Pierce Jackson Dawn (Randal Malone) was one of the greatest make-up artists of the early 20th century. However, his death is quite strange. It came after he wanted to work with horror stars Pratt Borokov (Tim Sullivan) and Janos Blasko (director and writer Ron Ford) for producer Leonard Schein (Wes Deitrick), even if Blasko has overdosed and Borokov must be convinced through death and reanimation to make the movie. Yet instead of acting, they start to kill.

Featuring interview segments with David DeCoteau, Conrad Brooks, silent star Anita Page and former Hollywood starlet Margaret O’Brien, this is basically Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff coming back from the dead to destroy unsuspecting people. For that alone, as well as how it’s shot kind of like a documentary, you have to enjoy it. It’s a low, low, low budget affair, yet when has that stopped a movie from being worthwhile?

If you love old movies and didn’t have any worries about watching movies no matter what format they were shot in, you’re going to love this. If you demand things have an actual budget and not spend time throwing deep cut horror jokes at you, well…

You can watch this on YouTube.

Shout out to Ator Moonbeam. He realized that I was missing this Jess Franco movie and sent me his DVD in the mail. Now, it closes out the second Jess Franctuary.

Maria Beltran (Rachel Sheppard) has become famous for writing Desperate Letters, a book that exposed her corrupt Caribbean homeland of San Hermoso. For some reason, she thinks that it would be a good idea to come home for a book tour despite getting death threats. While there, she meets up with several old lovers, including Beatriz Arenas (Tatiana Cohen), who she has a sapphic encounter with while a hidden camera records things, which the secret police use to blackmail her into doing assassinations for her, in-between Tora (Lina Romay) threatening her with sodomy with a curling iron and showing her the eyeball of her female lover.

Luckily, she has an ex-CIA ex-boyfriend named Leonardo Radek (Roger Pavlovich) who shows up and does capoeira and ninja stuff, killing people primarily by breaking their necks. Was I sad when he breaks Lina’s neck? You know it.

This film also led to Antena Criminal: Making a Jess Franco Movie, which showed what it takes to go to a hotel near the beach and allow Jess Franco to make a political thriller with surf rock, extended travelogue footage, zooms, extraneous lesbian scenes that are essential to the plot because they’re in a Jess Franco movie, dubbing which barely qualifies as the word, more zooms, Lina Romay being deranged and Linnea Quigley showing up just long enough to be top credited on the cover of the DVD yet meaning nothing to the actual film.

This was Franco’s 176th movie and I assume that when the hotel staff was on lunch break, he snuck into a conference room and pushed his zoom lens as far as it would go, filming several women with glitter all over their pubes.

This has some of the wildest—and by that, I mean borderline inept—action scenes in a Franco film, but it is missing things like diamonds, Dr. Orloff and Lina being more featured. In my dreams, this movie was mostly her and Linnea Quigley in a hotel room for three hours, smoking cigarettes while they discuss politics and Jess just goes wild with his camera. I don’t want AI to make movies, but I will accept my computer overlords if it can make that for me.

I must tell you, any movie that starts with Lesly Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” playing while a girl blasts a room full of possessed nuns and priests to chunks with a shotgun, I’m probably going to love that movie. That movie would be The Convent, which explains that Christine (Oakley Stevenson in her youth, Adrienne Barbeau in the present) believed that these nuns and priests were forcing her to have an abortion and that they were abusing children. She’s lived hidden in a house for years, never coming out, becoming an urban legend. The church becomes vacant and a place where people whisper ghosts congregate.

Clorissa (Joanna Canton) is the next in a long line of sorority pledges who must go into the church and spray their Greek letters inside. Along with her brother Brant (Liam Kyle Sullivan), goth best friend Mo (Megahn Perry), stoner Frijole (Richard Trapp), cheerleader Kaitlin (Renée Graham) and frat boys Chad (Dax Miller) and Biff (Jim Golden) — each is a stereotype of what you expect from a horror movie, which allows this film, directed by Mike Mendez and written by Chaton Anderson, to turn things on you — they decide to enter the church.

After police officers Starkey (Coolio) and Ray (Bill Moseley) bust them for smoking up inside the former religious area, everyone runs, except for Mo. She’s hiding from the police so that she doesn’t screw up her probation. She promises Frijole sex — she gives him her panties as insurance — if he doesn’t tell the police where she is. As she hides inside the frightening house of the holy, he makes plans to come back and get his stash and, perhaps more importantly, to get laid, as Mo is a virgin.

Surprise! Mo is kidnapped by Satanists named the Lords of Hell. Led by Saul (David Gunn), who also works at Dairy Queen. While he and his group are mall goths that she sees right through, they really do plan to kill her and bring Satan into our world. She’s stabbed but soon becomes possessed by an actual demon who quickly kills everyone but Saul and Dickie Boy (Kelly Mantle).

Clorissa runs away and comes to Christine for help, who laughs it off, as no teenager is a virgin today. Well, the real issue is that Clorrisa’s brother Brant is one, as is Dickie Boy. Luckily — or maybe not — Dickie Boy plans to have sex with Brant so that they can both survive, but he’s soon turned into the Anti-Christ, the role that Christine’s son was to fulfill. She blows up the church and takes everyone out but Clorissa and Brant. And, well, that cute little dog. But he couldn’t be a demon, right?

Shot on sets from Leprechaun 5: In the Hood and feeling like Demons American Style, this is filled with blood, gore and one of my favorite things in movies, reshoot wigs. They’re all over the movie, so make a drinking game where you spot them. That said, this is a lot of fun. And it’s one more entry on a potential Letterboxd list of horror movies with Coolio in them (Dracula 3000, Red Water,  Leprechaun 5: In the Hood, Pterosaurus and he did play a demon on Charmed once).

The Synapse 4K UHD and Blu-ray release of The Convent has a new 4K remaster of the uncut version supervised and approved by director Mike Mendez, as well as cast and crew audio commentary; a commentary by the Lords of Hell, Saul and Dickie Boy; a video tour of the locations; a making-of; an electronic press kit; liner notes from Corey Danna; a deleted scene and outtakes; a still gallery and trailers. You can get it from MVD.

Tarsem was born in Punjab and came to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, to learn how to be a filmmaker, studying alongside and acting in the student movies of Zack Snyder and Michael Bay. I first noticed his work in the video for R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” before he directed this film. He’s gone on to make The Fall, Immortals, Mirror Mirror, Self/less and Dear Jassi, some incredible commercials, and even coming back to music videos to make Lady Gaga’s “911.”

The Cell may tell a somewhat simple story: Child psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) must save comatose boy Edward Baines (Colton James) by studying the mindscape of serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio), who suffers from the same viral illness that causes an unusual form of narcoleptic schizophrenia.

Yet the direction and visual style of this film push it into unfamiliar territory. Taking cues from British artist Damien Hirst’s divided horse imagery, Norweigan figure painter Odd Nerdrum, H. R. Giger, and even shouting out Fantastic Planet, this looks unlike anything in the film—but a ton of music videos and artwork—before.

The story, all about the Cronenberg-ish named Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System, finds Catherine entering the brains of her sleeping patients to fix their dreams, an idea taken from He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny. Watching it, I was reminded of another similar film, Dreamscape, which may have a bigger script and wilder ideas but doesn’t have the eye for imagery that Tarseem and director of photography Paul Laufer bring to this.

Catherine is guided by doctors Henry West (Dylan Baker) and Miriam Kent (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and government agents Pete Novak (Vince Vaughn) and Gordon Ramsay (Jake Weber) as she descends into the mind of the killer, whose killing technique gives the name to this movie: he drowns his victims inside a glass cell. Then he rises above it to watch their deaths from above. Like Freddy Krueger, he rules his mindscape; just like those films, what happens to Catherine in the dreamscape occurs in reality. She’s trapped but must escape to learn how to use the device and save Edward.

Amazingly, there is a direct-to-video sequel to this that no one has ever talked about. It came out in 2009 and has a new killer, The Cusp, who kills people and resuscitates them over and over until they ask him to kill them. His only surviving victim, psychic investigator Maya (Tessie Santiago), is the only one who can stop him.

Despite its success, writer Mark Protosevich has disowned the film. He claims that what Tarseem made—and the many rewrites—changed his original script so much that he hopes he can remake it someday. Speaking of remakes, he wrote the script for American Oldboy.

The new Arrow Video release gives more than just the original and director’s cuts of the movie. There’s also a director of photography cut, with a different aspect ratio and alternate color grading created by director of photography Paul Laufer. This gives you an opportunity to explore the world of The Cell from so many places.

The Arrow Video Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases of The Cell have brand new 4K restorations of both the 107-minute Theatrical Cut and the 109-minute Director’ Cut by Arrow Films, approved by director Tarsem Singh. There’s also a bonus disc containing a previously unseen version of the film with an alternate aspect ratio and alternate grading created by director of photography Paul Laufer. Plus, you get an illustrated collector’s book containing new writing on the film by critics Heather Drain, Marc Edward Heuck, Josh Hurtado and Virat Nehru and limited edition packaging with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Savieri.

Extras include four different audio commentaries:

Film scholars Josh Nelson & Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

• Screenwriter Mark Protosevich and film critic Kay Lynch
• Director Tarsem Singh
• Director of photography Paul Laufer, production designer Tom Foden, makeup supervisor Michèle Burke, costume designer April Napier, visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug and composer Howard Shore

Projection of the Mind’s Eye, a new feature-length interview with director Tarsem Singh; Between Two Worlds, a new in-depth interview with director of photography Paul Laufer; Paul Laufer Illuminates, a new interview about the alternate master of The Cell; Art is Where You Find It, a new visual essay by film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; The Costuming Auteur, a new visual essay by film critic Abbey Bender; Style as Substance: Reflections on Tarsem; eight deleted/extended scenes with optional audio commentary by director Tarsem Singh; six multi-angle archive visual effects vignettes; theatrical trailers and an image gallery.

You can order the Blu-ray or 4K UHD from MVD.

Released in Italy as Trasgredire, Cheeky! finds Tinto Brass — joined by a writing team that included his wife Carla Cipriani, Nicolaj Pennestri, Silvia Rossi and Massimiliano Zanin — for another trip into his erotic world, a place where the rear end can be viewed as the window to the soul.

Seriously, if you think Andy Sidaris fully realized his world of gorgeous women in a world of spy games, it’s time to watch a Tinto Brass film. This time, he centers his gaze on Carla Burin (Yuliya Mayarchuk), a young woman from Venice who has come to England to be with her boyfriend, Matteo (Jarno Berardi). The only one not happy about that is Matteo, who is continually jealous of her. Perhaps he should be, as nearly everyone wants to be with Carla, including Moira (Francesca Nunzi), the real estate agent who rented her a flat, and her French ex-boyfriend Bernard (Mauro Lorenz).

After making movies like Caligula and Salon Kitty, Brass went in the direction of trying to craft worlds that revolved around young women who almost constantly are nude, like a Milo Manara comic book brought to life.

Brass said his intent with Cheeky! was to advance the cause of feminism through the character of Carla. “She’s a modern woman who is fully aware of her sexuality and sensuality, and of her right to enjoy it without subduing herself to a chauvinist mentality. It’s an old habit, a fixation of mine, a belief that in order to discover women’s lies, all you just have to do is look at their ass. Because, as opposed to the face, which is a hypocrite mask capable of faking and lies, the ass doesn’t lie.”

Only Tinto Brass would make this movie, a film that pretty much is the male gaze 200% of the time and believe that it’s a feminist film. Well, it is a joyous one, as love wins out by the end. Mayarchuk, who Brass discovered working in a pizza shop, is shot in every frame like a goddess, but also a conflicted woman who wants the pleasures of the flesh yet doesn’t want to lose the man she loves.

I never watch one of Brass’ later films and feel gross about it. It feels like a celebration of beauty and young lust. Meanwhile, he’s a dirty old man puffing along on a cigar, shooting this all with his wife by his side.

Cult Epics presents the 4K UHD world premiere of the Uncut and Uncensored version of Cheeky. It has commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nathaniel Thompson, trailers in 4K, an interview with Massimo Di Venanzo, an isolated score by Pino Donaggio, Backstage with Tinto Brass, trailers, a photo gallery, a double-sided sleeve with original uncensored Italian poster art, a 20-page illustrated booklet with liner notes by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti and a slipcase. You can order it from MVD.

Directed by Takashi Komatsu and written by Hiroshi Hashimoto based on the book by Osamu Sôda, Persona starts when a student named Danda comes back to school after weeks away. Bullying has kept him from class but now his face hides behind a mask. Soon, many of his fellow oppressed students start to cover their faces, finding freedom in the new identity it gives them, like Tonomura, whose birthday party is a debaucherous orgy of masked teenagers.

Psychiatrist Yuichiro Jonouchi (Ren Osugi) believes that the masks are a change in the way Japanese students will now face the world, while other more cynical voices believe that it’s a way for fashion designer Ken Diamon (Akaji Maro) to sell something beyond clothing, a new look for the Japanese youth market as well as push his masked daughter Hiroko into idol status.

Yuki (Maya Kurosu) and her best friend Ashihara (Yuma Ishigaki) start to investigate this trend and start asking why people feel the need to cover their faces. They even meet the creator of these white face obscuring fashion items, Akira (Tatsuya Fujwara). Their work is noticed by a scandal writer named Yaba (Ikkei Watanabe) who wants to find out why masked teens are being murdered.

Fujiwara and Chiaki Kuriyama, who plays Yuki’s sister Reika, would both be in Battle Royale ain 2000, another film that tries to figure out the Japanese school system and why it’s so filled with bullying and suicide. As for Persona, it feels like part Lynch by way of Japanese by way of teen drama as well as fashion giallo. It’s really fascinating.

Persona is one of the films on Arrow’s new J-Horror Rising set. It has extras including an interview with director Takashi Komatsu and an image gallery.

You can buy it from MVD.

Directed by Toshiyuki Mizutani, who wrote it with Mugita Kinosita, this takes place after the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, which saw at least 5,000 deaths. Yukari (Yoshino Kimura) has come to the city of Kobe to help with the rescue efforts.

As a psychic, Yukari can feel the thoughts of others. This isn’t always good, as the violent urges of people disturb her. She meets Chiharo (Yû Kurosawa), who has thirteen different personalities, and who is a loner after her classmates bullied her, blaming her for the drowning — in a toilet! — of a fellow student. When a gym teacher throws her down the steps, putting her in the hospital, Chiharo is still to blame when that man kills himself.

Why does Chiharo have these voices fighting inside her? Is it the abuse of her uncle Tatsurô (Kazuhiro Yamaji)? Or is the out of body experiences that she was forced to undertake from scientist Yayoi Takano (Makiko Watanabe)? Maybe both?

There is a thirteenth personality no one has seen yet, one behind the pain that Chiharo unleashes. That is Isola and she is starting to break through. I’ve always wanted to get into a sensory deprivation tank but after this, maybe I should reconsider.

Isola: Multiple Personality Girl is one of the films on Arrow’s new J-Horror Rising set. It has extras including commentary by critics and Japanese cinema experts Jasper Sharp and Amber T., interviews with Yoshino Kimura and Yu Kurosawa, original trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

You can buy it from MVD.