April 30: Visual Vengeance Day — Write about a movie released by Visual Vengeance. Here’s a list to help you find a movie.

In the decaying industrial suburb of Englewood, the historic Grandview Theater is facing its final curtain. But as the last reel of a forgotten, low-budget schlock-fest titled Grave Rot spins, the screen doesn’t just display images. It’s taking over reality.

Disillusioned paranormal investigator Kyle Jennings, a man who spends more time debunking haunted toasters than fighting demons, is hired by the theater’s desperate owner. Jennings expects a faulty projector or a squatter. Instead, the moment the clock strikes midnight, the lobby doors fuse into solid brick. The celluloid on screen tears like flesh, and the grainy, grey-skinned zombies from the film crawl into the velvet aisles. To survive the night, Kyle must physically enter the flickering world of the film to find the director, a vengeful spirit who died during production and is now editing reality to ensure a bloody finale.

The film utilizes a unique visual gimmick: the Bleed. As the supernatural force grows stronger, the theater begins to lose its color, taking on the high-contrast, grainy look of the 16mm film. Characters find themselves tripping over jump cuts and teleporting five feet forward or backward in time as the physical film strip in the booth glitches.

Kyle and Mina, cynical teenage projectionist, are chased through the lobby, but the geography has shifted. The popcorn machine is overflowing with what looks like teeth, and the movie posters on the walls have become windows into other scenes from the film. They have to use a flashbulb from an old camera to momentarily freeze the undead, who react to light like physical film stock.

Kyle realizes the only way to stop the infestation is to burn the original negative. He steps through the screen and enters a surreal version of the theater. In this realm, the laws of physics are dictated by 1990s editing tricks. He has to defeat the Director by cutting him out of the scene with a heavy-duty film splicer and slicing the Lost Reel, a cursed segment of film that contains the Director’s soul. It’s hidden somewhere in the theater’s crawlspace, and Kyle has to find it while being hunted by a creature that can only move when the projector shutter is closed.

Todd Norris, who directed and co-wrote this with C. Wayne Owens, has made a movie where you don’t say, “Well, it’s good for the budget.” Instead, it takes advantage of the cost and the SOV framework to create something stunning, with brains and heart, that doesn’t exist in movies that cost so many times more than this did. I was knocked out by this, another stunning surprise in the growing canon of criminally underseen should-be classics.

Visual Vengeance has LOADED this one up. It has a new director-supervised transfer from original tape elements, two commentaries (one by director Todd Norris and the other with Norris and composer Paul Roberts); new cast and crew interviews; Norris and Todd SHeets interview; bloopers; deleted scenes; The Paranormal Channel 5 TV Airing Bumpers; short films; trailers; a poster; Stick Your Own VHS stickers; a limited edition O-CARD featuring art by Uncle Frank; a Ghost Finder — yes, an actual ghost finder so you can hunt down spirits in your own home — a promo flyer and original sleeve art by The Dude. Get it from MVD.

April 29: Europsy — Watch a Xerox of Bond, James Bond.

In the 1960s, Mario Bava gave us the candy-colored, pop-art explosion that was Danger: Diabolik. Now, in the 2020s, the Manetti Bros. (Antonio and Marco) have made three movies about the King of Terror that have him more like the comic book version — cold and calculating. After 2021’s Diabolik and 2022’s Diabolik: Ginko Attacks!, we’ve reached the final chapter of their trilogy: Diabolik: Chi Sei? (Diabolik: Who Are You?).

Our story kicks off with Diabolik (Giacomo Gianniotti) and his lover, Eva Kant (Miriam Leone, born to wear a high bun and a catsuit), planning to lift some ancient coins from Countess Wiendemar (Barbara Bouchet!). Eva goes deep undercover at the Central Bank, but things go sideways when a gang of actual, low-rent thugs, led by the respectable lawyer Diego Manden, bursts in. They don’t just rob the bank. They kill the Countess and ruin Diabolik’s perfect plan.

Inspector Ginkgo (Valerio Mastandrea, looking perpetually like he needs a nap and a cigarette) is on the case, but his obsession leads him right into a trap. He infiltrates Manden’s villa alone and gets bagged. Diabolik, also hunting the gang to reclaim his loot, blunders into the same trap. For the first time in sixty years of comic history, the ultimate competitors are chained together in a basement, facing certain death. With the clock ticking, Ginko asks the question we’ve all wanted to know: “Diabolik, who are you?”

The film shifts gears into a gorgeous, high-contrast black-and-white flashback. We see a baby saved from a shipwreck and raised on a hidden island of super-criminals ruled by King (Paolo Calabresi). Diabolik grows up nameless, learning chemistry and the art of the mask. When King tries to double-cross him, our protagonist goes full nature vs. nurture, kills his mentor, steals his fortune and adopts King’s stuffed black panther’s name.

While the boys are bonding over trauma in the cellar, the real powerhouses take over. Altea (Monica Bellucci!), worried about her secret lover Ginko, teams up with Eva Kant. It is the crossover event of the century: the Duchess and the Thief, working together to storm the villa and take down Manden’s gang.

The Manetti Bros. aren’t trying to out-Bava Bava. This is a love letter to the original Sisters Giussani comics. It’s slow-burning, it’s stylish, and it treats its source material with the reverence of a holy relic. By the end, Ginko finally stops hiding his love for Altea and Diabolik and Eva go right back to what they do best: stealing shiny things and looking better than everyone else while doing it.

You can get this — and the other two films in a box set — from Kino Lorber.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. You can listen to her podcast at https://thecinemajunction.com. Her latest book is Japanese Cult Cinema: Best of the Second Golden Age. She writes for Horror & Sons and Drive-in Asylum. She has also appeared on the podcasts Japan on Film, Making Tarantino, Making Scorsese, The Rad Revivalhouse and contributes to Cinemaforce. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or follow her on Instagram @jennxlondon. 

April 28: Nightmare USA — Celebrate Stephen Thrower’s book by picking a movie from it. Here’s all of them in a list.

The Nail Gun Massacre had three things going for it that allowed it to secure distribution back in the ‘80s. 

1. A great title. 
2. It’s a slasher – those were just a wee bit popular in 1982.  
3. Video stores needed horror stock. 

Had it not met all three criteria, this regional horror movie made in Texas for 50 grand would likely be forgotten. Aside from the decent special effects, there’s nothing memorable about it. To quote another famous southerner – Mr. Leghorn – the plot of this film is “…smaller than the little end of nothin’ sharpened.” 

There are no character introductions. The movie just jumps right in at frame one to a woman being gang-raped by a bunch of rednecks. Then, a diminutive person in a motorcycle helmet and army fatigues hunts down all the perps and takes them all out with a cool-looking nail gun. In the end, it’s revealed that it’s not the victim doing all the killing, as we’re led to believe. Surprise, surprise! It’s the victim’s brother, Bubba! Reason 3,741 to never visit Texas. 

Rewatching this for the first time in many years, I was struck with the same question I was when I first watched it on VHS in the ‘80s. “How many nails would a killer go through to take out one person?” It’s not an effective distance weapon. A nail to the shoulder is hardly fatal. Hell, even several to the face might not kill a person unless it’s square into the temple. A rapey chubby guy with extra padding? You’d have to press right against the jugular. Even then, his protective flesh scarf could skew the entry, potentially postponing his well-deserved death for days or weeks. I mean, a guy got nailed to a chair through his scrotum in The Serpent and the Rainbow and basically walked away. 

Perhaps I was spoiled having seen Serpent first, and The Toolbox Murders before this movie. I had seen Dawn of the Dead’s screwdriver zombie kill probably a dozen times by the time Nail Gun Massacre threaded up into my trusty GE VCR. So, this movie never had a chance to win me over. 

I felt then, as I do now, that although the masked killer’s weapon of choice looks great, it’s not really all that efficient at killing sexual predators. It’s more suitable for long torture sessions. 

But this movie does have a lot going for it. A nail right in the dick? Yeah, this movie’s got that. Which is nice. It also has lots of dark humor. After every murder, the killer rattles off a funny Bond-esque one-liner in a Darth Vader voice. It also has the grossest dinner scene ever. Spaghetti-O’s, collard greens and cream corn. You can smell the combination of odors through the screen. 

I’d classify this movie as a Texas giallo. It’s worth watching to see what was possible in the 1980s with such a small budget.

Remember this review the next time you’re out shopping. Whether you’re in your local Home Depot tool aisle or the canned food aisle at Costco….choose wisely. Personally, I’d go for the chainsaw and Beefaroni combo.  

Trailer: 

April 28: Nightmare USA — Celebrate Stephen Thrower’s book by picking a movie from it. Here’s all of them in a list.

I’ve been super into John Hayes’ films lately. Jailbait Babysitter, The Hang-Up, Rue McClanahan’s debut film Hollywood After Dark, End of the World, Garden of the Dead, Grave of the Vampire, the Tales from the Dark Side episode “The Madness Room,” Dream No Evil…speaking of that last film, in which a woman grows up in an orphanage dreaming of the day her father will return, forever living outside the other children around her, only leaving to be a faith healer in a circus…well, it’s incredible. Sure, there’s no budget, but it has such a strange vision, powered by Hayes’ issues with his own childhood.

Six years later, he made this movie, one of the few times — if only — that the same director made an R-rated film and then remade it as an adult movie, using the name Howard Perkins.

Rosemary (Sharon Thrope, Sodom and Gomorrah: The Last Seven Days) is a teacher trapped in a cycle of sexual repression and father-fixation that would make Freud scribble notebooks full of findings. She never knew her father, grew up in an orphanage and barely cares about her boyfriend John (John Leslie, born in East Liverpool, Ohio and one of the Golden Age of porn’s most recognizable stars). They emerge from a theater showing Let’s Do It Again and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and while he has sex on his mind, as all men do, she couldn’t care less.

She’s leaving for three years to be a teacher and tells him blandly, “I’ve got to say goodbye to my father tonight.” Their lovemaking is barely that. It’s perfunctory. He soon departs and turns to a sex worker named Unis (Leslie Bovee) to fulfill his needs. This must be a regular thing, because he’s given her many of Rosemary’s outfits so that he can do what he really wants to do to his virginal girlfriend and can’t bring himself to unleash. He worships her from behind while calling Rosemary’s name. Once he finishes, he throws his money at her, leaving her unfulfilled and complaining about her back.

She tries to find her father in the flophouse where he lives. Instead, she runs into Mick (Ken Scudder, Thundercrack!) and Kate (Monique Cardin), who assault her at knifepoint. She runs away, only to return three years later, as her father has died and she wants to reconnect with Mick.

Rosemary goes to the funeral home along with John, who is now a police officer, to identify the body, bringing along her students Tracy (Candida Royalle, who pretty much created feminist adult) and Marsh (Melba Bruce, Alex de Renzy’s Femmes de Sade).

She muses, “It was such a nightmare to be a child. Now I’m the adult. Sex is always so degrading, so unclean. I’ll teach my girls all the good things. To be pure in mind and body.”

These girls are part of a cult that worships sex and soon end up making it with the funeral director (John Seeman), who has a small apartment filled with horror movie posters (Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, The Black Cat). As Rosemary and John watch — and they chant about eternal wombs — she finally finds an erotic stirring, and she allows him to dry hump her before going back to Mick, whose rough ways finally get her off. He gets a job, stops drinking and treats her right. Guess what? She hates it. He responds by nearly strangling her to death before John tries to save her life. He gets knocked out, and Mick leaves, promising that the next time he sees her, he’s going to kill her. No wonder she takes sapphic solace in the dual arms of her students.

Rosemary stares at herself for long stretches in the mirror and hears the voice of her father, begging her to not bury him because he’s still alive. During the funeral, fog appears everywhere, a demon emerges, the music gets discordant, and everyone in her life — John is now in a relationship with the woman who sexually replaced her, Unis — makes love to her as Rosemary screams, “Daddy! Take me away from this place!” The end is just pure sadness, as she’ll never escape, as the smoke and strange voices engulf her utterly.

This is not an adult Rosemary’s Baby, despite the title and horrible poster. It’s even weirder and better than that. In Nightmare U.S.A., Stephen Thrower wrote that this is “…a brutal sex drama that stands as one of his (Hayes) most disturbing films, with strong echoes of the family trauma theme that incessantly colored his career.” A lot of that is because Hayes was raised by an alcoholic uncle and an ancient grandmother, while his sister Dolores was sent to a convent, emerging only to have multiple children and descend into fanatic religious behavior. 

If Dream No Evil was a melancholic, circus-tent meditation on a missing father, then this film is the pitch-black, grimy realization that some things are better left buried.

You can watch this on CultPix.

April 27: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

This hits a bit close to home, as I did indies for more than twenty years, so when I saw Matt Cross, formely M-Dogg, “Super Cop” Dick Justice and “The Handicap Hero” Gregory Iron show up in the first few minutes of a movie, it kind of felt like how I spent most of my weekends over the last few decades: sitting in a high school locker room, waiting for my match. 

Matt’s wife Amy (Roni Jonah) used to wrestle, but left once she got pregnant with their son Cash (Cash K. Allen), who is being babysat by her ex-tag partner Kelsi (Britt Baker, whose boyfriend at the time, Adam Cole, shows up for a few seconds), who lost the ability to wrestle after an accident. A lot of this movie is about the pain of not being in the ring anymore and wishing you had it back, which I connected with very strongly. It doesn’t explore it anywhere near where it should, and really, things just happen in this, rather than feeling like we have any stirrings toward a point of view or a plot.

Paul (Wes Allen), a superfan or smart mark, kidnaps Matt and chains him up in his basement, explaining that he wants to give him his killer instinct back. Powerbomb never gets around to explaining that, instead focusing on Paul taking care of his sick mother or beating up a puppet. It wants to be the indy wrestling version of Misery, yet never quite gets there. 

B.J. Colangelo and R. Zachary Shildwachter have something here, even if they never find it. Instead of going all in on its premise, we have promoter Solomon (Aaron Sechrist) getting beaten up by Adam Cole’s thugs, trying to get Amy to wrestle again, while Paul tases Matt Cross and makes him eat pizza. Then we get a monologue where Kelsi cuts a promo in a mirror, then realizes the extent of her knee pain, turning to the bottle. We never see her again.

If you like indy wrestling, you at least get to see Derek Dillinger and Rickey Shane Page show up. Otherwise, this feels like they had a bunch of footage and no idea how to edit it into a collective whole. An IMDbs trivia says, “Film was funded by wrestling fans and made by wrestling fans (Hence its lack of creativity or professionalism), has several real wrestlers in it.” Man, people will say anything online.

I really wanted to like this movie, but it never gets to where it needs to go, as if it stayed in chain wrestling when it was time for the double down.

Ignore the poster, as that never happens. If this movie were a match on a show, it would really have them going, as Lord Zoltan once said. Going to the bathroom, the concession stand, to their cars to leave…

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 25: Bava Forever — Bava died on this day 43 years ago. Let’s watch his movies.

Mario Bava — or John Old — was the man who could make a studio backlot look like the gates of Gehenna. And while Lisa and the Devil was his heart and soul, it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. But then The Exorcist happened, and suddenly every producer in Italy wanted their own pea-soup-spewing cash cow.

Producer Alfredo Leone had a masterpiece on his hands that nobody wanted to see, so he did the most exploitation producer thing imaginable: He asked Bava to chop it up, add some possession flavor and then he retitled it House of Exorcism. Now it was less of an art film and more, well, Exorcisty.

This flick is a Frankenstein’s monster of cinema. You’ve got the ethereal, dreamlike footage of Bava’s original cut smashed together with new scenes directed by Leone (and a helping hand from Lamberto Bava, aka John Old Jr.). To slap a name on this identity crisis, they credited Mickey Lion as the director.

Mario said, “Even though it bears my signature. It is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it.”

So what is new? A lot. Enough to make you think that this is two movies joined together, which it totally is.

There’s a new framing device in which Father Michael (Robert Alda, father of Alan) is an exorcist trying to exorcise a demon from Lisa (Elke Sommer). She’s swearing more than Regan MacNeil, showing way more skin and also throwing up frogs. She’s also Elena, and all of Bava’s superior cut becomes a series of flashbacks to how she lost her mind, her life and her soul, eventually possessing Lisa.

Elena was stuck in an incestuous four-way relationship between her husband Max (Alessio Orano), a guy so impotent and tied to his mother’s (Alida Valli) apron strings it’s no wonder Elena looked elsewhere and found love — and some deep dicking — from her husband’s stepfather (Espartaco Santoni). It all ends in blood and with every in hell.

Somewhere in all of this, we have the priest get tempted by the ghost of his dead wife — she burned up in a car wreck — Anna (Carmen Silva), who is one of those Eurohorror women who seems like an android with a perfect body and fake eyelashes. Magic in its purest form. “Darling, don’t be embarrassed. You’re still a man. Take me.” You know, the devil works hard to convert those who have faith, but have you seen Carmen Silva? I get it. Man, I sure get it.

This feels like a weird U.S.-made exploitation rip-off of Lisa with bloodier deaths and a near-inserts level edit of Sylvia Koscina and Gabriele Tinti (and body doubles) getting it on. You know, I’m sure Gabriele Tinti was a good guy, but between this and him being married to Laura Gemser, I kind of despise the dude.

Spare a thought for poor Elke Sommer, who had to come back two years later just to contort on a hospital bed and projectile vomit neon green slime. It’s a far cry from the gothic beauty of the original, but there’s a greasy charm to it that you just can’t find in modern horror. I can’t help but kind of love the balls on this concoction of a movie.

Also: In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woodie Allen) walks past a marquee playing Lisa and the Devil and Messiah of Evil, and he kind of scoffs. For this and so many more reasons, I hope Tisa kicked him right in the dick at Passover, and it was no accident.

You can watch this on YouTube.

April 24: Puke! — Pick a movie that had a barf bag given away during its theatrical run! Here’s a list.

Gerardo de Leon made The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Brides of Blood, so we should watch any movie he ever chose to direct. This time, he tells us about Eduardo (Eddie Garcia) and his sister Leonore (Amalia Fuentes), a twosome who have made the worst of all horror-movie mistakes. They’ve come back home to see their father on his deathbed.

The old man has one simple request: “Burn this house to the ground the second I’m gone.” Does Eduardo listen? Of course not. Instead, he decides to poke around the basement.

Eduardo discovers his mother chained up in the dark. She’s a vampire, she’s hungry and she gives him a hickey that turns him into a cape-wearing, blood-chugging menace. While Eduardo is busy transforming into a monster, Leonore is pining for her lover, Daniel (Romeo Vasquez), hoping for a deathbed blessing that—spoiler alert—is not coming.

What follows is a chaotic descent into madness. Eduardo ruins a wedding with the kind of social grace only a vampire can muster (by biting the bride), murders his father in a fit of vampiric rage, and develops a deeply uncomfortable lust for his own sister. He tops it all off by getting into a sword fight with a ghost.

The film was picked up for U.S. distribution by Hemisphere Pictures, the same outfit that brought the Blood Island films to American drive-ins, often as part of legendary double features.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 23: Off Field On Screen — Draft a film that has a sports figure as its star. Bonus points if it’s not a biography of themselves!

Before grabbing a gun and taking on his iconic role in The Rifleman, Chuck Conners had already led a varied, interesting life. Like most men of his generation, he served in the military, putting any aspirations he had on hold while serving his country during World War II. Upon discharge, he went back to his first love–sports. And not just one. Well before athletes such as Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders (and, less successfully, Michael Jordan) attempted to excel at multiple professional levels, Conners played in both the NBA (for the Boston Celtics) and MLB (for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs). Fun fact from Wikipedia: Conners was the first player in the NBA to break a backboard, which broke due to taking a shot, not a slam dunk. I would love to see how this happened! What material did they use to make backboards back then? Was it wood? Was it termite infested? Inquiring minds want to know.

Conners soon realized that he was not going to make a career out of either sport, so he did what many former athletes do when pivoting to a new occupation–try acting. After minor roles in various film and television series, Conners landed the role that would change his life–Burn Sanderson in Walt Disney’s Old Yeller. Sanderson shows up to the Coates’ ranch looking to reclaim his egg-sucking yellow dog. What could have been a villainous sort of role quickly turns wholesome as Sanderson sees the need for Old Yeller to stay with Travis, giving tips about marking hogs and even warning him about “hydrophobie” in the area (AKA Chekov’s Rabies).

As luck would have it, the producers looking to cast the lead in The Rifleman took their children to see Old Yeller and were struck by the fatherly screen presence of Conners, increasing their offer and giving him the role that would, for better or worse, define him for most of his career. 

After The Rifleman, Conners was typecast in similar roles, unable to break away from the clean cut image of Lucas McCain. But thanks to films in the 1970s such as The Mad Bomber, Tourist Trap, and the miniseries Roots, Conners was able to showcase his talent extended beyond playing Mr. Nice Guy. In fact, similar to Andy Griffith, he might have excelled even more under sinister roles.

In 1987, Conners took on the role of Mr. Warren, the religious, uptight new director of Camp North Pines in Summer Camp Nightmare. While the film’s title suggests that it is attempting to capitalize on the summer camp based slasher films that were popular earlier in the decade, Summer Camp Nightmare is less about the horrors of a killer and more about the horrors of unchecked humanity. Based on a 1961 book entitled The Butterfly Revolution, the campers in this film find themselves elevating counselor Franklin to what initially feels like a harmless rebellion against Conners Mr. Warren, but quickly devolves into a full out dictatorship where anyone who goes against Franklin’s policies are eliminated.

The film starts out as a fun time. It is rare to find horror films set in a camp to actually have campers. All of the characters are likable here–the sort of camp I always wish I had been able to attend, but never did out of fear of being bullied (hey, it was the 80’s. Bullying kids with glasses was very en vogue).  Mr. Warren is an easy person for the youth to rebel against. He only allows religious programming on the television in the common area. He begrudgingly allows the boy’s and girl’s camps to intermingle, but quickly forbids it at the first appearance of tom foolery. And Franklin appears to be innocent enough, a quiet counselor who jumps into the water to save our narrator Donald. But his rise to power at the camp ends up being a metaphor for the dangers of Communism (the original novel was written at the beginning of the Cold War, which was wrapping up by 1987). 

Conners is not given much to do here. The role is pretty one note. But I do love seeing him in these twisted sort of roles. Nothing tops Tourist Trap, but it does not have to. Summer Camp Nightmare might be light on horror, but I still found it to be interesting enough to recommend. It is a film that definitely should be rescued from VHS, having never even received a DVD release. I would buy it. If nothing else, just for the performance of a song where two guys sing the song by Fear entitled Beef Bologna, much to the chagrin of Chuck Conners.