From writer/director Lamberto Bava comes a modern-day reimagining of his father’s classic Black Sunday! also known as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil, this is scanned in 2K from the original camera negative for the first time ever in North America and has an interview with Bava.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

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 any movies in the Demons series. Soon, they find a metal mask — whoops, this happens so often in Demons movies — and discover a body buried between the ice. Digging around, it causes them to get buried deeper in the snow, so deep that they discover an underground city where a witch was executed. And that witch? Well, she decides that this group of skiers would make the perfect instruments of her revenge.

Lamberto decided that if he was going to make another movie in the Demons saga, why not also 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, often reading it to his children. When he was allowed to choose the storyline for a movie he wanted to direct, he chose Gogol’s story, which also inspired the 1967 Russian film.

Davide is the de facto leader of this group and his girlfriend Sabina (Debora Caprioglio, using the last name of her fiancee Klaus Kinski here) 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, which makes you wish for the entire cast to be killed. Well, you get what you want, trust me. Mary Sellers from Stagefright is in this, as is Eva Grimaldi from Ratman as the demonic form of Anibas.

Man, what a demonic form it is. After she begins seducing our hero, her young breasts instantly transform into withered old tears and her feet and hands are replaced with chicken claws while she spits white fluid all over him. Oh yeah — she also has the facial scars that Barbara Steele wore in Mario’s version.

This is a hard movie to review, as you have to compare it one of the greatest movies ever made. 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’s going to 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 even 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.

For far too long, this 1974 shocker directed by Aldo Lado has been dismissed as a Last House On the Left knockoff. Now it can be experienced as it should be, on its own merit, in UHD for the first time ever. Scanned in 4K from the original camera negative with over 5 hours of special features — such as commentary by Aldo Lado, moderated by Freak-O-Rama’s Federico Caddeo, and a soundtrack CD — this is why Severin remains one of the best physical media labels.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

This Aldo Lado-directed piece of Italian grime also went by the names Night Train Murders, The New House on The Left, Second House on The Left, Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains, Late Night Trains, Last House Part II and Xmas Massacre, depending on the whims of fate (and Hallmark Releasing).

Margaret (Irene Miracle, who was also in Midnight Express, Inferno and Puppet Master) and Lisa are set to take the night train from Germany to Italy, but the train is full and they have to sit in a long corridor. They help Blackie (Flavio Bucci, Suspiria) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi, The Church) hide from the ticket taker as they board the train and hide from the cops. Of course, instead of saying thanks, they end up decimating the two girls, along with the help of an upper class blonde (Macha Méril, Deep Red) who has already turned the tables on Blackie’s attempts at assaulting her by seducing him. The two thugs really have no idea what they’re in for, because this mysterious blonde is more dangerous than both of them put together.

The whole time the girls are being victimized, murdered and forced into suicide, Lisa’s parents are hosting a Christmas dinner party where her doctor father speaks on the ills of a more violent society.

Later, when they arrive at the station to get the girls, they are worried when they don’t arrive. If you wonder, “Will they end up taking the people that killed them home?” then yes, you have seen your share of revenge movies. The most shocking thing is that the blonde may be the only survivor of the evil trio, as her fate is left open.

This video nasty is the kind of movie that I don’t put on when people come to visit.

While some decry the bumbling cop comedy in Craven’s film, this one jettisons any attempt at levity, adds some 1975 Italian style, gets a soundtrack from Morricone and gets way, way dark.

Lado also made Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die?, two of the more original and downbeat giallo to follow in the wake of Argento. Even when he’s ripping someone off — not that Craven didn’t also rip off The Virgin Spring, so there are no innocents here — he can’t help outdoing his competition.

How lucky that this comes out on Black Friday from Severin, because despite the fact that it’s so relentlessly immoral, it is, after all, a holiday film.

This 1983 production from writer/director Jess Franco can finally be experienced as one of his most surprising and heartfelt offerings of the decade. It’s summer’s end in the resort city of Benidorm, where seductive foreigners, conniving hustlers, gullible tourists and insatiable celebrities all come together in a barbed confection that’s part sunny comedy, part Nashville-style satire and totally, unmistakably, sexy Franco fun. It’s scanned in 2K from the original camera negative with over 2 hours of new special features, such as Francomania’s John Dixon and William Morris and more of Stephen Thrower’s journeys in the land of Franco.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

Lina Romay directed 13 movies in between starring in 123 films, most of them with the man for whom she became a muse, Jess Franco.

Surprisingly, this film — despite the title Las chicas del tanga that means The Girls In Thong — is nowhere near as racy as the other movies Franco made at this end of his career, feeling more like a comedy than anything else.

The men are stupid, the women are attractive, there’s no translation — well, until the Severin re-release, which I can’t wait for — and no awkward anatomy zoom lenses. That said, this is quite obviously for people that have created their own Letterboxd lists to track how many Franco movies they’ve watched.

Maybe it’s so chaste — well, for Franco — because Antonio Mayans had his wife Juana de la Morena and both of his daughters, Ivana and Flavia, in the cast (actually, that’s BS because Flavia was also in Emanuelle Exposed and Bahía blanca).

Speaking of that Emanuelle Franco movie, its lead Muriel Montossé is also in this, as are Eva León (Voodoo Black Exorcist, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) and Analía Ivars (Gold Temple Amazons, Lust for Frankenstein).

It’s no accident that Severin used our review for sales copy for this, reminding viewers that this movie is “absolutely insane.” What began as the epic global zombie apocalypse screenplay by Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi became – via the inimitable vision of director Bruno Mattei and a fraction of the original budget – this wild effort, now on UHD and scanned in 4K from the original camera negative for the first time in America, complete with a CD of its soundtrack.

There’s also a brand new novelization by Brad Carter, who worked with original screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi!

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

Bruno Mattei got hired to make this, being asked by Spanish producers to make something like Dawn of the Dead but happier, if that was possible. He made this under the name Vincent Dawn, which the producers requested. Two scripts were written by Claudio Fragasso* and Rossella Drudi, with the one being picked not being the script Mattei preferred.

I wish I could have seen that script** because what got made is absolutely insane.

The movie starts in a top-secret chemical research facility called Hope Center #1. There, the male workers talk non-stop about sex like this:

Technician #1: She may not know much about chemistry, but in bed, her reactions are terrific.

Technician #2: I’m not surprised with that cute little ass.

Technician #1: I’m a tit man, myself.

In the middle of this locker room talk, a rat causes a chemical leak and comes back to life as a zombified rat*** that eats the face of a worker, turning every single person there — eventually — into the living dead.

Meanwhile, four commandos — Lt. Mike London (José Gras, billed as Robert O’Neal), Osborne (Josep Lluís Fonoll, Wheels on Meals), Zantoro (Franco Garafalo, The Other Hell, billed as Frank Garfield) and Vincent (Selan Karay) — wipe out some eco-terrorists who are demanding that the Hope Centers be revealed to the public.

Now that the Hope Center we’ve seen at the beginning of the movie has lost contact with the world, the commandos go to New Guinea to find out why. There, they encounter journalist Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton, The Adventures of Hercules) and her cameraman Max (Gabriel Renom), along with a fighting husband and wife who are soon dispatched by a zombie doctor and their dead son.

Their fight dialogue really needs to be shared:

Josie’s husband: These bright ideas you get… bringing a 7-year-old child through this filth! Only YOU could have thought of it!

Josie: There was absolutely no way of knowing the trouble we’d run into.

Josie’s husband: Dumb broad! The living image of a modern mother! You couldn’t be so mean to leave our boy at a nice safe school for a couple weeks! Not her! “Oh, no! Not to bring our boy along with us would be cruel!” Doesn’t matter if he’s eaten by mosquitoes… or wounded by a native lunatic!

Lia Rousseau: Oh, please! You’re not gonna begin that again!

Josie’s husband: Oh, no! I’m sorry! Naturally, the great Lia Rousseau can’t possibly be disturbed listening to the complaints of a man who’s upset about his boy! No, she’s on a special mission. The idol of a TV audience who doesn’t get enough violence and BLOODSHED!

In case you’re wondering, “Is this a Bruno Mattei movie?” Let me satisfy you: when they go to a native village, footage from the documentary New Guinea, Island of Cannibals gets added into the movie and Rousseau having to strip down and get her body painted up. Of course, the mirth of the native village ends up with a zombie attack and the commandos — and journalists — make their way to the overrun hope center, where they learn that Operation: Sweet Death was made to destroy the world’s population so that overcrowding could be stopped, starting with the poor people, of course.

I love the ending of this, as politicians throw paper at one another while zombies have spread into the major cities.

In case you watch this and think, “This music sounds familiar,” I have the answer. It’s all Goblin, which was licensed instead of getting an original score made. It has songs from their album Roller, as well as their songs for Dawn of the Dead, Beyond the Darkness and Contamination.

Alternate titles include Hell of the Living Dead, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Night of the Zombies, Virus Cannibale, Os Predadores da Noite (The Night Predators) and Zombie Inferno.

I absolutely love the absurd dialogue in this! There’s so much, but this is my favorite back and forth:

Vincent: Patience is the chief virtue for those who have faith. Mahatma Gandhi, New Delhi, 1946.

Lt. Mike London: Up your ass. Lieutenant Mike London, Shit Creek, the year is now.

Also, it has the strange air that the terrorists are right, despite their actions being wrong. Pretty much humanity is doomed in the world of Mattei. Really, for all the bad I’ve heard about this movie, it’s a total success in my eyes.

I mean, it has a scene where a commando puts on a dress, sings a song from Singin’ in the Rain, causes a zombie kitten to leap out of a dead woman’s stomach and then dies while everyone yells, “Bastards! Filthy jackals! Look at them, look at THAT! They’re eatin’ him like PIGS! Goddamned rotten ghouls!”

You can watch this on Tubi.

*In an interview in GoreZone, Fragrasso said this movie was, “designed with lots of love, but in the end it came out a test tube baby, a kind of abortion. But I’m satisfied with the end results.”

**In that script, Fragasso wrote of “an entire Third World made up of an army of zombies, who the armed forces of the industrialized nations would have had to fight.”

**Spoiler warning! I wonder if this rat is the father of the rats we meet at the end of Rats: The Night of Terror?

You can listen to the podcast about this movie here:

After creating some of the best gialli of the ‘70s, director Sergio Martino entered the cannibal cycle here. When a British scientist disappears in the jungles of New Guinea, his wife hires an American anthropologist lead her deep into a green inferno of graphic violence, steamy nudity and several of the most notorious scenes in the entire genre. Scanned in 4K from the original camera negative with over 3 hours of special features, this has a new interview with Martino, audio commentary by Claire Donner of the Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies and more.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

Also known as La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal Godand Prisoner of the Cannibal God, don’t be fooled by the pedigree of having big stars like Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. This film may seem restrained at first, but it goes absolutely insane by the final ten minutes. I mean, when has Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) ever steered us wrong?

Susan Stevenson (Andress, the original Bond girl) is looking for her husband Henry, an anthropologist who has gone missing in the jungles of New Guinea. Along with her brother Arthur and Professor Edward Foster (Keach), they travel to the mountain Ra Ra Me, a cursed place where the authorities will not allow expeditions.

Of course, they go there. What did you expect? They’re stupid white people. The jungle thanks them with attacks from spiders, snakes and alligators. And then Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?), a jungle guide, joins their party.

Bad idea. Arthur has sex with one of the native girls, who is already married, but a cannibal attacks and kills both the husband and wife. A missionary makes them leave, as they have brought nothing but sin, adultery and death to his village. Don’t fuck in the woods. And don’t bring your Western values to the jungle.

It turns out that none of their reasons for coming to the island are altruistic. Susan and Arthur have no interest in finding her husband, but are instead looking for uranium deposits. Foster is there just to find the tribe of cannibals who had taken him captive in the past so he can wipe them off the face of the earth.

On the way, a waterfall takes Foster after Arthur doesn’t save him. And they reach the mountain, which isn’t just a uranium mine. It’s made from uranium. And how do we know that? Well, Susan’s husband’s body is being worshipped as a god because the Geiger counter he had keeps ticking, like a heartbeat.

At this point, the film rewards you by going completely off the rails, descending into chaos. A native attacks Susan, but is stopped by the tribe and castrated, then his penis is cooked and eaten. Another villager has sex with a giant pig. Meanwhile, the drums build in a hypnotic rhythm as another female villager masturbates (this is from the “director’s special selection” version, there are several cuts of the film). As this happens, Susan is stripped and smeared with orange honey by two naked female cannibals before being fed her own brother. Manolo is tortured. It feels like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, one of the only moments where the Martino who delivered a quick succession of giallo a decade or so before rears his artistic head.

Then, it’s over, with Manolo and Susan escaping. I mean, one would think that there would be years of therapy after this. But I don’t know. Perhaps she can get over this easier than most.

This isn’t a great movie. It might not even be good. It is entertaining for the last section, but there’s also the problematic issue of animal torture in the film — a monkey is slowly eaten by a snake and lizard being cut apart. Martino claims he tacked on these scenes at the distributor’s insistence. I guess the cannibal audience — an outgrowth of the audience for mondo films — needed more than just Ursula’s breasts and a dummy of Keach getting killed for their kicks.

This Black Friday, Severin, director Bruno Mattei and screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi take us to 225 A.B. (After The Bomb), as a gang of scavengers discover a seemingly abandoned city – including sets originally built for Once Upon a Time In America – only to become prey for millions of flesh-hungry rats. This has been scanned in 4K from the original camera negative for the first time ever and has 3 hours of new and archival special features and a bonus CD of the recently discovered/remastered soundtrack, plus”Under The Black Sky” by Pornographie Exclusive, a Severin produced music video with Geretta Geretta.

There’s also a brand new novelization by Brad Carter, who worked with original screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi!

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

“In the Christian year 2015, the insensitivity of man finally triumphs and hundreds of atomic bombs devastate all five continents. Terrified of the slaughter and destruction, the few survivors of the disaster seek refuge under the ground. From that moment begins the era that will come to be called “after the bomb” — the period of the second human race. A century later, several men, dissatisfied with the system imposed on them by the new humanity, choose to revolt and live on the surface of the Earth as their ancestors did. So, yet another race begins, that of the new primitives. The two communities have no contact for a long period. The humans still living below ground are sophisticated and despise the primitives, regarding them as savages. This story begins on the surface of the Earth in the year 225 A.B. (After the Bomb).”

Rats the Night of Terror begins with a punk gang investigating a mysterious town. Let’s meet the folks we’re going to spend the next 105 minutes with. Kurt and Taurus (Massimo Vanni, Warriors of the Wasteland) share the leadership responsibilities, but Duke really wants to take over. Then there’s Chocolate (Geretta Geretta from Demons), a poorly named black woman who gets flour all over herself and dances around while yelling, “I’m whiter than you!” Obviously Italian directors in 1984 were not yet “woke.” Lucifer and Lilith are, of course, a couple. At least she has plenty of fashion sense, traveling through the end of days wearing a cape and fedora. Noah is the resident genius, while Video is an expert at video games. Yep, that’s why they brought him along, despite the fact that there are no video games left. Deus has a shaved head with a strange symbol, is given to mystic rantings and has on one of The Warriors’ vests. Finally, we have Diana, who wears a studded headband and is the girlfriend of Barry Gibb lookalike Kurt, and Myrna, whose scream is ready to reduce your eardrums to quivering masses of cartilage.

Surprisingly, the gang finds plenty of food in this town. Of course, they also discover plenty of mutilated bodies and lots of rats. But at least the town looks nice, maybe because it’s the same set as Once Upon a Time in America.

Why aren’t the rats eating the food? Look, this was written and directed by Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, so you better be ready to throw logic into the cold, dead void of space. What else can you expect from the team that brought you Zombie 3, The Other Hell and Robowar? And you may also know Fragasso from another film that makes perfect sense, Troll 2. Just like that film, which has nothing to do with the movie it succeeds, this was billed as the third part of Enzo G. Castellari’s Bronx Warriors series. Again — check logical storytelling at la porta.

Luckily for our heroes, they discover a hydroponic growing system that’s made the kindest bud ever known to man. Just kidding — the crops are fruit, vegetables and plants, along with purified water.

Night falls and everyone goes to sleep in the same room. Lilith and Lucifer have sex while everyone else either watches or performs their signature character move, such as polishing a guitar or meditating. Our young lovers get stuck in their sleeping bag while everyone laughs at them, using that hearty guffaw that only Italian dubbed voices can perform. Lilith ends up deciding not to have any more sex — her Southern accent is beyond reproach — and Lucifer stalks off, while she zips herself back into that troublesome sleeping bag.

That’s when our merry band discovers that while they may have dressed for a Road Warrior ripoff, they took a wrong turn at Barter Town and ended up in a slasher film.

Even after the bombs drop, you should know better than to have sex in one of these affairs. That means we can cross off our demonically named couple. He just falls into a hole of rats whereas she gets stuck in that cursed sleeping bag as rats climb in. When the rest of the crew discovers her, a rat climbs out from her mouth in a scene that’s sure to make you either laugh uncontrollably, puke out your last meal or some combination thereof.

I just had a flash — the way everyone is dressed in this film, including Kurt in his white shirt and red ascot, it’s as if the Scooby Gang tried to escape New York. The costumes in this film are fabulous! Good work, Elda Chinellato!

This film sets new standards for rats killing humans. How did they achieve such special effects? One assumes that someone was off camera, just tossing rodents at the unfortunate cast. Well, one doesn’t have to assume, because that’s pretty much exactly what happened, PETA be damned.

Meanwhile, Noah gets attacked by rats, so they decide to scare the rodents off with a flamethrower. Bad idea, unless you enjoy barbecuing your friends. Then, they discover that the rats have eaten their tires off of their motorcycles. How did they do such a thing? What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!

Myrna continues to scream at any and every opportunity while our heroes barricade themselves into the building and wonder, “Has there ever been worse dubbing in a film?” No, my friends. No, there has not. Instead of just asking you rhetorically to imagine the diseases a rat can give you, this film lists them at length.

Who is the biggest enemy? Duke or the rats? Well, Duke may be shooting at them with a machine gun, but he hasn’t eaten anyone from within yet. The good guys keep giving Duke chance after chance, even after he’s more than proved that he’s a ne’er do well. Eventually, he blows himself and Myrna up real good.

Diana just can’t take it any longer, so she slits her wrists. Then, Video learns that the building they’re hiding in was an experimental station for something called Return to Light. Not “Remain In Light.” That’s a Talking Heads record. Also, the rats are super intelligent and see this place as an affront. ”This is worse than being dead,” says Kurt, while he sashays in his little pirate costume.

Have you ever thought, “It must be really fun to be an actor?” Then you weren’t in this movie. For the entire running time, giant piles of rats are poured everywhere and anywhere and on just about everyone.

The rats finally try to break the door down to the control room and all hell breaks loose. Meanwhile, these guys in yellow hazmat suits and masks from The Crazies start walking through the streets.

Deus is killed by Myrna’s corpse and even Kurt is killed by a bunch of rats that fly at him from every angle. Video and Chocolate are then saved by the people in the hazmat suits, who have been gassing all of the rats.  

Here’s where Rats: The Night of Terror unveils its shock ending. The hazmat guys are the people from Delta 2. Chocolate then says to one of her rescuers, ““Once, someone told me they read in a book that we all lived on the Earth together, that we were all brothers. The book was called the Bible, and it said that God created man and animals.” The leader of the men takes off his mask and he’s no man at all — he’s a human rat!

It’s a twist ending that isn’t explained and doesn’t make any sense at all! It would be like Peyton Farquhar shat his pants at the end of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge instead of getting lynched!

Rats: The Night of Terror isn’t a good movie. But it’s a great movie. A movie that you can tell people about and they’ll say, “That’s not a real movie.” But it is. It totally is.

Available during Severin’s Black Friday sale, this UHD of Umberto Lenzi’s film has so many extras, including commentary by Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth; an interview with Lenzi; a Deodato Meats Lenzi featurette; the documentary Me Me Lai Bites Back; interviews; newly discovered alternate footage; a trailer and an exclusive booklet by Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

What happens when you throw assassins in New York City, cannibals in the jungle and a Jim Jones-like cult leader into a big pot and set it to boil? You get Eaten Alive!

Sheila (Janet Agren, City of the Living Dead, Hands of Steel) is searching for her sister, Diana (Paola Senatore, Emanuelle in America)who has disappeared in the jungle. She hires Mark (Robert Kerman, Cannibal Holocaust) to help her find her way through the jungle. Oh yeah — and there are killers in the city using blow darts. That doesn’t matter so much once we’re in the jungle.

When they find Diana — after being chased by cannibals — they learn that she has joined the cult of Jonas (Ivan Rassimov, everyone cheer when he shows up to make this movie awesome), who abuses, murders, manipulates and mindfucks everyone and anyone he gets close to. Seriously, the minute Jonas shows up, this film goes off the rails. First, he burns a man on a funeral pyre and then orders his wife Mowara (Me Me Lai, who thanks to appearances in this film, Last Cannibal World and Man from Deep River is pretty much to this genre as Edwige Fenech, Barbara Bouchet or Nieves Navaro are to giallo) to be ritually raped. Then, he hypnotizes Sheila and takes her on an altar using a snake phallus covered in venom and blood (yep, really).

Jonas preaches the Book of Isaiah and pretty much owns everyone he can get his hands on, but Mowara, Sheila, Mark and Diana all attempt to escape. Diana and Mowara are overtaken by cannibals, with Diana graphically devoured while her sister and Mark watch helplessly. A helicopter arrives at the last minute to save them while the film goes into full exploitation mode, with the cult killing themselves ala Jonestown, leaving only one female survivor.

Oh man, I forgot! Mel Ferrer (The Visitor, Nightmare City) shows up as a professor!

Director Umberto Lenzi knows how to make a down and dirty film. He also knows how to keep it entertaining. Just witness other films he’s done like Ghosthouse! Plus, he’s the master of recycling, as this film re-uses the crocodile death and a woman being eaten from his 1972 film Sacrifice! (also starring Rassimov and Me Me Lai), Me Me Lai’s death from Ruggero Deodato’s Jungle Holocaust and a castration, a monkey being devoured and a man being eaten by a crocodile from Sergio Martino’s Slave of the Cannibal God. You could say he…cannibalized those movies! Sorry.

Again, keep in mind that these are rough films. They’re nearly indefensible, to be honest. I kind of wish the story of Jonas and his cult was more of the movie, with less of the cannibals. But you know, I can’t send notes back to Lenzi with a time machine or anything!

Marco Brambilla is a Milan-born, New York City-based video collage and installation artist, which doesn’t make him a natural choice to direct a Sylvester Stallone movie. He also directed Excess Baggage, Dinotopia and Abominable, but if you said, “Who should direct a slam-bang action film?” I would not answer with a video installation artist who comments on visual overload through his work.

1996: Maniac Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) kidnaps a number of hostages and hides in an abandoned building (the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company in Louisville, Kentucky, which was scheduled for demolition, substitutes for a Los Angeles building). This lures in LAPD Sgt. John Spartan (Stallone) — “Send a maniac to catch one” — who jumps out of a helicopter directly into combat. Spartan had done a thermal scan and no bodies were found, so he goes in guns blazing.

Unfortunately, the hostages were already dead and their bodies are found in the rubble of the exploded building. Phoenix claims that Spartan knew he had hostages and attacked anyway. The question of why does the court believe a man who has killed numerous people over a cop comes to mind here, but if you’re going to ask questions that make sense, you’re not ready for 1990’s action films.

Phoenix and Spartan are incarcerated in the California Cryo-Penitentiary, where they are frozen and given subliminal rehabilitation techniques while they sleep.

2032: Phoenix has a parole hearing and escapes, armed with the skills he needs to survive in the future, like computer hacking. Remembering that it takes a maniac to catch one, Lieutenant Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock, who took over the role from Lori Petty after just two days of filming) thaws out Spartan.

Spartan wakes up to the peaceful world San Angeles — Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara all in one city, kind of like Mega-City One from Judge Dredd — and discovers that he is a man out of time. It’s the most politically correct world ever, a place where physical contact and swearing are illegal and anything unhealthy is banned.

It’s also a place where Taco Bell is the only survivor of the Franchise Wars and is now considered the finest restaurant in the world. In Europe, where Taco Bell is less known, this movie substitutes Pizza Hut. Luckily, the new Arrow 4K UHD release allows you to see both versions.

Taco Bell did a Demolition Man pop up to celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con.

Spartan and Phoenix battle at a museum that has outlawed weapons, where the villain meets Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne, who lent his voice to The Black Cauldron and The Plague Dogs). Cocteau is an evangelical peace-loving ruler who has been in charge of San Angeles since the Great Earthquake of 2010. Phoenix finds that he can’t kill him because the leader is the one who programmed him while he was in cryosleep.

He did all this so that Phoenix will murder Edgar Friendly (Dennis Leary), the leader of the Scraps, an underground gang that resists his absolute power. Huxley figures this all out and Spartan tries to stop him. Unfortunately, Phoenix also has an army of thawed criminals. He taunts Spartan by telling him that he killed all the hostages before the bombs went off, doomed the hero cop to 36 years of cryo-prison for no reason.

Phoenix kills Dr. Cocteau, thanks to one of his men not being programmed, and tries to take over the future. Spartan stops him and blows up the cryo-prison in the process. He suggests that the peaceful future can only succeed if the Scraps and the above ground people learn to work together. He kisses Huxley and they walk away together.

It’s pretty amazing how much Judge Dredd took from this film, like Rob Schneider’s character and Adrienne Barbeau as the voice of the computer. It’s an early pass at that film and actually a million times better. It doesn’t feel dated at all, despite how silly it is at times. And by silly, I mean awesome.

Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps) actually did some uncredited rewrites to the film. It was his idea to show the two adversaries in 1996, saying “If you don’t show Kansas, Oz isn’t all that special.”

Of all the ridiculous ideas in this film, the bathroom seashells take the prize. Stallone has explained them by saying that the first two seashells were to be used like chopsticks to pull waste from the body and the third was used to scrape what was left. I mean, just the thought of how the three seashells work makes me pause this movie every time and try to comprehend what they’re all about.

The real explanation comes from screenwriter Daniel Waters, who wanted a scene where even the bathroom in the future would cause Spartan problems. So he called another screenwriter and asked for ideas. The answer? “I have a bag of seashells on the toilet as a decoration.” Waters replied, “OK, I’ll make something out of that.”

Hungarian science fiction writer István Nemere claims that most of that script was based on his 1986 novel Holtak Harca (Fight of the Dead), in which a terrorist and a soldier are frozen and then awaken to a society that has outlawed violence. He’s alleged that there is a conspiracy where a man has been illegally selling the ideas of Eastern European authors to Hollywood after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

According to this article at The Toy Box, the Mattel action figures that came out for this film basically took the body parts from The New Adventures of He-Man figures and added new heads. That said — where else can you find a Dennis Leary action figure?

There are tons of small roles in here filled with actors and personalities that I love, like Jesse Ventura and Jack Black. Jackie Chan was Stallone’s first choice to play Simon Phoenix, but Jackie doesn’t play bad guys, even when they planned a sequel to this.

I know I said earlier about ignoring plot holes, but there’s a major moment that isn’t touched on in the film. After Spartan learns that his wife died, he asks about his daughter before being cut off. In truth, before the Wasteland battle, he meets a Scrap named Kate (Vasilika Vanya Marinkovic, Jacklyn Hyde from the 2000’s reboot of Women of Wrestling) who he learns is his daughter. You can see him protecting her during the battle and she also stands next to Friendly when he’s introduced to Associate Bob at the end (I kind of adore Associate Bob, who constantly says “greeting and salutations” a line from another Daniel Waters movie, Heathers).

In fact, there’s a ton of this movie that was cut to achieve a more teen-friendly rating, including more of the scene where Phoenix rips out Warden Smithers’ eye, Phoenix spraying a crowd with machine gun fire, Phoenix killing Zachary Lamb and a battle between Jesse Ventura’s character — who has been overdosed with adrenaline — and Spartan. All of these cuts make the continuity of the battle scenes in the Scraps underground lair and the cryo-prison an absolute mess.

Best of all, when this movie in Kuwait, it was called Rambo the Destroyer. That’s a carnie movie that even Italian film producers would have to applaud.

I love Demolition Man, a film that gets its title from a song by The Police that Grace Jones sang on. It’s big, dumb, loud and completely insipid — and inspired — in all the best of ways.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of this movie is, as you’d expect, overflowing with awesomeness. Start with a brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Marco Brambilla, then add in the domestic Taco Bell and international Pizza Hut versions of the film presented via seamless branching. Then you get all kinds of extras, like three audio commentary tracks: one from director Marco Brambilla and screenwriter Daniel Waters, another with film historian Mike White of the Projection Booth podcast and an archival commentary with Brambilla and producer Joel Silver. There are also new interviews with production designer David L. Snyder, stunt coordinator Charles Percini, special make-up effects artist Chris Biggs and body effects set coordinator Jeff Farley, as well as a new visual essay by film scholar Josh Nelson, a trailer and an image gallery. It’s all inside limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Laurie Greasley that includes a 60-page perfect bound collector’s book featuring new writing by film critics Clem Bastow, William Bibbiani, Priscilla Page and Martyn Pedler; a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Laurie Greasley; 6 postcard sized artcards and Three Seashells and Edgar Friendly graffiti stickers.

You can get it from MVD.

Les Hackel (James Marsters) is down on his luck. Maybe even worse than that, as he wakes up to find that an explosive device has been implanted in his neck. Now, he must carry out heinous crimes in order to stay alive while trying to identify the mastermind ordering him to keep killing.

Also: This is a puppet movie.

Director and writer Evan Marlowe said, “We resolved (for some insane reason) to use only realistic lifelike hand puppets in actual settings, just like any other movie. No CGI backgrounds or actors wearing prosthetic makeup. This sort of thing has never been done. The Dark Crystal comes close, though there, the designers weren’t bound by the confines of reality. We’ve had a few incredibly skilled people helping out. Jeff Farley has been our lead puppet fabricator. Again, this kind of work isn’t common, so some amount of trial and error has been needed to find the balance of aesthetic, durability and function. Meaning, the heads need to look great on camera, hold up well under shooting environments that are often hostile,and let the puppeteer emote without too much effort. When it comes to the actual shoot, our puppeteer Danny Montooth lip syncs with each line, played on loop on my magical iPad until all the aspects (lighting, camera movement, mouth motion, eye line) are just right. Once I’ve got the footage, I edit it up and then our visual effects guy John Sellings smooths out any problems. When a scene is done, it gets color-corrected and graded, and then the sound and score are added.”

It took six years to make this movie. It also has an incredible voice cast, including Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Jordan Peele and Christopher McDonald. And there hasn’t been a movie ever before that looks or feels like this.

For those that can get past just how strange it looks to have human-sized puppets in every role, this movie is pretty awesome. Reality pretty much falls apart as Les has to place poison gas in workplaces, watch assassination TV shows and even slice the head off a baby which soon sprouts tentacles. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Can we even be sure after the end?

If you want to see a movie that goes all the way and beyond, Abruptio is for you.

You can learn more at the official site.

Did you see that name and logo above? Anchor Bay Entertainment is back. The home entertainment and distribution company was a favorite of collectors during the early years of DVD and blu ray. Umbrelic Entertainment has revived the brand with a mission to release quality films that entertain, inspire, and challenge audiences.

The Anchor Bay blu ray of this movie comes with a commentary track with writer/director Evan Marlowe and producer Kerry Marlowe, a second commentary with puppeteer Danny Montooth, interviews with the performers and filmmakers and the first pressing will have a limited edition slip cover.

You can get this from MVD.

Martha Peters and Mary Davis noticed that women weren’t making many horror movies in the 1960s, so they wrote this, which would be directed by Tom Moore, who  produced Horror High, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The Norseman and directed, wrote and produced Return to Boggy Creek.

As for Peters and Davis, only Davis would work on another film, writing the script for S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth.

This starts like Black Sunday, as a witch (Marie Santell) is being put to death after having been betrayed by her coven. As they take her to the gallows, she says that she will come back for revenge on the family of MacIntyre Stuart (Robert Elston), who is why she has been charged.

Three hundred years later, Professor Mac Stuart (Elston) is dumb enough to have a party and invite his swinging hippy students over to his place, where Jill (Anitra Walsh) steals one of Mac’s books, the Red Book of Appin, and soon becomes possessed by the witch after she, Sharon (Barbara Brownell) and Harry (Jack Gardner) — her boyfriend Alan (Darryl Wells) doesn’t want to play with evil — conjure up the evil woman, who ends up killing all of her friends to become the ruler of our world.

Pretty simple, but also pretty awesome, as 1972 was a way groovier place than 2024. The strangest thing is that instead of, you know, just killing Mac, the possessed Jill asks him all about telephones and coffee while a Moog synth soundtrack dibble dabbles. Man, could we all just live in this?

You can watch this on YouTube.