Simone (Katharine Isabelle, Ginger from Ginger Snaps and the titular character of American Mary) has disappeared from life. Once, she was a heavy metal singer named Sim Chaos — metal is infused in every scene of this movie, from the shirts that characters wear to the music on the soundtrack from bands like Hazel Doupe. Sacrilegia, Malthusian and Vircolac — and an author whose first book was a huge success.

Now, she lives in a house that looks like its becoming run down, with most of her life in boxes and her days revolving around how much vodka she can get her hands on. One night, she accidentally hits a teenager in a drunk driving accident. That girl, who is only called Kid for the majority of the film’s running time and is played by Hazel Doupe, is actually the character in the book that Simone has been struggling to write since a massive tragedy destroyed her life.

In Simone’s dreams, the Kid is chased by old men through an abandoned factory. She also has dreams of the face of a man, a hunting accident and her bloody hands. Even when she tries to go on a date with a well-meaning mechanic, hearing the rumors about her from the locals in the small Irish town that she’s run away to drives her to go overboard with her drinking.

Director Randal Plunkett takes a story that could have meandered in sentimentality and delivers a supernatural take on the process of self-forgiveness. Isabelle is supercharged as the lead, as she has no concern with coming off as someone you would like to be around, yet you slowly get behind her and cheer on her personal growth.

I was completely unprepared for this movie and the emotional power that it owns. This is the kind of movie that we need more of, a gorgeous yet dark examination of life that’s seen through the lens of the fantastic.

You can learn more at the official site.

Paris’ legendary Grand Guignol theatre has inspired so many films and this story actually begins in a theater much like that infamous historical landmark. As a Enola Penny walks into Theatre Guignol, she is gifted with the six stories that make up this movie, all while she becomes more of a puppet and the host — Udo Keir — becomes human. The framing sequence was directed by Jeremy Kasten (The Attic Expeditions).

The first segment, “The Mother Of Toads,” was co-written (with his former partner Scarlett Amaris* and Emiliano Ranzani) and directed by Richard Stanley. I have to say that this segment looks gorgeous and hits all the right buttons for me, as its based on a Clark Ashton Smith story. It also has  one of Fulci’s recurring actresses Catriona MacColl in it as Mere Antoinette, which delighted me to no end.

“I Love You” — directed and written by Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock) really didn’t work for me. It’s a simple story of a man finally being dumped by a long-suffering lover, yet I was struggling with the fact that it just seems to end.

“Wet Dreams” gives Tom Savini a rare chance to direct in a chapter devoted to a man telling his psychiatrist (Savini) about his nightly dreams that concern his wife (Debbie Rochon) castrating him.

Plus, you get “The Accident” from Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America director Douglas Buck. This may not be a horror story as much as a meditation on life and death.

Karim Hussain’s (the cinematographer of Possessor) “Vision Stains” is all about a serial killer who has lost the ability to dream, so she uses a needle to extract them from the eyes of her victims.

Finally, David Gregory — who also directed Lost Soul and Blood & Flesh — wrote and directed “Sweets,” about the break-up of a couple who use food in their lovemaking. Big points for getting Lynn Lowry in this story.

A co-production between Severin Films and Metaluna Productions, each director was given the same budget, schedule and narrative directive. Other than that, they were given free rein to create their own story. The results may not be even, but you can tell that this was made by filmmakers who understand that a horror anthology can be a very powerful movie.

*As a Stanley fan for some time, her story of the abuse suffered at his hands has soured me on his work, which kept me away from watching this for some time.

You can buy this at Severin Films.

Based on the stage play, Ghost Stories is a movie that redeems the horror anthology after years of poor direct to video and screaming excuses for entries in the canon. It’s written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, who stars as Philip Goodman, a famous professor and television personality who is obsessed with outing fraudulent psychics and explaining away the paranormal.

Now, he’s been invited to meet his inspiration, Charles Cameron (Martin Freeman*), who was once an occult investigator just like Philip, but now is a poor man living out his last days in a trailer. He asks him to investigate three cases, which form the stories of this anthology.

The first case is that of a night watchman named Tony Matthews, whose wife has died of cancer and daughter has locked herself away from the world. Now, he’s haunted by a young girl while he works. Then, a teenager obsessed with the occult accidentally runs over a demonic creature in the woods. The investigator becomes more and more unnerved by the cases, ending with the story of a banker whose wife has died in childbirth as she unleashed an inhuman child upon the world.

That’s when reality falls apart and Philip can no longer explain the unknown and must face down whatever he is enduring. I don’t want to give away the rug pull in this movie, but trust me that it makes sense and gives this story even more dramatic heft.

I love how the opening of this movie was inspired by faith healer Peter Popoff being exposed by skeptic and magician James Randi. It’s almost exactly the way the real life incident happened.

If any movie made in the last few years deserves to be compared to the heights of Amicus, this would be it.

*Freeman and Nyman told the cast, crew and media that this role was played by Leonard Byrne, even getting Freeman to wear a prosthetic mask to further game everyone involved.

Adam Rifkin (The Dark Backward) and Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs) met during the making of Detroit Rock City and quickly discovered how much they both loved drive-in movies. They planned on making a movie called Famous Monsters of Filmland that was to be based on the magazine and each segment would be about a different era.

The deal with the magazine — and a Gene Simmons-hosted MTV series — fell through. Years would go by before Rifkin and Sullivan teamed with directors Adam Green (Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (Mayhem) to make this movie.

The first story by Rifkin, “Wadzilla,” has great effects by The Chiodo Brothers and somehow has Eric Roberts as a character named General Bukkake. Ray Wise and Lin Shaye also appear, but the real draw is the giant sperm.

Tim Sullivan’s “I Was a Teenage Werebear” takes Grease, Twilight and every rebellious teenage movie and throws, well, homosexual werebears into the pot and cooks up all hot and steamy.

Adam Green directed “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein,” which is the kind of title that Jerry Gross would have delighted to have come up with. There’s also a short called “Deathication” which seems to just be out to upset viewers if they haven’t already been offended.

Joe Lynch’s “Zom-B-Movie” is the open and close of the movie. There’s one more night for the drive-in before zombies attack and Richard Riele dispatches them while saying catchphrase after phrase.

I wanted to like this more than I did, but as we all know, my sense of humor cannot and will not see Troma-ish films as funny nor fun.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Alright, I’m fascinated by these Full Moon remix affairs. This one tries to cash in on the zombie trend — no shame there — but at least one of the films is actually pretty well-known and you’d think it would sell more copies than just changing the name. But hey — I don’t run the house that puppets built.

That well-known movie is The Dead Hate the Living! but here it’s called “Zombie Apocalypse.” This movie was a film I’d see all the time back in the magical days of the Kennywood Hollywood Video, a place that I dream of today, a gigantic paradise filled with tons of movies. Written and directed by Dave Parker, it’s the story of a movie crew being trapped inside a real zombie outbreak. The fact that the crazy doctor is named Eibon should give you an idea that this movie was made for fans of zombie movies by fans of zombie movies.

“Undead Sentence” is Prison of the Dead, which was directed by Victoria Sloane…err…Dave DeCoteau. I recognize you anywhere, my friend. I feel as if I’ve seen the plot to this before — rich kid invites his friends to a funeral for himself but its all a ruse — but hey, Full Moon is a LEED-certified organization. The prison below the funeral home was known as Blood Prison, built by Puritan extremists specifically for the torture and execution of witches and heretics. Can you imagine how scary it would be if the executioners came back to life? And what if this also appeared on the Horrific remix DVD meaning that I watched the same movie three times in one week?

“Shallow Graves” was released in full-length form as Hell Asylum. The reality show Chill Challenge has charged five models with surviving for one night in an abandoned building if they want to win a million dollars. Hey — Brink Stevens and Joe Estevez are in this and it wasn’t Prison of the Dead 2 despite having that title while it was being filmed.

Look at that baby stroller on the cover of this. Are you scared yet?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Man, it’s a real letdown learning that other than the first Fangoria Tom Savini documentary that everything that Starlog and Fangoria video is absolutely horrible.

Take this Damon Santostefano-directed* piece of garbage. Santosefano also directed the classic Scream Greats, Vol. 1 “Tom Savini, Master of Horror Effects” and inversely in no way classic Scream Greats, Vol. 2 “Satanism and Witchcraft.” He also directed Severed Ties, which has Johnny Legend, Oliver Reed, Garreyy Morris and Elke Sommer in the cast, so I have to find that one.

At least this movie is only an hour long, even if the Alien comedy segment feels like it goes on forever. It was also known as Cinemagic, which does not make it any better than it is.

*Actually, he only directed the beyond bad film critic wraparound. The other directors were Jeffrey Baker for “Illegal Alien, Frank Kerr for “Nightfright,” Jonathan Mostow making “Dr. Dobermind” and Richard Taylor for “The Thing in the Basement.” Of these directors, Mostow has had the most success, directing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Surrogates.

Baby Born With Full Beard! BBQ Of The Dead! Killer Vacuum Destroys Town! Tabloid promises to bring the good old days of the black and white National Enquirer — and then the Weekly World News, which was printed on the old black and white press when the more socially redeemable Enquirer went full color — to life*.

This was directed by Glen Coburn (Blood Suckers from Outer Space), Matt Devil (Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants) and Bret McCormick (his The Abomination is one of the most incredibly upsetting in the best way movies I’ve seen).

Despite this having an awesome concept, the execution fails. When your movie starts with aliens attacking an aerobics class and it leads to yawns instead of excitement, you really are struggling. The stories aren’t even really stories, just scenes jammed together. A gun battle between rednecks leads to the birth of the bearded baby. Zombies have a cookout. And a tornado comes out of a vacuum. Otherwise, reporters discuss how they get these stories.

A tabloid horror anthology is a great idea. This isn’t it.

And yes, that is Lisa Loeb in the third story.

*The tabloid also inspired David Byrne’s True Stories.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directors Arielle Cimino and Jeff Ryan, working from a script by Jonathan T. Coleman and Christopher O’Connell, have put together an interesting story: Paige [Geena Santiago, who was in the movie YouthMin from the same creative team) is an actress playing one last role in her hometown of Salem. It’s in a local historical play about the Salem Witch Trials and the only audience is made up of drunk tourists.

During one of the re-enactments, a man dies and the crowd believes that Paige has cursed them. Holy man Samuel Hall (Matt Perusse) gets the crowd enraged and ready to enact their own modern witch trial as our heroine goes on the run.

I loved how this movie takes the, well, mass hysteria that we’ve been living under the past several years and puts it into the context of a horror movie. Everything here — well, maybe not the curse — feels like it could happen. One example is when Paige tries to stop the growing unrest with a Facebook post that makes things get exponentially worse.

Best of all, it’s a quick and quirky sixty-six minutes. It doesn’t have a big budget yet the cast tries hard and the story — which is the important part when you think about it — is well-told.

You can watch Mass Hysteria on Shudder.