Get ready for a movie completely overflowing with blasphemy shot in the Convento di Santa Priscilla in Rome (once owned by FIAT but now owned 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 (The 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, you’ll get a Mother Superior who rants and raves while locked in the basement, a gardener who is up to no good, possessions, a nun bragging about having sex with the Devil and so much more. And why the fuck are dolls hanging from the ceiling of a convent? Who knows!

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.

Can the young scientific priest (Carlo De Mejo, City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery) stop all of the screaming nuns and bring the fear of God back to this convent? Or will an evil cat bring his doom?

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.

Severin released what is the definite version of this film. And you can also watch it at Amazon Prime. It’s on Shudder too! You have plenty of options. Just make sure you’re ready to explain this one to your family and your clergyman.

Lando San Miguel just got out of jail and he’s already been given an impossible task. Hunt down and kill Satan. Not someone named Satan. Yep. The devil himself.

Luckily, Lando’s uncle takes a bullet meant for him and gives him all of his powers. Of course, he has to deal with the devil’s men taking his wife and daughter after killing his son. Lando says stuff like, “Every day I pray to God that he doesn’t fill me with murderous rage again.” Guess what? God is sending you to kill Satan! You better get ready, Lando.

His big power is to make spirals come out of his hands that deflect bullets. Sure the bullets still leave holes in his shirt. But at least they don’t kill him.

There’s also a dude along for the ride whose wife gets turned into one of Satan’s slaves, so the dude makes her breasts explode. Yes, that really happens.

Lando also meets God, who gives him a powerful weapon: a stick. This allows him to fight more dudes and a woman who turns into a dog before battling Satan, who is getting ready to marry his kidnapped daughter.

There’s also a scene where a snake gets tied into a knot. So there’s that.

80 minutes of a horrible movie. One great poster. And that’s about it. I don’t know if you should waste your time, but if you choose to, it’s on Amazon Prime.

The first Purge, that is, the original 2013 film, wasn’t all that great. Yet each sequel has done the exact opposite of tradition by being better than the film that inspired it. 2016’s The Purge: Election Year ended the 12-hour evening of lawlessness, so where do you go from here? A prequel. Can it live up to where the series has gone over three films?

While this entry is written and produced by James DeMonaco, this is the first time he has not directed one of the films, handing those duties over to Gerard McMurray.

Ever wondered how The Purge came to be? Well, to push the crime rate below 1% for the rest of the year and restore the economy, the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) decided to test Dr. May Updale’s (Marisa Tomei, slumming it here John Cassavetes style) theory that a one night venting of aggression would do wonders for people’s state of mind.

However, the test doesn’t happen in the suburbs, but instead in the marginalized, low income, black and Latino neighborhood of Staten Island. Despite $5,000 being given to each Purger (you gotta spend money to make money, I guess) and more money offered for each kill, people decide that they wanna party more than they wanna kill. And that’s when the NFFA takes matters into its own hands, sending in mercenary death squads to get the job done.

Can protestor Nya and her brother Isaiah survive the night and the attention of the maniacal drug addict Skeletor (the best part of the film, as he owns the screen from the second he first appears)? Will drug lord Dmitri rise up and defend the neighborhood that he’s pillaged? Will white people wear Klan hoods and Nazi outfits and burn churches to the ground?

Do I even need to answer these questions?

That said — I was entertained by this movie, which is both simultaneously wish fulfillment and dire warning. It’s also so many movies in one, combining a slasher film with a running movie with a dystopian/post-apocalyptic film, then adding a side of gritty urban drama, a crime movie and finally, an action shoot ’em up. It works if you don’t think too much about how The Purge could ever become true. Actually, screw that. Over the past two years, I totally see how it could not only happen, but be endorsed by the American people.

This movie isn’t going to be escapism from the slowly darkening world outside the theater. It’s junk food, sugar-filled candy that conceals a center that we’re all finding harder and harder to swallow. If only the world’s problems were so easily solved within 12 hours that could unite us all by violence, which in these films, seems to solve everything. The real world is much messier, much more depressing and much more oppressive.

That said, if you want to see a Nazi in neon gleaming latex get shot with a rocket, it’s pretty much the best pick you’ll find this summer.

I like going to the gym. It’s something I would have hated as a geeky kid, being surrounded by people working out, but today, I really find myself looking forward to doing cardio or situps and even lifting weights. I may hate that my gym serves pizza or that so many people text while they should be doing sets, but at least a demonic woman has never taken my gym over and tried to kill everyone. That happens? Well, have you seen Death Spa?

This little-known gem came to people’s attention after being the subject of an episode of How Did This Get Made?

Also known as Witch Bitch, this feels like the most 80’s movie ever. However, it came out in 1989, which means it feels instantly dated. But hey, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) is in it!

Michael Evans owns the titular spa. He’s just lost his wife, who had a pregnancy gone wrong and became paraplegic, so she set herself on fire in a field. As you do. Now, she is possessing the Starbody Health Spa. From turning a shower murderous to overloading a computerized Universal style machine to tear a man apart, this is one gym that demands that you spray down the machines and use proper etiquette. There’s also a possessed blender and a freezer with murderous fish, which look like no seafood I’ve ever seen before.

If you’re coming looking for nudity, this movie is packed with it. Oh the late 80’s, when the internet was just a dream and kids found porn in the woods and rented movies like this.

The film also features Merritt Butrick in his last role. He played Captain Kirk’s son in the Star Trek movies and was Richie in Fright Night Part II. And hey! That’s Rosalind Cash from The Omega Man as a police officer!

There’s also a love scene involving asparagus if you’re into that. Make sure to not skip leg day!

Here’s a drink when you break up a sweat.

Witch Bitch

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 2 oz. Gatorade
• 3 oz. Mountain Dew

1. Fill a large glass with ice, then add gin and lime juice.
2. Now, it’s Gatorade’s turn, then fill the rest of with Mountain Dew. Fancy, huh?

After directing several giallo films in a row (Macabre, A Blade in the Dark, You’ll Die at Midnight), Lamberto Bava began to dislike the genre and wanted to do more works like Demons. That was the inspiration for this film, where he used the killer’s point of view to show fantastic images of the victims, from a woman with a giant eyeball to another that looks like a human insect. He also claimed that this was one of the few times that he had the time and budget he needed to get it right.

Gloria (Serena Grandi, the “Dolly Parto” of Italy who also appears in Antropophagus and The Adventures of Hercules) is a former model who has inherited the magazine Pussycat from her dead husband. The magazine takes off once a killer begins murdering whatever model is on that month’s cover, starting with Gloria’s friend Kim.

Her neighbor Mark, who is in a wheelchair due to a mental condition, sees the murder and alerts her, but all she finds are photos of Kim’s body. Soon, Kim’s body is found in a dumpster.

Gloria’s brother Tony is a photographer for Pussycat and does a photoshoot with Sabrina (Italian glamour model, singer and songwriter Sabrina Salerno) and tries to have sex with her, but he’s impotent. After he leaves, killer bees sting her to death and sends the photos to Gloria.

Flora (Capucine, the famous French model and actress), an old friend of Gloria, is trying to buy the magazine and Gloria finally agrees, hoping that the murders will finally end. I wouldn’t say that she’s a friend actually, as she has all this old footage of Gloria back when she was a model and did porn and horror movies, which keep showing up every time we go back to her office.

Tony and Gloria start another photo shoot with Susan in a department store, but Tony ends up dead. The killer taunts them over the loudspeaker and kills Susan. When the police arrive, there are no bodies, but Gloria gets the photos and her friend Evelyn (Daria Nicolodi, ex-wife of Dario Argento, mother of Asia, writer of Suspiria and the star of Shock) finds Susan’s body.

The police go to question Roberto and discover the backdrops of Gloria that were in every one of the killer’s photos. He shows up at her house and she runs, just as a car hits him. The police now consider that the case is closed.

The magazine is finally sold and Evelyn quits. Tony’s body is floating in the pool and the killer shows up…but it’s Tony. He explains that he committed these murders to protect his sister, but he’s cutting off her clothes with a butcher knife while he’s doing this. So at the last second, Mark shoots him in the groin. He then visits her in the hospital at the end, seemingly recovered from his mental issues.

Completely unrelated to the plot, George Eastman shows up as one of her old boyfriends. I’m not complaining — George can be in every movie.

I’m not pretending that this movie is any good. You can tell when making a movie like Demons that Bava really cares. Here, things sloppily head toward its ending. A movie about a porn magazine filled with murder, gore and nudity that ends up boring you has to be a total failure. There’s just enough here to stay enjoyable, but it’s borderline at best.

You can watch this for free with an Amazon Prime membership.

This is the first film from rock star Rob Zombie, a man that I have pretty much vilified in conversations and reviews for basically filming Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 over and over again (with side dishes of Horror House on Highway 5 and Eaten Alive). That said — I watched this with an open mind and the hope of being entertained.

Zombie started directed several of his band White Zombie’s videos and was selected by Universal Studios to design a haunted maze for their Halloween Horror Nights. It was so successful that he was credited with reviving the attraction and he began a relationship with the studio. He has previously worked on a script for a sequel to The Crow called The Crow: 2037 A New World of Gods and Monsters.

Despite plans for an animated Frankenstein film, Zombie decided to turn his haunted house into an actual movie. Filmed in 2000 on the Universal Studio backlots, which gives this the same feel as the aforementioned Eaten Alive, the film was held for three years as there was concern over releasing it, due to all the blood, gore, masturbation and necrophilia. Not wanting an NC-17, Universal was content to sit on the film until Zombie bought it back and sold it to Lion’s Gate, who finally released it almost three years after the film had wrapped.

The film opens on October 30, 1977, as two criminals attempt to rob the gas station of Captain Spalding (Sid Haig, Spider Baby). It’s a quick intro to get us into the spirit of the film — down, dirty and scummy. Soon, Jerry (Chris Hardwick), Bill (The Office’s Rainn Wilson), Mary and Erin arrive, as they are traveling the country writing about strange roadside attractions.

Spalding gives them a tour of his Museum of Monsters and Madmen, during which he relates the legend of Doctor Satan, a mad doctor who was hung by an angry mob. Before they leave, he gives them a hand-drawn map to the tree where they lynched the man.

On the way, they pick up Baby (Zombie’s muse, Sheri Moon Zombie), a hitchhiker who gets in the car moments before a tire blows out and her half-brother Rufus (former pro wrestler Robert “Bonecrusher” Mukes) picks them up in his tow truck.

What follows is a descent into madness, as the Firefly family (who are all named after Marx Brothers characters) takes over the film. There’s Mother Firefly (Karen Black, Trilogy of Terror), adopted brother Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley, Chop Top from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Grampa Hugo (character actor Dennis Fimple in his last film) and the deformed giant Tiny (Matthew McGrory , a real-life giant who is also in Bubble Boy and Big Fish). The family has already kidnapped five cheerleaders and now is presenting a Halloween show to their guests, who run in fear before being taken back into the house.

The family begins to torture the four kids, including killing Bill to turn him into a mer-man like something out of an old roadside sideshow and scalping Jerry (who is named for the composer of the Star Trek theme).

Meanwhile, Denise’s dad Don and two deputies (Tom Towles from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Walton Goggins from TV’s Justified) track down the missing kids, only to be killed by the family. Then, the remaining three are dressed as rabbits and chased through a maze.

Jerry — despite being scalped — and Denise survive, only to find their way to Doctor Satan’s lair, where he operates on Jerry and reveals that his assistant Earl is the father of the Firefly family. Denise, however, escapes again, only to be picked up by Captain Spalding, who offers to drive her to safety. She passes out and Otis appears in the back seat. She awakens on Doctor Satan’s operating table and that’s the end!

The footage for this film is all over the place, much like Natural Born Killers. That’s because Zombie filmed a lot of the sequences in his basement with a 16mm camera, including the opening shot of the moon.

There are moments of style here, but the film feels pretty messy, There are enough ideas to fill several films and no real cohesive tale to be told, but that didn’t take away my enjoyment of the film. It feels like there’s promise here, unlike 31, where Zombie pretty much retold this same story again. There are several films that Zombie never made, like retellings of C.H.U.D. and The Blob, as well as an adaption of his comic The Nail called Tyrannosaurus Rex that would have been an homage to violent 70’s action films. I would have loved to see what he could do with different subject matter.

The Fireflys returned for the more serious The Devil’s Rejects and will soon return one more time for 3 From Hell. You can check this one — and several of Zombie’s other films — out on Shudder.

Movies like this are why we created this website. Terrorvision is a lunatic voyage into the 80’s with tongue planted so firmly in cheek, it’s gorily popping out the other side. It’s one of the strangest films you’ll see. And it gets a high recommendation from us. Why?

Ted Nicolaou directed more than just this movie — he was also behind Bad Channels and the Subspecies films. Here, he’s helped create a tale where a Hungry Beast from the planet Pluton ends up being beamed to the Putterman house through their fancy new satellite dish.

Oh, the Puttermans. We have Grandpa (Bert Remsen, who appeared in so many of Robert Altman’s movies), Sherman, the son, who idolizes the old man. Then there’s mom and dad (Mary Woronov and Gerrit Graham, a double bill of B and S favorites in the same film!), who just want to swing. And Suzy (Diane Franklin from Better Off Dead, Amityville 2: The Possession and all of Sam’s teenage yearnings) , who just wants to go out with her boyfriend OD (Jon Gries who is famous in our house from Fright Night Part 2 and more well known in everyone else’s as Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite).

Holy shit! Is that Alejandro Ray from The Swarm and The Ninth Configuration as a swinger? Yes, it is. And he’s joined by Randi Brooks from Hamburger…The Motion Picture (someday, we’re really going to have to do HBO week and cover that one!).

The alien ends up earing everything it can while imitating other people. The kids all decide to use the beast for profit, but that backfires and it seems like only the alien from Pluton can save them when Medusa, a horror talk show host, shows up to party and thinks the alien is the bad guy. Whoops.

Terrorvision is a crazy cavalcade of ideas and music videos and just plain strangeness. It’s a movie made for pizza and beer, for teenage sleepovers and for whatever substances you have handy. This is probably the most slime you’ll ever see in a movie, too.

Luckily, Amazon Prime has this for free with membership. I spend hours curating our next up list there and this was waiting to be watched for some time. It was worth the wait!

PS — The artwork for this movie comes from the shirt that Cavity Colors created. All of their products are great and so is their service! Grab one of these shirts while they last!

If you’re not from Pittsburgh, let me tell you about Century 3 Mall. At one point, it was the biggest, most modern mall in the area, dug into a former slag heap with 50 plus tons of concrete poured to ensure its three levels would stand. It had everything — Wicks ‘n’ Sticks, a food court, a cutlery store that sold throwing stars, a store called Heaven that had Japanese comic books and punk rock posters — even Richard Simmons showed up to precariously dangle from the third floor of the mall as everyone sweated to the oldies.

It was a magical time to be alive, but if you go to Century 3 Mall today, all that remains are 30 some odd stores from the heights that the mall had once reached —  five department stores and over 200 stores and services. It’s a sad blight today, with rainwater collecting in buckets all over the place, stained carpets and shuttered storefronts.

A sad Easter Bunny sits in what once was a bustling shopping center.

I tell you all of this to tell you that at one time, before the internet and social media, we went to the mall. My childhood mall was called Beaver Valley Mall and I remember our priest once yelling in a sermon that more kids thought BVM meant the mall than the name of our church — Purification Blessed Virgin Mary. This is also the same priest who told the story of the movie Alive once a month or so, with no meaning at the end, only discussing how they loved God, prayed and had to eat one another. This tale would always begin with, “The story is told…”

But I digress.

Chopping Mall is the second movie Jim Wynorski directed after The Lost Empire. Mentored by Roger Corman, it’s a cheap and quick little picture that still has moments of great entertainment quality. Kind of like a shopping mall.

Park Plaza Mall has had some theft issues, so they install the security team of the future: three robots programmed to take out thieves with tasers and tranquilizers. Of course, nothing could go wrong, right?

Rick (Russell Todd, Friday the 13th Part 2), Linda, Greg, Suzie (Barbara Crampton, We Are Still Here), Mike, Leslie, Ferdy and Allison (Kelli Maroney, Night of the Comet) have all stayed late after work and are partying in one of the furniture stores in the mall. These kids are super comfy with one another, because they’re basically soft swinging as they have sex on beds and couches right next to one another. Only Ferdy and Allison, the geeky kids, refuse to copulate.

Meanwhile, a lightning storm strikes the mall and reprograms the robots, which kill a technician (Gerrit Graham, Phantom of the Paradise, Terrorvision) and a janitor (Dick Miller, playing a character named Walter Paisley, a name he also used in A Bucket of Blood, The Howling, Twilight Zone: The Movie and Shake, Rattle and Rock!). Mike and Leslie are killed almost instantly, with her head blown to bits while the others all arm themselves with weapons to try and kill the robots.

Like Shakespeare, everyone dies…except for Ferdy and Allison. You’ll thrill to robots with treads rolling all over a mall, shooting lasers, beeping and booping and being like mini-RoboCops.

If the mall looks familiar, it’s because Commando and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were also shot at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. It’s even mentioned in the song Valley Girl by Moon Unit Zappa! The exteriors in the movie are the Beverly Central Shopping Centre, where Scenes from a Mall was set (and Eraserhead was shot on the industrial wasteland that existed before the mall was built).

My favorite part of the entire movie is when the Blanks (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) show up, reprising their roles from Eating Raoul! It’s totally unexpected and such a weird left turn. It’s not like they’re well-known characters, but any time Bartel and Woronov — two of my favorites — show up in a film, I’m excited.

While this film was originally known as Killbots, that title failed at the box office and the movie was re-released months later with its new title, one suggested by a janitor!

Sadly, malls are just about dead today. You can’t even find a video store in one to buy or rent this movie. You can go to Amazon Prime to stream this movie, though.

UPDATE: You can buy this on blu ray from Vestron Video at Diabolik DVD.

By 1981, all manner of slasher had been slashed. From dates on the calendar to holidays to high school, college, probably every trade schools, if you could kill someone someplace on some special day, there was a great chance that cinemas, drive-in and video stores had documented evidence of the murders. But a track team getting offed? What a twist!

At one of their track meets, star runner Laura Ramstead collapses at the finish line, pushed too hard by her coach and dying of exhaustion. Soon, her sister Anne is on leave from the Navy, back home with the mother and stepfather she desperately wanted to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a killer is wiping out the track team one by one, complete with giallo-like black gloves and a stopwatch. With each kill, he or she uses bright lipstick to cross another member off of the team’s photo. If Anne has gloves just like the killer, is it all a coincidence? Hmm?

There are all manner of people of interest, from Kevin, Laura’s boyfriend, to Dolores (Linnea Quigley!) the team’s bad girl and Principal Gugilone (Michael Pataki, who is in almost every movie that we watch), who has a stopwatch and plenty of knives in his desk drawer. And oh yeah, Coach Michaels (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Pieces, pretty much every movie that I watch that doesn’t have Michael Pataki in it, so this is a rare crossover), who isn’t allowed to coach any longer, despite the fact that it was a blood clot that really killed Laura.

Hey look! There’s Vanna White as a school bully! And more dead bodies! Soon, Kevin and Coach Michaels get into a huge argument over who the killer is, but the cops get there and shoot the wrong guy. Yep, it’s Kevin and he has Laura’s corpse all made up in her graduation cap and gown. He also has a sweet Vampirella poster on his wall.

A fight ensues and Anne ends up pushing Kevin into spikes — but not before body after body is revealed. That night, he comes back to kill her — an undead version of him at least — but it’s all a dream. It’s just her asshole stepfather, which makes it even easier to leave the town behind forever.

I ended up liking this one way more than I thought that I would. It has some elements of style, plenty of gore and lots of ridiculous moments, like a bed of spikes killing a high jumper. Plus, there’s a heavy metal concert with the band Felony, a roller disco scene and a combination football/knife murder weapon. Truly, something for every member of the family to enjoy. Director Herb Freed also gave us Tomboy and Haunts.

Want to watch it? It’s free with an Amazon Prime membership!

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Today, we’re going to talk about a movie that concerns World War 2 and a secret part of that war that nobody talks about: aliens.

In Italy, an American military patrol discovers a crashed spaceship and its alien crew. It also finds itself up against a Nazi flank packed with soldiers and tanks. Also: Hitler gets punched in the face.

Written by Paul De Meo (Eliminators) and directed by Danny Bilson (who also wrote The Rocketeer), this is a film long on humor and crazy ideas but short on plot. If you like Trancers, well, you’ll like this as it shares a lot of the same actors. Tim Thomerson is great as the near-mythic Sarge, a man who never dies no matter how many times he’s shot. If you’ve ever read Sergeant Rock, he’ll seem pretty familiar.

If Empire Pictures was around today, they’d be talking about a shared universe where characters from ReAnimator would battle Jack Deth from Trancers and The Dungeonmaster. Oh man — don’t forget RoboJox, Dolls, The Eliminators and Klaus Kinski from Crawlspace!

If you’re sick of launching off bottle rockets today, by all means, sit down and watch this. You can find it at Amazon Prime.