Until Vinegar Syndrome released this film on DVD in October of this year, Demon Wind was one of the very few horror films that had been huge on VHS that had never made the jump in format.

The best description I can find in my head for this film is a mix of Fulci and the Evil Dead, but a movie that makes way less sense. Yes, a film with less sense of plot than The Beyond and none of the aspiration toward art. And yet there’s so much to like!

In 1931, we see a body burned on a cross in the front yard. There’s another in the hallway and plenty of paintings of Jesus, as we hear singing about being washed in the blood of the lamp. We discover that a woman and her husband are trying to hide from demons. Instead, the husband transforms into a demon and kills her.

Fast forward to 1991 and Cory is dealing with the suicide of his father. He’s the grandson of the people we saw in the opening and has decided to go back to the farmhouse where they died. Often in these posts, I try and give advice. Here’s a new piece: if your family has a weird supernatural death or disappearance in its history, just leave it alone. Don’t go back to the cabin. Don’t go into the woods. Don’t go to the farmhouse. Just don’t.

He puts together a gang of his friends to hang out at the farmhouse, but of course a fog rolls in. And some demons. And lots of death. The farmhouse has a shield that keeps the demons out, but one by one, the teens are turned into demons. Luckily, they find some daggers that can kill the demons. Unluckily, the demon’s master arrives and they need to do much more to defeat him.

That said, where you’d expect things to make sense, Demon Wind goes in a much stranger direction. Like when Cory mentions he has been in a gas station before in a dream, we get to see that dream — in which he’s holding a big book while talking to his grandmother. Naked. Buck ass naked.

Also, the kids in these films have weird interconnected relationships. Like Cory’s girlfriend, Elaine used to date his best friend Dell. He greets her by kissing her directly on the lips and then high fives Cory. As you do. Dell’s new girlfriend, Terry, has an ex-boyfriend named Chuck, who brings his girlfriend Stacy, his magic tricks and an arsenal of roundhouse kicks.  I can only imagine that if these kids all worked in a mall together, they’d all have sex in the same room like Chopping Mall. Only Jack and Bonnie seem like they aren’t Eskimo brothers or sisters with someone else.

Despite warnings from old creepy men at gas stations — hello, Friday the 13th — and dead bodies and evil statements in blood on the walls, everyone acts like things are as normal as possible. It’s not just wooden acting. It’s literally like nothing phases these kids.

Bonnie reads the words off the wall a– “Now Satan shall walk” in Latin — and an explosive chicken shoots out of the oven and almost kills everyone. You read that one right. An explosive chicken. Somehow, Bonnie instinctively knows how this all works and has one request: when she dies, please don’t bury her here.

Also — The Fog (or the fog) covers the town, making sure that every escape attempt brings them right back to the farmhouse. And then three little girls take Bonnie, who disappears, leaving behind a burning baby doll.

Everyone decides that they will stay in the farmhouse for protection. Whereas in a film like Night of the Living Dead you’d batten down the hatches and board up the windows, these kids clean the house. Yes, in the face of certain death, the first thing they decide to do is some spring cleaning.

Then another couple just randomly shows up! Demon Wind doesn’t just go off the rails. It throws the rails off a cliff and follows them into the abyss.

The final act of this film just gets more and more bizarre. There’s gunplay. Demons feel up women and trying to get them off just by touching their breasts. Cow skulls eat faces. A female demon strips in the front yard, begging for the guys to come out and have sex, at which point they look at one another and say, “Demon,” like this is some demented Bud Lite commercial. And oh yeah — Cory transforms into a demon himself to battle the final boss.

There’s some decent gore. Some horrible acting. And no relation to the normal world in which you live and breathe. I often joke that there are some films that I just won’t recommend to normal people. Demon Wind is one of those films. But to my friends that I trust, to those that can effortlessly deal with trifling concerns like plot, motivation or dealing with multiple dream sequences, I’ll give this a recommendation.

Update: This is now streaming for free with an Amazon Prime subscription.

Minou (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) loves her husband, Peter. But Peter is cold and only really seems to care about work. All she does all day is pine for her husband and take care of a turtle. Yep. You just read that correctly.

One night, a mysterious stranger attacks her, cuts open her clothes and then warns her: her husband is a killer.

The mysterious man is proven correct when a man who owed Peter money shows up dead. He demands that she come to his home, where he blackmails her into sleeping with him. Seeing as how he has recorded their tryst, he now has more material on her.

Even her friend Dominique (Nieves Navarro, All the Colors of the Dark, who was married to the director, Luciano Ercoli) can’t be trusted, as Minou finds photos of the blackmailer in provocative poses in her possession. When she finally gets the police to investigate, the man’s home is empty and Dominique tells the police he never even existed. Oh yeah. Dominique was once Peter’s woman before Minou. So there’s that.

Minou has a nervous breakdown and overdoses on tranquilizers before sobering up and learning that it’s all been a plot against her from the beginning. But come on — if you’ve watched any giallo, you knew that going in.

Despite its lurid title, Forbidden Photos of a Woman Above Suspicion isn’t filled with sex or even all that much violence. It’s more about alcoholism and how women were taught that they had to have the skills to land a man, but not what to do with their lives to make them fulfilled beyond just a relationship.

Director Luciano Ercoli has some gorgeous shots in here that really take advantage of the space age 1960’s aesthetic. And a bossa nova score by Ennio Morricone keeps this film bouncing. It wouldn’t be the first giallo I’d recommend, but it’s not the last, either.

If you have Shudder — and you totally should — you can find this film right here.

What would a German ripoff of The Exorcist look like? That’s an important question to ask. And when I describe ripoffs of said film, I always say, “You know how in The Exorcist, it’s still somewhat of a classy movie. What if it wasn’t? Wouldn’t that be awesome?” Most people, sane people, at that point say, “No. I had no interest in seeing that at all.” For the rest of us, there are films like this.

In fact, Bill from Groovy Doom texted me late one night, asking if I had seen this film, knowing that it would be a movie that I would fall in love with.

Director Walter Boos is better known for his Schoolgirl Report exploitation films. But man, this movie…

We start with a prostitute arguing with several men in the streets before coming home to find a man crucified to the wall of her apartment building. I should also mention that her clothing is hideous, even for a prostitute character in a 1970’s German exploitation movie.

The dead man had visitors all hours of the day and night, including a woman with a giant dog and has only one living relative, his granddaughter…the titular character of this film. We find Magdalena in school, where they delay telling her the news until everyone can have a party. Again, as you do.

Magdalena elicits a Pavlovian response, as every time you hear the sound of flies buzzing, something completely maniacally insane is about to happen. Like the dead body of a man sitting up in the morgue. Or Magdalena frothing at the mouth and tearing her clothes off. Or a tiny dog losing its mind.

Actually, I live with a dog this angry all the time.

For the rest of the film, Magdalena alternates between being a virginal high school girl and being a complete lunatic. And would you really have it any other way? She goes from smashing dishes in a kitchen and kicking her way through doors to having sex with invisible demons in a no time at all.

Magdalena is fine and has to go to her grandfather’s funeral, who she loved when he was alive, but now that he’s gone, she yells, “I despise the dead!” She hitchhikes there, but when a driver tries to molest her while she sleeps, she kills him. And then goes back to school, where things get crazier. Of course.

Magdalena has another fit, during which she tears up a photo of her parents and tries to have sex with all of the old women who run the school before beating the shit out of every single one of them. Then she runs out of steam and the women slap her around way too many times for this to be comfortable.  Oh and I forgot — she’s naked the entire time.

That’s when Dr. Stone gets involved and runs tests on Magdalena because you need a scene in an Exorcist film where science can’t solve what faith can. That said, not many of these films have the doctor fall in love with his patient. Obviously, the rules about this kind of thing are much different in Germany.

Even though she’s found true love, that doesn’t mean Magdalena isn’t going to stop being possessed. She even appears nude to two brothers, making them fight one another in a bowling alley as she lies naked on a lane, begging for them to kill one another for her. Spoiler warning: one of them stabs the other and she disappears.

The rest of the film alternates between good and evil Magdalena, who even gets Stone to have sex with her (I mean, it wasn’t much of a stretch) and then claiming rape. Finally, the forces of good are able to get the evil of her grandfather out of her body. And how does that happen, you may ask? Well, she vomits up a snake and Stone steps on it.

Wow. Yeah, not since Enter the Devil have I watched a film so unafraid to be completely and utterly unhinged. Dagmar Hedrich only appeared in one other film than this and she goes utterly batshit lunacy in this, just a tornado of a performance. If you love possession films — and really, you should — grab this ASAP.

You can get a copy on Mill Creek’s Pure Terror box set that we unpacked in November 2019 — and we love this movie so much that we gave it another look with another take, for this is not your typical possession movie. Not by a long shot.

Sure, Jess Franco is just making a new version of The Awful Dr. Orloff with this film, but with bigger stars and plenty of gore. And when you’re looking for a movie to watch at 4 AM — and I often am — it certainly does the trick.

Dr. Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger, The Damned) is a plastic surgeon surrounded by gorgeous women who walk arm in arm to his fancy car. But a former patient wants revenge, so she tosses acid at him. Instead, she catches his sister, Ingrid, directly in the face, ruining her gorgeous looks.

Fast forward to a modeling shoot in Paris, where Flamand’s assistant Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie, The Grapes of Death) drugs and abducts Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro, Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, Dr. Phibes Rises Again). As she locks her into the basement of the doctor’s clinic, Nathalie gets into an argument with Gordon, a maniac who lives down in the basement and chops off women’s arms for a hobby.

Still with us? Then let’s go to New York, where Barbara’s dad Terry (Telly Savalas, Lisa and the Devil) is searching for his daughter, turning to Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tusk, Bigfoot, Chisum) to help find her. He first travels to a Paris morgue, where her body supposedly is, but the headless victim is not her as it’s missing a mole.

Flamand and his sister meet Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon, who played Orloff in six of his seven films) and learn how they can cut off Barbara’s face to replace Ingrid’s thanks to a Nazi scientist named Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring, who played numerous Nazis in his career, including in Jerry Lewis’ long lost The Day the Clown Cried). Plus, Franco’s longtime muse, Lina Romay, appears here as Orloff’s wife. When the doctor returns to his office, he learns Gordon has cut up Barbara’s face.

Morgan beats up Barabra’s photo director before a bouncer makes him leave. He has to call Terry with some bad news — his daughter had been working as a prostitute.

The doctor finds another face donor for the surgery, but Moser destroys it. That means they need to find yet another victim, during which Barbara’s credit card is traced to Flamand’s clinic. Morgan starts surveillance and notices that Nathalie is wearing Barbara’s clothes.

He arrives at the clinic and takes out Gordon, but is overcome and locked into the cell with all of the girls. The villains leave them bricked up and with their air running out.

But Sam has sent Barbara’s dad a message, who gets ready to rescue everyone. And then…the movie ends.

Yep.

The original ending of the film had Sam saving the day, but Franco wanting to make it different and leave it open as to whether Sam and Barabara survived. Why? Why ask.

Oh yeah — I almost forgot. This film is replete with surgical horror, like faces being sliced and lifted off, needles into eyeballs, scissors into throats and much, much more. If only it lived up to the promise of its poster, but that said, it’s grimy and seedy fun if you can’t find anything else.

For the first film of 2018, the only appropriate movie I can find is this 1983 Italian history of how the first two people on Earth created all of us. People have been making movies about The Bible for as long as people have been making movies. But nobody — and I mean nobody — has made one like this.

The pitch meeting went like this. Keep in mind, like all 1980’s pitch meetings, there was plenty of tasty cocaine.

“We want to make a movie all about Adam and Eve. You know, from the Bible. But can’t we all agree that the story would be much better if it was like Blue Lagoon? And had music like Endless Love?”

“Yes, we can. But who will play the first man? God’s most perfect earthbound creation?”

“Two words. Mark Gregory.”

“Trash from 1990: The Bronx Warriors?”

“Yep.”

“Here’s all the money I have. Please, let us celebrate with a bump bigger than your fist!”

Look — any movie that starts with stock footage of volcanoes to symbolize the creation of the world is going to get me excited. Throw in a landscape coming out of nowhere (George Miller from Mad Max fame is said to have directed some of these shots, uncredited), then have Adam burst forth from an amniotic sac (which is made from a burlap sack), then mope around until he makes a female out of sand.  And boom. This is the cocktail of movie-crazy that I drink like an alcoholic finally getting his hands on a bottle of cheap rotgut.

The sand woman disappears when God makes it rain, leaving behind a real woman, in a scene that has nothing to do with the real scene from The Bible. This is the definition of hubris — when you think your story is a better tale than The Greatest Story Ever Told. Also: Adam and Eve are white. Also: A fake Bee Gee’s song plays over the proceedings.

If you wonder, am I watching a ripoff of The Blue Lagoon? Good news. You are. And you’re watching one made by rip-off experts. Directors Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo made Blue Island just one year before this film.

Eve swims naked while Adam tickles a baby leopard in the same way that you or I would play with a housecat. And oh yeah — here come some flamingoes!

We’re 12 minutes into the film — and Eve has been in it for barely three minutes — when the snake in the Garden of Eden appears. Adam appears to tell her that the tree is forbidden, but Eve protests that she’s hungry. Adam gives her a plum instead. This is but the first time that a husband would try to solve a problem and fuck everything up as the result. Of course, she wants the apple. Nothing is good enough until she gets the apple. Come on, man.

While Adam and Eve are sleeping, a big lion comes over to them as ominous music plays. We get some day for night footage of the lion lying with them, because this is the Garden of Eden after all. A fact that is compounded with stock shots of more animals.

Eve then watches some stock footage of a lion raw dogging (raw lioning?) his mate and gets all into it.

Cut to a waterfall, where that pesky snake keeps offering the apple. And so the myth of women being responsible for all the wrong of the world begins. Adam gets there before she eats and he is not having it.

I just want to note — there is nothing like an Italian voice doing an impression of a snake.

Eve wants a more exciting life. Adam wants stuff to be exactly like it is. Man, if I had a dollar for every time I just want to sit on the couch and relax.

Eve bites into the apple and they have sex, because you know, sex is forbidden and wrong.

That synthesizer score? If I know my Italian movies, it means that shit is about to go wrong in a very bad way. Yes, the stock footage grows much darker and the winds pick up and it gets windy and our heroes get kicked out of the Garden.

BOOM! A volcano! You done fucked up now!

BOOM! A flood!

BOOM! Another volcano!

At this point, the film depicts God’s wrath as the boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark! What!?!

How about we follow that with an attack by a bird that looks like a cross between Rodan and the Devil that had sex with Kelly Curtis in The Sect? How about Adam and Eve hungrily devour its guts? This movie can and will deliver.

Adam and Eve are then taken by a gang of humping, chattering cavepeople who are obsessed with playing with Adam’s balls. He’s cool with it, but Eve is not pleased by having the women touch her. Luckily, a tiger comes along and chases everyone away.

Adam explores the countryside, watching green men and women bathe, while one of them kidnaps Eve. If you’re wondering, “Is this movie only going to be about Eve getting kidnapped?” Yes. It is.

One of the green men tears open a parakeet to remind us we’re watching an Italian movie and feeds Eve the meat inside it. Two of the women of the tribe begin to paint Eve green, but the main green man prevents this. He takes Eve to a waterfall and mounts her on the shore.

Adam comes upon Eve lying with her new man and he seems rather, well, Mark Gregory really doesn’t do emotions all that well. He seems somewhat peeved more than angry.

A hairer tribe attacks the green tribe and it’s a war of the cavemen! Of course, the hairy tribe is all cannibals, so we get some of that action. And now the green man is completely washed. Why didn’t they show this movie in my Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes?

After a giant battle, the green man battles a giant bear, perhaps the fakest of all bears, while Adam and Eve sit and watch. Adam finally steps to the green man and they battle. The first spot? The green man does a jumping hug, getting his balls all over Adam. It looks less like a battle and more like sex until the green man raises a rock above his head and attempts to smash out Adam’s brains. Eve stops him and she and the green man leave hand in hand. But Eve misses Adam, so she calls to him. The green man lets her go, which only proves that the first human was pretty much a giant loser and the cavemen who weren’t divinely made were much nobler. Oh, and that bear? They cut his fur off and makes clothes out of it.

That fake “Endless Love” song plays again and Adam and Eve decide that enough is enough. It’s time to get nude on the bearskin and made awkward love. Seriously, this is 6th grade make out in the closet at a party level making out.

Just to remind us that we’re watching an Italian film, here’s some B roll of an elk being eaten by cheetahs.

Adam and Eve also argue a lot, as she wants to prove she can do things. Then, you know, she’ll just fall down in the snow. Or eat berries and fall asleep.

They then try and go through a cave, only to face off with some wolves. I remember when I was a kid, we had a Catholic school newspaper and there was a space story that was published every week. I was so excited about it until I shared it with my mother, who pointed out that whenever danger happened, the women would go clean and make dinner while the men dealt with whatever happened. That’s always stayed with me as an example of poor storytelling and lazy sexism. That’s pretty much this film, except whenever danger occurs, Eve cries.

Our heroes then walk across a frozen landscape that really adds some production value to the film as Eve discusses her lack of faith. Eve — you’ve actually met God. And you have no faith? What hope do I have?

The ice storm passes and our heroes become part of a tribe, learning how to trade things and get along with others. Where did all of these people come from? I’ve often asked that question and never been given a good answer. I consulted bible.org with the question, “Was the world populated through incest or did God create others besides Adam and Eve?” Here’s what I learned: “As to incest, it was not considered a sin and was not prohibited for Adam and early man. If the race was to populate and fulfill the command of Gen. 1:28, there is little doubt that Adam’s sons and daughters had to have married their own sisters and brothers if the race was to populate the earth, but due to the purity of the race as evidenced also by the long length of life, there were no adverse effects as we see happening today. Gradually, as the effects of sin took its toll on the human race, marrying one’s own sister, etc., began to create hereditary problems.” So there’s that.

And jamesbishopblog.com posits that “The Bible itself implies that God did create other people alongside and before Adam & Eve.” And “Adam & Eve were not the first humans God by created, or the only humans to exist at that time.” That leads me to a hypothesis. Those dudes saw this movie.

That fake “Endless Love” comes back as Eve has her baby in the ocean and Adam holds up his son. Roll the credits.

Umm, wow. Adam and Eve versus the Cannibals has raised more questions than answers. I don’t really know who this movie is for. Biblically minded folks will be put off by its sleaze factor. People hoping for a straight up cannibal movie will be disappointed. And it never lives up to the insane promise of its title. That said, you should probably experience it, if you can find it. It’s something, let me tell you that much.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.