After the two Creepshow movies, where can you turn for a modern portmanteau filled with Stephen King stories? How about the cinematic version of the TV show Tales from the Darkside?

The success of Creepshow led to thoughts of making it into a TV series. Warned Brothers owned some aspects and Laurel Entertainment, who produced the film (its George Romero’s company) opted to create their own version. Two episodes of the show, “Word Processor of the Gods” and “Sorry, Right Number,” were based on King stories.

Starting with the intro “Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But…there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit…a dark side,” and ending with “The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter — waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight,” the show was a dark journey into the supernatural. It was followed up by Monsters, another anthology show of somewhat lesser quality (although several of the episodes are great fun and there’s a King written episode, “The Moving Finger”).

Several people, including Tom Savini, think that this movie is the real Creepshow 3, but his quote may be referring to the similar nature of the movies and the involvement of King and Romero.

The movie begins with Debbie Harry of all people, playing a housewife who is preparing the main course for a dinner party — Timmy (Matthew Lawrence, brother of Woah! Joey). As the film progresses, they will be our framing device as Timmy reads from the actual book Tales from the Darkside.

In Lot No. 249, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story and adapted by Beetlejuice writer Michael McDowell, a grad student named Edward (Steve Buscemi has never looked so young!) has been framed for a theft which ruins his scholarship. He wants revenge on Susan (Julianne Moore in her screen debut) and Lee (Robert Sedgwick, brother of Kyra) and gets it by reanimating a mummy to kill them both.

Susan’s brother Andy (Christian Slater, Untamed Heart, Robin Hood) kidnaps Edward and brings the mummy to kill him. At the last moment, he can’t do it and releases him. He probably shouldn’t have done that, as Edward soon sends the reanimated versions of Susan and Lee to kill him!

The next story, The Cat from Hell, is based on a King story and was adapted by Romero. A black cat is bedeviling Drogan (William Hickey, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), a pharmaceutical owner whose latest drug has killed over 5,000 cats in testing. One by one, the cat has killed everyone in his house, so he hired a hitman named Halston (New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, who is also Buster Poindexter).

After a comical battle, the cat goes down Halston’s throat (seriously, this special effect is insane and kudos to the special effects crew, which includes KNB) and then emerges to kill the old man.

The third story is also written by McDowell and is based on the Yuki-onna, a spirit in Japanese folklore. Preston is a drunken and depressed artist played by James Remar (Raiden from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) who witnesses a gargoyle kill a man. The monster swears to not kill Preston as long as he never tells anyone what happened.

Starting with that night, his life changes for the better. He meets and marries the gorgeous Carola (Rae Dawn Chong, Quest for Fire) and they have two children. He becomes a famous artist. He even wins back Robert Klein as his agent. All is well, but he can’t forget the monster.

On their tenth anniversary, he decides to tell his wife, which was the wrong idea. She was the monster all along and their children are also monsters (!). At the end, they all fly away after she kills him.

Finally, Timmy escapes by throwing the woman into the oven, then looks directly at us and says, “Don’t you just love happy endings?”

There was an announced sequel to this movie that was never filmed. A screenplay was written by McDowell and Romero, along with Gahan Wilson. Segments would have included an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s “Almost Human,” as well as Stephen King’s “Pinfall” (originally planned for Creepshow 2) and “Rainy Season.” Sadly, it never was filmed.

Director John Harrison was part of the Image Works, along with Dusty Nelson and Pasquale Buba (whose family name and hometown of Braddock was used for Martin). They produced the film Effects together. Harrison is also a music composer, creating the music for this film, as well as Creepshow and Day of the Dead. He wrote and directed Frank Herbert’s Dune in the early 2000’s, plus he wrote and co-produced the follow-up Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune.

Here’s some trivia I found interesting. Because of the samples and music cues that were used from Day of the Dead, Harrison recieved a co-writing credit on the Gorillaz’s songs “M1 A1” and Hip Albatross.

This is a pretty well-done film. I miss the Creepshow framing device, but it’s a great way to get more stories into one film. I remember catching the end of the third film as a teen and being freaked out by it. It’s still pretty powerful nearly thirty years later.

The beauty of Predator is that it starts as a war movie and suddenly becomes a slasher before you even realize it. It subverts the macho tropes of Arnold movies by inserting a killing machine that is tougher, better armed and just plain unstoppable. And that killer? He’s just here for sport.

So why do I love Predator 2 so much? Because it’s literally a grindhouse or Italian exploitation version of Predator. Instead of the jungle, we get a literal concrete jungle. Instead of Arnold, Jesse and Carl Weathers, we get character actors galore, like Danny Glover, Robert Davi, Gary Busey and Bill Paxton. It has the feel of RoboCop with a non-stop media barrage led by real-life junk TV icon Morton Downey, Jr. (“Zip it, pinhead!”), and a populace that is constantly armed and always looking for a chance to use it. It’s one of the few slices of the future where it feels like today — the technology is only nominally better and everything pretty much sucks for everyone. And holy shit, is it fucking hot.

The 1997 of this movie is really 2018, to be honest. Except LA is in the midst of a war between the Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels. It’s a perfect place for a Predator to hunt — and once that alien sees Lt. Harrigan (Glover) in action, it seems like it’s playing a game to capture the lawman as his ultimate prize. That’s when we meet Special Agent Peter Keyes (Busey), who is posing as a DEA agent, and new team member Detective Jerry Lambert (Paxton at his most manic).

There’s a scene where the Predator interrupts a voodoo ritual (the girlfriend screaming for her life is former Playboy Playmate turned porn star (that was a rare thing in the 1990’s) Teri Weigel) and wipes out everyone, skinning them alive and taking pieces of them as trophies. One of the team, Danny (singer Rubén Blades) comes back to the crime scene, only to be killed by the camoflagued alien.

Harrigan starts tracking the killer, thinking he’s dealing with a human. He even consults King Willie (Calvin Lockhart, The Beast Must Die), the voodoo loving gang leader. That’s when we get that immortal line that Ice Cube sampled, “There’s no stopping what can’t be stopped. No killing what can’t be killed.” A short battle follows with an awesome two cut (literally) of Willie screaming and his severed head being carried away, continuing the scream.

Two massive action scenes follow: Lambert and team member Cantrell (María Conchita Alonso) battling a gang and the Predator on a train, then Keyes and his team battling the Predator in what they think is the perfect situation.

It comes down to Harrigan and the Predator battling one on one, from rooftop to buildings to a spacecraft. Harrigan overcomes the alien with its own weapons, then an army of other Predators appear (this made me stand up and cheer when I saw this 27 years ago in the theater) and one of them hands the cop an ancient gun as a trophy before they leave him behind. That gun is engraved “Raphael Adolini 1715,” a reference to the Dark Horse comic book story Predator: 1718, which was published in  A Decade of Dark Horse #1.

To be honest — a TON of this film is taken from Dark Horse’s Predator: Concrete Jungle. The first few issues feature  Detective Schaefer, the brother of Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, as he and his partner, Detective Rasche, fight a Predator in New York City. And the inclusion of the Alien skull was inspired by Dark Horse’s Aliens vs. Predator series.

I love that Lilyan Chauvin is in this as Dr. Irene Richards, the chief medical examiner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles. How woke is Predator 2? The main cop is African American leading an ethnically diverse team when that diversity isn’t an issue at all? Then you have a woman in charge of all pathology? How ahead of its time is this movie?

Adam Baldwin from TV’s Firefly has a brief role as a member of Keyes’ team. Plus, Robert Davi plays a police captain, Kent McCord from TV’s Adam-12 is a cop, Steve Kahan (who played Glover’s boss in four Lethal Weapon films) plays a police sergeant and Elpidia Carrillo reprises her role as Anna Gonsalves from the original in a cameo.

If you read the book version, you learn even more: Keyes recalls memories of speaking with Dutch in a hospital, as he suffered from radiation sickness. However, the soldier escaped, never to be seen again. Arnold himself escaped, refusing to do this movie because of the script, and he was nearly replaced by Steven Seagal and Patrick Swayze!

Director Stephen Hopkins went on to direct The Reaping, Lost in Space, The Ghost and the Darkness and Judgement Night (he also directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child before this). He had to recut the film twenty times to get an R rating! I’d love to see the uncut version of this. Shout Factory, how about it?

For now, you can watch the film online on HBO Go.

One of my favorite things about the film is this outtake. Stick through it to see Danny Glover dance along with some Predators!

Also: Holy shit, Gary Busey. He is in character the entire time, discussing how they’re hunting the Predator while also talking about it as a film. If this doesn’t make you love him, nothing will.

A rickshaw driver in Miami is protected by an Asian witch when he comes up against a conspiracy involving him being videotaped having sex with a mysterious redhead and it causing the death of the son of a faith healing televangelist played by Donald Pleasance — all directed by Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colors of the Dark, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and so much more)!

This seems like the perfect union of everything I love in movies. It’s pure junk and perfect for 3 AM weekend viewing! Scott (U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist Mitch Gaylord, American Anthem) just wants to get ahead in class and help his roommate with his rickshaw business. But after that aforementioned redhead hooks up with him, all hell breaks loose. Reverend Mortom’s (Pleasance) son Jason was taping the action and Scott flips out, beating the guy’s ass. But soon, Jason ends up getting killed when the boat the action happened on is set ablaze. Soon after, a hitman (Daniel Green, in a role made for George Eastman) comes after Scott, killing his roomie with another inferno.

There’s also an ancient Chinese woman, Madame Luna, who Scott helped with his rickshaw who uses a cobra, a cat and magic to rescue our hero throughout the movie. She also wrote him a letter that he never seems to get to finish. Even after it’s been eaten by rats, her voice still plays in his head when he is near the paper.

The cops are also after Scott, thinking that he’s killed the reverend’s son and his roommate. So our hero goes to the Pink Pussycat and kidnaps the redhead — who we soon learn is Joana Simpson, the girlfriend of the dead man. I should also mention that Scott is pretty much the most moronic asshole to ever be seen as a hero in a film and that’s covering so much territory. Yet even after kidnapping Joana at gunpoint she still likes him and ends up helping him.

Throughout, Martino uses tons of crazy zooms, weird cuts that defy editing logic and everyone is constantly running and grimacing. It’s like a Rob Liefeld comic come to life. And it’s awesome. And by awesome I mean that anyone normal — like Becca — will tell you that this is a shitty movie.

However, let me make my argument. Any movie where Donald Pleasence is an evil televangelist with a warthog statue that is locked in eternal combat with a sorceress directed by my favorite giallo director is going to obsess me. There’s also a shower sex scene where our hero keeps his jeans on, confounding me even further. There’s also a magical key that unlocks the secret of the statue that burns through the killer’s hand. There is also a magical cat. Holy fuck, this movie. I have no idea how anyone would even come up with these concepts.

It turns out that Scott and the reverend’s son were both born on the highest day of the Chinese calendar — 6/6/66 — which means that when Scott says that he wears a tiger t-shirt because he was born in the year of the tiger, he is full of shit. He was born in the year of the horse and American Horse is a much shittier title than American Tiger or American Rickshaw. It’s also the title of a song by the band The Cult, but I think I’m probably the only person who knows or cares about that.

Donald Pleasence comes to attack the Chinese woman, but the cobra and cat attack him before he chokes her. Have you ever heard Pleasence do a Southern accent at the same time that he can’t shake his British voice? You will. I’d say this role was beneath him, but I can also point to so many other films that he was in that are worse.

The killer finally catches up with Scott, who runs across railroad ties and trips — he was an Olympic gymnast — before a semi takes out the killer, who suddenly has a snake come out of his eyeball! Again — this fucking movie!

Scott takes the statue back to Madame Luna, who is young again. The cops listen to Joana, who tells them that Scott is innocent. And the Reverend goes on TV and transforms into a warthog while Luna outs him to the world. Yes, you just read that correctly. Then, his wife screams that he is the devil and shoots him as everyone watches the warthog under his skin emerge. “He was the devil!” she screams as the cops matter of factly lead her away. A man just turned into a giant bloody pig. This should be a much bigger deal than the way the cops behave.

Just watch this trailer and wonder, “How could a movie like this be created and no one is constantly talking about it?” When I hear people complain that they’re bored and hate the world, it’s movies like this that I point them to.

Amazon Prime has become the video store of today, with me searching through strange cover art and discovering movies I’d otherwise never watch. You can watch American Tiger on there — and it’s complete with tracking issues! How magical is that?!?

UPDATE: Cauldron Films is releasing this on blu ray — literally its first on-disc release in the U.S. This is a full bells and whistles release, complete with a full 2K restoration, interviews with director Sergio Martino and production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, location visits, commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger, a limited edition slipcase and only 1000 copies will be made. Check out the link and order this ASAP. I know that I already did!

Whenever I’m watching a Fulci movie — or even discussing him — I turn to Becca and often speak in an Italian accent and say things like, “Can I stab the woman in the eyeball now? I’m bored.” If we’re to believe this meta-biographical film, my impression is not far off.

Fulci plays himself, a man haunted by the ever-worsening gore that his movies use. Now, real-life murders — and an obsession with violence everywhere he looks — have taken over his mind. He has, quite literally, a cat in the brain, eating away at the soft tissue, that we see while he’s trying to finish writing a script.

Finishing his latest film, Touch of Death, Fulci tries to eat a meal, but even the fillets and steak tartare he’s offered remind him of the gore he’s just directed. And then when he gets back to work, he’s irritable, even smashing a plate of animal eyeballs. Fulci is and at eyeballs? Something’s wrong!

He can’t even sleep when he gets home, as a handyman is using a chainsaw outside. Fulci flips out and uses a hatchet to smash some paint cans while the music from The Beyond plays.

Fucli decides to see a shrink, Professor Egon Swharz, who we first see fighting with his wife, Katya. His nurse, Lilly (Paola Cozzo, the pregnant nun from Demonia) lets him know that Fulci has arrived. Lilly instantly knows who the director is and Swhartz is interested to break down the barriers between film and reality.

Back at work, Fulci is struggling to complete both Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom (Sodoma’s Ghost) at the same time. What follows are two completely batshit sequences where Fulci directs a Nazi seduction scene and imagines a Nazi orgy while being interviewed by a long-legged German reporter. Fulci mutters a non-stop stream of sexual demands as the action unfurls in front of him, reducing him to only being able to say, Sadism. Nazism. Is there any point any more?” When we come back to reality, Fulci has smashed all of their cameras and must apologize.

When he returns for more therapy, the trap is sprung. Swharz wants to use Fulci to commit crimes, killing a string of prostitutes (using footage of other Fulci movies). The toll is taking over his professional life, as his assistant director has started working on his movie without him. Everywhere Fulci goes, death follows and even the police aren’t there to take his confession. When he goes to the police inspector’s house, he sees the man and his family stabbed, chainsawed and decapitated.

Everywhere Fulci goes, death follows and even the police aren’t there to take his confession. When he goes to the police inspector’s house, he sees the man and his family stabbed, chainsawed and decapitated. He still can’t convince anyone that he’s the murderer — he’s a kindly looking older man in a cardigan who people know creates these little gore movies.

Swharz finally flips out and kills his wife, cutting her head off with piano wire. He hypnotizes Fulci, who suffers through a series of violent images before passing out in a field next to a cute cat digging up the remains of one of the doctor’s victims. His friend the inspector finally arrives, but it’s to tell Fulci that they’ve caught the doctor in the act and that he’s innocent.

Months later, Fulci and Lilly, the nurse from earlier, are on his sailboat, named for his first movie Perversion. He uses a chainsaw to chop her up and then makes fishing lures with her bloody fingers. Is Fulci a killer? Nope. He’s just finishing the exact movie that we just watched. The film wraps and he sails away with Lilly, who is really an actress. Everything ends happily — at least in this version. Another has a scream during the credits to suggest that maybe Fulci is a killer.

Cat in the Brain — its title is a play on The Cat in the Hat — is a weird one. Fulci is the main actor in the film, but he had no confidence in his acting abilities, so his voice is dubbed by Elio Zamuto (who was also the Italian dubbing voice for Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I.).

Supposedly, the film started with a script with no dialogue that was a catalog of mutilations and the sound effects that would go with them. And Brett Halsey had no idea he was even in the film until long after it was done, as Fulci just used previously shot footage. This hurt their friendship, as Halsey felt he should have been paid.

In Fulci’s one U.S. convention appearance at the January 1996 Fangoria Horror Convention in New York City, he appeared on crutches with a bandaged foot. He was sick — he’d die two months later — and blizzards had covered the city with inches of snow. Yet fans came from all over the country for the rare chance to meet Fulci. This footage is on the second disk of Cat in the Brain and features the man himself speaking to the crowd, where he claims that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare rips off this film.

Sure, Cat in the Brain raises issues of the effect of horror on the people who make it. But is it really just a greatest hits of Fulci’s later period work? Did he feel trapped within the genre? Was it cathartic to create? These are all questions I would love to have heard him answer.

You can find this at Diabolik DVD.

Who better to take on the La Casa franchise — films that are not sequels and are not connected to one another — than the man who made Troll 2, a movie that is not a sequel and is also not about trolls?

Yep. Claudio Fragasso (Monster Dog, Rats: Night of Terror) is in control of your movie watching experience and he’s brought Troll 2 child actor Michael Stephenson along for another ride through the bottom of the movie making barrel.

A priest and his family — right off the bat, you could see that this script has holes you can drive the Landmaster from Damnation Alley through because Catholic priests can’t marry — move into a new house. Bad news for them, good news for us —  it was built over the graves of twenty dead witches.

Their son gets possessed, along with a radio and a meat cleaver. Oh yeah — there’s also the ghost of a female serial killer who wants to eat the souls of children.

And in another of those “they should have known better” moments, this is all filmed in the same building as Fulci’s The Beyond!

If you’re looking for the madcap moments that Troll 2 has, you won’t find them here. This is a more linear and controlled film, except for the crazed performance by David Brandon as Father George, an alcoholic priest whose contact with a demon has made him question his faith. You’ll marvel as he wanders down real city streets with real people — not extras — ranting like a maniac! But what do you expect? He watched a serial killer orgasm in the electric chair surrounded by the trapped spirits of her victims!

Looking for a copy for yourself? Shout! Factory has this on a double disk, along with the George Eastman directed Metamorphosis. You can also watch it on Shudder.

Until Vinegar Syndrome released this film on DVD in October of this year, Demon Wind was one of the very few horror films that had been huge on VHS that had never made the jump in format.

The best description I can find in my head for this film is a mix of Fulci and the Evil Dead, but a movie that makes way less sense. Yes, a film with less sense of plot than The Beyond and none of the aspiration toward art. And yet there’s so much to like!

In 1931, we see a body burned on a cross in the front yard. There’s another in the hallway and plenty of paintings of Jesus, as we hear singing about being washed in the blood of the lamp. We discover that a woman and her husband are trying to hide from demons. Instead, the husband transforms into a demon and kills her.

Fast forward to 1991 and Cory is dealing with the suicide of his father. He’s the grandson of the people we saw in the opening and has decided to go back to the farmhouse where they died. Often in these posts, I try and give advice. Here’s a new piece: if your family has a weird supernatural death or disappearance in its history, just leave it alone. Don’t go back to the cabin. Don’t go into the woods. Don’t go to the farmhouse. Just don’t.

He puts together a gang of his friends to hang out at the farmhouse, but of course a fog rolls in. And some demons. And lots of death. The farmhouse has a shield that keeps the demons out, but one by one, the teens are turned into demons. Luckily, they find some daggers that can kill the demons. Unluckily, the demon’s master arrives and they need to do much more to defeat him.

That said, where you’d expect things to make sense, Demon Wind goes in a much stranger direction. Like when Cory mentions he has been in a gas station before in a dream, we get to see that dream — in which he’s holding a big book while talking to his grandmother. Naked. Buck ass naked.

Also, the kids in these films have weird interconnected relationships. Like Cory’s girlfriend, Elaine used to date his best friend Dell. He greets her by kissing her directly on the lips and then high fives Cory. As you do. Dell’s new girlfriend, Terry, has an ex-boyfriend named Chuck, who brings his girlfriend Stacy, his magic tricks and an arsenal of roundhouse kicks.  I can only imagine that if these kids all worked in a mall together, they’d all have sex in the same room like Chopping Mall. Only Jack and Bonnie seem like they aren’t Eskimo brothers or sisters with someone else.

Despite warnings from old creepy men at gas stations — hello, Friday the 13th — and dead bodies and evil statements in blood on the walls, everyone acts like things are as normal as possible. It’s not just wooden acting. It’s literally like nothing phases these kids.

Bonnie reads the words off the wall a– “Now Satan shall walk” in Latin — and an explosive chicken shoots out of the oven and almost kills everyone. You read that one right. An explosive chicken. Somehow, Bonnie instinctively knows how this all works and has one request: when she dies, please don’t bury her here.

Also — The Fog (or the fog) covers the town, making sure that every escape attempt brings them right back to the farmhouse. And then three little girls take Bonnie, who disappears, leaving behind a burning baby doll.

Everyone decides that they will stay in the farmhouse for protection. Whereas in a film like Night of the Living Dead you’d batten down the hatches and board up the windows, these kids clean the house. Yes, in the face of certain death, the first thing they decide to do is some spring cleaning.

Then another couple just randomly shows up! Demon Wind doesn’t just go off the rails. It throws the rails off a cliff and follows them into the abyss.

The final act of this film just gets more and more bizarre. There’s gunplay. Demons feel up women and trying to get them off just by touching their breasts. Cow skulls eat faces. A female demon strips in the front yard, begging for the guys to come out and have sex, at which point they look at one another and say, “Demon,” like this is some demented Bud Lite commercial. And oh yeah — Cory transforms into a demon himself to battle the final boss.

There’s some decent gore. Some horrible acting. And no relation to the normal world in which you live and breathe. I often joke that there are some films that I just won’t recommend to normal people. Demon Wind is one of those films. But to my friends that I trust, to those that can effortlessly deal with trifling concerns like plot, motivation or dealing with multiple dream sequences, I’ll give this a recommendation.

Update: This is now streaming for free with an Amazon Prime subscription.

Sicily. 1486. A bunch of villages descend on five nuns — suspected of being witches — and drop the witch hammer on them. Each is crucified and then nails are driven into their chests. Blood sprays everywhere. Fulci is pleased.

Toronto. 1990. Liza is at a seance where she sees the crucified nuns and collapses, screaming on the floor. Perhaps you may recognize that this is kind of how Fulci began City of the Living Dead.

Liza then joins an archaeology team led by Professor Evans (Brett Halsey, The Devil’s Honey) as they visit Greek ruins near Sicily. Locals like Turi (Lino Salemme, Ripper from Demons!) and Porter (Al Cliver, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Zombi 2) warn them of the local legends that surround the monastery. And even after Professor Evans warns Liza to stay away from the unknown after the way she reacted to the seance, she enters the crypt within the ruins.

Using a pickaxe, she breaks into the wall and finds the remains of the nuns, angering the Professor and setting off a series of murders, like Porter being killed by a nun with a harpoon gun and two members of the team being killed by metal spikes.

Liza meets with a medium named Lilla, who tells her all about the witches. They’d invite young people to partake in orgies and kill them at the moment of orgasm, drinking their blood and going insane. If they ever got pregnant, they’d have the baby and throw it into a fire. Suffice to say, these are very evil nuns we’re dealing with. The kind of evil nuns that make Lille’s cats eat her the moment Fulci leaves. If you’re wondering, do they eat her eyeballs, then the answer is yes. Obviously, you know Fulci like I know Fulci.

Everyone suspects Turi, but he dies, too. A nun comes into the butcher shop and impales him on a hook, then stabs him in the neck, then nails his tongue to a block, then freezes him. Fulci, you scamp!

Inspector Carter (Fulci) starts to suspect the Professor, who decides to get out of town. Liza is going crazy and she refuses to leave, even when the townsfolk attack the ruins. Robby, a young boy, gets kidnapped by a white nun with no face, but he escapes just in time to watch his father get torn in half. Fulci strikes again!

Liza then stabs the Professor and disappears. The townsfolk charge into her chamber, where she foams at the mouth as she hangs on a cross. They set the crosses on fire again and everyone is destroyed, leaving the Professor to stagger in, bloodied, where he sees Liza’s dead body.

There are some great shots in the open here, with the camera wildly swinging through the seance and the nuns being executed. And the film looks so much better than Touch of Death. The city feels like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. It starts like City of the Living Dead. And Fulci has done possession before with Manhattan Baby. But this isn’t a greatest hits collection — we still need to watch A Cat in the Brain.