Did I watch all 13 of these?

You know I did.

Let’s concentrate on perhaps the best of this series, Pagan Invasion: Halloween Trick or Treat.

Let’s go to the sell copy: “Traces the pagan origins and history of Halloween. The Pagan Occult calendar of Druids, Witches, Pagans and Satanists marks Halloween as one of their highest holy days. The occult rituals seen in this video are real and not re-enactments. All the seemingly innocent symbolism of Halloween – black cats, snakes, broomsticks, bonfires, trick or treat…”

This feels dungeon synth, with an early computer-generated castle looming over everyone, which gives me a very warm feeling while also giving me the kind of chill I got from living through the Satanic Panic. This early green-screen technology makes the hosts look like they are broadcasting from a haunted screensaver.

This starts at a video sales convention, and we see some of the most wonderful horror movies of the 80s as the hosts clutch pearls, all before moving to meeting former Satanist Glenn Hobbs, who tells us about how he used to kill infants day and night. Wait, is that Hal Lindsay? It is, and he found a pentagram and a diaper in a shack, so there had to be more baby deaths. Seeing the author of The Late Great Planet Earth poking around a shack with a clean diaper? The peak of investigative journalism.

Like all Christian scare films, this liberally takes from Satanis, because where else are you going to get all that Anton LaVey interview b-roll? 

To understand Pagan Invasion, you have to understand the power couple of the 1980s counter-cult movement: Caryl Matrisciana and Chuck Smith. They weren’t just hosts; they were the architects of a very specific brand of California Charismatic paranoia. Caryl grew up in India, allowing herself to be marketed as someone who had firsthand experience with the darkness of Eastern mysticism. Chuck was a massive figure in American evangelicalism; he founded the Calvary Chapel movement and was a key player in the Jesus People movement of the late 60s. 

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

I have no idea what I just watched. I do not know what this movie is about despite having watched its London premiere with about 20 other people at The Nickel Cinema in Clerkenwell.

Scarlet Warning 666 is the concept of “random” fully realized on celluloid. Specifically, random in the service of ego. The ego of one Palmer Rockey. The man who performed 7 roles on screen and 47 behind the camera. He also composed and sung all the songs on the soundtrack. One song made me laugh so hard I cried.

In preparation for an art history side-by-side slide exam on Edo period paintings, my professor once said, “If you can’t remember the facts about any of the images, just write about what you see.” This is the only way to write about this film.  I will list what I saw and heard. From here on. I will refer to Palmer Rockey as PR.

Here goes nothing:

• Several parking lots (one shot lasts only a few frames)
• PR in a parking lot playing finger guns
• Ladies in bikinis
• PR running through a cemetery to his own funk song
• PR running through a corridor to his own disco song
• PR shadow boxing and pretending to jump rope to his own funk song
• PR having a long chat with his St. Bernard puppy, Bernie
• PR making out with a lady in a bikini to his own love song
• PR making out and tenderly dry humping a different lady in a tight red shirt
• PR in a yellow shirt with a black stripe down the front
• PR with a yellow shirt with a black striped collar
• PR in a red shirt with a white star on the collar and cowboy hat
• PR shirtless with upsetting shorts (three times)
• PR dancing to his own disco song
• PR woofing down green grapes with a copy of his album prominently on display
• PR dressed as a hooded scarlet guard
• PR posing for the camera
• PR rolling around with a fat guy
• Fake blood on a baby doll
• A native America shaker thingy
• A hand with a flashlight waving the light around onto a plastic skull
• PR with fake blood on naked, fish belly white back
• More smash cuts than I could count
• PR in the “supernatural room” doing some sort of ritual while bikini ladies dance in a circle to bad foley and PR’s songs
• An actor (Not PR) in a purple outfit with a white belt hanging out behind a bush in a park for DAYS
• A bunch of feathers dyed and clumped together
• A black and white sequence in a locker room about PR and his buddy in med school
• A woman whose twin sister has died dancing around a white coffin.
• 4 shots of the pavement where the camera man dropped the camera
• A weird narration (sometimes in falsetto) by PR trying to explain to the audience what the movie is about and why he made certain “genius” and “anti-establishment” aesthetic decisions.
• An actor (Not PR) reading from his script – twice
• PR dousing his pits with lime juice from a plastic lime
• More PR running

Basically, the movie is all Palmer Rockey all the time.

The End.

Thank you, Grindhouse Releasing.

See it.

Brent and Blake Cousins are back. Directed and written by Brett and starring Blake, this takes the guys years forward from Slaughter Day to make a new SOV-inspired film in which a cop uncovers a conspiracy to off the leader of the U.S.A. Well, it was shot in the 90s and finished a few years ago and it goes much deeper than that description, as this liquid can turn normal people into terrorists.

The Cousins have not chilled with age, doing wild stunts and crazy camera angles all over again, while using modern FX, supers and dubbing to make it seem like this all goes together when it totally doesn’t. The Vice President wants the President dead, but like an Andy Sidaris movie, this never leaves Hawaii. Why should it? You have 50 minutes? Then you’re ready for Brent and Blake to take you on another ride.

Because the footage sat in a vault for decades, the movie acts as a bizarre temporal rift. You have the brothers as their younger, stunt-crazy selves, but the post-production feels like it was handled by someone who just discovered every filter in Adobe After Effects. I will always be here for that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The title of this comes from one of the original Night of the Living Dead titles. That shows where the heart of this film is. It’s the story of a man (James Lemire) who wants to be with the wife (Gia Franzia) of a rich man (David Rosenhaus), who has learned that his beloved spouse has been cheating on him. He hires a killer to wipe them out, but that killer turns out to be our hero, who is also an archaeologist, folklorist, and college professor. It’s a resume that makes Indiana Jones look underachieving. 

What starts as a standard noir betrayal with a jealous husband, a cheating wife, and a hitman with a heart of gold quickly takes a hard left turn into supernatural insanity. Our hero has brought his enemy to a cursed land where Native American dwarf zombies and witch doctors live.

It could happen.

Directed and written by J.R. McGarrity, who also plays one of those evil shamans, this is quick, fun and cheap. But that doesn’t mean it’s without charm. In Germany, this had an even better title, Demon Forest – Sie werden Euch fressen (Demon Forest – They Will Eat You).

There’s also a woman in her bra and panties running around, played by Jessica Alexandra Green. Why is she in the woods almost naked? One would think foreign investors paid for this, but with a budget this low, why are we quibbling? 

You can watch this on Tubi.