I can hear you thinking—if you even care about Jess Franco’s very late period shot on digital video in a hotel room era—”Didn’t you already talk about La cripta de las condenadas?” Yes, I did. Yes, I referred to The Crypt of the Damned as “Jess Franco in one or two rooms watching women writhe around and zoom in and out of their curves for 90 minutes or so.”

This has the same cast: writer and cinematographer Fata Morgana (she also made Montes de Venus with Franco), Carmen Montes from Snakewoman, Eva Palmer from Jess Franco’s Perversion and actresses whose careers were in these two movies: Marta Simoes, Olivia Deveraux and María Traven.

This is supposed to be a hundred years after the first movie, but it’s the same idea other than images of a cemetery. Was Jess learning from 1990s VCA who would take one movie — Party Doll-A-Go-Go, for example — and break it down into two parts, even though it didn’t need to be?

There’s music by Daniel J. White, alongside Bach and Ravel. This is basically Jess getting to film nude women and then crawling all over his apartment, then selling it,t probably based on his name. But who are we to deny him the ability to see and film women, much less get the most out of the zoom feature? Are we to do as we always do and add to the blank slate that is a Jess Franco movie and find some meaning, some profound lesson here? I don’t think this is for getting off. It’s too slow, too moody, too strange. But hey, whatever gets you there, I guess. Some old people make home movies of their grandchildren, Jess Franco studies labias. Such is life. Is it a bad time to watch women kiss? If that’s boring to you, perhaps Franco’s entire work — point to the sign: you must watch every Franco movie to understand Franco — is not for you.

Based on “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?” from Action Comics #775, this cartoon was written by Joe Kelly, who also wrote the original comic, which was pencilled by Doug Mahnke and Lee Bermejo, and inked by Tom Nguyen, Dexter Vines, Jim Royal, Jose Marzan, Wade Von Grawbadger and Wayne Faucher.

When the Atomic Skull (Dee Bradley Baker) destroys much of Metropolis and kills several people, Superman (George Newbern) is asked why he doesn’t kill his enemies to protect humanity. A new group of heroes, The Elite — British psychic Manchester Black (Robin Atkin Downes), electricity controlling Coldcast (Catero Colbert), the demonic Menagerie (Melissa Disney) and the magician The Hat (Andrew Kishino) — responds by killing the Atomic Skull and winning over people, saying that they are willing to do what Superman won’t.

Kelly said, “The story tackles themes that go way beyond a typical superhero story…politics, the price of power and America’s place as a force in the world are all viewed through the lens of the DC Universe. Even if fans aren’t paying close attention to these issues, they’re all over the media. You can’t escape them. So with the state of affairs being what it is, I can’t think of a better time to see Superman confront these themes…I’m a big fan of taking real world issues and working them out through our “superhero” stories—but this one goes beyond strict allegory. Like the original comic story, the film is thought provoking without being preachy and really delivers a punch.”

By the end of this, Superman proves while he is still needed, even if he has to trick The Elite into believing. that he’s as ruthless as them.

The Elite are the same as The Authority, superheroes that became popular for their debauchery and willingness to end problems with violence and murder. They would show up again with new members, including cyborg Vera Black, a second Menagerie and Bunny. This team would eventually form the Justice League Elite, led by Black as Sister Superior and team members Coldcast, Menagerie II, Manitou Raven, his wife Dawn, Green Arrow, Flash, Kasumi (Batgirl in disguise), Major Disaster and Naif al-Sheikh.

In the fourth season of Supergirl, The Elite appeared with members Manchester Black, Menagerie, the Hat and a Morae responding to Agent Liberty and the Children of Liberty’s bigotry toward aliens, as well as the Department of Extranormal Operations’ ineffectiveness against people who kill aliens.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Adapting the Frank Miller — with Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley — comic book is a feat. Other than perhaps Watchmen, no comic took hold of my imagination in 1986 the same way, reinventing — for better or worse — the way that many saw Batman and Superman.

Directed by Jay Oliva and written by Bob Goodman, this two-part animated movie has Peter Weller as Bruce Wayne, retired for years after the death of Jason Todd, who was Robin. As Commissioner Gordon (Dark Shadows actor David Selby) nears retirement, they both seem themselves as old men about to be put to pasture. The world is filled with mutants and killing machines; Harvey Dent (Wade Williams) has had surgery to heal his face and been forgiven for his crimes as Two-Face; The Joker (Michael Emerson) is locked up for good.

As crime increases, Wayne decides that it’s time to be Batman again, bringing Carrie Kelly (Ariel Winter) on as his new Robin. He’ll need her help to stop the mutants, who may not be his greatest enemy, as the public remains divided in the media-dominated world of the future. Or today, as this is taking a two decade old story and telling it when it would be happening.

It’s strange to hear Miller’s dialogue — the mutants dialogue reads good on the page, not out loud — and news breaks within a film. At the time, it was cutting edge and influenced other media. Today, it may feel trite, even if this is nearly where it all began. The internal monologue of Batman may seem silly to the audience of today; it’s strange to hear them in a voice that isn’t the one you had in your head when you read the comic.

So much of RoboCop took from the works of Miller, to the point that he wrote the original script to the sequel. If you told teenage me that I would get to see a movie of this someday, I would have been so surprised. As such, I can’t help but like this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Not only is this a holiday movie, it’s a Mayan calendar movie. Yes, in the moments before Jacey’s (Magda Apanowicz) grandmother is killed by a gigantic icicle, she gives her a mystical ring and tells her that she’s the chosen one who will stop the end of the world on December 21, 2012.

Before you laugh at that, let me tell you this: Jacey was born right on Christmas in a town named Calvary, her parents are named Joseph (Ed Quinn) and Mary (Holly Elissa) and the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” isn’t just annoying, it explains each of the different disasters about to befall the human race. It was also written by the Mayans!

Directed by Steven R. Monroe — yes, the same guy who made the remake of I Spit On Your Grave — and written by Sydney Roper (Independence Daysaster, End of the World) and Rudy Thauberger (Snowmageddon), this is like The Dome plus The Mist plus every SyFy armageddon movie you’ve ever seen, plus a magic ring and special effects that include shaking the camera to make it seem like there’s an explosion.

Christmas lights come to life, birds unlife themselves, a mist freeze and kills people and only five golden rings can save everyone. There’s also a geomantic Mayan compass that everyone has to use to make their way to find them. There are also super religious people who want to sacrifice Jacey to save the world but she ends up figuring it all out.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

This is directed by Jay Woelfel, who has made a ton of movies, but perhaps is best known for Beyond Dreams Door.

In his director’s notes for this, he said: “Asylum of Darkness originally came about directly from the release of my first feature film, Beyond Dreams Door, made in my hometown of Columbus Ohio and released in 1989. The sales reps for that film claimed to want to make other films with the team that had made that film. So I embarked on a journey of writing long treatments for film after film for them, I think six at least. One of these was/is Asylum of Darkness . They, the sales reps, liked the elements in Beyond Dreams Door that questioned what was real and what wasn’t. They encouraged me to do something like that again saying “that is what you do best.” So I wrote a 30 page treatment, not about Dream reality, but in this case Insane Reality. A main character who is insane and knows that most of what he sees is insane. A key element to this premise being that, what he doesn’t know, is that insane people actually see beyond what we would call daily reality. Only they can see into a supernatural insane reality of shapeshifting demons that move behind the scenes of a sane person’s view of life. I liked the faceless “ghosts” that appear in Japanese ghost stories and those would be our main character’s chief rivals. The reps said that in the treatment, they couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. That was my whole point.”

Shot on 35mm, starring the same star from Beyond Dreams Door — Nick Baldasare — and having a plot that has so many twists and turns that it packs ten movies into its two plus hours, if this came out from Neon or A24, people would be obsessively masturbating over it to the point that you’d wonder how a movie could be that good. But no, this is a movie made by someone they’ve never heard of, hiding in the mom and pop video store that is Tubi, collecting virtual dust while lunatics like you and me are about to obsessively masturbate over it.

Or maybe you’ll feel like this reviewer, who said, “…one of the most schizophrenic films I have ever seen. Everything about it, from the acting to the directing to the music and everything in between, feels like everyone involved kept changing their minds every other day about what kind of movie they wanted to make.”

Dwight (Baldasare) is trapped in a mental institution as he’s committed murder but his lawyers got him a not guilty by means of insanity plea. There, he becomes friends with Van Gogh (Frank Jones Jr.), a man who removes his eye when he sees something that he can’t handle, and is treated by Dr. Shaker (Richard Hatch), who sometimes appears to be a skeleton. He escapes, running across the road and causing a crash that causes his spirit to cross over with a rich man named Artimus Finch.

He soon falls in love with that man’s abused wife Ellen (Amanda Howell) and takes over his life, taking on the vices and behaviors of someone who he wasn’t born as while Finch dies inside Dwight’s body. There’s also Detective Kesler (Tim Thomerson), who he may or may not have hired to find out what is going on.

You can add might or might not to everything in this movie, as characters change motivations, friends become enemies, enemies become friends and it gets a lot Lost Highway and I say that not because this is indebted to that film but because I have no other handle to hang this on, a film that juxtaposes its lead character being devoured by a zombie while Tiffany Shepis is all flirty with him as she’s dressed for a funeral. And who is Shepis, the woman who visits him every day while he’s losing his mind in the hospital? Who is good? Who is bad? Is anyone?

Originally released in 2012 as Season of Darkness before being revised in 2017 as Asylum of Darkness, this was shot in Ohio and edited in Los Angeles. It feels like it came from the 1990s, where you would have found it two minutes before the video store closed and then tried to tell all your friends about it but couldn’t find a copy anywhere to prove that it was real. I feel the same way now as I’m watching it online, so that should give you an idea of just how singular this is.

Clash of the Titans was one of my favorite movies as a kid. When the remake came out, I avoided it for the longest time. With Arrow’s new box set release, I finally watched it. Was it worth the wait?

Clash of the Titans (2010): When they started making this movie, producer Adam Schroeder and writers John Glenn and Travis Wright wanted to drop the “cheesy chessboard manipulation of characters” by the gods. Or, you know, the whole story of Perseus that this is based on and the story that Beverly Cross wrote for the 1981 movie this is also based on. As they dropped out and other creatives joined, the phrase “darker and more realistic” kept getting used and that’s where this ended up.

Director Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk) was a big fan of the original film — his ending of the Hulk movie is inspired by it — and also took in elements of the Saint Seiya anime for this remake. There’s even a fun moment where Bubo the owl shows up to remind you of the first movie.

When the gods battle the Titans who made them, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) turned the tide with his monster the Kraken. As the gods split up the world, Zeus (Liam Neeson) screwed over Hades and gave him the underworld while he took the Earth and Poseidon the sky. Zeus also made humans, who disappoint him as they no longer worship him. Maybe it’s because he keeps messing with them, like how King Acrisius (Jason Flemyng) tried to take over Mount Olympus, which led to Zeus cucking him and knocking up the royal wife Danae (Tine Stapelfeldt) before throwing a lighting bolt and turning the king into the demonic Calibos — which isn’t in any myth — and then — run-on sentence much? — the king throws his wife and baby into the ocean. An immortal cursed by the gods named Io (Gemma Arterton) saves the child and has fisherman Spyro (Pete Postlethwaite) and his wife Marmara (Elizabeth McGovern) raise Perseus (Sam Worthington) as their own.

As he grows to be a man, King Kepheus (Vincent Regan) and Queen Cassiopeia (Polly Walker) rule the country he lives in, Argos. They go to war with the gods, which cause the Furies to sink his parent’s boat. Only he survives and is brought to the royal throne room. There, he meets Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), who thinks her parents are morons for doing this. Well, they are, because Hades soon shows up, gets insulted when Cassiopeia says her daughter is as beautiful as the gods. He ages the queen until she dies and says that he will unleash the Kraken in ten days unless Andromeda is killed. Hades also says, “Oh by the way, Perseus is Zeus’ son.”

Perseus agrees to save Andromeda by defeating the Kraken. His plan is meet the Stygian witches (Ross Mullan, Robin Berry and Graham Hughes) who will tell him how to win and the answer is to get the head of the Medusa (Natalia Vodianova). Working with the royal guard, led by Draco (Mads Mikkelsen), Perseus battles giant scorpions and his father Calibos. Zeus also gives him a god sword that he refuses to lose until Calibos kills Io, so as he strikes his father, it transforms him back to reason. He asks his son not to become a god while Io, as she dies, begs him to save Argos.

While asked, Ray Harryhausen had no involvement in this as he felt his films had didn’t need to be remade. And yes, the ending is overly CGI, but it’s thrilling watching Perseus ride Pegasus and battle the gigantic Kraken (actually Leterrier in a green screen suit) to save Andromeda. All of my cynicism went away at the close of this, as I was happy with the action and how fast this moved.

But what of the sequel?

Wrath of the Gods (2012): Ten years after the first movie, humans have stopped praying to the gods, so the Titans have escaped and Zeus (Liam Neeson) is in trouble. Can he call on his son Perseus (Sam Worthington) to save the gods that he despises?

Despite being saved at the end of the first movie, Io has died — never mind that she’s Perseus’ great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother in actual mythology — and Perseus is raising their son Heleus (John Bell). Also, he should be the son of Perseus and Andromeda, but we’re already not following any of the source material. Perseus is now a fisherman when Zeus visits him, telling him that the prison that holds Kronos is failing. Our hero turns him down and soon, Zeus is attached by his son Ares (Edgar Ramirez) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes), who also murder Poseidon (Danny Huston). They make a deal with Kronos for power if they free him.

After fighting a Chimera that has attacked his hometown, Perseus looks for his father but only finds the dying Poseidon, who tells him that his son Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who can lead him to Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) and the prison of the Titans. Along with Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Perseus goes on a quest that sees him battling a minotaur, cyclops and demons. How can he defeat Ares and the creator of the gods? By combining Zeus’s thunderbolt, Hades’ pitchfork and Poseidon’s trident into the Spear of Trium.

There are some fun moments, but this sequel, directed by Jonathan Liebesman (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning), feels like effects and monsters thrown at you instead of the story of the first, which was a step down from its classic inspiration. This did much worse at the box office, which led to the third movie, Revenge of the Gods, being cancelled.

The Arrow Video When Titans Ruled the Earth set is available in both 4K UHD and blu ray. Extras include an illustrated collector’s book containing new writing by author and critic Guy Adams and film scholar Josh Nelson, a double-sided fold-out posters for each film featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Joe Wilson, six postcard sized artcards and reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Joe Wilson.

Clash of the Titans has an interview with producer Basil Iwanyk, an alternate ending, deleted scenes, a trailer, an image gallery and several features. Wrath of the Titans also has an interview with Iwanyk, deleted scenes, a trailer, an image gallery and several features.

You can get the 4K UHD and blu ray sets 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.

Directed and written by Steve Sessions (Contagio), Aberrations was made for “the cost of an average funeral.” It’s all based around a connecting story where horror novelist Claire Huston (Dawn Duvurger) uses a Ouija board — adding this to my Letterboxd list — to steal ideas from beyond the veil of the choir invisible from a dead master of terror. That means we get four stories, like Alice (Mona Duvera) dealing with a ventriloquist doll, Bobby (Amber Peach) being watched, a killer (Eric Spudic) geocaching to kill someone (Krystal Stevenson Akin) and grave robbers (Denman Powers, Kirk Jordan) bringing a man (J.C. Pennylegion) his dead wife.

The one skeleton at the end of the trailer looks just like one from Creepshow and that seems intentional. I also like that when it says “four tales of the macabre,” it’s over one of the actresses’ rear ends in a shower and that proves that what sells a horror movie will never change.

This got released before the current run of films like this that are not really connected and are just shorts all thrown together, so at least there’s something making these stories work. This has been seen by hardly anyone on IMDB or Letterboxd, so maybe that will change.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this film on January 20 at 7:00 PM MT at Sie FilmCenter in Denver, CO. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Between the giallo elements of this movie and the Jess Franco-indebted The Duke of Burgundy, Peter Strickland seems like someone who has watched the same movies as me. I just sit around and watch a hundred gialli in a month while he actually makes movies like this, Flux Gourmet and In Fabric.

British sound engineer Gilderoy (Toby Jones) has come to work at Italy’s Berberian film studio to work on a movie about horses. He didn’t realize that it was a giallo, The Equestrian Vortex — ah, the waves of Argento-style animal-themed movie titles — and how deep he would get into it, making disgusting noises on a Foley stage for the film’s murder set pieces. Director Santini (Antonio Mancino) has made a film about an aroused goblin — Goblin? — beneath a girl’s riding school that sounds more Suspiria than Deep Red. Yet the real terror comes from the sounds created by Gilderoy and the two actresses he’s working with, Silvia (Fatma Mohamed) and Claudia (Eugenia Caruso).

Strickland was inspired by the fact that Bruno Maderna could work with John Cage and score Death Laid an Egg, which he saw as a juxtaposition between high art and violent trash.

The sound artist loses all touch with reality, as Santini won’t admit that he made a horror movie while he also assaults Silvia, who destroys the audio they’ve made, meaning that Elisa (Tonia Sotiropoulou) is hired and is more abused by sound as the story continues. Like Blow Out, he needs the perfect scream but how far will he go to get it? And is he losing touch with his mother and real life at home?

Speaking of Gilderoy’s mother, that’s Suzy Kendall, who to many Americans was the first giallo queen with her appearance in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. This was her first movie in 35 years.

I loved this movie while others may find it obtuse. It’s similar to The Editor but instead of tributes to the greatest moments of the giallo, this looks for the horror within making art.

Bella (Kristen Stewart), who has just given birth, is now a vampire. After Edward (Robert Pattinson) helps her satisfy her initial thirst, she meets their Renesmee. The rest of the Cullens and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) stay nearby and when he acts possessive toward her daughter, Bella argues with him and learns that he has imprinted on her. He goes even further by transforming into a wolf in front of her father (Billy Burke) and telling him that she’s a vampire.

Irina (Maggie Grace) believes that Renesmee is an Immortal child, a vampire that can’t be controlled and who can kill many people. The Volturi have outlawed these beings and are coming to destroy her. We see a brutal fight in which nearly everyone dies but it’s just a vision from Alice (Ashley Greene) to Aro (Michael Sheen), who still wants the battle. Then the Cullens reveal another half-human, half-vampire.

Oh yeah — somehow Bella has learned how to shield her thoughts from Edward because you know, this is totally an X-Men movie. She lets her defenses down and they reveal their love for one another. Both are happy that Renesmee will have Jacob to protect her.

I have reached the end of the Twilight Saga. Can I join the Volturi now?

As part of THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 has extras like a commentary track by Bill Condon, another part of the series-length documentary, extended scenes and a music video for Green Day’s “The Forgotten.” Get this set exclusively from Best Buy.