Devilman started as a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Go Nagai. A high school student named Akira Fudo absorbs the powers of a demon with the help of his friend Ryo Asuka, becoming Devilman. There was a 39-episode anime series, a year-long run of the manga and even a crossover with Go Nagai’s other famous character, Mazinger Z vs. Devilman. While the anime had Devilman turning against demons to protect humanity, the manga has the entire world end, and God’s angels come to destroy what’s left. 

And then there’s this, a movie that Beat Takeshi said was “one of the four dumbest movies ever made after Getting Any?, Siberian Express and Pekin Genjin Who Are You?, saying that “there is nothing better than getting drunk and watching this movie. There is nothing better than getting drunk and watching this movie.” In Japan, people went to great lengths to hate on this film, including comedian Hiroshi Yamamoto, whose website was filled with bad reviews.

Imagine if a major comic book became a movie and it turned out to be the worst film ever, and then add in the fact that Japan has a national identity around its culture being important, and you get some idea of how hated this movie was.

Maybe it’s because music idols, the Izaki twins, were inexperienced at best and insanely horrid at worst in this. Or perhaps it’s impossible to tell the entire story in one movie. Or could it be the special effects that redefine bad? Could it be that every fight looks like a PS1 cutscene and not actual actors? 

Well, it has Bob Sapp as a TV announcer, so there’s that. And a hilarious scene where Akira finds the head of his love, Miki (Ayana Sakai), just left for him in his house. And it ends with the moon cracked, and I wonder, is this how Thundarr got here?

Director Hiroyuki Nasu made several manga adaptations, like the Be-Bop High School movies, as well as Beautiful Wrestlers: Down for the Count and Lesbians In Uniform. I have no idea how he made this, but he died a year later, so we can’t ask him.

Some people like to discuss the worst movies, and they always go back to the same well. Trust me, there are movies that are worse than anything you can imagine. This might be one of them: a movie blankly acted by singers unable to act, special effects unable to be special, and a beloved property treated like every 1980s comic book film other than Tim Burton’s Batman. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

We start at the funeral of Dawn Wiener, who got heavy, got acne, got date raped and then took her own life, all before the age of 20. Everyone worries that the way they treated her as a child is why this happened. Aviva watches these discussions and, despite only being a teenager — she’s played by eight different actors of different ages, races, and genders, but is supposed to be 13 — she wants a child.

She becomes pregnant by Judah, a family friend, and her family forces her to abort, which ruins her ability to become with child. No one tells her that, however. She runs away from home, has sex with a trucker and becomes part of the Sunshine Family, an ultra-religious home for orphans and runaways run by a father who hires a hitman to murder abortion doctors. And that killer is the trucker that Aviva just met, who she is sure that she’s in love with, until he kills the doctor, his daughter and himself via suicide by cop.

Finally, she meets Mark, who is suspected of touching Missy — the estranged sister of Dawn — who tells her that everyone is programmed to be one way or the other, that free will does not exist. But somehow, she’s able to find Judah again, who is now Otto, and feels that this time, she has a child.

Aviva is played by Emani Sledge, Valerie Shusterov, Hannah Freiman, Rachel Corr, Will Denton, Sharon Wilkins, Shayna Levine and Jennifer Jason Leigh in this Todd Solondz-directed and written movie. Of the casting, Roger Ebert said, “Consider the pathos brought to Aviva by the actress Sharon Wilkins, who is a plus-size adult black woman playing a little girl, and who creates perhaps the most convincing little girl of them all. Or Jennifer Jason Leigh, three times as old as Aviva but barely seeming her age. These individual segments are so effective that at the end of each one we know how we feel, and why. It’s just that the next segment invalidates our conclusions.”

Solondz doesn’t make easy films to watch or get your brain around. Good.

This Radiance Films release has a 4K restoration from the original negative by the Museum of Modern Art approved by writer-director Todd Solondz. Extras include a new interview with Todd Solondz by critic Hannah Strong; Todd Solondz and His Cinema of Cruelty, a new video essay by critic Lillian Crawford; a trailer; a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Bence Bardos, extracts from the original press book, plus archival interviews with Solondz and composer Nathan Larson and a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters.

You can get this on 4K UHD or Blu-ray from MVD.

Once called Vampz, this Steve Lustgarten (American Taboo, Power Slide)- directed and written movie is about Lillith (Sierra Tawan), Delilah (Tawanna Browne), and Cleo (Chantal Lashon), who are vampires who find that going out for their blood has become too dangerous. But what if they started a high-end call girl service, along with their familiar Dennis (Rick Irvin), and began using DoorDash to obtain the plasma they need so badly?

One night while they feed, a cop named Keith (Lamik Blake) sees them, which creates a psychic link that gets passed to his abused wife Eve (Emayatzy Corinealdi), who eventually becomes a vampire herself.

This looks a lot like a music video and reminds me of a time when between Blade and Queen of the Damned, it seemed like black vampires were about to have a moment. There are also two Blacula movies, as well as Vamp, Vampire in Brooklyn, and Ganja & Hess.

The best part of this? So much gore. These vampires don’t just drink blood; they devour people. There are some great ideas in it as well, so ignore the budget — you know that already — and just sit back.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The character of Riddick first showed up in Pitch Black, a movie that became a surprise success, leading to not just this sequel, but the 2013 sequel Riddick, all directed and written by David Twohy, based on characters created by Ken and Jim Wheat.

Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) is one of the last surviving Furyans, a race that excels at combat and can see in the dark. After the events of the anime Dark Fury, Riddick has been hiding on the frozen planet U.V.

Bounty hunters under the command of Toombs (Nick Chinlund) are hunting Riddick, who easily kills most of them and demands to know how they found him. There was a communication from New Mecca on planet Helion Prime, where Imam (Keith David), a survivor from the first movie, lives. Imam wanted Riddick to know that the Necromongers are looking for him, led by Aereon’s (Judi Dench) prediction that he is the last of the Furyans and must be killed. Her prophecy is that the leader of their faith, Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), will be murdered by this warrior. Commander Vaako (Keith Urban) is sent on a mission to stop Riddick.

Riddick is caught and sent to a prison planet called Crematoria, where he meets Jack, who is actually Kyra (Alexa Davalos), the girl that he saved in the first movie. She resents him for stranding her all alone. Meanwhile, Dame Vaako (Thandie Newton), Commander Vaako’s wife, has a conspiracy to have her husband replace Lord Marshal.

I kind of love this movie because it feels like Twohy was given the keys to the money vault and backed up a truck, ready to make his science fiction visions — and Diesel’s love of Dungeons and Dragons — an actual motion picture. It’s so dense with backstory that it feels like you’re several movies deep in a franchise instead of a sequel starring a character who was the secret hero of the first film that was a sleeper success.

Here’s how geeky this movie is. When Universal decided that they wanted to make a sequel, Twohy wrote the screenplays for not one, but three sequels, to which he and Diesel put into separate leather binders and presented them along with the key for the first binder.

Vin Diesel wanted Dame Judi Dench to play Aereon as he was a long-time fan. As she was acting in a play, he had her dressing room filled with so many bouquets of flowers that she couldn’t get into it. He told her that they couldn’t cast this movie until she agreed to accept the role. In her autobiography And Furthermore, she says that she never really understood what was going on, but enjoyed the experience of making the movie and loved the sets, which were the third-largest user of electricity in Canada.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD of The Chronicles of Riddick is packed with so much! It starts with brand new 4K restorations by Arrow Films of the theatrical and director’s cuts of the film, approved by David Twohy. Then, you get a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Dan Mumford and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Walter Chaw, original production notes and the Chronicles Compendium, an overview of the characters and planets featured in the film.

Extras on the discs include Ambition on Another Scale: Chronicling a Blockbuster Sequel, a brand-new feature-length documentary on the film, featuring interviews with writer-director David Twohy, actors Keith David and Linus Roache, storyboard artist Brian Murray and many others; interviews with Twohy, Murray and David; trailers; two audio commentaries, one by David Twohy and Vin Diesel and the other by Twohy and co-stars Karl Urban and Alexa Davelos; an introduction by Twohy; archive features on the worlds of the movie and its characters; a production calendar and behind the scenes features; three deleted scenes; animated segments that describe the many worlds in this movie; Toombs’ Chase Log, a short film narrated by Nick Chinlund in character; a guided tour of the set by Vin Diesel, along with 360-degree panoramic views of eight sets from the film; on-set interviews with Twohy, Diesel, Dench, Urban, Colm Feore, Alexa Davelos, Thandiwe Newton and producer Scott Kroopf; promotional interviews with Twohy, Diesel, Newton, Urban, Davelos and Feore; Escape from Butcher Bay, a compilation of cutscenes from the acclaimed tie-in video game and The Lowdown, a television special produced to promote the film’s original release.

You can get this movie on 4K UHD or blu ray from MVD.

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.

Greg Salman has only directed one other movie, Adventures In Pornoland, but after watching Mad Dawg, I’m going to check that out after this and not just because Veronica Hart is in it.

With the main character named Mac (Lamik Blake) and his wife called Lady Mac (Lunden De’Leon), it’s kind of obvious that this is blacksploitation take on Macbeth. Yet it works. There’s one really intense scene where Mac has finally risen up and started a series of bloody killings and his lover has to clean the blood from him in the bath as he just stares into nothingness, overwhelmed by what he’s done. Not what you expect for a low budget gangster movie.

This feels dark and bloody and rough in the best of ways. Lived in, if you will. It’s totally unexpected and I want to go back and live through it again.