Jan Reiff went on to be a director of photography on movies like Iron Doors and Slave, but before that he made this shot on video tale of Ludwig Herrmann, who killed his wife Elizabeth — and her lover — when he caught them in bed together. Then he killed a witness who was completely innocent. And oh yeah, then they came back as zombies.

Translated as Requiem for the Devil, this feels like a German Fulci superfan made his own movie because, well, that’s exactly what it is. Those zombies put him through hell — razor blades in the spaghetti anyone? — but Ludwig isn’t going down easy.

That said, he also kills his wife in a way that will get him on one one my many Letterboxd lists: he throws a hairdryer into the bathtub while she’s in it. Then he shoots her lover and runs him over to be totally sure, then because that witness saw everything, he remembers Italy and jabs out one of his eyeballs.

I mean, this has a lot going for it, beyond the gore, like an eighty minute running time and an ending that has, well alright it’s mostly the gore because the wife gets her face ripped clean off before quite literally facefucking our protagonist with a drill and then finger banging the hole left behind because, you know, why not? I’ll bet Ludwig wished he just kept playing his Gameboy and never looked around to see if he was being cucked. I mean, there are some questions you don’t want the answers to.

You can watch this on YouTube thanks to altohippiegabber.

Satan’s Storybook prefigures the streaming horror anthology films that litter our watch services today yet it’s miles above those, not just within its two tales, but with a connecting story that makes you want even more.

Directed and co-written by Michael Rider, who was also a zombie in the shot on video Hororama, this movie starts with the bride of Satan (Leslie Deutsch) — who by the way looks amazing and just like a late 80s heavy metal album cover come to life — being abducted by ninjas, one of whom is her sister, who is played Ginger Lynn, so of course I was beyond in love with this segment. This upsets Satan so much that he demands that his jester tell him some stories to keep his mood light. This segment hints at a third story as well as more of the story which is never delivered and honestly, that’s the only thing about this movie I dislike, because it leaves you wanting so much more.

“Demon of Death” is all about Zeek Heller (co-writer Steven K. Arthur), a serial killer who abducts metal and horror fan — she has a Scared Stiff poster on the all black walls of her room — Jezebell Jones ((Leesa Rowland) and even wipes out her family before being sent to rot in jail. He’s just like so many metal dudes I knew in 1989 except, you know, he randomly looks up girls from the telephone book — placing this firmly in 1989 — and killing them. Then he gets arrested by the law, wo say things like “The only thing that stands between you and Old Sparkey is us, and we don’t give a lizard’s dick if you do fry, you buttplug!” The trial goes on and on and right before they throw the switch, Jezebell does some black magic that doesn’t really work out like she planned. It’s grimy and grainy and you can see people reading their lines off scripts, which some reviews proclaim as the sign of a bad movie, as if they’d never watched SOV before.

The second segment, “Death Among Clowns,” has a clown named Charlie (Grady Bradner, the writer of The Howling and Cameron’s Closet in his only movie as an actor) hanging himself in his dressing room and then engaging in lengthy dialogue with another clown named Mickey La Mort, who is played by this film’s director and writer Rider. This is the segment that usually causes people to hate this movie as it seems to go on forever yet I love it. Mickey the clown keeps getting more demonic as the segment moves on and basically this is two writers putting together endless dialogue in one location — with a Howling IV: The Original Nightmare poster no less — and no twist ending. Exactly what you think is going to happen — a clown dragging another clown to Hell — happens. It’s. kind of fascinating, like near murderdrone with no murder.

This movie has so much fog throughout that one wonders if this was considered as a pack-in with fog machines so that people could learn of their power.

Satan’s Storybook has the feel of Night Train to Terror and I mean that in the best of mind-melting ways. There are so many moments in this that make little to no sense at all and that’s what I demand from my films. If anything, this is a movie where Ginger Lynn magically transforms from a ninja to a barbarian princess and if you can’t find some wonder in that, I think you should give up watching films and reading this site. Bring on the synth and distorted voices. Bring on the rubber masked demons. Bring on the fog, the glorious fog.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Before Alex Chandon made Cradle of Fear, he made this and wow, I love every bit of this grimy movie way better than that. It starts with a barbecue party being destroyed by shape-shifting Hare Krishnas who can become monstrous beings that feel like they belong up on the stage with Gwar but here they are destroying the suburbs.

Those monsters have just two days to worship their god Kalimah — the Kalimas are the basic beliefs of Muslims all around the world, so don’t come here for actual religious class — but they run into a biker gang given to giving chainsaw enemas — I mean, the same guy made Chainsaw Scumfuck — as well as a gang of BDSM enthusiasts and even some rednecks complete with a banjo player.

F bombs, British punk energy, monsters that look like they could parade about your town for Halloween, an up-close castration via garden shears, a Death Wish 3-looking gang, Frisbee-fu, a pole right to the face, bad acting and at least one part that had to be shot in a hotel room and I bet they ran out and didn’t use one of their own credit cards to pay for the damage to the room.

It’s cheap, messy and will take up about 1/6th the time that that new Avatar will waste and it cost a fraction of that movie’s budget that I am in no way good enough at math to comprehend. Most of the money on this was spent on FX and the rest on beer. As it should be.

Again, altohippiegabber has kept this alive and on YouTube.

There are just three movies by Stefan Schipke — this, Blutgericht der Zombies and a sequel to this — and you know, you could look at this as scuzzy SOV throwaway dross but hey, it was reissued on DVD in Germany as part of Terror Compilation: Volume 1 (2000-2002), which is pretty wild when you think of it.

There’s definitely a crossover — beyond the simple of metal and horror — between black and speed metal lovers and the SOV gore obsessed. There’s the same yearning for someone to go harder and faster, to be true, to not worry if the drum sound or video quality is horrible as long as the blast beats are there and we get plenty of guts and chum. The voices and vocals sound the same. Inaudible. Unspeakable. We have no idea what’s happening but if we experience it enough we learn the riff or the gist and celebrate it, speaking names of arcane bands and lost movies either outside in the cold before shows or in chat windows, seeking new and better highs.

The fact that this ends with a poised karate battle that looks so legit gives me hope in this life.

Also: How the fuck does this have an entry on Letterboxd?

All hail altohippiegabber who posted this on YouTube and is keeping so much strange and not even posted to IMDB SOV alive.

SOV filmmaker is the same as Lucio Fulci fans — this movie is dedicated to the Italian director — and this movie feels like Zombi in Brazil because, well, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be, even recreating the scenes of the dead coming back to life covered in moss and dirt.

There’s a couple — wealthy ecologists — stranded on an island — Matul, it has to be — when a cross-dressing serial killer — as an old lady and bringing along a potential victim — also makes his way there and a priestess commands the undead as they stumble through the jungle. Also these guys probably told the kitchen to keep the guts and put them in a doggy bag when they ordered their feijoada because those organs look suspiciously true to life.

I haven’t seen a Brazilian zombie movie yet, so now I feel there’s one more culture’s walking dead example that I can check off my passport.

Director and writer Petter Baiestorf is still making movies. He was also the creator of the 2013 sequel Zombio 2: Chimarrão Zombies.

You can get this from the Internet Archive.

Joe Zaso also made the two Screambook movies and Guilty Pleasures and is known as the Horror Himbo. An avid bodybuilder, he made appearances as The Hulk, Spider-Man, the New Jersey Devil and Captain America. And if you care about such things, because of his 15 EEE shoe size, he wears his own shoes for every film he appears in.

Directing this film and co-writing it with this movie’s cinematographer V.C. Siegfried, Zaso also stars in it along with Brian Dixon, who plays two roles, Bosco and Madman Malone. The story is all about a film crew shooting a horror movie in a haunted house and, as you can imagine, the cast and crew soon start showing up dead. You’ve seen it all before, but have you seen it shot on video? Have you seen an older starlet engaging in pillow talk while in the tub to a man she doesn’t know is a zombie? Are you prepared for horrific accidents? The camera accidentally catching people yawning? A close that finds an entire gospel church on stage with lyrics about sweeping your floor?

Honestly, usually a gospel choir can save any movie or song. This is the one time I’ve seen this not happen, as the choir is barely competent and that made me enjoy this movie even more. I also enjoyed the video effects and chromakey taking the places of stock footage lightning.

Zaso himself referred to this as a “less-than-stellar musical.”

Who are we to deny him?

I joke, though, because this movie really fascinates me because how many people pushed this hard and decided to not just make a shot on video, but a shot on video musical? Zeso learned a lot from his earlier films, the horror anthologies Screambook and Screambook 2, and this really shows a ton of promise. His films are entertaining, which is more than I can say for so many other movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Legend of the Woman’s Mystery Youkai Melon may start with very solemn readings of scrolls in the forest, but this SOV Japanese short is ready to give you so much more. A punk rock band has found a grimy new place to practice in and when that hets boring, one of their members finds some wooden boxes filled with — you guessed it — melons. Yet he should have paid attention to that opening narrations — we all should have — because it causes everyone in his band to get killed in increasingly gory ways, the kind that only happen in 1980s SOV Japanese short videos with mermaids, manholes and flowers of blood.

The joy of it all is that the witch that comes from the boxes and kills everyone can be reasoned with and is totally fine with resurrecting the band and being on stage with them when they play a secret show in the bowels of some urban bombed out section of Neo Tokyo in the year 19XX and everyone rocks out and maybe some people are more machine than man and demons and normal people can all get along and we can erase all that goopy head exploding like water under the bridge. Just don’t jump in the water off one of those bridges, because they’re super polluted.

Thanks to Garbage Gibbage, you can download this on the Internet Archive.

Also known as Jushin Densetsu (Beast God Legend), this 46-minute blast of Japanese SOV insanity was directed and written by Takuro Fukuda who went on to write for several Kamen Rider series.  It’s the story of  orphaned college student Goh (Tasashi Kato) who is dealing with several issues all at once, foremost that that he owes the Yakuza not just the money he’s paid but now more money for interest. When he tries to sleep, he dreams of being followed by demonic creatures that he tries to recreate in sculpture form in his waking hours. And his girlfriend Emi (Kyoko Katayama) keeps trying to help him but all he does is push her away.

Those dreams keep getting worse, like a mouth in the sink and a decapitated zombie head that attacks him. If only his job at a movie studio paid more, yet that seems just an excuse — actually, a good one — for some flamboyant 80s dance.

This is a movie that wears its influences proudly, like a title card that is 100% stolen from Demons and a fanatic devotion to 80s transformation effects.  I mean, when Goh finally transforms and takes out those organized crime toughs, it’s shot for shot taken from An American Werewolf In London. And hey — there’s the soundtrack from Phenomena blasting through a scene!

From http://thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com/2020/09/jushin-densetsu-1987.html

If I saw this in my teens, I’d be drawing all the monsters over and over again. Who am I kidding? I’m doing the same thing in my old age. Behold the power of goopy gore, long may it drizzle and bubble.

You can download this from the Internet Archive or watch it on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For another article on this, click here. There’s also an interview with director Wim Venk on the site.

Wim Vink only made six movies — including Pandora, Danse Macabre, Heaven Is Only In Hell and this one — but man, this movie is something else. It starts in a very ordinary way, as Debbie (Angelique Viesee) is relentlessly treated like utter garbage by the other girls and even a teacher (Ad Kleingeld) that seems sympathetic just wants to roughly take her on her teenage twin bed.

Is it any wonder that the girls all conspire to spray Debbie in the face with hairspray and then laugh as she’s hit by a truck? Well, that’s taking it far. And taking it too far would be gyrating atop her and taking photographs of the grisly carnage. Want it to get even worse? While she struggles in the ICU, a nurse who just ends up being the mother of one of the popular girls injects her in the eye with poison like a SOV Dead and Buried.

Debi arises and goes on a campaign of terror like a telekinetic-less Carrie, using a chainsaw and the pounding beats of composer Rob Orlemans to take twenty-five minutes of torment and finally have it up to here and then unleash pure traumatic hatred on everyone who has ever done her wrong. It’s also in Dutch and everyone speaks stilted English which only serves to make it all that much more foreign.

I love seeing this through decades of tape erosion and tracking between each piece of action as the synth beats my help into pulp. It’s not magic, but it’s quite close.

You can download this from the Internet Archive and watch it on YouTube. There’s even a making of on altohippiegabber’s page.

This movie begins and ends with interviews with its director Charles E. Cullen who is either the director of movies like The Curse of the Mummy Cat and Killer Klowns from Kansas on Krack or the New Jersey nurse who was the most prolific serial killer ever.

Maybe both.

Anyways, Charles has people asking him questions about his art, which is making a shot on video slasher about the Boogieman, who is the kind of killer who sledgehammers a baby just to show how evil he is.

How do you stop a monster like that? How about a Vietnam vet bounty hunter? What if there was a witch doctor joining him?

This is also in black and white and man, it has a hell of a body count. People are set on ablaze, machetes, chainsaws, rifles and even a car is used. Meanwhile, the music pulses and winds howl and the drone overtakes your mind and you wonder what next level of strange madness is about to emerge from your screen.

According to The Last Exit, Cullen is “an ex-chicken farmer that mixes slow-paced country humor with rural drug-culture and a love for cult, bizarre, trash and horror b-movies. Like a freaky country carnival, he expresses this via many forms of entertainment, including movies, weird country music, puppet shows, homemade TV shows and so on.”

Callen also made Night of the Bums, a movie in which a bat attacks a baby and then bums rip the infant into little bloody chunks. Man, this dude does not seem like he’d be a good dad.

You aren’t raising a kid with him. You’re watching his weird slasher. Relax.

You can watch this on YouTube.