April 27: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

This hits a bit close to home, as I did indies for more than twenty years, so when I saw Matt Cross, formely M-Dogg, “Super Cop” Dick Justice and “The Handicap Hero” Gregory Iron show up in the first few minutes of a movie, it kind of felt like how I spent most of my weekends over the last few decades: sitting in a high school locker room, waiting for my match. 

Matt’s wife Amy (Roni Jonah) used to wrestle, but left once she got pregnant with their son Cash (Cash K. Allen), who is being babysat by her ex-tag partner Kelsi (Britt Baker, whose boyfriend at the time, Adam Cole, shows up for a few seconds), who lost the ability to wrestle after an accident. A lot of this movie is about the pain of not being in the ring anymore and wishing you had it back, which I connected with very strongly. It doesn’t explore it anywhere near where it should, and really, things just happen in this, rather than feeling like we have any stirrings toward a point of view or a plot.

Paul (Wes Allen), a superfan or smart mark, kidnaps Matt and chains him up in his basement, explaining that he wants to give him his killer instinct back. Powerbomb never gets around to explaining that, instead focusing on Paul taking care of his sick mother or beating up a puppet. It wants to be the indy wrestling version of Misery, yet never quite gets there. 

B.J. Colangelo and R. Zachary Shildwachter have something here, even if they never find it. Instead of going all in on its premise, we have promoter Solomon (Aaron Sechrist) getting beaten up by Adam Cole’s thugs, trying to get Amy to wrestle again, while Paul tases Matt Cross and makes him eat pizza. Then we get a monologue where Kelsi cuts a promo in a mirror, then realizes the extent of her knee pain, turning to the bottle. We never see her again.

If you like indy wrestling, you at least get to see Derek Dillinger and Rickey Shane Page show up. Otherwise, this feels like they had a bunch of footage and no idea how to edit it into a collective whole. An IMDbs trivia says, “Film was funded by wrestling fans and made by wrestling fans (Hence its lack of creativity or professionalism), has several real wrestlers in it.” Man, people will say anything online.

I really wanted to like this movie, but it never gets to where it needs to go, as if it stayed in chain wrestling when it was time for the double down.

Ignore the poster, as that never happens. If this movie were a match on a show, it would really have them going, as Lord Zoltan once said. Going to the bathroom, the concession stand, to their cars to leave…

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 25: Bava Forever — Bava died on this day 43 years ago. Let’s watch his movies.

Mario Bava — or John Old — was the man who could make a studio backlot look like the gates of Gehenna. And while Lisa and the Devil was his heart and soul, it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. But then The Exorcist happened, and suddenly every producer in Italy wanted their own pea-soup-spewing cash cow.

Producer Alfredo Leone had a masterpiece on his hands that nobody wanted to see, so he did the most exploitation producer thing imaginable: He asked Bava to chop it up, add some possession flavor and then he retitled it House of Exorcism. Now it was less of an art film and more, well, Exorcisty.

This flick is a Frankenstein’s monster of cinema. You’ve got the ethereal, dreamlike footage of Bava’s original cut smashed together with new scenes directed by Leone (and a helping hand from Lamberto Bava, aka John Old Jr.). To slap a name on this identity crisis, they credited Mickey Lion as the director.

Mario said, “Even though it bears my signature. It is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it.”

So what is new? A lot. Enough to make you think that this is two movies joined together, which it totally is.

There’s a new framing device in which Father Michael (Robert Alda, father of Alan) is an exorcist trying to exorcise a demon from Lisa (Elke Sommer). She’s swearing more than Regan MacNeil, showing way more skin and also throwing up frogs. She’s also Elena, and all of Bava’s superior cut becomes a series of flashbacks to how she lost her mind, her life and her soul, eventually possessing Lisa.

Elena was stuck in an incestuous four-way relationship between her husband Max (Alessio Orano), a guy so impotent and tied to his mother’s (Alida Valli) apron strings it’s no wonder Elena looked elsewhere and found love — and some deep dicking — from her husband’s stepfather (Espartaco Santoni). It all ends in blood and with every in hell.

Somewhere in all of this, we have the priest get tempted by the ghost of his dead wife — she burned up in a car wreck — Anna (Carmen Silva), who is one of those Eurohorror women who seems like an android with a perfect body and fake eyelashes. Magic in its purest form. “Darling, don’t be embarrassed. You’re still a man. Take me.” You know, the devil works hard to convert those who have faith, but have you seen Carmen Silva? I get it. Man, I sure get it.

This feels like a weird U.S.-made exploitation rip-off of Lisa with bloodier deaths and a near-inserts level edit of Sylvia Koscina and Gabriele Tinti (and body doubles) getting it on. You know, I’m sure Gabriele Tinti was a good guy, but between this and him being married to Laura Gemser, I kind of despise the dude.

Spare a thought for poor Elke Sommer, who had to come back two years later just to contort on a hospital bed and projectile vomit neon green slime. It’s a far cry from the gothic beauty of the original, but there’s a greasy charm to it that you just can’t find in modern horror. I can’t help but kind of love the balls on this concoction of a movie.

Also: In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woodie Allen) walks past a marquee playing Lisa and the Devil and Messiah of Evil, and he kind of scoffs. For this and so many more reasons, I hope Tisa kicked him right in the dick at Passover, and it was no accident.

You can watch this on YouTube.

April 24: Puke! — Pick a movie that had a barf bag given away during its theatrical run! Here’s a list.

Gerardo de Leon made The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Brides of Blood, so we should watch any movie he ever chose to direct. This time, he tells us about Eduardo (Eddie Garcia) and his sister Leonore (Amalia Fuentes), a twosome who have made the worst of all horror-movie mistakes. They’ve come back home to see their father on his deathbed.

The old man has one simple request: “Burn this house to the ground the second I’m gone.” Does Eduardo listen? Of course not. Instead, he decides to poke around the basement.

Eduardo discovers his mother chained up in the dark. She’s a vampire, she’s hungry and she gives him a hickey that turns him into a cape-wearing, blood-chugging menace. While Eduardo is busy transforming into a monster, Leonore is pining for her lover, Daniel (Romeo Vasquez), hoping for a deathbed blessing that—spoiler alert—is not coming.

What follows is a chaotic descent into madness. Eduardo ruins a wedding with the kind of social grace only a vampire can muster (by biting the bride), murders his father in a fit of vampiric rage, and develops a deeply uncomfortable lust for his own sister. He tops it all off by getting into a sword fight with a ghost.

The film was picked up for U.S. distribution by Hemisphere Pictures, the same outfit that brought the Blood Island films to American drive-ins, often as part of legendary double features.