Santo Contra Hombres Infernales and Santo Contra Cerebro Del Mal were the first two movies made with El Santo, filmed in Cuba just as Castro took power, and smuggled out in a coffin. Enrique J. Zambrano realized he didn’t have enough coverage for two films, so he mixed footage between the two movies.

Joaquin (Joaquin Cordero) is the real star of this, a cop whose undercover identity is exposed, leading to his lover Irma (Gina Romand) being kidnapped. Santo just comes in to keep saving him. There’s not even a trip to Arena Mexico to wrestle, as Santo movies would later have. In fact, this has nothing to do with the formula you expect from these films. But you do get to see a lot of Cuba.

Santo had taken years off from wrestling to make movies, and this sat on the shelf for three years. Who knew that, despite the first two movies not being as insane as what was to come, Santo would become such a major cultural hero?

I will say that I love these new 4K Santo transfers. It’s wild to see these films in a whole new light, because they look like brand new films.

You can watch this on Blu-ray.

An early effort by the Sebastians, The Single Girls has a TV Guide-style write-up on Wikipedia: “A group of men and women travel to a Caribbean resort to discover themselves sexually, but unfortunately one of them has also discovered that they like to murder people, too.”

Also known as Bloody Friday and Private School, this has a bunch of singles all having an encounter on an island and when they’re not balling or having dark room milling, which is when everyone touches everyone else, and no one knows who is who, there’s a killer on the loose. Yes, a nascent slasher, as they say.

There’s Lola (Joan Prather), a virgin who decides to go to this island to lose her virginity. Allison (Claudia Jennings) hates commitment, and, you know, her boyfriend is a loser, so she shouldn’t be into it. Also, she’s Claudia Jennings. Shannon (Cheri Howell) wants to have everyone on the island. Dr. Stevens (Wayne Dvorek) has made a pretty groovy scene, but like I said, someone has a knife. The sex in this is relatively chaste, but there’s a good idea going on here.

Plus, we got ‘Gator Bait out of this, as it introduced Jennings to the Sebastians.

Solara (Kul Sarai), Tansy (Toria Pardoe) and Cala (Hannah Robson) are space princesses who have their future thrones taken from them when their stepmother, Voluptina (Caroline Vella), sends them through a black hole and into the past, where she hopes they’ll be eaten by dinosaurs.

This is just an hour, and everyone stays in bikinis. Also, because this is British, they’re really pale — I love that — so if you’re expecting tanned American ladies battling giant monsters, well…no… no. I watched this because I thought it would be suitable for one of my kaiju day movies, yet this didn’t even have great monsters.

Like I said, it’s an hour.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When a Stranger Calls is a remake of Fred Walton and Steve Feke’s short film The Sitter, with the first 23 minutes — the best part of the movie — being, well, The Sitter. That short played before Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and then this was the full-length result. 

Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is watching the children of Dr. Mandrakis (Carmen Argenziano). A phone call comes in, and a voice — we later learn it’s Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley) — keeps asking if she’s checked on the children. Spoiler: The kids are dead. 

Seven years later, he’s escaped from prison, and the cop who caught him, John Clifford (Charles Durning), has been hired to catch him before he kills again. He remembers Jill, and he’s also getting close to a woman who actually treats him well, Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst). Sure, the calls coming from inside the house had already been done in Black Christmas, but this does have some moments of fright. 

When Sneak Previews did their Women In Danger episode, this movie was shown, along with Friday the 13th, Halloween, I Spit on Your Grave, Silent Scream and Don’t Answer the Phone. Even with some of those films, Roger Ebert still singled this out as sleazy.

Walton would go on to direct April Fool’s Day, The Rosary Murders, the remake of I Saw What You Did and the TV movie, When a Stranger Calls Back. 

Oh, Windows.

Gordon Willis defined the way we saw movies in the 70s with his work on the Woody Allen films and The Godfather trilogy. But he never directed, other than this movie. Vincent Carnaby said of it, “…everything about Windows is ridiculous; including the performances of Talia Shire and Elizabeth Ashley; it has remarkably little pace of any kind, partly because anything of any interest happens off-screen and what happens off-screen is consistently, nuttily irrelevant; the camera-work, which Mr. Willis did for himself, is technically O.K.”

I mean, he sold it to me with that.

But oh, there are problems. One is, well, the homophobia. David Denby of The New Yorker said, “Windows exists only in the perverted fantasies of men who hate lesbians so much they will concoct any idiocy in order to slander them.”

Emily Hollander (Talia Shire) is all her neighbor Andrea Glassen (Elizabeth Ashley) thinks about. Emily is also attacked by a man who doesn’t have sex with her. He just wants her to beg for mercy into a tape recorder; he does it again, but Andrea saves her. Of course, Andrea has set the whole thing up and thinks that eventually, Emily will come to love her.

This came out a month before Cruising, so 1980 was a banner year for representation, huh?

This looks nice, though.

Devilman started as a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Go Nagai. A high school student named Akira Fudo absorbs the powers of a demon with the help of his friend Ryo Asuka, becoming Devilman. There was a 39-episode anime series, a year-long run of the manga and even a crossover with Go Nagai’s other famous character, Mazinger Z vs. Devilman. While the anime had Devilman turning against demons to protect humanity, the manga has the entire world end, and God’s angels come to destroy what’s left. 

And then there’s this, a movie that Beat Takeshi said was “one of the four dumbest movies ever made after Getting Any?, Siberian Express and Pekin Genjin Who Are You?, saying that “there is nothing better than getting drunk and watching this movie. There is nothing better than getting drunk and watching this movie.” In Japan, people went to great lengths to hate on this film, including comedian Hiroshi Yamamoto, whose website was filled with bad reviews.

Imagine if a major comic book became a movie and it turned out to be the worst film ever, and then add in the fact that Japan has a national identity around its culture being important, and you get some idea of how hated this movie was.

Maybe it’s because music idols, the Izaki twins, were inexperienced at best and insanely horrid at worst in this. Or perhaps it’s impossible to tell the entire story in one movie. Or could it be the special effects that redefine bad? Could it be that every fight looks like a PS1 cutscene and not actual actors? 

Well, it has Bob Sapp as a TV announcer, so there’s that. And a hilarious scene where Akira finds the head of his love, Miki (Ayana Sakai), just left for him in his house. And it ends with the moon cracked, and I wonder, is this how Thundarr got here?

Director Hiroyuki Nasu made several manga adaptations, like the Be-Bop High School movies, as well as Beautiful Wrestlers: Down for the Count and Lesbians In Uniform. I have no idea how he made this, but he died a year later, so we can’t ask him.

Some people like to discuss the worst movies, and they always go back to the same well. Trust me, there are movies that are worse than anything you can imagine. This might be one of them: a movie blankly acted by singers unable to act, special effects unable to be special, and a beloved property treated like every 1980s comic book film other than Tim Burton’s Batman. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

I first encountered this movie halfway through a showing in the middle of the night and had no idea what it was. That’s something that people that stream movies miss out on — the total confusion and need to know that arises when you discover a completely deranged movie in the middle of its running time in the small hours of the night.

William O. Brown only made one other movie, One Way Wahine. That’s a shame because I totally love what he had happening here in The Witchmaker. It’s just plain strange in the very best of ways.

Somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana, young women are being killed and drained of their plasma by Luther the Berserk, who is part of a coven of witches that has drawn Dr. Hayes (Alvy Moore, Hank Kimball from Green Acres) and his group of psychic investigators.

The coven’s leader Jessie — who appears in young and old forms — wants a member of Dr. Hayes’ group named Anastasia (Thordis Brandt, who played an Amazon in In Like Flint), who has supernatural ancestors, to join them.

There’s an interesting and probably unintended theme running through this movie, where the straight-laced older male scientists want to save the buxom blonde Anastasia and the witches and warlock just want to free her (and you know, make her a wanton woman. Can the patriarchy win out?

Six years later, this movie was re-released under the title The Naked Witch with footage that earns it that title. This is not the Larry Buchanan movie of the same name.

Alvy Moore was also the producer of this movie and would team with L.Q. Jones again to make A Boy and His Dog and The Brotherhood of Satan.

The VCI Blu-ray of The Naked Witch has a commentary track by Robert Kelly, artist, reviewer and film buff extraodinaire; a poster gallery of other notable horror films of the 1960’s and restored original trailers and a radio ad. You can get it from MVD.

From the creators of Christmas Lights, Screamityville is an 84-minute tour of some of the creepiest and most creative Halloween decorations. They claim that “It recreates the experience of driving around on a late October evening in search of your favorite decorated homes in your neighborhood.”

With music that gets you in the mood and well-shot footage, this makes the perfect Halloween movie to have running during a party. It’s a fun way to build excitement and create a festive atmosphere. And as we get further from the holiday, I turn to this to rekindle the Halloween spirit and lift my mood. There’s no narration to get in the way. Just gorgeous vistas of terrifying homes, all lit up to scare the neighbors.

If you love driving around and looking at Halloween decorations, this lets you do it anytime. It’s a convenient way to enjoy spooky sights whenever you want, making it perfect for year-round viewing.

You can get this on Blu-ray or DVD from MVD. You can learn more at the official site.

I was searching for kaiju films on Tubi and ended up finding this film, featuring Zeckencommando, ‘Lower Saxony’s most hardcore punk band,’ as they stumble into occult rituals involving Cthulu.

Kalle (director and writer Lars Henriks), Xena (Lea Ostrovskiy), Flash (Niklas Bähnk) and Titus (Phillip Spreen) mostly sit around, take drugs and occasionally play their instruments. Henriks claimed on Letterboxd that this film, “has the silliness of a Scooby-Gang-type gang of misfits stumbling into a huge adventure.”

The band learns that their landlady is selling their rehearsal space to an investor with no interest in preserving musical culture. That investor does have a lot to do with the occult roots of the Third Reich and getting Cthulu back to life. Hopefully, the band can stay together and address all their interpersonal dynamics.

Don’t expect anything other than a hangout movie, and you’ll be fine.

You can watch this on Tubi.