Raja, like his entire family, is a devotee of Lord Hanuman, which explains the H on his costume. When he was a child, his father Raghunath Rao wanted to offer the family’s prized jewels during Hanuman Jayanthi. Three thieves steal them and kill Raja’s mother and father, orphaning the family. Raja prays to Lord Hanuman for a way to achieve revenge and is gives him superhuman powers. He receives no answer, so he stabs himself in the stomach and bleeds all over the statue of the deity, which finally brings him the answer he seeks.

Over the years, Raja gets his revenge, but the hard part comes when his sister Lakshmi becomes pregnant to Mohan, the son of Maharajm who is the third thief, a man who even hires a sorceress to destroy the hero.

So yes — absolutely nothing like Superman.

This movie also has attack elephants. And sumos. And twenty karate fighters.

A Superman that kills for revenge sounds like something that Zack Snyder sails the seas of mayonnaise to, but this movie is definitely more entertaining than anything he’s ever done and cost less than an hour of his craft services.

Like seriously, Superman fights a demon and then straight up snaps the bad guy’s neck.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Puneet Issar is the man known as both Shekhar and Superman in this 1987 B. Gupta-directed remix remake ripoff of 1978’s Superman. He’s sent to Earth by his Kryptonian father Jor-El (Dharmendra) and as the planet explodes, the footage from Richard Donner’s film, as well as the John Williams score, is used.

After landing in India, Shekhar has the same upbringing as Clark Kent, except that he seems to really enjoy the song “Beat It.” He then grows up, goes to college and falls for Gita, who is also being pretty much stalked by K. K. Verma (Shakti Kapoor), so we have our Lois and Lex. After his father has a heart attack, Shekhar finds a tube in the rocket that brought him to Earth and becomes Superman, all while Gita finds work both in a hostel and at the Daily Times. Shekhar joins her and they both learn that Verma is now a criminal mastermind, complete with an army of strong women.

This is a Superman that has telekinesis — that he uses to feed orphans with dancing food — and a Lex Luthor that frequently has dancing girls show up and perform musical numbers for his pleasure.

Of course, Superman flies around the world just like the Hollywood film and yes, it’s the exact same footage. What a magical world we live in.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Roland Bennett (Douglas Epps) is like an unholy combination of Howard Stern and Art Bell, known for unleashing his venom on callers and staying up all night long which brings out the paranormal nuts. Before his show even goes on the air, his soon-to-be ex-wife Claire (Jane Plumberg) tries to get him to sign divorce papers, the big boss is listening in due to complaints and numerous calls from The Outsider (Jack McCord) sound like real murders live on the air.

It’s going to be one weird night.

Directed and written by Todd Sheets (Dreaming Purple Neon, Clownado, Sorority Babes in the Dance-a-Thon of Death), Final Caller wastes little to no time as Roland, his producer Jessica (Rachel Lagen) and engineer Jason (Alexander Brotherton) discover that The Outsider isn’t just some prank talking about eight people every eight years on the eighth day of the eighth month. He’s really doing it and isn’t far away, either. After having his way with the detective (Antwoine Steele) the police send and the security guard (Dilynn Fawn Harvey) at the station, he makes his way to the studio.

There’s a lot of talking in this — Roland and The Outsider are nearly the same person, just one eviscerates callers on the air and the other kills women — and tons of up close and personal stabbing, slashing and bloodletting. Once the film moves into a stalk and slash within the radio station, it gets really intense and I honestly had no idea what would happen next, much less a real turn by one of the leads.

Nearly 40 years of making movies on a budget means that Sheets knows how to turn a three figure budget into a movie that looks much more expensive than that. This movie also has more gross-out gore than anything you’ll see for the rest of the year, delivering in a way that an old fashioned slasher should make you feel: it’s aberrant, mean spirited and makes you feel like you need to lie in the shower for some time afterward, unsure of what to do next. Or you know, watch it again.

Final Caller is available on digital and on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing.

Small Town Monsters (On the Trail of UFOs: Night Visitors, Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou, MOMO: The Missouri Monster) are back with a new documentary, American Werewolves, in which Seth Breedlove asks, “Do real werewolves exist? And what are dogmen?”

With nearly a dozen eyewitness accounts, the film allows these people the opportunity to share their encounters directly to us, the audience. From brief run-ins on rural country lanes to horrifying, face-to-face confrontations and the discovery of the shredded remains of a werewolf victim, each has a frightening story to share.

Every year, dozens of encounters with upright canids are reported in America. Better known as dogmen, some think it’s an unidentified species of animal, while others believe that this creature is something supernatural.

Thousands of people go missing in the United States each year and this film posits the hypothesis that a real werewolf — or dogman — may be behind it, including a woman abducted in Ohio and a man hiking in Alaska mutilated beyond what any predator would do.

I was really excited to learn that dogmen tend to sow outside Native American burial grounds as I live right next to the second-largest east of the Mississippi.

That said, I’m a big fan of everything that Small Town Monsters puts out and this release is no exception. Their films are always well made, have unique points of view and tell a great story. Often, they stand head and shoulders above basic cable offerings about the same subjects.

American Werewolves is available on major streaming platforms from 1091 Pictures, including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and FandangoNOW. You can learn more at the official Small Town Monsters site.

Directed and written by Jeremy M. Inman and a spin-off of his Avengers Grimm movie series, this movie finds Alice (Christina Licciardi, who plays the same role in Avengers Grimm: Time Wars) and her Looking Glass spy organization rounding up fairy tale heroes and villains like the Wicked Stepmother of Sleeping Beauty Carabosse (Fiona Rene), Piper (Isaac Reyes), Goldilocks (Piper Lindsay), Gelda the Queen of Hearts (Talia Davis), Bluebeard (Trae Ireland), the Big Bad Wolf (Joseph Harris), Hatter (Randall Yarbrough) and Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Joseph Moses) like Amanda Waller setting up convicts at Belll Reve.

The machinations of Rumpelstiltskin (Johnny Del Riaz) in the past movie — where he was played by Casper Van Dien — have allowed Death in a  ninja mask (Nick Principe) and his cult to run free on Earth. Kind of like, you know, Loki and Thanos somewhere else.

There are some good ideas here — Bluebeard uses his knives to kill women and trap them inside the blades which he calls his wives, the whole idea of a group of fantasy villains joining up, Carabosse being a cannibal witch — but the budget hurts this, as does the same warehouse I’ve seen in nearly every Asylum mockbuster.

I’d love to see them do a comic book of this, as drawings have no budget.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Indonesian superhero Gundala was influenced as well as the legend of Ki Ageng Selo, a powerful figure able to catch lightning with his bare hands. In the comics, Gundala is a scientist named Sancaka who is trying to create an anti-lightning serum. He’s so intent on his lab work that he forgets the birthday of his girlfriend Iris West — I mean Minarti — and they break up.

Sancaka gets so upset that he brings to run in the pouring rain and gets hit by a bolt of lightning that sends him to another reality where Emperor Kronz of the Lightning Kingdom gives him the power to shoot thunder from his hands and the ability to run quickly from King Typhoon of the Bayu Kingdom.

Created by Harya Suraminata, this movie was directed by Liliek Sudjio and finds Sancaka near-instantly electrocuted by that lightning bolt and meeting the very Crystar-looking Emperor Kronz and then battles a gang of drug dealers led by the gold claw-handed Ghazul (W.D. Mochtar).

Also: Ghazul drinks so much J&B that you’d think he was in a giallo.

Go into this knowing it has a very low budget but you’ll find something fun in the pre-MCU and way before CGI era of comic book films.

Today, Gundala is a part of Bumilangit Universe which is bringing back many Indonesian superheroes. There was a new Gundala movie in 2019 and films were planned for Godam, Tira and Patriot.

At one point, before the internet united the world and divided our country, each nation had its own take on superheroes, like Japan’s Supaidāman, Turkey’s 3 Dev Adam (there are so many to pick from in that country, to be honest) and Mexico’s La Mujer Murcielago.

Director Dario Russo and actor David Ashby made this as a short in college, then turned it into multiple episodes in which Italian Spiderman (Ashby as Franco Franchetti) proves to be the only man who can hold a reality-altering asteroid.

From a surf contest with Captain Maximum (Leombruno Tosca) to growing to a massive size to fight that villain, massacaring his henchmen and losing his mentor Professor Bernardi, all while stock footage crocodiles turn into men, penguins being summoned, mustache boomerangs and the non-appearance of a villain named Goblin run past you at superhuman speed.

It helps if you know way too much about ripoff remix remake films, but even if you don’t, this is still pretty great.

Russo and Ashby would go on to make Danger 5.

You can watch this on YouTube.