Also known as La Settima Donna, Terror and Terror and The Seventh Woman, this is what happens when filmmakers dare ask, “What would happen if we mixed up The Last House on the Left with nunsploitation?”

In Roberto Curti’s Italian Crime Filmography, 1968-1980, he writes that this film was filled with “a succession of grim, misogynist and exploitative scenes: adolescent nudes, slow-motion sodomizations, vicious wounds, assorted killings.” I list this in case you are wondering why I decided to watch it.

Sister Cristina (Florinda Balkan, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture a Duckling) and the girls in her care (Sherry Buchanan from Tentacles and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Laura Tanziani, Laura Trotter from Nightmare City, Karina Verlier from Emanuelle In America, Luisa Maneri from Demons 6) are rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream when three thugs, led by Ray Lovelock, show up to hide out from the cops. Of course, they also decide to terrorize everyone and probably kill several of the girls along the way. Can Sister Cristina renounce her Holy Vows and help the girls to escape?

Of course she can.

A movie that takes a disco scene from Eyes Behind the Wall and has a brutal murder occur in full view of a Scrooge McDuck poster, this is the Italian exploitation film in its most undiluted form. Lovelock is a complete scumbag — and sings on the soundtrack — while there’s no way that Tarantino didn’t rip off the ending of this movie for Death Proof.

Francesco Prosperi — who wrote Hercules In the Haunted World — would go on to the next big craze, barbarian movies, making one of the better ones, The Throne of Fire. He also had his hand in a few cannibal films, like The Green Inferno and White Cannibal Queen. He should also not be confused with Mondo Cane director Franco Prosperi.

You can watch this on YouTube or you can try and hunt down the out of print Severin DVD.

We’ve talked about the charmed life of Matt Cimber before. This is perhaps the best movie he made that doesn’t have Pia Zadora in it. It was written by Robert Thom (who also wrote Wild in the Streets), husband of star Millie Perkins, and supposedly based on elements from both of their lives. If that’s true, they led some really wild lives.

Helping this movie look way better than it deserves? Director of photography Dean Cundey.

Perkins, whose debut was Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, is a revelation in this movie as Molly, a woman for whom television has created a fantasy world that reality can never match. She was assaulted by her father at a young age and the impact of that horrific act ripples across every terrifying decision she makes in this film. She still worships the man, claiming that he died for love while her sister Cathy (Vanessa Brown) detests his memory and will only say that he was lost at sea.

Molly leads a double life, as when she isn’t working at the bar owned by her lover Long John (Lonny Chapman, When Time Ran Out), she’s using her feminine wiles to lure men to their doom, much like the sirens did to sailors. Of course, they didn’t castrate them with straight razors, but let’s not quibble.

Her orbit leads her into a world of football players and aging actors who only work in commercials now. Despite brawling with one of the latter, Billy Batt (Rick Jason of TV’s Combat!) at a party after discussing Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus — and showing a high faluting sensibility that gave this movie its title — she’s able to bed and destroy a series of lovers while getting her body inked by Jack Dracula (Stan Ross) to resemble the tattoo her incestual father once had.

She also falls for handsome Alexander McPeak, who already has his own issues with his strange girlfriend Clarissa Jenks (Roberta Collins, who made everything from Death Race 2000 and Unholy Rollers to The Big Dollhouse, both Hardbodies movies and Eaten Alive better).

There’s no way that Molly can find love or a place to belong in this world. She’s a constant storm destroying and snuffing out lives, unable to find peace or even a place to be. Her story will not end well (not when George ‘Buck’ Flower — who also cast the film and put his own daughter Verkina into the disturbing father/daughter love scene flashback — is on her case).

Every setting in this film feels rotten and everyone in it feels diseased as if the end of the 20th century is a rotting piece of carrion left out at the furthest edge of the surf, unable to wash back into the tide. That said, I want to drink in the bar where most of this is set, as I can imagine the rum was high proof and the conversation was minimal.

While this was a section 2 video nasty, don’t come expecting gore. Do expect to be upset by its unrelenting dread and evil-minded script, however. Also, if the poster looks familiar, it’s a direct ripoff of Frank Frazetta’s cover for Vampirella #11.

You can watch this on Arrow’s American Horror Project. It’s also available as a single blu ray. It’s also streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Isaac Ward is the first “hue” in a world that has only been black and white, learning that he is filled with color after being shot. As he begins to turn multiple colors, he is not alone, and as society begins to reel from this new development, they start to capture these unexplainable colors and war seems ready to break out at any moment as the result.

Written and directed by Kodi Zene*, consider this film a somewhat post-apocalyptic Pleasantville. This is but the first of many films planned in this series, along with comic books and merchandise.

This film has a really solid and striking visual look, as the colors and Hues themselves break the black and white pallette that this film creates. I’m excited to see where this story can go with a richer budget and more time. It’s definitely worth a watch.

You can learn more at the official page. Monochrome: The Chromism is available on demand from Tempest Studios.

*Zene also shot and co-scored this movie.

Archibald Prize-winning artist Adam Cullen — the award is the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia — asked journalist Erik Jensen to write his biography. Jensen moved in with the artist and ended up stayed for about four years, during which Cullen spiraled into drug use and weapons possession. In fact, to show his commitment to telling Cullen’s story, Jensen was shot in the leg.

After Cullen’s death in 2012, Jensen completed and published Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen. The writer was pretty much traumatized by the experience, but felt that he had to finish writing the book to exorcise it from his soul.

Thomas M. Wright co-wrote, produced and directed this film, taking his acting knowledge and transforming it into a film that many considered one of Australia’s best films.

The film focuses on the complex relationship between the artist and his biographer. Wright wanted to not just make a biographical film or just make the movie of the story, but sought to question the book itself.

Authenticity was important to everyone involved.  David Henshall, who plays Cullen, lost 49 pounds making the film. He wore Cullen’s actual clothes and used his paintbrushes in addition to meeting many of the people in the artist’s life.

While we don’t often cover films of this caliber, we recognize them when we do get to see them. If you’d like to learn the story behind the story, this is a worthwhile watch. This will be available on demand as of November 3.

As a young teen — with parent bought subscriptions to the National Lampoon and Spy — I was obsessed with all manner of strange religions and aberrant behavior, which starts as simply as Scientology and builds into lifelong obsessions with groups like the Jack Chick, Unarius UFO groups, the Process Church, the book Illuminatus! and, of course, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs. Sadly, as everything good has been destroyed, even indulging in fringe conspiracy groups just gets sad these days. I was hoping that this documentary would show me a glimmer of hope and how slack could prevail against an increasingly darker world.

Originally called Slacking Towards Bethlehem: J.R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius, director Sandy K. Boone (this is his first film, yet he has produced several) explores this kind of sort of a church that took some smart, nerdy and even weird folks to examine the various ways that conspiracy and religion were crashing toward one another — which is where we are today — and then do nothing but make fun of it.

With a vast mythology that explains how Jehovah 1 gave salesman J.R. “Bob” Dobbs the secrets of the universe sometimes in the 50’s while containing references to Lovecraft and the ability to poke fun at other religions and exlaim that greed is good, the Subgenius ideals were pretty strong to my young mind. It didn’t hurt that adherents included de Mark Mothersbaugh, Mojo Nixon,Paul Reubens, Negativland, David Byrne, R. Crumb, Penn Jillette, Nick Offerman and Richard Linklater.

This movie does a decent job of setting up the path of this group and shows how that pre-internet, it was amazing to find people who shared the same values and interests that you did. Personal connections, while harder to come by, seemed to mean more.

Where my sadness with this film comes in — and this is for me only, perhaps — is that it really presented no answers as to how Bob fits in with our Q-Anon world of today. But perhaps that’s just slack in action, the idea of inaction and meaning nothing meaning everything. Here I was hoping for an explanation of everything, when the truth is that answer is that there is no answer. Things just are.

J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius is available on demand. We were sent a screener to watch and review, but that has no impact on our opinion of the film. Want to learn more about the Church of the Subgenius? They have an official site ready to indoctrinate you.

Bill (Christopher George, taking a vacation from his wife, who is in nearly every movie with him), Jamie, Dan (Preston Pierce, Angels’ Wild Women) and Diana (Roberta Collins, Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000) are on a treasure hunt deep in the Southern backwoods, seeking an inheritance of prices Civil War rifles. Sure, why not?

After thirty minutes of more of travelogue and dirt bike footage, you may wonder, “Has slasher month gone to Sam’s head? When are we going to get to the senseless violence?” Patience, slashawan.

The deeper into the South our protagonists find themselves, the less hospitality they get from the locals, but hey, there’s plenty of money on the other side of the rainbow on Whiskey Mountain, right? Well, there’s also a drug operation that runs everything around, even the cops, all headed up by Rudy (John Davis Chandler, probably the only actor I know that appeared in both Adventures In Babysitting and High Plains Drifter).

This is a movie that has all real marijuana as props and a soundtrack by the Charlie Daniels Band, along with the exact kind of horrors you know await them yankees when they ask too many questions and push too hard. It’s also filled with Peckinpah-esque slow motion — most effect with Heorge is double firing shotguns — to go with a brutal scene where we only hear the assault on the girls and see still evidence as it develops on Polaroids. Also — it’s 1977 and a technically a motorcycle movie. so that means that it also has a potential downer ending freeze frame.

I tell you what, William Grefé has never let me down. You can get this as part of the He Came from the Swamp box set that Arrow Video has just release. Diabolik DVD is a great bet to find a copy.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Witchouse is the kind of movie that I’d compromise with any girl I dated in 1999. The video store was closing, she wouldn’t watch a foreign film and it seemed like something close enough to what she wanted and that I could stomach. It is a film of, there’s that word again, compromise.

It’s directed by David DeCoteau, whose movies are either somewhat inspired silliness like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama or beefcake disguised as horror like Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper or holiday movies. And oh yeah — A Talking Cat!?!

May Day 1998. Elizabeth Lafay — no relation to Abigail — has brought together the descendants of those that stopped her murderous Aunt Lilith by burning her at the stake three hundred years ago for a murderous party.

One of the party-goers is Janet, who is played by Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife (and friend to Paris Hilton) Brooke Mueller.

Filmed back to back with Retro Puppet Master, this is a Full Moon kind of movie, if you know what I’m saying and I think you do. That also means that there are two more in the series, if there wasn’t enough witch or house or witchouse here for you. It’s also kind of, sort of another installment of Night of the Demons if you were hoping for a third installment, filled with stock characters including one Linnea Quigley-ish lady who carries a guitar everywhere she goes so that we know she loves to rock and roll.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Four struggling band members stop at a lonely roadside cafe — blame low blood sugar — to grab some dinner and a slice of pie. However, they soon discover themselves trapped within the diner owner’s art collection and must now fight for their very souls.

Honey Lauren plays Ellinore in this. You may remember her from Vice Academy 5 and 6 or Wives of the Skies, the incredibly interesting film that she wrote and directed last year. She’s the one behind all of this mayhem, running “Elle’s Kountry Kitchen” in the town of Angel Falls, trapping the kids and planning even worse for her.

In fact, every photo in her restaurant contains the living souls of those who have dined there before. But Death itself is coming.

Directed by Terry Ross from a script by F. Scott Mudgett, my favorite part of this movie was the absolutely out there song that started off the film. It’s worth the price of this movie all by itself.

You can learn more on the official website or on the official Facebook page.