Directed and co-written by Douglas Buck, this remake of Sisters starts with developmental psychologist Dr. Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea) performing magic at a children’s party being thrown at his work, the Zurvan Institute. His ex-wife — and former patient — Angelique (Lou Doillon) — is his assistant, but the party gets weird when Grace Collier (Chloë Sevigny), a reporter, is found and kicked out. 

Dr. Dylan Wallace (Dallas Roberts) ends up having a one-night stand with Angelique, learning that it’s her birthday, as well as the birthday of her roommate and twin sister, Annabel. He goes to get them a birthday cake, just in time to be stabbed with knitting needles by Annabel, which Grace sees on Phillip’s computer as she snoops on him.

Grace is against Phillip, as her mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital. She’s sure that he’s using psychotropic drugs on both Angelique and Annabel, as well as covering up their crimes. A former assistant, Dr. Mercedes Kent (Gabrielle Rose), reveals that Angelique and Annabel were conjoined twins who were taken by their mother from Canada to France, where they worked in a sideshow. Angelique was the quiet one; Annabel was murderous; they were separated, and it’s thought that Annabel died of lung failure and Angelique lives alone under Philip’s supervision.

As she sneaks into the institute, Grace is captured by Phillip, who drugs her, and the revelations of what really happened appear as if they were dreams. Philip started a sexual affair with Angelique when she still had a twin, so he said that Annabel was a parasite. He performed the separation so he could be with her, but after Annabel died, Angeliqiue took on her need to kill. Grace is so drugged out that she stabs the doctor, then Angelique kills Grace’s co-worker Larry (JR Bourne) before giving Grace a matching scar and making her her new sister.

Buck said, “In the original film, which I love, De Palma chose style over substance. I’m interested in exploring all the other stuff that’s there — the perversity, the tragedy, the sadness. All those character traits make it, to me, more interesting. I want to make the characters more alive.” I think that he did a great job here, as this can stand on its own.

You can watch this on Tubi.

If you have a child, don’t send them off to a school. Horror movies have shown me this.

The Edelvine Academy for Girls is where this takes place, and, as you’d figure, there’s a clique of mean girls led by Alice (Inanna Sarkis) that includes Yvonne (Stephanie Sy), Rosalind (Djouliet Amara), Bethany (Madisen Beaty), and Lenora (Jade Michael). One night, they prank Kerrie (Megan Best) by leading her to believe the urban legend of the Edelvine Ghost is real and that she’s being haunted. She’s so frightened that she runs to her room, falls out the window and soon dies.

Camille Meadows (Suki Waterhouse) is the new girl, staying in Kerrie’s room. One of the girls, Helina (Ella-Rae Smith), shows her to her room,  but they run into the mean girls. A fight breaks out, and everyone is given detention in the library by headmistress Mrs. Landry (Marina Stephenson Kerr), who lives in the school with her son Trevor (Seamus Patterson).

During one of these punishments, the girls hold a seance to reach Kerrie. They get some force, one that tells them that they will all be killed, starting with Lenora, who dies that night. Everyone thinks she just ran away, stealing several of their things, until they find a cross of blood on her bed. This cross is similar to the one that Alicia Kane wore. That’s who the Edelvine Ghost is said to be. 

The deaths continue with Rosalind dying in the shower, Bethant finding a masked figure and another seance, where Rosalind’s spirit claims that Camille is the murderer. Soon, Yvonne is murdered, and Camille and Alice are knocked out by the masked person and taken.

And now, spoilers…

Bethany and Trevor are the masked figures who kill the mean girls and Kerrie after Bethany steals an essay from her and wins a significant scholarship. They’re both murderous and full of lies, as Bethany faked the seance and Trevor may have created the urban legend when he killed Alicia, his babysitter. Bethany is going to kill Alice, frame Camille, and then kill Helina as well, but that’s when Carrie reveals she’s not who she said she was. She’s really one of Kerrie’s friends, here to get revenge. Kerrie’s ghost leads Helina to Camille and Alice, leading to Bethany being stabbed in the neck and Trevor’s head being graphically crushed. Camille leaves the school, waving goodbye to Heilna and Kerry’s ghost.

Seance was directed and written by Simon Barrett, who usually works with director Adam Wingard. Together, they made The Guest, You’re Next and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. This is a movie that plays with genre and is a decent watch; it’s low-budget but never low-concept.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the American Cinematheque Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void. 

Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti (who took all the credit) directed the first shockumentary, Mondo Cane. Following that, they worked on Women of the World before Jacopetti moved on to make increasingly more insane films with Franco Prosperi. Cavara? He went on to make his own films, including this one, which some place amongst the best giallo ever.

A mysterious killer is killing women who were involved with a blackmail scheme, using a needle to paralyze them before he slices their stomachs open, the same way a tarantula kills a wasp. Even worse — the victims are awake and can feel the pain, but are unable to move or scream.

Cavara uses one of the queens of giallo for his first victim, Barbara Bouchet (The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Amuck!). Soon, it’s up to Inspector Tellini to solve the case before he or his girlfriend is killed. He’s a totally likable character, rare for a giallo, who mainly argues with his wife, who buys too much furniture while worrying if he’s good enough at what he does. He hits a little too close to home.

There is plenty more eye candy in the film, with Claudine Auger (Domino from Thunderball) and Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me, The Humanoid) showing up. And there’s an excellent Ennio Morricone score.

For more info on Bond girls and giallo, read this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theater in Chicago (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void. 

Umberto Lenzi, come on down! We’re eager for you to shock us, titillate us, and perhaps even thrill us a bit. Oh, and you’ve brought Carroll Baker with you! Please, show us the tale you’ve crafted!

Released in Italy as Orgasmo, this was released as one of the first X-rated movies in the U.S., which was definitely played up in all of the ads especially because it had Baker in the movie. She had left America a single mother with two children and her prospects weren’t great in Hollywood. In Italy, despite making movies that she said “What they think is wonderful is not what we might,” she found a career. Later, she would admit that it showed her an entirely different world and brought her back to feeling alive again.

What’s confusing is that Lenzi’s next movie was released as Paranoia in Italy and A Quiet Place to Kill in America.

I love this interview that she did with Tank Magazine, answering if she ever did any avant-garde projects: “Some of the films in Europe, of course, but a lot of them I haven’t even seen. The one I’m curious about is called Baba Yaga; it was a really far out, wild, cartoonish sort of thing. I play the title character, a 1,500-year-old witch, and all my sisters were witches, too. I didn’t have to be completely naked, but in every Italian film, there was a scene where you had to show your breasts. Usually, I was talking on the telephone or reading a book. One day they announced a nude scene – I couldn’t believe it. But the make-up artist and hairdresser were already there, dying the other girls’ pubic hair to match the hair on their heads.”

In this story, Kathryn West (played by Baker) is a glamorous American widow who moves to Italy just weeks after her wealthy older husband’s death. She settles into a huge villa, but her life feels lonely and boring until Peter enters the picture. His free-spirited nature shakes her out of her rut, and soon he moves in with his sister, Eva. However, things aren’t what they seem—they are not actually siblings, and their relationship evolves into a complicated love triangle. When Kathryn tries to break free from this arrangement, Peter and Eva keep her prisoner, constantly keeping her under the influence of drugs and alcohol while playing the same haunting song on repeat, driving her to the brink of insanity and suicidal thoughts. That’s what happens when you get gaslit and everyone is feeding you pills. Don’t worry — everyone pays for their sins by the end.

Caroll Baker started off as a Hollywood sex symbol before retreating to Europe where she’d make Baba Yaga, So Sweet… So Perverse and The Sweet Body of Deborah, amongst others. Eventually, she’d move back to America and become a mature actress. As for Lenzi, he’d go on to make Eaten Alive, Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City and more.

If you appreciate melodramatic twists, layered narratives, and visually striking sex scenes, then it’s time to indulge in this film. If you can’t make it to the Music Box, you can find it as part of The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection set from Severin, which also has So Sweet…So Peverse, A Quiet Place to Kill and Knife of Ice.

John Dahl made plenty of neo-noir — Red Rock West, Kill Me Again, and The Last Seduction — and oh yeah, he directed Joy Ride, too. Writer Bill Geddie was Barbara Walters’s business partner and helped create The View. Together, they made an American giallo.

Seattle medical examiner Dr. David Krane (Ray Liotta) finds a matchbook at a crime scene that reminds him of the one he saw when his wife, Mary (Stellina Rusich), was killed. When he learns that Dr. Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino) has a way to transfer memories with Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF), he gets samples of his dead wife’s and the murder victim’s spinal fluid and shoots himself up with it, which allows him to relive those murders.

This is what we call bullshit giallo science, kind of like being able to see someone’s last moments of life through their eyeball or that people with the XYY chromosome have a criminal tendency.

Krane’s co-worker, Curtis Avery (David Paymer), looks at the sketch of the killer Krane has made and says that it’s Eddie Dutton (Kim Coates). Krane arrives at a hotel where Dutton is hiding and gets into a fight; the criminal is shot by Detective Don Bresler (Peter Coyote). As a result of all this, Krane is fired, but steals Dutton’s spinal fluid on the way out.

It turns out that Krane has been on a downward spiral. He was a drunk, asleep in the front yard on the night that his pregnant wife was killed. As he has more flashbacks, he starts to have heart attacks due to the side effects of the fluids. That’s when he discovers that the baby inside his wife wasn’t his. 

Detective Stewart Gleick (Christopher McDonald) reveals that Detective Joseph Bodner is the father. He’d met Mary when they testified against Bresler, who is a corrupt cop. Ah, it all makes sense now. And hey — Kim Cattrall is Mary’s sister. So there’s that.

Roger Ebert said, “In the annals of cinematic goofiness, Unforgettable deserves a place of honor. This is one of the most convoluted, preposterous movies I’ve seen—a thriller crossed with lots of Mad Scientist stuff, plus wild chases, a shoot-out in a church, a woman taped to a chair in a burning room, an exploding university building, adultery, a massacre in a drugstore, gruesome autopsy scenes and even a moment when a character’s life flashes before her eyes, which was more or less what was happening to me by the end of the film.”

He makes it sound even better.

But is it a giallo? Well, it was released in Italy as Specchio della memoria, which translates as Mirror of Memory.

That would be a resounding yes.

If you’re going to watch a Steven Seagal movie, let this be the one you pick. He plays Casey Ryback, chief petty officer and culinary specialist on the USS Missouri. As the ship sails off to be decommissioned, he starts making a meal for the commanding officer, Captain Adams (Patrick O’Neal), despite what the executive officer, Commander Krill (Gary Busey), wants. Why is he bringing in food and entertainment — like Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak), Playboy Playmate for July 1989, just like Eleniak in real life — on board?

That’s because he’s working with William Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones), a former CIA operative who is now a terrorist. After Ryback is locked in the kitchen, he takes over the boat, working with Krill, who kills Adams. They want to take the ship’s Tomahawk missiles and load them onto a hijacked North Korean submarine, where they will be sold to a foreign army that will possibly start World War III.

Ryback is a former Navy SEAL with extensive training in counterterrorism tactics who was screwed over by the system, and Adams took on the role of his cook so he could finish out his Navy career. Now they went and got him angry, and he’s ready to take out every terrorist, even teaching Jordan how to fight back. This is the best use of Seagal, as the villains get so much screen time and you can’t wait to see him finally go nuts on some terrorists.

Director Andrew Davis also made Above the Law with Seagal (that one is good), as well as The Fugitive, Code of Silence, The Final Terror, Holes, Collateral Damage and more. He was also the DP on Mansion of the Doomed, which blows my mind.

Based on a spec script by J. F. Lawton called Dreadnought, Seagal actually turned this down at first, having issues with his character teaming with a woman who jumps out of a cake. Yes, really.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has a new 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director Andrew Davis; new audio commentary with director Andrew Davis and writer J.F. Lawton; interviews with Davis, Erika Eleniak, Damian Chapa and visual effects supervisor William Mesa; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Vern and a serial fiction by Martyn Pedler. You can get it on 4K UHD or Blu-ray from MVD.

It took me literally five watches to get through Evil Dead Rise. In my past hater days, I would have just said something like, “Well, I already saw Demons 2,” but that’s not very productive. Films deserve to be seen, and my mindset did not jibe with what I was watching.

Maybe I’ve finally reached a point where the fifth Evil Dead movie isn’t all that exciting.

The thought filled my heart with dread. What would 16-year-old me, the one who watched Evil Dead II every single day, that a few years later would be one of two people in the theater for Army of Darkness, think?

Maybe I don’t want to grow up. It’s just too confusing.

Lee Cronin, who directed and wrote this movie, also made The Hole In the Ground. His Evil Dead movie came about after a period of great excitement over the reimagining. Fede Álvarez was making a sequel to that movie, Sam and Ivan Raimi were making Evil Dead 4 or Army of Darkness 2, and after all that, the seventh film would bring together Ash Williams and Mia Allen. Then the TV series came along, and when that was canceled by the fourth season, any talk of new movies ended. Until we got this.

And I wasn’t too excited.

But then it kicked off with some teens at the lake, some possessions and a levitating girl decapitating a boy while an incredible title card rose from the bloody water.

Alright, I was in.

Guitar tech Beth (Lily Sullivan) has learned she’s pregnant and needs to be near her family, which includes her tattoo artist single mother sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), and her kids, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher). They live in the Monde Apartments, a nearly condemned building in Los Angeles that was rocked by an earthquake that brought a book and three records to the land of the unpossessed. Of course, Danny is a DJ and throws those records on the turntable — Bruce Campbell voiceover cameo alert — and they reveal that a priest was able to bring the Deadites to our world with the Naturom Demonto.

He gets blood all over the book, which we all know isn’t good, as the aftershocks and power outages continue to assault their home. Ellie is soon possessed and tries to kill everyone, but before she dies, she makes Beth promise to protect her children. And then she’s back from the dead and doing anything but.

What follows is a blood-spraying, gore-filled battle between the Deadite-possessed humans — most of the family becomes an intertwined creature — and the survivors, Beth and Kassie. Is there a shotgun? Is there a chainsaw? And is there a wood chipper, too?

Yet this has the same issue every reimagining has. It has the blood, the book, all those elements, but it forgets the anarchy. What’s missing is the weird mix of goofiness and kids in the woods making something with no archetype or rules. We know what will happen every moment, as if it is predestined, with nothing shocking outside of the things engineered to be as such. Much like how the streaming Hellraiser forgot the sex and the streaming Texas Chainsaw Massacre forgot to be frightening, this has a menu of everything that would be on the model kit of an Evil Dead movie, but it’s missing the intangible. There’s no feeling of getting behind the protagonists. Sure, a cheese grater gets used as a weapon, but this film should have the DNA of a film series that spent forty minutes with a man’s own hand punching himself in the face. It should do something that makes us feel something. The absence of this anarchy is a disappointment that’s hard to ignore.

There’s some to like, but I want to love. I want to revel in the lunacy of what this film could be, instead of settling for what it is. This had 1,720 gallons of blood, but not as many ounces of magic as I wanted it to have. Honestly, they could have skipped the records and book, which would have been another possession film.

But would anyone have gone to the theater—yes, this even got out of streaming and into the big time—to see that?

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of this movie has audio commentary with director Lee Cronin and actors Alyssa Sullivan and Lily Sullivan; interviews with Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Gabrielle Echols, Anna-Maree Thomas, special make-up effects designer Luke Polti, editor Bryan Shaw, sound designer Peter Albrechtsen, composer Stephen McKeon and Cronin and Albrechtsen by Glenn Kiser, director of the Dolby Institute. There are featurettes, a short directed by Cronin, behind-the-scenes video clips and still gallery, concept artwork gallery, storyboard gallery, a trailer and TV commercials, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Waldemar Witt, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Waldemar Witt and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold. You can order this from MVD.