Wikipedia refers to this movie as an “American psychological thriller film” while it was sold as a detective story and derided by critics as being an erotic thriller. You know what that means: it’s a giallo.

It’s also way deeper than anyone gave it credit for.

Its heroine, Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan), is a full and rich character, at once introverted and attracted to danger. The New York City that she lives in is also filled with both violence and sex, even in her students. One of them, Cornelius (Sharrieff Pugh), believes that John Wayne Gacy wasn’t guilty of his crimes because he was a victim of desire. Moments later, Frannie watches a couple engaged in oral sex in public. And on the subway, every ad seems to be a poem written directly to her.

That violence gets close, so close, to her as a severed limb is found in her garden. That’s when the men — and police — intrude on her life. Detective Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) is so forward when he questions her that she’s excited by him. Yet as animalistic as he seems, he feels nobler than the others, like his partner Richard Rodriguez (Nick Damici) who isn’t even allowed to carry his gun after trying to kill his wife.

Frannie also notices that Malloy has a 3 of Spades tattoo, the same one she saw on the man getting pleasured in public. It’s because he’s in a secret society and can’t tell her anymore. Later that night, she’s attacked while walking home and he comes to her rescue. They have sex and when she wakes up, she realizes that some of her jewelry is missing.

But when going over the details with her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Frannie starts to wonder if Malloy is the killer as well as the masked man who stalked her. Her student Cornelius is questioned — his term paper was written in his own blood — and she has to tell her ex, John (Kevin Bacon), that she thinks she’s having panic attacks. It doesn’t let up, as she soon finds the severed head of her sister.

And when Malloy has her jewelry and a key to her sister’s apartment, it all seems to come together. Or does it? Like in all giallo, can we even trust our narrator?

Jane Campion and Laurie Parker spent five years developing the film. Also, Nicole Kidman got a producer credit because she was originally cast as Frannie, but dropped out in the middle of her div force to Tom Cruise, wanting more time with her children.

I really like what Jordan Searles said about the film, as it describes why it works so well for me: “Shots depicting Frannie being watched mainly serve to highlight how women have to navigate the world under the gaze of men. Frannie is always looking over her shoulder, constantly assessing her surroundings. She knows she is being watched, yet continues to pursue pleasure on her own terms. In the end, once Frannie has faced her worst fears, In the Cut rewards that bravery.”

It’s a rare film that is able to subvert the male gaze without falling into it. It also isn’t afraid to show depictions of sex that don’t seem alien from the early 70s heyday of Italian psychosexual murder films. I always passed on this movie, a victim of how it was sold and reviewed, and now I know that I was wrong.

You can get the uncut director’s edition of In the Cut from Mill Creek Entertainment on Deep Discount.

A group of children embark on a macabre adventure into the jungle of Brazil, one filled with characters from the horror traditions of Brazil: the werewolf, a witch, a ghost, monsters and The Saci. This anthology unites four of the most important names in Brazilian horror: Rodrigo Aragao, Petter Baiestorf, Joel Caetano and Jose Mojica Marins, the eternal Coffin Joe.

In the first story, directed by the brains behind this entire movie Aragão (Dark Sea, Cemetery of Lost Souls), the corrupt mayor of a city dies on the toilet and his blood and bile go directly into the water system he refused to fix, transforming everyone who interacts with the water into zombies filled with the same filth that he was. Talk about starting things off hot, as this is filled with so many gross-out effects.

Petter Baiestorf (Zombio 2: Chimarrão Zombies) directed the second story in which a military presence rules a town through violence, fear and outright racism. Yet when a werewolf starts to be sighted, even their might isn’t enough to stop it. This segment has some of the most gut-churning werewolf scenes I’ve ever seen, moments that look like barbecue-sauced infused blasts of muck, internal organs, peeling skin and always blood.

Marins directed and starred in the third story, a tale of exorcism gone wrong and the monster known as the Saci, which is a one-legged black man, always smoking a pipe and in a magical red hat that leaves behind a smell that never goes away. He appears and disappears in the form of a dust devil and has the power to grant wishes. Any small misfortune — even if a popcorn kernel fails to pop — is said to be caused by the Saci.

The final story is directed by Caetano (Encosto) has the ghost of a woman haunting a school, causing death after death that is hidden by being buried. The woman in charge of the school and this ghost are linked and that story is soon revealed.

I really had fun with this film. The credits are great with everyone seemingly overjoyed to work with Marins and when he is asked what it’s like to make a horror movie in Brazil, he answers, “Terrible.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

No, not that Trilogy of Terror.

This Brazilian movie creates new versions of stories that appeared on the TV series Além, Muito Além do Além (Beyond, Much Beyond the Beyond): “O Acordo” (The Agreement), “A Procissão dos Mortos” (Procession of Dead), and “Pesadelo Macabro” (Macabre Nightmare).

In the first segment, “O Acordo” (The Agreement), a mother discovers that her daughter has an incurable disease, so she offers her soul to Satan himself. They ask her to bring them back a virgin. This segment was directed by Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias.

The second story is “A Procissão dos Mortos” (Procession of Dead), which was directed by Luiz Sérgio Person. A young boy’s father is the only person brave enough to face the ghosts that haunt the village.

Finally — and most spectacularly — “Pesadelo Macabro” (Macabre Nightmare) is about a young man who is afraid of being buried alive, which is exactly and to no surprise what happens. This leads to tons of scenes of women being whipped, lizards, bugs and, yes, a premature burial that all feel like they’re the exact kind of bad trip that schoolteachers warned you that those blue acid star temporary tattoos would give you if any drug dealer tried to give you free acid, which I don’t think has ever happened ever. This was directed by José Mojica Marins, who we all know as Coffin Joe, and it lives up to exactly the kind of mania you expect from this man. He was actually the host of the TV show these stories came from for 21 years and sadly, hardly any tapes of them survive.

John (Chris Parnell, who should be in more movies) has lost everything. His wife (Tiffany Morgan; who before she dies reminds him that she would also like to be known as mother), his son Kyle (John Reynolds) and his beloved ’71 muscle car. Oh yeah — his newspaper is also bought out by Chaz AF (Julio Torrez) and turned into a website. John is immediately fired. And then he’s knocked off a bridge by influencer Jak-E Wak-E (Carmen Christopher) to what looks like his death.

But nope. He survives in the woods and becomes stronger, remembering who did this to him. Now, he’s going to become the Millenial Killer.

If you liked the Tubi original Pastacolypse, this shares much of the same creative team. It was directed by Jason Shwartz and written by Sam Taggart. It feels like they had several seasons of material and suddenly worked it all into this movie, including a team of millennial supervillains, a new romance for John with a former co-worker who is Generation X, John meeting a millennial he actually likes (but not for long) and tons of violence.

I laughed a few times during this and if you have an open mind, you probably will too.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Dr. Hamílton (Jorge Peres) is a psychiatrist who is having nightmares in which Coffin Joe is taking his wife. Hse seeks help from filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, who assures him that he created Coffin Joe, who doesn’t really exist.

There are only 35 minutes of new footage in this movie with the rest coming from censored scenes from past films including Awakening of the Beast, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe and The Strange World of Coffin Joe.

By this point, even though it’s mentioned several times in this movie that Coffin Joe was not real, he has become real. He has become more than an idea and is Brazil’s national boogeyman. He exists in our imagination as real as an actual living being. Kind of like, oh you know, Freddy Kreuger, who took a similar path 16 years later.

It’s also a great way to get out all the strangest stuff that couldn’t be seen in the past. Sure, it’s barely connected, but if you’re looking for a Coffin Joe mixtape to put on with some fuzzed out music for a party, well, this is it.

Directed and co-written (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) by Jose Mojica Marins — the alter ego of Coffin Joe — Hellish Flesh is the tale of Dr. George Medeiros (Marins) and his wife Rachel (Luely Figueiró). He’s quite the scientist. But he’s neglecting his gorgeous bride over the need for science, so she hooks up with his best friend Oliver (Oswaldo De Souza). Together, they come up with a plan to kill him and take his money. Step one is throwing acid in his face. Step two is spending all his money. Yet he didn’t die during step one, so you better believe that he will come for revenge. Except that when he does come home, he doesn’t seem upset at all. As for Oliver, well, after spending most of his friend’s money, he got stabbed by another lover, leaving Rachel alone.

This is a movie filled with screaming and while strange, it doesn’t enter into the world of the Coffin Joe films. He doesn’t descend a staircase of naked women or go to Hell and learn that he is Satan. But still, it’s a movie where an acid-deformed scientist works on his revenge and even when making a morality story, Marins still can’t make a normal movie.