Category Archives: Movie reviews

CBS LATE MOVIE: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Abominable Dr. Phibes was on the CBS Late Movie on February 22, 1974 and December 30, 1975.

Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey claimed that the main character in this Vincent Price film was based on him. Well, his name is Dr. Anton Phibes and he’s an organist, researcher, medical doctor, biblical scholar and ex-vaudevillian who has created a clockwork band of robot musicians to play old standards at his whim. Seeing as how nearly all of these things match up with LaVey, I can kind of see his point.

Director Robert Fuest started by designing sets. While working on the TV show The Avengers, he got excited about directing and ended up working on seven episodes of the original series and two of The New Avengers. Soon, he’d be working in film more and more, starting with 1967’s Just Like a Woman. Between the two Phibes films, And Soon the Darkness, The Final Programme and The Devil’s Rain!, he became known for dark-humored fantasy and inventive sets, several of which he designed himself.

This movie is one I can’t be quiet about. It’s one of the strangest and most delightful films I’ve ever seen.

Dr. Anton Phibes died in Switzerland, racing back home upon hearing the news that his beloved bridge Victoria (an uncredited Caroline Munro) had died during surgery. The truth is that Phibes has survived, scarred beyond belief and unable to speak, but alive. He uses all of the skills that he’s mastered to rebuild his face and approximate a human voice. Also, he may or may not be insane.

Phibes believes that the doctors who operated on his wife were incompetent and, therefore, must pay for their insolence. So he does what anyone else would do: visit the Biblical ten plagues of Egypt on every single one of them.

Phibes is, of course, played by Vincent Price. No one else could handle this role. Or this movie. There’s hardly any dialogue for the first ten minutes of the movie. Instead, there are long musical numbers of Phibes and his clockwork band playing old standards. In fact, Phibes doesn’t speak for the first 32 minutes of the movie. Anyone who asks questions like “Why?” and says things like “This movie makes no sense” will be dealt with accordingly.

After the first few murders, Inspector Trout gets on the case. He becomes Phibes’ main antagonist for this and the following film, trying to prove that all of these murders — the doctors and nurse who had been on the team of Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten!) — are connected. Phibes then stays one step ahead of the police, murdering everyone with bees, snow, a unicorn statue, locusts and rats, sometimes even right next to where the cops have staked him out.

Dr. Phibes is assisted by the lovely Vulnavia. We’re never informed that she’s a robot, but in my opinion, she totally is. Both she and the doctor are the most fashion-forward of all revenge killers I’ve seen outside of Meiko Kaji and Christina Lindberg.

Writer William Goldstein wrote Vulnavia as another clockwork robot with a wind-up key in her neck. Fuest thought that Phibes demanded a more mobile assistant, so he made her human, yet one with a blank face and mechanical body movements. I still like to think that she’s a machine, particularly because she returns in the next film after her demise here. Also, Fuest rewrote nearly the entire script.

After killing off everyone else — sorry Terry-Thomas! — Phibes kidnaps Dr. Vesalius’ son and implants a key inside his heart that will unlock the boy. However, if the doctor doesn’t finish the surgery on his son in six minutes — the same amount of time he had spent trying to save Phibes’ wife — acid will rain down and kill both he and his boy.

Against all odds, Vesalius is successful. Vulnavia, in the middle of destroying Phibes’ clockwork orchestra, is sprayed by the acid and killed while the doctor himself replaces his blood with a special fluid and lies down to eternal sleep with his wife, happy that he has had his revenge.

If you’re interested, the ten plagues Phibes unleashes are:

1. Blood: He drains all of Dr. Longstreet’s blood

2. Frogs: He uses a mechanical frog mask to kill Dr. Hargreaves at a costume party

3. Bats: A more cinematic plague than lice from the Biblical plagues, Phibes uses these airborne rodents to kill Dr. Dunwoody

4. Rats: Again, better than flies, rats overwhelm Dr. Kitaj and cause his plane to crash

5. Pestilence: This one is a leap, but the unicorn head that kills Dr. Whitcombe qualifies

6: Boils: Professor Thornton is stung to death by bees

7. Hail: Dr. Hedgepath is frozen by an ice machine

8. Locusts: The nurse is devoured by them thanks to an ingenious trap

9. Darkness: Phibes joins his wife in eternal rest during a solar eclipse

10. Death of the firstborn: Phibes kidnaps the son of Dr. Vesalius

I love that this movie appears lost in time. While set in the 1920s, many of the songs weren’t released until the 1940s. Also, despite the era the film is set in, Phibes has working robots and high technology.

There’s nothing quite like this movie. I encourage you to take the rest of the day off and savor it.

How does Phibes live up to being a Satanic film? In my opinion, Phibes embodies one of the nine Satanic statements to its utmost: Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. The men and woman whose negligence led to the loss of Phibes’ wife were never punished. Phibes had to become their judge, jury and yes, destroyer.

On the other hand — or hoof, as it were — Phibes is the exact antithesis of the ninth Satanic sin, Lack of Aesthetics, which states that “an eye for beauty, for balance, is an essential Satanic tool and must be applied for greatest magical effectiveness. It’s not what’s supposed to be pleasing—it’s what is. Aesthetics is a personal thing, reflective of one’s own nature, but there are universally pleasing and harmonious configurations that should not be denied.” So much of what makes this film is that Phibes’ musical art is just as essential as his demented nature and abilities. Music is the core of his soul, not just revenge.

Another point of view comes from Draconis Blackthorne of the Sinister Screen: “This is an aesthetically-beauteous film, replete with Satanic architecture as well as ideology. Those who know will recognize these subtle and sometimes rather blatant displays. Obviously, to those familiar with the life of our founder, there are several parallels between Dr. Anton Phibes’s character and that of Dr. Anton LaVey – they even share the same first name and certain propensities.”

CBS LATE MOVIE: Last Resort (1986)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Resort was on the CBS Late Movie on December 29, 1988.

Zane Busby started her career as an editor for Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain and acted in Up In Smoke before directing this movie for Julie Corman. This is one of those movies that has a surprising cast, beyond Charles Grodin in the lead (also in King Kong ’76, So I Married an Axe Murderer, and Axe Murderer). There’s Megan Mullaly (TV’s Will and Grace), Gerrit Graham (Phantom of the Paradise), Jon Lovitz (Almost Sharkproof), Phil Hartman (Cheech and Chongs Next Movie) and Mario Van Peebles (A Clear Shot) all making appearances.

George Lollar (Grodin) takes his family on vacation to Club Sand, where everyone else is having sex while he has his kids in tow. There’s also a revolution happening, a staff that could care less about hospitality, and Charles couldn’t be more like Charles Grodin.

It’s also the only woke movie I’ve seen in these 80s comedies, where the other f-word gets someone in trouble. About time — I knew things were intolerant back then, but it’s nice to see that some people were also willing to tell people to back off.

Man, not to pile on the Grodin downers, but this movie is the kind of film that posits the question, “Can Charles Grodin be the Chevy Chase that people love or the Chevy Chase that people hate?” Remember that Casio keyboard that Chevy would randomly play on his abortive talk show? I’m shocked Grodin wasn’t lugging it around. There’s your answer.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The To Do List (2013)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) is the valedictorian of her class but everyone knows she’s a virgin. Someone yells it out during her commencement speech. Her friends Wendy (Sarah Steele) and Fiona (Alia Shawkat) take her to a party where she meets and falls for college boy Rusty Waters (Scott Porter), even though her friend Cameron Mitchell (Johnny Simmons) has been in love with her for years. She almost sleeps with Rusty by accident and he leaves, which she attributes to the fact that she’s a virgin. As she usually makes lists, she makes one of all the sexual things that she wants to do to prepare to give her virginity to Rusty.

Brandy is nothing like her sister Amber (Richard Bilson) or mother Jean (Connie Britton). Instead, she’s continually correcting people on grammar. What follows is — point to the sign — a hijinks ensue movie, one where Brandy awkwardly learns how to have sex, making out with Cameron, Duffy (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and Derrick (Donald Glover), all before she has awkward sex with Rusty which, you guessed it, isn’t that great. And her parents are in the car next door at the very same makeout point.

Director and writer Maggie Carey was married to Bill Hader, who plays the lifeguard manager in this. She’s also directed episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, A.P. Bio, Barry, The Last Man on Earth and plenty more. She based a lot of the areas in this movie on her real hometown of Boise, Idaho, including the pool and Big Bun.

I love that Andy Samberg shows up in this as a rock star, plus Adam Pally, Laura Lapkus and Jack McBrayer have fun cameos.

As for the puking, well, it’s bright green alcohol tossed up the next day. My wife and her best friend did that once with one of those alcohols that has glitter in it, Hypnotiq. The toilet bowl was shining.

Anyways, this is way sweeter than you’d expect for a movie that ends with a father walking in on anal sex, the one position that makes his daughter finally orgasm.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Lola (1970)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Lola was on the CBS Late Movie on December 13, 1972 and August 9, 1973.

Also released as Twinky and London Affair, Lola has the kind of story that only a movie made in 1970 could have.

Scott Wardman (Charles Bronson) falls in love — or something — with Sybil Londonderry (Susan George), who also goes by Twinky and Lola. The problem is that he’s 38 and she’s 16. He seemingly knows the age of consent and any guy that can instantly tell you that is a creep.

Then Scott gets busted for being married to a child and forced to leave England. He says, “I make one uncool move with a nutty 16-year-old kid, and suddenly my whole world is turned upside down.” Now this pornographic author has to go back to the United States.

If you think this couldn’t happen, well…

Norman Thaddeus Vane wrote this, and it’s based on his own marriage to 16-year-old model Sarah Caldwell, whom he married when he was also 38. In an interview with the astounding Hidden Films, the writer — and later director — would claim, “There was a reason I wound up marrying Sarah Caldwell (who was 16 at the time and later cast in Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter which Vane scripted; Vane later based the script for Lola on this scandalous marriage). I was a good-looking kid on King’s Road in Chelsea. I had a sports car, I had money, and I had a beautiful flat.”

Vane also pretty much explains the plot of this film in that interview: “I met her at a party. She was stunningly beautiful. I had a small flat on King’s Road in Chelsea, and she used to come over secretly on the way back from school, and we used to fuck. And she told her parents that she was seeing me — I was probably about 38 or something—and they were angry. Her father was head of the East India Trading Company. The only way we could see each other was if we got married, and in Scotland, you could get married at 16. So we eloped there. I had been sleeping with a Scottish girl from Glasgow. You had to spend three days in residence in Scotland before you got married, so I asked her if we could use her family’s address, and she said yes. Sarah called her parents and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but I got married today!” The newspapers wrote columns about her; it was like a front-page story for months afterwards. They called me “The Cad of the Year.”

This entire interview is wild and I urge you to read it, as he claims that director Richard Donner immediately slept with Susan George, that the movie was financed by an Italian baron and Bronson superfan who later committed suicide over Britt Ekland, that Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland wanted to play the teenage girl and that Bronson couldn’t be controlled by Donner and he ruined the movie.

Lola is fascinating because why would Scott and Lola ever get together — well, sex — or stay together? There’s nothing that suggests that they have a single thing in common other than her schoolgirl crush on him, and well, yeah, she’s Susan George in 1970, I get that. Yet Bronson comes off as, well, Charles Bronson, a man who speaks little and is quick to violence. Maybe that’s how I see him, as I’ve watched so many of his action movies, but when you visit the posters and VHS covers for this, you’ll know that I wasn’t the only one who saw Bronson just as a force of violent nature.

Lola ends up getting an apartment for the couple while Scott is in jail over a misunderstanding, then she doesn’t realize that he has a job as a writer and needs to be left alone while he’s working. As a jerk of a writer myself, I get it. She also acts like a kid because she is one. Finally, after running away and coming back, she goes back to England for good.

This is not the last movie that Vane would make that references his life. The Black Room is about how he cheated on his wife in his own black room with Penthouse centerfolds that he met while working at that publication. It remains to be discovered if any of those women were vampires. Vane also made the absolutely baffling Club Life, a movie that I want everyone to watch.

I wonder if Susan George met with her agent and said, “Can I do something not so scuzzy for my next movie, like sleep with a guy twice my age?” And the agent said, “Susa,n baby, have I got a movie for you. It’s classy. It’s called Straw Dogs.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

The Meaning of Life was the last feature film to star all six Python members before the death of Graham Chapman in 1989 and it’s pretty perfect because it has no interest in a story to connect anything. It’s just life, from the miracle of birth to a Catholic man reminding you that “Every Sperm Is Sacred” in a song that I quote from often, including most of this speech that follows it:

Harry Blackitt: That’s what being a Protestant’s all about. That’s why it’s the church for me. That’s why it’s the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual’s right to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in fifteen-seventeen, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn’t stop at the simple condom. Oh, no. I can wear French Ticklers if I want.

Mrs. Blackitt: You what?

Harry Blackitt: French Ticklers. Black Mambos. Crocodile Ribs. Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.

Mrs. Blackitt: Have you got one?

Harry Blackitt: Have I got one? Uh, well, no, but I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry’s and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, “Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I’ll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant.”

Mrs. Blackitt: Well, why don’t you?

Harry Blackitt: But they – Well, they cannot, ’cause their church never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages and the domination of alien Episcopal supremacy.

School, war, finding an elusive fish, live organ surgery, man’s place in the galaxy — “The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure How amazingly unlikely is your birth And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space ‘Cause there’s buggerall down here on Earth!” — Christmas in Heaven, The Crimson Permanent Assurance, choosing how you wish to die and, of course, Mr. Creosote.

This sketch was filmed at Porchester Hall in Queensway, where hundreds of pounds of fake vomit had to be cleaned due to a wedding being scheduled hours later. There’s so much puke and it’s beyond gross — ribs sticking out of an exploded man — starting with this order:

Maitre d’: Would monsieur care for an apéritif, or would he prefer to order straight away? Today we have, uh, for appetizers: Excuse me. Mhmm. Uh, moules marinières, pâté de foie gras, beluga caviar, eggs Benedictine, tart de poireaux– that’s leek tart,– frogs’ legs amandine, or oeufs de caille Richard Shepherd– c’est à dire, little quails’ eggs on a bed of puréed mushroom. It’s very delicate. Very subtle.

Mr. Creosote: I’ll have the lot.

After all of this death and destruction and, well, puke, Maria arrives to clean up the dead body and again, all the puke. She reveals to us the meaning of life: “I used to work in the Académie Française, but it didn’t do me any good at all. And I once worked in the library in the Prado in Madrid but it didn’t teach me nothing I recall. And the Library of Congress, you would have thought, would hold some key, but it didn’t, and neither did the Bodleian Library. At the British Museum, I hoped to find a clue. I worked there from nine till six, read every volume through, but it didn’t teach me nothing about life’s mystery. I just kept getting older, and it got more difficult to see. Till eventually my eyes went, and my arthritis got bad. So now I’m cleaning up in here, but I can’t really be sad. You see, I feel that life’s a game. You sometimes win or lose, and though I may be down right now, at least I don’t work for Jews.”

I grew up obsessed with Monty Python in a non-Internet time when you never knew when you would get the chance to watch it again. I love that this won the Grand Prix at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, which suggests that even though this movie is ridiculous, it still has something to say through all the death and vomit.

It all ends with this: “The Producers would like to thank all the fish who have taken part in this film. We hope that other fish will follow the example of those who have participated, so that, in future, fish all over the world will live together in harmony and understanding, and put aside their petty differences, cease pursuing and eating each other and live for a brighter, better future for all fish, and those who love them.”

JUNESPLOITATION: The Torturer (2005)

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June 30: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Italian horror!

“A dark and gloomy theatre set for strange castings. An awful and neglected villa. A stage writer who pushes young actresses to put themselves at risk in morbid auditions thick with physical pain and pleasure. Around the writer stir his ancient and sick mother, his agent/stepfather, the aspiring actors and a young actress with whom he falls in love. Who is the torturer who tears to pieces the bodies of the implausible actresses?”

Shot on digital video and directed by Lamberto Bava, this film was written by Bava, Diego Cestino, and Andrea Valentini. It was based on a story by Dardano Sacchetti, Luciano Martino, and Michele Massimo Tarantini.

It’s as if Lamberto saw all the torture porn being made and said, “This is pretty much giallo with more violence. Maybe more nudity. Maybe we make this more sleazy! Hey — I know how to do these films. My dad made The Whip and the Body!”

Ginette Cazonni (Elena Bouryka) auditions for the new movie by director Alex Scerba (Simone Corrente) and ends up in bed with him. When she wakes up in the morning, she finds an earring that resembles the one her missing friend, Marzia, used to wear. It turns out that she also had an audition with the director before she disappeared. And oh yes, Alex’s mother and stepfather are both weird in their own ways. And if you’re looking for that other missing earring, well, Alex’s mother is wearing it.

Look, no matter how handsome a director is, if he’s off camera using a voice box to tell you to get naked and do things for him, perhaps you’re in a movie like this. And man, this movie! Lamberto must have gone down to Argento’s basement under Profundo Rosso and communicated with Fulci, because this sees New York Ripper and raises it a lunatic with a blowtorch and a barbed wire whip, all shown in full detail. I can only imagine Lamberto laughing at the young kids like Eli Roth and saying, “This isn’t so difficult.”

Ladies — in the world of Giallo and in the real plane of existence that we live on — if your boyfriend goes insane when he sees toy cars but then immediately wants to have sex with you, please get out.

This is way late in the Giallo film cycle, but it gets the memo right. You want gorgeous women, you want a nonsensical plot, you want family issues and this has it all. You may not want to watch naked girls get torn up with whips, but it was 2005, after all. At least Lamberto was still out there making movies, the last of a dying breed.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Fritz the Cat (1972)

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June 23-29 Cat Week: Cats! They’re earth’s funniest creatures (sorry chimps, you’re psychos).

Directed and written by Ralph Bakshi, and based on Robert Crumb’s comic, this was an attempt by Bakshi to expand cartoons beyond just being for kids, while creating an independent alternative to Disney for animated movies. Crumb and Bakshi met, during which time the animator showed Crumb drawings that had been created as a result of his learning the cartoonist’s style. Crumb gave him a sketchboard for reference. A good start, but by the end, Crumb felt this movie was making fun of hippies and Bakshi would call the comic artist “one of the slickest hustlers you’ll ever see in your life.”

Crumb said of the movie that it was “really a reflection of Ralph Bakshi’s confusion, you know. There’s something real repressed about it. In a way, it’s more twisted than my stuff. It’s really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way.  … I didn’t like that sex attitude in it very much. It’s like real repressed horniness; he’s kind of letting it out compulsively.”

Animated by several Terrytunes artists and the first cartoon to be rated X, this finds Fritz (Skip Hinnant) on several adventures, from making love to three female cats in a bathtub to a raid by cops, starting a riot, surviving the carpet bombing of Harlem and then getting blown up real good, somehow surviving that to make love to even more ladies on what should be his death bed.

Ralph’s voice is Phil Seuling, who started some of New York City’s first comic conventions and ran an early comic book distributor, Sea Gate.

Crumb killed off Fritz in a comic called Fritz the Cat Superstar to prevent further films from being made, but The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat was still produced, even without Bakshi and Crumb being involved.

JUNESPLOITATION: Double Edge (1985)

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June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is ‘80s Action!

Years ago, Jack Maraccio (Anthony East) killed the parents of Mark Quinn (Rom Kristoff). Mark didn’t grow up to be Batman. No, he’s a cop and working with his partner Ty Jackson (Jim Moss), he’s keeping the Philippines safe.

Imagine if you took Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rocky and Cobra, threw them in a cup with raw eggs and drank it before running up some steps and blowing things up. That’s this movie, which has a cover that looks just like Marion Cobretti, which was totally an accident and no one meant for it to look that way. Nor did they intend for Jim Gaines’ pimp character named Sly to make you think of anyone else by that name. As for our hero, Kristoff never takes his glasses off, was raised by a ninja and is now a ninja himself, something Stallone never did.

This was directed and written by Teddy Page, who also made Fireback, Jungle Rats, Blazing Guns and so many more movies like this before using the name Teddy Chuck as a first assistant director for movies like The Love Nights of Anthony and Cleopatra (Hakkan Serbes is in that and if you got excited, you’re a pervert), Samson in the Amazon’s Land, Raiders, Sodoma & Gomorra and Showgirl. Yes, Joe D’Amato adult films. I would call that making it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2025: Even More Dangerous Visions

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My last round of shorts.

Chickenboy (2024): When a lonely farmer accidentally makes a chicken-human hybrid by jerking off in the chicken coop, he must decide what their fate will be. Directed by and starring Matthew Rush — as both the farmer and the chickenboy — this is something else, a world where humans and chicken can create something together that is ready for sideshows. Are those still a thing? I want them to be a thing.

Human Resource (2025): A financial horror comedy, this is all about Shae, a millennial HR manager who has brought her total self to work, giving everything to her beloved company. In return, she has been given purpose, friends, bountiful perks and an on-staff barista. But when the market crashes and her company is taken over, will she still matter? As a private equity firm begins to restructure, Shae soon learns that by saving the company, she may be damning their souls. This short, directed by Henry Chaisson and written by Max Coyne-Green, rings so true to me after a week spent at a company retreat. I went through a similar ripping of a company to pieces and I still have PTSD. Thanks for making me have flashbacks.

Tether (2025): On the first day of her job manning an isolated space station all by herself, Mickie (Geffri Maya) receives an emergency transmission and has to decide whether or not she should put her career on the line by answering it. This has the voice of Ming-Na Wen as another captain and offers several lessons for viewers and the lead. This was directed and written by Meredith Berg. It could be a full movie with the universe that has been created here.

Wake (2024): Directed and written by Sean Carter, this is one dark and tight short. As a hurricane grows in power outside the hospital, two nurses have one last job before evacuating. They must put a DOA corpse on ice in the downstairs morgue as the hospital floods. However, that will be anything but easy, as one of them is the caretaker for their grandmother, who claims that the dead woman is the same person who stole her purse. Man, this was awesome!

Slow (2025): A field recorder meets a sinister being that can change her perception of time. How can you run when your ability to feel reality has gone away? Directed and written by Rebecca Berrih, this is the kind of thing I often worry about walking into.

Arson (2025): Once a popular boy band — maybe — Actual Size — Drake (Jai Benoit), Nick (Thomas Johnston), Leo (Jeff Pearson), and Kenny (Jerik Thibodeaux) — can’t seem to reach the level of stardom they think they had. Or maybe feel that they deserve. Stuck gigging at pizza joints and dive bars, they sell their souls to Ms. Black (Olivia Peck) for success but forget to read the contract. Directed by Erin Broussard, who wrote it with Donny Broussard, this balances some awesome music numbers with plenty of humor and practical effects. Awesome!

OK/NOTOK (2024): Loretta (Bairavi Manoharan), a working-class British Asian woman, has a new man in her life. Unfortunately, he soon breaks down and she learns that even customer service in the future will be AI. Maybe it’s easier to just have a robot that doesn’t work sitting on the couch in silence than a partner that doesn’t understand you. Directed and written by Pardeep Sahota, this film creates a future universe that feels so close to now that it’s naturally where we’re going. Do androids dream of electronic sheep or do they get sent back in for repairs? This film attempts to answer that question. I’m not sure what I would do.

Daughters of Evil (2024): In 1966, a girl group — Mary Sue (Ariel Ditta), Mary Jane (Natasha Pascetta) and Mary Beth (Jenessa Michelle Soto) — consults a spirit board to come up with the best band name ever: The Daughters of Evil. Then they got possessed by His Unholy Darkness Beleth, who can play a mean tambourine, and who became their manager. Directed by Pascetta, who also wrote it, and Adam James Taylor, this is shot as if it’s a YouTube video and has some fun moments, even if I’ve been spoiled by Late Night With the Devil and Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, two movies that walk the same left hand path and do it with more style. Still, this is a fun watch.

Howl If You Love Me (2023): This new short from John R. Dilworth, the beloved creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, is a romantic horror comedy about a man named Jim and his werewolf girlfriend Jules. Werewolf hunters show up and almost ruin everything buty our couple figures it out. This world is so sweet and nice that the Twin Towers never got hit by a plane. And there are werewolves! How can I go to this place? Are they taking applications? Do I need a Real ID? Are all werewolves this nice? Man, I have so many questions. One more: when do we get more of this? This seems like such a fun idea for a series and we always need more cartoons.

The Flacalta Effect (2024): Keesha (Rochée Jeffrey) and Toya (Tristina Lee) are black sisters whose house is being infiltrated by the undead who have been created by an anti-aging diet drug called Flacalta. Now, the beautiful undead are ruining their lives. Yet Keesha doesn’t really want to live, because as she sees it, being a black woman in America was never that great. Toya is an optimist who wants a better world and to have an orgasm. Directed and written by  Jeffrey, this definitely needs to be a full-length film. And they both need to survive!

Sempre Avanti (2023): Two U.S. soldiers — known as tunnel rats — plunge into a suspected enemy combatant tunnel system during the Vietnam War only to awaken unparalleled horrors. Like Shelter Half, this was directed by the Barber Brothers, written by Nathaniel Barber and shot by Matthew Barber. Both brothers appear in the story, unlike the above mentioned short.

This is appropriately claustrophobic and has a monster in it that looks like it was a lot like the one in Shelter Half, which if that’s true, props to these guys for extending their budget. It’s less a story than a framework to get said monster up against some soldiers, but it looks great and would probably make a great extended film.

The Traveler and the Troll (2025): Directed and written by Adam Murray, this has a traveler who has stopped to rest in a haunted forest. They soon learn they are not alone and have stumbled upon the lair of a terrifying troll who demands gifts for passage.

With no coin or treasure to give, the traveler must answer three of the troll’s riddles to survive the night and leave the forest with their soul intact.

Riddle 1: I have no fangs, yet I bite: The wind.

Riddle 2: I rise from the sea, I rest in the hills only to rise again from the sea: The sun.

The troll doesn’t have a third riddle because no one gets these right. The traveler makes the troll sad because, well, he is so used to these questions and doesn’t come off as frightening when he has memory lapses.

The filmmakers said that they were inspired by Legend, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. You can see that in this as well as a great mix of animation, puppetry and live action. Troll law doesn’t work out as well as the steel of a sword in the end, though. I totally loved this!

Her House (2024): Gina (Taylor Joree Scorse) and her estranged mother Helen (Gloria Gruber) have to go back to the home of Gina’s grandmother (and Helen’s mother) Jane (Lexa Gluck) to put things in order after the funeral. What’s my first rule of horror? Don’t go back home and definitely don’t go back home if you hate your family. Directed by Will Lee, who wrote it with Ian Hedman, this has the grandmother wanting to take Gina and Helen revealing where this cycle of mother and daughter trauma has begun. This short does so much in ten minutes. Definitely hunt it down and watch it.

Forever Yours (2024): Following a devastating accident that leaves the love of her life, Sebastian (James Tuft), paralyzed, Valeria (Andrea Ariel) becomes his caretaker. But is she devoted or obsessed? Directed by Elliott Louis McKee, who wrote the story with Andrea Ariel, this really is something else, a movie told by Valeria, who tells the entire story of how they met and we learn just what she tells us. I have to say, at least the human got it and Benny the dog was safe. I can forgive human being violence, but Benny is a good boy.

All Kinds of Animals (2024): Hannah (Carmen Sage) is an experienced hiker who is working her way up to the summit when something unexpected happens. Directed and written by Becky Sayers, this brings up the question of whether most women would rather face a man or a bear in the woods. Or maybe the guys should worry about our heroine and her bear mace. What a great and unexpected close to this! I feel like I see things like this happen on true crime shows all the time — often to women — so I am not sad at all when I watch it happen to men in movies. Ladies, get your revenge, at least in cinema. Seems like mom was all in on this plan too!

Are You Fucking Kidding Me?! (2025): When a broke birthday party clown named Bobo (Zachary Solomon) finds out in the middle of the gig from hell that his mother is on her deathbed, he has to figure out how to get home. “Stupid, we’re going to use magic!” is a great line in this. Also: Laura (Rivkah Reyes), the other clown who randomly called him a homophobic name with a hard g — wow. Everyone is against Bobo and why is he even at this party dressed like Porky Wiggles the pig and why are kids punching him Directed by Zen Pace and written by Zachary Solomon, this is the kind of short that I love. Strange, otherworldly and weirder as it goes on. I had to do a birthday party once where I was hired as a pro wrestler — which I was — and there was no ring. I just had to come out in full costume and talk about wrestling. Another time, I had to do one and actually have a match in a public park and get thrown into a tree. None of those things are as upsetting as the things that happen in this.

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

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2025: Fun Sized Epics vol. 2

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Almost through all the shorts!

DID YOU REMEMBER THE CAT? (2024): Directed by Daniel Foster, who wrote the script with Autumn Olson, this has Tara (Angelique Maurnae) and Mitch (Jonny H Lee) escaping a house party turned horror movie. But then they realize that they forgot the cat and not even a monster can keep a cat lover from going back, right? Unless Mitch wants to be single. A fun start to this block!

radiation (2025): Directed and written by Peter Collins Campbell, who said, “there’s something out there. radiation is a special little experiment I made with the help of a lot of amazing people all across the country, and my cat.” What a gorgeous film! If you have trouble with strobing, consider closing your eyes for this one. Some magnificent scenery and use of music.

Bananahead (2024): After her mother’s disappearance, Andi Sanger (Sally Maersk) tries to get the lead in the movie of her missing mother’s novel, Bananahead. However, her mother’s legacy — both in life and in the house her grandmother left behind — is filled with dread. If you find a key to a room in a family house and you’ve never been in it, you know that you don’t have to go inside it. Directed and written by Christopher Greenslate, this asks why a grandmother and mother would disappear and what damage that would do to everyone left behind. The closer Andi gets to understanding who her mother was, the further she drifts from reality. Also: major points to Andi’s Fugazi shirt.

Disfigura (2025): All I needed was Doug Jones as the host of this Twilight Zone-inspired movie, and I could already say that I loved it. Promising “a world of 1950s suspense,” this is all about Anya (Alexa Cappiello), who is forward-thinking for the time but worries about how her husband George (Alexa Cappiello) is acting. Directed by Toni Blando, who also wrote the script, and Jake Bradbury, this film features Anya being told she’s becoming too muscular and rugged. Just let the Light Trim tablets make you thin or she has to go to Disfigura. I don’t want to give much away, but this was just perfect.

Hi! I Just Moved Here (2024): New divorcee Kat has moved into a new home in the hills. Two things quickly happen: she bonds with her neighbor Hannah and finds a VHS tape outside her house. Kat has nightmares after watching the tape, which opens her mind to the horrible secrets of her house. Directed and written by Alessandro Pulisci, this grows dark and proves to me that if you find a tape in the street, you shouldn’t watch it. I have learned a great deal from this year’s CFF shorts. Great acting in this, the colors are gorgeous and it’s directed so well. It also has a shout out to Jack N. Green, who directed Speed 2: Cruise Control.

Your Husband Was a Good Man (2025): Orla (Jamie Alvey)’s husband William (Deaton Gabbard) died in a school shooting a year ago and she’s still taken by grief. She can barely raise their daughter together. But does she miss her husband enough to resort to magic to raise him from the other side? Directed and written by Jamie Alvey, this is primarily about the lack of consent that comes with reviving someone who didn’t consent to it. Haven’t we learned enough from movies that death can’t be screwed with? Guess not.

DESTROYER (2024): Directed by Judd Myers, who co-wrote the script with Kyle Montgomery, this film follows a man who is certain that his wife has a secret, as he attempts to uncover the truth, which soon leads him into a terrifying occult realm and perhaps something inhuman. I really loved how this was built, as well as the quality of the shooting and colors throughout. There’s a message in this, but it doesn’t hit you over the head. Instead, it slowly takes over and changes what you expect.

Any Last Words (2024): A crook trying to flee town, but he’s now staring down the barrel of a gun and in a room with multiple people who want him dead. Directed and written by Isaac Rathé, this taught me something very important: when confronted by people with weapons on me, make fun of their dick sizes.

The Girlies (2024): Antics! Estrogen! Escapades! That’s what is promised, as well as hijinks ensue! Oh wow! The Girlies are forced to face the unexpected in this short directed and written by Natalie Couture. This was so much fun and I could see it going on to be more than just this movie.

Get a Real Job (2025): The successes and failures of amateur non-profit fundraisers Sam and Yogi make up this film. Sam and Yogi would be Samantha Lochs and Yogi Paliwal, who directed and wrote the script with Ramona Donahue. You know, I had to go to New York City once and ask people to share their opinions on health care while we filmed it. You have no idea how much people swore at me during this experience. Maybe you do. This movie feels real.

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