April 16: Get Me Another — A sequel.

I love Dario Argento. Love his movies. Have his book. A coffee mug from his shop Profundo Russo is in my office. I’ve watched all of his films so many times I can act them out without a script.

But man, Mother of Tears.

Also known as La Terza (The Third Mother); Mater Lachrymarum, The Third Mother and Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, this is the third movie in the cycle of The Three Mothers. The Three Mothers come from “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow”, a section of Thomas de Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis. Just as there are three Fates and Graces, there are also three Sorrows: Mater Lachrymarum (Our Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (Our Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (Our Lady of Darkness).

Starting with Suspiria and continuing with Inferno, these are the stories of the three ancient witches who are close to ruling our world. At the beginning of the 11th century, they started of witchcraft as they rose from the Black Sea, making their way across countries, making money and gaining power as they kill everyone around them.

In the late 19th century, the Three Mothers had E. Varelli, an Italian architect based in London, design and construct three buildings for them to conduct their magic. The architect learned too late that they were evil and the places he made have become so corrupted by their evil that the very land around them is cursed.

The first of the mothers is Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, the Black Queen Helena Markos of Suspiria. After writing a series of books on the dark occult arts, Markos started the Tanz Akademie outside the Black Forest. As her power and wealth increased, the locals began to suspect her, so she faked her own death in a fire and passed control to the dance school to her greatest student, who was also Helena Markos.

The second mother is Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, is the youngest and cruelest of the Three Mothers and the main antagonist in Inferno. Her home is in New York City where she keeps E. Varelli as her slave.

This brings us to The Mother of Tears, as the other two Mothers have died as their homes burned. Before Suspiria, Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi) battles Markos, who killed her and her husband. This left Mater Suspiriorum “a shell of her former self.” This movie is about Elisa’s daughter Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) and her battles with Mater Lachrymarum in Rome.

Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, Palazzo Varelli.is the most beautiful and powerful of the Three Mothers. We first saw her in Inferno as she attempted to use her magic on Mark Elliot as he studied music in Rome.

Directed and written by Dario Argento (along with Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch), this begins with the Catholic Church finding a magical runic that increases the powers of Mater Lachrymarum. It is sent to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome, where Sarah (Asia Argento) and her boyfriend Michael Pierce (Adam James) work. Sarah discovers the tunic, along with Giselle (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) when they are attacked by the followers of the Third Mother. Sarah only survives thanks to a voice in her head.

Mass suicides, murder and insanity take over Rome, as Michael is killed, his son is eaten by witches and the coven plans on doing the same to Sarah. After being followed by Detective Enzo Marchi (Cristian Solimeno), Sarah learns that she has power and the guidance of her mother, which helps her to bring the entire plan and building down on the final of the Three Mothers.

Why did this movie take so long to be made? In 1984, Nicolodi claimed that she are Argento had written a script. That script was not used and neither was a 2004 script that Dario wrote. When the movie was finally made, its distributor, Medusa Film, asked for the film’s sex and violence to be edited.

Critics were not kind — they never are to Argento — and he said, “…the critics don’t understand very well. But critics are not important – absolutely not important. Because now audiences don’t believe anymore in critics. Many years ago critics wrote long articles about films. Now in seven lines they are finished: ‘The story is this. The actor is this. The color is good.””

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this movie. Sure, it goes for it and goes even further. But nearly everything Argento has made since, well, forever feels like it doesn’t have his heart in it. It doesn’t mean that I always hate what I watch but it makes me sad. The inventive camera work, the shock of what will happen next, the look and feel are gone, replaced by something else. As to whether or not that’s good, well…it’s different. It’s something I think about all the time.

To be honest, I kind of prefer Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat, which is an unofficial sequel to Suspiria and Inferno about a director making his own sequel to those movies and being cursed by the actual witches. It’s also a total mess but it feels like Cozzi is in love with making it which is what I look for when I need to see something go off the rails.

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 15: Slasher — A slasher without any sequels.

Directed, co-written (with Inserts director and writer and Mahogany writer John Byrum and Marsha Sheiness) and produced by Michael Walters — his only movie — Have a Nice Weekend is an early slasher that attempts to be ripped from the headlines as it starts with Chris coming home from Vietnam, burning his uniform and inviting his entire family to meet at their summer home.

Father Paul (Michael Miller), mother Laura (Nikki Counselman), sister Muffy (Patricia Joyce), her friend Ellen (Colette Bablon) and football coach and handyman Frank head off to the island, which seemingly has only two other people living there, Donald and Joan Crab (Peter Dompe and Valerie Shepherd). They have a strange meal where Paul looks at a butcher knife to carve the roast like it’s a sexual object and Chris flips out and smashes a radio that dares to speak of the war.

Is it a surprise that Paul is dead the next day, found in the rose bushes his wife was enraged about and stabbed by the same butcher knife he almost came over? Found by Donald and Ellen, now everyone becomes a suspect.  And the killing isn’t done yet, as there’s a garden hoe and a hook to be used.

That said, this feels like a TV movie that no one wants to watch and nobody wants to act in. I do love a sleepy movie, however, and I also adore one that has an ending where it seems like no one knows who did the murders and then someone is like, “We need an epilogue” and it still makes less than any reasonable sense.

Also: Chris gets killed, mom is banging it out with the gardener football coach and Muffy once sunk her fingernails into another girl’s face. It could be anybody. Or it could be someone no one knows who just so happened to head to this island to kill. Also also: Everyone hates everybody. Even the boat captain who takes them to their vacation home yells at everyone, the phones have all been cut off for the season (how is that a thing?) and nobody wants to be around anyone. In no way is this like what Barry Manilow sang, “Time in New England took me away to long rocky beaches you by the bay.”

This weekend in New England will be the death of these people.

If you’ve watched every slasher there is, well, you can watch this one too. I may be talking to myself.

That said, it has one great line: “Making a sandwich is a one man job!”

You can watch this on YouTube.

April 14: Don’t Go Back to Amityville — An Amityville movie official or otherwise. Here’s a list.

Director, writer and star Michael Stone has had enough of Amityville movies.

He said, “Now because Amityville is the name of a town and it really doesn’t exist beyond this house and those iconic windows, it really can’t be a protected franchise like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. So what this ultimately shakes out to is I could fart on camera for an hour and a half and legally release it as Amityville: Gas Chamber. And nobody would have any rights to sue me. If I wanted to actually make something about the Lutz or Defeo family not so much, but if you just want to make a movie on the cheap and attach a famous name to it, Amityville is a good one to do.”

This movie is the result of a joke that spiraled out of control. Amityville: Gas Chamber started as a concept for a 5-10 minute long video on my channel. However, every step of the way was met with “Why not?” Make it a full-length run-time? “Why not?” Give it proper artwork? “Why not?” Seek distribution methods? “Why not?” Now, here we are.”

It also has the best IMDB fact: “No dialogue is spoken in this film. Which means every time you aren’t talking, you’re quoting Amityville Gas Chamber.”

This is a movie where a man sits and reads The Amityville Horror while occasionally farting.

It also has occasional subtitles that start with “This is it. This is the movie. I’ll be periodically putting some trivia about Amityville here. But this is the movie.”

It also claims that this movie is better than Amityville Mt. Misery Road. 

I agree.

It’s a one note joke and that note is a brown one.

Actually, as someone who has made it through more than fifty Amityville movies, this is not the worst I’ve seen. That may speak to some of the horrors that I have endured as I struggle through the curse that I have to watch every single movie that has that name in the title and then some.

You can watch this on YouTube.

April 13: Yes No Goodbye — A movie about Ouija. Here’s a list.

Directed by Yuen Chor and Tun-Fei Mou, this Shaw Brothers movie has two, well, Haunted Tales.

The first, “The Ghost,” was originally a movie called Hellish Soul that was shut down and reshot a few years later (thanks Silver Emulsion!). The second, “The Prize Winner,” also started as a full-length movie before it was turned into a short and added to this movie.

“The Ghost” has newlyweds played by Ling Yun and Ching Li moving into a new oceanfront home but learning that no one around them is normal. Everyone sleeps throughout the day, even the livestock, and then the visions start. Then there’s a car crash. Then a ghost comes back. There’s also an eyeball in the closet. But this part is a traditional ghost story and shot as such. It’s really good. But where the movie really shines…

“The Prize Winner” has janitor Ah Cheng (Chan Shen) taking a spirit board away from some children in the building. He learns that it is haunted by a fox spirit that promises him all the riches that he can handle as long as he doesn’t gamble, have casual sex and murder people. Of course, he does all of those things and this story has numerous funny sex moments followed up by a totally gross ending that blew my mind out of my skull. Turns out that Hong Kong Ouija boards are gigantic and have a planchette that spins around it, which goes round and round until the man is transformed into hamburger. Also: A neighbor has an entire apartment filled with strange dolls.

The two stories don’t really work together but I could care less. I was pleased by both of them and the juxtapositive nature of this movie just makes me wish that there were more exactly like it but also happy because it is such a unique film all to itself.

You can watch this on YouTube.