Sizzlin’ Summer of Subterranean Psychotronica 2026: Rattlers 2 (2021)

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Week 2 (June 28 – July 4) – Dawna Lee Heising: Our beautiful QWEEN

45 years after Rattlers creeped its way into drive-ins, the lethal snakes are back to terrorize the California desert. If you haven’t caught the Harry Novak-produced 1976 cult classic, don’t sweat it—this sequel is practically a primer. Director Dustin Ferguson relies heavily on archival footage from the original, creating a jarring, grindhouse-style contrast between the weathered 35mm flashbacks and the modern-day digital production.

Writers Josh Price and Lee Turner do the heavy lifting to bridge the decades, weaving the classic narrative into this new installment. While the film leans heavily on the past—perhaps a bit too much at the expense of a fully fleshed-out original plot—and stumbles into a hurried climax, it remains a testament to Ferguson’s relentless output.

Ferguson has a regular cast that he turns to in film after film and many of them show up here, like Mel Novak as Commissioner Lewis, Brinke Stevens (yes, that Brinke Stevens!) as Rebecca, the always fabulous Dawna Lee Heising as Lindsay, Jennifer Nangle (Malvolia herself!) as Sally, Shawn C. Phillips, Julie Anne Prescott, Peter Stickles and more.

If anything, I wish that the film relied less on the original film and that the ending didn’t feel so rushed. But that’s fine — Ferguson seems to be learning with each film and I’m always interested in seeing anything that he makes when it crosses my path.

You can get this on demand from SoCal Cinema Studios or grab the DVD from Kunaki.

JUNESPLOITATION: Rolls-Royce Baby (1975)

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DAY 29. Free space!

I was trying to think of a movie I could watch to fill my free time and remembered that, somehow, some way, I had an unwatched Lina Romay movie. It’s kismet because yesterday I was looking back at my review of Jack the Ripper, and I had not succumbed to the Stockholm Syndrome of being pulled into the cinematic universe of Jess Franco. In fact, I wrote that I didn’t understand why people loved his movies so much. 

What was I thinking?

Rosa Maria Almirall Martinez was still in high school five years before this movie was filmed, not yet taking the stage name Lina Romay, not yet being the muse of Jess. Also not yet taking on even more stage names — “I’m Lina Romay when I have brown hair, Candy Coster when I have blonde hair, and Lulu Laveme when I have red hair.” — or leaving her husband for Jess. 

But in 1975, Lina was in a ton of movies, including Female Vampire and Barbed Wire Dolls. Here, she may play the “Rolls-Royce Baby,” but she’s really an idealized movie version of herself. The film begins with her shaving herself with a straight razor, which could give one the notion of sharp steel blades against young flesh because one tends to think big and obsess when watching Lina Romay movies. 

That said, this isn’t a Jess film, even if he may have directed a scene or two (I’m no Stephen Thrower, so I can’t just pull that knowledge out; Ian Jaye did say, “Right out of the gate when asked about this movie Dietrich says that he co-directed it with Jess Franco and that Lina was on loan from him, which is at odds with what most have believed about this film for years. It was commonly held that Franco was not involved in making this movie at all.”). Instead, it was directed by Erwin C. Dietrich, a former actor who moved into directing krimi films like The Strangler of the Tower before turning to adult films, where the money always is.

At some point, after touching herself and taking photos like cosplaying Sylvia Kristel in the wicker chair from Emmanuelle, Lina gets worshipped by Eric Falk (Mad Foxes), whom we’re introduced to when he does full-frontal karate. She then decides to head out in the titular luxury car, picking up a variety of men, from truck drivers to hippie hitchhikers, while he sulks in the car. Some of her lovers include Roman Huber, Ursula Maria Schaefer and Kurt Meinicke. 

Those are just facts; as for whether this is a good movie, all I have to say is that I had it playing in the background while I was in a meeting and audibly gasped the moment Lina appeared. Her giant eyes, her porcelain skin, just knowing it’s her… somehow Franco — and by extension Dietrich — were able to take what they loved about her and share it with the world, which is really the finest example of the sharing-caring paradigm I can imagine. 

I love that there are reviews that claim this is boring. Lina Romay wears lace and a big hat, staring right at you through the camera, fifty years ago in our time, gone from our realm of existence, but still vibrant, still young, still alive. 

You’d gasp too.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: Making Megaforce (2025)

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If you grew up staring at the comic book ad for Megaforce—that indelible image of Barry Bostwick in a spandex jumpsuit, the tagline “Deeds not words” —you know exactly why it’s etched into the collective psyche of every nerdy 80s action movie fan. Bob Lindenmayer’s Making Megaforce finally gives this cult relic the deep dive it deserves, transforming what could have been a standard look-back doc into a poignant, high-octane exploration of why we hold on to the movies that everyone else told us to throw away.

At its core, the documentary follows director Lindenmayer as he tracks down the ghosts of the film. He isn’t just looking for the locations, like the wind-swept Nevada Salt Flats where the film’s legendary, physics-defying tank battles took place. He’s looking for the people who built the dream. Through interviews with the original stunt coordinators, costume designers and crew, the film peels back the curtain on how a massive, over-budgeted 80s action spectacle was pieced together.

The heart of the doc is the relationship between Lindenmayer and Barry Bostwick. Bostwick, a genre legend known more for The Rocky Horror Picture Show and presidents than for playing the iconic Ace Hunter, brings warmth to this totally unexpected project. He isn’t dismissive of the camp classic he starred in. He’s a willing participant in the absurdity, sharing memories that bridge the gap between Hollywood glitz and the blue-collar reality of film sets. Seeing their friendship evolve on screen adds an emotional anchor, elevating the movie from a mere trivia hunt to something genuinely moving.

Lindenmayer treats the fans with as much respect as the stars. It’s a reminder that to them, Megaforce wasn’t just a flop. For a generation of kids — me included — it was an invitation to dream big, even if those dreams involved flying motorcycles, jumpsuits and headbands. And beneath the kitsch, there’s a surprising search for a lost father figure. It turns out that tracking down a movie is often just a proxy for tracking down the parts of ourselves we left behind in the 80s.

Whether you have the original Megaforce poster framed in your living room or you’ve never heard of Ace Hunter, this documentary is essential viewing. It’s rare to find a film that captures the specific, manic joy of loving a movie people make fun of and yet tells it with such sincerity.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

Murder, She Wrote S4 E7: If It’s Thursday, It Must Be Beverly (1987)

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The night deputy, who has been paying attention to various Cabot Cove ladies, needs Jessica’s help when he becomes the prime suspect in his wife’s murder.

Season 4, Episode 7: If It’s Thursday, It Must Be Beverly (November 8, 1987)

Jessica nd Sheriff Amos investigate the murder of the wife of Cabot Cove’s night deputy, Jonathan Martin. He has been going above and beyond his public duties, secretly forming relationships with several single women in town.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury, Tom Bosley and William Windom?

  • Julie Adams (Eve Simpson): The undisputed queen of the creature feature! She is etched into horror history as Kay Lawrence, the woman famously terrorized in the 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is the first of her ten appearances as this character.
  • Antoinette Bower (Mrs. Audrey Martin): A staple of 60s and 70s television, she brought a chilling elegance to Star Trek and famously appeared in the cult horror flick The Mephisto Waltz.
  • Gloria DeHaven (Phyllis Grant): A classic MGM musical star who made a fantastic transition into character work, popping up in genre staples like Fantasy Island.
  • Ray Girardin (George Tibbits): A reliable television face who spent decades appearing in everything from The Incredible Hulk to various crime dramas.
  • Dody Goodman (Beverly Hills): A comedy legend, but we have to tip our hats to her role as the mother in the cult classic Grease and her surreal, hilarious appearances in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
  • Kathryn Grayson (Ideal Molloy): A legendary operatic soprano and Hollywood golden age star who brought a touch of class to this murder mystery.
  • Rick Lenz (Deputy Jonathan Martin): Best known to genre buffs for his role in the creepy and atmospheric thriller The Mephisto Waltz alongside Antoinette Bower.
  • Ruth Roman (Loretta Speigel): A true noir queen. She starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, one of the greatest suspense films ever put to celluloid. But for me, she’ll always be Mrs. Wadsworth from The Baby.

In a smaller role, Sally Klein is Corinne.

What happens?

Welcome back to Cabot Cove, the town where the crime rate is higher than a mid-70s exploitation double feature at a rain-soaked drive-in! This time out, we’re looking at a classic case of small-town domestic drama turning into a full-blown homicide investigation. Amos has a real headache on his hands. His night deputy, Jonathan Martin, is living a double life that would make a soap opera character blush. The guy’s marriage is on the rocks — ain’t no surprise — and instead of working on his relationship, he’s been burning the candle at both ends by playing the field with a different woman for every day of the week while he’s supposed to be on patrol.

But things go from scandalous to lethal in a heartbeat. Jonathan’s wife, Audrey, is found dead right in her own kitchen, snuffed out by her husband’s own spare service revolver. While the finger-pointing starts at home, Jessica notices the one thing everyone else missed: the local mail delivery in New Hampshire is suspiciously behind schedule. The motive? Audrey was holding a winning New Hampshire lottery ticket, a prize someone else was willing to kill for.

Who did it?

The culprit turns out to be the local postman, who clearly took “neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night” a little too far when it came to his career change into homicide.

Who made it?

Another episode by Peter Crane. This was written by Wendy Graf and Lisa Stotsky.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. Come on, J.B. Also, as a single woman, why wasn’t she getting pounded out by the deputy? Everyone else is, all these single ladies of a certain age getting their groove on, and the only thing getting fingered in J.B.’s house is her typewriter.

Was it any good?

Not a bad episode. Lots of sin in this little town.

Any trivia?

This is the first time we see Loretta’s Beauty Salon. Travel agent Phyllis Grant (Gloria DeHaven); hairdressers Loretta Spiegel (Ruth Roman) and Corrine (Sally Klein), and divorcee Ideal Molloy (Kathryn Grayson) would come back for two more episodes.

The episode title references the movie If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.

While examining Audrey Martin’s body, Dr. Seth opens her left eye to examine her pupil. As he does this, her other eye opens.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: (Jessica and Seth are discussing their interrupted dinner of calamari) And, anyway, it’s not your fault they came out a little tough.

Dr. Seth Hazlitt: A little tough? They were so rubbery you could have turned them into snow tires!

What’s next?

While Jessica was inquiring about her latest novel’s plot being plagiarized by a popular TV series, the show’s executive producer gets blown up by a bomb.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: W.T.F. FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 2

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Dual Wielder (2026): Directed by Julia Boyd, this reveals why the initials E.E. sit atop every Time Crisis leaderboard in Los Angeles. Those high scores are from Eddie Esguerra, who has mastered the art of holding two light guns simultaneously, dodging virtual bullets, and clearing levels with surgical precision. It’s not just a movie about gaming; it’s a character study of a guy who has found total flow state in the middle of a dying medium. I love how he acts in front of a crowd, almost like a John Woo character, and his goal of hitting three arcades and beating the whole game alone, playing for two. So awesome.

Brian Won’t Wear Condoms (2025): Directed by Genna Edwards, this is about the strained dynamic between two friends: Abby (Jordan Chin), a wellness influencer living in the curated, pseudo-spiritual bubble of online health culture, and Kayla (April Consalo from Cannibal Mukbang!), her decidedly more grounded and skeptical best friend. When the influencer decides to undergo an alternative contraceptive procedure—a concept that sounds suspiciously like something whispered in a dark corner of a wellness retreat—the results are anything but harmonious. As the title suggests, the catalyst for this madness is the titular Brian, a man whose refusal to use basic protection triggers a surreal, visceral downward spiral that tests the limits of their friendship and their physical well-being. This was incredible and hey — it has a HELLBENDER song!

Long’s Long Lost & Mini Mart (2025): Directed by Julian Doan, this is set within the claustrophobic, flickering confines of a Little Saigon mini-mart. Our protagonist is a young man struggling under the crushing weight of a recent loss who turns to a medium who runs the register. She shows him a menu of the ways that she can reanimate his dead father for one final conversation. But when she brings his father back, it’s not all happy. Actually, it’s barely happy as it drags up decades of repressed history, unspoken grievances, and the kind of generational trauma that doesn’t just vanish when you say goodbye. As a convenience store lover, I would totally buy a beef stick and ice tea here.

BlueBeard GasLight (2025): The story follows a woman (played by director Kyla Miller) deep in the trenches of mounting an ambitious, artisanal puppet production of the legend of Bluebeard. While we see that, we get a deep dive into the feminist story of what Bluebeard is all about, as well as the many men who — of course — had no idea what it was trying to say. Really interesting!

Dry January (2025): Directed by C.J. Arellano, this is all about Maya (Akanksha Cruczynski). Looking to escape the haze of her partying lifestyle, she commits to a full month of sobriety. But what do you do with all that free time in a dry January? She finds her calling in sculpting. Her masterpiece? A jagged, menacing crab sculpture that seems to radiate a strange, malevolent energy and gives off fortune cookie like messages about the both of them. Maya feels fulfilled and gets great messages. Toby (Zak Ma), her drinking buddy and brother, not so much. In fact, the crab seems to hate him. He just wants to get back to getting wasted. She just wants to hang out with the crab. Man, this whole movie blew me away and I had no expectations, but I was rocked by it. We all need that crab man. And a drink. Maybe not all that paper eating.

Strip Mall (2025): Directed by Andrew Appelle, this finds Nate (Nate Wilson) — an average, aimless shoplifter looking for a quick score — getting busted. He expects a lecture or maybe a call to the local police. Instead, he encounters a store supervisor (Howard Linscott) who has been waiting for a special case. The punishment the supervisor doles out isn’t jail time. It’s a psychological and physical gauntlet designed to break Nate down to his core. I remember when Hills Department Store used to have a sign up front about how they’d prosecute anyone that stole and even at a young age, I was fearful that someday I would be in such a situation. Also: Those baby changing tables can really hold some weight. I loved this — such a strange piece of film.

The Last Cheap House (2026): Directed by Meg Favreau. In 2021, home-renovation influencers Josh (Jakeem Dante Powell) and Anna (Sami Griffith) Connelly vanished. Their bodies were eventually discovered three years later, tucked away and rotting in the crawlspace beneath their dream home. The film is presented as the final, recovered footage from their cameras. It’s a descent from bubbly content creators to a state of paranoid, trapped exhaustion. As someone who woke up yesterday to ten new doors randomly showing up to be added to this house, I felt like this may have been the most horrific film I’ve watched all year.

I Hate Babies (2026): Directed by Sidney Leeder and Alona Metzer, this has a protagonist who is dealing with a chronic, undiagnosable pain linked to her IUD. Once she finally removes the device, the world around her stops making sense. It turns out the pain was a filter—or perhaps a warning—because once it’s gone, she begins to perceive the terrifying reality of her social circle. Every woman in her life who has embraced motherhood is undergoing a grotesque transformation into a Mombie. Yes, a hive-minded, baby-obsessed group of creatures that view her lack of interest in reproduction as an existential threat. Terrifying.

It’s Hard Not to be Romantic About Time Travel (2025): Directed by Michael Charron, this has two friends — Swann (Taylor Fredricks) and Randall (Ronald Short) — stuck in a cycle of personal stagnation, who decide that the best way to move forward is to literally move backward in the hopes that they can erase the framed-up crime that ruined their lives. Armed with nothing but a significant amount of weed and a theory that love is the key to bending the space-time continuum, they manage to land five years in the past. But this isn’t about grand temporal paradoxes or changing the fate of the world; it’s about the terrifying realization that even if you have the power to go back, you’re still the same broken person you were when you left. PS: I call a time machine when I take edibles on a road trip and sleep until I get there. Also another PS: I love that Somewhere In Time was the inspiration for romantic time travel.

Lady Puritan (2026): Directed by Justin Streichman and Gustine Fudickar, Lady Puritan is a heavy, atmosphere-drenched short that follows a woman who finds herself trapped in a waking nightmare. There, the barrier between her current life and the grim, oppressive world of her Puritan ancestor is thinning. As she becomes increasingly unmoored from reality, she discovers that her family tree is rooted in something far darker than standard history. Gorgeous scenery and wild visuals in this.

Legend Has It (2026): Directed by Thomas Lorber, this has Adam (Jon Cor), a male stripper who is known as The Legend, arrive for a private booking. He’s dressed to get undressed, he’s prepped and he’s ready to work. But when he walks through the wrong door, he finds himself in the middle of a scenario that is definitely not a bachelorette party. There’s already been one mobster killed and it seems like a second is nearly dead. The brilliance here is that the film refuses to let the joke burn out. Adam doesn’t immediately realize he’s in over his head and the film milks that disconnect for every drop of tension it’s worth. Cor is great in this able to do plenty of action and yet handle the humor. Also: Dildo fight.

Violet Vendetta (2025): Directed by Ted Hayden, this is about Luke (Brandon H. Lee) and Hunter (Hector Melgoza), who are two wannabe auteurs who are just trying to get their masterpiece in the can. The problem? Their backer is a shadowy, dangerous executive producer whose idea of notes involves sending a squad of hitmen to their set. What follows is a frantic, blood-soaked descent into DIY action. Instead of calling cut, the boys have to trade their camera rigs for improvised weaponry. You know you know they’re bad guys? They roll up in a Cybertruck. Also, other than Ninja 3, this is the only movie I’ve seen that combines martial arts and golf carts.

Scullion (2026):Samantha (Whitney Garner) and Greg (Cody Parr) discuss how he grew up with a very fixed idea of how to wash the dishes. She tells him to change it up and go against what his mother taught him, which angers a sort of poltergeist (Jim Close) of poor housekeeping. Look, I have OCD too, and this is the kind of thing that happens when you don’t follow the rules.

My Severed Arm (2026): Directed by Casey De Fremery. After a masked killer leaves her trapped and alone, a woman turns to the internet to discover how she can survive the night. Ads during videos have never been more annoying. As someone streaming all day, this killed me. I am dealing with Roku’s incessant ads for Blossom and Cougar Town to the point that I am yelling at them during the day. Anyway, back to the movie. I love how close this looks to a mid-2000s slasher, along with all the humor. Even the killers need to search for help when it comes to cutting off their arms! And love that the slasher killer is like a mix of Madman Marz, Victor Crowley and Humongous with a gas mask!

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Subterranean Psychotronica 2026: The Paradise Motel (2022)

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Week 2 (June 28 – July 4) – Dawna Lee Heising: Our beautiful QWEEN

Walter Hochbrueckner directed, wrote and appears in this film which tells the story of Nikki Travis (Dawna Lee Heising), who has left her abusive husband Eric (Hochbrueckner) and while she doesn’t follow the lyrics of Tom Waits (“gonna drive all night / Take some speed”) as she goes out west, she sure finds plenty of weirdness.

She soon meets Misty (Llenelle Gibson) and Crystal (Angel Princess), two other women who are running from something too. Their three paths converge at a town called Paradise and Jackie’s (Vera R. Taylor) diner.

Paradise is a misnomer, as masked killers roam the streets, salarymen disappear regularly, Raymond Taylor (Mel Novak) seems to have the taxidermy skills and mommy issues of another hotel owner we know and fear and Nikki’s ex is still hunting for her, demanding the money she stole from him.

There are moments in this film that seem like they’re repeating, like you’re stuck in a dream where time moves like heavy mercury beneathe the waves, as you attempt to figure out why everyone has found this town, who left that knife just sitting out and why no one thinks it’s al that strange that Nikki wants to be known as Joan Crawford now. Also: a perfect amount of cheetah print.

The Paradise Motel is a quirky movie that succeeds because of its oddball nature. It’s not trying to be weird; it just is naturally. And isn’t that the best?

JUNESPLOITATION: Firepower (1993)

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DAY 28. PM Entertainment!

If you’ve spent any time digging through the bargain bins of VHS history—or if you’ve spent your weekends scouring Tubi for the kind of low-budget, high-adrenaline junk that puts modern CGI-fests to shame—then you know the name PM Entertainment. They were the kings of the direct-to-video era, a studio that understood a fundamental truth about action cinema: nobody cares about the plot as long as you blow up enough cars and someone gets kicked in the face with artistic precision.

Firepower (1993) is the quintessential PM production. It is a glorious, neon-soaked movie that feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen RoboCop and Enter the Dragon and decided the best way to merge them was to set the whole thing in a future where crime is legal, and the fashion sense is pure early-90s dystopian chic.

Welcome to the year 2007. I know, I know—we’ve lived through that year, and it mostly involved dial-up internet and the rise of social media, but in the world of Firepower, it’s a lawless nightmare. Cities have been carved up into Hell Zones, essentially pockets of urban collapse where the police are forbidden to tread. It’s a brilliant setup for a low-budget movie because it explains why everything looks like it was filmed in a half-abandoned industrial park in Sun Valley.

Enter our dynamic duo: Darren Braniff, played by Chad McQueen, and Nick Sledge, played by tGary Daniels. Braniff is the straight man cop, the guy who plays by the rules until the rules stop working, and Sledge is the loose-cannon Brit who is basically a one-man wrecking crew. They’re tasked with infiltrating the Hell Zone to bust a racket involving a counterfeit AIDS vaccine.

It’s the kind of high-stakes, socially conscious plot point that was ripped straight from the headlines of 1993, then immediately discarded in favor of guys fighting in a death-cage. Once they step into the zone, the movie stops pretending it’s a police procedural and starts being what it actually is: a collection of excuses for Gary Daniels to display his world-class kickboxing prowess.

Daniels is the crown jewel of this production. Long before he was holding his own against Stallone in The Expendables, he was the go-to guy for legitimate martial arts talent in films that couldn’t afford a massive budget. He’s agile, he’s mean, and he has that quintessential cool that makes him the star of every scene he’s in. Even when he’s playing second fiddle to McQueen, your eyes are naturally drawn to his technique.

But why did I choose this movie?

Firepower is famous for being the only film role for the late, legendary WWE Hall of Famer, The Ultimate Warrior. Cast as the main villain, The Swordsman, Hellwig is an absolute wall of muscle. The film handles him perfectly: he doesn’t have much to say, which is smart, because his job isn’t to deliver Shakespearean monologues. It’s meant to look like a mountain of neon-colored menace, crushing people in a cage. Watching him move against the more technical martial artists is a bizarre, fascinating contrast.

The heart of Firepower is the Death Ring, an underground tournament run by the villainous Drexal (Joseph Ruskin). The plot eventually forces our heroes to enter the tournament, which turns the movie into a series of increasingly elaborate death matches. This is where the film earns its reputation. PM Entertainment was famous for its practical effects. They didn’t have the budget for big-screen explosions, so they made sure their small-screen ones were everywhere. The car chases are well-executed, featuring daring stunts that feel genuinely dangerous. They had a knack for blocking off streets and turning Los Angeles into a playground of burning rubber and flying steel.

The fighting, meanwhile, is classic 90s DTV. It’s not the polished, wire-fu spectacle of Hong Kong cinema (though Daniels brings some of that training to the table), nor is it the slow, heavy brawling you’d see in a modern UFC fight. It’s raw, it’s rhythmic, and it’s over-the-top. The scene where the characters are forced to perform in a continuous take in front of the cameras shows just how talented these guys were at adapting to tight schedules and limited resources.

To prepare for his role, Jim Hellwig reportedly trained for three weeks with martial arts instructor Richard Rabago and the film’s fight coordinator, Art Camacho (who also plays Viper). It wasn’t enough to make him a world-class kicker, but it was certainly enough to make him look like a terrifying physical threat on screen.

Daniels initially turned down the role because the pay wasn’t up to his standards, and he was sick of deathmatch movies. The executives at PM finally convinced him to read the script, and he realized the character of Sledge had enough sarcastic wit to be worth the trouble. Thank goodness he changed his mind. Without him, this would just be another forgotten relic.

Like many films of the era, Firepower relies on that specific 90s vision of the future: dark, gritty, filled with leather trench coats and neon lighting. It’s an aesthetic that has aged into a kind of nostalgic perfection, even as it becomes outdated, even though it’s supposed to be the future.

Spoilers: Poor Darren. Not only is his fighting name Alley Cat, but his wife gets killed because he’s poking around and well, maybe that’s not so sad because all she ever did was yell at him and one of the girls in the fight club, Lisa (Alisha Das, who is also in Nightwish and has gone on to be “considered a global authority on spirituality with a special focus on angels”), was already showing him interest. So in the PM Entertainment world of men writing men’s movies, I guess that’s happy. What isn’t is seeing Warrior slice his partner’s head clean off and hold it up, which I wasn’t expecting.

The P in PM, Richard Pepin, directed, and the script was by Michael January. Keep an eye open for George Murdock (the voice of God in Star Trek V), stunt coordinator and former pro wrestler Nils Allen Stewart, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Joe Jackson in The Jacksons miniseries because he looks exactly like Joe Jackson to the point that I thought, “Why is Michael Jackson’s dad in this movie?”) and, of course, Gerald Okamura. 

This is the movie where Gerald Okamura fights Ultimate Warrior and I’m glad I watched it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Subterranean Psychotronica 2026: M 10.28 (1999)

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Week 1 (June 21 – 27) – Welcome to HELL

The summer’s here, so get ready to broil!

Bruce Neubauer somehow made this movie in under an hour, and unlike so many Christian scare movies, this isn’t for a strictly religious audience. It also presents a world where teen parties are filled with strobes, people who want to fight you at every turn and dudes being amped up for no reason. It’s why I stayed in my room as a teen and just watched horror movies.

The title comes from Matthew 10:28, which says, “Do not fear the one who can kill only the body. Fear the one who can kill both the body and soul in Hell.”

But yeah, if you spent your formative years wandering the aisles of a religious bookstore or caught a weird, low-budget educational film during a Sunday night youth service, you know exactly the feel. This is a low-budget religious horror cautionary tale shot in the heart of Lorain, Ohio, right near where Superhost once lip-synced “Convoy” on WUAB.

Mary is a young woman doing everything in her power to burn the bridge between herself and her Christian upbringing. She’s fighting with her parents, running with a crowd that has zero interest in going to church and generally acting out. Mary yells at everyone, from her mom and dad to her friends, to people trying to drive drunk and blast some alt-rock, and anyone else she talks to. If I went to high school with Mary, I’d be making her mix tapes and getting more obsessed about her the more she shouted barbed epithets at me.

After a night of carousing leads to a near-death experience — man, the dudes in Lorain are aggressive and just want to murder — Mary is forced to confront exactly what the title promises: a vision of the afterlife that is intended to be as terrifying as possible. And that’s after watching nearly all of her friends die.

Yes, religion as cosmic horror.

You aren’t watching this for the cinematography or the high-end special effects. You’re watching it for that one specific sequence where the low budget actually enhances the surreal, unsettling nature of Hell. It’s a classic example of how limited resources often force filmmakers to get weirder than a studio ever would. It’s not the Hell you expect, with flames. Instead, it’s a black void where shafts of light and Italian movie fog pour out, and all the demons have big teeth like something out of a Todd McFarlane comic. Where most modern religious movies just go to the Spirit Store, the filmmakers went into their heads to make something that feels not just alien, but terrifying.

Two asides:

  1. I’ve been reading a lot lately about how the reveal of aliens will upend religion, perhaps because, as Bob Lazar claims, Jesus was a created being made to keep humans taking care of the containers that are our souls. If this is revealed, people feel like the world would go to pieces. But the millennial kids — or the 90s ones here — seem like they couldn’t care less.
  2. When people go on and on about hidden movies or lost films, it’s always the same ones. Instead of obsessing about the next 4K UHD, you should open your mind to the sheer volume of underseen religious cinema, which is often way weirder, more earnest — and yes, both things true at once — than anything else you can find hunting for little-cared-about movies. Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, Mondo Macabro — no one is going to release a slipcover special edition of this film.

This is a movie with a teen in a vampire mask telling us how drunk he is, living in a town where white kids drink 40s while hanging out the window of their parents’ cars, and everyone is packing guns. I don’t want to live there, but the visit was interesting.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Red Eye #1: Night Angel (1987)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

Screenwriter Joe Augustyn (Night of the Demons) uses the legendary character of Lilith for Night Angel, the story of a centuries old succubus who is planning on infiltrating the minds of men via the cover of a magazine (yes, we are back in the 1990s folks).

As the story goes (in the Talmud), Lilith was Adam’s first wife before the creation of Eve. She was banished from the Garden of Eden for not being subservient to Adam. This disobedience allegedly included refusing to lie in the missionary position. Depending on the source, once Lilith leaves the Garden, she gives birth to hundreds of demons, many of whom die daily. In retaliation, she kills the infants of the Jewish people.

In Night Angel, Lilith is a demon herself, a succubus posing as a high fashion model, hoping to bring death and destruction to anyone who comes across her. It appears that humanity’s only hope for Pearl is 227 (Helen Martin), a woman who lost the love of her life to Lilith years ago, and may be the only person who has a way to destroy her forever.

In one of their earliest efforts, the special effects team of KNB provides the effects for Lilith’s transformation into her true demonic form at the end of the film. As always, great work by them.

Personally, I’m always fascinated by the incorporation of Jewish folklore into horror movies. We just do not see it enough in my opinion, although the source material is ripe for exploration.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: W.T.F. FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 3

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Blossom Needs a Ride Home (2025):Directed by Tim Schwagel. You know how it is. You spend your night fighting off a bloodthirsty maniac, you’re covered in gore, the adrenaline is fading, and now you have the ultimate indignity: trying to get a ride home in the middle of nowhere. I always wonder what happens in a slasher after it’s all over. This short has taught me that getting the ride you need may be even more difficult.

The Stay (2026): An illustrator, already frayed at the edges and pushing against a wall of creative stagnation, retreats to a remote, stark location to finish a massive project. As the deadline approaches, the boundaries between the illustrator’s dark, ink-heavy creations and his reality begin to bleed together. This gave me a lot of feelings, as I am against deadlines every day.

Max Distance (2025): This follows a weary programmer who spends her waking hours lost in the digital void of endless, droning Zoom meetings. To keep her sanity, she starts living vicariously through the window of her apartment, obsessing over the mysterious, handsome stranger living next door. It starts as a harmless flirtation with the idea of a real life, but as her professional isolation deepens, her daydreams begin to bleed into a full-blown fixation. As someone in these meetings all day, I understand.

Feast (2025): The world has ended and whatever is left is starving. In this wasteland, the survivors have adopted rituals that are as sadistic as they are necessary. Our protagonist is a man who finally hits his breaking point, refusing to participate in the group’s barbaric feasts. But in a society where conformity is the only currency, dissent is a death sentence. He finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a ruthless, manipulative leader who understands that if you control the calories, you control the morality. This won’t end well.

Always On (2026): Bronson Somatz is a man at the end of his rope. Fresh off a brutal breakup with an Instagram model, he retreats to the subterranean safety of his parents’ basement. Yet he doesn’t find clarity—he finds a bizarre new routine. To process the wreckage, he sets up shop in the back of an old, abandoned ice cream truck, holding therapy sessions for whoever wanders by. As he mixes booze with the isolation, the lines between his reality and his increasingly twisted, devolving daydreams start to blur. But maybe he’s better off. Maybe he doesn’t need a son named Batman and to watch other men rail his wife. Maybe he can succeed on his own with that reverse ice cream sandwich. Kyle Kuchta has made a short that I wish were a show streaming all the time. This was absolutely amazing.

The Lord of All Future Space and Time (2025): A grief-stricken cowboy whose life was shattered when his wife was brutally taken from him is ready to ride into the sunset and let the buzzards take him until he stumbles upon a mysterious duffel bag dropped straight from the future. Inside? Advanced tech that turns him from a man with nothing to lose into a one-man army with the power to rewrite the past. But it’s more than that. It’s all the lives that are touched or not touched by each decision. Director Chris Paul Russell has made something absolutely incredible here, and this is my favorite short I’ve seen at this fest. Just so well made and something that packs so much into its 24 minutes.

Fisher of Men (2025): Director Zach DeSutter tells a fish story. Or, well, made a short film that centers on a fisherman who is, to put it mildly, complicated. He’s a man of grit and tradition, but he’s carrying enough baggage to sink a skiff. When his questionable past catches up with him, he finds himself being hunted by something that has been lurking in the depths of his home lake for decades. The monster is an ancient, grotesque entity that seems to know exactly which buttons to push to make our protagonist pay for his earlier sins.

Imago (2025): Director Ariel Zengotita takes the concept of toxic family dynamics and drags it into the realm of body horror, creating a film that is as repulsive as it is impossible to turn away from. Ana has always lived in the shadow of her mother, but that shadow is about to get a lot more literal and a lot more chitinous. As her mother begins a slow, agonizing, and grotesque transformation into an insect, their already frayed, codependent relationship begins to unravel completely. It’s not just a physical transformation; it’s an emotional one. As the mother loses her humanity, Ana is forced to care for a parent who is becoming something entirely alien. She’s also going to make her feel guilty of dating a gringo, which is a whole other story.

RED: Beast Huntress (2025): Directed by Benjamin Maublanc, this follows Red, a fierce mercenary, who is hired to rescue a young shepherdess kidnapped by a mysterious beast on the eve of her wedding. As Red ventures deep into the forest to track the creature, she finds that man is the worst monster of all. This looks amazing and as a lover of sword and sorcery, I’d love to see a full-length.

And They Shall Handle Serpents (2025): If you thought getting the wrong order from your local delivery spot was bad, director Stuart Valberg is here to make your local driver look like a saint. The film introduces us to a takeout driver who has traded his GPS for a holy mandate. Convinced by the audio casettes he listens to that he’s been chosen to lead the wayward back to the Father, he decides that the best way to save souls is to make some terrifying—and usually lethal—adjustments to the local delivery orders. What a dark and well-made movie.

triptrap (2026): Jade (Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan) isn’t great with people. But her sister invited her to a party and tells her she still ahs to go, even alone, but then everyone starts tripping and there’s a ghost and…well, we’ve all been there. Directed by Jack Dorfman, this made me think that the ghost might hav ea frightening face, but was probably the best person Jade had met at this place.

WAR (2026): Directed by Danny Shepherd, this takes our protagonist to an underground combat ring, a place where her sister has goen away to, leaving her family behind. What does she find in this violent sport of the future? Will she still have space for her sister after the carnage is over? And what exactly kind of battle is this? Great twist.

Penelope (2026): Penelope has been dead for a while—666 days, to be exact—and she’s spent most of that time catching up on some serious shut-eye. When she finally wakes up, she realizes she’s blown her deadline to raise an army of the undead to make her father Satan proud. With the clock ticking and the Lord of Lies himself on the way, she has to pivot fast. She starts scouring the neighborhood, recruiting the most unlikely soldiers imaginable: an irate MAGA neighbor who probably has a bone to pick, two total stoners who have no idea they’re being drafted for a zombie apocalypse, and a mopey boy from next door that Penelope is nursing a major crush on. When dad shows up and takes one look at this ragtag group of misfits, the comedy turns into a stinging look at the universal struggle of never quite being enough for the people who raised you.

The One-Minute Problem (2026): When you’re tinkering with the fabric of reality in a suburban garage, the last thing you need is a visit from the utility company. Director Nick Delgado has made a great short about Raul, a Spanish immigrant with a brilliant but dangerous mind. He’s on the verge of perfecting a teleportation device. The problem? It requires more juice than the local electrical grid can comfortably provide. Every time he fires it up, he triggers blackouts across the neighborhood. Enter a relentless, pencil-pushing Department of Water and Power inspector who isn’t just looking to write a fine. He’s looking to end the operation permanently. As the inspector closes in, Raul’s experimental high-voltage drain starts acting up, threatening the structural integrity of his invention, his lab partner, his quiet domestic life, and the safety of his pregnant wife. This feels like it needed a full-length to fit all the ideas.

My Favorite Murderer (2025): Gayle (Mitzi Akaha) is a true crime junkie who spends more time listening to forensic podcasts than she does dating. But she finally meets the right guy, he seems almost too good to be true. He’s handsome, charming, has an encyclopedic knowledge of unsolved mysteries and throws her a party where he dresses as Keith Morrison. But as the sparks fly, the line between a shared hobby and a shared pathology begins to blur. Is it true love or is it a mutual descent into darkness? Tina Carbone has created a fun short and yes, I am married to a true crime person who falls asleep listening to how luminol makes the blood glow.

Yolk (2025): Our protagonist, played with frantic, bleary-eyed intensity, is just trying to make it home after an all-night warehouse party. But a wrong turn down a labyrinthine industrial alleyway leads her straight into a pocket dimension inhabited by creatures that defy biological logic. These aren’t your standard movie monsters; they are slimy, shifting and deeply unsettling. As she struggles to survive this alien domain, she undergoes a transformation that is as much about the loss of self as it is about physical metamorphosis. Ingo Dieckmann has captured something frightening and yet gorgeous.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.