The Mask of Satan was also released as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil in the U.S. and Japan. If you want me to explain all that, you can click here.

This is part of the Sabbath TV series which also includes Pedro Olea’s La leyenda del cura de Bargota, Imanol Uribe’s La Luna Negra, António de Macedo’s The Curse of Marialva, Daniel Wronecki’s María la Loba and Gertrud Pinkus’ Anna Goldin, la última bruja.

A group of skiers on the Swiss Alps fall into a chasm opened during an avalanche, which kills one of them named Bebo, played by Michele Soavi, who can’t seem to get away from movies in the Demons series. Soon, they find a metal mask — this happens so often in Demons movies — and discover a body buried between the ice. Digging around causes them to get buried deeper in the snow, so deep that they find an underground city where a witch was executed. And that witch? Well, she decides this group of skiers would make the perfect instruments for her revenge.

Lamberto decided that if he was going to make another movie in the Demons saga, why not remake his father’s Black Sunday while he was at it. That movie was filmed because the elder Bava was a big fan of Nikolay Gogol’s short story Viy, who often read it to his children. When he was allowed to choose the storyline for a movie he wanted to direct, he decided Gogol’s story, which also inspired the 1967 Russian film.

Davide (Giovanni Guidelli) is the de facto leader of this group and his girlfriend Sabina (Debora Caprioglio, using the last name of her fiancé Klaus Kinski here; she’s in the Kinski-directed Paganini and the Tinto Brass movie Iaprika) breaks her leg and it’s instantly healed. Is it any wonder that she’s soon possessed by the dead witch Anibas, who has the same name as her only reversed? What kind of coincidence is that?

There’s also a blind priest that everyone adores making fun of, which makes you wish for the entire cast to be killed. You just may get what you wish for. Speaking of the cast, Mary Sellers from Stagefright is in this, as is Eva Grimaldi from Ratman, as the demonic form of Anibas. What a demonic form it is. After she begins seducing our hero, her young breasts instantly transform into withered old teats and her feet and hands are replaced with chicken claws. At the same time, she spits white fluid all over. She also has the facial scars Barbara Steele wore in Mario’s version. Plus, Stanko Molnar is in the cast as a weird priest. He showed up often in Bava’s early movies like Macabre and A Blade In the Dark. He’s also in the Antonio Margheriti TV mini-series Treasure Island In Space, which has an insane cast: Anthony Quinn, Philippe Leroy, David Warbeck, Ernest Borgnine, Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Bobby Rhodes.

This is a hard movie to review, as you must compare it to one of the greatest movies ever. Even Lamberto, I think, would admit that his father remains the best director. But his son tries, he really does. And this film is pretty entertaining. But Black Sunday is the kind of film that will live forever. Lamberto was able to create some fun visuals and effects here, plenty of gore and some great music from Simon Boswell and gooey effects from Sergio Stivaletti, who directed The Wax Mask and did the effects for Demons, Hands of Steel, Demons 2, The Church, The Sect and Cemetery Man.

It has the same title as Black Sunday in Italy: La Maschera del Demonio. There’s also plenty of nudity and a scene where the witch’s tongue comes so far out of her mouth that she starts choking Davide and he’s like, well, alright, I guess I’ll have sex with her now.

It’s entertaining, as all Italian late in the game horror is to me. And that’s enough to recommend it to you.

Severin has released the North American Blu-ray premiere of this film, which has interviews with Bava, Mary Sellers and Deborah Caprioglio. It looks great and I love that I can get rid of my bootleg, which looked like it was multiple generations of VHS dubbed to DVD. Please, Severin — more Lamberto late 80s releases please.

You can get this from Severin.

Aloysius “Quackser” Fortune (Gene Wilder) takes road apples and sells them to people with gardens. His family keeps telling him that horses will be banned for cars soon, but he loves his work. And he’s in love with an American, Zazel Pierce (Margot Kidder) who is studying abroad. I mean, this movie has to be science fiction. 1970 Margot Kidder is in love with a guy who scoops manure.

Director Waris Hussein would eventually make TV movies like The Henderson Monster and Copacabana. This film strains my credibility meter as there’s no reason for these characters to be in love, and at the end, where Fortune inherits a fortune from that cousin in the Bronx and becomes a tour bus driver—spoiler—it seems too easy.

Nonetheless, 21st Century re-released this as Fun Loving after Wilder’s successful films with Richard Pryor as a new movie, not one with years of dust on it.

I love seeing Gene Wilder and Margot Kidder in movies, even if what emerges isn’t necessarily their best work. I’m also excited that this is out on Blu-ray, as it will allow me to go back and watch it again in the hopes that it will find me in a better frame of mind.

This Blu-ray has a commentary track by Robert Kelly, artist, reviewer and film buff extraordinaire. It also has a photo gallery and trailer. You can get it from MVD.

Every time Beth (Lyndsey Craine) dies — at her own hand — she wakes up in another horror movie. This time, it’s a cannibal romantic comedy. And that idea, that Beth wants to die but might learn something from each new film, is a great one. It doesn’t come back into this film at all, which is the first of the misfires that this movie commits.

My enthusiasm for this diminished somewhat when a Troma logo came across the screen. As for the story, well, Beth is the only student at Henenlotter High School — get it? — sees how horrible everything is and tries to do something about. The film seems to nudge you, wink wink you throughout; the same school is also the setting of director Liam Regan’s My Bloody Banjo. Those students not in the know can win the “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest and get a handgun of their own with which they can either shoot their fellow students or kill themselves.

Yet there may be hope. Beth has a crush on English teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) which seems to play out as a need to consume human flesh. This is the exact opposite of her vegan ethos yet eating one’s enemies is such sweet revenge.

The rest of the film uses teen movie stereotypes from Heathers, Tragedy Girls and Mean Girls to tell its tale of girl cliques and male sexual predators. Of all the imagery and ideas this movie uses, I liked that one of the female bullies favors Road Warrior Hawk makeup.

The movie — well, the evil teacher Nancy Applegate (Annabella Rich) — refers to Beth as “the millennial product of the American high school trope” and that would be an intriguing meta comment were it not so on the nose. Sure, her mother is dead, she has a horrible stepfather and school sucks, but why does she want to end her existence beyond a “woe is me” attitude? Far be it from me to expect good taste in film, much like exploitation, but I demand a character who has a reason, that a character with it is dying.

If she wants to live in a movie life that isn’t nostalgic horror, why does she play into the same cliches throughout? That motivation is never truly explored. Instead, there are endless references to other movies — if this were a Marvel comic, there’d be an editor note in every panel, cluttering this up with reference upon reference — and can you top this gross-out humor. Trust me, I love humor like that. Lloyd Kaufmann saying “Alex Baldwin” and blowing out his brains is anything but wit.

To be satire, one must have some position from which to state why something is worthy of ridicule, lest it becomes precisely what it is deriding. If you want to make fun of direct-to-video horror, that’s not that hard. If you want to make a satire about hot button issues like date rape and teen suicide, go for it. But you better bring your best material. And if this is it, I am not interested in seeing what comes next.

If you do like Troma, you can get this from MVD. It comes with an audio commentary, a making-of, deleted scenes, outtakes, a gore reel, a raw b-roll, cast interviews, a VFX reel, trailers and an introduction from Lloyd Kaufman.

This movie is so important to me. I feel like I’ve talked about it so much, but now that there’s finally a great version of it available, I can’t retire the $1 DVD I have of it that has BUTCH written across it in sharpie.

The director of A Dolphin’s Tale and A Dolphin’s Tale 2, Skippy from Family Ties and one of the stars of A Chorus Line made the most metal film ever. Let that sink in.

I grew up a fat, bespeckled child in a small town with crushing self esteem issues, a love for gore movies and a sarcastic mind that loved the way people treated me when I started dressing all in black. Every single situation that Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price, the previously mentioned Skippy) endures in this film…I lived it. If a monster Glenn Danzig (Verotika) could take over shop class and kill my tormentors, I would have gladly welcomed such mayhem and menace.

Eddie is a big fan of Sammi Curr, a superstar who went to the same high school Eddie is in, was tormented and bullied the same way Eddie is, became a big star and then died in a mysterious fire. Radio DJ Nuke (Gene “inventor of the devil horns*” Simmons, who played a great transgendered bad guy in Never Too Young to Die while wearing his girlfriend Cher’s clothes) gives Eddie the only vinyl copy of Sammi’s satanic masterwork “Songs in the Key of Death.”

Eddie does precisely what I’d do: he listens to the record and falls asleep. He has a crazy dream about the fire that killed Curr and awakens to the album playing backwards, telling him how to gain revenge on the bullies that torment him.

Eddie chickens out though — he doesn’t want to kill the jocks who have made his life so rough. Sammi takes matters into his own hands, creating an electric surge that allows him to escape the record and return to our reality. Eddie responds by smashing his stereo. Sammi’s response is as fucking perfect as it gets: “No false metal.”

Sammi’s friend Roger gets involved and unwittingly plays a cassette — fucking metal — at the school dance, causing Sammi to leap out of a guitar amp and take the stage. The crowd goes wild before Sammi starts killing audience members, shooting lightning at them and revealing his burned face. Holy shit — I saw this scene at the drive-in this year and the exuberance of hearing Fastaway blasting from car stereos in the fog at 5 AM is an experience I recommend to every single person reading this.

Can Eddie stop Sammi from being played on the radio and attacking everyone that hears it? Of course. It’s an ’80s horror movie. But man — I’m all from more Sammi Curr (sadly, Tony Fields died of AIDS in 1995).

Oh I forgot – Ozzy is a preacher in this that Sammi attacks. It’s a small cameo, just like Gene Simmons’ role, but that doesn’t stop my DVD cover from claiming they starred in this.

If you’re an 80s metal fan (and if not, man, thanks for reading this far), there are so many band logos and posters to spot in this, from the expected like Anthrax and KISS to the out of left field like Raven, Exciter and Savatage. You’ll also be much more likely to not dismiss this film as a piece of shit.

Me? I quote from this film almost every day. “The bait is you. Let the big fish hook themselves. You’re the bait. The bait is you.”

I really hope that people rediscover this movie or discover it in the first place. It’s probably the most perfect of all heavy metal horror movies, which wasn’t hard to do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not incredible.

*Dio has always claimed that he got the gesture from his Italian grandmother, who claimed it warded off the evil eye.

This movie’s Synapse 4K UHD has a 1080p Blu-ray of a 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative approved by Director of Photography Robert Elswit, along with audio commentary with director Charles Martin Smith, moderated by filmmaker Mark Savage. There are also interviews with writer/producer Michael S. Murphey and writer Rhet Topham, moderated by film historian Michael Felsher; an audio conversation with Paul Corupe and Allison Lang, authors of Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s; a making-of featurette; a tribute to Tony Fields; Horror’s Hallowed Grounds: The Filming Locations of Trick or Treat with Sean Clark; the Fastaway video for “After Midnight;” trailers, TV commercials and radio ads; a still gallery with an interview with photographer Phillip V. Caruso; a vintage electronic press kit; a limited edition slipcover and reversible cover art. You can get this from MVD.

A few years ago, I interviewed Quinn Armstrong, the director and writer of a movie called Survival Skills.

He said of this movie, “That’s why Surviving Edged Weapons is so fascinating. It’s like a police department gave some kid like fresh out of film school $30,000 and this kid was like, “I’m gonna make a masterpiece.” I swear to God, so it opens with two cavemen in an argument, and one of the cavemen takes a sharp rock and stabs the other and then the narrator comes in and says, “Since the dawn of time, men have been using edged weapons to kill each other.” It’s so weird. It’s so profoundly weird. I can’t get over it.”

No matter how much he prepared me for it, I wasn’t ready.

According to Calibre Press’ website, director Dennis Anderson and author Charles Remsberg published Street Survival: Tactics for Armed Encounters in 1980. They claim that “this book changed the law enforcement landscape by introducing new tactics, personal stories, and real scenarios.  Within a year of its publication, the Street Survival Seminar was born and quickly grew to become the most popular and respected resource for officer tactical training in the country.”

While they no longer sell this video on their site, they do have a course entitled “Advanced Leadership in a Police Reform Era” that uses children’s building blocks to spell the word “defund.” There’s another called “Surviving Hidden Weapons” that uses a lipstick tube with a blade. I obviously need to see that.

But first, let me explain Surviving Edged Weapons. 

I’ve heard that this was made in Canada and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, even though Calibre is based in Glen Ellyn, IL. They also sell a koozie that says, “One drink away from telling everyone exactly what I think.” Keep in mind that everything else on this site is about police response.

Narrated by Ronald Rolland, this has the production quality of Unsolved Mysteries and I mean that as a compliment. And yes, this begins with a Cain and Abel murder that explains that edged weapons have been with us forever. Then, your jaw will drop as this alternates between police officers showing off their scars and discussing how they’ve been stabbed — including an astounding ending where a cop is brought to tears by the memory and cries the thickest, deepest, saddest tears I have ever seen in my entire existence — and being an action movie, to the point that stuntman Dan Inosanto (who shows up in Game of Death, Sharky’s Machine and Out for Justice) is in it.

So yes, Officer James Phillips may say, “In my mind, I’m never gonna die in no ghetto. Absolutely never. A man turns around and punches me in the head, the fight’s on. If he cuts me, the fight’s on. If I’m shot, the fight is on. I’m not losing no fight to no scumbag out there in no ghetto, period. That’s it. No son of a bitch out there is gonna get me. The only way he gets me is cut my head off, and I mean that. I’ll fight you til I got a breath left in me. I don’t think any of those animals in that street can beat me. I’ve been going that way for eighteen years of street service, street duty, and that’s the way I’m gonna keep on going. You don’t lose the fight.” But you also get a Black Mass being interrupted by the police, a domestic disturbance turning into a meatcleaver going directly into someone’s head and a series of wounds closing with a full-on uncut dead cock on camera.

You will learn how criminals place knives in their jeans so they cut up cops hands, discover how the streets are non-stop terror and hear a man say, “Fuck me? Fuck you!” in a way that Bob Odenkirk had to have heard it. The VHS cover of Halloween is shown as part of our country’s knife culture and the narration says it “glorifies the blade.” A man in a Corvette with the license plate KILME stabbing himself. This is at once so much better than it needed to be and more reactionary than you’d expect a cop training video to be, even one made nearly forty years ago.

I’m saying this with no hyperbole. This is one of the most fascinating movies I’ve ever seen and if you come to my house and want to watch movies with me, there’s a really good chance I’m going to suggest we watch it. It’s like the unmade Death Wish 6 but on a smaller scale, shown to real people to prepare them for the thankless job of protecting the lambs from the wolves. It makes me reflect on how liberal real life me is and how jingoistic and needing for carnage movie watching me is, a juxtaposition that sometimes throws me into panic, but there you go. This movie will make you confront things, like how you might not like the fact that we live in a police state, but you certainly don’t want to do that job, and you even step away with some level of respect. Or worry. I can’t figure it out, but I’ll get back to you when I watch this four or five more times.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed and written by Ron Ford, this movie sends Trace (Tyrone Wade), the greatest alien fighter of all time, to Earth, where a million alien souls — the worst ones — have been unleashed. He’s to protect Sandy (Roxanne Coyne) and if the first two letters of her name didn’t give it away, she’s Sarah Connor. He’s, well, I guess a Terminator but one of the good ones, working for the ruler of the galaxy, who is Omnipresent Praxima, who is really Burt Ward, who was once Robin.

Does this movie maybe feel like it’s about Scientology? Sure. But it’s also filled with the kind of things that Wild Cat Line callers on Coast to Coast AM would scream about at 4:09 in the morning.

This also has a bad guy named Gorek (Mark Sawyer), who can jump from body to body, so it’s also The Hidden.

I say none of this in a mean way. This is precisely what I choose to watch when I don’t have to review movies that people ask me to or go upstairs where murder porn plays all day and night. A Temu JCVD is in this and he punches a latex masked gray alien in the face. I have always wanted to punch a gray alien in the face, so this is wish fulfillment on the greatest of scales.

Speaking of Coast to Coast and Art Bell, he once had an Anti-Christ Line and asked people to call in but only if they were the Son of Satan. Tons of people called, but the next time they tried this, the actual Anti-Christ was said to have called and he claimed that he was from Pittsburgh. I’m telling you this because I miss that show and being up in the middle of the night either laughing or frightened. More movies should have that energy and be like this, and more people who write about movies online should recognize that not everything has to be perfect.

Directed by Adam Meyer, this film claims that Scream was based on the real serial killer Danny Rolling, also known as the Gainesville Ripper, who murdered Florida college students Christina P. Powell, Sonya Larson, Christa Leight Hoyt, Tracy Inez Paules and Manuel R. Toboda during a four-day period in 1990. He decapitated one and set the bodies up for people to find much like a slasher villain.

Kevin Williamson, the writer of Wes Craven’s movie,  watched an episode of ABC News’ Turning Point and wrote Woodsboro Murders, which changed its name to the title we know these days.

Rolling may have had multiple personalities, which were the result of abuse from his police officer father. He carried that abuse to his wife and son before getting divorced, being arrested for raping a woman who looked just like his ex-wife and going to jail numerous times for robbery. By the 90s, he’d go on to kill Julie Grissom, her eight-year-old nephew and her 55-year-old father before shooting his own father in the stomach and head. Somehow, his dad lived, but lost an eye.

After killing five women and abusing their bodies in August 1990, he was arrested for robbing a Winn-Dixie. Cops found him in jail, identified by one of his teeth that had been extracted while incarcerated. He pled not guilty and even wrote a book with his future fiancee, journalist Sondra London, titled The Making of a Serial Killer.

By 1994, however, he pled guilty and was executed in 2006, not before singing to the 47 people who came to watch him die. They cut his mic off and then his life.

How much of Williamson and Craven’s film comes from this? It was more an inspiration. But hey — we have a Tubi Original about it, so you can watch that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Traci Hayes (Blood, Sweat and Cheers) and written by Sarah Eisenberg and Becky Wangberg (who have primarily worked in cartoons), On the Run is set up years ago when bikers Vince (William Mark McCullough) and Rick (K.C. Clyde) end their friendship over a drug deal. Vince goes to jail and the moment he gets out, he comes after Rick, who has a new life with his wife Laurie (Kara Luiz) and daughters Kayla (Sofia Masson) and Paige (Taylor Geare). It’s no spoiler to tell you that Paige is Vince’s daughter and wants her back as much as he wants everyone dead.

Rick and the girls are on the run—yes, Mom dies, there’s another spoiler—but there’s also the woman they think is their aunt, Steph (Pamela Rose Rodriguez), who is the witness protection agent who has been protecting them for years.

One daughter is the good girl, the other is kind of bad, their dad used to be a criminal biker, and their mom is dead. There’s everything you want in a young girl on the run movie. It’s not life-changing, but like most Tubi Originals, it’s a competent film other than, you know, cops never acting like cops really act, such as calling for backup, not taking innocent people into dangerous situations and not indiscriminately shooting everyone around them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chris Stokes makes a Tubi movie every month, but this time, they’re stretching their wings and going from romantic thrillers to a spy epic. In it, Kasey (Samantha A. Smith) goes from being a bad girl acting out after her dad dies to being part of a home invasion and being pulled into a conspiracy, getting arrested and going on the run from government agents along with her mother Latisha (Apryl Jones).

Luckily, her mother knows Victoria (Lateria Hope), who turns out to be even more connected to this conspiracy. She has a secret device that can start and steal any car, for example, and she just may be able to get this family out of this alive. I can’t tell you how surprised I was by this one, which yes, has a scene where a man makes a big deal out of making hot chocolate, but also is about government conspiracies, secret agent killing machines and a mother and daughter trying to deal with grief.

Shout out to Stokes for switching up how he films things and getting a ton out of his budget, making this look completely different from anything I’ve seen. This also seems to set up a sequel and as always, I’m here for it. I’m also trying to manifest my dream of a Stokes Cinematic Universe crossover between his series. Come on, Footage Films and Tubi.

You can watch this on Tubi.