You know Jeff Daniel Phillips. Whether he’s playing Uncle Gilbert or a frantic warden in Rob Zombie’s filmography, he has a face made for the flickering light of a drive-in screen. In Cursed in Baja, Phillips steps behind the camera as writer and director, casting himself as Pirelli, an ex-lawman who looks like he hasn’t slept since the mid-90s and has spent every waking hour since carrying the collective sins of Los Angeles on his back.

Pirelli is tasked with a simple job: head south of the border, find the wayward heir to a massive L.A. fortune and bring him home. It’s the kind of setup that usually leads to a standard action flick, but Phillips isn’t interested in being predictable. Once Pirelli crosses into Baja, the movie takes a hard left turn into a hallucinatory, soul-searching nightmare.

This isn’t just a hunt for a rich kid; it’s an existential dive into the dirt. After all, the last person who took the job just up and faded away. And just when you think you’ve settled into a gritty neo-noir, the film throws a curveball: a Russian cult that worships the Chupacabra. Yes, you read that right. Pirelli has to navigate double-crosses, his own crumbling psyche and goat-sucking-cryptid zealots.

Even better, Barbara Crampton has a cameo.

Extras include a commentary track by Jeff Daniel Phillips and a making of. You can get it from MVD.

If you’ve spent any time digging through the bargain bins of independent horror, you know that clown movies are usually a dime a dozen. Most of them rely on a scary mask and some greasepaint to do the heavy lifting. But every once in a while, a movie comes along that decides to swap the greasepaint for five-gallon buckets of stage blood.

Enter Marcus Koch’s 2007 splatter-fest, 100 Tears.

Gurdy (Jack Amos) was just an average, introverted circus clown until a false accusation of rape led to a brutal beating by the circus strongman. Gurdy didn’t take the turn the other cheek approach; instead, he took the strangle everyone and start a cross-country massacre way. 

Fast forward, and Gurdy is now the Teardrop Killer, an urban legend following the circus from town to town, leaving behind a trail of bodies and a signature teardrop drawn in blood. When two reporters, Mark Webb (Joe Davison, who also wrote the script) and Jennifer Stevenson (Georgia Chris), start sniffing around the trail of bodies, they find themselves trapped in a warehouse of horrors.

But this isn’t just a “kill-the-intruders” flick. Gurdy finds his long-lost daughter, Christine (Raine Brown), and instead of a heartwarming reunion, they decide to make mass murder a family business.

If you know Marcus Koch, you know he’s an effects wizard first and a director second. The budget here was a mere $75,000, but every cent is on the screen in the form of viscera. We’re talking giant meat cleavers, decapitations, and a halfway house massacre that sets the tone early: this movie wants to make you lose your lunch.

100 Tears is the definition of a cult film. It’s rough around the edges, the acting can be “theatrical” (it is a circus movie, after all), and the plot logic occasionally takes a back seat to the next practical effect.

Extras include two commentaries—one with director Marcus Koch and a second with Koch and Stephen Biro; an interview with Koch; a making-of; behind-the-scenes; outtakes; Koch’s childhood shorts; and a trailer. You can get this from MVD.

Everyone wants to be in the record books. John Penney’s Zyzzyx Road is in them for the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history.

How low? We’re talking thirty dollars.

If we’re being honest and subtracting the ten bucks that producer/star Leo Grillo refunded to the film’s own makeup artist, the actual theatrical run of this movie netted a crisp twenty-dollar bill. That’s not a box office return; that’s lunch at a diner.

But behind the trivia is a sun-baked noir that feels like it was cursed from the jump. Shot in 18 days in the Mojave Desert, the production was a gauntlet. You’ve got Tom Sizemore, acting his heart out while being arrested mid-production for failing drug tests. You’ve got Katherine Heigl, right as Grey’s Anatomy was making her a household name, stuck in the sand with a shovel. And you’ve got Leo Grillo as Grant, an accountant who makes the classic mistake of thinking a Vegas tryst with a girl named Marissa won’t end with a dead body in his trunk.

The plot is pure desert-noir fever dream: Grant and Marissa (Heigl) kill her jealous ex, Joey (Sizemore), or at least they think they do. They head out to Zyzzyx Road to bury the evidence, but the trunk ends up empty, and the desert starts playing tricks on Grant’s head. Is Joey a ghost? Is Marissa a succubus? Is the heat just melting Grant’s brain?

Zyzzyx Road isn’t actually the bottom-of-the-barrel trash its reputation suggests. It’s a gritty, sweaty little thriller that suffered from a bizarre distribution loophole. Because of the Screen Actors Guild rules for low-budget films, the producers had to give it a domestic theatrical run before they could sell it overseas. So, they rented one screen in Dallas, Texas, for a week, played it once a day at noon and hoped nobody would show up.

Mission accomplished.

Sizemore is predictably great as the menacing Joey. He always excelled at playing guys you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley or an abandoned mine. Heigl does the femme fatale-in-over-her-head bit well enough, and the Mojave scenery provides enough natural production value to keep things from looking too cheap.

It’s a movie that exists in the shadow of its own zero-dollar mythos, but if you look past the $30 price tag, it’s a solid piece of independent filmmaking that captures the feeling of a bad weekend in Vegas that just won’t end.

You can get this from MVD.

If you saw The Climb back in 2019, you know that Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have turned toxic male friendship into an endurance sport into a high art form. In Splitsville, they’re back to poke at the bruises of the modern ego, this time with Neon backing the play and Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona along for the ride to wonder why they ever let these two into their lives.

The film kicks off with the kind of chaotic energy that only Covino can direct: Carey (Marvin) and Ashley (Arjona) are attempting highway sex when they witness a horrific car crash. It’s the kind of traumatic inciting incident that makes most people cling to their partners. Instead, Ashley looks at the wreckage, looks at Carey and basically says, “Yeah, I want a divorce. Also, I’ve been cheating.“

Carey does what any broken man in a Covino/Marvin script does: he retreats to his best friend, Paul (Covino). But Paul and his wife Julie (Johnson) aren’t exactly the rock of stability he needs. They’ve gone enlightened with an open marriage. Naturally, Carey, in a mix of grief, confusion, and “why not?” ends up sleeping with Julie after she smashes a piece of pottery over a stranger’s head. If Dakota Johnson smashing things is your vibe, this is your movie.

What follows is a tangled web of ethical non-monogamy that is anything but ethical and mostly just hilarious. Carey tries to save his marriage by suggesting an open relationship to Ashley, then proceeds to move all of her lovers into their house just to be a passive-aggressive weirdo. The montage depicting their romantic encounters was filmed as a single, extended continuous take, with actors repeatedly changing wardrobe and staging positions off camera to create the illusion of multiple time jumps within a single shot.

Meanwhile, Paul’s life is cratering with bankruptcy, indictments and the realization that he only suggested the open marriage because he was insecure. It turns out everyone was lying. Paul and Julie weren’t actually sleeping with other people; they were just playing a high-stakes game of emotional chicken. By the time Nicholas Braun shows up as Matt the Mentalist, the movie has devolved into a glorious, fire-damaged mess of birthday parties, jail time and paternity questions.

Splitsville is a mean, lean, mid-budget comedy that reminds us that no matter how much we talk about boundaries and openness, we’re all just one stolen jet ski away from a total breakdown.

Bob Martin (Vinnie Bilancio) is your average college kid with bad skin, worse grades and a diet consisting mostly of instant ramen and existential dread. That all changes when he moves into a spare room owned by Crystal Traum (Wendi Winburn). She’s the kind of ice-cold blonde who looks like she stepped off a 1940s noir set. She’s the face of Crystalnetics, a New Age movement that promises to align your cellular frequency.

Under Crystal’s guidance, Bob undergoes the Prismatic Purge, a sequence involving strobe lights, cheap CGI geometric shapes, and a heavy dose of New Age techno.

Suddenly, Bob is in his true form. His body has improved, his brain is firing on all cylinders. He feels like a god. Bilancio plays the post-purge Bob with a hilarious, hyper-caffeinated intensity. He stops blinking. He starts speaking in frequencies. He carries himself with the unearned confidence of a man who just discovered the secret of the universe in a bowl of crystals.

While his skin clears up, Bob starts noticing strange anomalies, like his sweat smelling vaguely of ozone and his reflection in the mirror moving a half-second slower than he does.

What strikes me here is that for as unbelieving as Bob has been about every religion he studies, once Crystalnetics works for him, he’s all in. But, as they say, if it’s too good to be true, you’re probably about to be eaten by a stop-motion space slug.

Enter a weary detective with a folder full of accidental deaths and a theory that Crystal’s followers are checking out early. His questions lead Bob to start poking around the inner sanctum and discovering that Total Enlightenment is actually just a fancy term for becoming an appetizer. Yes, all this getting clean is just purging the body of pollution so that it tastes better for a kind of, sort of Elder God.

Before the credits roll, he’s dodging cloaked goons, battling rubbery monstrosities and squaring off against the cult’s leader, R. R. Deepak. He isn’t just a leader; he’s a physical manifestation of corporate greed and cosmic hunger.

From a Tom Cruise-ish actor named Dusty Chase (Tim Gannon) to a cleanse that makes sure you never get sick or tired — and clean — but just leaves you in your underwear while a stop-motion demon turns you into a snack, this movie has everything I love all in one place.

Director and writer Jeff Leroy (Rat Scratch Fever) is someone who turns a low budget into a high concept, something lost on so many direct to streaming movies today. I love that a monster movie can also be about indiviuality, Scientology and celebrity worship, all made with the kind of money most movies spend on energy drinks.

“The spilling of blood brings one closer to God.” Spill that goopy blood, bring me that rubbery monster, strobe those images, send in the gorgeous women dressed like a Church of Satan spread in a late 60s men’s magazine and bring me the detective who thinks you can shoot an eldritch horror from beyond the wall of sleep with a revolver.

I am so beyond all in for this movie and you should be too.

There’s also The Screaming: Reborn on the Visual Vengeance release, which has CGI instead of physical effects for the demon god. Your mileage may vary on whether you prefer this look or the way the film was first made, but the cut feels tighter and more shadowy in a good way.

Extras include a CD soundtrack of the original score by Jay Woelfel, director supervised master from existing tape masters, commentary with Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop Magazine, a making of, The Screaming: Reborn, a director remastered alternate verison of film with commentary from director Jeff Leroy, producer Dave Sterling and star Vinnie Bilancio, an image gallery, trailers, a mini-poster, “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker set, a reversible sleeve featuring original VHS art and a limited edition O-Card.  You can get it from MVD.

David Wascavage is probably best known for Suburban Sasquatch, but before that movie, he made this berserk film that is all about a scientist named Silas Purcell (David Weldon) whose parents (played by Loretta and Edward Wascavage, the director’s mom and dad) send him to a bed and breakfast to try and calm down. He brings his work with him — trust me, I get it — and ends up transforming the woods around the home of Jade Moon (Mary Wascavage, who also wrote the movie with David) into a killing field populated by mushrooms who live on human meat.

Also staying at the B&B are overly stressed and roided out pro wrestler Tony Ignitus (the much beloved Dave Bonavita) and a smarmy real estate agent named Jackson P. Jackson (Dave Wascavage, getting into his own movie), as well as a survivalist named Major Wang (Wes Miller).

By the end of the movie, hundreds of mushrooms of all shapes and sizes have taken over and the only weapon that destroys them is balsamic vinegar, a fact that made me laugh so loudly and for so long that I lost consciousness.

While Suburban Sasquatch had the man in the carpet-remnant suit, Fungicide relies on early-2000s digital audacity. The mushrooms range from the cute decoys, which are small, colorful, and bobbing with a rhythmic digital pulse that lures in the unsuspecting guests to giant humanoids and even a moment where a humanoid mushroom vomits a human skeleton, which is everything that I want movies to be. I also absolutely love that every time someone encounters one of these mushrooms for the first time, they think they’re cute and try to pet them, which always goes bad.

The choice of balsamic vinegar as the ultimate weapon is the kind of writing you only get when you aren’t beholden to a studio notes session. It turns the final act into a culinary counter-attack. It begs the question: Is it the acidity? The vintage? Or does the fungus just have a very specific palate?

More movies should be less concerned about video fidelity and more about having fun. This film proves it.

Extras include director-approved SD master from original tape elements, new commentary from director Dave Wascavage and co-writer / co-prodcuer Mary Wascavage, archival commentary with Dave Wascavage, Mary Wascavage and David Weldon, commentary from Sam Panico of B&S About Movies — WHAT THAT’S ME! —  and Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum, commentary from Schlock And Awe Films, the full RIFFTRAX version of Fungicide, alternate opening credits, a deleted scene, outtakes, trailers, a reversible sleeve featuring original home video art, a “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker set, a limited edition O-Card for the FIRST PRESSING ONLY and a “Grow Your Own Killer Mushroom” seed packet. Get it from MVD.