Monthly Archives: October 2022

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE 10: The Pink Chiquitas (1987)

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10. A Horror Film Scored by Paul Zaza.

Frank Stallone as Tony Mareda Jr., a former Olympic athelete and now a detective who fights with the mob the whole way to a drive-in located in Beamsville that soon has a meteor crash down and transform all of the women in sex-obsessed maniacs. Soon, Tony and news anchor Bruce Pirrie are trying to save the men of the town from Mary Anne Kowalski (Elizabeth Edwards) and her literal army of women. And their pink tank, too.

The meteor has the voice of Earth Kitt. Along with Stallone, she performs the Paul Zaza-written songs.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Don’t I need sleep?

This is the only full-length movie that Tony Currie directed and wrote, but he also worked on sound for Prom Night, Naked Lunch and Eastern Promises.

But seriously, this movie doesn’t have much to say. I was hoping that this would be some kind of secret classic — I mean, look at the poster art — but I struggled throughout. In a world where Invasion of the Bee Girls and Voyage of the Rock Aliens are already made, why did this even happen? What new could it say?

The filmmakers did, however, get all they could out of Art of Noise’s “Peter Gunn theme.”

2022 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 10: The Dead Can’t Dance (2010)

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10. THE FIRST WAVE: One made by an indigenous filmmaker or has indigenous cast members.

Directed and written by Rodrick Pocowatchit, who also plays Dax Wildhorse, The Dead Can’t Dance is a zombie movie about three Native Americans — Guy Ray Pocowatchit is Ray Wildhorse and T.J. Williams is his son Eddie — who run out of gas and walk into there being no room in hell, as the line is read.

Eddie has really been raised by Dax, his uncle, while his father Ray drinks away his days. On their way to Eddie’s college, everything falls apart. Now, this is a horror movie, but not a great one. But the fact that the Native American leads are so convincingly being themselves while also not being the finest of actors give this a lot of charm. Their identity doesn’t feel forced. It feels authentic.

It looks like the lowest of low budgets.

Yet I love the concept: an airborne disease turns everyone into zombies except for those with Native American blood, which makes them immune. I wish Pocowatchit had the money and crew to make this a high end production but maybe it would lose the charm that it has now. He’s also made a time travel film called Red Hand, a drama called Sleepdancer and Dancing On the Moon, which has three Native Americans also getting stranged yet in this story we’re more concerned with characters learning who they are and not at all about zombie end of the world horror.

You can watch this on Tubi.

SLASHER MONTH: Curfew (1989)

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Gary Winick sadly died young from brain cancer, but left behind Charlotte’s Web, Tadpole, 13 Going On 30, Letter to Juliet and this one, his first movie.

Stephanie Davenport (Kyle Richards, who had already survived a demonic car and Michael Myers at this point in her life) is out all night with her friends while her parents Walter and Megan (Frank Miller and Jean Brooks) leave for vacation. At the same time, Ray and Bob Perkins (Wendell Wellman and John Putch) have escaped from death row and come back to where the Davenports live, because Walter is the DA that put them away. He’s last on their list of bloody terror.

According to The Unknown Movies, “the British Board of Film Classification banned the movie from getting released on video in England.” I’m not sure why, as even though there’s torture and murder. It all feels like it’s way more than good taste though.

Perhaps they knew it would be too much to have Christopher Knight as a cop?

Regardless, if you’re looking for a movie where Kyle Richards causes one murderous brother to murder the other with a drill, well, here it is.

You can buy this from Vinegar Syndrome.

VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU RAY RELEASE: Blood of the Chupacabras (2003) and Revenge of the Chupacabras (2005)

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Visual Vengeance has brought back two Blockbuster Video shelf favorites, both concerning the infernal Mexican goatsucker known as el chupacabra! In the book Latinos and Narrative Media: Participation and Portrayal, these films are credited with starting the trend in movies about the chupacabras.

Blood of the Chupacabras (2003): If you read any reviews that came out on this movie’s original release, they all decry the fact that the poster and cover art are so amazing and the actual monster is not. But you know, that’s part of the charm in director and writer Jonathan Mumm’s movie (he also edited and composed some of the music).

The town that this takes place in has near Andy Milligan level supernatural coincidences: there’s a witch. There’s an old vampire hunter. There’s a singer. There’s an old prospector! And yes, there’s a chupacabra controlling possessed townsfolk from within a cave.

There are so many people in this town and let me tell you, I kind of love that the majority of this movie is people arguing over rent and trying to figure out how to survive in their downtrodden lives and then realizing, “Oh yeah. There’s a monster that kills goats in a cave.” That’s how real life is. You know that there are so many evil creatures in the woods outside of town but you live in a capitalist society and the cogs of the military-industrial complex are greased in the blood of the working man.

In addition to all of those characters — seriously, if you missed meeting new people in the new COVID era, get ready to meet so many people and then meet some more people — this movie has a synth score that in no way tries to sound real. You may be too young to remember organ stores in the mall and the poor souls that worked there that had to non-stop play synth and organ ditties while we shopped around them. Who were these people buying these gigantic organs? Where was the budget to hire so many people to play them? Where did they all go?

I digress.

I love when people review this movie and say it has so much talking. Yes, it’s a 1950s drive-in movie with no budget shot on video (with some 16mm from the first pass at making it) with rubber suits, early CGI and untrained actors. Revel in it. Soak it up. We should all be so lucky to live in a world that this movie exists and we do.

Revenge of the Chupcacabras (2005): 

Just look at that image of a humanoid chupacabra and remember 2005, a time when life was much, much simpler than today and we had no idea. We could still rent movies in stores. And yeah, things are probably more convenient today, but we also had movies with chupacabras. Two in a row, no less, from Jonathan Mumm, who directed and wrote this.

You know what’s really crazy? This movie isn’t even about a chupacabra. It’s about a kidnapping. A chupacabra shows up — and it looks better than the first movie because people whined that they got a cool looking poster and that monster wasn’t in the movie and have you people never watched an exploitation movie before?!? — but this is really about a kidnapping. I am all for the bait and switch, folks.

Also in 2005, you could kidnap an attractive college student and ask for $2 million and no one laughed at you. Today, we don’t believe in science so we would just giggle and try and negotiate the ransom.

This movie makes me want to love it and as such has a scene where a priest investigates the possessions going on in this small town and gets killed by a chupacabra and honestly, that’s all I want movies to be about.

The tagline is “It can smell your fear.” Can it also smell how happy I am to look over and see this movie on my shelf and be so happy that I own it, much less the gorgeous Visual Vengeance blu ray? You got me goat killer!

You can get this from MVD. Bonus features include:

  • Both available for the first time ever available on blu ray, scanned from the archival SD masters from original Betacam tapes
  • New audio commentaries on both films with director Jonathan Mumm
  • Archival behind the scenes features
  • Blooper reels
  • Archive video from premiere and festival appearances
  • Super 8 movie: Professor Bloodgood
  • Limited Edition Slipcase by Earl Kessler — FIRST PRESSING ONLY
  • Collectible Mini-poster
  • Stick your own VHS sticker set and more

For more details on the label and updates on new releases – as well as news on upcoming releases – follow Visual Vengeance on social media – IG, Facebook or twitter

TWITTER @VisualVenVideo

INSTAGRAM visualvenvideo

FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/visualvenvideo

FANTASTIC FEST 2022: Chaos Reigns Vol. 2

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Even more shorts I watched at Fantastic Fest.

Gary Screams for You (2022): Gary (Cody McGlashan), a campus security guard, discovers his animalistic side when his obsession with a viral video leads him down a very dark path. The filmmakers have said that it’s “a cry for help, a love letter, a Greek tragedy, a superhero origin story, an ode to madness.” It’s also the spec for a potential full length movie as well.

Gary is an undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar guy experiencing his first manic and psychotic episode. It’s also based on the creator’s real life experience. And I love the kind of hype that says that this movie is “a story about infinite realities, eternal life, total anarchy, becoming a god and what it means to be both human and inhuman.” 

Co-directed by Nolan Sordyl and Cody McGlashan, who also wrote the movie, this movie has more than one moment of absolute strangeness, which I completely endorse. Well made, too.

Godspeed (2021): Directed and written by Teddy Padilla (The Party Slasher, Ultra Violence) this has a man (Logan Miller, Escape Room) blackmailing a woman (Olivia Scott Welch, Fear Street) into teaching him her bank robbing secret. Well, he learns it, to his detriment. This is a really good looking film that, unlike so many shorts I’ve seen lately, has a beginning/middle/end and tells an incredibly rich and complete story in just ten minutes.

Where so many shorts are just test runs for longer movies that go on and on and never expand the feeling of the original, this is the perfect length and honestly couldn’t be improved with more time.

Good Boy (2022): Eros Vlahos has made a movie that I completely understand: a woman is hired to be a dog watcher and must deal with a Pomeranian who wants to kill everyone. Seriously, his tag says “A Normal Dog on one side and “Run” scrawled into the other. This film has some amazing angles, including one dog POV shot where he keeps nodding to the bowl of food that must be filled. You know, I live with a long haired chihuahua pomeranian chupacabra mix that I fear might kill me at any moment. So yeah, this movie reached me on a level that went beyond anything else I’ve seen in so long. This is what it’s like every day when my wife leaves, as a small dog stares at me and shakes and makes noises that sound straight out of a 70s Satanic movie.

Hairsucker (2022): Directed and written by Paddy Jessop and Michael Jones, this movie has somehow exceeded how disgusting I thought it would be and now, if I even think about it for a little more than a few seconds, I get physically sick which is a major accomplishment for a movie to make these days. Then again, I have to snake the shower every few months and man, I could use the creature from this, as long as I don’t wake up and it’s scalping me and getting blood all over the place.

This is really simple but man. It lives up to the title. Hair sucking. Who knew? And great, now I feel like I’m going to vomit again. Consider it high praise.

Hell Gig (2022): A struggling comedian tries to win a local standup competition, which sounds normal, but then we learn that she’s been infected by a demon who eats anyone she envies. And her best friend is also in the competition.

Gale is also a stand up, so obviously, she gets what this feels like in the real world. And hopefully she doesn’t have a demon in her.

Bruce Bundy, who plays Maeve, was Octavia in The Hunger Games movies, while Jamie Loftus, who has done a lot of comedy work, is Eli. Both work really well together and I love the idea of a demonic figure standing in for the natural feelings when our friends become successful.

Huella (2021): Directed and written by Gabriela Ortega, this gorgeous short has Daniela (Shakila Barrera) escaping from the drudgery of her work-from-home customer service agent job when the ghost of her grandmother (Denise Blasor) who makes her consider if the fleeting moments of dancing she does upon her rooftop are enough.

Generally, ghosts come to us in films to shock or attempt to hurt us. Not so here, in a movie whose name means “fingerprint.” Ghosts can hopefully shock us from our set lives and help us change the path of our lives. This movie only has fourteen minutes and yet does so much with them.

Kickstart My Heart (2022): Director and writer Kelsey Bollig survived a near-death experience to tell this story of, well, a near-death experience. Lilly (Emma Pasarow) must survive three levels of living hell to return from the near-dead which ends up looking like scenes from horror movies and Mortal Kombat, which I can totally endorse.

You have to love when someone tells an incredibly personal story and does it with fight scenes involving ninjas and demons. More people should follow the model that this film has set, but then again, this is so original and well-done, they’ll find themselves wanting in comparison.

The Last Queen of Earth (2020): In this world, Y2K really happened, so a farmer named Zebediah (Travis Farris) gets to live out his dream of wearing women’s clothes, which yeah, it’s going to upset everyone on every side and not win, but that’s the way the world works. I’ve seen people upset that it pretty much leans into everything people laugh at about guys dressing up like women and kind of makes it a joke, so yeah. Look, I write about Jess Franco movies so I’m not going to solve this issue. This movie looks really nice, has a good pace and Y2K actually ending humanity is a good idea.

Director Michael Shumway also composes music for films, while writer Lex Hogan has worked as a script supervisor. I’d like the see what else they can both create.

Last Request (2022): Greg (Michael Greene) is on his death bed and requests that Even (Tim Casper), his high school bully who has turned his life around and become a man of God, comes and fulfills a very specific request: to listen to the angel that lives inside his rectum.

Yeah, this is a simple joke that you can see coming, but you have to admit that it’s pretty funny. The talent is great and director Daniel Thomas King, who co-wrote the script with Ryan Kindhal, has added the right tension to make it even more hilarious.

SLASHER MONTH: Puppet Master (1989)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally part of slasher month two years ago on October 11, 2020. It’s back because the goal is to write up every single film in the series this week.

Puppet Master may have started with one direct-to-video movie, but since then, there’s been ten sequels, a crossover with Demonic Toys and a recent reboot, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.

After Empire Pictures went out of business, Charles Band started Full Moon Productions, which would partner with Paramount Pictures and Pioneer Home Entertainment to create direct-to-video movies. Puppet Master would be first and it’s very similar to another Band movie, Dolls. Yes, this was originally intended for theaters, but Band thought it would make more money as a home release.

Think Star Wars is confusing? Well, Puppet Master is really the sixth film in chronological order. It starts in Bodega Bay, California in the year 1939. A puppeteer named André Toulon (William Hickey, Uncle Lewis from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) is finishing a puppet he calls Jester when Nazi spies come for him. He places Jester and the other puppets (Blade, Shredder Khan and Gengie) into a hidden panel before killing himself.

Fifty years later, psychics Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford take a journey to meet their old colleague Neil Gallagher, who has found Toulon’s hiding place, all thanks to a series of visions. Soon, a doll named Pinhead is taking out the psychic’s one by one, finally revealing that Neil has been alive all along using Toulon’s Egyptian secrets of alchemy to reanimate himself. However, he’s dumb enough to cross the puppets and throw Jester at a chair. Those puppets stay together. Only Alex and Megan survive along with Dana’s formerly taxidermied dog, which is now mysteriously back alive.

Such a small debut for a series that would go on to so many more installments, right? Even though they only have five minutes of screen time, people fell in love with the little guys. How can’t you adore Blade, who is based on Klaus Kinski and the Leech Woman? Strangely enough, most of the music in this movie comes from a movie Band produced that’s also about bringing inanimate objects to life, Tourist Trap.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE 9: Furious Road (2014)

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9. A Film Directed by Jeff Leroy.

With movies named Rat Scratch Fever, Frankenstein in a Women’ Prison and Giantess Attack, Jeff Leroy knows that some of the battle is fought when you name your movie.

Also known as Grand Auto Theft: L.A. — a title that is pretty good you know? — this takes a Mad Max-style name to tell the story of the Calles de Infierno neighborhood in L.A., a place where a gang of women is trying to get rich or die trying. But to get there, they have to fight other gangs, the cops, a vigilante and even one another.

Vixen, Sarita, Kandy, Electra and Katie sell drugs, sure, but their drugs don’t kill people. So they decide to kill — well, Vixen decides to — kill Kane, the dealer behind it, only to learn that he has another boss Andre. But the real boss selling this Death Meth is The Phantom. Or The Shadow. Who knows, the movie bounces around a lot and has cut scenes to look like, yes, a video game.

Also: a band called the Reach Around Rodeo Clowns have two songs in this and they play more than once. It is rockabilly. In a movie about street gangs.

Jeff Leroy also knows that you need a nice looking piece of art. He did that twice, once for each title.

Women, drugs and violence all sell. This movie is proof yet again.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2022 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 9: Tomb of the Werewolf (2004)

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9. FULL MOON FEVER: Since the “heavenly body” is out tonight, a lycanthrope story seems just right.

Richard Daninsky (Jay Richardson) is the latest in the line of the Daninsky family, a bloodline that also includes noted werewolf Waldemar (Paul Naschy). He’s just inherited a castle filled with hidden treasure, so he brings a reality show into the home and you guessed it, Elizabeth Bathory (Michele Bauer!) shows up to pull the silver dagger out of Waldemar’s body just in time for him to be unleashed on a bevy of sex scene having individuals — and couples — like Evan Stone, Monique Alexander, Beverly Lynn, Jacy Andrews, Stephanie Bentley and Danielle Petty.

Directed and written by Fred Olen Ray, this was made at the same time as Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood, also shot in America and starring Naschy.

Re-released as The Unliving, this was shot by Gary Graver. And come on, if you have to make a softcore horror movie and could get Naschy in it, wouldn’t you? But still, it’s a Cinemax-style sex movie with long scenes with no genitals and people dry humping while Paul Naschy is in full makeup, just waiting to go on and do his werewolf thing. His wife was in the hospital sick in America while they made this, he barely spoke the language and he had to be confronted by all this U.S.A. softcore and how disconcerting is that? And it’s his last werewolf movie? I mean, that’s either jubilant that he went out in a movie with so much balling or sad and it’s late on a Saturday and I’ve taken too many edibles so I think it makes me wistful.

I am all for Michelle Bauer being Bathory and doing a Black Sabbath opening. More of that.

SLASHER MONTH: The Gore Gore Girls (1972)

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This was a parody of everything that had come before in the gory and sleazy Herschell Gordon Lewis and if anything, goes even further than all that had been done in the past.

Reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) has offered detective Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) $50,000 if he can solve the murder of Suzie Cream Puff (Jackie Kroeger), as long as she gets the exclusive. Following him on his investigation, other food-themed dancers like Candy Cane and Pickles get killed with evidence that points to a man named Grout (Ray Sager), a Vietnam vet that misses smashing the heads of dead people during war and finds vegetables a poor substitute. Or maybe its the feminists who are protesting all the male gaze in the go go club. Oh yeah — Henny Youngman also shows up as Mr. Marzdone Mobilie, a man who owns plenty of jack shacks and strip clubs.

Gentry keeps Weston drunk most of the time or gets her onstage to dance in an amateur contest but he’s just really trying to lure the killer into his clutches. He’s a horrible person and in fact, nearly everyone in this movie is completely despicable, some kind of alternate world where everyone is absolute scum. I say this with beaming happiness.

The only movie that Lewis ever sent to the MPAA — it got an X, so no surprises there — this is the kind of movie where a woman’s breasts are cut over with scissors to drink chocolate milk out of them, but it can still have themes of PTSD from Vietnam in 1972, years before any other filmmakers were articulating this issue.

But at heart (and guts and brains), this is a movie where a woman’s butt is beaten with a tenderizing hammer and then seasoned with salt and pepper. Or a bubble gum chewing dancer dying as her bubble is filled with blood? Then somehow there’s a level-headed appearance by the feminist group in the movie that pretty much has them saying everything that Lewis probably knew he was guilty of. Literally exploitation and education at once, but lost on everyone who just loved a director who often had characters just play with entrails for long stretches while he zoomed in. And then he invented direct mail.

You can watch this on Tubi.

FANTASTIC FEST 2022: Chaos Reigns Vol. 1

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Get ready for another collection of shorts that I watched at Fantastic Fest.

The Blood of the Dinosaurs (2021): Once, we went to a Mystery Spot and after we walked toward the center of the room, it kept pushing us into the walls and I was young and trying to hold my mother’s hand and it made me cry. Then, we all got on a train and it went through a forest and animatronic dinosaurs appeared and the driver told us to reach under our chairs for guns to kill the rampaging lizards and I yelled and ran up and down the length of the train begging for people to stop and that we needed to study the dinosaurs and not kill them. This was not a dream.

Another story. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and planned on studying them, combining my love of stories of dragons like the Lamprey Worm with real zoology, but then nine-year-old me learned that they were all dead and I had to face mortality at a very young age which meant I laid in bed and contemplated eternity all night and screamed and cried so much I puked. This is also a true story.

The Blood of DInosaurs has Uncle Bobbo (Vincent Stalba) and his assistant Purity (Stella Creel) explain how we got the oil in our cars that choke the planet but first, rubber dinosaurs being bombarded by fireworks and if you think the movie gets boring from here, you’re so wrong.

Can The Beverly Hillbillies become ecstatic religion? Should kids have sex education? Would the children like to learn about body horror and giallo? Is there a show within a show within an interview and which reality is real and why are none of them and all of them both the answer? Did a woman just give birth to the Antichrist on a PBS kids show?

This is all a preview of Joe Badon’s full film The Wheel of Heaven and when I read that he was influenced by the Unarius Cult, my brain climbs out of my nose and dances around before I slowly strain to open my mouth and beg for it to come back inside where it’s wet and safe.

Badon co-wrote this film’s score and screenplay with Jason Kruppa and I honestly can’t wait to see what happens next. Also: this was the Christmas episode of Uncle Bobbo so I can only imagine that this was him being toned down.

The Blue Hour (2022): Jeremías Segovia directed and wrote this short in which a young woman — La Chica (Lucia Blasco) — is on the beach, waiting for the crowd to leave so that she can bathe in the nude. She believes that it’s just her and the ocean and that’s when she realizes that a shadow known only as El Joven (Juan Diego Eirea) is watching. This begins a battle of wills between the two with her keeping her body inside the rapidly cooling azure waves while he never averts his gaze. Who has the longer endurance and patience?

Segovia also made the shorts La Mujer Ruta and The Tooth Fairy. This is an intriguing premise and a gorgeous looking short.

The Businessman (2022): Lola (Liviya Meyers) is on the way home from school when she meets a salesman (Steven Gamble) who looks to instill the fear of financial insecurity into her and convince her to sell ancient fashion magazines for him. Director and writer Nathan Ginter also made Last Seen and this has some great atmosphere and a genuinely strange feel throughout, feeling at once modern and out of time.

What if capitalism itself was the monster of a supernatural movie out to coerce teenagers to do its occult bidding? That’s this movie and it looks, feels and plays out so well.

Chicks (2022): Geena Marie Hernandez directed and wrote this tale of a “girly, cotton-candy colored slumber party” that transforms into an occult ritual when Polly (Nikole Davis) is invited to join the popular upper echelon of high school royalty for a sleepover. Yet Lizzie (Jena Brooks), Kelly (Maddie Moore) and Jazz (Lilliana Simms) have plans for her and honestly, I could see the witch elements rolling in but I had no idea where this was going, nor did I get the pun of the title until the end of the film. I’ll let you go in as blind as I was, but man, this looks great, like a pink candy nightmare and the end is wonderful. Well done.

The Community (2022): Milos Mitrovic and Eric Peterson also made Unidentified Objects, a great film that played Fantastic Fest. This is a 48 Hour Film Fest movie turned into a short that stars Adam Brooks (the director of Astron-6’s Father’s Day and The Editor, as well as Doctor Scorpius in Manborg and the dad in Psycho Goreman) as a man seeking something precious and using an informant (Mitrovic) to get it. It’s an absurd short that is quick and to the point, while being pretty enjoyable.

Cruise (2022): I worked in a survey research telemarketing place before I got into advertising and it’s the kind of job that still gives me nightmares. We had a set script that we had to follow, a mysterious room had people listening to us and you didn’t even get to call the number. It would just ring, you’d ask someone if they got their sample of laundry detergent, then they would call you an asshole for ten seconds, then you’d start all over again for ten hours at a time. Often, one of those mystery people would tell you that you were off script and take over and show you how. The worst was if you made a human connection at any point, they would terminate your call. I still wake up thinking that I’m late for my job there, a room of cubicles and no windows and people plugged into headsets as blood for the machine.

Cruise, directed and written by Samuel Rudykoff, finds telemarketer after telemarketer trying to sell a cruise and failure means death.

These days, when scam likely comes up on my phone, I don’t get mad or rude to the people on the other line. I was once them. It was not fun. And, as this movie will show you, you may end up getting them shot right in the head.

Deerwoods Deathtrap (2022): Shot on Super 8, this tells the story of Jack and Betty Gannon, who were on a trip to Cape May, New Jersey in 1971 when they somehow survived being hit by a train. Even wilder, everyone in the car, like an elderly grandmother, an infant daughter and a young son — director James Gannon — all lived. Now, fifty years later, they have returned to a place they barely lived to tell from even if they can’t agree on what really happened.

This is an incredible short, filled with humor and darkness. But the best part is the closing line: “Guess what?  People do get hit by fucking trains.”

This definitely made me rethink when I cross those tracks down by Sheetz.

East End (2022): Director Grant Curatola’s East End looks like a late 70s to early 80s slasher and does something wonderful: It takes a crime in a small town and inflates it via the telephone game, as what may not be the worst crime of all time eventually becomes a horrific story that the entire town can’t stop talking about, all set to the music cues from Psycho. A fun idea, told well.

The Event (2022): Co-directed by Frank Mosley and writer Hugo De Sousa, who also appear in this film along with Jennifer Kim, this has Vincent (De Sousa) and Jack (Mosely), roommates and best friends, going back and forth over a short film that Vincent has made. Why hasn’t his friend watched it? Sure, it’s 2 AM, but come on, it’s the greatest thing he’s ever made, the joy of his life. And if he has a long way of explaining things that involves pasta, then so be it. But man, let Beatrice (Kim) sleep!

This hits harder than I would like to admit, because I want my wife to appreciate the work that I do or things that I write and she just says, “OK,” as she looks up from some phone game. Heartbreaking.

Everybody Goes to the Hospital (2021): This is an absolutely terrifying movie, the stop motion animated story of 4-year-old Little Mata (writer/director Tiffany Kimmel’s mother, as this is based on a true story) as she gets so sick that she has to go to the hospital in late 1963 with appendicitis and things get worse from there.

I don’t even know how you can recover from getting every single one of your organs taken out of your body and cleaned, but somehow this brave little child did. I was completely not prepared to be repeatedly emotionally barraged by this well-crafted short.

I just spent some time with my dad at an appointment in a hospital after watching this and man, I kept remembering the details of this movie. It stays with you.

Ex Creta (2022): No pun intended, but holy shit, this movie was great. Seriously, so unexpected and yeah, it’s a four-minute-long movie about a scatological artist but I don’t care. It made me laugh more times in a short period than some full-length movies dream of being able to do. Also: the dog!

Olivia Puckett, Emily Kron and Gabrielle Anise are great voice talents as well, moving the story so well while director and writer Jon Portman has crafted a singular work of art.

Buzkill (2022): Let me tell you, when you start your animated short off with a logo that says Canon Pictures and looks like Cannon Films, I’m going to love what comes next.

That said, it’s easy to love this movie, which is the story of Becky (Kelly McCormack, who is Jess McCready in the A League of Their Own Series) and Rick (Peter Ahern, also the director and writer), who return to her house after a date and their moment of romance is interrupted by an insect crawling out of her eyeball.

The animation is gorgeous, the story is amusing and I just loved the way that it all pays off. Buzzkill gets in more gross-out and laugh-out-loud moments in its short running time than most movies get in two hours.