In 2013, when the Alamo Drafthouse presented the uncut version of this film for the first time in the United States, they called it an “unforgettable assault on reality.” Those words best describe what is otherwise an indescribable film.

But I’m going to try.

Maybe a recipe will help.

Take Chariots of the Gods, and some of Rosemary’s Mary, then a little bit of The Omen, throw it in a blender and then pour the whole thing down the sink.

No? Maybe a synopsis.

We start in Heaven, or somewhere very much like it, where Franco Nero (the original Django) is one of those space gods that Erich von Däniken wrote about. He tells the bald children who surround him that there was once a war between two aliens, one good and one bad. The bad one — who is either called Sateen or Zathaar — was defeated, but not before he slept with a whole bunch of Earthwomen. Cue the Book of Enoch in the Lost Books of the Bible. Or cue the Scientology myth of Lord Xenu. Or Xemu, because he has two different spellings, too.

Only one child is left — a young girl — and a vast conspiracy wants her mother to have another child — a brother this time — so they can mate. The Christ figure sends John Huston — yes, the director of The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen — and the bald children to a rooftop somewhere in Atlanta to stop this plot. To do that, the children become adult evil men and dance around a lot while Huston walks up and down the stairs to triumphant music. If you think I’m making that last sentence up, you’ve never been blessed with this movie.

Meanwhile, Lance Henriksen (Near Dark, Aliens) is Ted Turner, pretty much. His name is Raymond Armstead, and he owns the Atlanta Rebels basketball team that plays at the Omni, and he is dating Barbara (Joanne Nail, Switchblade Sisters), who, of course, has the seed of the gods inside her. Her daughter Katy is 8 years old and already using her powers to help the Rebels win their games. But that isn’t all the help Raymond is getting. The rich, powerful and ultra-secretive Zathaar cult controls the world and is helping his team become winners. All he has to do is marry Barbara, knock her up and let their kids fuck. Hopefully, they have a boy, or Raymond is gonna have to get in the saddle all over again.

Raymond can’t even do that right, and the leader of the bad guys, Mel Ferrer (The Antichrist and Eaten Alive!) is upset and ready to quit on Raymond. Barbara doesn’t want more kids, and indeed not another child. But who can blame her? Her daughter is one creepy little girl. Her daughter knows all about the conspiracy and begs her mom to get married so she can have a brother (and this is where, in person, I’d throw in “…to have sex with” but I’d use the f word). How creepy is Katy? Well, she kills a bunch of boys with her mental powers because they make fun of her while she ice skates. And then she accidentally shoots her mother at a birthday party. Yep, it’s as if The Bad Seed met Carrie!

Then, as all 70’s occult movies must, the stars of Hollywood’s golden age make appearances!

Glenn Ford, the actor, plays a cop that Katy curses out and uses hawks to wreck his car!

Shelley Winters plays Barbara’s nurse, who once had one of the space babies and killed it, but can’t bring herself to kill Katy! According to interviews, Winters really smacked around Paige Conner, the actress who played Katy!

Sam Peckinpah, the director (!), plays an abortionist who removes one of the space babies from Barbara after the conspiracy pays a bunch of things to artificially inseminate her. Turns out Peckinpah had trouble remembering his lines, which is why we never learn that he’s Barbara’s ex-husband! Then is he Katy’s dad? Who knows! His voice is even Peckinpah’s! They had to ADR all of his dialogue.

In response to the abortion, Katy shoves her mom through a fish tank. She also decides to throw her down the stairs, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?-style. And by throwing her down the steps, I mean do it over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, John Huston is still going up and down the stairs. Finally, they HAVE HAD ENOUGH (I like to emphasize that so you get the gist) and sent their John Woo-ian flock of doves to fight the hawks. Meanwhile, Mel Ferrer and all his men show up dead with black marks on their bodies.

And Katy? Well, as Huston tells us, kids can never be evil. She gets her head shaved and goes into space to meet the Interstellar Jesus Christ. The title comes up as insane music blares.

Writer/director/insane man Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi) was in Fellini’s 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita. What inspired him to this level of cinematic goofiness? He was helped along by Ovidio G. Assonitis, whose resume includes writing Beyond the Door, Madhouse and Forever Emmanuelle before becoming the major stockholder and CEO of Cannon Pictures in 1990. That may explain some. But not all.

I know I often write things like “I don’t have the words to describe this” when I do these reviews — mainly after I write a few hundred words all about said subject. But this is one time that that statement is not pure hyperbole. Just watch the trailer and be prepared to lose your grasp on normalcy!

The Visitor defies the logic of good and bad film. It can only be graded on whether it’s an absolute film, ala Fulci or Jodorowsky. It is something to be experienced.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of this film features a brand-new 4K restoration of the 109-min European version from the original 35mm camera negative, by Arrow Films. Extras include brand new audio commentary by film critics BJ anf Harmony Colangelo; visual essays by film critics Meagan Navarro and Willow Catelyn Maclay; archival interviews with Lance Henriksen, Lou Comici and cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri; a theatrical trailerl an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Erik Buckham and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Marc Edward Heuck, Richard Kadrey, Craig Martin and Mike White. You can get it from MVD.

Shot entirely on location in Ireland, mainly employing Irish actors and crew, Excalibur was an essential film for the Irish filmmaking industry and helped start the careers of Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne and Ciarán Hinds.

It was also known as the Boorman Family Project, as several members of director Jonathan Boorman’s family appear: his daughter Katrine Boorman as Igrayne (Arthur’s mother), his daughter Telsche as the Lady of the Lake, and his son Charley as Mordred as a boy. It was shot a mile from his home, so he was able to stay home for the entire shoot.

Boorman has wanted to make the movie since 1969, yet United Artists saw the three-hour script as too costly and instead offered him The Lord of the Rings, which he did not make but did develop. He ended up using some of the work that went into that adaptation here and was potentially inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

He’d worked with Rospo Pallenberg on that canceled film (as well as Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Emerald Forest; Pallenberg would also direct Cutting Class), so he worked with him here to bring Malory’s Morte d’Arthur to theaters. Boorman said that his film was about “the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions, which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.”

I love Roger Ebert’s review of this movie, in which he said that the film was both a wondrous vision and a mess, “a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy figures who are not heroes but simply giants run amok. Still, it’s wonderful to look at.”

It’s beyond gorgeous, actually, a movie that combines shocking gore with artistic flourishes, like the three ladies in white who attend Arthur to Avalon at the close. Boorman was also smart enough to cast Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgana Le Fay, two actors who had had a conflict when they acted together in Macbeth. He felt that tension would be seen on screen, and it certainly is. That said, Mirren claimed that the two became friends while making Excalibur.

It rained every single day of the shoot, which added to the film’s foggy look. It had many issues, as the first fight scene had to be filmed three times. It was filmed at night, and the exposure meter was broken, leaving two scenes underexposed.

Boorman’s career is pretty great. Sure, there are the big movies like Deliverance, but I love that he shoots for the fences and makes off-the-wall stuff like Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Here’s to less playing it safe for directors, even if the misses turn out to be spectacular losses. I don’t think that can happen in entertainment anymore.

My initial exposure to this film came from Mad Magazine. Often as a kid, we wouldn’t see an R-rated movie until it was on HBO, so many of the films I’ve had to find as an adult were first seen through the eyes of Mad’s Usual Gang of Idiots. This time, Don Martin did the movie adaption. I’m happy to share a few panels with you thanks to Jesse Hamm on Twitter.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD and Blu-Ray release of Excalibur — buy it at the MVD links — has so much. It all begins with a brand-new 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative by Arrow Films, presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 for the first time on home video. You get both the theatrical and TV cuts, as well as extras like two new audio commentaries: one by Brian Hoyle, author of The Cinema of John Boorman, and the other by filmmaker David Kittredge, director of Boorman and the Devil. There’s also an archival audio commentary by director John Boorman. Plus, there’s The Making of Excalibur: Myth into Movie, a never before released 48-minute documentary directed by Neil Jordan during the production of Excalibur; new interviews with Boorman, Charley Boorman, creative associate Neil Jordan, production designer Anthony Pratt and 2nd unit director Peter MacDonald; Anam Cara, a new featurette on the working friendship of John Boorman and co-writer Rospo Pallenberg featuring a newly filmed interview with Pallenberg; Divided Nature, a brand new featurette by film historians Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr; trailers; an imkage gallery and Excalibur: Behind the Movie, a 50-minute retrospective documentary in which cast and crew look back on the making of the film. It’s all inside a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options, along with a collector’s perfect-bound booklet containing writing by Charlie Brigden, K.A. Laity, Kimberly Lindbergs, Josh Nelson, Philip Kemp, John Reppion, Icy Sedgwick and Jez Winship, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring two original artwork options and six postcard-sized reproduction art cards.

Vernon Chatman (creator of Wonder Showzen) decided to reach out to four different low-production-value adult film-on-demand groups and have them film his script. There’s nothing sexually arousing here, which makes you wonder what the porn actors involved in this had to believe that they were doing.

Women give birth to meat, men want to go back to the womb, the end of the world arrives, God carries humanity as if it were a fetus, the Pollard family keeps changing with each different group of actors, and this has way more sitting on the toilet than any other movie I’ve seen.

Did you know that to see God’s face, you have to strip?

Can you imagine going to work and your job is having sex all day on film, and then you’re instead making a movie about nuclear war, cheese gratering penises and spraying acid into the face of the Supreme Being. I wonder whether people who have jobs we think they’d love get burned out. Do they come into the office — or the hotel or Van Nuys rented house — and think, “I’m so tired of oral sex.”

This is an interesting experiment, but also a torture test.

Smeralda Amadier (Nadja Tiller) is a singer who has gone from fame to owing money to loan sharks. They give her three days to pay, or else… well, you know, else. She decides to sell all of her jewelry, but after a night of passion, she wakes up to her safe empty. The cops show up, claiming that the man she was horizontally dancing with is the suspect. And now, in her home, you find his sweater. His bloody, bullet-hole-littered sweater.

Plus, with George Hilton on hand as her ex-lover, we definitely have a giallo. Except this is closer to the Lenzi/Baker Gialli of nearly a decade before, and not the films of Argento.

You do get Evi Rigano (The Tenth Victim) as the personal assistant Marcelle, the evil yet smoke-show sister Yvonne (Evi Marandi, Planet of the Vampires), and Guy Madison in his only giallo! Yes, the star of Long Days of Hate, LSD Flesh of the Devil and Five for Revenge. Director Mario Sequi also made The Cobra and The Tramplers. Also: A great twist ending and an even better chase scene.

You can watch this on YouTube. 

Marco (Paolo Turco), the son of a plastics manufacturer, has just returned from four years away studying in England. Upon his comeback to Italy, he finds nothing but aimlessness. The upper class is disconnected, and the youth are in revolt. For this he spent a night in a prison cell after protesting?

Directed by Adriano Bolzoni (who wrote The Humanoid, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and A Fistful of Dollars; he also directed Nudo, crudo e…), who wrote the script with Giustino Caporale, Marco Masi and Guy Pérol, this has some star power from Peter Lawford, one of the Rat Pack. Yes, the people who made the world want J&B, or as  Difford’s Guide says, “…they partied on whiskey — specifically, J&B Rare Whiskey.”

Everyone has changed. His sister Marzia (Trey Hare) has photos of herself — nude — all over her room. His mother (Françoise Prévost) is distant. And while free love is happening all over, he’s disillusioned. Maybe The Graduate-style soundtrack is here to tell us that he’s someone trapped between the rich, the left, the poor, and the right. It’s the kind of movie that talks down on lesbians but has no trouble showing us lots of Sapphic scenes. The cake, the eating it as well…

It’s kind of a mod giallo, but you’ll hate the main character and wonder what’s happening.

You can watch this on YouTube.

X Trilogy: Collector’s Edition Box Set is a three disc box set that has all three movies by Ti West: X, Pearl and MaXXXine and is the first U.S. release of X and Pearl on 4K UHD. It also has a 64-page booklet with a new essay by Jon Dieringer, unreleased concept art, costume sketches, behind-the-scenes photography, the original poster, VHS artwork created as set dressing for the films and more, as well as over 90 minutes of making-of featurettes and new commentary tracks on all three films.

X (2022):  Consider the law of diminishing returns: X is the best slasher that I’ve seen all year, last year, the year before and probably for the rest of this year.

It may also be the law of the desert island in that it may be the only slasher in years that approaches the blood-soaked heaven of 1978-1981, yet were it released then, would I feel the same way?

And after seeing tweet after tweet about how debauched and filthy and sexed-up this movie was, did we see the same film? Or am I really the “affable pervert” that Grindhouse Releasing said I was and I’ve become too desensitized? Or, probably more true, has this generation become more puritanical and repressed than we were?

Probably most importantly, I decided to just shut up and enjoy the movie.

What I came away with was a film that actually gave me that uncomfortable and awesome feeling of “I wonder what’s next” and a worry for each of its characters.

Back in 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make a dirty film in rural Texas, learning nothing from another Texas-shot slasher. And when their elderly hosts discover what’s happening, the cast find themselves in a way different movie.

Reading that description, I felt sure that I would dislike this movie, but then again, this was Ti West, who somehow took a very basic story in The House of the Devil and made something great and lasting.

I’ve been burned by an A24 trailer before. Come on, we all have. But again, I decided to shut up and watch the movie.

And I’m glad that I did.

Maxine Minx (Mia Goth, Nymphomaniac) dreams of being an adult film star and people knowing her name. This brings her to deepest, darkest New Zealand, err Texas, along with her producer/boyfriend/suitcase pimp Wayne (Martin Henderson), director RJ (Owen Campbell), his assistant/girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, Scream) and two co-stars, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, the Perfect Pitch movies) and Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi!). As they go deeper into the rural world, we’re reminded — of course — of that aforementioned Texas film, what with the van that propels them and the farmhouse they end up in.

RJ has a goal. Just because it’s porn doesn’t mean that it can’t be art, he says, almost like a non-burnt out Gary Graver. Wayne knows something more important: porno chic died because middle America is stil too afraid to go to a porno theater and still blushes when they buy a skin mag. But if they can have that movie in the safety of their home? He’s ahead of the video era, Caballero and VCA before they’d even realized what was next. The themes of this movie are desire and age battling hand in hand and the fact that the new type of entertainment they’re making is based on the oldest joke there is — The Farmer’s Daughters — points to the intelligence of this endeavor.

Meanwhile, there’s Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (also Mia Goth, we’ll get to that shortly), the elderly couple who owns the land. Howard barks at everyone while Pearly stays in the shadows, except for the moment where she invites Maxine in for lemonade, a remembrance of youth, some jealousy and a rebuffed sexual December to May advance.

That afternoon, Pearl watches Maxine and Jackson at work and begs Howard to make love to her one more time, but while the spirit and the emotional heart are willing, the flesh and the physical heart are weak.

That night, Lorraine surprises everyone by asking if she can be in the film. RJ tries to use art as the reason why the script can’t be changed; she defeats his argument and he watches her make love through the eye of his camera. That night, he leaves everyone behind but runs into Pearl and that’s where — nearly an hour into the film — “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays and we’re reminded of exactly what kind of movie we’re in for.

The end of the film surprised me. I should have seen it coming, but the repeated dialogue, the divine intervention and Greek chorus of televangelists all came together in a way that I had no idea was going to occur. Seriously, that preacher gives Estus Pirkle a run for his money.

I also had no idea that Goth spent ten hours a day in makeup for the dual role, which she’ll take up again in Pearl, a prequel that was shot at the same time as this movie.

Even the soundtrack works, written by Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe, who covers Fred Fisher’s “Oui, Oui, Marie.” What doesn’t, however, is the moment where Snow and Kudi sing “Landslide,” as we’ve already established the closeness of the actors and this seems only in the movie to have them remind us they also do music.

As bad as 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, this is good. It feels closer to Eaten Alive, another Hooper film, what with the alligator scene — I winced when someone claimed this movie had a scene that echoed Alligator — and I love how the final girl is the least chaste character in the movie, continually doing drugs and putting herself first.

Here’s to more horror being committed to only being inspired by the past instead of wallowing within it, pushing itself to new heights. I was worried if West would ever come close to House of the Devil again; my fears were unnecessary.

Pearl (2022): Most sequels and prequels rely too much on the movie that they gestate from. Yet Ti West’s Pearl does what seems to be impossible: it takes a movie I really liked, X, and makes me love it. Together, these movies become so much more than the sum of their parts, creating a reflection in the same way the letter that informs them, that denotes pornography, that crosses out the violence on your old TV screen, bifurcating your mind and giving you so much more than you expected.

Back in 1918, during a very different pandemic, Pearl (Mia Goth) is trapped in Texas while her husband Howard fights in World War I. Her father is a shell of a human being, paralyzed and unable to even communicate, while her mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) keeps her on the farm, taking care of the dying man and the crops and serving as her whipping girl. Pearl dreams of a life far from here, of being special, of performing and oh yes, she may also be deranged.

Pearl dreams of more than just being in movies; as she watches them, she’s inspired to be more. She imagines the scarecrow in the cornfield is the projectionist (David Corenswet) who gives her attention. She makes love to it in a way that she never has with her husband. That same projectionist shows her A Free Ride, considered to be the first American hardcore movie, and that night, after she sets her mother on fire and leaves her to die from her burns, she makes love to that man.

There’s an audition for dancers for a traveling show and Pearl must be in that show. By now, she’s already pitchforked that projectionist, her mother and father, all acts that she confesses to her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro).

For nearly eight minutes, Goth breaks the film, explaining who she is and what she’s been through; a husband who has basically abandoned her, the joy she had when his child inside her died and how much she enjoys killing things. It’s astounding, a moment that takes this movie away from basic slasher into psychobiddy — and I say that with sheer delight and absolute kindness — territory.

How heartbreaking then that Howard arrives the next morning to discover his wife serving a maggot-filled pig to her dead parents, holding a smile that goes through the entire credits and dissolves into tears?

West, the director and writer, had worked on this with Goth as a backstory for her character but after dealing with COVID-19 filmmaking, he decided to keep working and make the prequel as soon as the filming of X wrapped, saying “I came out of quarantine and I was like, “We’re already building all of this stuff, it’s COVID and we’re on the one place on Earth where it’s safe to make a movie.””

He saw this film as being a combination of a Douglas Sirk film, Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz and a “demented Disney” film, while the film combined Mario Bava with, obviously, Tobe Hooper.

Both films show how Hollywood has influenced people for better or, well, let’s be honest — worse.

This isn’t the end, as Maxine will continue in MaXXXine. West says, “I’m trying to build a world out of all this, like people do these days. You can’t make a slasher movie without a bunch of sequels.”

I often despise any of the films of today, the ones I’m told that I must see. But since House of the Devil, I’ve been on board with West. It’s not always perfect, but I can say that he definitely makes movies that I in no way expect. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

MaXXXine (2024): I have never been at once more excited and more worried about a movie. After X and Pearl, I was beyond hyped for what would come next. To take my fever pitch ever hotter, this movie was sold as a giallo in 1980s Hollywood, a film like Body Double. I’d be shocked if Maxine and Holly Body didn’t do coke together at the AVNs or at least scissored in a Bruce Seven film)

But to so many American creators, giallo just means synth, bright colors and black gloves. Could Ti West pull it off and make this work alongside the first two movies?

Totally.

Ten minutes into this movie, and I was sold. 

Maxine Minx has escaped death in Texas that claimed everyone else, the final girl who has moved beyond and become a major star in adult films, as they moved from grindhouses and jack shacks into the VHS era. The movie begins with her trying out for a mainstream film, The Puritan II, and yelling that every other girl in line can just go home. She has the part.

Of course she does.

While her contemporaries like Amber James (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby Martin (Halsey) are out partying in the Hollywood hills, she’s working a second job at Show World, dancing in a private booth for men there just to objectify and masturbate to her. That’s fine — she’s the one making the money. She’s interactive, like OnlyFans, before that was a thing, doing everything she can to keep making money and get the life she deserves.

At the same time, a black-gloved killer is stalking her and killing everyone near her, as well as sending detective John Labat (Kevin Bacon) after her. Maybe the guy dressed as Buster Keaton who wanted to rape her should serve as a lesson: don’t fuck with Maxine Minx. She brings a gun to a knife fight, forcing him to his knees to suck off her weapon before she stomps his sex organs into fleshy and bloody pulp.

The cops have gotten their hands on the video filmed in Texas, and Maxine has a copy sent to her, too. She watches herself get off, hiding the footage from her friend Leon (Moses Sumney). At the same time, she’s won over director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) and scored a role in her film, which delights her agent and lawyer, Teddy Knight, Esq. (Giancarlo Esposito). What I love about Teddy is the care he shows Maxine when she reveals she’s being followed; sure, he also shows it through violence, as he and Shephard Turei (Uli Latukefu) help Maxine decimate Labat. 

Whoever is following her has an entire cult, one hiding their murders under the same killing ways as the Night Stalker. Even Molly Bennett (Lily Collins), the star of the first Puritan movie, is not safe. Everyone is going to these Hollywood parties and not coming back. Go figure: this cult is gathered to destroy Maxine — in the house from Body Double — and at its head is her father, Reverend Ernest Miller (Simon Prast). They’re filming a snuff movie they plan on releasing, all to prove that Hollywood is evil. You can see that their Christian mission is more evil than any of the filth that Maxine is part of.

Everyone is an actor, even the cops, Detective Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Detective Torres (Bobby Cannavale), who may save Maxine but are just as ineffective as any giallo police. It’s up to her to be the final girl all over again, the star of her own movie, facing down the man who has tried to ruin her and blasting his face into shotgun oblivion, all under the Hollywood sign. 

Again, while so many movies try to be 80s, this has the right look and soundtrack. I mean, Frankie’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome,” New Order’s “Shellshock” and Ratt’s “I’m Insane?” To make it all come back to giallo, this also has a Stelvio Cipriani song. Sure, it’s from The Great Alligator, but it’s a good song. Plus, this somehow has the Psycho house show up, and it never feels like borrowed interest. 

I’m glad that all my waiting paid off. I mean, it didn’t. I should have known this would be good.

Bonus features include:

X
○ Commentary with D.P. Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock
○ Pearl makeup timelapse
○ “The X Factor” featurette
○ Original trailer

Pearl
○ Commentary with D.P. Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock
○ “Coming Out of Her Shell: The Creation of Pearl” featurette
○ “Time After Time” featurette
○ Original trailer

MaXXXine
○ Commentary with production designer Jason Kisvarday and set decorator Kelsi Ephraim
○ “The Belly of the Beast” featurette
○ “XXX Marks the Spot” featurette
○ “Hollywood is a Killer” featurette
○ Deep Dive with composer Tyler Bates
○ Q&A with Ti West
○ Original trailers

You can get this set from A24.

Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 31 at 7:00 PM at The Sie Film Center in Denver. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Life’s weird, because one of the best giallo films — and you could also call it neo-noir or krimi while you’re trying to figure out what it is — is the animated cat film Felidae from Germany. While the U.S. struggles to understand that cartoons can be for anyone, this film has incredibly adult situations all acted out by felines. So while it looks cute, let me warn parents out there that there are some extremely violent and disturbing images in this movie for kids.

Francis is one of those cats who take after their owner. Seeing as how he’s the fur son of Gustav Löbel, a romance writer and archeologist, he’s inherited a detached view of the world, like a Chandler character with a tail. They’ve just moved into a new house, and the first thing he finds is the body of another cat. As he explores the murder scene, he meets the one-eyed and roughed-up Maine Coon cat Bluebeard, who gives him the background of the neighborhood, which is a pretty wild place, seeing as how some of the cats worship a god named Claudandus and regularly kill themselves in his name. He barely escapes them and meets up with a blind cat named Felicity, who reveals more about this group of occult kittens.

Francis next meets the elderly Pascal, who is keeping track of each murder, at which point he learns that Felicity is the latest victim. He soon discovers that the neighborhood once housed a laboratory devoted to creating a wound-healing formula tested on stray cats, with the lone survivor being Claudandus, who murdered the scientists and freed the strays, leading to his very name becoming holy amongst the alley’s cats.

Now, one of the cats will reveal himself to be this legendary figure, and they’ve selected Francis as their successor. Will he accept the power or stop this cycle of murder, which aims to push past humans in the evolutionary ladder and take over the world?

Director Michael Schaack went on to make several Pippi Longstocking cartoons, while writer Martin Kluger has mainly worked in German TV. Akif Pirinçci, who wrote the original novel, also had his book Die Damalstür filmed as the 2009 Mads Mikkelsen-starring movie The Door.

With wild dream sequences, mysterious allies, a cult, graphic murders and even a sex scene, Felidae has everything that most giallo do. And unlike some films, like Your Vice Is a Locked Room, which only has one cat—the black badass known as Satan—nearly every character here has fur.