Father David (Graham Skipper, the director of Sequence Break) is a devout priest who has never missed a Mass, never eaten meat on a Good Friday and never misses the opportunity to speak on God’s love, including when he invites Terry (Jeremy Gardner, the director of After Midnight and the man who told his mother not to watch this movie) and Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke, Gardner’s real-life wife) to stay during the holidays.

It starts as a simple act of kindness and nothing can go wrong, right? But throw in a game of never have I ever, then have a good man — in his head if perhaps not as much in his heart — get tempted and things are ready to go off the rails.

Director and writer Eric Pennycoff also made Sadistic Intentions, which starred Gardner and Zaudtke, and he puts together a movie with a small cast, a smart script and a mix of madness and black humor as the priest finds himself in a place — and perhaps a position — that he had never prepared for.

I also loved Rigo Garay, who plays RIgo the organ player, perhaps the only character brave enough to tell Father David that he hasn’t had a parishioner attend Mass in weeks and that he’s just been giving sermons to an empty church. But if that’s true, who are the prophetic — and perhaps Satanic — voices who come to confession? And what’s with the young padre’s frequent confessions of his own to that horrifying painting?

There’s an incredible moment near the end where an off-the-deep-end Father David throws on his vestment and rants on the altar while arguing with a red-lit Terry — or a vision of him — before learning that — and this is the biggest spoiler warning I can give — that the real Terry has beaten his wife and snorted David’s mother’s ashes.

I mean, this is a movie that has a priest with his head wrapped up straight out of Threads losing his mind and a last shot that will make you think long after the Christmas carol-scored credits run out.

The Arrow Video blu ray release of The Leech has two commentary tracks, one with with writer/producer/director Eric Pennycoff and producer Scott Smith and the other recorded live at the Chattanooga Film Festival; a virtual Q&A with director Eric Pennycoff and the cast at the 2022 Chattanooga Film Festival; Preaching to the Void, a brand new visual essay exploring The Leech and Pennycoff’s earlier films by critic Anton Bitel; The Voice of Reason, a brand new video interview with Pennycoff and actor Graham Skipper; an introduction and Q&A from the film’s international premiere at FrightFest 2022; exclusive introductions to the film by Pennycoff and Skipper; The Making of The Leech; Rigo’s music video; three short films by Pennycoff, Unfortunate, The Pod and Phase II; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Haunt Love and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Julieann Stipidis. You can get it from MVD.

You can also stream this movie on the Arrow player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

Directed by Hiroaki Yoshida, whose Twilight of the Cockroaches had an English translation by Robotech remixer Carl Macek and inspired Joe’s Apartment, Iron Maze was co-written by Yoshida and Tim Metcalfe, who wrote Kalifornia, Revenge of the Nerds and Fright Night 2. What a resume! It was produced by Oliver Stone, whose name is high above everyone else on the VHS box art.

It’s all based In a Grove by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa, the writer of Rashomon.

It’s set in Corinth, Pennsylvania, a town that does not exist but was the setting for the soap opera Loving. Junichi Sugita (Hiroaki Murakami) has bought a local steel mill and plans on tearing it down to make a theme park — hey, Kennywood is ten minutes away if this is set in Pittsburgh — but he’s found near brain-dead inside his factory. Is it the steelworkers, led by former boss Jack Ruhle (J.T, Walsh) and Mayor Peluso (John Randolph), angry that they’re about to have to work minimum wage jobs? Or is it hotel worker Barry Mikowski (Jeff Fahey) who was insulted by Sugita and has been taking it out by sticking it to the man’s American wife Chris (Bridget Fonda)?

It’s Gung Ho with steel instead of cars and sex instead of hilarity.

This was shot in Braddock, the home of Martin and John Fetterman’s adopted hometown. This really gets across just how bad the dead mills made Pittsburgh amongst its surreal scenes. Fonda’s character is from Harmony, but I bet it’s really Zelienople and she doesn’t want to teach Japanese people how to pronounce that. Also: 1991 Bridget Fonda is a good argument for intelligent design.

Blood Beat is one of those box covers you’d look at over and over again, trying to decide whether or not you should rent it. Then, when you finally sit down and take it in, it blows your mind and you try to describe it to your friends and they think you have to be making it all up. Ah, the pre-internet days. Well, now that we’re all online, I’d like to think of you as my friend. And I’m going to tell you all about this crazy movie.

Fabrice A. Zaphiratos has two directing credits to his name and this is one of them. That’s a shame — his direction here tends toward the strange and unexpected. There were moments here where I just yelled in glee at the TV, shocked at what was happening. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it aspires to be one.

This feels like a regional horror movie made by a bunch of European art directors on too many drugs. It’s also the only Christmas horror movie I’ve ever seen that has a psychic samurai slasher. But it really isn’t even about Christmas. It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen that has a murder scene synched up with a girl’s orgasms. Also, the house the family lives in tries to kill everyone at one point, but no one decides to leave it.

This all starts with Cathy and Gary talking about how they’ll never get married, despite him wanting to be a father to her children. This scene feels like something out of a pure drama and not in a tacked on to a horror film way. I actually thought I had accidentally loaded up a student film or an attempt to film a 70’s hard and honest look at relationships. But soon enough, Dolly and Ted come home. Ted’s girlfriend Sarah is the cause of great concern, as Cathy’s psychic abilities warn her of the young girl. Surely, she’s seen her before. And when Sarah finds a samurai sword in her bedroom, things get strange.

As weird as the film gets, it never plays anything for laughs. It’s earnest and deadly serious. Unlike a modern film, it explains nothing. You’re open to explain for yourself why the mother and girlfriend have a psychic link. Why is the killer a samurai? Why are there strange video effects throughout? Why is the mom a painter? I’d love to discuss this film at a party with a roomful of people who have just watched it.

This movie is why I love movies. It feels like a discovery. I want to share it with you.

Vinegar Syndrome has put out what has to be the definitive release of this film. It’s packed with extras and an embossed slipcover. You can also watch this on Tubi.

Somehow, someone, somewhere decided that a remix of Striking Distance — a movie that means more in Pittsburgh than anywhere else in the world — and The Fog should star a bunch of pro wrestlers and our world is all the better, particularly because they decided that Kurt Angle should play the lead, Sheriff Will Logan.

That someone is probably director and writer Bruce Koehler, who also made American Ouija. He cast Sid Vicious and Kevin Nash as the spectral Jacobs brothers, as well as the one-time Glacier Ray Lloyd and local Pittsburgh wrestler Jason Winn “J.B. Destiny” Bareford, once an assistant to George Romero and the 2007 Guinness World Record holder for the Most Consecutive Kicks To One’s Own Head in Sixty Seconds, which he won by kicking himself 57 times in the head in one minute. He plays Angle’s deputy in here. And that Dave Hawk guy in the credits? He was Angle’s manager when this was filmed.

Pittsburgh movie fans will probably more excited to see first zombie — and the maker of FleshEater — S. William Hinzman as well as noted Steel City stage legend Bingo O’Malley.

It’s shocking that this movie has an IMDB estimate budget of $3 million dollars, a budget I would be keen to dismiss. But who knows? It’s not the first movie that Angle made with Koehler, as End Game was the first. There’s also Death from Above, which adds Tom Savini and Robert Z’Dar to the yinzer and pro wrestling cast. Oh yeah — Matt Morgan, Rhyno, ODB and James Storm are all in that, so the TNA influence was heavy. Seeing as how it was also shot in Pittsburgh, I guess I’ll have to watch that too.

You can watch this on Tubi.

At the time this was made, in the places where it was made, I haunted Market Square in between my classes in art school. This movie makes me wistful because so much of the downtown Pittsburgh that I loved — and is long gone — was there, like National Record Mart, The Oyster House, Candy Rama, George Aiken, GW Murphy’s — and the film drives up Liberty Avenue to where Chez Kimberly once was, yet the movie makes what was once Pittsburgh’s most sinful street even most lust-filled. It also hits Shadyside and Bloomfield, which makes sense, because Tom Savini had to just walk a few blocks to the effects and perform his cameo as a photographer.

Pittsburgh wasn’t the original setting for this movie. Writers Mick and Richard Christian Matheson first wrote a story called Red Sleep that director John Landis rewrote with Harry Shearer. In that tale, Las Vegas was run by vampires, but the studio hated it. Landis found another story, Innocent Blood by Michael Wolk, and had enough freedom to do anything he wanted. He was going to make it in Philadelphia and set it in New York City, but Pittsburgh worked better for him. Another story that gets told is that Innocent Blood was going to be made by Jack Sholder with Lara Flynn Boyle and Dennis Hopper in the lead roles.

Anne Parillaud had just finished making La Femme Nikita and was a great choice for this movie, even if her accent made her difficult to understand. She said of the movie, “I fell in love with Marie in Innocent Blood because she wasn’t born a vampire; she never decided she wanted to be. For me, it was a parable to talk about how you deal with this problem, which is when you are different. You think or you live or you want something different from everyone else. People don’t follow you, because it’s scary. You are quite alone in your choices.”

Marie is living in the City of Bridges and making moral choices about whose blood she drinks, making sure to shotgun blast each victim so it looks like a crime and not her living off their fluids. Yet when she gets caught in the war between Salvatore “Sal the Shark” Macelli (Robert Loggia) and Detective Joseph Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia). One night, when she tries to use Sal for his blood, a meal with garlic weakens her. He assaults her, she recovers by biting him but must run before she can turn him. This allows him to become a vampiric mob boss, which is a great idea, even if this film seems a bit small in how it realizes it.

That said, the cast is great. There are pre-Sopranos roles for David Proval, Tony Lip and Tony Sirico, Don Rickles as their consigliere who lives near the gift wrap house in Shadyside, Chazz Palminteri as a gangster, Luis Guzmán and Angela Bassett as a cop and an attorney and cameos from Linnea Quigley, Forest Ackerman, Frank Oz, Sam Raimi and Dario Argento as a paramedic!

Twenty minutes had to be cut the first time the MPAA saw this, then two more minutes to get an R. I wish there as an uncut version because I’d like to see if it plays better.

Landis was unhappy that this played in other countries as A French Vampire in America which is a great play on his more famous werewolf movie and a much better title than this got.