Alex (Manuel Melluso) works and pretty much lives in a room full of monitors which show the lives of many other people. He’s getting over the loss of his partner Alice (Alba Barbullushi) who has just left him, so in order to escape his despair, he creates a social network he calls the Denkraum. But instead of posting cute animal photos, memes and political diatribes, this online  meet-up is all about confronting what people fear.

The language of this film is distortion, both in audio and visual forms, as well as chat bubbles that drive the narrative. It’s a disorienting narrative that doesn’t look like any other movie that I’ve seen, which is a definite plus. This is definitely not a film that everyone will enjoy, as it pushes itself toward a surreal look and feel, but for those willing to get into it, it has some gorgeous visuals and vignettes as Alex looks into the world around him through those screens as the Denkraum seems to evolve into a self-aware network.

There’s also a religious cult that the movie gives glimpses of before letting them take over the story by the end, as well as end of the world conspiracies, murder and plenty of sexualized violence. It kind of feels like doomscrolling after the drugs kick in and finding yourself unable to stop.

Director and writer Luca Paris also made two shorts, The Stain and Vampires – They Never Sleep at Night. This is his first full-length movie.

Directed and written by Vittorio Schiraldi (who also wrote Watch Me When I Kill), this was based on a novel that Schiraldi wrote.

Stefano (Joshua Sinclair), the son of Don Angelino Ferrante (Arthur Kennedy) has been shot in the back by the brutal Gaspare Ardizzone (John Saxon) — who is the start of a more violent and ruthless breed of criminal — for refusing to sell him land. Ferrante sends for a killer from America hoping for revenge.

The death of Stefano leaves behind a widow, Mariuccia (Agostina Belli), who is both protected and impregnated by a bodyguard named Massimo (Pino Colizzi). Meanwhile, Ardizzone goes to America and starts wiping out the New York bosses too and Don Ferrante still refuses to put a hit on him. Will his family and way of life survive?

Pretty much The Godfather with a different cast and some subtle changes, Family Killer still boasts an amazing Saxon performance as a total psychopath.

William, a grieving detective (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), hunts down criminals who trade artificial humans on the black market. What would we call a cop like that? A blade runner? No matter — there’s also an underground resistance trying to sabotage the business of men hiring artificial humans to be their wives, just as William programs his companion Meredith (Elena Kampouris from My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2; I watched both of these movies in the same week, which gave me some level of meta whiplash) to take the place of his dead wife.

Kampouris is amazing in this as she really appears to be a robotic being; I don’t mean that as her acting is wooden. Instead, her performance gives us a true window into what robotic companions — alerting Dr. Anton LaVey from the world beyond — will be like in our tomorrow. There’s an astounding scene where she recites the manual to William, as he adjusts her command settings, intimacy level and sexual desire percentage before making love to her. It sets up how alien this coupling is.

Director and writer James Bird has some good ideas here, but instead of exploring the relationship between a widow and the mechanic woman who replaces his lost bride, this goes into a different place where AI creations are rising up against their male masters. Isn’t it better that these men are leaving women alone and basically left to their own devices?

I did love the scene where Meredith attempts some self-love and gets an access denied message that stops her. More of that thinking would have taken this film to the level it deserves to be.

Wifelike is playing in select theaters and available on digital.

Xiangang xiao jiao fu was released in the U.S. by Cannon as The Godfather Squad.

Cops and Interpol agents are being killed all over the world by the Carrol crime family. Wang Liu  (Bruce Leung) saves one of them in Hong Kong and gets targeted by the Carrols, who decide to make a kung fu movie in Italy and cast Wang Liu in what they hope is a snuff film.

The best part of this movie? Gordon Mitchell showing up as Carrol’s adopted son Duke, a man who still has his German army uniform. It’s wild seeing someone I knew from giallo and westerns fighting in a kung fu movie.

Shirley Corrigan (The Crimes of the Black Cat, Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf) shows up, as does Maria D’Incoronato (Concorde Affaire ’79).

Big exploitation points for having the Pope appear by way of shooting him outside of a Vatican office and then using stock footage and editing to get him into the film. Also: someone gets kicked into a fireplace and I am all for that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Inspector Silva (Stanley Baker, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin) is a former private eye and now a surveyor and guard for the interests of a diamond company  Vista Alegra, Venezuela. This is a town where diamonds come right out of the mud. It’s also where French singer Popsy Pop (Claudia Cardinale, Once Upon a Time in the West) has come — on tour? on vacation? why does she travel with a giant Alice In Wonderland book and doll? — along with gangsters led by Marcou (Henri Charrière, the writer of Papillon, the story of his time in a penal colony and his later escape). They want to steal at least $2 million dollars of diamonds.

The heist goes down and only Popsy escapes. The men — except for Marcou — are all killed, with Silva making a deal with the elder criminal: He will help the detective search for Popsy and the diamonds. In exchange, Marcou is to get Popsy, whom he is in love with and he will receive 15 percent of the diamonds.

The two men soon realize that Popsy is able to get into their heads and hearts, which makes her dangerous. Who will get the diamonds? More to the point, who gets the girl?

Directed and written by Jean Vautrin (along with J.B. Beellsolell), this was also released as The 21 Carat Snatch.

On D-Day, a mixed group of forced labourers being held by German forces take shelter from the bombardment inside a bunker which gets blocked in by a bombing run. They have enough food to last for years and it turns out that they’re trapped there for the rest of their lives, as they wait and wait for help that never comes.

Based on Le Blockhaus by Jean-Paul Clébert, this was directed by Clive Rees, who co-wrote the script with John Gould. That book was based on a true story, as in 1951, two German soldiers claimed to have been trapped for six years in an underground storehouse in Babie Doły, Poland. They died within days of being rescued.

Aufret (Peter Vaughan), their leader in the world above, before they were trapped in this storehouse and inside the darkness, loses his power over the men and isolates himself while the others, like Visconti (Charles Aznavour) and Grabinski (Jeremy Kemp) try to play games and keep their spirits up. By the end, the survivors dwindle — Rouquet (Peter Sellers) and Lund  (Per Oscarsson) are the others — and even their matches and candles have started to run out. All that remains is a life trapped in a small space and no light will find them again.

This is a rough movie — not a bad one, but a bleak entry — and also one that should be discussed more.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The UK movie Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman was released in the U.S. by Cannon as Naughty Wives, which is definitely a dirtier if not better label for this.

David Clyde (Brendan Price, who was also in the British sex comedy The Amorous Milkman) gets a job as a vacuum salesman and soon finds that he’s being chased by women.

Director Wolf Rilla is best known for Village of the Damned while writers Joseph McGrath shot some of the first music videos with The Beatles and Denis Norden wrote a lot for David Frost.

This is pretty much true to form for most British sex comedies — a funny line here and there, some nudity there. Today it seems quaint but I’m sure in 1973 pulses raced.

Man zhou ren was released as The Godfathers of Hong Kong in the U.S. by Cannon.

According to the Lost Media Wiki, the Cannon English dub of the film is just about lost. The only known home video release with English audio was a heavily abridged 8mm print release by Ken Films. It’s on YouTube courtesy of Kerrie O’Keefe.

Kin Jin Pai plays a detective and wanderer called Man Tshu who comes into a town and challenges the crime family that owns it, burning their opium and taking away one of their prostitute wives as his love interest.

It was directed by Katy Chin Shu-mei — her only film and it’s rare to see a Hong Kong martial arts movie from a woman — and a young John Woo was the assistant director.

The end of this film gets incredibly intense and quite violent, which is why Cannon supposedly picked it up.

You can watch this on YouTube.