The Dead Girls are a shock rock band whose members are Gina Verelli, who goes by Bertha Beirut and is played by Diana Karanikas (Click: The Calendar Girl Killer); Dana Grant, who is Lucy Lethal and is played by Angela Eads (Fatal Images); Amy is Nancy Napalm and is played by Kay Schaber (Fatal Images);  her brother Mark, who is Randy Rot and played by Steven Kyle and Susie Stryker who is Cynthia Slain and is played by Angela Scaglione.

Their manager Artie (Brian Chin) has ideas to make them go mainstream, but the girls realize that they are mainly known for their death-obsessed lyrics more than their abilities. Much like the Stained Class and Ozzy Osbourne lawsuits that inspired this story, the band’s fans have been inspired by their lyrics to engage in a mass suicide. The biggest problem for Gina is that her sister Brooke (Ilene Singer) was one of them and barely survived. Now, Aunt Annie (Carol Albright) and Uncle Jim (Robert Morris) — who raised them with good Christian values — think that Gina is to blame.

The band decides to take a two week vacation to a remote cabin, bringing along Brooke, the band’s assistant Jeff (Jeff Herbick), Gina’s old boyfriend from home Mike (David Chatfield) and a groupie named Karen (Mara Holland). Moments after they depart, Artie is murdered by a masked person. Also along for the ride is a nurse (Deirdre West) who is helping Brooke to recover.

The small place they’re staying it is frightening from the beginning. Elmo (David Williams), the developmentally challenged handyman seems to be stalking everyone. And when they send the groupie away, she’s soon killed. The murder doesn’t stop, as Susie is drowned in the lake by the killer and her body is found by Amy. Her body disappears and the band think that it’s a prank, as she has died on stage several times and worked with a magician to learn how to slow her heart and breathing.

If you think that this feels like a giallo, that’s no accident. Writer Steven Jarvis was influenced by the Italian genre.

The next morning, Amy find Susie and Jeff’s corpses in a barn. Gina runs, trying to stop the nurse who is taking Brooke to the hospital. She doesn’t get to her, stranding the group in a place with cut phone lines and a sheriff (Robert Harden) who thinks that they’re all pulling a stunt. Dana believes that Amy and Gina are behind the murders and the group begins to battle amongst themselves.

Amy is obsessed with the military — after all her name is Nancy Napalm — and she sets bombs up all over the barn trying to stop the killer. Dana and Gina start to believe that Mark is the killer and while they’re discussing that, Amy is dismembered with an axe just as Mark returns with firewood. Gina finds her body and takes her gun, returning to find Dana tied up and Mark holding a pistol.

That’s when it all comes out. Dana and Mark wanted to kill Amy and Gina, thinking that they were the murderers. And then, the real killer shows up and slices Dana’s throat.  Gina runs with the killer following her. Mark kills Elmo and we think that’s the end…except…

Spoiler warning…

Mark is the real killer. He’s a religious man who thinks that the Dead Girls had to die to end their music and save teenagers. He accidentally steps on a bomb and blows up, just as the nurse returns, finding Gina tied up. Thinking — just like Mark — that they’re all evil, she leaves Gina tied up and drives away.

Director Dennis Devine (Things II, Fatal Images) said that the weather and cold temperatures made this the most difficult film of his career. I love the idea that the band is being killed by weapons from their songs. I just wish that they actually had a chance to play their songs. It’s so close to being a great metal movie and that would push it over the top.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

Ted Farrell (Matt Felmlee) loves a mystery. As a college student and singing telegram actor, he goes from creating an audio thriller into one of his own, as a gorgeous woman named Jennifer (Loreal Steiner) ends up near death in his car. Soon, her last boyfriend Jeff (Jeff Tatum) and his friend Vic (Chris Hall) are stalking him. Can he stay one step ahead?

Directed by the team of James Groetsch, Shawn Korby and Bill Weiss, this is a suspenseful story that is anything but a student film, even if it’s one made by students. Shot on Super 8, it seems to never stop moving or to get boring, always keeping the viewer guessing what happens next.

Plus, seeing as how it’s a movie about someone who tells stories with sound, it has plenty of audio design that moves the tale forward. A very rare regional horror thriller from the late 1980s video store era, The Wrong Door enjoys its first time ever thanks to Visual Vengeance.

I’ve thought about this movie so many times since I watched and definitely recommend it. It has a strange charm, like a noir film but one made in 1990 and with all the look of a Super 8 microbudget effort. It just works.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

I’ve watched two of Steve Lustgarten’s movies — this and American Taboo — and I’m really surprised by his directing and writing. Both films seemed like stories I’d have no interest in and they each got me, watching on the edge of my seat.

Kyle Lockwood (Tim Vandeberghe) left town as soon as he could but now he’s back. Maybe Los Angeles didn’t work out like he wanted it to, but then again, the Nebraska small town of his past hasn’t fared that well either. The farmers are pretty much stuck growing marijuana thanks to a predatory drug lord who just so happens to be married to the girl that got away from Kyle.

Some people are happy to have him back home. The cops sure aren’t. They’re reminded of chasing him not all that long ago, him blowing their cars off the dirt trails that act as roads and getting away with it. They aren’t all that thrilled with him being back in town or disrupting the shadow world of cops making money off drugs they’ve enjoyed the last few years. The town has given up its soul and now the black sheep is back to try to pull it out of its thrall.

It’d be any other action movie but you care so much about each character that it just works. John Durbin, who plays main villain Gene Lynch, is so just plain detestable that you want to see everyone succeed. He gets the best exit I’ve seen in some time.

I really enjoyed the time I spent with the people in this movie. They feel real and I cared about what happened to them. How many films can say that?

Based on the autobiographical novel by Toshio Shimao, this is the story of the author (Ittoku Kishibe) teaching and writing in post-war Japan, struggling in poverty but still finding time to have an affair, which ruins his wife (Keiko Matsuzaka), who threatens suicide and even loses their children to her parents as they try to save anything that is left from their union.

This is a gorgeous film but very hard to watch as it is so emotionally raw. Director Kohei Oguri has only made six movies yet each of them are very well-reviewed; this won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

Shimao was to be a kamikaze in World War II before the fighting stopped. He met his wife, a Catholci, and converted, as this movie’s title is based on 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God!” He really did choose to live with his wife in a mental hospital and then moved from the city to a smaller town to attempt to fix their marriage.

The Radiance Film release of this movie comes with a documentary on the Japanese film renaissance of the 1990s featuring interviews with Kohei Oguri, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Kaneto Shindo and others; an interview with film scholar Hideki Maeda; new English subtitles; a trailer; a limited edition booklet featuring a newly translated interview with director Kohei Oguri and full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. Yu can get The Sting of Death from MVD.