Imagine this: the gene for violence is discovered — turns out it’s all based on the bloodline of Judas Iscariot — starting a worldwide crisis when governments force people to be tested to determine whether or not they’ll commit a violent crime. College student Lexi Smith is in the middle of all of this, as science and religion becomes one thing, demons and angels start showing up and humanity prepares for the end of all things.

Produced and directed by Jenni Ivers, this movie kind of surprised me when it took a sudden religious turn, getting into the Nephilim and fallen angels. I wasn’t put off by it, but had no idea that’s what I was getting into.

Filmed near me in Morgantown, WV, it’s all about two college students who find themselves battling the forces of Samyaza, a demon who comes to Earth every 17 years with the goal of destroying creation. There’s also a flash forward to a future where religion doesn’t exist and people dress like extras from an Italian post-apocalyptic movie. So there’s that.

I actually loved the part of the movie where it becomes a history lesson of the Lost Books of the Bible and how the flood happened and demons on Earth. Probably most folks would be put off by so much exposition — it honestly grinds the film to a halt — but it was my favorite part of the entire thing.

Want to see it for yourself? Loophole is available On Demand on January 8.

NOTE: We were sent this movie by its PR team. That doesn’t impact our review.

Can we all admit that Ovidio Assonitis is a bona fide maniac? I’ve tried to explain The Visitor to people and always fail to capture the sheer lunacy and notion that it’s a film at the very same time about everything and nothing at the very same time. Nor can I divine why Franco Nero lives on the moon with bald dancing children determined to stop Satan from helping Atlanta to win a basketball championship.

You may wonder — what if Assonitis made a slasher? Good news. He did. And it’s also as deranged as you’d have hoped.

Julia teaches deaf children when she’s not having flashbacks to her horrific childhood, including her mistreatment at the hands of her twin sister Mary. Her uncle James, a priest, urges her to visit her sister and deal with her past.

Mary is suffering from a degenerative skin disease and their reunion does not go well to say the very least. The evil twin promises to make her sister suffer as she has suffered and begins using her evil dog to kill nearly all of Julia’s friends and neighbors.

At some point, Assonitis decides to just throw reality to the wind and we’re given a scene where the priest asks a lady to help him move some packages into Julia’s basement. One of them is a dead body and when she panics, he chases down the neighbor and murders her. The next day, the now insane priest arranges a surprise party for our heroine, complete with the dead bodies of everyone he has taken out. Mary confronts her sister, but is also murdered by the Catholic maniac priest.

Julia’s boyfriend comes back just in time, killing the evil dog with a power drill and rescuing his woman, who gets her revenge by repeatedly striking Father James with a hatchet before sitting down next to the dead body of her sister.

This is a theme in his catalog, but Assonitis had to fire and take over for the original director ten days into the production. There are touches of high art here amidst the slasher gore and the setup of the evil sister is quite well done, only to be thrown away at the end.

Also known as There Was a Little Girl and And When She Was Bad, this movie was re-released by Arrow a few years back. You can grab a copy from Diabolik DVD or watch it with on Amazon Prime.

After being denied the bonus and getaway that he was promised, a low-level mobster is nearly killed by the boss that he’s trusted for his entire life. Now, he’s coming back to get what’s rightfully his by force in writer/producer/director Ashley Scott Meyers’ latest movie.

Known for the film Ninja Apocalypse and writing Snake Outta Compton, Meyers is also behind the site Sell Your Screenplay. Here, he tells the story of Rob (Gunner Wright), who is trying to get what’s his from Kain (James Aston Lake, who did stunts in Deadpool).

Rob had been a courier for Kain and was caught by the police, but agreed to stay quiet and just go away. However, Kain sends killers after him instead. The cops are also on their way to try and get everyone put away while Rob’s girl Gina (Candice Bolek) is caught in the middle.

This movie aspires to be a Tarantino-esque film despite its low budget. James Ashton Lake is pretty funny in his role, but it feels like there could have been a bit more twists and turns in the tale. I’m also not a fan of CGI gunshots and wounds over practical effects, but understand the budgetary concerns.

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

Note: I was sent this movie by its PR team but that has nothing to do with this reviewer’s thoughts.

I love Mario Bava. I can’t say enough good things about the movies he’s made. His son Lamberto, however? Between Devilfish, Blastfighter, Delirium and Demons, his movies are a mixed bag with only the last one being a film I’d recommend (look, I love Blastfighter, but people usually think most of the movies I recommend are bonkers and I’ve scared enough people). So how does he fare this time?

Jane Baker is a middle-aged woman whose affair suddenly ends with the death of her lover Fred thanks to a car accident. Things get worse — her son is drowned by her daughter Lucy as they play unattended. All that remains is for her to spend a year in a mental hospital.

When she’s released, she can’t go back home and determines to live in the apartment where she once made love to Fred. Sound normal? Well, her blind landlord — named Robert Duval — keeps hearing her make love all night and screaming her dead lover’s name.

Did her daughter drown her brother on purpose? Is Jane still having sex with a dead man — or part of him? Is the New Orleans mansion she leaves behind enough to make my wife jealous and ask when we are moving there?

Mario Bava died two months after seeing this, but felt that he could die happy as his son had made a great film. While slow in parts, I’ll admit that this is one of his better efforts with a truly inspired and demented final act. Between the reveal of Fred, Jane’s insane daughter coming to visit and even the Pieces-esque shock ending, all of the build-up really pays off at the end. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a movie where pieces of a dead lover are served in a stew to a blind man and the woman who has kept making love to parts of him. So, I guess, that’s a kind review for Lamberto!

You can check this out on Shudder.

This regional oddity was written and directed by Houston native Frank Q. Dobbs. It has nothing to do with the other film that uses this title, which is better known as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. Instead, it’s all about a woman who is doing a reference book on cults of the world, which leads her to the dust bowl of the American Southwest, a place where extremist Christians sacrifice human beings.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x54w6nj

Of course, it takes 40 minutes of languid screentime before the heroine shows up in Terlingua, Texas. But until then, there’s plenty of beer drinking, innuendo and red robed cultists, who are known as The Penitentes, a centuries-old fraternal — and fanatical — brotherhood.

The pace seems so slow that when things actually start happening, it’s really shocking. Nothing happens in this film at an expected pace and nothing is cliche. It’s all unexpected.

This was lost for a long time before Something Weird released one of the most scratched up prints ever.  Luckily, Massacre Video has cleaned this all up and released a proper version that you can get from Diabolik DVD.

The beauty of a Mill Creek box set is that amidst the dross, there are films of incredible power. Sure, you’ll suffer through old television shows, barely incomprehensible Spanish horror and video store era throwaway junk, but then you’ll be rewarded with a film like this. Messiah of Evil isn’t just a legendary once lost film returned to power. It’s a work of art that feels like it came from beyond the wall of sleep, the place where the Ancient Ones  wait to come back and reclaim their rightful and most horrible power.

You can watch Messiah of Evil on several levels. On the most basic of levels, it’s a film about Arietty (the never before or since more lovely Marianna Hill) attempting to find her artist father in the cursed town of Point Dume, California.

It’s also a zombie movie of sorts, made in the wake of Night of the Living Dead, where an entire town slowly becomes the living dead. As they bleed from the eyes and lose all sensation, to begin to crave meat from any source, be it an entire grocery store’s meat department, mice or human flesh. Once they give in to their transformation, they light fires on the shore, as their ritual of The Waiting anticipates the Dark Stranger’s return to glory, leading them toward taking over the rest of reality.

Or is it about the final days of the class struggle that started in the 60s? The zombies nearly all wear suits while their targets, like collector of legends Thom (Michael Greer, who would go on to provide the voice for Bette Davis after she quit the film Wicked Stepmother) and his two lovers, Toni (Joy Bang, who worked with talents like Roger Vadim, Norman Mailer and Woody Allen before Messiah) and Laura (The Price is Right model Anitra Ford), are free love visions of style. Yet the Dark Stranger cuts through class, even turning cop upon cop near the climax.

Parts of the film were never fully realized, but that doesn’t matter. Some critics complain that major plot points and the lead characters’ motivations are never fully explained. Even the most normal people in this film act like the strangest characters in others. At no point does it feel like we’re watching a movie set in our reality. This is a transmission from another place where our surrealism is their everyday.

Messiah of Evil was created in an environment that will never exist again — the New Hollywood that starts with traditional studios panicking as their blockbusters and musicals would stall at the box office, while films like Easy Rider succeeded. Suddenly, deeply personal films would be made within the studio or even exploitation systems. Indeed, the previously mentioned Night of the Living Dead is packed with politics and social commentary, things only hinted at in past horror and science fiction films. This trend would die with the return of the blockbuster, with Jaws and Star Wars. In a moment of true irony, the creators of this film — the husband-and-wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz — would go on to direct Howard the Duck and write American Grafitti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for Goerge Lucas.

This is a movie where the heroine finds herself in the throes of undead transformation, throwing up mouthfuls of insects while the shade of her father begs her to not tell the world what she knows before he attacks her. After murdering everyone else in their path, the dead things of Point Dume don’t kill her. No, they resign her to an even more horrible fate: she must spread the legend further so that once the Dark Stranger arrives, more of reality is receptive to his grasp. She ends the film in a mental institution, knowing that one day soon, the end of everything we hold dear will arrive.

I love that the Chilling Classics set was sold in K-Marts and WalMarts, places where normal people would find this asynchronous transmission from another place and time and wonder what the hell they were watching. Much like the infection of Point Dume, it finds the right people. It discovers the best way to transmit its message to those most willing to spread its legend. It survives, no matter what, despite not being finished, despite age, despite being lost.

The absolutely amazing art for this article is by Francine Spiegel and can be purchased at Exhibition A. And we love this movie so much, we reviewed it two more times: Doc from Camera Viscera reviewed it as part of our Mill Creek “Chilling Classics Month” HERE and we discussed it as part of our 2017 podcasting schedule HERE, and you can listen to Bill from Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum discuss this movie with Becca below.

You can also listen to the commentary track that Bill and Sam did for this movie here:

Writer-director Jimmy Lee Combs has brought together a cast of actors from films like Friday the 13th, Maniac Cop 1 & 2, The Crazies, Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs, Sleepaway Camp, Critters 2 and more for a new anthology horror movie.

Michael awakens only to realize that he’s been taken by a gun holding maniac (Christoper Showerman from TV’s Supergirl) who reveals that our hero’s wife and daughter are captive in the trailer they’re towing. If he tries to escape in any way, a deadly toxin will be released, so Michael must do everything he’s asked to do, even rob a store.

Along the way, the driver forces Michael to listen to three different stories:

In “By Proxy,” Lynn Lowry (The Crazies, Shivers) plays a mother that must confront the demonic reasons why her son committed suicide.

“Radical Video” concerns a serial killer named The Sledgehammer (Jonathan Tiersten, Sleepaway Camp) who is killing the patrons of Radical Video in the 1980’s. Keep an eye out for Laurene Landon from Maniac Cop in this one, plus plenty of VHS covers and posters to feast your eyes on.

Finally, in “Epidemic,” a demon (Yan Birch, Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs) uses numerous human beings throughout time as hosts. Helene Udy from the original My Bloody Valentine, Felissa Rose from Sleepaway Camp and original Jason Ari Lehman from Friday the 13th all make appearances in this gory tale of possession.

Can Michael save his family? Will evil win the day? Well, you’re going to have to watch Terror Tales to get the answer!

I liked the idea behind several of these stories, but felt that it’s two-hour running time could have bee trimmed somewhat or that perhaps one of these stories — particularly the last one — could have held up and been its own movie. There’s some stunt casting here, with the professionals standing head and shoulders above some of the newer talent, but those names are going to be the ones that get most people to rent or buy this.

That said, I really appreciated the production design on the video store set and would love to see what Combs can do with a bigger budget.

Terror Tales is available on VOD starting January 8. For more information, visit the official site.

Disclaimer: I was sent this movie by its PR team and that has no impact on this review.

My father, grandfather and uncle used to play this game when we had cookouts, late into the night, where they would list the initials of a famous actor and they’d all have to guess. Tom Mix, Rex Allen, Tex Ritter…the list would go on and on. Then there would be “LL” — who of course ended up being Lash LaRue.

Lash started his career as the Cheyenne Kid, the sidekick of singing cowboy Eddie Dean, whose whip wasn’t just for show. Lash was an expert in using one, able to disarm villains and perform other tricks (he was also the trainer for Harrison Ford as he prepared to play Indiana Jones).  After appearing in all three of the Eddie Dean’s singing western films, Lash starred in eleven “Marshal Lash LaRue” strange western films for PRC, a Poverty Row (the name given for the lower than B-level studios that churned out films in the 1940’s) studio and Eagle-Lion. Unlike many cowboys, Lash spoke with a street patois, not unlike the actor he resembled, Humphrey Bogart (so much so that character actress Sarah Padden (Murder by Invitation) asked if they were related. When Lash said no, she looked him dead in the eye and asked,   “Did your mother ever meet Humphrey Bogart?”).

But unlike those big-time Hollywood stars, Lash would actually come to your town, showing off his whip skills and convincing young cowboys and cowgirls that there was at least one movie star hero who could actually do all of the things he did on screen.

Unbenowst to Lash, his role as a villain in 1972’s Hard on the Trail was actually in an adult film. While he had a non-sex role and had no idea that the film was X-rated, he spent the next ten years repenting as a missionary.

That brings us to 1985’s The Dark Power, a regional horror movie made by director Phil Smoot, who also directed Alien Outlaw, which also starred LaRue.

A North Carolina regional horror film, this one starts with a near full minute of a yard sign. Yep. It reads:

SAMMY & EARL
“THE FIX-IT BROTHERS”
IF WE CAN’T FIX-IT… THROW IT AWAY!
CALL 99 FIX-IT

What follows is a fat child messing around with a bow and arrow, juxtaposed with wild dogs chasing after him, POV-style. Once the four dogs catch up to him, he runs for about ten feet before falling down and crying. Luckily, he’s saved by Ranger Girard (Lash, of course) and his skills with the bullwhip, which never come near the dogs thanks to some, well, poor editing and sound dubbing.

Meanwhile, one of the Ranger’s friends, a Native American mystic, expires Citizen Kane-style after saying the word, “Toltec.” Turns out that the Toltecs were Aztec occult priests who liked to live inside the Earth and build great evil power. The bad news? They’re coming back, thanks to their eagle symbols that no one understands but the ranger. Luckily, a local news girl and her inept cameraman — everything he shoots turns green — are here to tell the tale.

The Native American mystics house is sold to some college kids, who take turns eating snacks, working out in leotards, being racist to one another,  drinking beer and taking baths and showers. It’s as if they demanded that some kind of inhuman force rise and kill them all, one by one. Good news — they’re gonna get what they asked for.

While all that’s going on, the reporter keeps flirting with Lash, who has gone from looking like Bogie to looking like a grandfatherly man with Q-Tip-esque hair. Imagine a more well-groomed Santa Claus, in a Scoutmaster outfit, with a whip. I guess I can see how some ladies — and bear lovers — could be into this. I mean, just check out this sexy dialogue:

Mary: Of course, some girls might be a little crazier about whips than others.

Ranger Girard: You know about my whip?

The Toltecs rise from their graves, accompanied by a soundtrack that is recorded on what can only be described as an xylophone and kazoo symphony. Also — they speak like the characters from a cartoon and slap one another often. Let the art below illustrated both their look and the cultural sensitivity of this movie:

The townspeople all suck. Let’s be honest. They’re all fat, mean and given to fits of pure stupidity. They even let their fat children steal their vehicles. Thank God Lash is there to defend them, beating on zombie Aztec priests with the power of his whip skills, slur yelling dialogue like, “All right, you demonic bastard, let’s take this outside!” and “Feel my whip, you son of a bitch!”

Man — at one point Lash was one of the biggest stars in the country. Yet here he is, in one of his last films, gamely swinging his whip at the undead. It’s not great. But it’s certainly entertaining.

You can see the Rifftrax version of this film on Amazon Prime.