Back when I was a kid, I read so many Jack Chick comics. That’s because while the tracts are given away for free, the full-size comic books were always in Christian stores, and those were the only places that sold craft supplies in my small town. Chick’s Crusader comic book had six issues about Alberto Rivera, an anti-Catholic religious activist who was the source of many of Chick’s anti-Catholic theories.

Rivera claimed that he was sent to a Catholic seminary at the age of seven, and two years later, as his mother lay dying, she reportedly saw ugly creatures swarming her deathbed and realized she was headed for a Christless eternity on account of being Catholic. At her grave, nine-year-old Alberto promised to discover the truth. But before that, the Vatican sent him as a deep-cover priest with the mission of infiltrating Protestant organizations and sabotaging their leaders.

This is when Alberto learned that the Vatican was behind Freemasonry, and they worship the Virgin Mary because they’re really simping for the Whore of Babylon. In 1965, he denounced the church in a stadium filled with 50,000 people, going to war with the Jesuits, who, like the NWO, if you’re NWO, you’re NWO for life. They tortured him so severely that his lungs collapsed and he went into an iron lung. As Radiohead sang, “Faith, you’re driving me away. You do it every day. You don’t mean it, but it hurts like hell.”

Alberto asked Jesus for forgiveness, was miraculously healed, and so moved a Jesuit official that he was allowed to escape Spain and rescue his sister Maria, a nun who had also been targeted by the church, and barely made it through as she was “…bleeding to death from flagellation and other mistreatment.” Also: Jim Jones was a Jesuit.

But let’s ask Cornerstone magazine for the, well, gospel truth. “Is Alberto’s story true? No! Our intensive investigation reveals his police record, his investment schemes, his bad check‑writing, his contradictory testimony, his fabricated educational record, and his reported family abuse.”

Alberto’s story was inconsistent and shifted over time. In a 1964 statement, he claimed to have left the Catholic Church in July of 1952. Yet later, he said it was 1967, which is not a minor tweak, you know? But even after 1967, he continued promoting the Catholic Church.

Rivera had some documentation that he said proved he was a priest. It didn’t.

His sister was a maid, not a nun.

He claimed he was a priest in 1963, but he was really married with children in the U.S.

Rivera may have lied — or stretched the truth– or been compromised by a global conspiracy — about those things, but he had no problem saying the Jesuit order was behind, well, everything. Communism? Jesuits. Islam? Jesuits. Nazism? Also Jesuits.

World Wars, economic recessions, Jonestown and the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, who was Catholic? Jesuits.

He claimed that the Catholic Church was hard at work spreading homosexuality and abortion, plus some mic drops like how the popes are all antichrists and the Catholic Church worships the Whore of Babylon (two mentions in one article, so SEO scores will be high for this). Alberto was also ahead of the curve of being all in on hating Islam, as he claimed that Muhammad was manipulated by the Catholic Church to invent Islam as a tool to destroy Jews and rival Christians, and that Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, was a Catholic nun stationed at an Arabian monastery, acting on instructions from a bishop to marry Muhammad and launch a new religion.

But how far could Rivera go? How about the idea that the Vatican staged Fatima and picked the town because it’s the name of Muhammad’s daughter? And they also hired a Muslim killer to murder Pope John Paul II in the hopes that the guilt of that fact would make more Muslims Catholic. But aren’t they all a Catholic scheme?

This is old school non-right-wing conspiracy madness, the kind I love the most. The kind where Alberto would claim that people were constantly breaking into his home. And when he joined up with Jack Chick, well, things went wild. Obviously, the Vatican did more than start Islam. Communism, the Masons, the KKK, the mob, the Illuminati, the New Age movement, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons…they made them all. And they can’t wait to start a new inquisition.

These claims were so over the top that there was a protest by both Catholics and Evangelicals to the point that Catholic and even Protestant bookstore owners removed Chick’s product. In response, My Name? . . . In the Vatican? was released, in which Chick doubled down.

Catholic Answers said, “The impact of Alberto Rivera on Jack Chick’s universe is difficult to underestimate. It was Rivera who provided Chick with his most sensationalistic, most anti-Catholic claims and allowed Chick’s conspiracy theories to grow increasingly complex and bizarre.”

Anyways…Elijah’s Secret.

The YouTube description for this movie says, “Please enjoy this free SD screener. By watching this, you agree to share your thoughts about this Christian-based film by writing a review and posting it on AT LEAST one of the following sites: YouTube (comment section), the Harmberg Brothers website (link below), Facebook (please tag #elijahssecret and #harmbergbrothers), Twitter, your blog, and any other applicable websites. Furthermore, if you like what you see (we are confident you will), please tell your friends, family, church congregation(s), coworkers, etc., about this film and send them the website link. Thank you, we are looking forward to reading your review(s)!”

Let’s do this.

Professor Elijah Steinbeck (Wayne Harmberg, the writer and producer) has a secret. He’s not really a Baptist preacher. Instead, he’s a Jesuit who has been tasked with converting the church from the inside out as well as controlling the soul by conducting human trials.

He never counted on Captain Christopher Holmes (Casey Harmberg, who directed, wrote, produced, and did the wardrobe). Holmes is more than just a U.S. Army officer. He’s also a writer for Stars and Stripes and a God-fearing American.

According to the official site, “Additionally, this movie was filmed entirely on an iPhone 6S (a new and rapidly growing technique among filmmakers), making it among the very first feature-length films to be shot this way. It was also edited using Cyberlink PowerDirector 14, a state-of-the-art editing software with 3D, CGI and picture-enhancing capabilities. Prepare to be stunned!”

Forget being stunned, you will be gobsmacked by high-ranking Jesuit overlords meeting in public parks with no mics, clad in hoods that resemble hoodies more than holy vestments. This is also packed with footage from other anti-Jesuit films, a scene where our hero reads the Jack Chick publication The Secret History of the Jesuits and the kind of special effects that would make Neil Breen laugh.

Obviously, I wrote over a thousand words about this, and I’m going to watch it for the third time in a row.

You can watch this on YouTube.

When Tori (Chelsea Durkalec) is killed — maybe in Fight Valley, an underground MMA club and come on, she totally died there because why would this movie even get made and why would it be named Fight Valley otherwise — her sister Windsor (Susie Celek) moves back home and meets up with her girlfriend Duke (Erin O’Brien) and their friend group, which includes Yanni (Kari J. Kramer), and Jamie (Cabrina Collesides) — the Knock Around Girls — and starts to train with Jabs (Miesha Tate).

Fight Valley sounds better than Camden, New Jersey, right?

The sisters grew up on different sides of Jersey. Tori was with her dad, fighting in the streets, while Windsor was with her rich mom. So now Windsor has to get revenge and fight the big bad Church, played by MMA fighter Cris Cyborg.

Director and writer Rob Hawk has plenty of MMA stars on hand, like Amanda Serrano and Katlyn Chookagian, so the fights look good, even if the idea that a rich girl could defeat Cris Cyborg with a few weeks of training is hilarious. But hey — it is a movie.

There’s also plenty of “your sister was a lesbian, are you too?” content that you could say is representation, but it totally feels like exploitation. Your mileage may vary.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Director Marcel Walz’s Blood Feast remake has a thankless task. Technically, it’s automatically a better-made movie than the original Blood Feast. But it’s not a better movie. Does that make sense?

Fuad Ramses (Robert Rusler), his wife Louise (Caroline Williams) and daughter Penny (Sophie Monk) have moved to Paris and opened the Ramses American Diner. But the restaurant isn’t a success and he has to work nights at an Egyptian museum, so as you figure will happen, he gets obsessed by Ishtar and makes a feast for her. A feast of people!

Rusler is a really nice guy — he tells great stories in person — but it’s hard to accept anyone else as Faud other than Mal Arnold. Rusler gives it his all, but again, this is thankless work.

We expect things to be cheap and slapdash in the world of Blood Feast instead of slick. Or vanilla. This is based on a movie where a man tore out a woman’s tongue and caressed it on camera. You expect more and don’t get it. It’s certainly well-made, but that’s what I want. I want to throw up in my mouth. At least Herschell Gordon Lewis shows up as an Egyptology expert.

The Synapse 4K UHD release of Blood Feast comes with extras including an Indiegogo promotional trailer, a theatrical trailer, a making of, a music video for Chilli Con Curtis’ “Tonite,” footage of the premiere and a scare cam. You can get it from MVD.

I want to love this movie, but I don’t.

It has everything I should love.

It’s an auteur project by Anna Biller, who directed, wrote, edited, produced, scored and designed the clothes.

It’s shot on 35mm film.

It’s about a woman discovering herself through witchcraft.

So what gives?

Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) is a widow returning to the dating scene. But nearly every man she gets with becomes too clingy, either having to disappear or die. Her apartment is great, her clothes and makeup are perfect, but nothing seems to work out for her.

I get what this movie is going for, but it feels so mannered and even meandering that it comes off as more like an artistic exercise than something with blood in its heart and loins. Say what you will about Eurotrash movies, but at least they got excited. This feels like it constantly tells you its references, points out where it got its color palette from, and reminds you how long it took to make all the costumes. But what about the actual movie? Do people just like this because it’s on the right side of sexual politics? Because, well, good for the movie, but that doesn’t instantly make a movie good.

There’s a time to have something important to say and not sledgehammer it home over a running time that feels like a Warhol stunt film instead of The Velvet Vampire, which this is indebted to. I could film my Letterboxd list, too, and it’d probably just as boring. But hey—this movie sure is pretty, right?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who wrote the story with Mary Laws and Polly Stenham, The Neon Demon finds Jesse moving from Georgia to Los Angeles, all of sixteen, ready to become a star. She soon takes a shoot with Dean (Karl Glusman), becomes friends with makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone), as well as two other models, Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee). The girls soon become jealous of her, as her youth — can people tell the difference in these ages? — get her more attention than them.

Of course, Jesse is about to find out about the dirty side of modeling, whether that means being coerced into sex, pressured into cosmetic surgery or having dreams of triangles and men penetrating her mouth with a knife. Afraid after someone breaks in next door, even staying with Ruby is dangerous, as she repeatedly tries to have sex with Jesse, who reveals that she is a virgin. When she’s turned down repeatedly, Ruby goes to her job at a morgue and gets off on a corpse.

Soon, the girls shoved Jesse into a pool and stabbed her repeatedly, consuming her body. It’s not for everyone — Gigi screams, “I need to get her out of me” before slicing her stomach open — as eyeballs are puked up and eaten.

Refn has watched many of the movies you have and then some. Ruby is inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky. a lipstick called Red Rum. Before making this, Elle Fanning was told to watch Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A character is named Roberto Sarno. And yet this movie played Cannes, filled with grindhouse imagery. Also, It’s gorgeous. The story doesn’t matter. It just is.