up to investigate the earthquake and gets a face full of rotting nun corpse falling out of a coffin.

Oh yeah — between priests being set on fire and a nun’s severed head in the sacristy, this movie is every nightmare you had in CCD class. When Mother Vincenza yells, “The genitals are the door to evil! The vagina, the uterus, the womb; the labyrinth that leads to hell; the devil’s tools!” you’ll either cheer or recoil in terror, depending on whether or not you ever sat through a five-hour Good Friday mass.

Seriously. This movie tested even my resolve of how far is too far. Which is just another way to tell you that I loved it.

This was shot at the same time as The True Story of the Nun of Monza with most of the same cast and crew. Fragasso says that he shot The Other Hell downstairs and Mattei shot the other upstairs, helping each other as needed. As for Mattei, he would always say that Fragrasso was just an assistant director. They did the same two movies for the price of one on Women’s Prison Massacre and Violence In a Women’s Prison, as well as Scalps and White Apache.

Mattei was interviewed by European Trash Cinema and said, “Let’s say that he has influenced almost everyone. For example, L’altro Inferno/The Other Hell utilized Argento’s concepts, but wasn’t an absolute copy of Inferno, the title was dictated by the distributor. He makes movies wilh lots of blood, I’m not adverse to it but in some countries, like Germany, gory movies aren’t distributed.”

While it premiered in Italy in 1981, it didn’t reach American theaters until 1984, where it was renamed Guardian of Hell. It was unleashed on VHS by Vestron Video, finding its true home in the wood-paneled basements of horror nerds who wanted something a little more European.

I can’t believe that you could have walked into a multiplex and watched this.

ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD RELEASE: Soldier (1998)

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Paul W.S. Anderson gave us Mortal Kombat—a movie that proved you could turn an arcade game into a theater-filling spectacle—and then followed it up with Event Horizon, which is basically Hellraiser in outer space. So when it was announced he was teaming up with Kurt Russell and Blade Runner scribe David Webb Peoples for an old-school sci-fi actioner? You bet your ass I was first in line.

Soldier is a movie that got absolutely buried at the box office because people expected Star Wars, but what they actually got was a beautiful, hyper-violent cross between Shane and a Cannon Films action exploitation flick.

Kurt Russell plays Sergeant Todd 3465. He doesn’t say much—in fact, he only has 104 words — the whole two-hour running time, which is pure cinematic economy. He’s a veteran warrior raised from birth to freeze his emotions and kill anything in front of him. But progress marches on, and the delightfully slimy Jason Isaacs shows up as Colonel Mekum, introducing a new batch of genetically engineered super-soldiers led by Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee). Todd gets his clock cleaned by the new model, gets pronounced dead and is dumped with the trash on a waste planet called Arcadia 234.

Except Todd isn’t dead. He gets taken in by a group of interstellar refugees, learns how to do crazy things like “smile” and “not murder people,” and then has to go full action star on his old unit when they show up to use the planet for target practice.

Peoples has explicitly stated that this takes place in the same universe as Blade Runner. Look closely at the junk piles on Arcadia 234 and you’ll see a spinner vehicle. Look at Todd’s military record on the computer screens—he fought at the Shoulder of Orion and the Tannhäuser Gate! However, it was not intended as a sequel. Peoples told author Danny Stewart in the book Soldier: From Script to Screen, “No, I never had any thoughts about that… I wrote Soldier in 1984. Very quickly on my own. I wrote it because I saw the first Terminator in the theater, stunned. And it was such a wonderful movie. I’d always wanted to write a movie in which there was a tough guy who would be seemingly unsympathetic in the lead, and I felt that The Terminator was almost there. Later in the sequel, it was determined he was the hero, but at the time, he was sort of a villain. But the fact is, he was so great. I went off, and I decided to write about this soldier.“

Plus, you get Gary Busey as old-school commander Captain Church; Connie Nielsen as Sandra, the woman who teaches our hero how to be human and Michael Chiklis as Jimmy Pig.

I love how this ends, as 3465 and his old men end up rescuing the planet and adventuring out into deep space. This has always been a movie that deserved a much bigger audience than it got.

The Arrow Video release of this film features a brand-new 4K restoration approved by director Paul W.S. Anderson. Extras include an archival audio commentary by director Paul W.S. Anderson, co-producer Jeremy Bolt and actor Jason Isaacs; interviews with James Black, assistant director Dennis Maguire, associate producer Fred Fontana and production designer David L. Snyder; VFX Before and After, a brand new behind-the-scenes look at how the film’s special effects were created with visual effects supervisor Craig Barron; Weapons of Mass Creation, interviews with visual effects supervisors Craig Barron and Van Ling and miniature supervisor Michael Joyce; A Soldier’s Journey, a brand new interview with Danny Stewart, author of Soldier: From Script to Screen; We Don’t Need Another Hero, a brand new retrospective on the film with film historian Heath Holland; an electronic press kit; on-set interviews with cast and crew; trailers; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Orlando Arocena and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by film critic Priscilla Page. You can get it from MVD.

CULTFLIX MONTH: The Sheriff was a Lady (1964)

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Also known as In the Wild West, Freddy und das Lied der Prärie, The Wild Wild West, 6 pallottole per Ringo Kid, this stars German singing sensation Freddy Quinn as Black Bill (aka Freddy / John Burns), a gunslinger returning to his hometown of Moon Valley. He’s looking forward to reuniting with the Daniels family, who raised him, and his childhood friend, Anita Daniels (Beba Lončar, Interrobang, Don’t Look In the Attic), whom he views as a sister.

Upon arrival, Black Bill finds the town in chaos. While the local ranchers have struck gold, a ruthless bandit group is burning them out of their homes and killing them to steal their fortunes. The bandits, led by a shifty saloon owner named Steve Perkins (Rik Battaglia, Nightmare Castle), have just raided the Daniels’ ranch and kidnapped the family patriarch, Ted Daniels (Josef Albrecht).

Anita manages to escape the raid. Instead of playing the helpless damsel, she pins on a deputy sheriff’s badge, determined to rescue her father and bring the bandits to justice. Meanwhile, Black Bill goes undercover on the exact same mission. Neither realization hits immediately: Anita doesn’t recognize her old friend in the stranger in town and Bill keeps his true identity clandestine.

While trying to save the town, Black Bill finds himself targeted by both Anita and Olivia (Mamie Van Doren, why do you think I watched this movie?), a sultry saloon singer controlled by the villainous Perkins. Olivia takes a liking to Bill, prompting Bill to warily warn her that a woman’s love “can pain you for a lifetime.” True to his no-nonsense cowboy nature, Bill refuses to let these romantic distractions derail his mission to stop Perkins. Assisted by three comedic sidekicks and a frequently drunk local sheriff (played by director Carlo Croccolo, who also made Black Killer and Gunman of One Hundred Crosses as Lucky Moore, but was mainly an actor. IMDb claims that Sobey Martin made this; he was a German mainly known for directing TV shows like Gunsmoke, Lost In Space, Rawhide and The Cisco Kid. Bill sets out to clean up Moon Valley.

Quinn was an absolute powerhouse heartthrob in Germany, scoring 10 number-one hits between 1956 and 1966. His German cover of Dean Martin’s “Memories are Made of This” (“Heimweh”) sold a massive 8 million copies. The film capitalizes on this by having him break into song frequently.

Imagine: A German Elvis, ten minutes of Mamie Van Doren and a dubbed Western that feels like a slow-moving drug high. Of course I loved it.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The One-Armed Executioner (1981)

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Interpol agent Ramon Ortega (Franco Guerrero) and his new blonde American children’s book author wife Ann (Jody Kay, Death Screams) are back in the Philippines after a honeymoon in San Francisco. Within minutes, the drug dealer that our hero is after — Edwards (Christopher Mitchum) — has sent his men to kill Ann and has had his arm chopped off. And in case you’re wondering if the drug dealer is evil, he has an evil Axis symbol on the side of his boat.

Edwards doesn’t just want Ortega dead; he wants him broken. After the brutal hit on the beach that leaves Ann dead and Ortega’s arm severed by a machete, Edwards leaves him alive as a living warning. Ortega spirals into depression and drinking, just trying to live out the rest of his life in pain, when a new master named Wo Chen appears and teaches him how to fight with one hand and how to do gun fu, if you will, in which they have a gigantic training device with numbers. The master calls out the targets, and Ortega improves with each shot.

You feel for Ortega, as he found the right kind of woman, the one who sleeps with baby dolls and has sex in the shower with her shower cap on, the height of eroticism. But seriously, he really does hit rock bottom, but this film pulls him up and gives him the chance to get revenge.

Ortega eventually fits his stump with a specialized prosthetic that allows him to steady his aim, effectively turning his entire body into a tripod for his .45 caliber vengeance. The showdown moves from the slums of Manila to Edwards’ fortified compound. Ortega has to dismantle a small army of mercenaries using a combination of one-handed reloading techniques and raw, unadulterated 80s rage.

This movie is an absolute blast from start to finish, delivering the kind of weirdness and magical action that could only come from the Philippines and a master director like Bobby A. Suarez, who also directed American Commandos, The Bionic Boy, Cleopatra Wong and Warriors of the Apocalypse.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHATTANOOGA FILM FEST HITS FANS WITH CINEMA SUPLEX UNLEASHES FINAL WAVE OF 2026 PROGRAMMING

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The Chattanooga Film Festival proves three is indeed the magic number with a ludicrously loaded third and final wave of 2026 announcements.

With two waves of programming, parties and peculiar happenings already announced for its 13th annual event, the Chattanooga Film Festival was just getting warmed up. The festival has now added a third wave of films and fun to the schedule, and true to form it’s as electric as it is eclectic. With screenings and events featuring genre luminaries like Michael Dougherty, Mark Pellington, Barry Bostwick, and C. Robert Cargill, the festival’s fans will be treated to a year filled with reverence for cinema’s history but also the joy of discovering new voices and future favorites.

Leading the charge are a pair of world premieres primed to ooze their way into the hearts (and nightmares) of the festival’s 2026 attendees. Filmmaker Josh Lobo’s Night After Night is a mysterious and maniacal jaw dropper of a follow-up to Lobo’s brilliant debut I Trapped the Devil—which graced CFF’s screens in 2019. In the film, a pair of overnight security guards at a private university experience increasingly disturbing events when a mysterious mute figure begins appearing nightly without explanation. Anchored by a uniformly killer cast including CFF Fan Favorites Scott Poythress and AJ Bowen, Lobo’s latest deftly dodges the sophomore slump and cements his status as one of the coolest voices in genre cinema.

Also, making its debut is the world premiere of filmmaker, writer and photojournalist Andrew Zappin’s wonderfully unhinged The King of Black Goo. From its amazing cast anchored by DJ Qualls (Hustle & Flow, Road Trip), Kathleen Wilhoite, Margaret Cho and Johno Wilson to its colorful world and impossibly detailed production design, Zappin’s bizarro sci-fi comedy may just be the most original and unique rom com you’ll see this decade. The kind of movie practically made for CFF’s audience of warm-hearted weirdos The King of Black Goo follows Qualls and unfolds a genre-bending fairy tale about a bitter, lonely man who undergoes a personality-altering medical procedure in hopes that it will make him worthy of love.

Making its U.S. Premiere at the festival is Australian filmmaker James Branson’s haunting and hard to forget Bunny. In his atmospheric post-apocalypse tale, Branson follows a young woman as she roams the ruins of a world she never got to grow up in. Raised on old books and b-movies, she lives alone in the shack she once shared with her father. Supplies are scarce and food is running out. There’s nothing left to hunt… nothing except other people. Full of incredible imagery and fueled by a remarkable intensity, Bunny is a breathless experience that we think our fans are going to—pun intended—eat up.

Another treat for CFF faithful is the return of the festival’s favorite purveyors of ultra-indie liminal horror. Two years ago the original NOCLIP shattered skulls when it screened here, and last year its equally eerie successor NOCLIP 2 expanded the NOCLIP cinematic universe. And here’s the insane part. While they were here for their NOCLIP 2 screening, filmmakers Gavin Charles and Alex Conn somehow secretly shot an entire third film in our honor, crafting in the process a film as much devoted to the eerie emptiness of liminal spaces as it is to the creativity-crushing difficulties of navigating the film festival circuit. We’re flattered and honored to present our 2026 audience with the opportunity to see a special screening of NOCLIP 3: The Chattanooga Syndrome.

Speaking of special screenings, this year’s virtual fans can also tune in for an episode of the world’s first horror trivia game show Better Luck Than Chuck. Having been raised on a steady diet of MTV’s Remote Control and Tales from the Crypt episodes this is truly a quiz show after our own dark hearts. As with all their virtual events the festival has leaned into interactivity and during the screening audience members can get in on the fun and win mystery movies from sponsor ARROW VIDEO.

CFF is also proud to partner with the folks at Antenna Releasing to present screenings of two incredible documentaries. Nicholas Clark and Dylan Frederick’s American Theater, in which a “canceled” theater director summons a troupe of conservative actors to an abandoned cabin in rural Georgia to plot revenge on the Atlanta theater community with a musical retelling of the 1692 Salem witch trials. Like a non-fiction Waiting For Guffman or Hamlet 2, Clark and Frederick’s wildly entertaining doc is, as one astute Letterboxd reviewer perfectly put it, full of moments that will make you laugh till it hurts and some moments that just hurt. Believe us when we say everyone is going to be talking about this one.

One great doc deserves another, and CFF couldn’t be more excited to honor its tradition of dropping a crowd pleasing banger of a music doc into the mix for its annual SONIC CINEMA offerings. This year it’s not only a great music doc, it’s a great music doc directed by Mark Pellington, one of the undisputed GOATS of the music video era with an insane number of iconic clips to his credit (Alice In Chains, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Flaming Lips and Pearl Jam to name just a few). Pellington also co-created one of the most influential shows in the history of MTV, the short lived but impactful BUZZ. With its sights firmly set on the counterculture, BUZZ reveled in a kaleidoscopic verite approach to culture and the underground and was instrumental in putting diverse and brilliant artists from William S. Burroughs to RuPaul in front of MTV’s 1990 audiences.

In his new doc This Is Buzz, Pellington chronicles the history and the legacy of his influential show as only a true insider could and serves up nothing less than one of the best documentaries you’re likely to see in 2026. Among Pellington’s many incredible contributions to the world of music videos, television and film he’s also the director of one of eeriest and most underrated films of the early 2000s, 2002’s The Mothman Prophecies. CFF is honored to present a special screening of this stone cold cryptid classic with an introduction by Mark himself along with an extended chat about This Is Buzz.

Capping off our collab with ANTENNA RELEASING is a CFF exclusive sneak peek into the whacked out world of multi-time CFF alumnus Mr. Graham Skipper. Skipper will give CFFers an exclusive tease of his forthcoming metaphysical surrealist horror comedy Organonym in which Graham and the equally beloved to CFF’s long time fans actor/filmmaker Jeremy Gardner play versions of themselves. Did we mention the project is produced by one of our other talented 2026 filmmakers Chelsea Stardust (GRIND)?

The CFF’s southern celebration of cinematic strangeness has become a cult-favorite on the festival circuit and the inclusive community of kind-hearted film fans that have embraced the festival have helped to elevate them in just 13 years to one of the key destinations in the U.S. for lovers of fantastic films.

“For fans of genre cinema 13 is an iconic number. This year we turn 13, and we’d be fools not to properly commemorate such a macabre milestone,” said CFF’s Director and Lead Film Programmer Chris Dortch II. “That’s why this year we’ve built a beast for our fans and for everyone that has helped carry us through to our teenage years. Movies have a way of lightening even the darkest of times and every one of us could all use a bit more of that right now. Maybe some cheaper gas and a few less AI data centers too.”

The CFF’s 2026 feature line-up doesn’t end there though with more than 20 additional features and dozens of short films available to both hybrid and virtual festival attendees in addition to the two jam-packed previous waves of announcements. Highlights include the much buzzed about SXSW sensation Sender (featuring Severance‘s Britt Lower and Better Call Saul/Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn), the gorgeous (and deeply strange) animated musical The Obsessed, and a deeply inspiring doc chronicling everyone’s favorite filmmaking family The Adams’ in Blood & Guts.

Then there’s the awesomely intense survivalist slasher Pitfall, Pierre Tsigaridis and co-writer/star Dina Silva’s brilliant and darkly hilarious slasher Frankie, Maniac Woman and the mysterious must-see by Polish filmmakers Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak Glorious Summer, a flat-out masterpiece of a sci-fi drama and one of the best movies of any genre you’ll see in 2026. It also wouldn’t be CFF without at least one skull crusher of a film about a metal band and filmmaker Donnie Hobbie’s JUMP SCARE has its amps turned to eleven and therein Hobbie delivers a crowd-pleasing head-banger of a horror comedy.

Oh boy does the list go on, CFF’s feature line-up, packed with more than 50 films, means that fans will also be treated to brilliant riffs on classic Twilight Zone episodes (The Thing in the Fog), one of the most unique vampire tales ever shot—with stop motion bats no less— (On Gallows Hill), a love letter to physical media that still cares enough to be creepy as hell (Dead Media) and many more.

Also of note is the festival’s multi-pronged salute to Megaforce, one of the finest films in the history of humanity, which we’ll be screening along with filmmaker Bob Lindenmayer’s joy filled celebration of Megaforce, Making Megaforce. The latter is a documentary that will make you cry, warm your heart and remind you that sometimes the only move is to avoid the tyranny of “good” taste and find a little bit of joy in this world. Joining us for an extended chat with doc maker Bob Lindenman and Megaforce star Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show) moderated by the only man for the job—screenwriter, author, producer, and as fans of his popular Junkfood Cinema podcast will know a LITERAL Lieutenant of Megaforce C. Robert Cargill (The Black Phone 1 & 2, Sinister, The Gorge). Get ready to leave CFF 2026 a Megaforce Mega-fan.

Speaking of fans, ensuring that the festival now enters into the sixth year of its on-going commitment to audience accessibility and that fans anywhere in the US can get plugged right into the fun of the festival, the festival’s beloved Fans and Filmmakers Discord Server makes its triumphant return as well boasting its own full schedule of virtual events from filmmaker chats and Q&As to watch parties including nightly midnight gatherings to bask in the wonderful weirdness of the festival’s wildly popular nightly secret screening series REDEYE.

This year the festival’s many night owls will be treated to the craziest collection of films in the block’s history including intros and guest programming by SUPER NEAT special guests including Fangoria’s Amber T to the festival’s longtime collaborator and the madman behind their kinetic annual animations Zack Hall. A nightly celebration of the deepest of cuts and the thriving community of cinephiles that has grown around the festival, REDEYE rides into its fourth year on a pale horse that CFF says fans, “shall know by the trail of dead-ass motion picture madness in its wake.”

On the shorter side of things, the CFF has assembled the largest offering of short films in its 13-year history with more than 130 films from more than 40 countries represented. Anchoring this year’s shorts program and leading the festival’s fan-favorite DANGEROUS VISIONS block is a beautifully restored new version of Season’s Greeting filmmaker Michael Dougherty’s (Trick ‘r Treat, Krampus, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) hand-animated short film that introduced the world to the now iconic Sam character from Dougherty’s beloved Trick ‘r Treat. Season’s Greetings celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and to mark this milestone CFF is honored to have Michael join us for a conversation about Sam’s evolution over the years.

Other highlights of the festival’s stacked 2026 shorts program include the return of can’t miss alumni filmmakers like Chris McInroy (Chair), stop motion animator extraordinaire Matt Eslinger (Cotton Candy Randy), animator Ashley Wong (Forever Home), Aqua Teen Hunger Force creator, writer and actor Dave Willis (Silverbacks), multi-time alumni Chloë Levine (Bloom) , Bill Watterson (Midnight City), Alexandra Basson (Redneck) and more than 100 more of the most creative, crazy and crowd pleasing pieces of short cinema the universe currently has to offer.

FEATURES

Grind (d. Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust): This horror anthology tackles the modern work landscape through four timely perspectives – the hustle culture of an MLM, the endless repetitiveness of a food delivery driver, the online horrors of a content moderator, and the unionization of a familiar-feeling coffee shop.

Camp (d. Avalon Fast) Presented by Dark Sky: Haunted by a traumatic past, Emily finds solace as a camp counselor while navigating grief, witchcraft and the power of female friendship. Emily feels at home as she’s taken in by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and wrap her in a veil of peace & forgiveness. Emily stands at the forefront of a new kind of life, but there’s a voice out there in the woods she can’t quite seem to ignore. The voice is whispering – and she’s telling Emily to go home.

Flush (d. Grégory Morin) Presented by Dark Sky: Middle-aged coke fiend Luc (Jonathan Lambert, Quentin Dupieux’s Reality) is having a pretty terrible night. Having gone to confront his ex at the club where she works, determined to somehow win back her love, one thing leads to another and he soon finds himself wedged firmly in a toilet, effectively trapping him in a bathroom stall. Trapped, we should mention, with a heap of coke that he stole from the bar’s resident dealer. He’s soon found, setting off an increasingly crazy series of circumstances that veer from the hilarious to the intensely grotesque as Luc’s world is assailed from every conceivable direction in a bizarre race against time that will have you gasping.

First Feature (d. Curtis James Matzke) World Premiere: Intrepid student filmmaker Thomas Reilly-King (affectionately known as TRK) spends years doing whatever it takes to complete his first feature film, aptly titled Enduring Destiny, as classmate Curtis Matzke documents his antics and looks back on the experience together ten years later. Searching for fame in a production spanning several years, the unflappable writer/director/actor calls in every favor and spends his last dime to realize his bizarre vision. The resulting film is its own brand of absurdity, featuring an 80s-style theme song, superfluous green screen, and excessive ADR. He even makes talking action figures of his character. What began as a behind-the-scenes student production, First Feature is a love letter to student filmmaking in the digital age, showcasing the absurdity of what could be a future cult classic.

Mockbuster (d. Anthony Frith): A struggling filmmaker’s chance at redemption collides with chaos and compromise as he navigates the eccentric world of notorious production house, The Asylum. Mockbuster is a comedic, behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of a B-grade smash, The Land That. Time Forgot, that is both an unashamed celebration of trash cinema and a forensic look at the collision between art and commerce.

Lucid (d. Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall): A 1990s art student uses a lucid dreaming elixir to break through creative blocks, but soon finds herself trapped in a nightmarish underworld where her suppressed memories and inner demons become deadly monsters.

American Theater  (d. Nicholas Clark & Dylan Frederick) Presented by Antenna Releasing: A “canceled” theater director summons a troupe of conservative actors to an abandoned cabin in rural Georgia to plot revenge on the Atlanta theater community with a musical retelling of the 1692 Salem witch trials.

Assets & Liabilities (d. Zach Weintraub): Zach is a burnt-out suburban father haunted by the impending arrival of middle age. When his family heads out of town for the weekend, he seizes the opportunity to live out a day as his younger, less responsible self. A spontaneous encounter with a fellow skater feels like a victory until an unsettling connection between the two emerges. The result is a forcible confrontation with his own bourgeois standing that shatters the illusion of Zach’s carefree day and sends it spiraling into dark territory.

Blood & Guts (d. Carlye Rubin & Katie Green): The lines between real life and reel life are muddied in the story of the Adams, an unconventional family who makes independent horror films. While they may vomit blood onto one another, lack boundaries and make frequent use of the f-word, they also face what every family must: change.

Bunny (d. James Branson) U.S. Premiere: In the aftermath of a climate collapse, a young woman roams the ruins of a world she never got to grow up in.Raised on old books and b-movies, she lives alone in the shack she once shared with her father.Supplies are scarce and food is running out. There’s nothing left to hunt…  …nothing except other people.

Dead Media (d. Joseph Scrimshaw): A troubled young woman wants to relax by streaming an old horror movie. Her lonely Gen X uncle demands they watch it on DVD. But the disc is haunted, plunging them into a movie night that won’t die.

Demonitize (d. Alexander Watson): Out-of-work television ghost hunters discover the key to getting their jobs back – and proving ghosts are real – is by working with the last group of people anyone would expect: Social Media Stars.

Frankie, Maniac Woman (d. Pierre Tsigaridis): After years of wanting to look like those who grace the covers of magazines, Frances Ramirez ends up making headlines in a different way. She is soon to be known as the Maniac Woman.

Glorious Summer (d. Helena Ganjalyan, Bartosz Szpak): In a serene, sun-drenched world, three young girls spend their days in carefree play, mindfulness exercises, and idle contentment. Their every need is meticulously cared for by an all-encompassing, nurturing system that keeps their lives perfectly stable and predictable. For years, they’ve lived in this blissful, responsibility-free bubble, where summer never ends. But cracks soon begin to appear in this idyllic picture.

Lenore (d. David Ward): In the squalid basement of a suburban home, unemployed filmmaker Max Wren (Nicholas Jaquinot) spends his days and nights hunting for footage of the controversial online performance artist Lenore (Ruby Duncan)—piecing together a distorted tribute to her in the wake of her sudden disappearance. But before he can complete his magnum opus, Max must face a domineering antagoniser from his past, two nosy police officers tipped off about his antisocial behaviour, and most concerning of all: a violent and vengeful spirit that seems to live within his grotesque editing Suite.

Making Megaforce (d. Bob Lindenmayer): The original Megaforce (1982), is widely regarded as one of the worst movies of the Eighties and filmmaker Bob Lindenmayer made a documentary about how awesome it is. Starring Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show), 1982’s Megaforce is packed with futuristic vehicles, spandex jumpsuits, insane stunts, and corny dialogue. It’s an adolescent adventure that time has forgotten. But one man remembers: director Bob Lindenmayer, and he’s on a quest to convince the rest of the world just how amazing this under-appreciated stunt-filled spectacle is. The world’s biggest Megaforce fan, Bob owns a fleet of fully operational dune buggies and motorcycles from the film. At first, Bob’s mission is pretty straightforward – chronicle the making of this box-office flop through cast and crew interviews. But when he meets his hero, Barry Bostwick, the film takes a left turn and becomes something more than a documentary – it becomes a hilarious and touching tribute to the power of fandom, friendship, and flying motorcycles.

Megaforce (d. Hal Needham): Whenever freedom is threatened only the rapid deployment defense unit MEGAFORCE (with a little help from their flying motorcycles) can save the day. On its release in 1982 stuntman turned filmmaker Hal Needham’s MEGAFORCE died an unceremonious death and has since carried with it a reputation as one of the worst films of its era. At CFF we think it’s high time MEGAFORCE had a reappraisal. It’s fun, it’s got martial arts and we know we already mentioned flying motorcycles but c’monnnn! If that doesn’t stir your nethers we’re afraid you might be at the wrong film festival. For the rest of you be sure to catch this as a double feature with Bob Lindenmayer’s doc MAKING MEGAFORCE and make sure to check out our extended discussion with Bob and Megaforce star Barry Bostwick moderated by C. Robert Cargill.

Narcisa’s Will (d. Clarissa Appelt, Daniel Dias): Haunted by the memories of her recently deceased mother, the once known Brazilian star Narcisa, Ana wants to sell her childhood home and split the money with her younger brother, Diego. But when her mother’s ghost starts giving signs of her presence in the dressing room, it becomes clear that Narcisa’s will is still stronger than her own, even after death.

Pitfall (d. James Kondelik): After a young man gets separated from his friends in the woods, he falls in to a 10 foot deep pit of spikes, impaling him through his leg and leaving him trapped. He quickly learns that his fall was not an accident but the beginning of a deadly hunt.

On Gallow’s Hill (d. Ed Shimborske): After college screw-up Matt Bishop is bitten by a vampire, he discovers he can only survive on one thing: his own rare blood type. As his thirst grows, Matt descends into a coven underworld, rekindles an old flame, and uncovers the dark secrets of the blood business- forcing him to confront his own morality (and mortality) to stay alive.

Jump Scare (d. Donnie Hobbie): The female metal band JUMP SCARE retreat to a remote cabin to write their next album only to be terrorized by the family of cannibals next door.

Night After Night (d. Josh Lobo) World Premiere: The lives of two overnight security guards at a private university begin to unravel after the discovery of a mysterious individual who returns on a nightly basis.

Noclip 3: The Chattanooga Syndrome (d. Alex Conn & Gavin Charles) Special Screening/World Premiere: In their self described “meta-found-footage / documentary escapade”, Gavin and Alex head to Tennessee to document the premiere of their previous film, and to follow a tip that will lead them to the most liminal spaces in Chattanooga…

Sender (d. Russell Goldman): After receiving a series of unnervingly personal packages she never ordered, a woman, newly sober and starting over, spirals into paranoia, convinced someone is watching her. As the online retailer denies responsibility, her search for the anonymous sender sends her down a dangerous rabbit hole, forcing her to confront her past and the fragile reality she’s trying to rebuild. A tense psychological descent into surveillance, recovery, and self-doubt.

Sunshine Girls (d. Madeleine Hicks): This is the story of Elaine Hamilton, a timid woman nearing her 30th birthday who must make the difficult choice between motherhood and medically induced photosynthesis. In a world that is quite literally suffocating, society has become dependent on the oxygen-producing Sunshine Girls to sustain life. Within the confines of this organization (part new-age adult summer camp, part dystopian prison) Elaine learns that falling in love can take your breath away.

The King of Black Goo (d. Andrew Zappin) World Premiere: A genre-bending fairy tale about a bitter, lonely man who undergoes a personality-altering medical procedure in hopes that it will make them worthy of love.

The Mid-NIght Driver (d. Alex Cherney): When a young girl summons a driver using a seemingly innocent ritual, she must fulfill his demands if she ever wants to get back home in 1992 Long Island

The Mothman Prophecies (d. Mark Pellington): A reporter investigates strange phenomena in a small town in Mark Pellington’s classic of cryptid cinema.

The Obsessed (d. Wataru Takahashi): Inspired by Shinji Ishii’s short story, this whimsical musical follows Giuseppe, a man powered by fleeting obsessions. One day, he’s singing arias, and the next, he’s collecting insects or mastering embroidery with feverish focus. Every new fascination feels like everything—until the next one comes along.

The Thing In the Fog(d. Chedey Reyes): A veteran airplane pilot and his atypical co-pilot in training will find themselves involved in a series of unprecedented interdimensional events, which will turn them into the only hope to save all humanity from the imminent invasion of the Audryes.

This Is Buzz(d. Mark Pellington): Follows the radical impact and lasting relevance of Buzz, an influential MTV series from the 1990s that featured notable contributors including William S. Burroughs and RuPaul as hosts.

With its commitment to audience and filmmaker accessibility, its warm-hearted southern hospitality, and its consistently surprising and eclectic programming, the Chattanooga Film Festival has, in just 13 years, been chosen as One of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World (MovieMaker Magazine), one of FilmFreeway’s Top 100 Best Reviewed Film Festivals in the World out of the nearly 14,000 festivals on that platform, been chosen One of the Best Genre Film (MovieMaker) and Horror Festivals (Dread Central) and hailed as “the gold standard on how to run a welcoming, unpretentious, no-bullshit film fest for folks who want to hang out and have a good time together” by legendary cinema publication FANGORIA.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is a 501c3 non-profit run entirely by a small but passionate crew of volunteers. All proceeds from the festival’s ticket and badge sales and donations go directly to the staging of each year’s festival. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube or even join our virtual monthly secret screening series with The Double Secret Cinema Society on Patreon.