What movie would Sean Connery choose to follow up his run as James Bond with? Well, it’s The Offence, but this was his second movie after. And it’s definitely the first film John Boorman did after Deliverance. What they created was a film that absolutely cannot be easily explained. I’ve watched it in the double digits and there are whole sequences that I can’t unpack. In the year 2293, Earth has lived beyond the end of the world. There are two populations, the immortal Eternals and the mortal Brutals. The Eternals live in the Vortex, a country estate that affords them comfort at the expense of excitement. The Brutals live in a wasteland growing food for the immortals, yet face constant danger. The Brutal Exterminators are the ones that keep the machinery running, as they are ordered by a giant flying stone head named Zardoz to kill other Brutals and exchange food for more weapons. One of the Brutals, Zed (Connery) goes for a ride on Zardoz, even temporarily killing its pilot, Arthur Frayn. Zed goes to the Vortex, where he meets Consuella (Charlotte Rampling, The Damned, Asylum) and May (Sara Kestelman, Liztomania). They defeat him with psychic powers and use him for menial labor. Consuella wants hm destroyed, while May and Frayn want to keep him alive. Zed learns that the Eternals are watched over by an artificial intelligence called the Tabernacle. Because they live forever, they have become bored and no longer have sex. Some of them have fallen into comas and are known as Apathetics. And despite their vast resources of knowledge, all they care about is making special bread, meditating and enforcing their social rules by artificially aging anyone who violates their byzantine rules. The Eternals misjudge Zed — he is far more intelligent than he lets on. He learns that he is part of Arthur Frayn’s eugenics experiment and that Frayn is also Zardoz. He’s also learned to read, and once he discovers that Zardoz isn’t a god but a play on the Wizard of Oz, he becomes enraged. Zed lives up to Arthur’s goal for him — to deliver death and freedom (one and the same) to the Eternals. He absorbs all of their knowledge as he leads the Brutals on a killing spree against the Eternals. The film ends with still images of Consuella and Zed falling in love to the tune of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony — an ode to soldiers — and giving birth to a son before they age into skeletons. It’s complex and simple and moving and silly all at the same time. Kind of like the rest of Zardoz. I didn’t even mention the animated scene of how erections work or Connery in a wedding dress or the weird outfit Zed and the Brutal Exterminators wear — knee-high boots and a giant red thong. The film was inspired by Boorman almost making The Lord of the Rings. Although the project ended, he wanted to see if he could create his own fantasy world. A fantasy world that makes little or no sense, as evidenced by the spoken word intro that 20th Century Fox executives asked Boorman to create. The goal was to help the audience understand the film. But just look at this dialogue: “I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue — rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation — and a magician, by inclination. Merlin is my hero! I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment — and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business too?” There’s no way to really prepare you for this movie. Trust me when I say that there has never been a movie like it before or since.

Marissa (Bridget Regan) and Eve (Joanne Kelly) have seemingly been pitted against one another since they were born. Their father, Raymond Hale (Samuel Roukin), was an oppressive collector of art who felt that his life of privilege kept him from his true calling of being an artist. He sword that his daughters would be guided to becoming the best artists who ever lived. To do that, Hale taught them that their pain would guide them to become better at their craft, despite the damage that it would do to their psyches. Marissa became a cold, unfeeling art scenester, using her sister’s art to gain entry into a world that she doesn’t have the talent to survive in. Eve has regressed inward, spending as much of her time as possible inside the family’s crumbling home, the same place where she found her father dead from suicide.

Their relationship is best summed up by a flashback where both paint in front of a waterfall. Their father yells at Marissa, complaining about how she doesn’t seem to care. He then forces Eve to burn her sister’s canvas, intonning, “The seed of creativity is adversity.”

Eve became a prodigy and was known in the art world before puberty.

Marissa was always jealous of her.

And if this seems like an art world version of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the filmmakers should take it as a supreme compliment.

Years later, the sisters come back together as Marissa learns that Eve plans to donate the priceless art that her father owned to a local gallery. It just so happens to belong to the fiancee of the girl’s childhood friend Cormack (Alain Uy), who has also remained in their hometown. Instead of becoming a great painter, he’s content to take care of Eve from afar and have a tattoo shop.

Appearances are reality for many in this film. Marissa is as much a mess as Eve, but she never admits it. Eve may appear like she’s hanging on to life by her fingernails, yet she can feel joy at the opportunity to reconnect with her sister.

Director and writer team Melora Donoghue and Kimberly Stuckwisch have created an entire world populated by characters who live and breathe. Marissa blows into town, seemingly always one step ahead of her sister. Yet Eve, while innocent, is not without guile. I rooted for her in this.

This is quite a movie. I hope it gets the kind of distribution where so many people can watch it.

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

Mr. McDaniel (Paul Lazar, Silence of the Lambs) is a retired teacher obsessed with a game all the social media kids are playing called Sweet Relief. They all name someone who they dislike and people vote on whether or not a murder would be justified. If it is, they must complete the murder. If they back out, they’re killed.

The game starts to infect a small town. Nathan (Adam Michael Kozak) moves away from home and cohabitates with Jess (Alisa Leigh). This causes his young sister Hannah (Lucie Rosenfeld) to be trapped with their strange mother who constantly watches McDaniel online. Hannah and her mother think that Nathan has betrayed their family and if they have to play the game to get him back, they’re in.

There’s also a child killer turned drug deal and now police informant reformed Gerald (B.R. Yeager) who is obsessed with the fact that he’s kind of a cop. He’s also still a murderer and when Jess catches him, all of these stories meet in a bloody and nihilistic finale.

Directed and written by Nick Verdi, this has a pace outside of what you see out of Hollywood. There are moments that just wait and wait for you. The characters all feel authentic and even when they’re locked into their own odd thought patterns, you never lose sight of the fact that they could be real.

It’s not perfect yet it’s rough edges are what make it interesting. The kids — and the adults and the senior citizens and everyone in town — are not alright. You can’t stop watching.

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

Directed and written by Ludvig Gür, Gudstjänst — which is being released in the U.S. as In the Name of God — is about Theodor (Linus Walhgren), a priest who is often the only person at his masses. The worshippers are dying off and his wife Felicia (Lisa Henni) wonders if they should move on. He’s happy that his mentor Jonas (Thomas Hanzon) has come to town. The problem is that it seems like he may be deranged. After all, he just killed a dove right in front of him and sprayed him with hot blood.

Yet when Felicia collapses and is soon hospitalized, dying from a mysterious ailment, Jonas offers to save her if Theodor follows him just as he did by going into the priesthood. Now, he must accept the true priesthood of God and kill sinners to save his wife’s life.

Jonas has already captured a rapist and all the younger man has to do is snuff out his sinful life. He does. His wife is healed. He becomes known as a faith healer and people come back to the church. His wife is with child. God has a plan.

Yet to make the prayers of his new followers come true, he must keep killing. Because the God who has listened to Theodor is the Old Testament one, the vengeful demander of sacrifice, the God that asked Abraham to murder his own son just to see how far he would go.

This is the very definition of a moral quandary. Isn’t murder a sin? Yet aren’t the people who Theodor is hunting and destroying evil incarnate? Isn’t all this murder making the world a better place? And if he can make miracles happen at the same time, isn’t that God’s will? Can you become addicted to creating magic happen in the lives of those who follow your teachings?

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

In this movie directed and written by its stars, Gavin Charles and Alex Conn, two filmmakers explore a dead mall yet find themselves trapped within its environment, as the hallways, stairwells and abandoned stores start to trap them.

Made in Kansas City on nearly no budget — $37 or so IMDB would like you to believe — this is a liminal horror movie. That means that it takes place “in a space between two states of being.” This is a big YouTube horror trend and before every Hollywood movie starts to run it into the ground, Charles and Conn are here first.

Hollywood pitch meeting shorthand: Think Skinamarink.

The duo keep yelling, “This is another liminal space!” as they find all these backrooms and the Lunch Zone inside what was once a place of capitalism. Now, it’s a husk. This feels like the next level of found footage and taking streaming video into the horror film.

So wait — for the old people like me — what are The Backrooms?

According to Wikipedia, they “are usually portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional expanse of empty rooms, accessed by exiting (“no-clipping out of”) reality.” They’re also quite often filled with sinister beings.

In 2019, a 4chan thread posted a “photograph of a large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and dividing walls.” It upset people and no one could quite figure out why. One anonymous poster was able to sum it up and some of their words came to be the title of this movie: “If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”

A24 announced that they are working on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Kane Parsons’ videos, with Parsons directing. Roberto Patino is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan, Michael Clear from Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce.

So again, it’s nice that these guys got there first.

Much like the aforementioned Skinamarink, nothing much happens. But that’s sort of the aesthetic, I guess. Again, I’m ancient and I remember when found footage was Cannibal Holocaust and not The Blair Witch. I feel about this the way I do about pop music: I am almost forty years past when that music should be relevant for me. For those who it is for, I hope they love it.

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

If you think there’s censorship in America today, well, let me tell you…after the comic book trials of the 1950s, in which Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent led to Congress having trials amidst the belief that comic books caused juvenile delinquency, the Comics Code Authority was born. Every comic needed the code and in order to keep offending comics like E.C. Comics’ Tales from the Crypt from ever rearing their ugly head again, vampires, werewolves, ghouls and zombies were banned. Comics couldn’t even use the words horror or terror in their titles. Even comic book writer Marv Wolfman’s last name was challenged!

It got so ridiculous that when Marvel used zombies in The Avengers, they had to call them zuvembies. They were still undead, they still acted like zombies, yet that spelled got them past the outdated Comics Code.

However, a 1971 provision to the Code stated the following: “Vampires, ghouls and werewolves are allowed when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works written by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world.”

After the last appearances of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and a werewolf as superheroes in a short-lived line of Dell Comics, comic publishers realized that they could make monster books and as the characters were in the public domain, they could create their own versions of some already beloved characters.

Marvel already had a “living vampire” in Morbius — yes, the same character who is getting his own movie — but the Dracula comic floundered at first with several different writers (Gerry Conway, who went from a Universal-inspired take with major input from editors Roy Thomas and Stan Lee to a Hammer take on the character in the two issues he wrote, followed by two issues by Archie Goodwin and two by Gardener Fox before the aforementioned Marv Wolfman came on board) before gaining traction. Gene Colan was the artist along with Tom Palmer on inks for most of the run, basing his Dracula on Jack Palance, who would end up getting the role in the Dan Curtis TV movie Dracula a year after Colan prophetically started drawing him as the King of the Vampires.

At its height, Tomb of Dracula also had two black and white titles, Dracula Lives! and Tomb of Dracula. Yet even after the series ended in August of 1979, the character would return to battle the X-Men.

Strangely enough, Marvel’s Dracula comic book has more of an honor than just being one of the first Marvel movies. It also introduced the character of Blade, who would be one of the first Marvel film successes in 1998.

In 1980, soon after the end of the series, Marvel’s deal with Toei led to this movie.

The Toei deal began when the CBS Spider-Man series — which only had 13 episodes in America and a few TV movies — became a big success in Japan. Toei, the makers of Kamen Rider, would be the partner to create Marvel-inspired series such as their own Japanese Spider-Man show that gave Japan their own webslinger in Takuya Yamashiro and his giant robot Leopardon.

Marvel also produced the Sentai — think Power Rangers shows Battle Fever J (with characters from multiple countries much like Captain America; Miss America on the show inspired American Chavez — according to this article on Inverse — and the crew even battled a Dracula robot), Denshi Sentai Denziman and Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan, which Stan Lee tried and failed to bring to America. Ironically, former Marvel producer Margaret Loesch ran Fox Kids in the 90s, which led to Marvel shows appearing on Fox, as well as a much later Super Sentai series, which was rebranded exactly as Lee had suggested by Saban Entertainment and called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

In 1983, Harmony Gold released this to American cable as Dracula Sovereign of the Damned. And wow, it’s something else.

The movie starts with no less gravitas than to show us how the universe was formed and the nature of juxtaposition — life and death, heat and cold, light and dark — began. Nowhere is that juxtaposition more felt than in the form of Dracula, who is both alive and dead.

Now making his home in Boston, after being hounded by multiple vampire hunters, Dracula soon interrupts a wedding between a virginal bride and Lucifer, stealing Dolores for his own, yet conflicted as to whether or not he should drink her blood. They end up having a son, Janus, who is killed by the cultists and Satan, but comes back as a being of pure light that also wants to kill his father. Meanwhile, Frank Drake, Hans Harker and Rachel Van Helsing are hunting down the vampire, wanting to end his life for good.

Can you fit more than 40 issues of a comic book into 90 minutes? Well, the makers of this movie sure gave it a try. At one point, Dracula even becomes human and walks the streets of Boston still wearing his cloak, but goes to get a hamburger. It’s also amazing just how much violence, Satanic moments and even nudity that this movie has. It’s also hilariously dubbed and the source material isn’t understood by the people making it, so it’s exactly everything that I want and need it to be.

As part of the deal with Toei, one more movie got made: Kyoufu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and written by Lloyd Phillips, David Odell (the writer of Masters of the Universe, Supergirl and The Dark Crystal, as well as the director of Martians Go Home and “No Strings” and “The Yattering and Jack” episodes of Tales from the Darkside) and John Hughes — yes, that John Hughes — I would have no idea this movie existed if not for the magic that is the Red Eye movie section of the Chattanooga Film Festival.

Based on the adventures of real-life blackbirders Bully Hayes and Ben Pease and shot in New Zealand — Sir Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop claims that it started the 1980s Kiwi filmmaking boom — this is known as Savage Islands everywhere but America.

It’s one of the many movies made in the wake of Raiders of the Lost Ark like Hunters of the Golden Cobra, Treasure of the Four Crowns, The Perils of Gwendoline In the Land of Yik-Yak, King Solomon’s Mines, Sky Pirates, Jane and the Lost City, Ark of the Sun God — and yes, I am just listing movies that I love — that went back to movie serials for inspiration, this goes back even further and mines another Hollywood genre that had fallen out of favor: the pirate movie.

Missionary Nathaniel “Nate” Williamson (Michael O’Keefe from Caddyshack) is at sea, trying to save souls. Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones, a few years from The Eyes of Laura Mars but looking like some kind of young lady killer) is a pirate who is trying to make money anywhere he can. They’re forced to work together and are both in love with the same woman, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove, Appointment With Death) and have to save her from slaver Ben Pease (Max Phipps).

Does this sound somewhat similar to the triangle between Will Turner, Captain Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann in Disney’s multifilm Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Perhaps. Except those films made millions and this one was forgotten.

Roger Ebert referred to it as “one of the more inexplicable films I’ve encountered recently. The part I can’t explain is: Why did they make it? The movie is a loud, confusing, pointless mess that never seems to make up its mind whether to be a farce or an adventure.”

For some reason, more than these filmmakers wanted to bring pirates back in the 80s. So I’ll say that this is better than most of them, but it’s up against Yellowbeard, The Pirate Movie, The Pirates of Penzance and the excoriable Pirates, a movie that could be the worst thing Roman Polanski ever did that wasn’t a crime against humanity and also had Cannon buy a boat and leave it shipwrecked at Cannes for years.

Speaking of Cannon, this feels a lot like the kind of movie they’d make, except it’d be directed by Michael Winner or Sam Firstenberg, which means that it would be a lot weirder.

Maybe the fault isn’t in the movie — at least in the U.S. — but in Paramount, the studio that made it.

Allegedly, when they saw the final cut, they were concerned about how close it was to Raiders. And Temple of Doom was being filmed and ready to be their next big summer movie. They didn’t want two swashbuckling movies out at the same time — much less two that rip off the rope bridge scene from The Lady Hermit (shoutout to The Betamax Rundown) and have a scene where the female lead is about to be cooked in a pot — so they released it in November when no one would go see it.

So despite all of that, by the end of this — and the last dramatic rescue — I was cheering. It won me over. Isn’t it cool when that happens and you don’t expect it?

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

De UFO’s van Soesterberg is directed by Bram Roza and just like the title says, it’s about the night of February 3, 1979. In the air above Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, a giant black UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) hovered overhead and was seen by twelve people. All of them were military officers and their stories were all the same.

Roza runs UFO Meldpunt Nederland, a site that tracks UAP sightings in the Netherlands. Yet he never allows this film to turn into the breathless kind of narrative of a show like Ancient Aliens. Everyone from witness to critic is given plenty of time to share their story. It’s all illustrated with gorgeous artwork and it just feels well beyond what I’ve come to expect from paranormal documentaries. This also has a wonderful score by Mike Redman.

The director also made the movie Xingadix Lives! which is about De Johnsons, a 1992 Dutch horror film thriller directed by Rudolf van den Berg.

So many of these witnesses have been embarrassed and afraid to appear in interviews. I’m so pleased that this film so effortlessly and perfectly tells their stories. Even if you’re not into UFO stories, you may find something to enjoy in this.

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

“What is a juggalo?
A Hulkamaniac.
He powerbombs motherfuckers into thumbtacks.
People like him ’til they find out he’s unstable
He Sabu’d your momma through a coffee table.”

Trey (Jon Oswald) has just got of a year in jail and even there, he’s liked by the guards. He seems like a genuine person. He went there because of Silas (Scott Turner Schofield). He once promised Silas’ dying brother that he’d protect him no matter what. And Silas is alright, caring for Meemaw in her coma that she probably won’t ever wake up from. To celebrate Trey being free, they decide to go to the place all juggalos go to celebrate their love of the Insane Clown Posse, The Gathering of the Juggalos.

Then, they take the wrong turn on an off ramp and end up spilling a milkshake on an important man named Gavin (Reed Diamond). Gavin is the sheriff who runs the town and he soon sends his officers after them. Things get tense, Trey can’t go back inside and Silas ends up attacking an officer and dosing him with LSD.

The plan to get to the Gathering and rap on stage? It might not happen so easily.

The only person that they know around here is Scarecrow (Jared Bankens), a person so horrible that he was kicked out of a past Gathering and is no longer permitted to be a juggalo. He lives in a trailer that he inherited from his grandmother after she was devoured by wild dogs and forces his sister Eden (Ashley Smith) to pump breast milk that he can drink and to participate in necromantic rituals that will connect them to her dead child.

Director Nathan Tape, who wrote this with Tim Cairo and Clayton Nepveux, is able to find joy and true love in this movie. It never talks down to or makes fun of juggalos for their life choices. Instead, it affirms many of them. It’s also not afraid to go full on wild, as there are some moments in this movie that even shocked me. It’s also gorgeous in the way that it’s filmed.

I never would have thought that this would have me laugh with, instead of at. Even if you don’t understand the love of Faygo or know what a Dark Carnival is, you will afterward and walk away with a much more full understanding of why this group feels such a bond. There’s not really any rock and roll to be a burn out about any more and if I were in high school today, I’d probably at least know a few juggalos.

I mean, sure, they wear face paint and are obsessed with pro wrestling — I have done both of those things — but Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope can also write hopeful things, like:

“If magic is all we’ve ever know
Then it’s easy to miss what really goes on
But I’ve seen miracles in every way
And I see miracles every day.”

This movie lives up to that song.

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

“The last surviving 728,000 copies of Blind Cop 1 were censored by the U.S. government. Each individual one was burned and buried in the Syracuse salt mines.”

After saving the city in the last movie, Blind Cop (George Fearing) is mourning the loss of his partner Mac (Steven Vogel). He knows that all sorts of military weapons are ending up in the hands of street gangs, but he only knows how to do things his way. His way means killing everything in his path. Yes, despite being blind, Blind Cop has powers beyond what we can imagine. He can fight anything. He can drive a car. He can get blind drunk and still not see. Blind Cop is the hero of the city, even if the city doesn’t understand and kicks him off the force.

Schmidty (Isaac McKinnon) is one of the few people who believes in him. He rescues him from literally getting pissed on by some goons and nurses him back to health. This involves giving Blind Cop his car and a place to sleep it off.

Blind Cop may also be related to Manny Cobretti with dialogue like this:

“You can’t just go around killing people, Blind Cop.” says the police chief.

“They’re not people, Chief. They’re criminals.” snarls Blind Cop.

This film has Blind Cop dispensing brutal justice to perps like Max Froglips, Frank the Male Hooker, Titan, Ulrich Von Kunst and no small amount of nameless and soon to be deceased henchmen. You know how Revenge of the Ninja has Don Shanks as a Native American bad guy in the middle of a gang that has more diversity as the Village People? Yeah, this has that. It feels like when you’d play a Double Dragon clone like Bad Dudes and I mean that as the highest compliment that I can give. It’s hard to make a movie that’s like something Cannon would put out and have the parody not be so dumb or in the way of the action. Somehow, Blind Cop 2 pulls it off.

Director Alec Bonk wrote this along with McKinnon and Augustin Huffman. They must have watched as many movies that were left in the action section of their local video store on a Saturday night as I did. That Vietnam flashback feels earned, baby.

You can learn more on the official site.

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