Nicholas Kazan’s first films flirt between historical movies like his scripts for Frances, Patty Hearst and Reversal of Fortune with stories of murder with tinges of the otherworldly like Impulse and Fallen, as well as the neo-noir At Close Range. And oh yeah — Matilda.

He only directed two movies, one an anthology TV movie called The Edge and this one, which moves from the standard thriller to perhaps a flirtation with the giallo form in that the main character begins to doubt his own innocence and identity as he finds his life unended by manipulation that began seemingly before he even meets his second wife.

James Spader plays Ray Reardon, a recently divorced architect who bumps into Lena Mathers (Madchen Amick) at a party, at which points she reacts as if he slapped her. She sticks in his mind, because when he sees her at a grocery store, he stalks her and ends up sleeping with her. Within minutes of the film beginning, they’re married and with child.

But even the most normal details of his wife’s life all seem like lies. When he meets someone who graduated from the same college as her, none of the people that are mentioned are memorable to Lena, including the President of the school dying during a major assembly. Ray’s suspicions get to him so much that he travels to a small town in Texas where he learns that his wife’s abusive past never happened; her family is surprised to learn that he’s not in the CIA.

And that’s when he discovers the bruises. The kind that you get from making love to another man.

Lena goads Ray into the unthinkable, as he slaps her, an act which lands him in a mental hospital. And it’s there that she reveals her long con, to have his children, to take his money and to leave him behind. But the game isn’t over yet.

Dream Lover is more interesting when we don’t know if Ray is guilty or innocent. Once it tips its hand. it loses that momentum. I do love the twist ending and you could argue that Ray really is deranged and everything from the slap on is inside his head, as there’s no way that the police would arrest you and place you in a mental ward for months without a six-month observatory period. But you know, it wouldn’t be a movie without a lapse in logic.

Oh yeah — there are also circus clown-filled dream sequences that have nothing at all to do with the narrative, so that leads me to definitely include this as an American giallo. Because when things seem to make no sense for a very specific reason, that’s when they become a giallo, right?

Also: Why do I love James Spader, who plays a jerk in nearly every movie and gets to make movie love to Machen Amick, but think of Michael Douglas as a complete jerk? What a blind spot to have, as they both were 90s erotic thriller/American giallo-adjunct male stars!

The first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman — Tracey Moffatt, who also made Lip, a mashup of black servants in Hollywood movies talking back to their bosses — BeDevil was inspired by the director’s childhood.

The first story “Mr. Chuck” is about an Australian boy haunted by the spirit of a drowned American soldier, with the experience seen through the eyes of the boy as a man looking back on his youth and a white woman whose family colonzied Australia. And it’s presented as a series of documentary interviews, heightening the strangeness of it all.

In “Choo Choo Choo Choo, Moffat plays a character who might even be herself as a train continues to haunt a family as it runs on invisible tracks through Queensland, even decades later.

The last story is “Lovin’ the Spin I’m In,” during which a doomed couple tries to leave their community behind to escape racism, their death ends up trapping them in an eternal dance.

beDevil has been compared to Kwaidan and that’s an apt comparison. It feels like it came from a darker world than our own to explain and help us get past the darkness in our own place. Please try and seek it out, as it’s an amazing film.

H. P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs!) tells his cabby (Brian Yuzna) to wait outside the monastery — he’s got a Necronomicon to find. As he races to find a copy before the monks stop him, he’s locked inside a room where he gets to discover the future through the book.

The first story, “The Drowned,” is loosely based on “The Rats in the Walls.” It tells the story of Jethro De Lapoer (Richard Lynch!), whose wife and child died in an accident, causing him to set a Bible ablaze at the funeral. He brings them back to life with the Necronomicon, but the green glowing eyes of his family as they rise upset him so much that he leaps to his death. His nephew has no such compunctions and brings back his wife Clara (Maria Ford), who comes back in the same way, nearly causing his death. Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak was also inspired by this same story. This story and the framing story come from Yuzna.

“The Cold” is based on the short story “Cool Air” and has Dr. Madden (David Warner!) injecting spinal fluid and staying inside a chilled room to stay alive forever, at least until the power goes out. Dennis Christopher, Gary Graham and Millie Perkins are also in this story, which you may have seen in Alberty Pyun’s H. P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air or the Jeannot Szwarc-directed, Rod Serling-written Night Gallery episode. This was directed by Christopher Gans, the director of Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill.

“Whispers” is based on “The Whisper in the Darkness.” This one has monster bats and all the gore you’ve been looking for, as if the last segment wasn’t packed with enough melting people. This one comes from Shusuke Kaneko, who made the Heisei era Gamera movies Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, Attack of Legion and Revenge of Iris, as well as Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

At the end, Lovecraft avoids the monks and runs into the night. This film may not be completely successful at making an anthology of his stories, but it’s pretty entertaining. It was well-received in the U.S., but a much bigger success in Europe and Asia, where it played theaters.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can check out Paul Andolina’s review of this movie too.

Vampiro came to lucha libre from Canada and with his look, physique and martial arts movies became a near-instant star, kind of like Konnan to the point that the two hated one another. Born Ian Richard Hodgkinson, he had already been a security guard for Milli Vanilli and a professional goaltender before he trained with Gene Anderson, Ian Richards and Abdullah the Butcher in International Wrestling.

Known as Vampiro Canadiense (Canadian Vampire) at first, Vampiro became such a big star that he got to follow in El Santo’s footsteps and make a movie.

Directed by José Nieto Ramírez — who made several movies with comedic actors Manuel “Flaco” Ibáñez and Pedro “Chatanuga” Weber  — this film concerns an evil supervillain who has a metal glove that allows him to control people. He nearly kills Vampiro in a match with Pierroth Jr. and then sends his evil female henchwomen to keep rubbing up on our vampiric tecnico.

Meanwhile, there’s an alien woman named Larossa and her pet bear Mascota — who sounds like the weirdest mix of feedback, beeps and blips — who have also come to Earth to get the aid of Vampiro in some battle. Somehow, Vamp spends most of his own movie chained to a bed with those goth evil girls caressing him, which doesn’t sound like all that bad of a time when you really think about it.

The film looks great, filled with fog and colored gels, giving it a near-late 80s Italian look. Plus, if you’re a fan of 90s lucha, you get to see some of the biggest stars, such as Negro Casas, Ultimo Dragon, Faby Apache, Art “Love Machine” Barr, Norman Smiley, Pirata Morgan and Haku. Trust me, you won’t be bored, even if you don’t really like wrestling. You will be confused no matter what because none of this makes any bit of sense.

You can watch this on Shout! Factory TV.

Didn’t Radu die in the first Subspecies?

Well, yeah. But now his minions have simply reattached his head and taken the stake from out of his heart, allowing him to Hicks and Newt the hero of the first film, Stefan, killing him within moments of the film’s opening, sending heroine Michele to Bucharest with the titular Bloodstone in the hopes of getting help from her sister Becky.

Meanwhile, Radu’s mother — yes, known as Mummy — comes on the scene and tries to help him turn Michele to the side of the vampires, which leads directly into Bloodlust: Subspecies 3, which was shot at the same time as this film.

A rare sequel that is even better than the original, this starts strong and gets even better, with actually scary moments and a multi-layered antagonist. I don’t own the box set and action figure of Radu for nothing.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Dangerous Attraction tells the story of Carlo Monti (Gabriele Gori, The Bronx Executioner), a graduate student who wants to discover why his mother mysteriously died and get to know if his father — who was an Italian exploitation director — was involved. And who better to tell the tale of the foibles and vices of the scummy side of the Italian film industry than Pierre Le Blanc, who we all know is none other than Bruno Mattei?

Carlo discovers his father’s home, which is packed with trunks filled with old scripts and posters of his films. It’s also where he meets Emma (Monica Carpanese, Madness), who claims to be his sister yet still becomes incredibly attractive to our hero.

This film finds itself — like most of the direct-to-video erotic thrillers released in the 90s — between the softcore film and the giallo. This has an intriguing theme — who is Carlo’s father, why did he potentially kill his mother in a car accident and, this being an Italian movie, will he sleep with his half-sister — to keep things moving across 88 minutes.

As for Carlo’s father, he’s played by David Warbeck, a veteran of Italian film, thanks to appearances in The Beyond, The Ark of the Sun God, Miami Golem, Ratman, Domino and Fatal Frames. It was pretty great to see — for me — a major name show up in one of Mattei’s late period films.

Here’s hoping someone — Severin, one would assume — gets all of these 90s Mattei movies out sooner or later. If we can enjoy a gorgeous version of Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey, why not Attrazione Pericolosa?

Ninì Grassia may have wrote, produced and wrote the music for this film, but in moments you can tell that it was directed by our pal Bruno Mattei, who didn’t even use one of his many names and just went anonymous (although Gianni Cozzolino, who did second unit on Mattei’s Legittima Vendetta and Omicidio al Telefono is listed as the director on IMDB).

Suria and her sister Nancy (Cristina Barsacchi, First Action Hero) are two young women from a wealthy family with very diferent love lives. Nancy plans to marry Roger, while Suria and her husband James (Antonio Zequila, who shows up in so many of Mattei’s softcore nineties output) constantly sleep around on one another.

Their lives change when Roger runs over a woman named Baby Ryan, which is the most hilarious character name I’ve heard of in some time. She’s played by Malù, the former adult star Ramba who is attempting to go legit. Yes, working with Bruno Mattei can be considered going legit.

The truth is that Baby Ryan is really Frank’s — the guardian of Suria’s villa — lover, but Frank is sleeping with Suria and this young girl gets intertwined into everyone’s lives, learning that James wants to sleep with her when he isn’t also having a bedroom rodeo with his secretary and maid.

But oh, the truth takes this movie from just a sexy Cinemax film to the realm of the giallo, as Baby Ryan is actually James’ sister. Their mother died young because she was so disgusted with her son, which is a very Italian mother reason for dying. That means that everyone decides to set him up with an orgy, because just divorcing the guy is not enough, convincing Frank that his sister has given him some oral cuddling, which is somehow a punishable offense in Italy. You’d never guess that from their movies, but there you go. Frank is shamed and everyone decides to live together and there will never be any jealousy issues or weirdness ever again.

If you ever wonder, what exactly is a Bruno Mattei completist, it would be the person who sought out this movie, found it and posted it to numerous internet sites. That would be me. I probably should be ashamed of my addiction.