Starting as a YouTube series, Infinite Santa 8000 starts at the end of all things, as humanity has been destroyed. Somehow, some way, Santa Claus (Duane Bruce) and his cyborg wife Martha (Tara Henry) have survived. Instead of getting the rest he deserves, mutants and robots keep attacking, as they hate what Christmas means.

When Dr. Shackleton steals Martha, Santa must get in his sleigh, power up his robotic reindeer and make his way through whatever is left on our planet, battling monsters and even the Easter Bunny.

Created by Greg Ansin and Michael Neen, this Director’s Cut has new scenes, re-animated and retouched shots, and has been recut to match the original script. It’s not for kids — unless your children want to see a robot-eyed Santa blow away mecha bats and kill for food — but for the older amongst you, this will make a fine holiday special. It has a death count of 854 and a rough and dynamic animation style that constantly has a fight happening almost every single moment.

The Synapse blu ray features commentary with creators Ansin and Neel, the complete original 13-part web series, multiple interviews with cast and crew, original promotional trailers and two music videos.

You can learn more on the official website and buy the movie from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For a more glowing review of this movie, check out Jenn Upton’s review.

This happens every time.

I get excited for a movie, I buy into the hype, I wait for it and it starts so strong.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has just turned fifty, a former movie star and award winner not unlike Jane Fonda all those years ago, now aged past her Hollywood prime. She’s so upset by the way that her producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) treats her that she drives right into a car crash, which she walks away unscarred, but meets a nurse who informs her that there’s a way to get what she wants.

For the first quarter of this movie, I was shocked by how each scene seemed to be finely combed and obsessed over by director and writer Coralie Fargeat and cinematographer Benjamin Kračun. Rooms feel too large, angles feel too sharp, colors feel too bright. This excited me, wanting to see what was next, as Sparkle heads out in a yellow overcoat into the filthy end of the world in the 1980s of Los Angeles, finding sans serif type highly designed packages of The Substance.

She learns the rules and we already know they will be broken: She will get the youth that she wants, as a new body will appear out of her back. The two bodies are still one person and must switch consciousness every seven days. The active body must feed the inactive body with a weekly food supply and take daily injections of stabilizer fluid from the original body to keep from rotting. But we know that the young version of Elisabeth, Sue (Margaret Qualley, daughter of fashion model and actress Andie MacDowell, a ballet dancer in her youth that probably already has learned the lessons of this), will become addicted to the fame because how else do you experience being the center of the world?

As the film loses its color and edge, so do the characters move apart, forgetting that no matter what, they are one. Sue delays the switch to make love to a gorgeous boy on a motorcycle, causing Elisabeth’s finger to age. Elisabeth can barely move from the pain in her back — have you ever given birth by having your spinal column slide open? — and spends most of her days staring at the TV and the other times eating everything she can, leaving it lying everywhere, and then hiding out as she makes her way to get new supplies.

This new young life that she wanted isn’t even hers any more.

Instead of killing off her younger form — who has kept her in a coma for 90 days, transforming her into an elderly hunchback that appears more John Merrick than Debbie Sullivan — Elisabeth brings her back from the other side, only to be repeatedly slammed face first into a mirror and then murdered.

This leaves Sue the dream that she wants, being a star on New Year’s Eve, a very 1980s dream that no longer seems to matter.

To keep from rotting away, she loads up on the drug and then goes all Brundlefly in the mirror — don’t worry, the movie still has time to complete ape The Elephant Man and Eraserhead on the way to a close that you can spot from the opening frame — before emerging as Monstro Elisasue, a freakish creature that somehow is able to fool every single person around her by taking a poster and taping it to her face.

I knew this was an allegory at the start, then maybe magical realism. I didn’t let reality in the way when I debated who could survive a back wound like that with home surgery and no antibiotics, but by the end of the movie, it feels like the budget went out the window, as effects go almost chromakey in quality, other than a bloodletting than feels all Sam Raimi and a multiple bodies in one form that wants to shock you but forgets that you already saw Society.

Do I expect too much of the cinema of today? Do I overthink the male gaze in this movie, one created by a woman, that is supposed to make you feel bad for staring at bodies when, you know, it just keeps showing you bodies? I can’t even imagine how different this would be if Ray Liotta had lived and was in this instead of Quaid, who seems like he’s on the best of coke and ready to eat four pounds of shrimp in one scene (yes, I did look that up).

This is a movie that references other films until it becomes a Xerox that others will refer to, the stream backflowing into itself. Effects were called blob and Gollum and Requiem, all other movies and Coralie wanted the sensibility of The Elephant Man, according to the FX guys. Then, this gets so needledrop sledgehammer that it uses “Also sprach Zarathustra” and “The Nightmare And Dawn” from Vertigo and at that point, any pretense toward subtlety is washed away like a ripped off face on a Hollywood star, pretending to be the Lady In the Radiator after we’ve watched a movie that is like Seconds, only sloppy ones.

What are we to learn here? That we should love who we are and embrace aging? Maybe. I don’t know, it’s all buried under transgressive shock that will only be that to audiences who haven’t decided to wallow in the muck of the movies we grew up on. The film also has a major issue — and maybe it’s just me — but the beauty of Moore isn’t in the fact that her ass is tight or that she doesn’t have a wrinkle. She has lived in her body and been a goddess for decades, defying the expectations of how someone should age. The younger version of her feels like a sports car I’d be afraid to get dirt inside, a porcelain doll that you just leave on the shelf instead of risking being a bull.

The level of wit here is to name the sexist oaf Harvey. Hardy har harv.

At one point, I paused this — and the big twist had already happened — and it was 47 minutes before the end of the movie. Brian Yuzna had 96 minutes in Re-Animator. Lynch did Eraserhead in 89. This is 141 minutes long.

You will believe that someone can master home repair first time out to the point that she creates a room inside the bathroom that looks flawless. Who has that much real estate inside their walls? Also: An eye socket poops out a breast and in Hell, Lucio Fulci is like, “And?” Also: How did they keep that bathroom so clean when people are puking all over it, all the time?

This is a film that hates its character when she’s old and sexy, when she’s young and sexy, and then makes fun of her some more when she looks like Ephant Mon meets Castle Freak.

Unlike beauty, the movies that are cannibalized here will live forever.

This, not so much.

Released in Italy as Trasgredire, Cheeky! finds Tinto Brass — joined by a writing team that included his wife Carla Cipriani, Nicolaj Pennestri, Silvia Rossi and Massimiliano Zanin — for another trip into his erotic world, a place where the rear end can be viewed as the window to the soul.

Seriously, if you think Andy Sidaris fully realized his world of gorgeous women in a world of spy games, it’s time to watch a Tinto Brass film. This time, he centers his gaze on Carla Burin (Yuliya Mayarchuk), a young woman from Venice who has come to England to be with her boyfriend, Matteo (Jarno Berardi). The only one not happy about that is Matteo, who is continually jealous of her. Perhaps he should be, as nearly everyone wants to be with Carla, including Moira (Francesca Nunzi), the real estate agent who rented her a flat, and her French ex-boyfriend Bernard (Mauro Lorenz).

After making movies like Caligula and Salon Kitty, Brass went in the direction of trying to craft worlds that revolved around young women who almost constantly are nude, like a Milo Manara comic book brought to life.

Brass said his intent with Cheeky! was to advance the cause of feminism through the character of Carla. “She’s a modern woman who is fully aware of her sexuality and sensuality, and of her right to enjoy it without subduing herself to a chauvinist mentality. It’s an old habit, a fixation of mine, a belief that in order to discover women’s lies, all you just have to do is look at their ass. Because, as opposed to the face, which is a hypocrite mask capable of faking and lies, the ass doesn’t lie.”

Only Tinto Brass would make this movie, a film that pretty much is the male gaze 200% of the time and believe that it’s a feminist film. Well, it is a joyous one, as love wins out by the end. Mayarchuk, who Brass discovered working in a pizza shop, is shot in every frame like a goddess, but also a conflicted woman who wants the pleasures of the flesh yet doesn’t want to lose the man she loves.

I never watch one of Brass’ later films and feel gross about it. It feels like a celebration of beauty and young lust. Meanwhile, he’s a dirty old man puffing along on a cigar, shooting this all with his wife by his side.

Cult Epics presents the 4K UHD world premiere of the Uncut and Uncensored version of Cheeky. It has commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nathaniel Thompson, trailers in 4K, an interview with Massimo Di Venanzo, an isolated score by Pino Donaggio, Backstage with Tinto Brass, trailers, a photo gallery, a double-sided sleeve with original uncensored Italian poster art, a 20-page illustrated booklet with liner notes by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti and a slipcase. You can order it from MVD.

Directed by Taylor Martin from a script by Simon Phillips — I just reviewed his movie The Bouncer — this starts with the aftermath of a bank robbery committed by a gang of holiday named criminals, including Father Christmas (Phillips), Prancer (Luke Avoledo), Grinch (Nick Biskupek), Rudolph (Dan Molson) and Snowman (Michael Swatton).

They’ve made it to the Jolly Rancher Hotel, but they don’t know that vampires — Mother (Sayla de Goede), Lucia (Louisa Capulet), Victoria (Kelly Schwartz) and Selene (Sienna Star) — are also there, ready to feed on college girls and initiate their new recruit Genie (Camille Blott). Meanwhile, the hotel’s clerk, Colin (Paul Whitney), is playing everyone against one another.

This is a very Tarantino-influenced movie, right down to the DJ (Chad Ridgely) giving us the story of the robbery that we don’t see, as well as someone who planned the heist that we never see, as well as the shift into horror when this starts as a crime film. It’s well done and makes the most of its budget, as well as giving innovative ways to fight vampires, like silver spoons and flash grenades.

Also: Stay tuned for a vampiric Santa.

You can get the Cleopatra DVD release of this movie from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

No, not the 2012 movie Sinister, but instead the 2011 Steve Sessions film.

Gerard Prewitt (Lucien Eisenach) starts this movie by slowly possessing a woman (Isabelle Stephen) who gets nude in a bathtub, then has her mind and body taken over before being drowned. Then, Prewitt selects his second victim, Emily (Donna Hamblin), a career woman who has no time for her brother Sam (Donny Versiga).

Yet she needs him — and an expert in witchcraft (Luc Bernier) — when she starts to believe that she’s being haunted by the ghost of her mother. The truth is that Prewitt has picked her as his next victim, using the body of a dead serial killer to stalk her and an animated skeleton to chase her from room to room of her small home.

The slow burn nature, as well as the look and feel of this movie point to a film more rooted in the 70s weirdness that is the kind of place that I like to soak in, like that first bath scene without me having to take off my clothes. Also: How about that golden hearse the bad guy drives?

So many reviews claim this is too slow, that nothing really happens, that so much happens in real time, that it’s more about mood than being scary. Were they trying to sell this movie to me? Because in their effort to leave low scores, they somehow made me love this even more.

Ninjas. “Life means nothing to them,” says Mister Tanaka, a man who shows up in this wearing an outfit like my dad in the mid 80s, a striped red polo and short shorts.

If you ask IFD what this Joe Law directed and written movie is about, they’d say, “A Japanese scientist tries to conceal a deadly formula, but an undead ace and his ninja devils are determined to use it to cause mischief and mayhem. It is up to Lung, a master of the lost art of Hocus Pocus, to keep evil at bay and prevent mass destruction on a global scale.”

Sure, maybe.

IMDB lists the director as Chi Lo, who used the name Joe Law to make Crippled Masters and Lo Ke to direct Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.  Seeing as how this was produced by Joseph Lai and Betty Chan, all bets are off.

Or maybe this is the same movie as American Commando Ninja and combines a Taiwanese TV show, another movie called Born a Ninja and the kind of dialogue that only can come from a 1980s dubbed into incomprehension ninja movie can give you. Or it’s Silent Killers. It could have so many titles and it would still be hard to tell you what happened.

Let me try.

Mister Tanaka has a secret formula from World War II that just could destroy the world. That much is true. Two women want the formula and they are Becky, who wears a yellow vest and Confederate flag shorts, but I think that means she’s into late 70s and early 80s redneck trends in America a little too late as they move across the globe and isn’t racist like my neighbor who wears short shorts and throws away all his kids toys after his wife took them and also has a huge Southern Cross up on his garage wall despite being an Italian man in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Did I go on a tangent? Becky is joined by Brenda, who loves denim so much she’s wearing it on the top and bottom. They’re joined by master of the hocus pocus style, Larry, which involves your everyday kung fu but also the ability to shoot fire out of his fingertips.

As for the bad guy ninja, that’s Meng Fei, who was also in the Ninja Death trilogy, Night Orchid, Everlasting Chivalry, The Sun Moon Legend and Middle Kingdom’s Mark of Blood. He’s pretty amazing in the last fight scene.

Anyways, Mister Tanaka keeps dreaming of dead people that were killed by this secret back in the war and the secret is a mirrored mustache that you put on a devil mask. There’s also a white ninja named David who battles Larry before they decide to be friends, get a room and drink beer and eat fried cabbage.

Or maybe that was the last movie? Have years of drinking, substances and Godfrey Ho movies dulled my reason and when confronted by this synth-scored shot on video wonder my mind just wanders in between different martial worlds, unsure of all the things I’ve seen, all the ninja deaths I’ve felt as if they were my own? In truth, the only important thing is that ninjas can become straw men and that you can swallow a sword in the middle of a fight and live.

I do know one thing. When David sees Larry hanging out with the two ladies, he says, “Two chicks? You one animal!” That’s exactly how I felt.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Starring YouTube star Jesse the Jack Russell Terrier — who would go on to be in two sequel, A Doggone Hollywood and A Doggone Adventure — this is the holiday story of Murphy, a telepathic dog that has been taken by the CIA. Yes, the government is ready to liquidate these children in order to get back their secret weapon, a small dog who is so cute when he’s sleeping.

Now, you may ask, Sam, why did you choose this movie for your Christmas challenge?

Two words: Jim Wynorski.

Even with the assignment of make a cute dog movie for the holidays, Jim goes above and beyond and casts Dominique Swain — yes, Lolita — as a researcher, Gail Thackray (Hard to Die) as a woman on a train and Lauren Parkinson (Snow White from Avengers Grimm: Time Wars and you know I watched the fuck out of that, Merry Christmas) as an agent dressed in skintight leather for the entire movie.

Wynorski understands the idea of something for daddy.

This is the man that made Chopping Mall and here he is, still working, making films for kids to be babysat by via streaming services while they’re on Christmas break. He just made Murderbot last year, so he’s still out there. During the most merry time of the year, let him into your home. If it’s cold outside for you, it’s cold outside for Jim Wynorski.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’m a big fan of the films of Philip J. Cook, starting with Invader and Beyond the Rising Moon. Recently, Visual Vengeance put out Despiser, one of his movies that I was lucky to get to record a commentary track for. Since then, he’s made Outerworld, the Malice series of films and web series, Pungo: A Witch’s Tale and now this film, Ghost Planet.

All of Cook’s films share a unique look, as he pushes himself to develop his own special effects, and an interesting take on their stories, which eschew traditional Hollywood narratives.

Max Stone (Joe Mayes), his lawyer sister Julia (Claudia Troy) and their soldier half brother George (Mark Hyde, Despiser) are space rogues and archaeologists, looking for the technology left behind by the Tesserans. The ships that they find are beyond our understanding, but they have found an entire base full of them, just as a solar flare forces them to run.

A year later and things haven’t worked out so well. George has cancer, acquired on one of the many worlds where he was forced to do shadow ops, and the loan that Max took to pay for new body parts can’t be paid back, leading to repo men coming to take them back by force. They’re nearly killed before a mysterious woman named Trudy (Georgia Anastasia) saves them, killing a man and putting them in prison, where Julia is able to get them released.  Soon, they find out why they were able to get away. Trudy is an android owned by John Moesby (Ulysses E. Campbell), who wants them to go back to space and find the Tesseran technology for him.

This brings them to the titular Ghost Planet, a haunted world where the only living person is a young girl named Naiad (Julie Kashmanian), while being hunted by space pirates who want the same tech that they do. However, Naiad gives the Stones the edge they need, as she knows how to communicate with the Tesseran machinery.

I’ve read some reviews that take this movie to task for how it looks and I honestly wish these people had just an ounce of imagination. Cook has created several worlds here from sound stages, green screen, CGI and miniatures. It doesn’t always feel real, but you have to realize that he’s making this movie with the budget of a few days of the catering of a blockbuster. The trade off is that this is rich with ideas and heart.

What you get is a movie that looks and feels like nothing else, other than a Philip J. Cook movie. And that’s exactly what I wanted this to be. I mean, spaceships guided through the galaxy by bubblegum? Incredible.

You can learn more on the official site and watch this on Tubi.

Poor Mia Farrow.

It feels like she could never catch a break, whether that’s in movies or real life.

In See No Evil, she plays the recently blinded Sarah, who is staying with her uncle and aunt. As she goes on a date with Steve (Norman Eshley), she avoids being killed like everyone else. The next day, she has a carefree day in this manor home while the rest of her family is dead all around her, unseen thanks to her loss of vision.

The gardner, Barker (Brian Rawlinson), is somehow still alive. Well, not for long, but before he fades out, he tells her that the killer is coming back to find a bracelet they lost that has their name on it. We don’t see their face, but do get to see some distinctive boots as Sarah runs blindly into the woods before she’s saved by gypsies.

Tom (Michael Elphick), the leader of the gypsy family, sees the bracelet, which has the name Jack. He believes that it belongs to his brother, who was dating Sarah’s cousin Sandy (Diane Grayson). He tells Sarah that he’s taking her to the police, but instead, he’s locked her in a shed so that his family can escape.

I’m not going to reveal the killer, but Sarah is forced to fall down muddy hillsides before being saved and even then, she must endure one more near-death experience as she’s attacked while in the bath tub.

Writer Brian Clemens wrote the script on spec and Columbia Pictures told him “‘Well, if Mia Farrow plays the lead, we’ll buy it.” You can imagine what happened. He also wrote The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, And Soon the Darknes, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and directed and wrote Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter.

This was directed by Richard Fleischer, whose career encompasses everything from blockbusters like Fantastic Voyage and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to magnificent disasters like Doctor Dolittle and The Jazz Singer and odd efforts like Amityville 3D, Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja and Mandingo. As the son of Max Fleischer, he was chairman of Fleischer Studios, which handles the licensing of Betty Boop and Koko the Clown. That’s why his last screen credit was creative consultant for The Betty Boop Movie Mystery in 1989.

Originally, this movie’s soundtrack was by Andre Previn, who was married to Farrow at the time. They wanted Previn to further change the music, but he was in Russia, which is why they tossed his music. Of course, Previn has a different story. The real one, probably, is that producer Leslie Linder disliked his score and hired David Whitaker to write a new one, which he also hated, and then Elmer Bernstein wrote the music. This helps in the ad campaign, as the movie was compared to Hitchcock.

Also known as Blind Terror, this starts with a walk past several marquees. While the movies Rapist Cult and The Convent Murders aren’t actual films, Torture Garden is playing on a TV.

See No Evil is a good suspense film that is better thanks to Farrow, who seems constantly on the verge of cracking. She’s so good at being an actual person when surrounded by the fantastic and the deadly, this being yet another great example of her abilities.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Not only is this a holiday movie, it’s a Mayan calendar movie. Yes, in the moments before Jacey’s (Magda Apanowicz) grandmother is killed by a gigantic icicle, she gives her a mystical ring and tells her that she’s the chosen one who will stop the end of the world on December 21, 2012.

Before you laugh at that, let me tell you this: Jacey was born right on Christmas in a town named Calvary, her parents are named Joseph (Ed Quinn) and Mary (Holly Elissa) and the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” isn’t just annoying, it explains each of the different disasters about to befall the human race. It was also written by the Mayans!

Directed by Steven R. Monroe — yes, the same guy who made the remake of I Spit On Your Grave — and written by Sydney Roper (Independence Daysaster, End of the World) and Rudy Thauberger (Snowmageddon), this is like The Dome plus The Mist plus every SyFy armageddon movie you’ve ever seen, plus a magic ring and special effects that include shaking the camera to make it seem like there’s an explosion.

Christmas lights come to life, birds unlife themselves, a mist freeze and kills people and only five golden rings can save everyone. There’s also a geomantic Mayan compass that everyone has to use to make their way to find them. There are also super religious people who want to sacrifice Jacey to save the world but she ends up figuring it all out.

You can watch this on Tubi.