2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge 8: The Devil Conspiracy (2022)

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8. HOLY WEDNESDAY: …And on the 8th day the Physical Media God watches a Christploitation flick.

Directed by Nathan Frankowski, written by Ed Alan, and filmed in Prague, The Devil Conspiracy is wild because it attempts to be both an action movie and a religious film, but ultimately becomes over-the-top with CGI, leaving the viewer blown away, as it’s unclear who this is for.

It’s for me.

Back in the days when angels fought in Heaven, St. Michael chained Lucifer in Hell. Now, a biotech company steals the Shroud of Turin in order to clone Lucifer. Their army kills Father Marconi (Joe Doyle), whose body is soon taken over by St. Michael in order to stop the end of the world from happening. Their plan is to find fallen women and use them to have a baby that the devil will possess, all while fallen angels teach St. Michael how to stop this, all while protecting Laura (Alice Orr-Ewing), the mother of the soon-to-be devil baby.

The main bad girl’s name?

Liz (Eveline Hall).

Yes, this movie is absolutely ridiculous in all the best of ways, and I wish they’d make so many more in a series of these films. Get this: Only the infant Christ could stand to be possessed by Lucifer, unlike weak humans who burn out when filled with the dark one. They’ve also created clones of Vivaldi and Michelangelo, which they auction off, and we simply ignore that this is happening because, in the grand scheme of this plot, it’s such a small thing in the face of the end times of all that is.

Also: Laura drinks an entire jug of bleach and lives.

Common Sense Media said: “Parents need to know that The Devil Conspiracy is a graphic fantasy/horror/thriller about a plot by devil worshippers to create a new baby Jesus and bring hell to Earth. Violence is intense and often bloody. There’s lots of fighting, shooting, beheading, slicing, stabbing, bloody wounds, jump scares, demons, other scary stuff, and more. Sporadic strong language includes uses of “f–k,” “motherf—-r,” “s–t,” “bitch,” “goddamn,” “whore,” etc. There’s some brief, inappropriate flirting, a woman wears fishnet stockings, and a childbirth scene is depicted. It’s preposterous and poorly made, but some viewers may be entertained in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way.”

Their review reads like a Joe Bob Drive-In Total: “Women are kidnapped and roughly handled; they’re shown panicking and terrified. One woman is physically violated (a fertilized egg is forcibly inserted into her uterus). Brief, strong images of children in peril. Severed head, beheadings. The head is split in half. Lots of dead bodies. Someone is stabbed. Guns and shooting; one person is shot in the head, with blood spatter. Bloody wounds. Choking, gasping. Character shoots a bird in a tree. Fighting. Head-slamming. Body-slamming. Head-butting. Face-stomping, with strong gore. Vomiting on someone’s face. People are attacking guards with homemade weapons. Demon chained by the neck. Jump-scares. Brief scary/creepy stuff. Scary dream about a demon baby. Character drinks bleach, with screaming, vomiting. Explosions. Violence depicted in paintings, artworks. Mention of rape.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Weird Visions Society (2024)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Physical Media

I know, I know, microbudget anthology films are all over microbudget films and streaming horror. But what if someone did it right?

Director Ryan Petrillo and his co-writer Dan Lisowski got it right.

This is a movie made by people who actually care more than just to tell people that they’re filmmakers. The colors are intentional. The music and sound design absorb you. And there are wild colors, ooze, and so much strangeness, as well as bottles of J&B and post-dubbed sound.

What’s it about?

“Each autumnal equinox, a group of humanoids meets at the nexus of dreams and reality to celebrate the strangest mysteries of the universe: monsters, ghosts, the inexplicable, the outrageous. As they slurp their ceremonial slime and join their minds, they share these stories of horror and fantasy. This is the Weird Visions Society! A post-dubbed, micro-budget, horror-sci-fi anthology consisting of five tales woven together by the hallucinatory mind-melding of ceremonial slime-drinking humanoids from another dimension.”

Those humanoids meet in a room with a gold curtain and what appears to be a picture frame that opens into the universe from The Astrologer. In this sanctum, they pour ooze into bowls and lap it up before tripping out into these stories, then, you know, destroying one of their number. Each story may not have the best pacing, but when does an anthology ever all add up? Instead, the sum is way greater than the whole of the parts, and you’ll be left loving the drone, the neon, the moments that make this feel a lot more like an Italian 80s direct-to-VHS wallow in scuzz than something on Blu-ray from 2024, and that’s the highest compliment I can give.

Also: The ambient extras on the Blu-ray will totally be my new writing meditation soundtrack.

You can get the movie, merch and slime here.

 

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: The Living Coffin (1959)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Living Coffin was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 17, 1966, at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, December 7, 1968, at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 28, 1971, at 1:00 a.m.

The Screaming Death was directed by Fernando Méndez, who also made El Vampiro, The Black Pit of Dr. M and Ladrón de Cadáveres. It was written by Ramón Obón, the screenwriter of the first Mil Mascaras movies, as well as the director and writer of Cien Gritos de Terror.

The American version — The Living Coffin — was remixed for U.S. audiences by K. Gordon Murray, who did a lot of that and really didn’t ever bother consulting the source material.

Gastón (Gastón Santos, a former bullfighter who played himself in many of his movies) and his sidekick Coyote Loco (Pedro de Aguillón) arrive in a town haunted by La Llorona, the crying woman. Maria (María Duval) believes that the red idol that Gastón is carrying was carved by her deceased aunt Clotilde. And the locals think that that woman is, in fact, the crying woman killing the townsfolk.

The film looks great and mixes Gothic horror with Western action, but never really gets going. However, it’s an excellent idea, and I’ll keep looking out for the perfect horror in the West.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Dirkie AKA Lost In the Desert (1976)

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Dirkie DeVries is eight years old and played by Wynand Uys, credited as Dirkie Hayes; he’s the son of director, writer, and producer Jamie Uys, who also directed The Gods Must Be Crazy. As he flies over the Kalahari Desert with his Uncle Pete (Pieter Hauptfleisch), the old dude has a heart attack, stranding Dickie and his small dog (Lolly, played by Lady Frolic Of Belvedale) in the middle of nowhere, with his father Anton (Jamie Uys) searching for him.

If you love dogs, this is a harrowing movie, as that little Cairn Terrier is supposedly eaten, has rocks thrown at it, fights hyenas, and so much more. It lives, barely, as does Dickie. But not for any lack of trying by the actor’s own father!

This could have been released as early as 1969, under the title Dirkie Lost in the Desert in South Africa. This is a cruel movie to make children watch, one that seemingly has nature and foreign cultures at war with kids. If I had seen it when I was small, I would have nightmares to this day.

As for young Wynaad, he had to film all of this twice, as they made both an English and Afrikaans version. He never acted again. I can only imagine how he felt about his dad, but since then, he has worked in adventure travel and as a pilot in the Kruger Park region of South Africa.

You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Dagora the Space Monster (1964)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dagora was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 22 at 1:00 a.m. and December 16, 1967 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, October 16, 1968 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, May 16, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 24, 1971 at 11:30 p.m.

Giant Space Monster Dagora, directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, is a kaiju movie that I would have hated as a child. It’s mostly a cops-and-robbers movies about diamonds, then it’s all about scientists. Dagora only randomly shows up, and it’s a floating jellyfish that seems like one of the Lovecraft Elder Gods. As an adult, the strange look of this kaiju is precisely why I enjoyed this movie.

When several TV satellites launched by the Electric Wave Laboratory go missing, it’s discovered that they have collided with unidentified protoplasmic cells. While that’s happening, Inspector Komai (Yosuke Natsuki) is searching for the thief who is stealing diamonds all over the world, which leads him to a crystallographer named Dr. Munakata (Nobuo Nakamura).

Meanwhile, Mark Jackson (Robert Dunham) is dealing with diamond smugglers as an undercover agent of the World Diamond Insurance Association. They all soon learn that the diamonds — and other sources of carbon — are being consumed by Dogora, which is the form that the cells have taken. And you’ll never guess what defeats the creature. Artificial wasp venom.

Dagora is only in this movie other than as a still at the beginning of Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, but it has shown up in several video games, including Godzilla: Monster of Monsters, Godzilla: Heart-Pounding Monster Island!!, Godzilla: Trading Battle and Godzilla Generations.

This was syndicated by American-International Pictures as part of two of its TV packages, Amazing 66 and Sci-Fi 65. In their prints, all of the cast and credits are removed, as there’s a jump cut from the main title to the first scene.

Take a look at the movies in these packages!

Amazing 66

Sci-Fi 65

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 7: Metalface (2017)

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7. A Texas Chainsaw Massacre Ripoff

“Cindy just lost her job and home. Desperate for money and a place to live, she accepts a job offer but doesn’t know that her new employer is a deranged psychopath who specializes in hunting humans. Metalface is a degenerate killer who does not know any compassion and makes trophies from his sacrifices…and Cindy is next.”

After an unsuccessful run as Playing With Dolls, Lightning Pictures released this in the UK as Leatherface: The Legend Lives On. Legally, how could they even do that? Director Rene Perez was upset about this and has made two sequels.

Cindy Tremaine (Natasha Blasick) has no money, major life issues and the chance to be a housekeeper in a cabin in the woods, one watched all the time by The Watcher (Richard Tyson), who has set masked serial killer Prisoner AYO-886 loose with the goal of him killing Cindy.

So the guy has a barbed wire mask, and that’s all we learn. In fact, the movie ends before there’s even a beginning. Is it better or worse than recent Chainsaw movies? It’s close. That’s no praise. It’s frustrating because this feels so close to actually being something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 7: The Devil’s Candy (2017)

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7. NOW THAT’S BRASS: Skewer the end of week one with a thrust of metal – be it precious or, better yet, base.

Directed and written by Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones), this begins with Raymond Smilie (Pruitt Taylor Vince) shutting out the voices he hears with his guitar. His mother unplugs it; he murders her. And then Jesse Hellman, a struggling painter, his wife, Astrid (Shiri Appleby), and their daughter, Zooey (Kiara Glasco), move in and aren’t told the whole story. Jesse’s paintings become strange and sell better, but he’s hearing the same voices as Raymond, who is lingering outside and talking to Zooey. In the past, Ray had killed children, referring to them as sweet candy, and still has the bodies buried on the grounds of his old house.

How metal is this movie? Jesse wears a Sunn O))) shirt and they’re on the soundtrack. And it starts with Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

I loved how the hero slays the monster with an axe, if you will, at the end of this.

Beyond that, this is filled with acting that goes beyond what is expected for a genre film and a family that you actually feel loves one another.

 

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Deported Women of the SS Special Section (1976)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: 7. Stelvio Cipriani

Le deportate della sezione speciale SS says that its director is Alex Berger. Still, we all know that that’s Rino Di Silvestro, who IMDB said “…was an Italian writer/director who specialized in extremely raw, graphic and, in the opinion of many critics, offensive low-budget exploitation fare.” He also made Women In Cell Block 7, Love Angels, Baby Love, Bello di Mamma, Hanna D. – La ragazza del Vondel Park, The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra and The Legend of the Wolf Woman.

A group of female prisoners is transported by train to an SS concentration camp and subjected to torture by the camp commandant, Herr Erner (John Steiner) and his guards, which includes Kapo Helga (Erna Schürer, La bambola di Satana), a lesbian Third Reich boss, because every one of these movies needs one of those.

Erner falls for prisoner Tania Nobel (Lina Polito), as if this were a film like Salon Kitty. This starts with forced pubic haircuts and ends with a razor blade castration. This has Stefania D’Amario (Nurse Clara in Zombi), Anna Curti (Bava’s Kidnapped), Sara Sperati (who was in the high end version of this, Salon Kitty), Solvi Stubing (The Sheriff Won’t Shoot), Ofilia Meyer (Caligula’s Hot Nights), Paola D’Egidio (La Commessa), Maria Franco (Emanuelle Around the World), Felicita Fanny (X-Rated Girl) and Anges Galapagos (also in SS Lager 5, SS Experiment Love Camp, Achtung! The Desert Tigers and Von Buttiglione Sturmtruppenführer).

All the interiors for the prison camp were filmed at Bracciano Castle, the exact location where The Inglorious Bastards, Toby Dammit, Night of the Devils, Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, and many more films were also shot.

This is the kind of dialogue that waits for you in this movie:

Herr Erner: Tanya. Did you love your Ivan? Hmm? How did he take your virginity away? In the forest, like the animals, or in that dirty bar where they killed him? How did he do it to you, hmm? Standing up against a tree, or lying on the ground among the fleas? What was so special about him?

(Tanya spits in his face)

Herr Erner: You lurid slut! I will have you hanging from a rope, and I myself will tighten the noose about your neck!

Oh yeah! It also has a score by Stelvio Cipriani, who did the music for Piranha II and Tentacles, which is how you rule the undersea world.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Robot Monster (1953)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Robot Monster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 28, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. 

Phil Tucker invented a rotary engine known as the CT Surge Turbine, which he successfully patented but unsuccessfully attempted to sell to the automobile industry as a more efficient alternative to the internal combustion engine. Years after directing movies like this and The Cape Canaveral Monsters, he did actually contribute to some movies as an editor, including Orca and King Kong.

Yet we’re all going to remember him for this movie, and to be honest, whenever life gets me down, I remember that at some point, people got together and decided to make a movie about the end of the world, and they threw a monkey suit with a TV set for a head in it. I think about the startling ridiculousness of that, and you know, it’s all better.

That monster is known as Ro-Man Extension XJ-2. He’s played by George Barrows, who made his own gorilla suit to get roles in movies. He’s already used his Calcinator death ray to kill everyone on Earth except for the eight people we meet in this movie.

I mean, that’s pretty through. There were 2.6 billion people alive in 1953, so to wipe out that many people, much less be able to find the eight you missed, is pretty good work, if I can commend the outright annihilation of a planet.

This movie outright rips off the ending of Invaders from Mars and recycles footage from One Million B.C., Lost Continent, Rocketship X-M, and Captive Women. Still, it’s in 3D, shot all over Bronson Canyon and was made in four days for $16,000. That is also worth celebrating.

It also features a score by Elmer Bernstein, who was currently being held back from major movies due to his liberal views. He also composed a score for Cat Women of the Moon that year, but would soon become one of the biggest names in movie music.

Look, this is a movie that has a Billion Bubble Machine with an antenna being used for Ro-Man to communicate with the Great Guidance, the supreme leader of his face, who finally gets fed up and blasts not only that gorilla robot but the child hero before he causes dinosaurs to come back and then uses psychotronic vibrations to smash Earth out of the universe. If you can’t find something to love there, you are beyond hope.

You can watch the Mystery Science Theater and the original version of this movie on Tubi.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Ring of Darkness (1979)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Stelvio Cipriani

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

I’m ashamed to admit that the name Stelvio Cipriani did not ring any bells when I first saw this category on the list this year. It is just my ignorance, because Cipriani’s score for Mario Bava’s masterpiece A Bay of Blood (AKA Twitch of the Death Nerve AKA Carnage AKA Blood Bath AKA dozens of other titles) is one of my favorite film scores of all time—across all genres. It has so many different flavors, from the menacing, almost jungle beats of the introduction, to the whimsical finale. It is pretty perfect.

Cipriani’s score here in Ring of Darkness is definitely also scoring. It probably helps that his composition is executed by Goblin, really leaning into the prog rock, almost droning feel. I could not help but think about the score used in Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness as comps to the style of the score. I’m also ashamed to admit that I might have fallen asleep halfway through Ring of Darkness. I’ll blame a combination of sleep deprivation and the beats dropped throughout the film that just lulled me to slumber. Now, Ring of Darkness is not a very exciting film, but I was never bored by it.

Beginning with an extended opening sequence, we learn that a group of women is bound together by their love of dance and the love of the devil. Years pass, and eventually the daughter of one of the women is having her own sort of spring awakening, suddenly becoming self-aware that her true father is Lucifer himself. 

While Ring of Darkness was accused of being another Italian rip-off of The Exorcist (writer-director Pier Carpi claimed to have written the story prior to William Blatty’s novel), the film really owes more to films such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen. Really, all three films form a sort of unholy trinity that, let’s just say, inspired many horror films in the 1970s and 80s. 

No one would confuse Daria (Lara Wendel) with Reagan or Damien in terms of memorable, menacing demonic characters. Is she the spawn of Satan, or has she just hit puberty? She goes around calling her mother “mother” in an annoying way that only a teenage girl could do. She does leave a scorching handprint on the chest of a classmate who wants to try to make the moves on her, an ability I’m sure most girls wish they had to rid themselves of annoying teenage boys.

Eventually, Daria ends up at the Vatican. Why? I guess we will never know, as no sequel was produced, or probably asked for by anyone ever. Still, I was interested in knowing what would happen next. Just like I wanted to know the next chapter in The Omen after Damien turns around and smiles back at the camera as he attends his parents’ funeral.

I watched this one on TUBI under the alternate title Satan’s Wife, which might just be one of the worst titles in cinematic history. There is no wife of Satan here. I’m not sure Satan is down with such long-term commitments. A much better title would have been To the Devil a Daughter, but Hammer had already used that one a few years prior.