This movie is a worked up 15 year old who reads Fangoria and has never seen a woman naked in person and I want to be its friend. It’s only an hour long with 13 minutes of credits and bloopers, but it knows what you want: breasts, beasts and blood.

Shawn Burkett directed and wrote this and you know, if I were a teenager again, I’d be hunting down every movie he made. According to IMDB, he was celibate for almost a year in order to finish this, so yeah. It totally seems like it.

The monster cost under $200. That also totally seems like it.

Don’t Fuck In the Woods 2 just was released and it definitely improves on this. Jane (Brittany Blanton) is a great final girl and shows up in the second movie too, which is a spoiler, but you know, you’re watching this movie for the sex and gore, so maybe let’s not be so quick to get angry about giving away the plot.

You can watch this on Tubi.

We’re back to the Axis universe of these movies and psychic war journalist Elisa (Tania Fox) builds a telepathic link to Blade and together, they fight to stop the Germans from developing a Nazi death ray.

Directed by John Lechago and written by Brockton McKinney and Neal Marshall Stevens, this continues the ESP angle of the last three films while also getting in some walking dead Nazis. It was filmed live on the web so you could watch it as it was created.

I liked this, but at this point I’ve seen every single film in the series, so I’m going to keep watching them. The Axis universe has led to some halfway decent stories and I may have said several times already that I prefer the puppets to be on the right side of the war.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Surgeon General (Kurt Carley) is really the coolest looking slasher I’ve seen in so long. Also: this movie is absolutely deranged, but what else should I expect from Gabriel Bartalos, who also made Saint Bernard which is somehow even stranger than this. I also love any movie that has Warwick Davis play a character named Plates that throws plates at people and just screams.

The whole Rockwell family gets killed by the strange family of old people and mutants, which also includes Brain, a kid with a gigantic brain. Well, Tina lives, but they wall her into a room covered with newspapers and try to turn her into a killer. They succeed but then things go down an even deeper rabbit hole, if that’s possible. I mean, a headless god beneath the gigantic trailer park? An entire town of killers? A gang of bikers called the Ancient Ones?

This movie made me happy to no end, a film that destroys bodies and looks gorgeous all the way. This is so filled with production design gone insane in the very best of ways.

This is the movie Rob Zombie has been trying to make.

You can get this from Severin or watch it on Tubi.

A lot of slashers came out in 1980 and maybe Terror Train isn’t as fondly remembered by some, but for those that are fans — like, well, your author — it works because you truly feel as if you’re on a train. You also get some incredible scenery and a killer that keeps shifting disguises, all while the film navigates themes that most movies don’t touch forty years later, including hidden love between male friends and a transgendered character that to talk more of would be a spoiler.

Quebec-born director Philippe Gagnon — well, Terror Train is from Canada — is working from a new script by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin, writers for the Netflix series Slasher. Everything starts just like the original, as Kenny (Noah Parker) is pranked by Doc (Matias Garrido) and gets away with it. By pranked, I mean that he ends up in bed with a dead body. Alana (Robyn Alomar) feels like the gang should confess, but instead the next three years of college go by and find them passengers on a tourist train that conveniently goes through a zone with no signal.

There’s still a Mitchy (Emma Elle Paterson). A magician (Tim Rozon) is on board. And yes, the clown gets killed early, just like the first movie. But does it have the magic of the 1980 classic?

The killer only switches costumes here a few times, sticking to that clown costume, while the movie switches holidays from New Year’s Eve to Halloween. This also gender swaps Carne the conductor to be an older woman played by Mary Walsh. All of these decisions seem like changes for change’s sake; I have no issue with a female conductor but I really miss the steady guiding hand of Ben Johnson and the way he seemed like someone who genuinely cared about protecting his passengers. The lack of costume changes points to a script that doesn’t understand what worked so well; a clown is scary, but not knowing who the killer could be is much more sinister.

Another misstep is that in the original, Alana seemed to be someone trying to atone for her past sins, but also had enough of an edge that you believed that she’d go along with the prank. This version seems so unsure of herself that one wonders how she’ll survive.

The CGI train scenes and kills take away two other things so great about the first film, one that was actually shot on a train car to give the simulation that we were moving down the rails in the snow. This never feels like it takes place anywhere other than a room. And the weirdest part is there’s a Phantasm-style song that sounds so derivative that I was sure that they just followed the example of the Shaw Brothers and stole it.

This trip down the tracks follows the original pretty close until we switch tracks for the last ten minutes. Some folks may not miss David Copperfield and the long dance numbers. I totally do. The original is silly in many ways, but has some really frightening moments and unlike so many slashers, feels like it could happen.

Yet I wonder: who is this for? Anyone who loves the first one is going to be irked before it even begins. Is a train relevant for today’s audience? Oh well. I guess the rights were up and someone was going to make it. As always, we still have the original.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Damiano Damiani is a name held in high regard if only for one film, the most Italian movie ever made by a major U.S. studio, Amityville II: The Possession. Based on the book Aura by Carlos Fuentes, Damiani wrote the script with Ugo Liberatore.

Sergio Logan (Richard Johnson) is a womanizing cad who notices an old woman (Sarah Ferranti) following him everywhere. When he finally confronts her, she offers him a job: catalogue her vast library of erotica. That seems like the right job, but it gets better when he meets her gorgeous daughter Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino). As you can imagine, the library is filled with occult and sex magic energy. They claim the books are the works of their long-dead master, but the truth is that women can use their wiles to destroy men, especially ones who think they’re the so-called stronger sex.

Sergio is not alone. He also has another librarian, Fabrizio (Gian Maria Volonte), as competition, as well as the remains of the master of the house behind a glass case. It’s funny that this has always been amongst horror films. Sure, it’s in the genre, but it’s also just as much art as it is fright.

Along with a new video introduction by Italian film devotee Mark Thompson Ashworth, a limited edition 80-page book featuring new writing by Roberto Curti, Rob Talbot, Jerome Reuter, Rod Barnett and Kimberly Lindbergs, a fold-out double-sided poster and limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, The Witch has new commentary by author and producer Kat Ellinger, a new video essay by author and academic Miranda Corcoran and a new video interview with author and filmmaker Antonio Tentori.

Mino (Franco Nero) is a wealthy nobleman and oddly enough taxidermist living under the domineering rule of his mother (Olga Solbelli) who decides to escape by marrying his fiancée Laura (Erika Blanc, pretty much the queen of Italian gothic horror). This also upsets his maid Marta (Gioia Pascal), who cuts the brakes on Mino’s car. She dies in a crash yet Mino saves her body, stuffing her and placing her body in his bed. While he’s preoccupied with that, Marta — why is the name Marta or Martha always filled with dread in Italian movies? — shoves his mom down the steps.

In his grief, Mino starts having sex with ladies of the evening in the same bed as his stuffed wife. When these girls find out that they’re part of a necrophilic threeway, he strangles them and Marta puts them in an acid bath. He agrees to marry her and make her a countess, but then Laura’s twin Daniela shows up and ruins her plan. When she tries to kill his love come back from the dead, Mino flips and repeatedly stabs his maid turned wife, then kidnaps Daniela and leads the police on a manhunt.

Italian censors were bewildered by this movie, saying “In addition many scenes of almost full female nudity and excessively graphic intercourses, the film features episodes of necrophilia, close-ups of horrific scenes with blood and brutal violence, presented with real sadism and a protracted insistence which conveys a sense of complacency by part of the makers.”

Imagine how they felt when Joe D’Amato remade it thirteen years later as Buio Omega, a movie that outdoes the depravity of this film on nearly every level.

Directed by Mino Guerrini from a script by Piero Regnoli based on a story by Gilles De Reys, this is one dark movie and you know, I love it. It’s wild to see Nero play such the villain.

Along with a new video introduction by Italian film devotee Mark Thompson Ashworth, a limited edition 80-page book featuring new writing by Roberto Curti, Rob Talbot, Jerome Reuter, Rod Barnett and Kimberly Lindbergs, a fold-out double-sided poster and limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, The Third Eye also has new commentary by author and critic Rachael Nisbet, a new video essay by author and filmmaker Lindsay Hallam and a newly edited video interview with actress Erika Blanc.

You can get this set from MVD.