H. P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs!) tells his cabby (Brian Yuzna) to wait outside the monastery — he’s got a Necronomicon to find. As he races to find a copy before the monks stop him, he’s locked inside a room where he gets to discover the future through the book.

The first story, “The Drowned,” is loosely based on “The Rats in the Walls.” It tells the story of Jethro De Lapoer (Richard Lynch!), whose wife and child died in an accident, causing him to set a Bible ablaze at the funeral. He brings them back to life with the Necronomicon, but the green glowing eyes of his family as they rise upset him so much that he leaps to his death. His nephew has no such compunctions and brings back his wife Clara (Maria Ford), who comes back in the same way, nearly causing his death. Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak was also inspired by this same story. This story and the framing story come from Yuzna.

“The Cold” is based on the short story “Cool Air” and has Dr. Madden (David Warner!) injecting spinal fluid and staying inside a chilled room to stay alive forever, at least until the power goes out. Dennis Christopher, Gary Graham and Millie Perkins are also in this story, which you may have seen in Alberty Pyun’s H. P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air or the Jeannot Szwarc-directed, Rod Serling-written Night Gallery episode. This was directed by Christopher Gans, the director of Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill.

“Whispers” is based on “The Whisper in the Darkness.” This one has monster bats and all the gore you’ve been looking for, as if the last segment wasn’t packed with enough melting people. This one comes from Shusuke Kaneko, who made the Heisei era Gamera movies Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, Attack of Legion and Revenge of Iris, as well as Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

At the end, Lovecraft avoids the monks and runs into the night. This film may not be completely successful at making an anthology of his stories, but it’s pretty entertaining. It was well-received in the U.S., but a much bigger success in Europe and Asia, where it played theaters.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Robert Rundle is a maniac.

Seriously, who knew that the director of Cybernator and Run Like Hell— as well as scarecrow #1 in Dark Harvest, ninja guard #1 in Big Sister 2000 and Bo Stompkins in Raw Energy — and writers Randall Frakes (Rollerblade, Hell Comes to Frogtown) and Tanya York (Frogtown II) would be able to create such a piece of outright lunacy? I always discuss movies seemingly made by aliens that have no idea what humanity is like and beam us their ideas and as such they’re so strange that nothing seems like anything a human being would do.

This is the movie we send back to them.

The Vampire of Los Angeles (Don Stroud) is the kind of killer that only direct-to-video can give us. He randomly picks up women and does all manner of odd things to them, like keeping their skulls for cereal bowls and injecting their blood into his veins. Oh yeah — one of the skulls talks to him and has gotten inside his head and not in the way that skulls should be in your head. Stroud is absolutely going for it in this movie and seeing as how the last four movies he did before this were Donald Jackson roller blade-related movies, I get the feeling he had the chance to really stretch his wings as an actor. And by stretching his wings, I mean screaming at the top of his lungs and taking Polaroids of himself in the mirror.

In the very same neighborhood is a house of priests: the Monsignor (Erik Estrada, whose first name is misspelled in the credits), Father Thomas (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Father Daniel (Michael M. Foley, Tracer from WMAC Masters). Most of the time, the priests are all sitting at a table eating dinner, reading their lines off of the newspapers in front of them and interacting with their maid Merna. Yes, the priests have Judy Landers as their maid.

Have you started to figure out why I love this movie yet?

As we get into the stories of the Vampire draining women of their blood and Father Michael kicking ass for the Lord as a vigilante priest complete with a cross-decorated gun and throwing stars, we also get nearly an entire song by a lovely young lady named Hiroko. She’s also in Miracle Beach, a beach blanket movie that unites Ami Dolenz, Pat Morita, Alexis Arquette, Allen Garfield, Martin Mull and Vincent Schiavelli.

I have no idea how a Japanese pop idol got to America much less why she’s in this sleazy movie and even less why she got to sing almost all of her song “My Love’s Waiting.”

Otis the vampire has a new target, a girl named Kim (Carrie Chambers, Karate Cop), who is a psychic just like him. Yes, that’s right. He’s not just a vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it, he’s also a psychic vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it. Kim brings the two stories together, even if I can’t remember how Robert Z’Dar, Jim Brown and Scott Shaw (more Donald Jackson crossover) are part of this.

This is the kind of movie where you watch Don Stroud eat corn flakes out of a human skull and make smoothies with blood and beer, all while the psychic cop also has a crucifix knife ready to hear that killer’s deathbed confession.

Thanks to my weird movie pals across the pond The Schlock Pit, I learned that Stroud was paid $1,000 a day for this movie. He should have made way, way more than that, because he’s giving this movie everything he has left.

This is the kind of movie that people get mad at and I get happy about. It’s just so oddly made, so poorly paced and has the cast equivalent of a horror movie convention, but you know I’d buy every 8×10 Judy Landers has on her table.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Director Louis Crisitello has created this documentary all about Pensacola musician Phil Thomas Katt, whose show The Uncharted Zone has built and encouraged a scene all its own. I didn’t know anything about this music, these videos or the man himself, but this film was plenty of fun and made me want to know more.

Known as the “Dick Clark of the Gulf Coast music scene,” Katt believes that anyone can make good music. It’s great that even as the world becomes more commercialized and homogenized, there are people out there willing to put their time and energy into championing music that no one else would hear or see.

He’s still out there, still making The Uncharted Zone and the idea that music of all kinds is encouraged brings a smile to my face.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Germán Alonso is trying to finish his first movie, Mexman, but he’s battling with the documentary crew following him, trying to get taken seriously as a filmmaker and dealing with fickle love.

Directed and written by Josh Polon, I got the idea that yes, Germán is a genius and makes incredible shorts and puppets. When producer Moctasuma Esparza (the producer of Selena, The Milagro Beanfield War and The Telephone) is interested in making his film, Germán and the writers he’s working with — Tyler and Ben Soper — start to have conflicts because its show business, you know. Business. And geniuses don’t always do well at business.

It takes more than just the ability to animate and dream to direct, because you are the one in charge. You need to be on schedule, you need to be organized and you need to have people respect you. The problems start when Tyler and Ben take the writing credit and give Germán the credit of just story. This sends him over the edge and things never improve from there.

I feel bad for Germán, but when you have an opportunity, you need to focus. The idea of falling for a woman who may not be all that into you and spending forever talking about ideas instead of doing them is infuriating. For all his talent, it feels sadly wasted.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Director and writer Anthony Edward Curry told the Asbury Park Press, ““I always felt that TRAP was a story that needed to be told,” Curry said. “It was a movie that found itself over years of production because it was constantly morphing — because the real-life characters, they were evolving before my eyes. So I was constantly re-writing. Every day I was changing because the characters are changing in front of me.”

The title means The Real Asbury Park and it’s a story that Curry originally wrote when he was 17. How true to life is the film? Curry made national press when a video confession from former Neptune High School classmate Liam McAtasney was secretly recorded in 2017 was a key piece of evidence leading to McAtasney being found guilty of murder.

According to the New York Post, “In December 2016, artist Sarah Stern, 19, went missing and her car was found abandoned on a bridge in Belmar, NJ. In the aftermath of her disappearance, Curry remembered his high school friend Liam McAtasney, who was close with Stern, pitching an idea for a movie in which he killed a girl. He came to the shocking realization that this wasn’t a tale that simply lived in his friend’s imagination — and he went to the police, who helped him set up a sting. Curry filmed McAtasney’s chilling confession — leading to his conviction and a life sentence.”

With a cast made up of some actors, some real street people and the director himself, TRAP tells the story of a young criminal about to face life in prison and the dark path that got him there. It’s really uncompromising and if it feels lived in, obviously it is. It might be playing in this festival surrounded by horror genre films, but it truly might be one of the more frightening movies playing.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Directed and written by Manuel Lagos Jr., this is the story of Buddy (Joshua Michael Payne) and Catherine (Evangeline Wurst), who have their 4th of July holiday interrupted by Catherine’s estranged childhood friend Juliet (Erica Boozer).

This might not be for everyone — well, if you like mumblecore you’ll dig it — as it’s a hangout film about three people trying to figure out how everything and everyone fits. The leads are all really talented and come off as really authentic, which helps keep you invested.

This is the first full-length film that Lagos has made and it’s definitely worth a watch. Well-shot, great angles and just a lived-in vibe that I totally enjoyed.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

There’s a Trim Season comic book that came out in 2022, which was based on an original concept from Megan Sutherland, Sean E DeMott and Cullen Poythress. They were inspired by the story of several women who went missing in Humboldt County, CA during a marijuana harvest. That turned into a screenplay, written by David Blair and Ariel Vida, and then the comic book by writer Jake Hearns, pencils and inks by Mara Mendez Garcia and colors by Lorenzo Palombo.

Directed by Ariel Vida, Trim Season is about Emma (Bethlehem Million) and Julia (Alex Essoe), who get recruited by James (Marc Senter) to head up into Northern California for trim season and make $5,000 cash. They’re joined by Harriet (Ally Ioannides), Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and Lex (Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy) and when they get there, things already seem odd. There are guns everywhere carried by masked men. None of those men join them, because the only trimmers are women.

Then they meet their boss, Mona (Jane Badler, still terrifying me ever since she ate a rat in V), who looks like the kind of female villain that would once have battled and bedded James Bond. And as they work 16 hours days, they start to learn that this isn’t the job they were promised, what with Mona having some kind of magical powers thanks to a strain that only he can inhale and survive.

Somehow folk horror meets Suspiria meets body horror, Trim Season exceeded any expectations I had for it. Balder owns every moment she has on screen and man, how many costume changes did she get? As many as she wanted, that’s how many.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.