Peter Strickland — who directed and wrote this film — also made In Fabric and Berberian Sound Studio, two movies that felt like they were not of our time. This movie isn’t just in the world of Jess Franco; it was nearly a remake of the Spanish director’s Lorna the Exorcist.

The difference is that where Franco would make smut and say — not all the time, but enough — that it had political or literary reasons beyond just flesh, this is a movie that cloaks itself in the language of exploitation but is a romantic story about two people trying to remain in love when the opposites that attract them start to feel like they could all be too much.

Strickland even discussed the films that inspired this: Les Biches, Belle de Jour, Fox and His Friends, Marta, The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant (which also inspired the poster for director Kevin Kopacka’s Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes), Terry and June, Mano Destra, The Image, The Lickerish Quartet, All Ladies Do It, Venus In Furs, A Virgin Among the Living Dead and Lorna the Exorcist. He referred to Franco’s “very dynamic, very unique beautiful films” and “hypnotic trance,” which is so much of the reason why I keep watching his movies.

In The Duke of Burgundy, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is the teacher of Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) — the class is lepidopterology, the study of butterflies and moths — and while Evelyn is the maid in her non-classroom hours, she is really the submissive to Cynthia’s dominant side. But the truth is that Evelyn is always topping from the bottom.

The couple re-enacts the same scenes day in, day out — BDSM is nothing if not ritual —  with Evelyn scripting Cynthia’s role to her satisfaction. Evelyn gets off on their play; Cynthia worries non-stop and keeps worrying that she’s screwing everything up.

At night, Evelyn asks Cynthia to lock her in a trunk as mock punishment, which ends up bothering Cynthia in two ways: the physical separation upsets her and it reminds her of her age, as she hurts her back moving the heavy trunk with her lover inside it.

On Cynthia’s birthday, Evelyn takes her displeasure out on her by making her bake her own cake, then she eats it while rubbing her feet all over her younger submissives face, not even stopping at their safe word. This is when the true nature of a bad relationship reveals itself in BDSM; Fifty Shades of Grey was not a rough lover. It was a man taking advantage of trust, which is even worse in the context of a master-slave relationship. Again — the very nature of who is in charge in these relationships can be debated.

Cynthia begins paying attention to other teachers and Evelyn becomes depressed. It’s only when they attempt real communication that any progress seems made, even if the film ends with both playing the same roles and the same ritual and the same games over again.

Between the in and out of focus, the lighting, the colors and the way the film takes the feel of the sexual — without ever becoming base and crass — this film feels like Franco, except that it probably cost more to make than every film from Jess’ last two decades of filmmaking put together. I do love that the strange neighbor woman is named Lorna and played by Monica Swinn, who was in twenty of Franco’s movies including Shining Sex, Barbed Wire Dolls and Female Vampire.

What does the title mean? The Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) butterfly was given that name for reasons unknown, or as Matthew Oates said in his book In Pursuit of Butterflies: A Fifty-Year Affair, any reasoning being lost in the mists of entomological antiquity.” That bit of insect intrigue makes sense seeing as how this is a movie that has the Featured Insects in Order of Appearance in the end credits.

A movie with no men, two women in love yet struggling and one that is actually sexy without being clinical, The Duke of Burgundy is a film that more need to see.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Janna (Cynthia Rothrock) sustains a head injury by falling off a roof after masked men kill her sister and nephew. This ends up not only putting her in the hospital, but it also gives her psychic powers — yes! — and also has her still making one-liners and enjoying two very long lovemaking scenes — hey look out for No Retreat, No Surrender‘s Kurt McKinney rocking some briefs — despite the gravity of her situation.

Also: Brad Dourif, Mako, Tony Lo Bianco and Walter Koenig — who Rothrock claimed “terrorized the set while filming” and was “belligerent toward director Paul Maslak and ranted often about how unprofessional Maslak supposedly was” — are in this!

Also also: Robert Easter and Neva Friedenn, who wrote Supervan and The Toolbox Murders, were the writers of this script.

Janna is usually an expert witness in murder cases, but now she finds herself fighting for the justice her family deserves in court and then on the streets. She also discovers that even if she can read someone by touch, there’s no way that she can use that in court.

I have no idea why in a movie where Rothrock deals with the five stages of grief there’s also a fight scene punctuated by boing sound effects that would not be out of place in a nudie cutey or Italian sex comedy.

This movie is ridiculous in the way that only a 90s direct to video movie can be, which means that it is special and should be treasured. I also love how Rothrock is a strong, muscular and capable woman not made to look like a shrew; instead, she’s the hero at the center of all of this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Known as Zong heng tian xia, this was directed by Godfrey Ho and written by one and done screenwriter Herb Borkland. It stars Cynthia Rothrock as FBI agent Tracy Pride, who like many a Rothrock character is hunting an evil banker. She’s also backed up by her sister Joyce (Donna Jason, who was also the film’s assistant director) and their CIA agent father John (Leo Rocca).

It also has a guy named Jake (Chuck Jeffreys) who is supposed to be a Bevery Hills Cop-era Eddie Murphy.

The banker is Jason Slade (John Miller), a banker so evil that he blows off a prayer breakfast with Ronald Reagan.

The sisters get the name of the movie into their dialogue, as Tracy says to Joyce, “I chase honor, you chase glory.” How this wasn’t called Pride and Glory makes no sense.

More movies need to have their title said in the movie because I celebrate it every single time that it happens.

I’m just amazed that Godfrey Ho made an entire movie without taking footage from another movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Created by a group of Chicago theatre artists locked out of their livelihoods by the pandemic, Fresh Hell was a movie I thought I’d struggle through. No offense to directors Ryan Imhoff (who also wrote the script and plays The Stranger) and Matt Neal, but I’m on Microsoft Teams all day for work and struggle to get through up to ten virtual meetings a day. Could I handle one in my non-work free time?

Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley), James (Randolph Thompson), Kara (Christine Vrem-Ydstie), Cynthia (Crystal Kim), Brian (Tyler Owen Parsons), Scott (Will Mobley), Todd (Rob Fagin) and Laura (Christina Reis) all gather for a video chat and by the end, The Stranger appears in place of their friend Laura. Their call ends with him knowing too much about them, hints that Laura is dead and the sinister man slicing his own cock off and showing the bloody wound left behind.

This is where the film changed and brought me in. Grace lost her sister in the early days of COVID-19 and while everyone else thinks Laura’s death is some kind of joke, she worries that what they’ve seen may be real. That’s when The Stranger starts coming for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Scott has become an alt-right firebrand, human puppies show up in the background of the others when Grace tries to warn them and then the finale is an on-stage talk show with the surviving characters and The Stranger, which again, is unexpected.

I’m glad I stuck with this movie. I was honestly expecting it to be background noise, but it becomes more deranged, unsettled and surprising as it goes on. And isn’t that what we want from movies these days? Trust me: stick around for that first videochat and then buckle up.

When traveling across the Scottish Highlands, one-time friends Jess (Michaela Longden) and Andrea (Emma O’Hara) reconnect before they get separated after a night at a pub and a meet-up with Nate (director Nathan Shepka) and Tommy (Craig McEwan). Feeling something is off, she decides to go on ahead, but then realizes that she needs to go back for her friend. When she finds the corpse of Tommy and another girl — and no Andrea — she may be in even bigger trouble herself in this film from director Nathan Shepka and screenwriter Tom Joliffe.

If you liked And Soon the Darkness, you have an idea of what to expect here. There are some interesting twists and turns; nobody should be trusted. This movie is another example why I never look up old high school friends and tend to stay hidden deep inside my movie cave.

This is a movie that uses its low budget effectively and knows when to switch gears and really grab you. I had some fun with it. Here’s hoping you do the same.

Detective Sean Thompson is no longer Chad McQueen, now he’s Jeff Wincott, but Billie Blake is still Cynthia Rothrock and that’s the whole reason why I’m watching this.

This time, they’re on the case of Club Syntax where the elite get favors from beautiful women while being protected by numerous martial arts masters who are all battling to determine which fighting group rules the world of combat. Well, they eventually are, but their team is briefly split up while Thompson moves up to detective and gets a new boss, Captain Krantz (Billy Drago).

I mean, it’s pretty much what you want it to be. A fight club gets infiltrated by Wincott and Rothrock; also she dresses up as a hot dog vendor and then becomes a bartender inside that nefarious club.

Directed by Kurt Anderson with a script by Richard Brandes and exploitation producer master Pierre David, this movie is like ordering a hamburger. You know exactly what it is, but you take that first bite and it’s so rewarding and you think — this is why I ordered this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sean Thompson (Chad McQueen) and Billie Blake (Cynthia Rothrock) have come up against drug runner and car smuggler Dalton Rhodes (David Carradine), who may also be killing all of his competition with his deadly kung fu death touch known as dim-mak. Complicating matters? Sean’s brother Michael (Andy McCutcheon) is working for Rhodes.

Director Steve Dalton was on second unit for Invasion U.S.A., The Midnight Hour, The Goonies and I, Madman before directing ten Billy Joel videos. Richard Brandes, who wrote this, also wrote Party Line so I’m instantly a fan of whatever he chooses to make.

Rhodes has some memorable associates and criminal contemporaries like Professor Toru Tanaka, John Fujioka (Shinyuki from American Ninja), Tony Longo (who teamed with the Undertaker in Suburban Commando) and Vincent Craig Dupree (the boxing Julius from Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.

It also has Chad McQueen undercover as a Domino’s driver, so it has that going for it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Kris Fairchild (Cynthia Rothrock) and Preston Michaels (Richard Norton) are back together. Kris is now a federal agent instead of a teacher and during her very first assignment, she learns that her contact in Jakarta has been killed by Thor (Ron Vreeken). Meanwhile, Preston is tending bar, destroying bad customers and training Tommy Andrews (Patrick Muldoon), a rich kid whose father’s bank is being investigated by Kris. So that means that our leads meet at a party and have to pretend they don’t know each other.

It turns out that Tommy’s dad is laundering money for a boss named Buntao (Frans Tumbuan) and that’s why he’s constantly in danger. There’s also a new boss named Dazzo to deal with.

This was directed by Guy Norris, who did stunts for Road Warrior, Dead End Drive-In, The Blood of Heroes and so many other movies. He’s still doing stunt work on movies like Three Thousand Years of Longing and Mad Max: Fury Road.

This movie has a twist on the level of the first movie’s revelation that final boss Conrad Drago was Kris’ brother. I didn’t spoil that when I wrote about that film and I refuse to spoil what happens here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Cynthia Rothrock holds seven black belts and sashes in Tang Soo Do, Taekwondo, Eagle Claw), Wushu, Northern Shaolin, Ng Ying Kungfu and Pai Lum White Dragon style Kung Fu. She is also an 8th degree black beltr in Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan and in her first 38 tournaments, often competing against men, she took first place in forms 32 times and first place in weapons 12 times.

So beyond being in some pretty fun films, there’s a good chance she can kick your head in.

Richard Norton has studied Judo, Karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, Thai boxing and several Japanese weapons systems, which he worked with Bob Jones to synthesize into a hybrid martial art called Zen Do Kai. He’s also a 5th-Degree Shihan rank Black Belt in Goju Ryu, 8th-Degree Masters rank in Chuck Norris’ Chun Kuk Do, a 5th-Degree Black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and a 10th-degree Black Belt in Zen Do Kai Karate.

So beyond fighting Chuck Norris at the end of The Octagon and acting as his stunt coordinator for the series Walker, Texas Ranger, there’s a good chance he can also kick your head in.

This was not the first time the Rothrock and Norton team had come together, as they appeared in Magic Crystal, Lady Dragon and China O’Brien.

Kris Fairfield (Rothrock) is a teacher who has no problem fighting a gang al by herself when all she wanted to do was use the ATM. Preston Michaels (Norton) is an Australian cop and vacationing bodyguard for the band Skab Faktory who stops a mugging and ends up not only getting arrested, but getting screamed at about jurisdiction by LAPD Captain Murdock (Catherine Bach!).

Meanwhile, music conniseur and industrialist Conrad Drago (Brian Thompson) and his business partner Rita Carrion (Terri Treas, who was in the Alien Nation TV movies) are up to no good and for some reason, come to a martial arts seminar given by Fairfield. As she spars with Michaels, one of her students named Paris Armstrong (Patrick Malone) follow Drago and Carrion to an alley and catch them not only moving weight but also end up killing one of the dirty cops who arrested Michaels just hours ago. He gives away is position and the chase is on.

Paris gets beaten into near-oblivion while Michaels gets blamed for multiple crimes and ony Fairfield can exonerate him. Well, one hopes, but when the police is this corrupt who can say, you know? There’s also a female-centric gang led by Hanna the Hun (Alex Datcher) who go from forcing our leads to fight to being part of their team against Drago and then they decorate their headquarters before the big battle, which I can respect.

Director and writer Terence H. Winkless also made Bloodfist and wrote the script to The Howling. This has no werewoves, but it’s still pretty good.

Directed by Daniel Benedict (Bunni), who co-wrote the script with Casi Clark (they also worked on a short called Fall of Grayskull), The Bloody Man is an attempt to bring back the warm and gushy feelings of 80s horror. It stars Tuesday Knight (Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) and Lisa Wilcox (Alice Johnson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) to help you make that connection.

After the death of his mother, Sam (David Daniel) is having issues with his family, his friends, the bullies at his school, and most of all, the horrific Bloody Man, the comic book character that sustains him through bullying. In fact, his mother (Wilcox) gave him a Bloody Man action figure the very day she died in a car accident.

He also has to deal with Kim (Knight), his new stepmother, who he believes is slowly becoming possessed by his comic book antihero, an event that brings together his fractured family.

Between lengthy comic book animatics and plotting that keeps reminding us that Sam is being bullied at home and in school more than several times, the film drags at times. The closing — where the Bloody Man begins to imitate others — has some good tension, but it takes around two hours (!) to get there. That said, it’s fun seeing all the 80s toys and AEW/ROH wrestler Brian Cage as a copyright skirting He-Man character in a brief cameo (probably pulled from the aforementioned Fall of Grayskull short).

The Hold Steady may have sung, “I’ve survived the 80’s one time already and I don’t recall it all that fondly,” but it seems that so many films want to live in the past — trust me, I get it, slashers after 1983 are really hard for me to hold in any regard — versus moving toward the future. And the more you make a teen horror film with synth and blue/red gel lighting — well, at least on the poster — the more you’re going to get compared to Stranger Things than The Monster Squad.

That said — I did like The Lost Boys reference by calling the brothers Sam and Michael. With some pruning toward how much is in here, this would be a fine feature. As it is now, it’s not bad, but it does drag a bit before redeeming itself with a fun conclusion.

The Bloody Man is available on digital and VOD platforms now with a DVD release coming later in the year from Wild Eye.