Before Lucio Fulci was the Godfather of Gore, he was a director known for comedy. This 1964 film is all about the mania — the title translates as The Maniacs — that men and women exude every day, told in short skits, such as “The Elaboration,” in which a hearse driver fixes up his vehicle so he can get his passengers to the grave in less time and “Sport,” in which a boss loses so many bets that he must sell his wife to his co-workers.

The film finds time to make fun of protesters, housewives convinced their husbands are cheating, writers, strip club patrons, government agents and more. Its comedy doesn’t really translate so many years later, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that Fulci was considered a dependable comedy director.

In addition to the Morricone soundtrack, Fulci cast some of the 60s most gorgeous actresses, foremost amongst them Barbara Steele. Also on hand are Gaia Germani (Hercules In the Haunted World), Ingrid Schoeller (who was also in Fulci’s Oh! Those Most Secret Agents), Lisa Gastoni (The War of the Planets), Dominique Boschero (Who Saw Her Die?), Margaret Lee (Venus In Furs), Mary Arden (Blood and Black Lace) and Rada Rassimov (The Cat o’ Nine Tails).

Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Jackson (Johnathon Schaech) live in New York City, but after a trip to visit his mother Martha (Jessica Lange) a series of events cause them to move back to the family farm.

Did Martha messing with Helen’s contraceptives cause her to get pregnant? And why would Martha’s mother-in-law Alice warned Helen about her? And how did that man break into the house, nearly assault Helen and slice her stomach without killing her unborn child?

Martha soon shows up and says that she wants to sell the farm and Helen decides that they should move back to her husband’s home and help. For his part. Jackson mentions that he has some issues, as he may have pushed his father down the steps to his death and that her dad was having an affair with Robin Hayes.

If your marriage is getting like this, get out.

Also, why did Jackson never investigate his father’s death? Why did he come to his mom’s in the middle of the night on a planned trip and not wake her up when they got there? Why does Lange never not have a glass of wine and a cigarette?

This film sat on the shelf for some time, as it was recut after bad screenings. The original version cut had a climatic fight between the two ladies with one dying. I leave it up to you if all the work to fix this movie was worth it.

Jonathan Darby has only directed one short since this movie. He made the kind of movie that the person you are dating would find at Blockbuster, hold up and say, “I love this movie” and you wonder where your life has gone wrong and why you’re in a relationship with this person.

Thana (Zoë Tamerlis, who also wrote director Abe Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, is a mute seamstress working in New York City’s Garment District.

After she’s assaulted twice — once at gunpoint in an alley by a masked man and then again in her own apartment by a burglar — Thana lives up to her name, which is inspired by Thanatos the Greek god of death. She attacks the second man with a glass red apple and then beats him to death with an iron and leaves him in her tub. After dealing with her horrible work situation, she cuts her rapist apart and dumps him all over the city.

She keeps the man’s gun and soon uses it on another man who corners her, then runs up her steps and throws up in an echo of Paul Kersey’s first night of vigilantism in Death Wish.

Soon, she’s a literal Angel of Vengeance, which was the film’s other title. She targets a series of men who have treated women wrong and even causes one of them to kill himself when her gun jams. Finally, her vengeance reaches the point where she unleashes her full fury on her horrible boss and every man who attends her party as she whirls around, full action heroine, repeatedly shooting everyone while dressed as a nun.

Ms. 45 is better regarded than I Spit On Your Grave, perhaps because it doesn’t dwell in its rape scenes or have them take up much of the movie’s running time. Or maybe, just maybe, because it’s a much better movie.

Part of the same cinematic universe as The 18 Bronzemen and Return of the 18 Bronzemen, The Blazing Temple finds the temple, well, burning. Set ablaze by Emperor Yong Zheng, the 106 surviving Shaolin make a vow to enter the imperial palace and get their revenge.

Despite the fact that General Kim is firing cannons into the temple, the same rules apply: no one can leave unless they face the 18 Bronzemen. One abbott realizes that he’s dooming his students, so he opens another way to escape and gives abbot gives the 18 styles of kung fu to Siu (Carter Wong), then dies.

The burning of the temple is often discussed in these movies but now you get to see it. While not the best martial arts movie I’ve seen, Joseph Kuo is a fine director and this is worth watching to see Wong in a lead role.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and co-written — with Bill Condon and Walter Halsey Davis — by Michael Laughlin, Strange Invaders was to be the second part of a trilogy that started with Strange Behavior AKA Dead Kids. The third film was going to be The Adventures of Philip Strange, a World War II spy adventure mixed with science fiction.

1958: Centerville, Illinois (shot on location!) is invaded by aliens, transforming humans into blue orbs and taking over their bodies.

1983: College lecturer Charles Bigelow (Paul Le Mat) learns that his ex-wife Margaret Newman (Diana Scarwid, Mommie Dearest) has disappeared after last being seen in Centerfield. Along with journalist Betty Walker (Nancy Allen), he heads to the town to find her and protect their daughter Betty Walker (Lulu Sybert, who was the daughter of production designer Richard Sylbert and writer Susanna Moore, who left Sybert for Laughlin), a half-human, half-alien being that the aliens want to bring back home.

Along with June Lockhart and Mark Goddard from Lost in Space (and Kenneth Tobey from The Thing, Strange Invaders also has Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Wallace Shawn, Fiona Lewis (who was also in Strange Behavior ), Bobby “Borris” Pickett (the maker of “Monster Mash”) and Dey Young (Kate Rambeau from Rock ‘n Roll High School).

Strange Invaders is a movie that tries to remind audiences of the Cold War science fiction of the 1950s. Audiences weren’t really all that into it — I mean, even The Thing struggled — but it remains a movie I watch every few months and always enjoy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Remember when Leelee Sobieski read that 9/11 poem on The Tonight Show? Well, this movie has also been claimed as a victim of that attack, as its box office wasn’t what was expected, so everyone instantly used that date as a scapegoat — not just Mariah Carey, who for years has used it to defend the bombing of Glitter.

Ruby Baker (Sobieski) and her brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan) have become orphans and placed in the care of their former neighbors, Dr. Erin Glass (Diane Lane) and Terry Glass (Stellan Skarsgård). For Rhett, it works out pretty well, because he can play video games all night. But for Ruby, it means watching Dr. Glass shoot up and Mr. Glass continually insinuate that they’re all alone if you know what I mean.

The estate and trust fund lawyer Alvin Begleiter (Bruce Dern) is called in, but even a social worker is fooled. Meanwhile, Terry is paying off loan sharks with the kids’ inheritance instead of putting them through private school. And for some reason, Ruby is still dumb enough to allow him to write one of her papers, which he plagiarizes because she has no idea what gaslighting or being a junior quasi-giallo heroine entails.

Things get worse — Dr. Glass fatally overdoses, the loan sharks come to get their money or kill everyone, Chris Noth shows up — and Rita Wilson refused to even be credited for being in it. Director Daniel Sackheim produced and directed four episodes of the third season of True Detective, as well as plenty of other TV shows, so he’s recovered nicely. Writer Wesley Strick also wrote Wolf, The Saint, Doom, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Final Analysis, yet people allowed him to keep writing movies. Maybe it’s because he also wrote Arachnophobia and Cape Fear, right?

Perhaps most importantly, the sequel — Glass House: The Good Mother — has none of the actors or characters from this movie or even the house.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When this played a triple bill with Curse of the Living Dead (Kill, Baby, Kill!) and Revenge of the Living Dead (The Murder Clinic), anyone upset by these three films was offered free psychiatric care. Amando de Ossorio did more than just create the Blind Dead and direct The Loreley’s Grasp. He cared about your mental health.

Sylvia (Anita Ekberg, perfect) learns that she’s now a countess and has inherited a castle, even if the locals are horrified by the very mention of its name. Yet things get strange when she arrives, as both her uncle Count Walbrooke (Julián Ugarte) and the maid Blinka (Adriana Ambesi) claim to be vampires. There’s also some non-consensual whipping.

The entire family is cursed and Sylvia must remain at the castle — she’s the reincarnation of the witch Malenka — and she must stay unmarried or the curse will get worse. Her fiancee still comes to save her and stabs the count in the heart. If you saw it in Spain, it’s all a hoax but the bad guy dies anyway. In other countries, there’s an ending where he really was a vampire. I can hear Americans saying, “If I’m gonna come see Fangs of the Vampire, there better be vampires. Them Spaniards already fooled me with Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, a movie that had no Frankensteins in it!”

Extracted from the Secret Police Archives of a European Capital is a long title for a movie, so let’s just go with Tragic Ceremony.

After sailing all day, Jane (Camille Keaton), Bill (Tony Isbert), Joe (Máximo Valverde) and Fred (Giovanni Petrucci) have run out of gas somewhere near that old Frankenstein place — no, but seriously, somewhere in England — and end up at the mansion of Lord and Lady Alexander (Luigi Pistilli, never to be trusted, and Luciana Paluzzi from A Black Veil for Lisa and The Green Slime) and are invited to stay.

That night, Jane interrupts the Satanic ceremony in the basement and gets saved by Joe, who stabbed Lady Alexander and the cultists all kill one another. This gets reported on the news like a Manson Family copycat murder and the evidence points to the four of them as the ones who did it.

Then, the movie shifts into slasher mode, as perhaps that’s not Jane at all. Perhaps.

Directed by Riccardo Freda (The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire) — maybe, Fillipo Walter Ratti has also been credited with some directing — and written by Mario Bianchi (he also wrote another movie that Freda directed, The Murder Secret).

Vinegar Syndrome included this movie in the box set Camille Keaton In Italy along with Madelaine and Sex of the Witch.