I really love Small Town Monsters‘ work. They combine documentary and interview footage with narrative story elements to bring creatures from folklore and legend—like the Jersey Devil—to life.

“It’s one of those classic, gothic, American tales that we’ve wanted to tackle for years but just couldn’t find the right way to do it…until now,” says Small Town Monsters founder Seth Breedlove.

There are many stories told about where the Jersey Devil comes from. Some say that it was the thirteenth child of Mother Leeds, a woman who had already had twelve babies and was cursing her troubled pregnancy. While born as a normal infant, the child grew into a demonic being with hooves, a goat’s heagoat’s wings and a forked tail. Some say she was a witch and the father the devil. Others claim this legend was spread after a battle between Benjamin Franklin, who published Poor Richard’s Richard’s rival almanac, Daniel Leeds. Franklin called the Leeds family “monsters,” and what added even more hellfire to the story was that Leads, a Quaker, was ostracized by his religion for publishing pagan symbols in his almanacs and, after being kicked out of the church, went all in on esoteric astrological Christianity and occultism.

After being formally chastised as blasphemous and heretical by the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, Leeds converted to Anglicanism and published anti-Quaker tracts criticizing their theology and throwing in his lot with the British royal governor of New Jersey, Lord Cornbury.

Leeds’ sonLeeds inherited the almanac business, and Franklin predicted his death as a joke and referred to him as a ghost in the following years. Given the symbolism and the fact that the ghost story was taken as truth, the Jersey Devil was the next logical step. The Pine Barrens, where it supposedly lives, are isolated and undeveloped, so they lend themselves to mysterious theories.

Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil is great. It combines horrific black-and-white footage with historical moments that bring the story—perhaps the truth—to life. It’s a high-quality film right up there with Small Town Monsters’ past work.

You can learn more on the official site.

Directed and written by Lori Evans Taylor (she produced 216 episodes of Lucky Dog, a Saturday morning show that I have watched and cried through many times and she’s the writer for the upcoming Final Destination 6), Bed Rest skipped theaters and went right to Tubi, where we discover that Julie (Melissa Barrera, Scream) and Guy Rivers (Guy Burnet) have moved into a new home just a few months before she’s due to have their first child. She has some issues with her pregnancy and is moved to mandatory bed rest — the title does not lie — but then there are ghosts troubling her from bedside. Or, as my wife said as she walked in to this, “Is this another one of those dumb Amityville movies you’re obsessed with?”

Julie has lost a baby before and has some past mental health issues, which now it seems like she’s seeing a five-year-old child in her house, the same age as the boy she lost. Yet when that boy tells her that someone is coming for her baby, that’s when this kicks into gear.

There may have been other children murdered in the home, but is there really a haunting? Is this all in our protagonist’s mind? Are her husband and nurse Delmy Walker (Edie Inksetter) just gaslighting her into better mental health? Will I watch everything that Tubi has as one of their originals?

In your heart, you know the answer.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I have to confess, I was pretty excited about the idea of this movie: a robotic Santa let loose on a small town on Christmas Eve, directed by Joe Begos (VFW, Bliss).

But man, I feel like when I unwrapped this gift, it was filled with coal.

We start with a RoboCop-style series of TV ads for holiday products and a news report that claims that a robotic Santa that’s been recalled because it was originally a military robot and it goes back to its programming because of a glitch.

Great, I’m on board.

But then we have half an hour of record store owner Tori Tooms (Riley Dandy, who has also been in the holiday movies A Hollywood Christmas, A California Christmas: City Lights and A Kiss On Candy Cane Lane) and her employee Robbie Reynolds (Sam Delich) arguing over her Tinder date, getting drunk, arguing about the multiple versions of Black Christmas, getting drunk, arguing about the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack, getting high, arguing about Pet Sematary 2, getting drunk, swearing every other word (the movie has 487 uses of the word fuck), getting drunk some more, visiting their friends Lahna (Dora Madison) and Jay (Jonah Ray from the new Mystery Science Theater 3000) before they all do coke together and that couple has sex in the toy store where they work and get killed by the robotic Santa, argue about bands and oh yeah, end up having sex.

Abraham Benrubi, who plays the evil Santa, was once the monstrous Kubiac on Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Jerry on ER. He has holiday experience as well, as he played the role of Santa — a nicer one — in A Country Christmas.

This all ends up feeling like someone making a cover version of a Rob Zombie movie, a fact helped by the fact that no one talks like anyone else in this movie in real life, that Jeff Daniel Phillips shows up and that everything feels covered with neon filth. And that’s fine if that’s your thing, but just because you throw a bunch of Vinegar Syndrome posters into your movie and shoot it on 16mm doesn’t mean I have to like it.

In fact, it gets so Terminator at one point that the soundtrack realizes it and starts sounding like it came from that movie.

I guess I wanted too much out of this movie, expecting a movie that skewered holiday films while bringing back the feeling of holiday horror movies that I love. Instead, I was forced to be the third wheel on a date between two people who barely know their references — Lemmy didn’t do “Run Rudolph Run” with the Foo Fighters, he did it with Dave Grohl and Billy Gibbons — and are annoying as they bray on and on about their barely coherent pop culture signifying lives and unconcerned that everyone around them is forced to hear just how annoying they are, as if they’re in a contest to see who I can dislike more.

This is also the kind of film that will get breathlessly hyped on Twitter as something new and fresh and 16mm, dude. Don’t follow — make your own opinions. In fact, you might just love this. I don’t know why or how, but you do you.

If you watch post 1970s disaster films, you usually are watching the movies of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Devlin started his career as an actor before getting into writing. His first big script was Universal Soldier, but he’s best known for working with Emmerich on the huge disaster alien film Independence Day — and it’s beyond inferior sequel — as well as Stargate and Godzilla.

Devlin made his debut as a director with this movie, one he also co-wrote with Paul Guyot and co-produced. Let me tell you right from the beginning: it does what so many disaster movies do. It has a ridiculous concept and throws actors at it.

It also tested so badly that executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, writer Laeta Kalogridis and new director Danny Cannon had to come in to reshoot parts of it.

We all know — although many deny it — that we’ve destroyed our climate and in the next 10 years, our planet is going to be much harder to live on. This film has a science McGuffin called the Dutch Boy, a system of climate-controlling satellites, that can do magical thinsg like neutralize typhoons.

Yet because he brought Dutch Boy online without authorization, the U.S. government replaces its creator, Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) with his brother Max (Jim Sturgess), who is the lacky of Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom (Ed Harris).

So yes, we have our disgraced maverick hero.

Now for the big disaster.

The desert is freezing! Hong Kong is on fire! A computer virus is inside Dutch Boy! A geostorm is on the way!

This was inspired by Devlin’s daughter Hannah asking him if a machine could be made to fix the environment. That’s also why Jake’s daughter — and this film’s voice — is also named Hannah.

Thirteen years before, Devlin’s partner Emmerich has already made The Day After Tomorrow, a movie just as dumb as this one. The only difference is that one made money. Emmerich also made The Noah’s Ark Principle back in 1984 which is a very similar story to this.

It took 45,000 gallons to set a few blocks of Montreal ablaze for this movie, which at least pushes it somewhat past being another version of The Towering Inferno. It was directed by Alvin Rakoff, who also made Death Ship, and written by Dave Lewis, Céline La Frenière and Jack Hill. That’s right — the man who made Spider Baby, Switchblade Sisters, Sorceress and Coffy to name just a few.

Mayor William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen, so associated with movie like this that Airplane! had to cast him, a role that changed his career) gets paid off an allows an oil refinery to be built right in the middle of his town. There’s no water source nearby, but nobody would ever get fired — like Herman Stover (Jonathan Welsh) — and flood the streets and sewers with flammable gasoline, right?

Meanwhile, amongst the shoddily built facilities and structures of this flaming metroppolis, we meet the players of this melodrama, liek Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) who is trying to treat the thousands of burned people, reporter Maggie Grayson (Ava Gardner) who is trying to sweat out the booze and get her name back with this story and Chief Albert Risley (Henry Fonda), the fireman trying to fix it all.

Surely, realizing disasters film casts, you must ask: “Is Shelley Winters in this?”

Of course. She’s a nurse in it.

There’s also Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec (Susan Clark, before she was the mean mother of Webster), who is dating the mayor, but also has an old fling kind of thing with Whitman and has been stalked for years by Stover. She’s seriously catnip to all these felines who dance around the fickle flames of their burning burg.

How do you escape all this? You make a water tunnel. I’m as astounded as you. Also, I’m pleased to see James Franciscus show up as Gardner’s assistant and later boy toy, because that’s how the 70s worked.

You can watch this on Tubi.

PRESCRIPT: Credit where it’s due. I wouldn’t even know about this movie if I didn’t see that White Slaves of Chinatown planned on posting it on YouTube this week. Follow them and if you can, donate because they haven’t had the easiest time of it the last few years.

Released in Poland as Nocni goście (Nocturnal Guests), in Germany as a sequel to Don’t Open ‘Till Christmas titled Fröhliche Weihnacht 2 and in nearly every other country in the world other than right here where it was made, Night Visitors is something else, a movie that predates Funny Games in its home invasion theme but unlike other films in that genre like The Last House On the Left, it remains completely bloodless. There’s even a line on some box covers that claims “This year, Halloween has come early,”  yet because it’s set on Christmas Eve, wouldn’t Halloween be late?

Director David Fulk has one other directing credit, 2000s Road to Flin Flon and that’s it, which is a  shame. He co-wrote this with Norman Smith, who edited the films Dead Ringer, Streamers, Graveyard Shift and the videos for “Time After Time” and “She Bop.”

Fulk shot a trailer for the film with actor Daniel Hirsch playing the mysterious Travis, which he also played in the final project. He’d just played the villain in The Zero Boys but this was a role that may have a similar concept but would need some more mental edge and less physicality. Continental Film Group agreed to produce and changed the name from The Whitmores Are Having Company to the much more provocative Night Visitors.

It was shot in February of 1988 in Sharon, PA which is minutes away from my hometown. Sharon is also the home of The Club, that locking mechanism that keeps thieves from stealing cars, and also the device that pays for much of the town staying alive, keeping tourist places open such as Reyer’s, which was once the largest shoe store in the U.S.; the original Quaker Steak and Lube, a chicken wing restaurant that local Trent Reznor (well, Mercer, PA close enough) eats at every Christmas Eve with his family; the Buhl Manor; a cemetery with crosses for every day a hostage was in Iran; Kraynaks, which has an annual Christmas tree walk and The Winner, a place that sells fancy dresses to old women while a dude plays piano for them. It’s an odd place yet perfect for this film.

In the book A Scary Little Christmas: A History of Yuletide Horror Films, 1972-2020 by Matthew C. DuPée, Fulk got into what inspired him: “Not to go into too much personal history, but I did grow in kind of Whitmore-esque environment. At that time in my life, I felt a need to skewer the artificiality, the denial of emotion, the removed-from-the-real-world nature of that milieu. So I aimed to bring the “real world” to them in the form of these four characters — archetypes, really — embodying the aspects of life they most denied and feared. And Christmas seemed to be the logical time to set it, since that’s when families with adult children are most likely to be together and a time when all that phony good cheer can be magnified. As for the “vibe” of the film, I was always partial to dark comedy during and after my college days in theater and film and it’s a style that lent itself to that story. I didn’t want to do just a mad slasher type of movie. That certainly would have been off-putting for the intended audience and it wouldn’t jibe with the vibe I was trying to get across…I was kind of toying with the viewer’s expectations.”

The film takes place in Shaker Heights — to quote the Hold Steady, “We used to shake it up in Shaker Heights” and also the hometown of WWE jerks the Beverly Brothers, but not really because those guys were from Minnesota and not even brothers — where the Whitmores have gathered for Christmas Eve. Lloyd (David Schroeder, who was in 150 plus movies and is still acting as of 2021) is the father, a man who seems like he’s a sitcom dad from the 50s, while Carolyn (Rochelle Savitt) is the strict mother. They’ve worked hard over the years — “We’ve done the best we can” — to raise their three children, accountant and 26-year-old virgin Tad (Joe Whyte, whose voice you may recognize as Chris Redfield in the remake of Resident Evil; he’s also in Assault of the Party Nerds), Holy Trinity College freshman and ham radio enthusiast Robbie (Richard Gabai, who directed, wrote and starred in two films for Menahem Golan’s 21st Century, Virgin High and Hot Under the Collar, as well as Vice Girls; he also acted in plenty of memorable films like Demon Wind, Nightmare Sisters, Thirteen Erotic Ghosts and Glass Trap) and high school senior Katie (Jeralyn Fabre), who is expected to also attend the same college as everyone else. There’s also the grandmother (Billye Ree Wallace, who is also in Shrunken Heads and was Nana on Seinfeld) who constantly complains about how dirty the house is.

As they prepare for their holiday festivities, we see how the other half lives, that is the antagonists led by the aforementioned Travis, who lords over his assembled family which is made up of his crimped-haired, Madonna-styled lover Lucy (Michele Winding, who is also in Gabai’s Blood Nasty), the bullying Earl (Richard Rifkin, who has nearly thirty movies on his resume, including non-sex appearances in Private adult films and blockbusters like Eragon and The Martian; like many folks here he’s also in Blood Nasty) and Reerah (Gregory Carlton Battle), who surprises dad when he reveals that despite being black, he came from wealth and learned everything the real way on the streets.

Travis and his — well, use the Manson form of family — visit as if they are carolers and burst inside the house, pulling a gun, ruining the traditional dinner and unwrapping all the gifts. The family is led downstairs and one by one brought upstairs as they are interviewed by Travis who has one wish: for someone special to kill him so he can go to Heaven and meet God.

It’s not Tad, who finds himself unable to rise and then does rise in other ways as he shares a bed with Lucy, surprising her with how good he is despite a total lack of experience. Also, as an aside, the JC Penney’s in Sharon’s Shenango Valley Mall once had a big display of MTV fashion in 1984 with the guy’s side basically being neon and sleeveless Union Jack shirts like Joe Elliot and the girl’s side was all push-up bras and lace gloves so even pre-teens could be Material Girls and I always think about the videos playing while kids begged their parents for rock and roll clothes in the middle of a dying steel town mall.

Robbie is lost inside his world of ham radio — which if you think about it is the less socially respectable social media of the past –and physically can’t compete with Travis, puking all over the doily covered furniture and being sent upstairs to be watched by Earl.

Reerah is in the basement, watching over mom, dad and grandma, who shares a kiss with Travis that shakes her to her core. It turns out that six months after marrying her husband — she never says Lloyd’s dad — she made love to a working man who stole him briefly from her. A man that looks exactly like Travis but 51 years later. As Travis tries to seduce Katie — which isn’t hard, as she wants to scream at baseball games, sing in elevators and dance in New York City — the family attacks, knocking out Earl and Reerah, which brings down a barely dressed Tad and Lucy just in time for Lloyd to push Travis into the Christmas tree, killing him.

Or does he? Because moments later, he’s been transformed, saying how he touched the face of the Almighty and is a changed man. Strangely, the whole family has been transformed by this night and not by violence; this is kind of like their Christmas Carol except, you know, one warped by sex, strangness and a lunatic who might be the sanest person in the story.

Night Visitors never came out on VHS in the U.S., nor is it streaming anywhere other than YouTube and it’s also never been on DVD or blu ray. This is a movie where not much happens, a lot of talking occurs, everyone is absolutely strange and there’s not really a protagonist or antagonist as much as there are characters that interact. I find it incredibly fascinating, a holiday horror movie that is not a horror film at all, one I had never heard of that had somehow been made just feet from where I was often in 1987.

Inspired by the life of French brothel madam Madame Claude, this Just Jaeckin-directed film has a soundtrack by Serge Gainsbourg. I really don’t know how much sexier a movie can be to be perfectly frank, because I think if you put those two guys together, you might get pregnant just handling this blu ray even if you are a guy.

Madame Claude (Françoise Fabian) has a veritable army of high-class call girls always on call, ready to serve the needs of the elite businessmen of the world. She’s not above getting involved in politics or business or even blackmail, which may come back to hurt her when photographer David Evans (Murray Head, yes, the guy who sang “One Night In Bangkok”) starts taking photos of her ladies as they meet up with their clients.

You know who else is in this? Klaus Kinski, who hated being in the film despite seemingly living a wild life while making it. In his book Kinski Uncut, he claimed “It’s an insult that I have to do the movie Madame Claude, and here in Paris to boot. The salary is also wretched. But we need the money. The girls who play Madame Claude’s prostitutes in the movie **** like professionals. Especially the very young ones, but also the married ones, whom I can **** only if their husbands are briefly out of town. A very young extra has a tiny, almost naked **** like a mouth, very tiny *** cheeks, and very tiny ***. I always have to telephone her ***** mom before I can **** the daughter.”

He’s the first client of the woman who Madame Claude is transforming from innocent to wise to the ways of love, Elizabeth (Dayle Haddon, who was in Spermula, Sex with a Smile and is also Pearl Prophet in Cyborg). He wants her to seduce his son and then he breaks his son’s heart by taking her as well.

Jaeckin makes dirty movies, but he also comes close to art. This also gets into conspiracy, U.S. Presidents being serviced by call girls, a chase through Kinski’s home as the photographer is finally caught by numerous agents and — as always — gorgeous women like Fabian, Haddon and Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron (who was also in Jaeckin’s The Story of O).

The Cult Epics blu ray release of this movie has a 4K HD Transfer from the original 35mm negative supervised by cinematographer Robert Fraisse, as well as commentary by Jeremy Richey, author of the upcoming book Sylvia Kristel: from Emmanuelle to Chabrol. There’s also an interview with Jaeckin, a French trailer, a promotional gallery and a CD of the soundtrack by Gainsbourg. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on December 18, 2017 and again on March 2, 2022 to discuss how it was re-released by Cannon as Deathhouse. 

Christmas Eve, 1950: Wilfred Butler runs from his home, on fire, and supposedly dies in the snow.

Christmas Eve, 1970: John Carter (Patrick O’Neal, The Stepford Wives, The Stuff) and his assistant Ingrid arrive in a small Massachusetts town. He meets with the town’s mayor, sheriff and major citizens like Tess Howard and Charlie Towman (John Carradine!), who may have lost his voice to a tracheotomy but not his need to smoke, about selling the Butler mansion as soon as possible. While staying overnight with Ingrid, who is also his mistress, they are both killed by an axe. The killer calls the police and says that they are Marianne.

Tess, the town’s telephone operator, hears the call and drives to the mansion, where she is greeted by Marianne Butler before she is hit in the head with a candle holder. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mason finds that Wilfred’s grave is empty. He is killed and thrown into the empty hole.

Mayor Adams is asked to go to the Butler mansion but leaves his daughter, Diane (Mary Woronov, Death Race 2000, Chelsea Girls) at home. She meets up with a man who claims to be Jeffrey Butler, who has taken the sheriff’s abandoned car. Together, they search for the lawman but can’t find him.

After taking Towman to the mansion, Jeffrey goes back to get Diane. On their way to the mansion, Towman stumbles blindly in front of them and is hit and killed. His eyes had been stabbed out and Diane grows worried about Jeffrey.

Well, fuck me, this movie is also about incest! A diary found at the house reveals that Jeffrey is the son of Wilfred and his daughter, Marianne. Afterward, Wilfred turned the house into an asylum and admitted his own daughter. However, on Christmas Eve 1935, he turned all of the inmates loose. They killed every doctor as well as his daughter. Of note here is that many of the inmates in the flashback are played by former stars of Warhol’s factory, like Ondine, Tally Brown, Kristen Steen and Lewis Love, as well as Flaming Creatures auteur Jack Smith, artist George Trakas and his wife at the time, Susan Rothenberg. Warhol superstar Candy Darling also shows up in the film as a party guest.

Well, it turns out that some of the inmates of the insane asylum ended up being important parts of the town — that’s right, all of the important people John met with in the beginning!

Mayor Adams arrives at the mansion and he and Jeffrey face off, guns drawn, each believing the other is the killer. They kill one another as Marianne shows up, but she is really Wilfred, who is alive. He went after the inmates for their role in the death of his daughter and used his grandson/son/secret shame Jeffrey as a patsy. Diane gets the gun and kills the old man. One year later, the mansion is demolished as she watches.

Director Theodore Gershuny worked on plenty of episodes of Monsters and Tales from the Darkside after this film. He was also married to Woronov. The original title for the film was Night Of The Dark Full Moon and it was also nearly called Zora, which makes little to no sense.

There are some really interesting techniques here, especially in the flashback sequences, which feel like tinted photographs come to life with the saddest version of “Silent Night” ever playing behind the action. I love how experimental and dark these sequences look — they remind me a little of the film Begotten.

This is a dark film for your holiday viewing, so if you want to chase away the family for a while, this is the one to do it.

Mark and Lawrence Zubia grew up in a large Mexican-American family in Arizona and started their music careers in their dad’s mariachi band before forming several bands in Tempa, the same scene that contained Jimmy Eat World, Gin Blossoms and The Refreshments. In fact, Pistoleros was the band that ex-Gin Blossoms leader Doug Hopkins formed after leaving that band, but Hopkins had addiction issues and took his life six months after starting their band.

The movie that director Steven Esparza was making is way different than what he planned. On the first night he met the band, thinking he was capturing their comeback, the band was already split. Esparza told AZ Central, “No one knew Lawrence had fired him at that point, that Mark was upset and they were just basically going backwards again.” That’s because Lawrence and Mark were estranged for nearly a decade after what Lawrence describes as a six-year, self-destructive downward spiral fueled that started after recovering from back surgery.

Even though the brothers would work out their demons and their band, sadness came back into their lives when on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020, Lawrence died of pancreatitis after contracting pneumonia while recovering from surgery.

This film is a rough but necessary watch. The Zubia Brothers had a love and hate relationship that also had to deal with being in a band, touring and drugs. Through meeting and interviewing Lawrence and Mark and their fellow bandmates and other bands in their scene, as well as journalists, friends and even doctors, you gain the full and complicated story while getting to learn why their music was so important.

You can get this from MVD.