Some think that because this is one of the better of the “Lucio Fulci presenta” films that The Godfather of Gore had something to do with it, perhaps co-directing alongside Giovanni Simonelli, who wrote Cat in the Brain for Fulci, as well as Jungle Raiders, The Ark of the Sun God, Bloody Psycho (another Fulci presents), some of the Kommissar X movies, a few Sartana films and a movie Bava came in to save, Knives of the Avenger.

Massimiliano and Silvia Cipollone play Hansel and Gretel, who we meet as they’re being kidnapped, then placed on an operating table where their organs are harvested because this is an Italian movie, then confirming that yes, this is an Italian horror film by having them come back as ghosts that horrifically pick off everyone involves one by one.

The kids kill everyone in their path by just showing up, their eyes glowing and then the madness happens. It would almost be a murderdrone if it were in more capable directing hands — or less, maybe — and it has the same song repeating five times as an instrumental and thirteen times by the kids.

This is the counterpoint, I guess, to The Sweet House of Horrors, where children need protected by ghosts. Here, the kids just cut out the middle man and lead people to growing, self-inflicted gunshots and oven-related death, as well as one old lady getting her eye damaged, just so we know who is really in charge here.

Along with the aforementioned Bloody Psycho, Cat in the Brain has effects and kills from this movie and several other late period movies that took advantage of Lucio’s signature, such as Sodoma’s Ghost, Massacre, The Murder Secret and Touch of Death.

After a drug deal gone wrong, the criminals take a magician named Chandu and his daughter hostage and take them back to his mansion, a place where his obsession with the gods of the ancient times has gone a bit out of his control and now, well, everyone is going to pay.

Sure, its a good set up, but it’s also directed by the man who brought us Pieces and Slugs, Juan Piquer Simón.

So anyways, Chandu lost his wife — his first assistant — due to an accident, which is when we’re to assume he got into the black magic that has left him with a pulsating left hand. Now his daughter (wife and daughter are both played by Marcie Layton) is his assistant and just in time for all hell to break loose.

There isn’t the budget to make this the movie it wants to be, but when has that ever stopped us from enjoying something?

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

I mean, how could I not watch this movie? It’s got Michael Dudikoff, Mark Hamill and Robert Mitchum improbably together in a riff on The Hitcher or The Vanishing or any other number of hitchhiking maniacs on the road movies.

Dudikoff is a cop who is more married to his job than to his Russian wife Lara, who finally decides to drive off and then make the decision to pick up Justin Mckay (Hamill), who grew up with a mother who parted her sister’s hair with a butcher knife and has passed on the willingness to kill to her son.

Over one brutal evening, Lara must ride with the killer as he destroys everyone he can, ending with him trying to convince Mitchum, playing a doctor, to give her electoshock therapy against her will.

If you’re used to seeing Dudikoff be a ninja — an American Ninja — he barely fights in this. But hey — it’s a Cannon Film, which means that it has some level of strangeness, maybe because it was shot in Italy* instead of America, but has stuntman Bob Bralver directing it, who only made one other full-length movie, Rush Week, which isn’t all that bad. He’s joined by writer Russell V. Manzatt, who also wrote that aforementioned college stalk and slash.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*That’s the claim I keep reading, even if IMDB says that it was made in California. I mean, with all the neons and blue color, this could have been a late Italian direct to video movie.

Directed by Sally Mattison and written by Catherine Cyran — all of the Slumber Party Massacre movies have been directed by women — this movie is probably the worst of the three films and a remake.

It does have a character named The Beach Weirdo that somehow has a power drill that he carries around and uses to do what killers in the slumber party movies do, which is drill women.

After filming was completed, the set was used for another Roger Corman-produced sequel that was also unrelated to the movie that before: Sorority House Massacre II. Speaking of Corman, this movie needed his special touch, because even though the actresses in the film were hired because they woud get nude, several refused and Mattison agreed to let them keep their clothes on.

The sinister foreign buyers demanded to see some flesh and Maria Ford was the one to get her clothes ripped off and assaulted, no matter what Mattison wanted to have happen. Man, how has Corman never been part of the Me Too takedown?  Hopefully he’s treated his talent better than what I’ve read.

Written, directed, produced and edited by Jack Snyder, this movie was made in 1985 and released in 1990. It concerns a group of college students who must spend the night inside a haunted house in order for their supernatural and the occult class. So they do what college students do — they get drunk, high and laid — and just when they think they’re in the middle of a prank, a very real grim reaper begins killing them off.

To get there takes over an hour, time during which the forty-something twenty-year-olds in this movie drink lots of beer and talk a whole bunch and then drink some more and then chat some more and then wander around and then drink some more.

A warning — this movie is two hours long. Maybe more. And yet there are two minutes of stop motion demon that kind of make it all worthwhile, along with a synth score that just drones on. But mostly, it’s dudes with mustaches chatting and drinking, if that’s your thing.

Fatal Exam was barely released in any format and never officially made available on disc, Vinegar Syndrome restored it in 2K from the 16mm original camera negative and included it on their Home Grown Horrors Volume One box set along with Winterbeast and Beyond Dream’s Door. You can also watch this on Tubi.

This Australian slasher is pretty unique in that is set in a rich Catholic school and has plenty of coming of age and students versus townies story beyond the slashing, which also feels a little but closer to the giallo than the slasher, despite giving away who the killer is early in the film.

It was even released into Australian theaters with a Willian Castle gimmick: the fright break, which gave audience members the opportunity to walk out and claim a refund before the big ending reveal.

Actually, I say that this is set in Australia but many of the characters claim to be from America, yet the accents are most definitely from a land down under.

I’ve seen some bad reviews for this, but I obviously have no taste and I loved that it had a killer dumb enough to keep eyeballs in the classroom and that it had a streak of sleaze, such as the teacher’s wife who makes plans every Sunday to sleep with young boys and then insult her husband by revealing it all to him. It’s got a glossy look to it, an ending where even the nicest people in the cast kept destroyed and a nun throwing acid in someone’s face. These are all good things.

Cayce Bridges (Ally Sheedy) — nice first name — is a remote viewer and empath who can mentally find and link with murderers, allowing the police to catch them. However, once she meets the Shadow Man, she learns that there’s a psychic that is even more powerful than she is.

So much American giallo seems fixated on the psychic detective who can find a killer that ends up getting stuck inside her mind. That said, this film has a wonderful performance by Ally Sheedy to shore it up as well as a bonkers scene at a dinner where she suddenly links minds with the killer and begins ruins numerous rich folks’ fancy evening out.

Plus, Michael O’Keefe, John Agar and Lauren Hutton make for what is in our existence a pretty decent cast.

Writer/director Rockne S. Bannon’s career has mostly been in science fiction, as he wrote the theatrical and TV versions of Alien Nation, as well as plenty more TV like FarScape, the 90s Twilight Zone and Cult.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Dennis Paoli wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, The Dentist, Spellcaster and Castle Freak, so I would put his Full Moon work on the good side of the “Is it a good or bad Full Moon?” equation that we’ll discuss throughout this week of their films. I am thanking him for somehow getting Charles Band to make a movie with all non-small characters, save Phil Fondacaro, because Mr. Band just can’t seem to make a movie without someone short or miniature.

Unlike so many other Full Moon films, this one looks and sounds great, with a Pino Donaggio score and a lush and romantic feel, because hey, it’s the Full Moon version of Beauty and the Beast.

It’s also incredibly troubling, as Lawrence and his twin brother are under a curse and may only be killed by someone who loves them. I don’t believe that said curse gives them license — here’s the rough part — to drug and assault our main character Catherine Bomarzini (Sherilyn Fenn) and her friend Gina (Charlie Spradling, who was also in the Full Moon films Bad Channels and Puppet Master II).

Also known as The Ravaging, which is the re-mastered title, this movie also has a ghost girl, a faithful nanny and monster and human lovemaking. It’s kind of like the Cinemax version of a fairy tale — umm, no wait, that would be Fairy Tales — and I’m sure that lots of folks rented this before they could actually rent VCA movies and were rewarded with something even stranger than an actual adult movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Writer Vivian Schilling told Fangoria about this movie: “When I was 18, just out of high school, I went to a party with a girlfriend. A guy offered us a ride home, someone we thought we knew pretty well. He didn’t look wasted or anything, but when we got in the car he started driving really crazy. We were going very fast and hit a tree; I was in the front seat and was literally buried in the dashboard. It was bad. For a moment as I was sitting there. I thought I was going to die. I always felt lucky to have lived through that, but it also made me wonder. What if I was supposed to die and didn’t know it?”

So they made a movie where Robert Z’Dar played the Angel of Death and Joe Estevez was his Soultaker, years before Final Destination, and Schilling even appears in the movie as one of the souls chased by death itself.

After the surprising success of this low budget film, a sequel was planned with James Earl Jones, Faye Dunaway, Donald Sutherland and William Shatner discussed as being in the cast and director Tibor Takács being picked to helm the picture. Funding was never found and Schilling eventually turned that script into her book Quietus.

Director Michael Rissi also made Terror Eyes, which also starred Schilling.

The Willies has a cast that makes you keep into the movie. I mean, Sean Astin is one of three kids gathered around the campfire — Jason Horst and Joshua John Miller from Near Dark are the other two — telling urban legends like the old woman who microwaved her dog, a rat in fried chicken and death in an amusement park. Michael then says that he has a story that will give them all…The Willies.

In “Bad Apples,” Kathleen Freeman plays to type as the mean teacher and James Karen shows up as a kindly custodian, the only person who really cares about Danny, a bullied child. As things happen, Karen ends up being an alien who loves to eat bad kids. This segment as actually a short that writer and director Brian Peck (Victor from The Last American Virgin and Scuz from Return of the Living Dead) made in 1985.

In “Flyboy,” Gordy Belcher plays insect pranks on other kids before running into Farmer Spivey, who has super manure that can grow things faster. Of course, this all ends up with Gordy getting his arms torn off by super flies.

At the end, Kyle and Josh claim that their uncle can prove the stories are true. Well, he ends up being James Karen and he reveals the monster face from the first story.

The Willies also has cameos from Kirk Cameron, his wife Chelsea Noble, Tracey Gold and Jeremy Miller which almost makes this an episode of Growing Pains. Perhaps more exciting are appearances by Clu Gulager, Dana Ashbrook and even comedian Doug Benson.

This movie was for kids and is dark in ways that modern horror is not. I think 1990 was the last gasp of things getting to be this weird. The poster is super high quality and really feels like the style of art that slip cases and Fright Rags use today.

You can watch this on Tubi.