Nathan (Hugo Dillon) and Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj) are dead. Nathan’s car hit Daniel’s motorcycle on an icy road and now they’re yelling at one another as two gates appear, a blue and red set. Daniel hears the singing of angels. Nathan, who has recently killed his wife in what he claims is an act of mercy, hears screams.

As Nathan and Daniel enter the red gateway, they finds several souls in the same place as him. And that’s when we realize this is a portmanteau of tales, telling us all about killer child Nina (Manon Maindivide) who works with Tony the Monster (Carl Laforêt) to murder people she doesn’t enjoy and a lawyer who goes by Julia (Ophélia Kolb) who hasn’t paid any attention to her daughter and now tries to keep a relationship after she kills herself. As for what happens to the men we met at the beginning, Norghul (Jean Rouceau) sentences Daniel to 4,000 years of solitude.

Director and writer Quarxx is a visual artist who makes this look gorgeous. As to how much sense it makes and how good of a movie it is, the answer lies in how much story you want versus how much graphic gorgeousness. It’s definitely bold even if you may just want to get back to the story that started this, which is usually not how you want a framing story to work in an anthology film.

The Arrow Video release of this film has interviews with Quarxx and special make-up/FX supervisor Olivier Afonso, an interview conducted with Quarxx while he captures footage of a baby being born, a making of, footage from the premiere, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anton Bitel, a director’s statement and director Q&A.

You can order this from MVD.

If anything, Nico Mastorakis knows how to put together a cast of actors that I get excited about. In this, he has Shannon Tweed, Norman Fell, Bubba Smith, John Vernon, Zsa Zsa Gabor, M. Emmet Walsh, Lou Ferrigno, Erik Estrada, Ted Lange, Billy Barty, Yvonne De Carlo, Little Richard, David Birney, Dick Gautier, Camilla Sparv (a one-time wife of Robert Evans) and former Miss Yugoslavia Natasha Pavlovich.

This is his chance to make Some Like It Hot, with Frank (Robert Caso) and Frank (Kevin Schon) having to become Ethel and Mirabelle when they take evidence against a mob boss in a briefcase switcharound. On the run from hitman Bruno (Brian Thompson, The Night Slasher and Shao Khan!), they end up in a beauty contest for a ketchup king named Rupert Hess (Herb Edelman). At some point, this forgets to be a Billy Wilder movie and becomes Casablanca.

Julie Gray is also in this and not only was she in School Spirit, Dr. Alien and Stryker, but she’s the girl in Ozzy’s video for “The Ultimate Sin.” Yes, that’s Spice Williams as Sam. She was also Vixis the female klingon in Star Trek V and Coach Drew in Fatal Games. And Bogart at the end? Robert Sacchi who is the Sam Spade-appearing detecting in The French Sex Murders.

I have a soft spot for this filmmaker. Reading the reviews of this, it seemed like he had punched some of these folks’ moms in the stomach or something. He just makes movies!

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

Yes, Nico Mastorakis, the same maniac who made Island of Death, Blind Date and The Zero Boys, made a Police Academy ripoff. It also checks off another box with an appearance by Phillip, who is pretty much James Bond. Also, because this is Mastorakis, there’s some full-frontal nudity.

Also, Mastorakis never meant to actually direct the film, but after seeing that some of the dailies, he fired the original director and took over.

Gerald Okamura, the Hard Master from the first G.I. Joe movie and one of the hatchet men in Big Trouble In Little China, is Chiba, a man who owns a ninja academy in Topanga Canyon. His enemy owns Beverly Hills Ninja Academy. And just like Camp North Star and Camp Mohawk, they must battle.

There’s a mime, a klutz, some attractive women, a wiseacre and all the things you expect from this genre. Is Police Academy ripoff a genre? It is now.

Becky LeBeau, whose IMDB resume has Joysticks, multiple David Lee Roth videos, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Back to School, The Under Achievers, Not of This Earth, Rock-A-Die Baby and both Munchie movies, is in this. That alone should give you reason to find a copy of your own.

Also: a band on the soundtrack is called The Piggy Dicks. That is now my favorite band name ever.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has a new interview with Gerald Okamura, looking back on his role as Chiba and his career as an actor and martial artist. You also get a trailer for the movie.

This set is available from MVD.

Julius Lazar (Dick Gautier) and his secretary Missy (Amy Lyndon) have finished up planning his next movie Sex and Violence when they decide to get away for the weekend and go to Hawaii. She has no idea what she’s doing, so that allows T.C. (Will Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmyer) to break in at the exact same time as two of Lazar’s disgruntled employees, Paco (Fernando Garzón) and Lee (John Kreng). Luckily, Bo has a second personality named Simon who is super strong — look, you’re watching a Nico Mastorakis movie, these are the plot twists you grow used to — and he’s able to defeat the two of them, setting T.C. up as Lazar and himself up as a director as young and morally unencumbered actresses show up to become famous in the next big movie from Hollywood’s most popular exploitation director.

If you’re looking for a movie just for nubile and often nude women, well, Mastorakis knew what you wanted. There are ninety women in this, including Bunty Bailey (Dolls, a-ha’s “Take On Me), Teri Weigel (one of the few women to be both a Playboy Playmate and Penthouse Pet, as well as an adult movie star), Roxanna Michaels (Caged Fury), Penny Wiggins (who was The Amazing Jonathan’s assistant Psychic Tanya), Marjean Holden (Sheeva from Mortal Kombat Annihilation), Christina Cardan (Chained Heat) as a non-SAG actress, Kahlena Marie (Streets of Death) as a SAG actress, stuntwoman Laura Albert, Heidi Paine (Wizards of the Demon Sword), Debra Lamb (both Stripped to Kill movies), Jesae (who became adult actress Elise di Medici), Becky Mullen (who was Sally the Farmer’s Daughter in GLOW and is also in the Van Halen video “Poundcake”) and Donna Spangler (Amityville Witches).

While all the women are trying to get a part, DuBois (Ted Lange) shows up with several members of the mob to take back the money that Lazar took from them for his new movie Pink Thunder. There’s also Michelle Wong (Julia Nickson, Rambo: First Blood Part II), who comes to audition just to tell Lazar how much she hates his movies and ends up becoming T.C.’s dream woman.

This has so many ridiculous scenes, including gay bodyguard ninja Brucie (Dan Spreaker) beating up an entire collection of bad guys and Bo getting his brains back from a hypnotist (Ji-Tu Cumbuka). None of it is politically correct, much of it is goofy and Mastorakis shot this because he was looking for somewhere fun to live. He stayed in the mansion that this was shot at for three weeks.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

Lenny (Mark Hennessy) and Bruce (Scott King) are taking photos of bikini girls on Venice Beach when they accidentally film a murder. The only clue? A woman with a rose tattoo on her butt. Now, Mr. Karrothers (John Vernon) is sending his hitmen after them.

Featuring a score by a very young in his career Hans Zimmer, this Nico Mastorakis directed and written movie moves fast and soon has Lenny and Bruce — along with Lenny’s bully brother Skip (Steve Donmyer) — catch up with that tattooed behind. It belongs to Christie (Hope Marie Carlton, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger) who, of course, once dated Skip. The law thinks she’s a killer but Lenny thinks otherwise.

You may or may not know, but I’ve been trying to watch every Tara Buckman movie, so I am pleased that she shows up here as the wife of Vernon’s character. Ted Lange also plays a man who is at once unhoused on the beach but perhaps the smartest character in the film.

This is a mix of high and lowbrow, as most of Mastorakis’ movies are. It has allusions to Blow Up while also naming a character Mario Argento. It’s also ridiculous at times, but never boring. I don’t believe Mastorakis can make a boring movie.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

Man, Nico Mastorakis made some crazy movies. Like this one, in which a bunch of teens on a Greek vacation discover an entirely new kind of drugs: audio cassettes that deliver orgasms via hallucination filmed music videos. No, really. What is this, The Digital Underground’s Sex Packets: The Movie?

It also has a soundtrack filled with songs by Chris de Burgh, the guy who wrote “Lady In Red,” so it has that going for it. Also, Seiko paid big money to get their Data 2000 watch into this movie, as if the people who watch Nico Mastorakis movies are looking to upgrade their digital watches.

This is a movie about an old man inside the cassettes trying to get the three heroes to find the second tape, which will weaponize the music video orgy inside. So basically Porky’s meets Videodrome but Debbie Harry never puts out a cigarette on her breast.

Yes, it’s exactly as odd as it sounds.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

Andrea (Adrienne Barbeau) is a widow whose husband was an astronaut. She’s come to Greece to raise her son Tim (Jeremy Licht). One day, walking the beach after a storm, they come across a man (Keir Dullea) in the surf. He doesn’t even remember who he is, so Andrea calls him Glenn. She begins to fall in love with him, while Tim sees him as a father figure. The island’s people seem to be weirded out by him, other than Dr. Barnaby (Peter Hobbs), who learns that he has two hearts. In time, Glenn tells him that if he ever had something like a father, he wished that it would be him.

Glenn ends up being Jesus — or the brother of Jesus — who has come here from the future. He has powers that we don’t and is able to see Tim get accidentally shoved off a cliff by a very cute dog in a scene that made my jaw drop. Glenn is able to bring him back to life, but when he’s unable to do the same for other kids, the village turns against him. Also: Why would Andrea give weed to a man she thinks is a murderer at worst and an amnesiac at best?

Dullea is really great in this, as he plays the confusion perfectly. It’s wild to see director and writer Nico Mastorakis tackle such a serious subject, nearly making both a Jesus Christ and superhero movie at the same time. If Jesus came back in time to Earth, I imagine that it would be only right if he got to sleep with Adrienne Barbeau.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

Based on the stage play The Terror by Howard W. Comstock and Allen C. Miller, Doctor X shouldn’t be disregarded by today’s horror fan just because it was made in 1932. It’s packed with murder, cannibalism, sex workers, strange relationships, frightening special effects and so much more. Because it was made in the two-color Technicolor process, it looks nothing like you’d think either, nearly a painting come to life. Large cities got to see this version while other countries and smaller towns only had black and white, which is how audiences saw this movie when it made its way to television in the 1950s.

It was feared that the color print was gone until the death of Jack Warner, who had one. The true color vision of Doctor X was donated to the UCLA Film & Television Archive, who did a digital restoration in 2020.

Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) is writing about The Moon Killer, a serial murderer who has been killing during every full moon. Each body has pieces missing, as if they were eaten, which has driven the police insane as they search for suspects.

Doctor Xavier (Lionel Atwill) is the police’s expert on the case, yet they believe that he may be the suspect as well. After all, the brains are removed with surgical skill with a scalpel similar to the one he uses. If not him, it could be the other experts at the Academy of Surgical Research: Dr. Wells (Preston Foster), an amputee who has written several studies of cannibalism; Dr. Haines (John Wray), a voyeur; Dr. Duke (Harry Beresford), who is paralyzed and Dr. Rowitz (Arthur Edmund Carewe), who is studying the mental impact of the moon.

The police are morons, as they trust Dr. X enough to let him investigate this case, bringing together all the suspects. Each of them is connected to an electrical system that tracks their heartbeat in the hopes that reenacting a murder will tell Dr. X who The Moon Killer is. Only Wells is not in this experiment, as the murderer has two hands while he has just one.

As Dr. Xavier’s butler Otto (George Rosener) and maid Mamie (Leila Bennett) act out the horrible slaughter, Taylor starts to fall for Dr. X’s daughter, Joanna (Fay Wray), despite the fact that she outright hates him for writing that her father was probably the suspect that everyone should watch for.

The lights go out and when they come back on, Rowitz is dead, a scalpel in his head. That night, when his body is set out, it gets cannibalized. Mamie runs and Joanne must take her place as the experiment continues, but that’s when the killer — SPOILER! — is revealed as Welles, who has been creating inhuman flesh and he wants to kill Dr. X’s daughter next.

She’s saved by Taylor and because this is a pre-Code horror movie, he sets Welles on fire and tosses him out a window.

The success of this movie led to Atwill and Wray appearing in Mystery of the Wax Museum. Before that release could be filmed — which also has effects by Max Factor — they were also in The Vampire Bat. While The Return of Dr. X is not a sequel, Night Monster, which also stars Atwill, is a remake.

The Moon Killer is based on Albert Fish, who was called the Moon Maniac. He was still murdering while this was being made, as he was arrested shortly after this was in theaters.

Doctor X is from some other world, a place filled with weird jokes, strange killers and a doctor’s home that seems like it’s more dungeon than domicile. I can’t wait to go back there again.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Here’s a drink.

The Moon Killer

• 2 oz. bourbon
• 4 oz. cider
• .5 oz. maple syrup
• 4 dashes angostura bitters
• Dash cinnamon
• Dash nutmeg

1. Mix all liquid ingredients in a glass with ice.
2. Accent with cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Manga creator Junji Ito grew up in a house where he was afraid to go to the bathroom, as it was at the end of a long underground tunnel filled with water crickets. While working as a dental technician, he was drawing at night and submitted a story to a magazine called Monthly Halloween that would become Tomie. The story was inspired by the death of a classmate, which Ito felt was odd that the boy just disappeared from the world. So he came up with the idea of a girl who died but just came back as if nothing has happened.

Director Ataru Oikawa didn’t want to make the movie version to be filled with gore, but more of a horrific youth drama. He still sought out Ito’s approval, taking parts from the original “Photograph” and “Kiss” stories and even had the creator’s approval for the casting of Miho Kanno as Tomie.

The police are looking into the murder of Tomie, a high school girl, which was followed over the next three years by the suicide or insanity of nine other students and a teacher. Soon, the detective assigned to the case learns that Tomie has been murdered and reborn in Gifu since the 1960’s, just as Japan joined the industrial era.

A classmate of Tomie, Tsukiko Izumisawa, can’t remember the three months around her friend’s murder. And oh yeah — her neighbor is nursing a strange baby that soon grows into another Tomie, which seduces Tsukiko’s boyfriend before attacking her at her therapist’s office by shoving cockroaches down her mouth. So our protagonist’s boyfriend does what any of us would do — he cuts the head off Tomie and takes Tsukiko to bury the body in the woods, which of course backfires. Tomie reappears and kisses Tsukiko full on the lips, who responds by setting her on fire.

That said, a few months later, Tsukiko begins to realize that she is becoming Tomie herself.

While not a horror movie, this certainly is a strange movie. For some reason, in the glut of Japanese horror that was badly remade in the U.S., this series never showed up. I would assume that’s because there’s no easy hook to grab on to.

The Arrow Video release of Tomie has audio commentary by critic and Japanese cinema expert Amber T.; interviews with director Ataru Oikawa, actress Mami Nakamura and producer Mikihiko Hirata; a trailer; an image gallery; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Zack Davisson and Eugene Thacker and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sara Deck.

You can buy it from MVD.