William Brown (Jonah Ray) is stuck. He wants to be a prog musician and that’s not something that’s going to make you rich but it might make you creatively fulfilled, as long as you realize that no one else is going to get the music you play. He’s working at a studio for Scott (Thomas Lennon), engineering a session of druggy Caleb Bang Jansen (Ryan Kattner) and being berated for everything he does. At least he has his old videos of Swig (Jon Daly, a yinzer) to inspire him.

Home isn’t much better. While his wife Emily (Kiran Deol) is supportive, he also has to deal with his landlady (Randee Heller, Alice from Soap and Daniel LaRusso’s mom) making him fix the fuse box, a rampaging Daryl the pig (played by Kosher the pig) and a new neighbor named Vlad (Alex Winter), who won’t stop blasting music, moving furniture and screaming. It’s enough to push him to do something insane.

After failing to make Vlad stop being so horrible — he calls the cops at one point and his wife ends up liking the old man — he tries to talk to him. It ends up in a fistfight and Vlad is accidentally impaled. That’s when William starts hearing the voice of Swig, telling him how to get rid of the body, which ends up being more than one body. It ends up being a lot of bodies.

Yet despite becoming a mass murderer, the good news is that William finally finishes his album and becomes a success. Well, he’s in jail. But you get to see a torso with guts hanging out play drums and some of the craziest prog instruments ever.

Director Josh Forbes comes from music videos and that’s a good thing. He’s working from a fun script by Mike Benner, Jared Logan and Charles A. Pieper and some wild effects by Bill Corso and Ben Gojer. Plus, seeing Alex Winter in a movie makes me so happy and he makes the most out of both of his roles.

This is the kind of movie that doesn’t need overthought and just is out to entertain you. It succeeds beyond expectation.

Originally known as Freaks Out, this Italian film is directed by Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg Robot), who co-wrote it with Nicola Guaglianone (The Legend of the Christmas Witch). It’s heroes are the stars of the Mezza Piotta Circus: the albino insect commanding Cencio (Pietro Castellitto), human magnet Mario (Giancarlo Martini), super strong wolfman Fulvio (Claudio Santamaria), the electric Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo) and their ringmaster Israel (Giorgio Tirabassi).

A Nazi ringmaster named Franz (Franz Rogowski) — with twelve fingers — has seen visions of the circus under the influence of drugs and wants to take them. The first step is sending Israel to a concentration camp, then making them work at his Berlin Zircus. He believes that they can stop Hitler from killing himself and saving the Third Reich.

This movie is totally up my alley, because it is all at once a war movie, a superhero film, a movie about sideshow performers and filled with magical realism, as well as strange moments like Franz playing Radiohead’s “Creep” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” nearly half a century before they were released. Well, he can see the future when he huffs ether, as in his drawings at the end, you can see the Jeeg Robot, a movie that both Mainetti and Guaglianon created together.

It’s also overloaded with both ideas and running time, clocking in at around two hours and twenty minutes. That said, Mainetti is a creative force, someone who is at once an actor, writer, director and composed. And he even made a Tiger Mask-influenced short, Tiger Boy. This movie may be kind of all over the place but it looks amazing and I’d love to see these characters return.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Lena Simon (Brittany Lucio) is dealing with her car breaking down on the way to work when she’s surprised by motivational speaker Scotty Sharpe (Newton Mayenge), who offers to take her to work instead of waiting for a tow truck. His offer of dinner turns out to be the perfect relationship until she starts to suspect him of cheating on her. Her friend Toni (Donna Glytch) suggests that she work with MaMa Ti’Mun (Tangie Ambrose) to do a voodoo spell on him, which will keep her in love with him once he eats special herbs inside a bowl of spaghetti. It makes him even more loving but also turns him into a killing machine.

Also: He may be a criminal and not just a motivational speaker. She also has a brother named Meatball (Markice Moore) who is on house arrest.

Director Adam Gierasch has an interesting background. He was one of the writers of movies like the Tobe Hooper remake of Toolbox Murders as well as his movie Mortuary. He also was one of the writers of Argento’s Mother of Tears and the remake of Night of the Demons, which he directed along with Autopsy, Fertile Ground, House by the Lake and the “Trick” part of Tales of Halloween. He’s working from a script by Dempsey Gibson, Markice Moore and Jason Rainwater.

His director’s statement really goes for it: “I was drawn to the unique story of Spaghetti as I was immediately reminded of Brian DePalma movies that I love, and I also loved the idea of a predominantly African-American cast. Lena is haunted by surrealistic nightmares like Carrie is, and then finds out that the man that she’s falling in love with is anything but normal. He has a terrifying set of skills that he can’t even remember, which turn him into a cold-blooded killer. In my approach I utilized the neon color of De Palma’s Body Double and the unmotivated light of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, while adding in as much blood as I could to grind it all together and make the perfect bloody, scary, funny stew. For my score I tapped Slasher Dave, the creative force behind the band Acid Witch, to embark on composing for the film. His unique approach pulls from The Exorcist (especially “Tubular Bells”) and John Carpenter’s Halloween. To make the voodoo elements work I had him put in a lot of tribal drums. Finally, we used a real goat for the voodoo ceremony (although of course it left set unharmed.) It was some of the most fun directing I’ve had in a long time, and probably the nicest, coolest cast I’ve ever worked with.”

I’m a big Acid Witch fan, so I was glad that I read that. It makes sense why the opening — filled with AI generated animated art of women and spaghetti — feels so sinister.

The IMDB reviews for this movie are interesting. Either they’re ten out of ten reviews that claim that it’s “A Savory Fusion of Narrative Brilliance and Visual Delight” or a one out of ten that says, “The uncanny resemblance to Indian cinema becomes evident, particularly in the implausible death scenes.”

People will be stabbed in the face, a woman’s face will explode and yes, that goat shows up. I will say that this movie takes itself seriously — despite being about a woman putting her period blood into a pasta dish for her cheating man — and it looks way better than any other modern horror movie on Tubi, complete with cool gel lighting and some really great gore. It goes hard when it doesn’t have to and for that, you should respect it.

I thought I was about to find another Black Giallo movie and I did, but was also amazed to find out that it was made by someone who actually worked with Argento. You can still be surprised.

I said this so many times during this movie:

You can watch this on Tubi.

Vanessa (Julie Anne Prescott) and Erica (Traci Burr) move into a new apartment, invite over their boyfriends Thomas (Ken May) and Josh (Christopher Bryan Gomez) and find a Ouija board. You know what they should do, right? Throw that thing away. But instead, they use it and unleash three small demonoids who, from the poster, are definitely an even lower budget version of Ghoulies.

That said, this only asks an hour of your time and has some fun looking creatures that, while somewhat cheap also have plenty of heart. There’s even a horror host, Malvolia (Jennifer Nangle) and the chance to see the Valley Relics Museum in another movie by director and co-writer — with Craig Muckler — Dustin Ferguson.

There’s only one other review on IMDB and it says, “Acting is bad and the Demonoids are literal hand puppets that don’t even move their mouths. The voices for them sound like a kid show.”

You have not made it through the films that I have seen, sir.

It’s quite strange that the first part of the movie with the girls and their boyfriends feels like the first movie, the Demonoids going crazy in the streets is a sequel, the breaks with Malvolia and the news programs just take up time and it all has a really long credit sequence and yet is done in an hour. I always wonder why and how you pad a movie that’s done in fifty plus minutes, but then again, I keep watching these, you know?

Credit where credit is due: the title is good and the poster is great. And as you know, sometimes, that’s all you need.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Nazi Dawn — because our possessed heroine of sorts is named Dawn (Kristen Casner, using her much more Teutonic full name Kristen Walterscheid Casner) — this is all about a group of sorority girls who take their new pledge Dawn to a country estate and end up awakening the spirit of Dawn’s great-grandfather Van Holly, who was a Nazi butcher. Why do a seance? I mean, do you not know better? Also: one of the girls, Eve (Lora McHugh) is always leading Dawn around on a leash, so should we surprised when the slave becomes the dominatrix with Aryan costuming?

The occult loving Agness (Veronica Ricci), sapphic couple Fiona (Jennifer Van Heeckeren) and Alex (Laura Azevedo), Dee (Ashley Rose) and Alyson (Kelly Erin Decker) were dumb enough to unleash the Nazi spirit, which went into the village idiot, and when they kill him, it goes into Dawn. The Ouija board is saved for the last twenty minutes despite being so highly billed in the title.

Directed by Dennis Devine, this has no less than five writers: Ted Chalmers, Annie T. Conlon, Karianne Davis, Monte Hunter and Veronica Ricci, who in addition to being in the cast also wrote some of the dialogue. Adult stars Missy Martinez and Ryan Keely also appear and this movie in no way shies away from nudity, bondage and gore, which is kind of welcome even if the kills are a bit neutered.

However, it has a great name and poster and quite often, that’s all I need to watch something.

You can watch this on Tubi.