Sometime in the late 1960’s, Professor Jones (John Saxon) was involved in an MK Ultra-style eugenics experiment. Wondering what eugenics is? Our own President refers to it as the “racehorse theory,” which should scare the unholy shit out of you when you realize that eugenics was a major driving force in creating the Master Race of the Third Reich. But hey — isn’t it so funny when hes cutting up and making fun of people?

Sorry for the politics. Let’s just talk about Hellmaster. We’ll all feel better that way.

Jones created The Nietzsche Experiment, which gave its subjects telepathic abilities while also making them violent mental cases. Twenty years later — and armed with an entire gang of deformed mutants (is there any other kind) — he is killing everyone who ever did him wrong and transforming his old college into a slaughterhouse.

Originally called Them and Soulstealer, this made in Detroit regional small wonder — shot in the Clinton Valley Center Hospital, an active-at-the-time mental institution — was re-released at the end of the video rental era. Beyond Saxon, David Emge (Stephen from Dawn of the Dead) makes an appearance as a reporter, who joins with one of the survivors and a psychic who takes the drug in order to destroy its creator once and for all.

This is a movie that looks way better than you’d expect and plays out much more fun than you’d hoped. In a world of direct-to-streaming, the video store classics will forever remain above them, looking down and dripping goopy syrup-smelling blood all over the place.

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Vinegar Syndrome. Their new release even has the Them cut and commentary for both versions. I love everything they release, as they put the care into these forgotten movies that studios neglect to bestow on their most artistic releases.

Before he helped start The Asylum, David Michael Latt made this sex comedy which way more comedy than sex. Attila plays Jamie Z., a rock star who is too much of a headache for his manager, so he’s marked for death. He lives in a girl’s sorority and you’d think that’d be the recipe for way more hijinks than it is, but nope. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the excessives of 1980’s post-Porky’s madness, but this was too tame, too simple and, well, too filled with actors literally screwing up their lines and it not being edited.

There are many early 90’s direct to video and cable ladies on hand, such as Avalon Anders, as well as April Lerman, who was on Charles In Charge before ending up here in her last acting role.

I want to find something to like here, something to make it all worthwhile. But sometimes, there is nothing but entropy and the void. The more you stare at it, the more it screams back in your face.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I really tried to go all three weeks of Mexican films without a lucha libre film, but man, when it’s one this strange, I couldn’t help myself.

Before Tyler Mane played Michael Myers in two Rob Zombie films, he was known in Mexico as El Nitron. Here, he plays El Vampiro Interespacial, who is conquering the galaxy. A space prince tries to get away, which brings him, as always happens, to Earth.

Lucadores de las Estrellas has a simple premise but presents a movie perfect to run in the background of any party.

A girl from the spaceship comes to Earth and decides to take over the life of a deceased singer named Larossa. She’s played by Gloria Mayo, who was also Adriana in Santo vs. the She-Wolves and also in the baffling Vampiro, Guerrero de la Noche.

Luckily, she finds El Mistioso and El Volador(who would one day become Super Parka and whose son Volador Jr. is a big star in CMLL today), who teach her all about drinking beer and wrestling. They end up having an empty arena match with Nitron, as well as another match filled with the lucha stars of 1992, such as Satanico, Pirata Morgan, MS-1, Blue Demon Jr., Ponzoña, Bestia Salvaje, Janette, Martha Villalobos, Cynthia and more.

The evil minis that hang out with Nitron and sound like chickens are played by some major mini-luchas: Mascarita Sagrada, Aguilita Solitaria and Espectrito.

The idea for this film was a combination between Antonio Peña, who would soon leave to form AAA in the biggest Mexican wrestling news of perhaps all time, along with Ramón T. Cerro (who was also part of the team that made the Vampiro movie), Francisco Alonso Lutteroth (also known as Paco Alonso, perhaps the most powerful man in Mexican wrestling in the latter half of the 20th century) and Mayo.

This film is everything it should be: fights, a little romance, no small amount of comedy, masked men and aliens. All films should be this much fun.

Within a depressing Mexico City circus, 13-year-old Alma is a fire-breathing, trapeze-swinging young woman who is in love with her father Renato, a dying clown. She wants to give birth to the child they’ve conceived together and their sin of incest leads to her walking the streets. There, she joins a group of puppeteers who present shows that preach the word of God. However, even in this new world, Alma cannot escape the sin that she feels will never be absolved.

Once she learns that she will never be accepted in this new church, Alma becomes the despoiler and the destroyer, leaving behind only flames.

I’ve seen this compared to Santa Sangre, which I feel was a much better film. This is interesting but never seems to reach the heights of that film. That said, you should check it out and see what you think.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ruben Galindo Jr. made Don’t Panic, Cementerio del Terror and Ladrones de Tumbas, all movies more than worthy of praise. This is a mix of a cop film, a slasher and some occult themes, as the killer is a psychiatrist who is able to influence the minds of his patients.

This feels more like an Americanized direct to video cop on the tail of a killer with something extra — The First Power, if you need an example — which here ends up being mental powers.

Sadly, this movie does not live up to the first three of Galindo’s films that I enjoyed so much. But I’m not giving up on him, especially when he has movies like Mutantes del Ano 2000, where a giant mutant rat runs while in a teacher’s house, and Resucitare Para Matarlos, where a bullied kid learns how to kill all the soccer players once he comes back from the dead.

Why would I spend weeks of my life preparing for this barrage of Mexican weirdness for you, dear reader? Just so I could tell you all about this movie, which is a veritable pot luck dinner of the things that both enthrall and upset me in movies.

Mexico, as horror filmmakers, rarely does subtle. And they rarely just do one thing when other horrifying elements can be layer on, like the scariest tasting seven-layer burrito ever burrito’d.

It would be enough if this movie was a ripoff of Child’s Play. But no, that’s too easy for director Roberto Guinar. No, instead, the doll shows up for a man named Lorenzo, who can’t perform sexually with anyone but his mother. Yes, that’s right. If you’re not creeped out by human dolls running around and killing people, this movie tosses in a side dish of incest. And not implied. Oh no. No, no, no. This incest is driven into your eyes and heart with all the fervor and subtlety of a Mexican soap opera from Hell.

Yes, Yermo has entered the House of Dolls, the store where Lorenzo and his ladylove mother call home. When our hero — is he our hero? — takes him to a children’s show, all the doll will do is fart. And fart. And fart some more.

The music in this is insane, like cowboy music with synths at times and screams and growls at others, all in English for a movie shot in Spanish that looks and feels like a latmodelrl scumbag Italian film but came out years after it was made and was only available in bootleg bins in Mexican stores in the U.S.

Everything in the above paragraph is why I am both fascinated and upset by this movie, which we all know means that I will be talking about it non-stop to anyone dumb enough to listen.

Most of this movie is Yermo and the lunatic son lying on the floor and laughing, as if you have a window in to their baffling world. I want to know more. In the perfect world of my dreams, this movie would have had at least two sequels to explain more. And no, the budget, aesthetics and sheer incomprehesinbility of this would not have been altered a lick in between installments.

This movie was near-impossible for me to find, but if you want to come over to my house, I’ll mix you cocktails spiked with hallucinogenics and we can scream at one another about this movie for as long as it takes.

It does seem like an audacious gamble, taking a sketch that previously only existed as a short take on public access TV and getting the director of The Decline of Western Civilization to make a full-length story, but hey — Wayne’s World is the most successful of all the Saturday Night Live movies. It gets by on heart, on weirdness and on the likeability of its leads.

Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar (Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) are on the cusp of making it, if making it is selling the rights to their public access show for $10,000. Wayne is trying to escape his last girlfriend Stacy (Lara Flynn Boyle) and has fallen for Crucial Taunt lead singer Cassandra Wong (Tia Carrere), a knockout who learned English from the Police Academy movies.

The rest of the movie is basically a collection of great small scenes strung together with put the tiniest of plots, including a moment where Alice Cooper explains that Milwaukee is Algonquin for the good land. Ed O’Neil also has a great cameo as the manager of Stan Mikita’s Donuts, with several asides to how death and murder have entered his life.

Wayne’s World is the second film that Coleen Camp appears in that has three endings. She’s also Yvette the maid in Clue. Please enjoy my trivial knowledge that will help no one.

Ever seen License to Drive? That’s a Greg Beeman movie, too. This one, he got Jeffrey Jones, usually the villain, to play the heroic dad opposite Terri Garr. Of course it bombed. But it ended up becoming an HBO and video store favorite.

Emperor Tod Spengo (Jon Lovitz) rules the planet Spengo, the leader of idiots who have created a Super Death Ray Laser that will destroy our planet. That’s all before he fell in love with the aforementioned mother.

Once they arrive on Spengo, courtesy of the Magnobeam, Marge is waited on by servants with fish or dog heads, while Dick is stuck in the dungeon, where he meets Raff (Eric Idle), who is the real leader and goes into the desert to find his son White Bird and the rebels.

Jon Lovitz left Saturday Night Live to make this film. I’d compare it to Flash Gordon but you know, Jeffrey Jones instead of Sam J. Jones.