The night before Henry (Victor Meutelet) starts his mandatory military service, his friends Sonia (Sofia Lesaffre) and Max (Kassim Meesters) take him drinking and then into the catacombs of Paris, discovering tunnels that had been thoroughly destroyed during the Second World War. Chased by skinheads deep into the tunnels beneath the streets of the City of Lights, they find the 717 Bunker, an abandoned Nazi fortress that may not be abandoned.

Directed by Grégory Beghin and written by Nicolas Tackian, this film is claustrophobic — of course, what do you expect from being in the Paris catacombs? — and once it gets to the gore, it delivers. It’s just not very exciting until it actually gets there. That said, the closing moments are harrowing and make up for how slow going it is in other places.

Movies like this remind me to just stay in my movie room and not do spelunking or urban exploration.

I watched Deep Fear at Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.

Deep Fear will be on Screambox on October 11.

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 Nightsiren at Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.

I have made no secret of my devotion — obsession? — with the Found Footage Festival, the life mission of Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher to take VHS tapes and remix them to reach us across the decades. So much of my conversational moments daily are made up of things I learned from these guys, like Jack Rebney yelling “Accountremants?!,” Champion Cathan Fable Little Star, “You can’t pay your rent with trophies,” “Fucking nature,” “Ice your bitch down” and so many other things I randomly say I first heard from the video collection of Joe and Nick.

As the twosome tour the U.S., they used to get stuck doing morning shows. At some point, they went from small pranks to a big one: they became Chop and Steele, two exercise masters who smashed baskets and threw sticks at one another. Anyone watching them would know it was a joke. The real laugh — or lack of humor — was when a big media company sued them for a litany of charges, putting their lives and fortunes at risk.

Directed by Berndt Mader and Ben Steinbauer with writing by Alex MacKenzie, this film explores how the Found Footage guys got here, how their relationship works and how a court case and COVID-19 almost ruined it for all of us. Sure, it’s cool to hear from David Cross, Bobcat Goldthwait, Reggie Watts and Howie Mandell what these guys mean to them. But the true stars are always Joe and Nick and, of course, the found footage of them in the moment and especially as they are being examined in court. The humorless legal questions literally seem like Brazil as Joe tries to explain what Frisbee Fuckers mean and the line “these fuckers only work from 4 AM to 10 AM” can cause so many headaches for Nick.

In a soulless world that just wants to crush you and forget that laughter exists, these guys get you through it. Their VCR Party show gave us something to look forward to during lockdown. And they’re still out there, fighting the silly fight, not letting things like being adults or offending people by urinating all over NBC’s stage get in the way of a good laugh.

This movie is everything I wanted it to be and yes, I did tear up at the end.

I watched Chop and Steele at Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.

You can learn more at the official Chop and Steele website.

Mickey Reece makes a movie a year and every time, it’s something different. Like the exorcism movie Agnes or Climate of the Hunter, a movie that plays with horror and age. This time, he’s made a comedy — kind of, as always the genre isn’t always absolute — about Troyal Brux (Reece), a country singer on the rise who pretty much seems like Garth Brooks, seeing as how this was made in 1994. In fact, it was Garth until the Oklahoma film commission took away the tax rebates they promised; when the name was changed, those rebates came back. Brooks is from Tulsa and his real first name is Troyal, so you understand.

In the middle of his rise to fame, Troyal gets a written invite from George Jones (Ben Hall). Jones is on the opposite side of life as Troyal and he wants to spend one night out in the world before he gets frozen the very next day.

This is the night they spent together.

Reece has already made Alien, a film about Elvis, but this one is about the gulf between country of old and modern country. The outlaw world of Jones and the commercial world of Troyal. Is Jones trying to make fun of the new family man who is trying to be a star? Or does he see something of himself at the start of his career, when he could see into people and write songs that connected to people?

I grew up in a town with one radio station, all country, so Jones’ songs — “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” “You and Me and Time,” “She Thinks I Still Care” — mean so much more to me than anything country has had to say for itself in decades (and don’t tell me that Sturgill Simpson and today’s presented alternatives are any more authentic country than Garth was). The songs that played on WFEM — well, with the exception of “The Bird” — were raw expressions of life gone off the rails. The life of Jones parallels Brooks in that they both had marriages to fellow performers — Jones famously with Tammy Wynette, who sang “Stand By Your Man,” and Brooks to Trisha Yearwood — but while it took Jones until 1999 to get sober and stop blowing off concerts — “No Show Jones” — Brooks has been a steady superstar. Well, except for that whole Chris Gaines thing, which this movie hints at.

I loved that this movie has asides about Tasha Yar and Denise Crosby coming back to be on later seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as fantasies — or maybe not? — of Jones killing people for organized crime figures or destabilizing anti-government officials. I’m of the feeling that the best stories don’t have to be true if they’re entertaining.

Sure, this is a movie of basically two men in a room talking. Yet it’s that conversation and where it goes that make for an incredible tale, ending with perhaps the strangest baby reveal and musical number I’ve seen in a movie. That pushed this way over the victory line for me.

I watched Country Gold at Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.

Tutor and rocker Neil Stuart (co-writer Matt Farley) has returned to the small New England city of Rivertown that he left in disgrace after growing obsessed by a riverbeast. His fiancee is marrying someone else. His enemy, reporter Sparky Watts, is still hounding him to no end. And maybe his new student, the daughter of a noted pro athlete Frank Stone, has way too many questions. But this time, he just might turn his life around. And you know, prove that the creek-living creature is an actual thing.

I’ve been indulging in director Charles Roxburgh and his writing partner Farley’s movies and realizing that so often, I wish that I could see films that I really love again for the first time. This is that chance for me, as I’m absolutely tuned into everything in this movie, which is at once a 50s drive-in film that has talking moments that usually cover for the lack of action but here, the action is in the long conversations and songs and not in the creature rising from the river. Also: I absolutely am stunned by the William Castle-style opening and strobe warning of when the beast comes out to kill.

This movie hits so many topics like rudeness at wedding receptions, longing for lost love, the miracles of cat litter, local conspiracies driven by a hunch and, yes, cryptozoological menace. It also feels like sitting down and hearing a shaggy dog version of a story by your drunk or high best friend instead of actually getting to see the movie, except you totally get to see the movie.

Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You! is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest. This is part of Molten Media, which has produced independent feature films since the late 1990s. According to Fantastic Fest, “the idiosyncratic cinema of Charles Roxburgh and Matt Farley pay homage to the regional low budget horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s as they unravel bizarre tales set in and around lightly-fictionalized small New England towns. Akin to the manner in which John Waters and Kevin Smith cultivated their cult universes out of tight-knit communities of vivid personalities, Charlie and Farley’s films imagine a unique portrait of Americana as they recruit an eccentric ensemble of folksy friends and family to endearingly perform the offbeat vernaculars and campy melodrama of their wittily verbose scripts.”

Fantastic Fest Burnt Ends has awarded the filmmakers with the first annual Golden Spatula in recognition of their creative spirit, and a partial retrospective of their inventive catalog which includes Local Legends, Metal Detector Maniac and the world premiere of a special 2k restoration of their autumnal slasher Freaky Farley as well as more contemporary works which pursue a distinct, but just as wonderfully eclectic and wry comic sensibility.

You can get a virtual badge here.

You can also buy this on blu ray from Gold Ninja Video.

PILI has been playing on TV in Taiwan since the 1984 and it looks wild to Western eyes, an example of Taiwanese art of bùdàixì glove puppetry. Unlike traditional puppetry, PILI uses computer-generated imagery during its action sequences. Also, in case you didn’t pick up on it from the movies on the site this week, Taiwan does some absolutely berserk wuxia films.

Demigod: The Legend Begins is the origin story for one of its most popular characters, Su Huan-jen. Not yet a powerful warrior but just a student, he seeks to escape the obligations and debt that he owes to the local librarian. Using his acupuncture skills, Huan-jen barely gets by. But when he has the chance to heal the Lord of Globe Castle, he gets to see the rich man’s sacred library as well as get involved in a war between humanity and the celestial kingdoms beyond mortal men. And when Su Huan-jen is framed for the lord’s murder, his own life is on the line in the midst of all this spiritual warfare.

Director Chris Huang Wen Chang and writers Huang Liang-hsun and He Yuan-yu have created a movie that looks astounding but has a story that makes you forget that you’re just watching puppets in action. They become living characters and draw you in. There’s nothing else I’ve seen like this and I can’t wait to hunt down more of this.

You can watch Demigod: The Legend Begins with a Fantastic Fest virtual badge here.

Filmed on video in a Staten Island basement, hosted by lounge singer Frank Masi and his wife Tillie from 1979 to the early 1990s, Stairway to Stardom existed in a world that could only be before the internet. I first saw clips of the show thanks to The Found Footage Festival and they broke my brain.

AGFA has brought together some of the most amazing moments of this show, whether that means unfunny stand ups, R&B singers who can’t dance on beat or just, well, whatever people thought was their talent.

This has no host or talking heads explaining its significance. It doesn’t need it. Instead, it’s everything wonderful of the now lost world of public access, a place where anyone could be a star, but it took a lot more work to get there.

The fact that this exists and that someone out there may get to experience it for the first time makes me so happy. Allow the joy that is this show to wash over you. You’ll have “Hairdresser” in your head before it’s over.

The Stairway to Stardom Mixtape is playing at Fantastic Fest. You can get a virtual badge here.

You can download complete episodes of the show on the Internet Archive or watch clips on YouTube.

Matt Farley and Tom Scalzo, played by Matt Farley and Tom Scalzo, are music professors currently on sabbatical working on an album of music by their band Moes Haven that will be based on whatever happens in their lives. Currently, that seems like it’s going to be them playing basketball all day. But that’s before they get a nemesis, a metal detector, well, maniac.

Sure, the guys just get a bad feeling about him, but what if they aren’t safe? What if he can get into their homes? What if there are unsolved crimes that he may have committed? And what if they become so obsessed, recording an entire album about their enemy that proves that they have grown mutually haunted by one another?

This movie just flows and feels like a total hang out with two friends who love recording songs just as much as they do escaping the world of being grown-ups. Just as many people love them as are annoyed by them, but when you have a man who can find lost medallions and writes poetry that mentions his hatred of you, well, anything can happen.

And what’s the deal with those missing feisty twins?

Your bedroom community is also filled with this same kind of evil. You just need to take a sabbatical too.

Metal Detector Maniac is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest. This is part of Molten Media, which has produced independent feature films since the late 1990s. According to Fantastic Fest, “the idiosyncratic cinema of Charles Roxburgh and Matt Farley pay homage to the regional low budget horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s as they unravel bizarre tales set in and around lightly-fictionalized small New England towns. Akin to the manner in which John Waters and Kevin Smith cultivated their cult universes out of tight-knit communities of vivid personalities, Charlie and Farley’s films imagine a unique portrait of Americana as they recruit an eccentric ensemble of folksy friends and family to endearingly perform the offbeat vernaculars and campy melodrama of their wittily verbose scripts.”

Fantastic Fest Burnt Ends has awarded the filmmakers with the first annual Golden Spatula in recognition of their creative spirit, and a partial retrospective of their inventive catalog which includes Local Legends, Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You and the world premiere of a special 2k restoration of their autumnal slasher Freaky Farley as well as more contemporary works which pursue a distinct, but just as wonderfully eclectic and wry comic sensibility.

You can get a virtual badge here.

You can also buy this on blu ray from Gold Ninja Video.

I went all in on The Third Saturday in October V, loving the way that it had the look and feel of 90s direct to video slasher sequels, so I was beyond excited for the first installment which referenced slashers like Death Screams and Another Son of Sam, I got pretty excited.

Sadly, the final effort doesn’t match the other film. This feels like an approximation of the late 70s and early 80s slasher boom, where The Third Saturday in October V nearly could have arrived in our time via a rip in the time/space paradox and seemed like it really was a product of its era. It was kind of hard reading other reviewers saying how much this seemed like My Bloody Valentine and it felt like a game of, “Tell me that you haven’t really paid attention to slashers other than aping what everyone else writes about them without telling me.”

It’s too bright, too trying to be strange instead of being odd naturally — the endless meow dialogue is grating at best — and the football title feels forced whereas it naturally fits into the other film.

That’s not to say that there’s not some real talent here. Director, writer and editor Jay Burleson gets a lot out of his budget. Darius Willis and K.J. Baker are really good as the parents of victims who just want to put serial killer Harding into the ground once and for all. And there’s a great atmospheric graveyard scene that’s quite evocative of the early scenes of Halloween. Then it all kind of falls apart, as the characters of John Paul (Casey Aud), Denver (Kate Edmonds), Pam (Venna Black), Bobbi Jo (Libby Blake), Uncle Deeter (Richard Garner) and Ned (Dre Bravo) are never funny, constantly drag the film down and just seem like they’ve come out of Tromaville — never a good thing — and take the film from satiric to sophomoric.

It also doesn’t help that Denver’s headphones — the Walkman 2 which popularized the device didn’t come out in the U.S. until 1981, so this feels anachronistic — dancing scene just ended up reminding me of a much better throwback in The House of the Devil.

Creating slasher victims is hard — how much should we care about them? Do we just want them to die? This film never even ponders that, even if at heart it’s either a tribute or a pastiche of the past. That said, Allison Shrum’s Heather is a fine final girl and I enjoyed Lew Temple (31, The Devil’s Rejects) as her father.

I really wish I had liked this more and even after a second viewing, worrying if I’d overhyped myself, I still struggled to finish it. One of the things that took me out of the film was seeing Harding have his mask on near the end with no scene explaining where it came from or why he had a mask, which is always the big moment in any slasher. And yes, I get that we rarely get much character development in these movies, but why is Jakkariah Harding so feared? I can accept The Shape being unkillable, but I also learned that he had the darkest eyes, the devil’s eyes. This film asks us to fill in the knowledge we have of slashers without rewarding us with touching on those moments and treating them in new and unique ways.

The slasher genre is ripe for being made light of but this film sadly doesn’t have much new to add to the conversation, which is a shame, as I can and will extol the virtues of its sequel/companion movie.

The Third Saturday In October V is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.