Show Me Love was originally titled Fucking Åmål in reference to one of its leads, Erin, who yells, “Varför måste vi bo i fucking jävla kuk-Åmål?” (Why do we have to live in fucking bloody cock-Åmål?). As the movie was going to be Swedish entry to the Academy Awards, the country itself wanted the name changed, as did the city, which claimed that the name of the movie would show their town in an unfair light and may even cost their economy. Variety even refused to run ads for it. So Moodysson just took the title of the Robyn song on the soundtrack and gave this movie its new name.

As you can imagine, after its success, Åmål has now embraced the movie and even has a Fucking Åmål Festival.

Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg) and Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) are two students who have different outlooks on life. Agnes has no one close to her and is always depressed, while Elin is surrounded by friends and yet finds her life dull. They start to get to know one another and Elin confesses how trapped their small town makes them so they attempt to leave for Stockholm, but are kicked out of a car when the driver catches their first kiss. Of course, Elin is not sure about this relationship, wondering if she’s meant to be with Johan before realizing that perhaps this love is the one good thing about their small town.

As you’ll discover watching the full career of Moodysson, this coming of age film is just the start of his ability. Ingman Bergman said that this was, “a young master’s first masterpiece.” I’m so excited that I got to watch nearly his entire filmography in one week.

The limited edition The Lukas Moodysson Collection from Arrow includes high definition blu rays of seven films, as well as interviews with Moodysson and other cast and crew, moderated by film programmer Sarah Lutton. There’s also a two hundred page featuring new writing by Peter Walsh, excerpts from the original press kits for each film, interviews with and directors’ statements from Moodysson and essays on his films from a 2014 special issue of the Nordic culture journal Scandinavica by C. Claire Thomson, Helga H. Lúthersdóttir, Elina Nilsson, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport and Kjerstin Moody.

Show Me Love appears as a 2K restoration by the Swedish Film Institute, approved by director Moodysson and cinematographer Ulf Brantå. Extras include new interviews with Moodysoon and Alexandra Dahlström, an appreciation by Dr. Clara Bradbury Rance, author of Lesbian Cinema After Queer Theory, a short film named Talk (Bara prata lite), a trailer and an image gallery.

You can get this set from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vestron releases are coming out from Lionsgate, such as this collection of two 90s slashers. Extras on The Dentist include commentary with director Brian Yuzna and special makeup effects supervisor Anthony C. Ferrante, isolated score selections and audio interviews with composer Alan Howarth and director of photography Levie Isaacks, interviews with Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Paoli, Ferrante and J.M. Logan, a trailer and a still gallery. Extras on The Dentist 2 includecommentary with director Brian Yuzna and special makeup effects supervisor Anthony C. Ferrante, isolated score selections and audio interviews with composer Alan Howarth and editor Christopher Roth, interviews with Jillian McWhirter, Pierre David, Ferrante and Logan, a trailer and a still gallery.

The Dentist (1996):

Brian Yunza directed this one, a movie that is ready to upset you even if you’re hardened to gore, because everyone hates the dentist. Seriously, if you’re about to get a filling, please avoid this movie, because it features major moments of molar malice. It made my teeth hurt just watching it.

Dr. Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen*) is a man with it all: a successful dental practice, plenty of money and a gorgeous wife. Of course, she’s sleeping with the pool guy, which makes him go absolutely bonkers and start killing everyone that has ever upset him. It starts with shooting his wife’s friend’s dog and then only gets crazier from there. By the way, that isn’t even a dog. It’s a stuffed goat.

He hallucinates that an actress is his wife and starts choking her with her stockings before her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo!) flips out. And then he brings his wife in to show her a new opera-themed room and cuts her tongue out before taking out all of her teeth.

For most of the film, Alan is in-between reality and his delusions, so you have no real idea what’s happening. What is going on is plenty of death, like air getting injected into someone’s jugular and smashing out someone’s teeth with a drill**, this movie reminds me of how long it took me to get all my front teeth replaced with implants.

Hey — Ken Foree shows up as a cop. If you’re playing at home, that makes him a police officer in Dawn of the Dead, Terror Squad, True Blood, Blood Brothers and this movie.

The budget was so small that Yuzna did his own storyboards and gave the art department his credit card to get set decorations. Favors must have been called in, because Alan Howarth composed the entire score in one weekend (as well as doing the final mixing and foley work).

*While Bernsen played real-life serial killer dentist Glennon Engleman in Beyond Suspicion, this movie was not based on that tale.

**The kills are all based on murders from Hitchcock films.

The Dentist 2: Brace Yourself (1998): When we last saw Dr. Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen), he was being sentenced to a maximum security mental hospital and being menaced by his wife Brooke (Linda Hoffman). However, he’s hidden a weapon inside his own skin and escaped, but his aforementioned ex knows that he’s gone to one of the towns that he’s kept postcards from and she’s going to get the money he owes her to pay back all of the teeth and the tongue she’s lost.

This Brian Yuzna (Society, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, Faust: Love of the Damned) directed film — he also made the 1996 original — seems like a sideways sequel for The Stepfather, with Dr. Feinstone becoming Dr. Lawrence Caine and starting all over again in the town of Paradise, Missouri.

Of course, he’s still a maniac and all the issues he had in the first film all come raging back all over again, like his extreme jealousy when he falls for local Jamie Devers (Jillian McWhirter, Dune Warriors), who looks just like his last wife.

Also, much like the last time we saw the evil dentist, if you have to get any work done on your chompers, you shouldn’t watch this beforehand. There’s also a Clint Howard appearance, which is always welcome.

Alan Howarth did the score, so listen for stingers that sound suspiciously like the ones from Halloween 2. And I almost forgot that Big Ed Hurley’s eyepatch-wearing wife Nadine (Wendy Robie) is in this.

Directed by Jean-Marc Piché and written by Matt Roe and Avi Nesher (the director of Doppelganger) this movie finds the holidays coming at the worst of times, as all the signs of the end are there — it’s  super hot in New York City despite it being December — and that’s because The Minion is about to unlock the fourth of the Trinity — just go with it — the Antichrist who is locked inside the fortress of the Knights Templar and their strongest warrior Lukas Sadorov (Dolph Lundgren) must stop that from happening. He’s also a former Speznas who left the Soviet army after witnessing a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan — is this a Red Scorpion sequel? — who ends up working with a Native American archaeologist named Karen Goodleaf (Françoise Robertson).

The Minion has powers like The Hidden, jumping from body to body, but Dolph has a spiked glove so it seems like this is unfair fight for demons. Also: a subplot about nuclear waste on reservations, the alternate title Knight of the Apocalypse and the sad undelivered promise that Michele Soavi was one selected to direct this and man, what a movie that would have been. It’s still pretty good — I mean, Dolph praying before beating up cops and a bunch of Knights Templar in body armor fighting a body-switching demon, what else could you ask for? — but just imagine if this had been in the hands of a man who put a scene in a movie where a rabbit can use a remote control and it’s the least wild idea in that film.

Everyone compares this to End of Days but Lundgren got there first.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I have let all of you down by not having a Pollonia Brothers holiday movie on the site until now, so here we go. Alan (Mark Polonia) has a horrible job that gives him big hours and small pay and he might not be able to get gifts for his kids, but maybe if he helps Santa defeat the Feeders, which are literally hand puppet monsters, perhaps everything will work out.

Directed by John, written by him and Mark and just around an hour, this also has a cat in it that is really made of construction paper and I don’t know, there’s something about things being lo fi and shot on video that makes me incredibly forgiving. The real gift? There are two more Feeders movies and have the same aliens that look like they were made by children and have glowing red eyes which I love. I mean, they also haunt me, but I love them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is directed by Adam Grossman, who also wrote the script, and Ian Kessner. It has nothing to do with Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls other than the name. What it does have is comedian Larry Miller as a carnival clown named Louis Seagram. In 1977, he raped and murdered the mother of Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips). After he’s released from prison, he attacks Alex in her car, which she drives into a river — maybe it has a little bit of the original, including a role for Sidney Berger, who was in the Herk Harvey film — and dreams of the carnival where she first saw the clown.

Candace Hilligoss, star of the original, turned down a role. She saw this and hated it, saying that if anyone sees the words “A film by Adam Grossman” they should run for the exit. She also blasted Craven for putting his “signature crap” all over it, saying he should be “hung up by his thumbs at Hollywood and Vine for fans to stone, because he so devastated the intent of the original.”

Other Grossman films that Hilligoss should not watch include Sometimes They Come Back… Again and  Sometimes They Come Back… for More.

I don’t think this movie is exactly great but the fact that it isn’t bad is a major success. Miller is really good in this and really plays a great villain. And hey — Shawnee Smith!

You can watch this on Tubi.