It’s pretty amazing to me that this movie exists, seeing as how Anthropophagus came out all the way back in 1980—and was spelled Antropophagus—and already has had several spiritual and unofficial sequels, like Absurd—which is closer to Halloween than D’Amato’s first film, which was released as The Grim Reaper in the U.S.*—and the German sort of sequel Anthropophagous 2000, which was made in 1999.

You don’t need to really know anything about the original to watch this.

The BIFFF website has a great line about this: “It ticks off all the boxes of Italian Z-grade trash cinema: an outrageously idiotic script, paper-thin and brain-dead female characters who are more likely to break out into a pillow fight than to engage in a scientific discussion on their thesis (we do hope the filmmakers have met actual women in real life), bad acting made worse by hilarious dubbing and such outlandish amounts of blood, guts, intestines, brain mush, baby removals and other such niceties that put Hostel to shame. In short: pure, unfiltered bad taste.”

A teacher named Nora (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Claudio Fragasso’s 2022 movie Karate Man) has assigned her students — Giulia (Jessica Pizzi, The Slaughter), Angela (Giuditta Niccoli), Diletta (Maria D’Ascanio), Betty (Chiara De Cristofaro), Sonia (Shaen Barletta), Cinizia (Valentina Capuano) and Isabel (Alessandra Pellegrino) — to an assignment that will help her thesis paper on the impact of isolation. She’s gotten the keys to a fallout shelter where numerous people have already died, asked the girls to not bring their phones, and everyone just goes along with this plot.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Alberto Buccolini) is hunting them all.

Antropophagus is best known for a scene where Klaus Wortman (George Eastman, who also co-wrote the script for the 1980 movie) tears a fetus out of Maggie (Serena Grandi) and eats it right on camera. For being a degenerate exploitation filmmaker, that film’s director, Joe D’Amato, waited until nearly the movie’s end. Here, it happens three minutes in.

Director Dario Germani started his career as a cinematographer (he’s still working as one, as he made Emanuelle’s Revenge with Carpanese last year, as well as the aforementioned Karate Man), and he understands that for this movie to work, the tunnels — the Bunker Soratte, Gallerie del Monte Soratte — that it takes place within have to be claustrophobic. There are some nice shots within this, as well as some gore — skin rolling off arms — that got close to disturbing me. Writer Lorenzo De Luca doesn’t do much to tie this to the original, and instead, it feels like it could easily be a ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes or Hostel.

Credit — or blame — for putting this together goes to Giovanni Paolucci. Yes, the same man who wrote Ark of the Sun God before writing and producing the last period of Bruno Mattei’s career (from Attrazione pericolosa — which starts Carpanese — to Zombies: The Beginning) and Dracula 3D.

I have to be honest. Yes, this movie is terrible, but if it was shot on film and made in 1980, the dubbing, bad acting and lack of story would not bother me. I wish the monster in this had an intimidating size and aura like George Eastman. The dubbing is so bad here that it made me love what I was watching. That said, I can only imagine someone who hasn’t made it through the assembled canon of D’Amato, Mattei and Fragasso would detest this movie.

*I can make this even more confusing by saying that Absurd was also released as Zombi 6 and Antropophagus as Zombi 7, but let me tell you, breaking down which movies are called what Zombi numbers will give you a migraine. Check out this article to learn more.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.

Tran Long, an influencer who uses his web show Memory of Murder to delve into actual crime scenes, weaves a complex web of interconnected narratives for his viewers. The movie unfolds with a man who killed his lover and his parents, another who broke into a jewelry store and then kills the family that owns it, and finally, a man trapped in gambling debts who tries to get an ex to help. When she refuses, he kills her. These stories, seemingly disparate, are intricately linked, leading to a compelling revelation.

Based on actual events, this movie honestly pulls no punches, with the last murder being incredibly grisly. This is an unsanitized view of crimes that men visit upon other men, unlike so much of reality-based true crime.

Vietnamese director Le Binh Giang, best known in America for his movie KFC, continues his exploration of the human psyche in Memory of Murder. This film continues his journey into the heart of darkness he started in KFC. By the end, we discover that Tran Long created his show to deal with his grief over his parents’ murder. All three stories are interconnected and point to who may be behind that crime.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.

A feature-length adaptation of “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” from V/H/S/2, this finds kids Gary (Dominic Mariche), Jack (Asher Grayson) and Miles (Ben Tector) being bullied by teens Billy (Calem MacDonald), Dallas (Isaiah Fortune) and Trish (Emma Vickers) with Gary’s sister Sam (Phoebe Rex) caught in the middle. You see, the kids love to backyard wrestle and make home movies, but Sam is growing up and it’s time for her to decide if she really wants a boyfriend. That said, Billy might not be the best pick.

It’s all a moot point, because on the night of a party gone wrong that the bad kids force Sam to throw, aliens attack and all extraterrestrial hell breaks loose.

Directed by Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun), who wrote the film with John Davies, this is a movie that’s gorier, weirder and more profane than it’s title would suggest. It also has characters that — other than Sam (Phoebe Rex) — are cookie cutter at best and annoying at worst. It feels like a mean spirited cliche of Spielberg-esque alien movies and while it looks great and has wonderful practical effects, I kept asking if there was more. The end feels so abrupt that you feel cheated; it doesn’t have to have a happy ending, but it just feels like the filmmakers ran out of ideas and time.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.

Released by Vestron Video in 1987, this forgotten folk horror—also known as Cry Blue Sky—is very similar to The Witch, minus any arthouse aspirations. Instead of a man whose pride casts his family out of their village, this movie is about a reverend accused of adultery and polygamy.

Reverend Will Smythe (Dennis Lipscomb, Under Siege) and his followers leave their town behind to live in a valley haunted by an ancient evil. A rugged woodsman, Marion Dalton (Guy Boyd, Body Double), is along for the ride because he has his eye on Smythe’s lusty wife, Eloise. Hijinks, as they say, ensue. And by hijinks, I mean whatever is in the woods begins to haunt and kill everyone.

Rob Paulsen, who plays Jewell Buchanan, would become a voice actor. Perhaps you’ve heard him as Raphael and Donatello, two of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Pinky from Pinky and the Brain. He’s also in the movies Stewardess School, Warlock and Body Double. He’s also the voice that says, “Cheers was filmed in front of a live audience.” In all, he’s been in 1,000+ commercials and been the voice of 250+ cartoon characters.

Director Avery Crounse started his career as a photographer and only made two other films: The Invisible Kid and Sister Island, which starred Karen Black.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), as part of the Folk Horror: Lands of Cruelty, Beliefs of Terror program which also includes Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Kill List, the 2019 French version of la Llorona, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Bldg. N, In My Mother’s Skin and To Fire You Come at Last. You can learn more at their official site.

Starting with Carrie, Stephen King was adapted by more than fifty directors and eighty or more films and series were filmed. The beauty of King On Screen is that it brings together nearly every living director who worked on these films, including Tom Holland (The Langoliers, Thinner), Mick Garris (The Stand, Sleepwalkers), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), Taylor Hackford (Dolores Claiborne), Mike Flanagan (Dr. Sleep, Gerald’s Game), Mark Lester (Firestarter), Mikael Håfström (1408), Josh Boone (The Stand), Tom McLoughlin (Sometimes They Come Back), Lewis Teague (Cujo, Cat’s Eye), Fraser C. Heston (Needful Things), Craig R. Baxley (Storm of the Century, Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital), Mikael Salomon (Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King), Scott Hicks (Hearts In Atlantis), David Carson (Carrie 2002), John Harrison (Creepshow, Creepshow 2), Zak Hilditch (1922), Greg Nicotero (Shudder’s Creepshow), Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass), Tod Williams (Cell) and so many more.

The film Jaromil Jires, directed before this one, 1969’s The Joke, has been described as “possibly the most shattering indictment of totalitarianism to come out of a Communist country.” As a result, it was banned for nearly twenty years.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is based on the 1935 Vítezslav Nezval novel. Much like that work, this movie is a work of surrealism and one of the films that I can best point to being part of a genre I’ve been referring to as ‘dark childhood’ films. This genre, which I’ve come to represent as movies that use the supernatural to explain the pains of oncoming adulthood, often features dreamlike sequences, allegorical storytelling, and a focus on the psychological aspects of growing up.

Valerie is asleep when a thief steals her earrings. She’s frightened by the masked Constable, who grows angry when the thief returns what he has stolen to her. That’s when she learns that the earrings were a last gift from her mother before she entered a convent, but they once belonged to the Constable.

The Thief and the Constable remain at odds over the earrings and Valerie. That night, she meets the masked man in the street, where he leads her to a chamber where her grandmother ritualistically whips herself all in the name of a past lover. Oh yeah — there’s also a woman named Elsa who was once the Constable’s lover and grows young again when she tastes blood.

The earrings pass through multiple owners, and Valerie’s blood is the key to nearly everyone’s survival. People transform into monsters and cats, and if you didn’t guess already, the movie has descended into a dream that only Valerie can wake up from.

Honestly, it’s hard to rationally write about this film. The film is a visual masterpiece, with magic infused in every frame. You’re either going to be captivated by its artistic brilliance, or you’re going to find it too arty or strange. Obviously, I belong to the former camp.

Members of the bands Espers, Fern Knight, Fursaxa and other musicians formed the Valerie Project in 2006, performing original songs while the film plays.

If you’ve ever read Angela Carter’s works or seen the film The Company of Wolves, which she wrote for director Neil Jordan, you’ve seen work directly influenced by Valerie.

Grab the Criterion blu of this and do yourself a favor. It’s a perfect film.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), as part of the Folk Horror: Lands of Cruelty, Beliefs of Terror program which also includes Eyes of Fire, Kill List, the 2019 French version of La Llorona, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Bldg. N, In My Mother’s Skin and To Fire You Come at Last. You can learn more at their official site.

Two decades after a tragedy with her sister, Šarlota — pronounced Charlotta — comes back to her remote mountain hometown in Slovakia to claim an inheritance left by her dead mother. Yet when she gets there, her mother’s house has burned to the ground. Staying in her former neighbor’s abandoned cabin — rumored to have been a witch’s house — Šarlota remembers the misogyny, patriarchy and superstition that she had left. As she approaches a herbalist named Mira, the locals believe Šarlota must also be a witch.

A deserved winner of the Best Picture in the Cineasti del Presente Competition at the Locarno Film Festival, director Tereza Nvotová has made a movie that looks absolutely gorgeous and from another world. The witch sabbath scene in this is incredibly evocative and blew me away.

We live in a world that fears what it does not understand and seeks to hold back things of beauty and passion. These issues exist from big cities to small towns and everywhere in between; things are sliding back into a world where women no longer even have autonomy over their own bodies. Nightsiren presents a place where the power within women is challenged by old beliefs and an even older guard.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.