EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

If there’s something that all cannibal movies seem to have in common — beyond scenes where white people mistreat the native populace, real animal atrocities and copious levels of gore — it’s the idea that mass media is the root of most of the modern world’s issues. Italian exploitation filmmakers were several decades ahead of the mistrust of what many would call fake news today and their human beings devouring human beings offerings often placed documentary filmmakers or network television reporters as the reason why all of this chaos is taking place. The natives were just fine doing their rituals and eating random folks in the jungle. The white people bring cocaine and their modern perversions into the unspoiled green inferno, ruining everything.

Somehow, 24 years after Cannibal Holocaust, a 73-year-old Bruno Mattei — using his Vincent Dawn alter ego — would find himself in the jungle trying to bring back the sick feeling you get in your stomach when mass media goes to places that they should have known better to avoid.

Grace Forsyte (Helena Wagner in the only role of her career) was once a big deal in the world of television journalism, but the fickle whims of fate have cast her into the pile of the also-rans. She decides to reverse her fortunes by heading into the belly of the beast and capturing Amazon cannibals on video along with another once-famous telejournalist named Bob Manson (Claudio Morales, who was also in Mattei’s A Shudder on the Skin and Orient Escape).

The footage that they send back gets big ratings and makes them both stars again, but the TV news industry runs on blood, so they’re forced to get increasingly violent and horrifying images to continue getting those big numbers.

Look, this movie is also called Cannibal Holocaust: The Beginning and Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Beginning, so Mattei wasn’t even trying to hide what he was trying to do here. It’s a shot on digital video cover version of that film, along with a hilarious subtitle typo (some mouths later instead of some months) and a lot less real animal violence.

This was shot at the same time as In the Land of the Cannibals with much of the same crew.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

When the rest of the world makes zombie movies that are either boring or sub-Troma winks at the camera filled with humor that breaks the tension, Bruno Mattei remains single-mindedly devoted to making the kind of undead movies that made me love the genre.

In short, in the sad world we find ourselves in where zombies have become boring, Bruno Mattei alone reminds us that these kinds of movies can remain incredibly fun.

After a team of adventurers loses their gold, they go through a fog bank and end up on an island of the living dead. There, nearly everyone dies as they’re pursued by shambling, blood puking monsters that never stop. Oh yeah, there’s also another higher caste of zombies that act like a cross between the Blind Dead and vampires, hypnotizing unwilling victims into becoming their thralls, even if they have to charm them with flutes!

I’ve come away from Mattei’s late period — he made this movie a year before his death — digital video films with great fondness, particularly for Yvette Yzon, who has taken over for Laura Gemser in his movies, starring in this, Zombies: The Beginning, The Jail: Women’s Hell, A Shudder on the Skin and two Segreti di Donna films for Mattei.

Here, she’s Sharon, not only the final girl but the Lara Croft of this story. The rest of her crew is pretty worthless, except for Snoopy, who gets his name by always wearing a Snoopy t-shirt. This is an astonishing choice for a zombie film and one that I applaud. He’s played by Jim Gaines, who has been in plenty of Mattei films like Robowar, Zombie 4, Strike Commando and even shows up in The One-Armed Executioner.

Want an even better name? The leader of the ship is Captain Kirk (Gaetano Russo, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats and Trhauma, which he wrote)!

Screenwriter Antonio Tentori has been there for the dark night of the soul that aging Italian horror filmmakers must endure, being the scribe for everything from Argento’s Dracula 3D to Fulci’s Cat in the Brain and D’Amato’s Frankenstein 2000.

Only Sharon survives, but it appears that she becomes a zombie. No worry — she comes back perfectly healthy in the sequel, Zombies: The Beginning. Yes, only Mattei would name the second movie — or third, if this is in the same universe as Hell of the Living Dead — with a title like Zombies: The Beginning.

What are we to think of a movie that has not only the Necronomicon but also the De Vermis Mysteriis and the Cask of Amontillado? A film willing to rip off The Fog, Night of the Living Dead, Ghost Ship, Fulci’s eyeball scene in Zombi, the Blind Dead movies and even Mattei’s own Hell of the Living Dead? A movie that outright steals footage from The 13th Warrior, Interview with the Vampire, Deep Rising and House of the Dead?

We are to celebrate it. Thank you, Bruno Mattei, for always making it cheap, gross and upsetting, but never ever boring. The spirit and flame of 1980s Italian horror was kept alive by you longer than anyone.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Snow Creature was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 22, 1963 at 11:10 p.m. It also aired on June 12, 1965; February 11, 1967 and April 19, 1969.

Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton) is collecting botanical samples in the Himalayas when the wife of his guide Subra (Teru Shimada) is kidnapped. The guide takes over and forces the entire group to find his wife who he claims has been taken by a Yeti. Parrish and photographer Peter Wells (Leslie Denison) plan on working together to stop Subra but they soon learn that the creature is real.

By the end of the story, Parrish and Wells have succeeded in bringing the Yeti back to what we call civilization, only for it to escape into the sewers and get killed by one of the men hunting it. Way to go, humans.

The Yeti is played by Lock Martin, who also played a Martian in the original Invaders from Mars and Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Director W. Lee Wilder is the brother of Billy and also made The Omegans, Phantom from Space and Killers from Space. His son Myles wrote the story.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Blood Rose was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 25, 1976 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on October 1, 1977.

Directed and co-written by Claude Mulot (who sadly died at the age of 44), this is the story of Frederick Lansac (Philippe Lemaire). He’s a botanist, portrait artist and the owner of a beauty salon. After meeting Anne (Anny Duperey) at a dress ball and they are soon married. Somehow, some way, Anne gets her face shoved into a bonfire by the jealous Moira (Elizabeth Teissier) at one of Lansac’s painting shows, which is the wildest way to make a ripoff of Eyes Without a Face that doesn’t have Peter Cushing’s girlfriend have a studio light hit her in the face.

Lansac learns that one of his employees Dr. Rohmer (Howard Vernon), is a doctor who can only practice on criminals after an incident. Before you can say The Awful Dr. Orloff, they’re killing women to graft parts of their bodies to Anne’s face, who has gone into madness and also is having fantasies of her nurse Agnès (Michèle Perello) in scenes cut from the American version of this movie.

When a movie is sold as “The First Sex-Horror Film Ever Made!” it’s astounding that it aired on regular TV like Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. This isn’t afraid to get way weird, like Igor (Roberto) and Olaf (Johnny Cacao), two dwarf servants who dress in animal skins, randomly show up.