John Russo is a green filmmaker and by that, I mean that he sure does love to recycle footage. But hey — he’s also smart enough to realize that those that love metal generally love horror movies, so why not combine both of them?

His Market Square Productions put this together and it was directed and written by Paul McCollough, who was around to shoot The Winners, There’s Always Vanilla, The Booby Hatch, FleshEater and Midnight, as well as edit The Booby Hatch, FleshEater, Midnight, The Majorettes and Heartstopper plus also compose music for several of those films and the remake of Night of the Living Dead, Legion of the Night, Santa Claws and Monster Makeup.

There are seven music videos on this and each has a video — of sorts — to go with it.

Hurricane “Over the Edge”: Hurricane is an American heavy metal band — they’re still around! — first formed in 1983. The original lineup had now current Foreigner lead vocalist Kelly Hansen, Robert Sarzo, Tony Cavazo and Jay Schellen. If some of those last names seem familiar, Cavazo and Sarzo are the younger brothers of Quiet Riot’s Carlos Cavazo and Rudy Sarzo. Robert was the first guitarist to replace Randy Rhodes after he tragically died. Robert and Tony are also the only original members left in the band. I kind of love how the “video” behind their song is just footage of Kennywood, an amusement park outside Pittsburgh.

Wrath “Children of the Wicked”: Wrath plays what they refer to as “progressive, technically demanding thrash metal which has been referred to as Tech-Thrash or Speed-Tech.” Bassist Gary Modica is the only original member left, but they’re still recording.

The Pandoras “Run Down Love Battery”: This band got their start in late 1982 as part of the 1960s garage rock revival and was associated with the Paisley Underground era in Hollywood’s underground rock scene. Sadly, the band split into two factions as It’s About Time LP was released with founder/singer/songwriter Paula Pierce hiring three new musicians and literally going her own way. The band was on Rhino, Elektra and Restless before disbanding in 1990. Keyboardist Melanie Vammen and bassist Kim Shattuck went on to form The Muffs. Even sadder, both Pierce and Shattuck are no longer with us. This is pretty much just the band’s video for the song, but man, it’s infectious.

The Dickies “Booby Trap”: This Los Angeles-based punk band has been in continuous existence for over 40 years. They’re probably best known for doing the music for Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Elvis Hitler “Hot Rod to Hell”: This Detroit-born psychobilly band was named after the stage name of their lead singer Jim Leedy and had a novelty hit with the song “Green Haze,” which combines the theme song of Green Acres with “Purple Haze.”

The Del-Lords “Judas Kiss”: Founded by The Dictators’ guitarist Scott Kempner, this band had four singers — beyond Kempner, there was Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, Frank Funaro and Steve Almaas — to become an urban roots rock version of the Beach Boys. They were named for the director of several Three Stooges shorts, Del Lord.

N.M.E. “Heartstopper”:  This Pittsburgh band featured guitarists Michael Weldon and Brian Keruskin, Chuck Robinson on bass, drummer Dave Snyder and vocalist Jirus. They broke up shortly after doing the music for the movie Heartstopper.

All of all these songs play over clips of Night of the Living Dead, The Majorettes, Midnight and Heartstopper which as you may have put together are all movies owned by Russo (or in the public domain, as is the case with Night). There are also strange garbled voiceover and audio warnings about a character named Uncle Tonoose, who gets mentioned so much in this you might believe that he’s actually someone. Maybe the character from Make Room for Daddy came back from the dead?

Regardless, this is a fun artifact of a past time and for a while was the only way to see Heartstopper. It’s pretty ramshackle, but that’s part of the fun.

Thanks to the magic of the web, you can watch it on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of my favorite holiday movies and one I dream that Vinegar Syndrome releases. This was first on the site on December 20, 2017.

Sometimes, I watch movies in the middle of the night, after working long shifts of meetings, copywriting and brainstorming. Whatever brains that still exist in the mush and at this late hour are often exposed to sheer lunacy via films that I find on YouTube. When I awaken, my first thought is often, “Was that movie real or a nightmare?”

Elves is one of those films.

Kirsten and her friends innocently take part in an anti-Christmas pagan ritual in the woods, but then she cuts her hand and awakens a demonic elf who ends up being part of a Nazi plot to create the master race that Hitler always dreamed of. Yep, instead of the pure Aryan Nietzsche paradigm, the Führer dreamed of a world where human and elf hybrids would populate the globe.

Through one of those moments of perfect horror movie luck, Kirsten is the last pure Aryan virgin on earth. Nope, this isn’t a post-apocalyptic film. That’s just the way things are these days. Her grandfather was once a part of all of this, but he’s since reformed. Oh, he’s also her father, because inbreeding was a big part of keeping the bloodline pure.

But hey, Kirsten has no idea that any of this is going on. She’s just trying to get through the hell of holiday retail, working in a department store. That’s where she meets Mike McGain (Dan Haggerty, TV’s Grizzly Adams), an alcoholic homeless ex-cop who takes over for the store’s Santa Claus when the original is killed by an evil elf. Yes, I just wrote that sentence, perhaps the most batshit crazy one I’ve ever assembled in all my years of writing.

Mike starts living in the store, eating food that he steals from the snack bar where Kirsten works. One night, he saves her when the Nazis come to the store and kill all of her friends.

Will Kirsten survive? What does her mom think about all of this? Have you ever wanted to see a movie where an elf electrocutes a woman in a bathtub? What the fuck is an elfstone anyway? These and several other questions will and won’t be answered.

This is a film rich with purely inane and insane dialogue, including a lecherous cocaine using Santa that states, “Santa said oral!” and our heroine bemoaning that her only friend is a cat. There’s also a great scene where Mike goes to see a professor during a holiday dinner and the man describes how elves and Nazis are having this big ritual and incestual sex bloodlines in front of his children.

Geek note: Mike goes to the library and asks what the Dewey Decimal System Number is for the occult. The answer? 666. Nope. The real number would be 130, the code for books on parapsychology and the supernatural.

Is this film any good? Fuck no, it’s horrible. And I loved it. It’s my holiday gift to you and I’m so happy to share such a patently warped film with all of you.

Also, was this film inspired by The Little People, the potboiler that inspired Paperbacks from Hell?

It’s also never come out on DVD, an amazing thing in an age where nearly everything has been released. Luckily, the VHSPS crew have things covered!

How have I never watched this?

I mean, the cast is pure magic. Rutger Hauer playing a gaijin Zatoichi? Terry O’Quinn as his chemical expert war buddy who gets wacky when he throws explosives at people? Nick Cassavetes and Rick Overton as the cowboy henchman known as the Pike Brothers? Randall “Tex” Cobb as Slag, the man trying to get O’Quinn’s kid and who has already killed his ex-wife, played by Meg Foster?

This is a movie where, of course, Hauer has crazy blind eyes and goes eyeball to eyeball with Foster, her blue eyes staring a hole into the sun.

Lisa Blount as O’Quinn’s new love? Tiger Chung Lee playing a heavy? Sho Kosugi showing up just long enough to go one on one with Hauer in a sword duel over an electrified hot tub?

Phillip Noyce made this and Dead Calm in the same year, which is absolutely amazing. He also made Sliver and I’d love to talk to him about all of the insanity.

Seriously, I watched every single moment of this with a huge smile on my face. The idea of remaking Zaitochi Challenged in America and not losing any of the charm? Credit goes to Tim Matheson, a fan of that Japanese series, who worked with producer Daniel Grodnik for seven years to get this made.

The Kino Lorber blu ray of this has an audio commentary by screenwriter Charles Robert Carner, moderated by Filmmaker Douglas Hosdale, as well as a newly remastered trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

Winemaker Dr. Elson Po (James Hong, who directed this with William Rice, and wrote the movie with Douglas Kondo and  James Marlowe)  is growing old, so he takes young people and uses their blood to make wine. He gets a great idea to make a movie about the wine, but that’s just a scam so that he can get some gorgeous young folks to visit and die.

There are some fun moments in this, like the dying people buried in Po’s garden, him ordering the death of his wife’s young lover and a moment where he rapidly ages while making love. No problem — he heads down to the basement for a fresh bottle of that age-defying wine.

Jezebel, one of the main women in this, is played by Playboy March 1982 Playmate of the Month Karen Lorre, who was also in Dangerously Close. I love that all these young American women take one look at Po and say, “He’s so…interesting!” Yes!  He’s going to smash you like a human grape into his favorite chablis! Run!

You can watch this on Tubi.

Gary Winick sadly died young from brain cancer, but left behind Charlotte’s Web, Tadpole, 13 Going On 30, Letter to Juliet and this one, his first movie.

Stephanie Davenport (Kyle Richards, who had already survived a demonic car and Michael Myers at this point in her life) is out all night with her friends while her parents Walter and Megan (Frank Miller and Jean Brooks) leave for vacation. At the same time, Ray and Bob Perkins (Wendell Wellman and John Putch) have escaped from death row and come back to where the Davenports live, because Walter is the DA that put them away. He’s last on their list of bloody terror.

According to The Unknown Movies, “the British Board of Film Classification banned the movie from getting released on video in England.” I’m not sure why, as even though there’s torture and murder. It all feels like it’s way more than good taste though.

Perhaps they knew it would be too much to have Christopher Knight as a cop?

Regardless, if you’re looking for a movie where Kyle Richards causes one murderous brother to murder the other with a drill, well, here it is.

You can buy this from Vinegar Syndrome.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally part of slasher month two years ago on October 11, 2020. It’s back because the goal is to write up every single film in the series this week.

Puppet Master may have started with one direct-to-video movie, but since then, there’s been ten sequels, a crossover with Demonic Toys and a recent reboot, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.

After Empire Pictures went out of business, Charles Band started Full Moon Productions, which would partner with Paramount Pictures and Pioneer Home Entertainment to create direct-to-video movies. Puppet Master would be first and it’s very similar to another Band movie, Dolls. Yes, this was originally intended for theaters, but Band thought it would make more money as a home release.

Think Star Wars is confusing? Well, Puppet Master is really the sixth film in chronological order. It starts in Bodega Bay, California in the year 1939. A puppeteer named André Toulon (William Hickey, Uncle Lewis from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) is finishing a puppet he calls Jester when Nazi spies come for him. He places Jester and the other puppets (Blade, Shredder Khan and Gengie) into a hidden panel before killing himself.

Fifty years later, psychics Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford take a journey to meet their old colleague Neil Gallagher, who has found Toulon’s hiding place, all thanks to a series of visions. Soon, a doll named Pinhead is taking out the psychic’s one by one, finally revealing that Neil has been alive all along using Toulon’s Egyptian secrets of alchemy to reanimate himself. However, he’s dumb enough to cross the puppets and throw Jester at a chair. Those puppets stay together. Only Alex and Megan survive along with Dana’s formerly taxidermied dog, which is now mysteriously back alive.

Such a small debut for a series that would go on to so many more installments, right? Even though they only have five minutes of screen time, people fell in love with the little guys. How can’t you adore Blade, who is based on Klaus Kinski and the Leech Woman? Strangely enough, most of the music in this movie comes from a movie Band produced that’s also about bringing inanimate objects to life, Tourist Trap.

Body Organ Replacement Network starts with three of the adopted daughters of Buck and Della Cassidy (Russ and Claire Hagen) being abducted by an evil ambulance that delivers its captives to Hugh (Russ Tamblyn) and his crew of surgeon Dr. Farley (William Smith), nurse Jerry (Clint Howard) and secretary Liz (P.J. Soles) where their organs wil be harvested and sold to rich people.

Sounds good, but then let me tell you: this movie’s second unit director John Stewart and most of the cast also show up in Action U.S.A. so you know that this movie is not going be normal. I mean, there’s a part of the movie that takes place at a charity adopt a grandparent day.

Of course Ross Hagen directed this, so that made me think, did Gary Graver act as his cinematographer? I mean, do I even need IMDB for this movie?

Oh yeah, Rance Howard as a corrupt cop and the alt title of Merchants of Death? Was this made for me? William Smith gravel voiced complaining about livers being bad and saying medical terms is pretty much all I want in this movie watching life.

Magic Warriors is the third movie in a trilogy that includes Child of Peach and Magic of Spell. I am happy to inform you that in no way did this series of movies ever get less weird or filled with whimsy.

Well, it’s kind of the third part. It was released as Child of Peach 3 in some places, but it’s a totally different story with the same cast and crew. Lin Hsiao-Lu is now Little Flying Dragon and he/she must protect Golden Boy, the son of a male sword fighting angel and female demon witch. Somehow, he also has a map that can find the only weapon that can kill the Devil King so everyone wants to find him. Also, Devil King has kidnapped Golden Boy’s parents, so they have to figure out how to get that weapon and defeat him.

Golden Boy’s magical powers all revolve around toilet humor. Like when he remembers that his mother told him that when you’re drunk, you can find the truth, so to remember even more of what she told him he gets completely drunk and he’s a kid. A little kid. He then pisses in Little Flying Dragon’s face. He also farts and has poop-based projectile abilities.

There are green skinned monsters to battle, a scene where Little Flying Dragon gets poisoned and turns into a monkey and enemies that look like snails and mushrooms. You should really abandon any hope that this will make sense or be normal. Why would you want that anyway?

I wish there had been thousands of these movies. There are more out there, however, so the hunt is on to find movies that are in the same world as this. Every time I wonder if the well of strange film will dry up, it gives me a new obsession.

You can either watch this on YouTube or download two parts on the Internet Archive: part one and part two.