Teresa (Madison Lanesey) and Drew (Travis Quentin Young) are on their late honeymoon, and the marriage isn’t all that great for Teresa. Drew? Everyone loves the guy, and he seems so happy no matter what. Teresa is one of those people who constantly has to tell everyone how much she loves them, even calling an ex on the day of her wedding to do this.

To be frank, Teresa may be one of the most hateable characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. When one of her energy bars almost kills a fellow passenger with a nut allergy, her husband takes the blame. And this makes her angry! And yes, I saw Madison Lanesey write on Letterboxd not to hate this movie because of her character…”I know, I know, she’s hard to love.  But then again, it IS hard to love.”

Then they meet Paz (Arta Gee), a non-binary native whom they hope to seduce. As you can imagine, the sex is great. But when Drew is honest and sleeps with Paz alone — something he got permission for — she flips out and goes hard at him about how she never loved him. He gets on a boat and has a sad sailaway, a broken man.

And what are we to learn from this?

G.G. Hawkins, who directed and co-wrote this with Madison Lanesey and Scott Monahan, appears to be someone with considerable talent. I just couldn’t get past the vapid nature of this film, and even though it’s a lean 79 minutes, it felt like being trapped with a couple that everyone knows really hates each other behind closed doors, regardless of what their social media posts say.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of films I’ve watched.

Charlie Bailey (Eric Tabach) hosts the Paranormalcy podcast, struggling to get noticed as a crowded white guy with a podcast space. I can relate. Then, he meets Duncan Slayback (Gabriel Rush), who tells him he can prove that ghosts don’t exist. After all, his fiancee died and has never come back to him. To further prove his point while Charlie is recording him, he shoots himself in the head before claiming that he won’t haunt our protagonist.

Except that Duncan does come back from the dead.

He becomes the show’s co-host, using his ghostly powers to find missing things and get into peoples’ heads. Soon, Charlie succeeds and has the money to support himself and his pregnant girlfriend, Brie (Kaikane). Yet when Duncan starts to ask too much, including getting revenge on the man he claimed killed his fiancee, all as a rival podcast, Jasper (Charlie Saxton) tries to reveal how Charlie can do so many ghostly things.

Maybe Charlie shouldn’t have trusted Duncan. Yet once he’s too deep, well, he’s stuck. He can’t escape the call of doing his show, the rush of getting followers, the need to be part of something. Again, I understand. This hit very close to me. And it’s a really intriguing film in which the lead is unlikeable, yet you want him to grow and get past it until, yet again, it’s too late.

Dean Alioto directed and wrote this film, marking his return to genre films after a long hiatus since creating The McPherson Tape. Featuring cameos from Dave Foley and “Master of Horror” Mick Garris, this movie exceeded my expectations. It has surprising twists and turns that I never saw coming. If you can watch it, I highly recommend you do!

The Last Podcast screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

From the CUFF guide: “From the depths of space, Dracula has devised his most dastardly plan yet: turning the residents of Marlow into his personal army of vampire zombies. Terror grips the town as a full-blown zombie outbreak erupts, leaving chaos in its wake. A motley crew consisting of a grizzled detective, a sceptical rookie cop, a chain-smoking greaser, and a determined young woman band together to save the world from — (see title). Packed with gruesome special effects, b-movie miniatures, and gut-busting laughs, Vampire Zombies…From Space! is a bloody comedy that has its foundation in horror films of the 1950s.”

Directed by Mike Stasko, who wrote the script with Jakob Skrzypa and Alex Forman, this has appearances by Night of the Living Dead‘s Judith O’Dea, Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, Tim & Eric’s David Liebe Hart and Saw VI’s Simon Reynolds.

Dracula (Craig Gloster) is from space — he has a son, Dylan (Robert Kemeny), too! — and they’ve come back to Earth to kill everyone — all in black and white. He had once attacked the family of Roy MacDowell (Erik Helle) and killed most of them, making the entire town think that Roy is a killer. When Roy’s daughter Susan (Charlotte Bondy) is killed, everyone blames him, but his daughter Mary (Jessica Antovski) is ready to convince Police Chief Ed Clarke (Andrew Bee) that there really are aliens. She joins with Officer James Wallace (Rashaun Baldeo) and local tough guy Wayne (Oliver Georgiou) to save her town.

With an evil council of vampire aliens that includes Coppola’s Dracula (Martin Ouellette), Vampira (O’Dea) and Nosferatu (David Liebe Hart), a store called Ed’s Wood & Hardware, a public jerk off bandit played by Kaufman, tons of gore and a heart that beats right because it’s making fun with, not at, old movies, this is one to find and love.

You can learn more on the official site.

Vampire Zombies…From Space! screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

From the CUFF Guide: “In the chaos of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, a teenage usher named Vince Lawrence witnessed the fiery backlash against disco—a sound that defined freedom and pride. Undeterred by the hostility, Vince used his earnings to buy a synthesizer, setting in motion a journey that would change music forever. Venturing into the underground sanctuary of The Warehouse, where Frankie Knuckles spun revolutionary sounds, Vince teamed up with Jesse Saunders to form Z Factor, a scrappy collective of visionaries who captured the pulse of Chicago’s underground on wax. Their track, “On and On,” became the first recorded house music anthem, sparking a movement that transformed a local DIY culture into a global phenomenon. From those gritty Chicago streets to festival stages worldwide, Vince’s story is an electrifying testament to how a dream, born in the ashes of rejection, ignited a genre that continues to unite and liberate people across the globe.”

Directed by Elegance Bratton, this has Vince Lawrence tell the story of house and how it grew out of disco, which people believe died but come on. We know that isn’t true. This breaks down how rock bands felt threatened by disco and how Disco Demolition Night on July 12, 1979 was a way of fighting back. But what was a way for Steve Dahl to push back against disco replacing rock turned into racism, as this movie tells us. Some saw it as a targeted attack on black music.

Vince Lawrence was there that night working as an usher, saving for a synthesizer. He said when people were saying “Disco sucks,” it started to feel like they were saying it to him. And then he had to go home through Bridgeport, worried he would be made fun of, attacked or much worse. Steve Dahl got in trouble for a publicity stunt but it was out of control and an event that destroyed black art as some of the records were Motown, not disco.

In “The Flip Sides of ’79” in Rolling Stone, writer Dave Marsh said, “The antidisco movement, which has been publicized by such FM personalities as notorious Chicago DJ Steve Dahl, is simply another programming device. White males, eighteen to thirty-four, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins, and therefore they’re most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium.” He also told Today, ““I was appalled,” remembers Marsh. “It was your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead. It was everything you had feared come to life. Dahl didn’t come from Top 40 radio, he came from album rock radio, which was fighting to heighten its profile.”

In that same article, Gloria Gaynor said, “Disco never got credit for being the first and only music ever to transcend all nationalities, race, creed, color, and age groups. It was common ground for everyone.”

That’s where the movie gets into how disco gave birth to “a couple babies:” house and hip-hop. The difference, according to several in this, is that hip-hop led to violence and disrespect. House brought people together and house became a safe party with no gangsters, because, “everyone was gay.”

I really liked how the movie breaks down the song “Fantasy,” who thinks they wrote it and how the black artists felt disrespected by the white singer, Rachael Cain (who is also part of the Michael Alig NYC club scene and ended up owning Trax Records). I also liked how so much of early house was one drum machine and one synth. Nothing else. Just noise and beat; the DJ became the focal point; not a band. Not a real drummer.

Also an interesting point that this film brings up is how black culture is always stolen from. Today, the most famous house musicians are white. House was stolen by white culture. Techno was taken from Detroit. EDM stole from black music. The creators of house never saw the money that other musicians did after them.

This is recommended, as it shines a light into a form of music I’d always wanted to know more about. Now, I want to go deeper and learn more about the personalities and songs that this has introduced me to.

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

I had a roommate who used to tell us Yinzers how much better everything was in Philadelphia. He would go on and on about the excesses of Wing Bowl and I’d think, “Who could live through such a thing?”

Now I have my answer.

From villain Damaging Doug to the vomiting of Matt “Sloth” Dutton, champion “El Wingador and unlikely winner Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, this takes you inside the Wing Bowl, from the first small event to the gigantic ones at the end, moments of overeating, too much drinking and out of control behavior, like Mize, who would smash beer cans into his head.

From 1993 to 2018, this was the Super Bowl for Philly, until days after the twenty-sixth year in the Wells Fargo Center, the Eagles won their first championship. Before that happened, people would regular eat 500 wings, often getting nauseous, as fistfights in the crowd and nudity would fill the day, which started at 6 A.M.

Suggested by WIP-FM Philadelphia show host Angelo Cataldi, this gets nearly every major celebrity — of sorts — into this, interviewing them and showing them in action. Sure, WIP didn’t share footage, but did you expect them to? This was like Roman circuses and even the stories told by my old roommate can’t compare to the reality.

Here’s hoping this doc gets wide release.

No One Died: The Wing Bowl Story screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

I’ve been way too lax in reviewing this movie, which I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. Sometimes, when I love a filmmaker, such as Christopher Bickel, whose The Theta Girl and Bad Girls are both incredible watches, or an artist, I always worry about their next work.

What was I thinking?

This movie is so perfect for me. Just imagine, a more well-thought-out Midsommar that has actually seen The Wicker Man — and on drugs, mind you — but also knows about collecting records, the joy of finding lost media and understands the allure of strangeness like the Arica, Source Family/Father Yod/Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Process Church and how today’s youth only gets the cool veneer of these lost groups — well, The Process is now kinda sorta Best Friends Animal Shelter — and not the at-times harsh reality. It’s easy to love black metal for its aura of kvlt, yet I doubt you’d participate in the burning of a stave church.

Made for the price of a used car, this movie finds Pater Noster and his band/church lying low after recording several albums in the distant past, one found by Max (Adara Starr), a record store employee that probably only is there to get the discount and build up her own collection of albums. Store owner Sam (Shaley Renew), co-worker Abby (Sanethia Dresch), Gretchen (Shelby Lois Guinn), and Jay Sin (Josh Outzen) get obsessed with the songs. When an invitation to visit the actual Pater Noster compound comes to Max, they all decide to go. Armed with info from cult podcaster Dennis Waverly (Tim Cappello, not playing a sax), they think this is going to be a laugh.

Maybe they haven’t watched the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis or I Drink Your Blood.

Meeting Pater Noster (Mike Amason) may be the last thing they do.

Even crazier is how perfect the music is for this film, featuring The Restoration, Brandy & the Butcher, Turbo Gatto, EZ Shakes, Stagbriar, Ass/Bastard, In/Humanity, Transonics, Hot Lava Monster, Marshall Brown and Larb as well as Tim Cappello playing that sax.

Here’s how the movie was sold on Indiegogo: “The movies we make are punk rock demo tapes. We operate outside of Hollywood and traditional distribution routes. We make movies for people looking for something different, not defined by focus groups and corporate interests. You won’t find this movie in a Walmart because it doesn’t belong in a Walmart.”

That couldn’t be more true. This feels truer to the insane spirit of drive-in movies that you wonder, “Who is this for, other than me?” than any movie I’ve seen in years. Yet it feels real, lived in, authentic. This is, quite literally, the actual shit. A movie where you feel for the victims just as much as for the victimizers, a place where you think that you too could be trapped, because as much as I love the cults of the 70s, I know I would never survive.

A near-perfect film. Find it and live in it now.

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org

Directed by Graham Mason, who also created 2018’s Reveries and 2020’s Reveries: Going Deeper, this was co-written by stars Matt Barats and Anthony Oberbeck, who play two drifters wandering through a desert.

The quote on this film is: “Who are those guys? Poets or something? I always see them around coffeeshops…no laptops…weird…are they artists? Philosophers?…They seem like they must be around 40…”

Or, as CUFF put it, “Reveries: The Mind Prison is a comedy movie/art film hybrid, a sprawling experiment in unbridled creativity and collaboration. Told through a combination of narrative scenes, abstract video montages, and meditative voice-overs, it’s best described as Aki Kaurismäki meets a lo-fi Koyaanisqatsi narrated by Steven Wright, or as Vulture magazine put it, “Like an Ayahuasca session conducted by Mitch Hedberg.” CUFF will host the World Premiere of the feature-length culmination of an eight-year collaboration between CUFF alumni Matt Barats, Anthony Oberbeck, and Graham Mason. The trio have worked on several films that have recently played CUFF, including 2023’s Cash Cow (directed by & starring Barats), 2023’s Dad & Step Dad (produced by Mason and wrote & starring Oberbeck), and 2024’s A Joyful Process (produced by Mason and starring Oberbeck). This is the third movie in a trilogy that includes the comedy art films Reveries (2018, 46m) and Reveries: Going Deeper (2020, 60m).”

What you get here is a journey. Two sunglasses-clad wanders in the desert trying to escape wherever we are, wherever we ended up, and hoping to get out alive. This trip isn’t for everyone, but for those ready for it, it is here.

Reveries: The Mind Prison screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

From the CUFF program: “The story of D.O.A. frontman Joey “Shithead” Keithley, who transitioned from a punk activist musician to politician when he was elected for the Green Party in Burnaby, BC. In 2018, punk icon Joe Keithley turned art into reality by winning a council seat in his hometown of Vancouver. When he ran for reelection in 2022, his campaign demonstrated how music can still effect change, even in these surreal times. Something Better Change documents Keithley’s 40+ year journey as an activist musician in Canada’s most iconic punk band, and how it informs him as a Green Party politician today.”

Scott Crawford also directed Creem: America’s Only Rock’n’roll Magazine and Salad Days: A Decade of Punk In Washington.

This features appearances by Ian and Alex MacKaye, Duff McKagan, Jello Biafra, Beto O’Rourke, Keith Morris, and Dave Grohl as it tells the story of how Keithley has transitioned from frontman to politician.

As The Stranglers said in the song of the same name:

“Something’s happening and it’s happening right now
You’re too blind to see it
Something’s happening and it’s happening right now
Ain’t got time to wait”

Joe didn’t want to wait for someone else to do the things he saw that weren’t happening. This shows the journey of someone who once went by Joey Shithead, from punk to a man concerned about his neighbors. Unlike many politicians, he talks about the actions he wants to take, not just running for power or popularity.

I encourage you to see this movie — check out the Facebook and Instagram pages — because it’s inspiring to see someone take action because they genuinely believe in it. It reaffirmed my faith that sometimes, good people do good things.

Something Better Change screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Synopsis from the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival site: A punk rock horror film where a girl turns into sweets — and everyone wants a taste. After a brutal assault by an ice cream man, punk girl Candy becomes host to a mutant baby. Her pregnancy accelerates at a horrifying rate, and as her body begins transforming into ice cream, those around her see her not as a person, but as something to be consumed. Fetishized by strangers, and betrayed by those she trusted, Candy fights to reclaim her body before she melts away completely. Fueled by a blistering punk rock soundtrack and dripping with grotesque body horror, this film oozes with raw feminist subtext. Blending midnight movie chaos with social satire, this wild exploitation film has it all—grindhouse grit, surreal shocks, and a heroine who refuses to be devoured.

It needs to be stated up front: Potential viewers of Canadian body horror/exploitation shocker Sugar Rot who wish to avoid films involving rape and other forms of sexual assault will want to steer clear of the film, as writer/director Becca Kozak subjects protagonist Candy (Chloë MacLeod) to numerous amounts of both. 

Kozak tackles social issues revolving around the exploitation and commercialization of women’s bodies, and she doesn’t hold back on pushing buttons and boundaries. There’s something here to offend almost everyone, and at the same time, there’s plenty of what exploitation film aficionados crave: nudity and sexual situations, over-the-top set pieces, and jaw-dropping practical gore effects, with plenty of goop and glop for good measure.

MacLeod gives an all-in performance in her lead role. Some of the situations in Sugar Rot are a bit on the nose, and that extends to character names, such as Candy’s punk-rocker boyfriend being named Sid (Drew Forster) — there’s even a Sid and Nancy reference, if you didn’t get the connection already — and a doctor named Herschell Gordon (Charles Lysne). Forster and Lysne join Michela Ross and Tyson Storozinski as the main supporting players, all of whom give the proper amount of camp and scenery chewing that their deliberately baroque characters require.

ery little is sacred and few targets are safe in Kozak’s debut feature. She had goals for this film and she reached for them, resulting in a colorful — in more ways than one — punk-fueled slice of cinematic anarchy. Sugar Rot will put you off of dessert while giving you food for thought.

SUGAR ROT screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

An After Hours-type comedy of misfortunes for the mid-2020s, writer/director Brandon Daley’s $POSITIONS finds less-than-lovable loser Mike (Michael Kunicki in an all-in performance) quitting his longtime factory job when his cryptocurrency hits in the $30,000s. Naturally, those figures don’t last for long, and neither does the newfound popularity that he found with his sudden wealth. 

To add insult to injury, his girlfriend Charlene (Kaylyn Carter) gets the better end of the deal when he suggests an open relationship — just ask new flame Lorenzo (Jeffrey A. Hunter). As caretaker for his brother Vinny (Vinny Kress), Mike tries desperately to reaccumulate crypto wealth, even though the brothers’ newly Christian, recovering addict cousin Travis (Trevor Dawkins in a strong supporting role), recently released from prison, tries to convince him that cryptocurrency is a scam.

$POSITIONS is the type of feel-bad comedy in which the protagonist is hard to root for and in which you know matters will only get continuously worse. Daley certainly heaps the challenges onto Mike. 

Daley keeps the proceedings going at a frenetic clip, though the suspense is often tied to shots of the crypto going up or down on Mike’s phone app, with the action doing what it needs to accordingly. If schadenfreude humor is your cup of bitter tea, $POSITIONS is certainly worth a watch.

$POSITIONS screens as part of the 2025 Calgary Underground Film Festival, which runs April 17–27. For more information, visit https://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/.