Between Pin, Cathy’s Curse and this film, what is it about Canadian families in horror films? Beneath a surface of politeness, is everyone this psychotic north of the border?

Julie (Isabelle Mejias, Scanners II: The New Order) just wants to play with her pet snake, hunt with her dad, and, well, lie in bed with him. But when her mom takes away her snake, she just watches a delivery boy (Paul Hubbard, who played Flash Gordon in the deleted scenes in A Christmas Story) violate her and does nothing to save her life, even though she’s holding a gun. It’s a horrifying scene, as the man is shocked that he’s knocked the woman’s head so hard into the ground. He’s more upset than Julie when he sees the blood seeping out of the back of her brain. Julie just watches, fascinated yet removed.

Julie thinks she has her father (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) all to herself, but he soon finds a new wife: the alluring Susan (Sybil Danning)! She brings sex appeal and a stepson. And because she may have been dating daddy before mommy died, maybe Julie’s dad is taking advantage of the death she caused.

One thing he’s definitely taking advantage of is the opportunity to make sweet, sweet love to Susan. He doesn’t know that his daughter is watching the entire time and enjoying things way too much, imagining herself in bed with her father! Ugh!

And it gets worse and worse, as Julie does things like lock her stepbrother in a refrigerator, nearly killing him, and then brings the rapist who killed her mother back to the house to take out her new mom in a blackmail plot. Yep, she even tells him, “You can rape her all you want!” It all adds up to an ending that totally shocked me, and I don’t want to cheat you out of it.

Unlike The Bad Seed, Julie isn’t just born bad; she is a product of a father who is so pathologically oblivious that he borders on being an accomplice.

Yep. This is one rough little film, which makes sense when you realize it’s by the writer and director of Chained Heat, Paul Nicolas (that movie also has Danning in it, plus Linda Blair, Henry Silva, Tamara Dobson, John Vernon and Stella Stevens for a movie that transcends the WIP genre).

It’s not for everyone. But Mejias is great in it. And it’s the kind of movie that you are amazed exists, and even more astounded as it plays in your DVD player (or streams on YouTube).

In a bizarre twist of “it’s a small world,” Cindy Girling (who plays the mother who gets her head smashed) was actually married in real life to Paul Hubbard (the delivery boy who kills her). Talk about taking your work home with you!

Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) owns the hottest business in 1983: a video arcade. It’s driving local business tycoon Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker, a man whose name I screamed into the ear of a sleeping girlfriend once, which is a long story I should really get to sometime) nuts, so he gets his two nephews and plans on shutting down the arcade. Mean! Unfair! No!

Bailey’s too smart for Rutter and has two pals named Eugene Groebe (Leif Green, Davey Jaworski from the legendary bomb Grease 2) — who is molested by swimsuit girls before he even gets to the arcade — and McDorfus, who are ready to deal with this affront.

This movie was such a big deal that Midway allowed the image of Pac-Man, their new game Satan’s Hollow, and the as-yet-unreleased Super Pac-Man to be used during the big showdown at the movie’s end.

Corinne Bohrer, who is pretty much teen movie royalty thanks to appearances in films like Surf II, Zapped! and Stewardess School, shows up, as does John Voldstad, who played “my other brother Daryl” on TV’s Newhart.

There are two real reasons to watch this movie. One is the theme song, which has beeps, boops and promises “video to the max” and “totally awesome video games!” This song will infiltrate your mind and not leave, trust me.

The other big reason is John Gries, who completely owns every scene he appears in as King Vidiot, a punk rock maniac surrounded by punker girls who communicate only in video game noises when they’re not all riding miniature motorcycles. In a more perfect world, King Vidiot would be the star of the film. Every other person pales in comparison to his greatness. Gries would go on to steal the show in plenty of other films, including Real Genius, Napoleon Dynamite, Fright Night, The Monster Squad, and TerrorVision.

This all comes from Greydon Clark, who directed The Uninvited — a movie where George Kennedy does battle with a house cat — Without Warning and Wacko, as well as appearing in movies like Satan’s Sadists.

The saddest part of this movie was that, even though the good guys won, arcades would be dead by the mid-1980s. So really, the bad guys did win. King Vidiot? Well, no one knows what happened to him.

Also known as The Horror Star and Body Snatchers, this is the tale of Conrad Razkoff (Ferdy Mayne), a horror film star who fakes his death or maybe not, but definitely exists beyond life and death as he wipes out a drama class.

Before that, Ragzoff is in a dentures commercial, and the director argues with him over his acting, so Ragzoff shoves him off a balcony. Then, he visits the drama school and faints from excitement, revived by one of the students, Meg (Jennifer Starrett).

That night, he decides to die and tells his director, Wolfgang (Leon Askin), what he wants for his funeral. As he expires — or fakes it — Wolfgang says, “The world is rid of you, and I am rid of you. Good night, sweet prince of ham!” The great actor rises and kills the disbeliever with a pillow.

Meg, Saint (Luca Bercovici, the director of Ghoulies), Bobo (Scott Thomson, Copeland from the Police Academy series), Eve (Carlene Olson), Donna (Donna McDaniel, Angel), Oscar (Alan Stock) and Stu (Jeffrey Combs, cast for his hair color, really) go to the cemetery after dark to see Ragzoff’s tomb. A film begins, cursing them, before they steal the body and head off to an old mansion in time for the coffin to explode and all sorts of murder, including tongue ripping, black magic and crypt gas.

By the end, the police show up to find Meg surrounded by her dead friends and Conrad rising from his grave to kill a fake psychic and joins his wife, at which point we see the video inside the tomb with the actor saying how much he enjoys being in Hell.

I’m obsessed with the films of Norman Thaddeus Vane, like The Black Room and Midnight. Plus, the scenes of Conrad being a horror star are really Christopher Lee in Uncle Was a Vampire. It’s strange and wonderful. That’s what I want in all my movies.

The Troma “Tromatic Special Edition” Blu-ray includes extras such as the DVD Intro featuring Lloyd Kaufman and Debbie Rechon, an archival audio interview with director Norman Thaddeus Vane, historical commentary with David Del Valle and David DeCoteau, audio commentary from The Hysteria Continues, the original trailer, artwork gallery, an interview with DP Joel King, Troma behind-the-scenes and music videos. You can get it from MVD.