On an island in the middle of the ocean, the fishermen ensure that everyone has enough to eat by giving the gods their daughters, throwing them into the sea. All of them do this except for Muthana (Al Farhan), who saves Hayat (Hajjar), making her an outcast.

Twelve years later, as her mother becomes pregnant again, there’s a chance she can become part of the village and her family, but a boy is born. She’s taken to the water again and yet escapes, ending up a fisherman herself on the boat sailed by Amer (Ashraf Barhoum).

The older sailor doesn’t know what to make of the woman with scales on one foot; what are we to make of the villagers who have been eating mermaids, the very daughters they tossed into the ocean, reborn?

Directed by Shahad Ameen, this black and white Saudi film is bleak. But isn’t the world getting darker for women over just the last few weeks? The men are free to sail the open waters while the women hide indoors, praying that their child may either feed the village as part of their death or that their next child be a man. I’ll think about this film for many days to come.

Scales is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including a conversation with director Shahad Ameen and producer Rula Nasser moderated by filmmaker/author Kier-La Janisse, a trailer and the short film Kindil.

You can order this set from Severin.

Prince Mccoy (director, writer and star Michael Worth) has lost out on all the dreams he once had as he grew up in the small town of Apple Seed. His childhood bank foreclosed on everything his father owned, which he blames for his father’s death. And now, he has no home, no girlfriend and no hope. So he decides to drive across the country in his 1967 Mustang — which is all he owns — and make that bank pay for what they’ve done.

He picks up an old man named Carl Robbins (Rance Howard), a strange senior who has a bucket list on a napkin and a mission to lead Prince on a journey that will change both their lives, meeting a variety of people, like the love that Prince let get away, as they also confront the errors they’ve made in their own lives.

That’s because just like Prince wants to, Carl also robbed a bank. And despite his advanced age, he’s facing a prison sentence that will last for the rest of his life. Is Carl’s past going to be Prince’s future? And what happens when they make it to Apple Seed?

This is the last film that Rance Howard was in, released two years after his death. It also has a role for his son Clint.

There’s also an appearance by Robby Benson that echoes the movie Ode to Billie Joe, based on the song of the same name.

Worth told Diversions LA, “I did a film with Rance in Flagstaff, Arizona and I knew I had to do a film for him. It was just one of those things I wanted to get made. We completed the project just before Rance passed away.”

As I get older, I’ve been thinking of the journey of my life. This movie made me reflect on things and wonder when I will go from Prince to Carl in my experience.

This VCI Entertainment and MVD release has extras like an audio commentary by director and star Michael Worth, an alternate longer cut, a making-of, a short about the movie’s premiere, deleted and extended scenes, and a Rance Howard memorial video.

You can get it from MVD.

This was originally a web series, edited together and uploaded to Tubi, where you will find it and expect to have a real movie but instead be given this.

Directed and written by Stephan George, this is the story of a series of seasonal suicides set up and set into motion by Santa. You can get it from the title, right?

There are a bunch of gorgeous young people in this — Adam (Daniel Francis-Swaby), Lee (Brian Law), Sarah (Khaleila Hisham), Tom (Ciaran Lonsdale) — and some long-held reasons for hunting down people, feeding them snake venom and then killing them while they’re still alive but can’t move and feel it all. That part reminds me of Paolo Cavara’s Black Belly of the Tarantula except that unlike a giallo, this gives away the killer as soon as the story starts.

I don’t think they had much of a budget for special effects because people get their wrists sliced open and blood should been literally spraying like that geyser of a kill in Tenebrae and instead, nothing at all.

It’s unfair for me to judge this digital video serial killer movie against giallo but that’s kind of what I do. You may enjoy this more than I did, as it seemed herky jerky — that can be explained by how they edited together shorts into one longer film, the same issue that Scorpion with Two Tails, a late entry from Sergio Martino that was put together from five 50-minute TV shows — but this just didn’t work for me.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Two years ago, Severin released Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, a collection of 31 remastered films on 14 discs. This movie appears at the center of it and if you know nothing of the story of Adamson — somehow a man who could work with both Colonel Sanders and Charles Manson — get ready to have your mind blown out of the back of your brain.

Beyond his 1995 demise, murdered by live-in contractor Fred Fulford and buried inside his home, Adamson’s life is of extreme interest to me, as it should be anyone coming to this site.

The son of silent film star Denver Dixon and actress Dolores Booth, Adamson was involved in movies from the age of six, as he acted in his father’s 1935 film Desert Mesa.

After helping his father make Halfway to Hell in 1961 and meeting Sam Sherman, the two would join with Dan Kennis to create Independent-International Pictures, the makers of movies like Satan’s Sadists and the astounding Dracula vs. Frankenstein. They’d go on to recreate — rip off, really — the Blood Island films in the U.S., as well as movies in the stewardess — well, he invented that category — western and biker genres, often shot at Spahn Ranch.

This film hits on everything I love and I couldn’t have been more overjoyed watching it. I’ve been holding off, needing something to look forward to and this was more than worth that wait. Alien conspiracies? Murder? Go-go dancing? Shady characters? Stuntpeople? Carnival Magic? This has all of that and so much more.

Outside of a movie where George Eastman, John Saxon and Santo team up to battle Adolfo Celi, Telly Savalas and Christopher Lee to save Edwige Fenech, Marisa Mell and Caroline Munro from being horribly murdered, I can’t think of a film that I more want to watch again and again. While the movie of my dreams will never be made, I am deliriously happy that this exists.

You can get this from Severin or watch it on Tubi.

Directed, written, produced and filmed by Anthony Polonia, son of Mark, this movie uses footage from Konga TNT, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster and Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters to show the kaiju that have attacked Earth. Thinking humans are too violent to be part of a peaceful universe, aliens sent the ape-reptile hybrid Zillafoot to Earth. Its mission: Destroy everything and everyone.

Can the military stop it? Can Dr. Kaski (Mark Polonia), inventor of the GXG-1 weapon? Can the Ultrasquad? Can anyone?

This has effects by Brett Piper, which explains why props from Empire of the Apes and Revolt of the Empire of the Apes are in this. Man, this has some bad reviews on IMDB and Letterboxd, but I was somewhat charmed by it. It’s only an hour and pretty goofy, which are two things that make me watch a movie.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy the SRS blu ray.

An entry for GEMSTONE’s Creators Audition, a collaborative project between Toho Co., Ltd. and AlphaBoat in which Japanese artists and filmmakers competed in a challenge to create new works inspired by the Godzilla series, Hedorah Silent Spring was made by Hiroto Yokokawa, director of indie kaiju films The Great Buddha Arrival and Hoshi 35.

You may think the Rachel Carson quote is out of place in a kaiju movie, but Godzilla vs. Hedorah director Yoshimitsu Banno also took inspiration from her book.

Just five minutes long, this finds a man unleashing a small piece of Hedorah on a city, basically deciding that humanity has had its chance to fix the pollution they created. Now, Hedorah will return and destroy everything.

With perfect music by Hiromi Shinoda, this does more in a few moments than most modern kaiju do in hours.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Kenzo Miyazawa is a night school teacher with a class full of weirdos. Sadly, there aren’t enough students and the school is about to close. There’s also a musical that the class wants to put on for a festival. And oh yes, an alien kaiju that has come to destroy the city which Mr. Miyazawa challenges to a battle.

Directed by Yoshikazu Ishii and written by Nobuhiko Ishii, you may be not pleased to learn that the giant teacher doesn’t become giant until the last few minutes of the movie. Instead, it’s an entire movie about alien students learning about themselves. You might be let down if you’re looking for an entire movie of a monstrous kaiju instructor.

You can watch this on Tubi.