December 1: Happy Horror-days! Celebrate trying to survive the festive season with a collection of cult films that are set around the holidays or are up to their knees in snow. Either way, there will be chills galore. From everyone at ARROW, we wish you Happy Horror-days! Titles include: Holiday Fear, The Leech, Chill Factor
Also on December 1: Once Upon a Chinese Hero Kickboxer and Ninja Hunter
December 4: Gala Avary Selects Vol. II: Gala Avary (producer of the Video Archives podcast and host of The Gala Show) invites you into the scene… POV: It’s December 4th. You know what that means. It’s my birthday and you’re invited to my party! We’ve already been out to Finney’s Crafthouse for dinner and enjoyed cauliflower tacos and a Bavarian pretzel. Don’t forget the sweet potato fries! I’ve blown out 28 candles, plus one for good luck, and made my wish. Oh, you want to know what I wished for? It’s bad luck to share so I’m keeping it to myself. Now that dinner’s over, it’s time for gifts — but wait! Just because it’s my birthday doesn’t mean you don’t get something too. Come on, unwrap it. It’s just what you wanted: 20 new ARROW Selects hand-picked by myself. Which one are you going to watch first? Titles include: Bloody Birthday, Lady Morgan’s Vengeance, The Initiation.
December 15: No Sense and No Money: The Seijun Suzuki Collection: “I make movies that make no sense and no money”, Seijun Suzuki said of his own work, but what fun is ‘sense’ compared to surreal, unforgettable and influential Yakuza movies? Although unappreciated at the time, especially by Nikkatsu, the studio that fired him after calling his masterpiece Branded To Kill “nonsense”, Suzuki left behind a legacy of work unlike any other. His films made indelible impressions on filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino and ARROW are proud to present a curated Season in No Sense and No Money: The Seijun Suzuki Collection. Titles include: Eight Hours of Terror, The Boy Who Came Back, The Sleeping Beast Within.
December 18: Travis Stevens Selects: The producer of Cheap Thrills, Jodorowsky’s Dune, We Are Still Here, Buster’s Mal Heart and more, shared: “It was a pleasure diving into the ARROW catalogue to pull together a selection of international films that cover everything from sex & violence, to haunted relationships, to tactile science fiction, to alt vampires, to how the hell did that movie ever get made? Basically, everything that makes cinema great, now streaming only on ARROW.” Titles include: No, The Case Is Happy Resolved, Inferno of Torture, Shock.
December 29: Five Fighters from Shaolin and The Leg Fighters
Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly.
ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
With a slickly designed and user-friendly interface, and an unparalleled roster of quality content from westerns to giallo to Asian cinema, trailers, Midnight Movies, filmmaker picks and much, much more, ARROW is the place to go for the very best in on-demand entertainment.
I love Gold Ninja Video and all of their releases. Here are four new ones that are out today!
Ed Wood’s Revenge of theDead: A 2-disc set of Wood’s Night of the Ghouls with the following extras:
Audio commentary by Will Sloan and Justin Decloux of The Important Cinema Club podcast
Audio commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell and KJ Shepherd
Ed Wood Apocrypha: A Video Discussion
Kelton The Cop: An Appreciation of Actor Paul Marco by Justin Decloux and Will Sloan
The complete KELTON’S DARK CORNER (2006-2015), featuring Paul Marco’s final appearance as “Kelton the Cop,” with a new introduction by director Vasily Shumov
BONUS FEATURE: Ed Wood’s Jail Bait (1954) in SD with optional commentary by Will Sloan and Justin Decloux
SUPER 8 presentation of Plan 9 from Outer Space: With Optional Commentary by Justin Decloux and Will Sloan
Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), a short film by Ed Wood
Archival interview with Paul Marco
The 2K scan of Final Curtain (1957), an unsold TV pilot by Ed Wood, which was incorporated into Revenge of the Dead.
Ed Wood trailers
Liner notes by Ed Wood expert Greg Dziawer
The Monster Man: A zany, no-budget apocalyptic feature from Writer/Director/Star/Movie Obsessive Jose Prenders, co-starring the legendary Ed Wood company player Conrad Brooks. This disc includes the unreleased mockumentary Unspeakable Horrors: The Plan 9 Conspiracy which includes interviews with Joe Dante and Fred Olen Ray!
The Golden Triangle: A Filipino/Taiwanese James Bond riff co-directed by the visionary behind the film where Bruce Lee Goes to Hell: The Dragon Lives Again.
Rock n’ Roll Asylum: It’s just another typical day at the Rock N’ Roll Asylum for well-respected Dr. Utger (Adam Thorn), and the loveable residents that include Pokaroo The Kangaroo, The Murderous Biter, and The Clown Receptionist.
But when the leather-jacketed Pandamaniac starts a murder spree with a hammer, it’s up to Dr. Utger to bring sanity back to the madhouse! Will his powers of the mind be enough to calm the restless masses? Or will Dr. Utger come face to face with some disturbing magic, time travel, and psychic powers???!!!
One of the wildest films you’ll ever see. Adam Thorn’s fever dreams is indescribable beyond things like “There’s a murderous panda with a hammer, a receptionist clown, evil wizards, and time travel.”
Save some money from the big sales on Black Friday and throw some money to Gold Ninja.
Closed Circuit: ABOUT THE AUTHOR: When Frederick Burdsall isn’t at work or watching movies while covered in cats, you can find Fred in the front seat of Knoebels’ Phoenix.
What we have here today, my friends, is your standard supernatural made for TV Giallo. From 1978, comes Circuito Chiuso (Closed Circuit), directed by Giuiano Montado, who is probably best known for the trilogy of films he made dealing with the various abuses of power, the most known being Sacco and Vanzetti. It stars Flavio Bucci, Tony Kendall and to an extent Giuliano Gemma. Let’s look at the story…
A harmless, movie-loving old man goes to the cinema to watch the Giuliano Gemma western now appearing. Everyone takes their seats and the film begins to roll. Nothing out of the ordinary happens here until the final confrontation, when the Pistolero (Gemma) fires at his adversary and the old man is struck and killed by a bullet. With police already in the theater, it is quickly locked down so the killer can’t escape. We watch tensions build as the interrogations begin and no one is allowed to leave. The police chief decides to re-enact the crime in the hopes of figuring it out and gets a volunteer to sit in the death seat. When the final confrontation takes place, the pistolero fires and the volunteer is gunned down. There doesn’t appear to be any connection and finally the chief runs the film a final time, taking the death seat himself. Not to spoil anything but it doesn’t end well for the chief and the mystery is solved.
It is part sci-fi, part social commentary and somewhat supernatural making for an interesting watch. If you go in expecting the usual black gloved killer and lots of bloody violence you will be very disappointed. Go in with an open mind, then watch and enjoy this visual experiment that has been overlooked long enough and I’ll see you at Knoebels.
The Unscarred: For his third feature film – and first outside his native Staten Island – writer/director Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock) delivered an intense new take on alienation, desperation and retribution: In 1979, a shocking accident rocked the student exchange program at Stanford University and forever changed the trajectory of four young lives. Twenty years later, an impromptu reunion in Berlin will turn the sins of the past into an explosion of lust, deception, dark secrets and cold-blooded murder. James Russo, Steven Waddington, Heino Ferch and Ornella Muti star in this extreme neo-noir, now scanned in 2K from pre-print German vault elements with 2 hours of new Special Features for the first time ever in America.
Stir: In 1974, the cruel treatment of inmates at Bathurst Prison in New South Wales, Australia led to violent riots, savage reprisals and a still-controversial official inquiry. Six years later, this “furious, foul-mouthed, open wound of a film” (Bob Ellis, Nation Review) – the feature directorial debut by Stephen Wallace from a screenplay by Bathurst inmate Bob Jewson – dared to tell the inside story: When career criminal China Jackson (Bryan Brown) is returned to prison after exposing abuses by guards, tensions between inmates and officers begin to boil until they explode in rage, defiance and shocking carnage. Max Phipps co-stars in this “intense and authentic account of a brutal system” (Cinephilia) – nominated for 13 AFI Awards including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenplay and Best Actor – scanned in 2K from the 35mm interpositive at The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Combat Shock novelization: Buddy Giovinazzo’s landmark gut-grinder is now an all-new page-turner. Available to purchase by itself or at a discounted price in two of our Severin Black Friday Sale Bundles.
There are two bundles, The Stir Crazy Bundle and The Buddy G Bundle for these movies and associated books.
Spider Labyrinth: The title of this movie may translate as The Spider’s Nest, but it was released here as The Spider Labyrinth, which is a really awesome name for a movie. Good thing that this blast of late 80s Italian horror lives up to it.
Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga, Sinbad of the Seven Seas) is a professor of languages whose life’s goal is to translate the sacred texts of a pre-Christian religion. This brings him to Budapest, where Professor Roth gives him a black book and plenty of paranoid ramblings, telling him about a cult called The Weavers that worship living beings from before humanity was even an idea.
This film has its roots in not just giallo — Whitmore is the stranger in a strange land who is confronted by a dead body and plenty of mystery about exactly why — but also the works of Lovecraft, informing us that there are religions that existed before the ones that we know and accept. Also, a shade of yellow forms over this story as our hero has a phobia about spiders, as he was locked in the closet with one as a small child and has carried that fear with him into his adult life.
Oh yeah — there’s also a fanged woman who can climb the walls like a spider out there killing anyone who helps our hero, even transforming the murder of one of the maids into an Argento-style art murder. It helps that Sergio Stivaletti, who did the effects for so many of the giallo maestro’s films, is on hand here. And this movie works admirably without CGI, as the ending gets absolutely into the stratosphere of wildness with an infant that becomes a spider.
This isn’t just a giallo cover movie. It has a genuine story to tell and some beautiful scenes along the way, as a real air of death just under the surface of reality. Sadly, its director Gianfranco Giagni has mostly worked in television, such as the show Valentina (a remake of Baba Yaga), or made documentaries such as Rosabella: la storia italiana di Orson Welles and La scandalose.
You can buy this by itself or get it as part of The Tangled Web Bundle which includes the Spider Labyrinth 4K UHD, the Collectable Spider Baby Metal Figurine and the Spider Labyrinth Sticker. It’s a $73 value for $65.
There’s also a Saturday sale and a huge bundle where you can get everything. You can also get half off anything that was released a year or longer ago.
Look, just throw your paycheck to Severin and they’ll take care of your movies for you. The sale starts at midnight tomorrow.
I’m excited about a lot of what Severin has for sale, but beyond excited for these two movies.
Raiders Of The Living Dead: A regional New Hampshire film with a synth score that was reedited with new footage by Sam Sherman with that iconic Independent-International Pictures logo at the start of the show?
If you’re wondering, “Is it weird?” My answer is, “Would it be on our site if it wasn’t?”
While filming on this movie originally began in New Hampshire by co-writer Brett Piper as a movie called Graveyard, it was finished by writer-producer Samuel Sherman, the man who formed Independent-International Pictures with Al Adamson.
In an abandoned prison, a doctor is using executed convicts to form a labor force of the living dead. Meanwhile, Jonathan (the one-time Flick and future adult actor Scott Schwartz) has turned his dad’s LaserDisc into a laser gun and decides that he should hunt down zombies with the help of his girlfriend, grandfather, a reporter and a librarian (who was played by Zita Johann, the female star of Universal’s The Mummy, lured out of retirement by Sherman).
There are three versions of this. A sixty-minute version by Piper called Dying Day, an initial take on the footage by Sherman called Dark Night and then Raiders of the Living Dead, which is one of the best carny movie titles ever.
Now scanned in 2K from the negative of the final release version, the Severin release has over 4 hours of new & archival Special Features – including two previous cuts in their entirety – that reveal the full ROTLD saga.
The Dead One: The Dead One is a significant movie because it’s one of the first two zombie films made in color — the other is Dr. Blood’s Coffin — and it was made outside of the Hollywood system in New Orleans. It mostly played in Southern drive-ins, in Mexico and the UK before it disappeared for 41 years.
Shot in Eastmancolor and Ultrascope, a form of Cinemascope from Germany, The Dead One has a cool looking zombie and otherwise would be an unremarkable film other than the fact that it’s a Barry Mahon film and stands out from the rest of his output, which is either falls into the disparate genres of nudist films, roughies, propaganda movies or children’s films.
Actually, the poster for this would like you to know just how remarkable this movie is, saying that The Dead One is “The Greatest VOODOO Film Ever Made – Filmed on Location in New Orleans Where VOODOO was introduced to the New World.”
This is probably the most restrained Mahon film I’ve seen. It played double bills for a long time, a filler for drive-ins that would run late into the night while what happened in the steamed up cars looked a lot like the other movies Barry was known for making.
You can buy both of these movies alone or as part of the Independent-International Appreciation Society Bundle, which comes with the Independent-International Pictures Logo T-Shirt. It’s a $76 value that’s only $68.
You can get these movies tomorrow at midnight from Severin.
Every Black Friday, Severin brings so much stuff for sale that starts to make you realize that it’s better to buy for yourself than give or receive. This year is no different. This is the first of several guides to what they have for sale starting tomorrow at midnight.
Up first are the Michele Soavi releases!
Cemetery Man: Throughout the 1990’s, Michele Soavi kept the traditions of Italian horror alive. Starting as an actor in films like Aliens 2: On Earth, City of the Living Dead, Demonsand The New York Ripper, Soavi would also become an assistant director to greats such as Dario Argento (Tenebre, Phenomena), Lamberto Bava (Blastfighter and the previously mentioned Demons) and Terry Gilliam (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm). Finally, he’d graduate to creating his own films, including Stagefright, The Sectand The Church.
Cemetary Man is based on Tiziano Sclavi’s novel Dellamorte Dellamore (the best translation is “About Death, About Love”). Sclavi also created the comic book Dylan Dog, whose protagonist looks exactly like this film’s star Rupert Everett (and which was also made into a 2011 film).
Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett, My Best Friend’s Wedding) takes care of the Buffalora cemetery. He lives in a shack, with death and his mentally challenged assistant Gnaghi his only friends. Quite frankly, his life sucks. Young punks in town tell everyone he’s impotent. And his only hobbies are putting together a skull-shaped puzzle and crossing out dead people’s names in the telephone book.
That said, he has a hell of a job to do. The gates of the cemetery read “For those who will rise again,” and after a week, the dead rises from their graves, ready to kill the living. Francesco must kill them when they rise, even if no one wants to hear what a problem he’s facing. Again, the townspeople think he’s a moron, the mayor doesn’t care and, according to Franco, the town’s bookkeeper, he’d have to do a ton of paperwork if he really wanted the help.
While watching a funeral, Dellamorte falls in love with a widow. He waits for her to visit the graveside of her dead husband, then takes her on a tour of the grounds. As they have sex on the graves, her dead spouse rises and fatally bites her. Or maybe it’s a heart attack. Or maybe she isn’t even dead. That said, seven days later, she also rises from the dead and Dellamorte must put her down as well.
Meanwhile, Gnaghi falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Valentina. Even when she’s decapitated, he won’t fall out of love, instead digging up her head and starting up a romance. And the widow rises again, leading Dellamorte to believe that he was the one who killed her, not her husband. This causes him to either go insane or to begin seeing the truth, as the Angel of Death appears to him, begging him to stop killing the dead and only kill the living.
The widow has become the unattainable object of Dellamorte’s desire. He even tries to talk a doctor into removing his penis so that one aspect of her, the assistant to the new mayor (oh yeah, Valentina killed her dad when he shunned her new relationship) who is afraid of penetration, will fall in love with him. That relationship ends when she is raped, loses her phobia and marries her attacker.
Dellamorte then goes into town and kills anyone who said he was impotent. Meeting a prostitute in a bar, he realizes that she is also his unattainable love. He kills her and everyone in her apartment by setting it on fire.
Remember that bookkeeper, Franco? Well, he’s killed his whole family and the other murders that Dellamorte has done are all pinned on him. He drinks iodine to kill himself, but before he dies, Dellamorte visits. While visiting, he kills a nun, a nurse and a doctor, finally trying to confess to everything but no one will believe him.
Death reveals himself again and laughs that Dellamorte has not figured out what the difference between life and death is. So our hero packs up the car, grabs Gnaghi and tries to escape the town. As they race out of a tunnel, their car wrecks and Gnaghi is critically injured.
Dellamorte fears that the rest of the world has ceased to exist. He decides to kill himself and Gnaghi before his assistant is miraculously healed. He throws Dellamorte’s gun off a cliff and the two men decide to go back home.
If you’re looking for a narrative film that makes sense, this is not the movie. If you’re seeking a dream meditation of life, love and loss, then fire up your DVD player. Or streaming device, it is 2017 after all. Shot in a real abandoned cemetery, there are moments of poetic beauty and grace, like when the floating fool’s fire lights dance around the graves as Dellamorte and She make love. And there are also moments of abject horror and dread, as the film has an incredibly memorable personification of death.
Soavi would drop out of filmmaking to take care of his sick son in the late 1990s, returning to work in television in the early 2000s. Here’s hoping that he gets another chance to return to features, as Cemetery Man is everything I love about film — strangeness that is not easily accessible or categorized.
The Severin blu ray of Cemetery Man is packed with extras, including:
DISC 1: UHD
Audio Commentary By Director Michele Soavi And Screenwriter Gianni Romoli
Trailers
DISC 2: BLU-RAY
Audio Commentary By Director Michele Soavi And Screenwriter Gianni Romoli
At The Graves – Interview With Michele Soavi
Of Love And Death – Interview With Actor Rupert Everett
She – Interview With Actress Anna Falchi
Archival Making-Of
DISC 3: BLU-RAY
A Matter Of Life And Death – Interview With Gianni Romoli
Graveyard Shift – Interview With Cinematographer Mauro Marchetti
Head Over Heels – Interview With Actress Fabiana Formica
The Living Dead Mayor – Interview With Actor Stefano Masciarelli
The Music From The Underground – Interview With Composer Riccardo Biseo
Resurrection – Interview With Special FX Artist Sergio Stivaletti
Cemetery Gates – Interview with Set Designer Antonello Geleng
Grave Encounters – Interview With Alan Jones, Author Of Profondo Argento
Trailers
DISC 4: Bonus Soundtrack CD
Exclusive Booklet By Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies
Beyond being available as a $55 UHD release, this is also available in the That’s Dellamore Bundle, which includes the Cemetery Man 4K UHD, Cemetery Man Snowglobe, Cemetery Man 4 Piece Enamel Pin Collection, the new Soavi Hall of Fame Enamel Pin and the Cemetery Man T-Shirt. If you buy those separately, they’re $158. You get them in the bundle for $142.
The Church: Michele Soavi directed four horror films from 1987 to 1994, starting with Stagefright and ending with Cemetary Manthat continued the rich tradition of Italian horror. With training from Joe D’Amato and Dario Argento, as well as second unit work on two Terry Gilliam films, he emerged as a unique presence with an eye that combines those aforementioned traditions with a gaze toward the art film and the new.
Some considered this movie a sequel to the Demons series of films, with each movie all based around one cursed place. Demons was all about a movie theater (including Soavi as the Man in the Mask that lures people to their doom) and Demons 2 concerns an apartment building. There are also a million other movies that are and are not connected to that series that only Joe Bob Briggs can properly explain (or this article).
The film opens with the history of the church. Upon finding stigmata on the foot of a village girl, Teutonic Knights wipe out a village — man, woman, child and animal — burying them in a mass grave. It seems the devil had infiltrated the entire town and this was the only way to deal with it. One villager (Asia Argento) tries to escape and is impaled and tossed into the grave. The knights cover the grave with crosses and build a church upon it.
In modern times, we meet Lotte (Argento, again), the daughter of the church’s sacristan, Hermann; Evan, the new librarian who starts a relationship with Lisa (Barbara Cupisti, Stagefright, Cemetary Man), an artist restoring the artwork in the church; the bishop; the reverend (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, The Omen, City of the Living Dead, House on the Edge of the Park) and Father Gus (Hugh Quarshie, Nightbreed, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace).
The cathedral is filled with secret pathways that Lotte uses to go out clubbing, before coming back and getting slapped by her father for smelling like cigarettes and booze. There’s also a rumbling, bubbling undercurrent of pure evil presided over by black-robed monks.
Evan and Lisa may be sneaking off and making love, but he is only really in love with learning more of the church. As she finds his way to the stone with the seven eyes, he kneels before the status and tears his own heart out, holding it above his head as it beats its last, while we’re treated to fast-moving visuals of the pulsating city above the church set to the music of Philip Glass (The Church also features music by Keith Emerson and Goblin).
As the possession of Evan increases — yes, ripping out his own heart was just the start — we’re treated to a litany of insane images. Lisa is taken by a demonic goat. An elderly couple bickers and then the wife is found using her husband’s head to ring a church bell. A man kills himself with a jackhammer. A bridal party photo shoot ends with the bride model impaled. A woman is absolutely destroyed by a subway train. A giant flesh tower of dead bodies rises as the mechanics of the church kick in, trapping everyone there with death the only escape. Oh yeah — there’s also a flashback to the original builder of the church being impaled on his mechanical security system.
The Church is less about a narrative flow and more about a collection of images and moments that add up to one impressive smorgasbord. Soavi saw the other Demons films as “pizza schlock” and ended his artistic relationship with Argento with this film. Yet he was contending with a script that had a ton of other writers, including Argento, Soavi, Franco Ferrini, Lamberto Bava, Dardano Sacchetti (who wrote nearly every major Fulci movie, as well as A Bay of Blood and Shock), Fabrizio Bava and Nick Alexander. What emerges is a wild exercise in style, featuring a multitude of references to artwork both religious and modern, including the painting “Vampire’s Kiss” by Boris Vallejo.
If you’re expecting a movie that’s easy to follow, I suggest you find another one to watch. But if you’re searching for arresting visuals and a technically proficient director who has a ton of visual tricks he wants to blow your mind with, then by all means, get ready to experience The Church.
The Severin UHD release has the following extras:
DISC 1: UHD
Trailer
DISC 2: BLU-RAY
The Mystery Of The Cathedrals – Interview With Director Michele Soavi
Alchemical Possession – Interview With Co-Screenwriter/Producer Dario Argento
The Eleventh Commandment – Interview With Co-Screenwriter Franco Ferrini
The Ghostwriter – Interview With Co-Screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti
Lotte – Interview With Actress Asia Argento
Here Comes The Bride – Interview With Actress Antonella Vitale
A Demon Named Evan – Interview With Actor Tomas Arana
Father Giovanni – Interview With Actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice
Monsters And Demons – Interview With Special FX Artist Sergio Stivaletti
Holy Ground – Interview With Make-Up Artist Franco Casagni
Building The Church – Interview With Set Designer Antonello Geleng
The Right-Hand Man – Interview With Assistant Director Claudio Lattanzi
Return To The Land Of The Demons– Interview With Alan Jones, Author Of Profondo Argento
Trailer
DISC 3: Bonus Soundtrack CD
Exclusive Booklet By Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies
There’s a ton of merch that goes with The Church which you can buy indivdually or as part of the Our Soavi-est bundle of the sale! This one includes all THREE Brand New Soavi titles: The Sect 4K UHD, The Church 4K UHD, and Cemetery Man 4K UHD, as well as the Cemetery Man Snowglobe and 4 Piece Enamel Pin Collection, the new Soavi Hall of Fame Enamel Pin, The Sect Pendant, The Church – Stone With Seven Eyes Pendant, The Church Goat Demon 3D Metal Keychain and Gang Bang Woven Patch, Soavi Signed Postcard, The Sect T-Shirt, The Church T-Shirt and Cemetery Man T-Shirt. It’s all worth $370 but costs $299.
There’s one more release!
The Sect: Between Ed Sanders’ book The Family — which examines the origins of Manson’s Family — and Maury Terry’s The Ultimate Evil — which suggests that a worldwide network of Satanists is responsible for the Manson family and Son of Sam murders, we’ve come to accept the notion of an organized army of evil. But who are they?
In the revised 2002 edition of The Family, Sanders referenced the Process Chuch of the Final Judgement as the “satanic group of English origin” behind these killings. The Process successfully sued Sanders’ publisher to remove this reference.
That said the die was cast. By 1980, books like Michelle Remembers suggested a deep conspiracy of Satanic ritual abuse. The Satanic Panic of the 80’s found sacrifice and worship around every corner. Perhaps the author you’re reading now was targeted. Yet no real evidence has ever been found.
Michele Soavi’s The Sect concerns that network of Satan as they prepare the way for the Antichrist. From a commune being slaughtered in the early 1970s — a scene with references to the Rolling Stones that repeat throughout the film — to multiple modern murders that follow, including a heart being left on a train and a suicide in public, the devil’s helpers are organized, know how to plan and are well ahead of the rest of society.
Just a note — as cheesy as Sympathy for the Devil reads today — The Rolling Stones were at the forefront of the occult 60s thanks to their association with Kenneth Anger. If you’re interested in learning more, I’d heartily recommend Gary Lachman’s Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius.
But let’s get back to The Sect. In modern Germany, schoolteacher Miriam Kreisl (Kelly Curtis, sister of Jamie Lee) saves Moebius Kelly (Herbert Lom, Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera) after an accident and brings him back to her house. Within a few hours, he’s injecting her and shoving beetles up her nose while she sleeps and giving her nightmares of a giant bird having sex with her.
From there, the film descends into more of a series of nightmares than a fixed narrative. That makes sense once you realize that its origins in three different scripts that producer Dario Argento, director Michele Soavi and writer Gianni Romoli couldn’t finish. So you’re left with a film with a giant glowing blue gateway to Hell in the basement, a plot to conceive the Antichrist much like Rosemary’s Baby, an evil Shroud of Turin that can kill and bring people back from the dead and, oh yeah, a super smart rabbit named Rabbit who can use a TV remote.
The Sect has some references to other films, with the first victim being named Marion Crane (Psycho) and another named Martin Romero (obviously, George Romero and his Braddock vampire film Martin).
Following Soavi’s Stagefrightand The Church, this film offers less of the pure insanity that he’d bring to bear in his next film (and sadly, final horror film) Cemetery Man. Yet a restrained Soavi is still more visually inventive than a hundred lesser directors. From images of animal-masked children to the evil Jesus that smokes up and annihilates hippies in the flashback, there’s a continual undercurrent of menace and doom.
Strange symbols just appear. People disappear even after we see them arrive. Or they die in airplane accidents and still appear. Kathryn (Mariangela Giordano, Evelyn from Burial Ground, she of the incestual zombie child relationship) shows up to get smothered by the previously mentioned evil shroud. Worms show up in the water. A possessed Kathryn convinces a trucker to kill her. Rabbit symbolism abounds. Kathryn gets back up off the operating table and attacks Miriam before killing herself again, which a doctor tries to explain as a commonplace thing. Long black tunnels lead to a sinister mortuary. The doctor who couldn’t save Kathryn and Damon, the Jesus-like killer from the opening, are working together. A woman’s face is ripped clean off, Hellraiser-style. Even trusted detective Frank is taken over and wants to kill Kathryn now that he knows her secret. Whew. I hope these short bursts of words give you an idea of just how much happens in this movie. It never really lets up, becoming more and more unreal.
Moebius comes back to life to tell Miriam that every moment of her life has been planned, that they own her, that everything has been for this moment of indescribable joy. The cult gathers as the doctor injects her, sending her to sleep.
Finally, the devil comes to take Miriam. In shadow form, he appears to be human, but what attacks her is a giant bird that pecks at her neck and has his way with her. The cult lowers her into a pit as Moebius raves, screaming that he is her father and that she will give birth to the Antichrist. As she waits in the blue basement water, midwives swim around her, facilitating the birth as the moon slowly goes dark.
A giant amniotic sac with a child inside is lifted as the moon goes completely black.
In a shot straight out of Rosemary’s Baby, Miriam moves through the crowd to see what Moebius refers to as their “revenge against God.” He offers her the chance to raise the child.
Cut to her kneeling, beatific in white, as she stares into the blue waters of the well below. The doctor attempts to be tender to her, but Miriam tosses her down the pit. She makes her way to the rest of the cult and accepts her child, running with it as a motorcyclist chases her and crashes, creating a giant wall of fire.
Moebius screams that they are ger family now. Miriam kneels into the flames of the crashed motorcycle and sacrifices herself to destroy the baby and Moebius.
Fire crews put out the bodies as we see their charred remains wash away — except Miriam is still alive under all of the ash. An eagle circles the sky as Miriam believes that her son saved her.
The Sect is crazy, but it still doesn’t feel as strange as The Church or Stagefright. Yet again, when compared to any other film, it’s odd as hell. It flies by, a mix of imagery and ideas that takes you on a whirling dervish of a ride.
The Severin UHD of The Sect has the following extras:
DISC 1: UHD
U.S. Release Trailer
DISC 2: BLU-RAY
Sympathy For The Devil – Interview With Director Michele Soavi
(You’re The) Devil In Disguise – Interview With Co-Screenwriter/Producer Dario Argento
Catacumba – Interview With Co-Screenwriter Gianni Romoli
Cult Of Personality – Interview With Actor Tomas Arana
Owner Of A Lonely Heart – Interview With Actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice
In The Shaded Area – Interview With Cinematographer Raffaele Mertes
Four Times Argento – Interview With Composer Pino Donaggio
Total Eclipse – Interview With Special FX Artist Sergio Stivaletti
Oh Well – Interview With Set Designer Antonello Geleng
The Birth Of Evil – Interview With Film Historian Fabrizio Spurio
Into The Dark Well – Interview With Alan Jones, Author Of Profondo Argento
Catacomb In The Kitchen – Michele Soavi Shows Us His Dark Basement
Italian Trailer
U.S. Release Trailer
DISC 3: Bonus Soundtrack CD
Exclusive Booklet By Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies
There’s so much more but we’ll get to that in another post. See you at midnight at Severin!
If you like the Cisco Kid, good news. This set has so many movies with the character and is a lot of fun. I had never seen any of these before and I had a great time with this set, which is full of movies.
South of the Rio Grande: There were three Cisco Kid movies made in 1945. That’s how popular the character was. This one, directed by Lambert Hillyer (who made so many movies, including Dracula’s Daughter) and written by Victor Hammond and Ralph Bettinson, is unlike many of the other movies in the series as its a musical. It starts with Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) singing to a potential girlfriend. Then, he and Pancho (Martin Garralaga) head to Mexico to stop the corrupt Miguel Sanchez (George J. Lewis) and romance the ladies like Pepita (Armida) and Dolores Gonzales (Lillian Molieri) who work in a cantina.
Sixty-two minutes long, this Monogram Pictures series joined Charlie Chan and Palooka Joe as their dependable features. They kept making them and audiences kept going to see them.
The Girl from San Lorenzo: Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) and Pancho (Leo Carrillo) have to prove their innocence after robberies made by two thugs (David Sharpe and Edmund Cobb) who look just like them. Our heroic dup gets jailed, but the outlaws have one more big score and need to free Cisco and Pancho to have an alibi.
Director Derwin Abrahams worked in serials and TV, while writer Ford Beebe directed a hundred movies. These guys moved fast back then, making entertaining adventure and Western movies. The same year, there would be the first of 156 episodes of The Cisco Kid TV series.
I’m amazed that people talk about superhero fatigue. They should look back and see how many Western movies and shows there were in 1950.
Satan’s Cradle: The Cisco Kid (Duncan Renaldo) and Pancho (Lee Carrillo) have to stop Steve Gentry (Douglas Fowley) who has killed Jim Mason (Frank Matts), the well-respected leader of a small town. He takes over all of his businesses and is uses an actress named Lil (Ann Savage, Detour) who pretends to be the man’s widow. How bad are these bad men? They beat up Preacher Henry Lane (Byron Foulger).
Directed by Ford Beebe and written by J. Benton Cheney, this is an hour of your life that will enjoyable go by as you think about how awesome Ann Savage was in Detour and how fun Cisco and Pancho are at playing with their dialogue.
The Daring Caballero: Directed by Wallace Fox and written by Betty Burbridge, this has Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) learn that Pappy Del Rio (David Leonard) is about to be hung for a crime he didn’t do. The Padre (Pedro de Cordoba) thinks he’s innocent as well, as so Cisco and Pancho (Leo Carrillo) break him out. Later, when Cisco talks to Mayor Brady (Stephen Chase), he realizes that he’s really a criminal. There’s also the son of Del Rio, Bobby (Mickey Little), who needs to be saved.
The heroes are against nearly every elite in town. More than just the mayor, it looks like bank president Ed Hodges (Charles Halton) and Marshall Scott (Edmund Cobb) are also in on the crime. Luckily, they’re up against Cisco and Pancho.
Cisco Kid Returns: The first of three Cisco Kid films made in 1945 with Duncan Renaldo as Cisco and Martin Garralaga as Pancho, Cisco Kid Returns finds our hero trying to escape murder charges and keep his girlfriend Rosita (Cecilia Callejo) from marrying John Harris (Roger Pryor). There’s also the daughter of a murdered man who is used by Cisco as the child he claims that he has had with Rosita
The last film of director John P. McCarthy, this is not the first Cisco Kid movie. 1914’s The Caballero’s Way is the original film, starring William R. Dunn. Vester Pegg was Cisco in a 1919 film, then Warner Baxter took over the role in five films between 1928 and 1939, even winning a Best Actor Academy Award for In Old Arizona. Caesar Romero also was Cisco in six films from 1939 through 1941.
Cisco Kid In Old Mexico: Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) and Pancho (Martin Garralaga) are bandits who hold up a stagecoach and take Ellen Roth (Gwen Kenyon). Yet she wins them over by telling them that she’s a nurse who has been framed for murder. They decide to help her in their own way, demanding a ransom for her that the killer has — Will Hastings (Norman Willis) — has to pay so he doesn’t seem like the killer of his aunt. Cisco then implicates Roth by meeting with him and offering to kill her for money. Oh Cisco.
Director Phil Rosen also made It Could Happen to You, The Shadow Returns, Return of the Ape Man, Spooks Run Wild and more than a hundred other movies. Writer Betty Burburdge was the daughter of Civil War Major General Stephen G. Burbridge and Mabel Burbidge, an advice columnist. She acted in a ton of silent films before becoming a writer, specializing in Westerns. Of the 124 movies he wrote, 14 starred Gene Autry.
This is one of the three movies with the Cisco Kid made in 1945.
The Gay Amigo: Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) and Pancho (Leo Carillo) are at the border of Arizona and Mexico when they see the U.S. Cavalry pursuing some Mexico bandits. As they get to Mexico themselves, they see a bandido fall off his horse, dead. What’s strange is that the Mexican criminal is really an American soldier all dressed up.
That’s because a gang of elites are trying to keep Arizona from becoming a state and they’re using Mexicans and the racism against them to keep it from happening. Things really haven’t changed, I guess.
Directed by Wallace Fox, this was written by Doris Schroeder, who was also an editor and wrote TV show tie-in novels for Disney’s Spin and Marty, Patty Duke, Lassie and the Lennon Sisters.
The Gay Cavalier: The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) has no Pancho to help him. That said, he can still keep a young girl named Pepita (Ramsay Ames, who played Princess Ananka in The Mummy’s Ghost; despite her exotic appearance, she was born on Long Island) from marrying a rich man to save her family home. There’s also a gang of stagecoach robbers. It makes it all simple when the man aiming to steal Pepita ends up being the same man who leads the criminals.
According to director William Witney, there were several Republic Pictures’ stuntmen who got hurt running on rooftops to get a better look at Ames walking across the backlot. In fact, more of them got hurt that way than in the actual stunts.
This was directed by William Nigh, who directed many of the East Side Kids and Mr. Wong movies, and written by Charles S. Belden.
Beauty and the Bandit: The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) attacks a stagecoach carrying a wealthy young French person named Du Bois who ends up being Jeanne Du Bois (Ramsay Ames). The gang escapes with the money which Cisco says is money stolen for years from the poor of California. Of course, she soon falls in love with Cisco — and he with her, come on, he’s Cisco and she’s Ramsay Ames — and he gives her the money back. She has to decide what to do with it.
Directed by William Nigh and written by Charles S. Belden, this was another quick movie made for Monogram Pictures yet the Cisco Kid’s legend has lived all the way to today, as I’ve been watching movies with the character in them all week.
South of Monterey: Directed by William Nigh and written by Charles S. Belden, this time The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) learns that Commandante Arturo (Martin Garralaga) and Bennet, a tax collector (Harry Woods), are stealing land from the poor. Can he play them against one another and return the land to the people who really deserve to live there?
Auturo’s sister Carmelita (Iris Flores) is going to marry one of those locals (Carlos Mandreno), but her brother really wants to marry her off to Bennet. Cisco decides that he’ll help these young kids in love, as he’s a sucker for romance.
Riding the California Trail: Rancher Don Jose Ramirez (Martin Garralaga) wants to marry off his niece Delores (Inez Cooper) to Raoul (Ted Hecht), because when she’s wed, he’ll be able to get her inheritance. The problem is that Raoul also is involved with Raquel (Teala Loring).
Where does the Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) and Baby (Frank Yaconelli) come in? Well, Cisco is a womanizer, but it’s one lady at a time, like the lovely saloon girl Delorez (Inez Cooper), who is known as The Angel of San Lorenzo for how kind she is.
It’s kind of wild that all Cisco does is smoke, drink and love the ladies, yet he was a matinee hero for kids. It’s a strange comparison to the singing Gene Autry to Tex Ritter and his whip.
This was directed by William Nigh and written by Clarence Upson Young, who also wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Rx.
Robin Hood of Monterey: Eduardo Belmonte (Travis Kent) overhears his new stepmother Maria (Evelyn Brent) and her lover Don Ricardo Gonzales (Jack La Rue) planning on getting his father Don Carlos Belmonte (Pedro de Cordoba) off the ranch and in the ground, so to speak. Eduardo offers her money to get out and she accuses him of trying to sleep with her, which leads to his father attacking him. The lights go out, dad is dead and Eduardo is shot.
He’s saved by The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) and Pancho (Chris-Pin Martin) try to solve this, but Cisco is arrested and killed by a firing squad. But you know that this can’t be real and he’s going to show up — he does — and save Eduardo.
This is one of the 167 movies that were directed by Christy Cabanne and 192 movies written by Bennett Coleman.
King of the Bandits: In Arizona, The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) and Pancho (Chris-Pin Martin) learn that someone has been impersonating Cisco and robbing people. I feel like this has happened more than a few times to our hero.
Directed by Christy Cabanne and written by Bennett Cohen, this is yet another adventure just as much about finding the ladies as it is getting to the truth of these crimes. The bad guy — Smoke Kirby — is played by Anthony Warde and the mother and daughter who need saving are Laura Treadwell and Angela Greene.
The Cisco Kid Western Movie Collection is available from VCI Entertainment. It has 13 movies and extras like two Cisco Kid TV episodes, interviews with Duncan Renaldo and Colonel Tim McCoy, and photo and poster galleries. You can get it from MVD.
The Mysterious Castle In the Carpathians(Tajesmstvi Hradu V Karpatech) 1981, Czechoslovakia, 97 min.: A unique and almost indescribable mix of Gothic fiction, steampunk gadgetry (designed by Czech animation wizard Jan Švankmajer), slapstick comedy and romantic opera, director Oldřich Lipský’s wonderfully bonkers delight has elements of The Fearless Vampire Killers, Terry Gilliam, Mel Brooks and “The Benny Hill Show.” Based on an 1892 Jules Verne novel The Carpathian Castle (which partially inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula), the film follows Count Teleke of Tölökö (Michal Dočolomanský) on the trail of the count’s lost lover, opera singer Salsa Verde (Evelyna Steimarová) – only to discover she’s been abducted by fiendish Baron Gorc of Gorceny (Miloš Kopecký), whose castle home is filled with the bizarre inventions of mad scientist Orfanik (Rudolf Hrušínský). Littered with puns, sight gags and non-sequiturs – “Later, in Werewolfston”, an invented dialect, a detached golden ear for eavesdropping, a staff topped by an enormous TV eyeball – Mysterious Castle was the third fantastical film from the team of director Lipský and writer Jiří Brdečka after their much-loved musical western spoof Lemonade Joe (1966) and their detective/horror satire Adela has Not Had Supper Yet (1977), both major Czech cult hits. (Note that actor Miloš Kopecký and Jiří Brdečka worked on the supernatural anthology Prague Nights, also released by the Národní filmový archív, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company.) In Czech with English subtitles.
Benny’s Bathtub (Benny’s Badekar) – 1971, Fiasco Film (Denmark), 41 min. Dirs. Jannik Hastrup and Flemming Quist Møller: How can you not love a psychedelic animated kids’ film in which a young boy, bored with the dreary and gray Adult World, follows an enchanted tadpole through the drain in his bathtub – where he discovers a surreal and musical undersea world?? Populated by singing (and barely dressed) Mermaids, a funky hepcat Octopus and whiskey-drinking Skeleton Pirates, the underwater kingdom is the grooviest scene this side of Yellow Submarine, with helpings of Dr. Seuss, Sid & Marty Krofft and Harry Nilsson’s The Point thrown in. (Kids’ entertainment in the early 1970s was truly outtasite!) In addition to the candy-colored, kaleidoscopic visuals, the film is famed for its incredibly addictive soundtrack featuring Jazz heavyweights of Copenhagen circa 1970, with vocals sung by the cream of Danish 60s Pop and Rock including Peter Belli, Otto Brandenburg, Poul Dissing and Trille on tracks like “Octopus Song/ Blækspruttesangen” and “Seahorse Song/ Søhestesangen”. Considered something of a national treasure in Denmark (where it was selected for the country’s Cultural Canon alongside works by Carl Th. Dreyer, Isak Dinesen and Hans Christian Andersen), Benny’s Bathtub has been beautifully restored in 4K from the original camera negative and sound elements for its first-ever U.S. release. In Danish with English subtitles.
November 3: The Iron-Fisted Monk: Rice Miller Luk (Sammo Hung) is just a simple man trying to live a quiet life, until one day the Manchu Bannermen bully their way through town, killing his uncle in the process. When a nearby Shaolin monk, San De (Chan Sing), easily defeats them and sees the fallen Luk, he offers him a chance to learn martial arts at the Shaolin Temple. However, Luk’s impatience with his training sees him return to his town to witness an even more ruthless organization of Manchus, led by a depraved official (Fung Hak-An) who has a nasty and violent habit of taking whatever (and whoever) he wants. Will Luk’s incomplete Shaolin teachings, combined with the skill set of San De, be enough to put an end to the Manchu stronghold plaguing their people? Predating The 36th Chamber of Shaolin‘s variation of the story of San De and Miller Luk by a year, and notorious for its uncensored version receiving a retroactive Category III rating in Hong Kong (the equivalent of the American NC-17), The Iron-Fisted Monk pulls no punches, literally or figuratively, explosively marking the beginning for one of the greatest martial arts film directors of all time!
November 6: Actor, director and magician Andy Nyman shares the titles that inspire his art and illusions: “Dear ARROW viewer. I’m delighted to share my choices with you. As I look again at my list I realize there is a common thread, they all illicit a gut reaction from me. For the most part it’s shock and astonishment, with the occasional nightmare – but in two cases unstoppable tears – I’ll let you work out which those movies are. You’re in for a treat.” Titles include Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Ringu.
November 10: Beware busting a move! Shaking it can lead to snuffing it in this curated collection of foxtrotting flicks where getting down is likely to get you killed. Titles Include: Enter the Void, Showgirls, The Escapees.
Also: Growing Up With John Waters and Hockney on Photography and Other Matters.
November 17: ARROW are proud to showcase a collection of weird, wonderful and downright insane award-winning short films from director Brian Lonano. Led by the festival decimating Content: The Lo-Fi Man, Lonanorama also includes the utterly outrageous Gwilliam (winner of the ‘Most Effectively Offensive’ award at the Boston Underground Film Festival), gruesome comedy-horror Crow Hand!!!, a superhero story like no other in BFF Girls, the Halloween-themed nuttiness of Gwilliam’s Tips for Turning Tricks into Treats, chilling demon opus The Devil’s Asshole, and much, much more, even including some exclusive extras!
Brian Lonano & Blake Myers Selects: “It is really kind of ARROW to let me select 10 films from their amazing library to share with you. Many of these films have shaped me as a filmmaker. They are great examples of how to push boundaries and expand the language of cinema.” Brian Lonano: “I’ve chosen 10 films that I believe to be excellent examples of persistence of vision, wild unhinged storytelling and underdog outsider filmmaking.” Titles include Children of the Corn, The Boxer’s Omen, Basket Case.
November 20: Steven Kostanski Selects: “Choosing my favorites from Arrow’s weird catalogue of movies is a welcome nostalgia flashback to my video store days when I’d shove all sorts of sci-fi and horror nonsense into customers’ faces. After reviewing my list, it’s clear that my tastes have not changed in 15 years: I’m forcing Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 on people just as passionately as I was back then, and in these tumultuous times that gives me a certain level of comfort. Enjoy!” Titles include Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Dead or Alive.
November 24: Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe: Part One: Cultural icon, anti-establishment statement, sadistic lord of carnival horror! With his iconic long fingernails, top hat and cape, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) was the creation of Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, who wrote, directed and starred in a series of outrageous movies from 1964 to 2008. An unholy undertaker in search of the perfect woman to propagate his bloodline, Zé do Caixão made his screen debut with the first Brazilian-produced horror film, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. Three years later, his quest would continue in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, with Zé embarking on an even more brutal campaign of terror, aided and abetted by his hunchbacked assistant. The Strange World of Coffin Joe, meanwhile, is an anthology of three short horror films featuring a strange dollmaker, a necrophiliac balloon seller with a foot fetish, and a psychotic professor involved in sadistic rituals. Sex, perversion and sadism abound in The Awakening of the Beastas a psychiatrist experiments on four volunteers with Lsd in this surreal examination of 60s drug culture. Diverging from horror toward satirical black comedy, The End of Man sees a naked stranger emerge from the sea to perform miracles in a nearby town and become a modern messiah whose deeds will affect the whole world. Newly restored from the best available elements and packed with new and archival extras, Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe is a love letter to one of the great iconoclasts of horror, who forged his films in the face of military dictatorship and religious censorship to become Brazil’s national Boogeyman.
Found Footage: From terrifying and troubling events caught on camera by our heroes (or villains), to forbidden footage that when uncovered and viewed spells doom, to seldom-seen peeks at the unseen lives of everything from slime mould to the stars of Barbarella, Found Footage is a collection of the unearthed, the dangerous, the forbidden and the behind-the-scenes. Titles include The El Duce Tapes, Phantom, Kolobos.
Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly.
ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
With a slickly designed and user-friendly interface, and an unparalleled roster of quality content from westerns to giallo to Asian cinema, trailers, Midnight Movies, filmmaker picks and much, much more, ARROW is the place to go for the very best in on-demand entertainment.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.