Inspired by a 1950s series of Malaysian movies*, this film is about Sheng Yun (Danny Lee, The Killer, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent/King of Snakes, Infra-Man), a man who has risen past the handicap that polio dealt him to become a lawyer. He tries to helps a man, Lin Yang Ba (Ku Feng), who has killed a criminal to protect his daughter Yue (Chen Ping) and his coconut oil business. Before he is hung, Lin Yang gives Sheng Yu a black magic spell that transforms him into an oily maniac.

The real problem is that Yue is really in love with Chen Fu Sin (Wa Lun) and wants nothing to do with him. That means he goes on a rampage, wiping out all manner of criminals, like a plastic surgeon, a woman who accuses men of rape and a blackmailer. Look, if someone asks you to look at the magic spell on their back, lie in a hole in your yard and cover yourself with oil, I guess you do it.

Some people think all the Shaw Brothers did was martial arts movies. Oh man. I hope you know that they made movies like The Boxer’s Omen, Human Lanterns and Corpse Mania. Somehow, director Meng-Hua Ho (The Cave of the Silken Web, Black Magic) and writer Lam Chua made a movie that feels like The Heap, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing with a bit of Toxic Avenger except, you know, in 1976.

You would also think that because this is a superhero movie that it would be for children. Well, no. Not with the near-constant nudity and threat of sexual violence in every scene. It’s so strange how the goofy costume of the creature is juxtaposed against the sheer depravity on display in this movie, including scenes where a woman reveals her burned breast and the Oily Maniac attacks an abortionist mid-baby killing.

*According to IMDB, this is based on the Malaysian legend of the orang minyak (oily man), a creature that comes to life out of crude oil and is fueled by the hope for revenge by those who have been done wrong. There are also three Malaysian films — Curse of the Oily Man, Orang Minyak and Serangan Orang Minyak — as well as two modern movies, Orang minyak and Pontianak vs. Orang Minyak, which has the oily man battle a vengeful ghost woman.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by Ian Jane. You can get this set from MVD.

Inspired by the huge success of the Japanese superhero versus monster fare such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider in Hong Kong, the Shaw Brothers produced the first Chinese superhero in 1975, which they called Infra-Man. However, they pushed the envelope created by the Japanese even further, inventing a world where a school bus can crash, Hong Kong can be destroyed, an earthquake can happen and monsters appear all within the first minute of the film.

Let me see if I can summarize the blast of pure odd that I just watched at 5 AM: Princess Dragon Mom (known in the original version of this film as Demon Princess Elzebub) is a ten million-year-old mother of monsters who wants to destroy the Earth. She carries around a whip and has a dragon head on her hand, but can also turn into a monster herself. She also has an entire legion of beasts ready to do whatever she asks, like her assistant She-Demon (Witch-Eye in the original), who is an Asian girl with a hand that has an eyeball in the middle of it. Also: both of these ladies wear metallic bikinis with skulls all over them and have several costume changes. They also have an army of cannon fodder dressed in skeletal costumes, which was obviously the influence for the Skeleton Crew in the new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

They’re battling with Science Headquarters, led by Professor Liu Ying-de. He’s used the BDX Project to transform Lei Ma (Danny Lee, The Killer) into the bionic kung-fu kicking motorcycle riding Infra-Man, who has whatever powers he needs for any situation. He’s also really good at getting tall and stepping on monsters until their green blood pours out. Bruce Lee tribute actor Bruce Le also appears as Lu Xiao-long, another member of the team.

You get all manner of monsters in this one — the Emperor of Doom, the Giant Beetle Monster, an Octopus Mutant, the Driller Beast, a Laser Horn Monster and the Iron Fist Robots. All of them are given to dramatic pronouncements, overacting and blowing up real good.

Believe it or not, Roger Ebert said, “When they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world.” Twenty-two years later, he went even further: “I find to my astonishment that I gave Infra-Man only two and a half stars when I reviewed it. That was 22 years ago, but a fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that film. So, in answer to those correspondents who ask if I have ever changed a rating on a movie: Yes, Infra-Man moves up to three stars.”

He’s right — this movie is completely unhinged, with dragon witch women who threaten to throw little girls down volcanos, blotting out the sun and rocket fists. They should have made five thousand sequels to this.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. There’s an option to view the film in its US theatrical version, Infra-man, with lossless “Stereo-Infra-Sound” surround audio. You also get commentary by martial arts cinema experts Frank Djeng and Erik Ko, an interview with Bruce Le, a video essay on Shaws’ tokusatsu films written and narrated by Steven Sloss, theatrical trailers, TV ads and radio commercials. You can get this set from MVD.

The eighth movie in the series and the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, this film begins two months later, as the rogue AI known as The Entity has begun hacking its way into nuclear arsenals, aided by a doomsday cult that worships the code. Only Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team can stop it. Luther (Ving Rhames) has already been working on a virus to destroy it, which leads The Entity to tell Ethan directly that it plans to kill his best friend.

Joined by former enemies Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), they must go to the wreckage of the sub from the first movie, transmit a Poison Pill into the AI and somehow stop Gabriel (Esai Morales) from aiding the AI in dropping nuclear bombs on the planet.

This brings back just about every character in the series, either in new footage or flashbacks, even revealing that one of the CIA agents is the son of disgraced IMF commander Jim Phelps.

At three hours, the first third drags a bit. But hang with it, as the end is filled with massive stunts and set pieces. I rarely seek out big Hollywood movies, but if you’re going to do that, this is the one to watch. It’s dizzying in its array of situations it puts Ethan into, and there are actual emotional stakes throughout.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote it with Erik Jendresen, this is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Fallout and the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. I have no real affinity or knowledge of these, so I went in cold.

A rogue AI known as The Entity has destroyed the Russian stealth submarine where it was housed, the Sevastopol, in the hope that it can be released into the world. IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team have been called in to retrieve it for the U.S., as any government that uses this AI will be ahead. Or so they think, as it is already self-aware. After all, it can manipulate cyberspace itself to control global defense intelligence and financial networks. 

This brings Ethan into the orbit of rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who has a price on her head thanks to CIA director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). The battle to destroy the AI takes the team all over the world, as they chase Grace (Hayley Atwell), an agent who has already stolen the part Ethan had, while disarming nuclear bombs in airports. That means that you get Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Beni Dunn (Simon Pegg) as Ethan’s fellow agents, as they also go to war with the CIA, who want to arrest them, and the soldiers who work for The Entity, like Gabriel (Esai Morales) and Paris (Pom Klementieff).

The start of Cruise’s last films in this series is the kind of high-action epic that delivers on all fronts. It feels like this series has taken the ball from Bond and run with it, pushing the stunts beyond the Bourne movies and turning them into roller coasters all their own. Even without knowing the characters and their backstories, the car chase in Italy and the airport scenes are so full of twists and turns that I found this an entertaining watch, liking it way more than I thought I would.

John Waters picked this as his top film of 2025, telling Vulture that “My favorite movie of the year is a disagreeable but highly entertaining tale as exhausting as today’s politics with characters nobody could possibly root for. Yet it’s so terrifyingly funny, so confusingly chaste and kinky that you’ll feel coo-coo crazy and oh-so-cultural after watching. If you don’t like this film, I hate you.”

I don’t want John Waters to hate me.

Luckily, this is the second Ari Aster movie in a row that I’ve been challenged by and liked, after Beau Is Afraid, and I think both of those films may not be as popular as Hereditary or Midsommar, but they’re definitely better films.

Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is enacting a mask law in the wake of COVID-19. Yes, this film takes us five years — and another world — back to 2020. Meanwhile, Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) refuses to believe in the virus, as he’s been living in a steady stream of conspiracy theory talk thanks to his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), and her mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell).

After they battle over the mask rules, Joe decides to run for mayor, which upsets his wife. But are there any good guys here? Sure, Joe is a jerk, but Ted wants to bring a data center to town. Then again, isn’t it a conflict of interest that Joe gets young cops Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Michael Cooke) to be his campaign aids? And what’s with his patrol car being covered with misspelled conspiracy campaign ads? Is that the result of his wife’s guru, would-be cult messiah Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler)?

In the middle of all of this, even the young folks get in over their heads, trying to navigate Black Lives Matter. Ted’s son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), his friend Brian (Cameron Mann), and social justice influencer Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) want to get Michael on their side, as they’re all white yet wish to belong.

During a televised campaign stop — how big is Eddington? — Joe remarks that Ted sexually assaulted his wife, who has blamed her father, but then again, Vernon’s cult is based around repressed memories that could be false. She leaves him; Joe goes into a noise complaint at Ted’s house and gets slapped.

This causes Joe to flip out. He starts his rampage with the killing of a homeless man, then works his way to Ted’s house, where he shoots him and his son with a sniper rifle, set up to look like Antifa — remember when they were going to attack the suburbs? — before a private jet of heavily armed Antifa actually does arrive in town.

At the same time, Native American Officer Butterfly Jimenez (William Belleau) learns that the shots that killed Ted and Eric came from his tribe’s land. He figures that the sheriff did it, just as Joe is framing Michael. The point of all of this is moot, as Antifa — who are really terrorists posing as Antifa — attack the town, killing nearly every cop until Brian saves the sheriff, who had been stabbed in the head while randomly blasting a giant machine gun, even hitting Butterfly with a round, before a terrorist kills him. Brian shows up and faces off with the last gunman, killing him and saving Joe. 

But did he save Joe? 

Joe gets everything he wanted. He’s now the mayor, but he’s a vegetable. He can’t speak or even take care of himself, and every action he takes is dictated by his wife’s mother, who uses his power to push her conspiracy agenda while still allowing the data center to open in town. After a long day — and urinating on himself and needing to be cleaned by a nurse who slaps him — she shows Joe her daughter, now pregnant with the cult leader’s baby. At night, she and the male nurse get into bed with one another — and Joe — and he has everything he wants but has no idea it’s happening. Well, maybe he didn’t want his mother-in-law next to him in bed.

Nobody in this is a hero, like how Brian was only into Sarah, not her politics. And yet he becomes a hero for using a gun to save Joe, whose actions have set the town on fire. He becomes a right-wing hero when all he wanted was to sleep with a liberal girl who thought that his politics were performative because, well, they were. 

Aster told Variety that this movie is about “a conflict between a small-town sheriff and mayor, is partially inspired by a similar stand-off that took place in New Mexico during the COVID-19 era.” That sheriff, David E. Frazee, visited the set, and he and the mayor of Estancia, Nathan Dial, are both thanked in the credits. And while Aster had this film in mind before he made Hereditary, he said the main idea was “How can I make a film about the incoherent miasma we’re living in without the film becoming a message?” 

So many questions: Who sponsored the terrorists, with their logo of a hand squeezing the life out of our planet? Was Vernon really abused? Who abused Lou, Ted or her father? What is the significance of the name Solidgoldmagikarp, the AI data center company?

Actually, I learned what it means from this great article on Jacobin: “It turns out “solidgoldmagikarp” is a reference to an actual AI phenomenon. A couple years ago, ChatGPT users discovered that if they asked the AI to repeat the phrase “solidgoldmagikarp,” it caused the chatbot to fritz out, unable to make sense of the command. Why? Because for years, a Reddit user named “solidgoldmagikarp” would log on to the subreddit r/Counting and simply post ascending numbers. So every instance of that phrase was linked to a string of numbers in order. Because these stupid chatbots can’t reason, the machine just spits out something unintelligible. The error has since become a meme. And by becoming a meme, the chatbot can now only make sense of it. Digital hallucinations, which are not real in any sense, become real by virtue of people talking about them enough.”

A lot of people didn’t like this, saying that Aster was trying to make them relive the horror of 2020 with no moral center.  Aster replied, “I think that’s a pretty bad-faith read of the film. I’ve heard people say you let the left have it worse than the right. Which, to me, feels like an insane thing to say. Given that the people who represent the left in the film are, at worst, annoying and frustrating, and the people on the right are, at worst, murdering and ruining lives.”

This is a film about division, and I love it for that. It’s also a director using whatever goodwill he has left from two hits to do whatever he wants to, which is how the best movies arrive.

You can get this on Blu-ray from A24.

Santo Contra Hombres Infernales and Santo Contra Cerebro Del Mal were the first two movies made with El Santo, filmed in Cuba just as Castro took power, and smuggled out in a coffin. Enrique J. Zambrano realized he didn’t have enough coverage for two films, so he mixed footage between the two movies.

Joaquin (Joaquin Cordero) is the real star of this, a cop whose undercover identity is exposed, leading to his lover Irma (Gina Romand) being kidnapped. Santo just comes in to keep saving him. There’s not even a trip to Arena Mexico to wrestle, as Santo movies would later have. In fact, this has nothing to do with the formula you expect from these films. But you do get to see a lot of Cuba.

Santo had taken years off from wrestling to make movies, and this sat on the shelf for three years. Who knew that, despite the first two movies not being as insane as what was to come, Santo would become such a major cultural hero?

I will say that I love these new 4K Santo transfers. It’s wild to see these films in a whole new light, because they look like brand new films.

You can watch this on Blu-ray.

An early effort by the Sebastians, The Single Girls has a TV Guide-style write-up on Wikipedia: “A group of men and women travel to a Caribbean resort to discover themselves sexually, but unfortunately one of them has also discovered that they like to murder people, too.”

Also known as Bloody Friday and Private School, this has a bunch of singles all having an encounter on an island and when they’re not balling or having dark room milling, which is when everyone touches everyone else, and no one knows who is who, there’s a killer on the loose. Yes, a nascent slasher, as they say.

There’s Lola (Joan Prather), a virgin who decides to go to this island to lose her virginity. Allison (Claudia Jennings) hates commitment, and, you know, her boyfriend is a loser, so she shouldn’t be into it. Also, she’s Claudia Jennings. Shannon (Cheri Howell) wants to have everyone on the island. Dr. Stevens (Wayne Dvorek) has made a pretty groovy scene, but like I said, someone has a knife. The sex in this is relatively chaste, but there’s a good idea going on here.

Plus, we got ‘Gator Bait out of this, as it introduced Jennings to the Sebastians.

Solara (Kul Sarai), Tansy (Toria Pardoe) and Cala (Hannah Robson) are space princesses who have their future thrones taken from them when their stepmother, Voluptina (Caroline Vella), sends them through a black hole and into the past, where she hopes they’ll be eaten by dinosaurs.

This is just an hour, and everyone stays in bikinis. Also, because this is British, they’re really pale — I love that — so if you’re expecting tanned American ladies battling giant monsters, well…no… no. I watched this because I thought it would be suitable for one of my kaiju day movies, yet this didn’t even have great monsters.

Like I said, it’s an hour.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When a Stranger Calls is a remake of Fred Walton and Steve Feke’s short film The Sitter, with the first 23 minutes — the best part of the movie — being, well, The Sitter. That short played before Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and then this was the full-length result. 

Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is watching the children of Dr. Mandrakis (Carmen Argenziano). A phone call comes in, and a voice — we later learn it’s Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley) — keeps asking if she’s checked on the children. Spoiler: The kids are dead. 

Seven years later, he’s escaped from prison, and the cop who caught him, John Clifford (Charles Durning), has been hired to catch him before he kills again. He remembers Jill, and he’s also getting close to a woman who actually treats him well, Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst). Sure, the calls coming from inside the house had already been done in Black Christmas, but this does have some moments of fright. 

When Sneak Previews did their Women In Danger episode, this movie was shown, along with Friday the 13th, Halloween, I Spit on Your Grave, Silent Scream and Don’t Answer the Phone. Even with some of those films, Roger Ebert still singled this out as sleazy.

Walton would go on to direct April Fool’s Day, The Rosary Murders, the remake of I Saw What You Did and the TV movie, When a Stranger Calls Back.