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.

Getting released just three days before the remake of Jumanji, this mockbuster from The Asylum is way better than their usual fare, having plenty of humor and some heart.

Back when Sarah (Jessica Chancellor, who created and stars in the Mystery Incorporated series that’s a more adult version of Scooby Doo) was a kid, her brother Jake (Brandon Root) disappeared from an arcade after playing the game Rancala. Years later, she’s opening an arcade in tribute to him along with her friends Rae (Tiana Tuttle) and Chrissy (Emily Sweet, who was in the remake of Castle Freak). As they ready for the opening, someone has already been playing Rancala and using an icon that looks like Jake. All three are sucked into the game and become near-super heroic as they look for Sarah’s lost brother.

Directed by Canyopn Price, who wrote the script with Daniel Lusko, this actually has a pretty fun story, some video game moments and a Sharknado first boss. I agree with other reviewers that this would be much better if every character the girls battle came from an Asylum movie, but that would require more thought than The Asylum gives to their films.

Also: Bai Ling is in this for approximately three minutes.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I really hope Domino is not Brian De Palma’s last movie. He was not involved in the ADR, the musical recording sessions, the final mix or the color timing of the final print, all elements he would have been obsessed by. He also told The Playlist, “Domino is not my project, I did not write the script. I had a lot of problems in financing. I never experienced such a horrible movie set. A large part of our team has not even been paid yet by the Danish producers. This was my first experience in Denmark and most likely my last.”

He did at least show some excitement for the idea of this movie, saying ““It is the revenge story of a revenge of a cop duo against terrorists who killed another. But the whole political aspect will be very little exploited, the film was more for me a new opportunity to explore a visual narrative. In the film, terrorists are obsessed with the idea that their actions are instantly visible live on the Internet or on TV.”

The movie starts in the midst of  Copenhagen police officers Christian Toft (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Lars Hansen (Søren Malling) dealing with a domestic disturbance. Hansen handcuffs a man covered in blood, thinking he’s the abuser and Toft goes upstairs to check on the victim. Leaving his gun at home, he takes Toft’s and finds a flat filled with bomb material and guns, as well as one man already dead. Downstairs, the attacker breaks free and slices Hansen’s throat. Toft chases the man across the rooftops with both falling and being knocked out. As he loses his touch with reality, the cop watches three men take away the man he was chasing.

That man’s fingerprints belong to Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney). He’s a Libyan Special Forces soldier whose parents were killed by ISIS leader Salah Al-Din (Mohammed Azaay). He’s been trying to get to the terrorist leader — who often films and posts his attacks on the internet — and has already killed one of his soldiers. Toft wants revenge, but is suspended and stuck being questioned by internal affairs inspector Alex Boe  (Cance van Houten) for not having his service weapon.

But the plot gets more twisted, as CIA agent Joe Martin (Guy Pearce) has taken Tarzi and his family, forcing him to work with him to get his own revenge on Al-Din. Now, they have to stop the terrorist before he escapes to North Africa. How much more twisted? Boe is pregnant with Toft’s partner’s child and wants revenge too.

It all ends with a terrorist bombing inside a bull fight arena, crosses and double crosses and a downer ending. What else can we expect from De Palma, even if he didn’t get to finish this?

The one moment that his hand is obvious is during an internet assisted assassination on the red carpet. If every part of this movie could feel like that, it would have been a success.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As I’ll be exploring the films of Chris Alexander this week, I wanted to share a few of his other movies that have been on the site before. You can learn more about the director at his official site.

Parasite Lady (2023): Chris Alexander has been making movies for Full Moon for a bit and I dug Necropolis: Legion — yes, it can never live up to the insanity of Necropolis, but it sure tries — as well as his Scream of the Blind Dead. He also made two other vampire movies, Space Vampire and Queen of Blood, which looks and feels like Jean Rollin and I have no complaints about that.

Arrielle Edwards plays the lead, a redhead pale vision that wanders the hallways of a hotel room and the tourist traps of Niagra Falls looking for victims. The first film I’ve seen from Full Moon’s Delirium Films label, this is the kind of movie that people are going to find on Tubi and get enraged about because nothing happens. It’s also the kind of movie that lunatics — like, you guessed it, me — are going to fall in love with, because not only does it feel like Rollin, but it feels like the last ten movies of Jess Franco, films that he shot in a meeting room in a hotel, with gorgeous women rolling around to music. Except this has sounds that seem like they come from not just underwater but somewhere in the dimension a few thousand doors away. Also: please know that me invoking the name of Franco is no slight; it’s the kind of honor I would not bestow upon many. Some people use the feel of Jess and brag about it. It takes a certain bravery to completely live in the nothing happens but everything goes down madness.

Alexander referred to it as the “next feminine, fevered, fluid-filled dream-state existential exploitation” that he’s making. It also has ties to past films, as Thea Munster is Lady Death from Girl With a Straight Razor. And Kate Gabriele and Ali Chappell are also strong in the cast. It’s like Alexander is assembling a company of players willing to go all the way into the darkness — and neon light — for his films. I also applaud this.

A dreamy movie filled with snow, carnivals and long nails that slice into milky white necks, all while distorted sounds and fuzzed out tones play. And just 42 minutes? Was this made just for me?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Scream of the Blind Dead (2021): Director, writer and musician Chris Alexander has taken what most remember from the Blind Dead films — synth-driven slow motion moments of a gorgeous woman being chased through the Spanish countryside by undead Knights Templar — and turned it into forty minutes of fright for Betty (Ali Chappell) who runs through the Canadian countryside in an attempt to avoid a Knight played by Thea Munster.

Imagine if Amando de Ossorio loaned out his creatures to Jess Rollin while allowing Jess Franco to shoot the Sapphic flashback scene of our heroine. As a nice addition for Eurohorror fans, Lone Fleming   (Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Blind Dead, It Happened at Nightmare Inn) is the voice that speaks over the film.

This isn’t a movie that I’d recommend to people who haven’t fallen in love with the Blind Dead or European horror where there’s no attempt at all in creating a story, just a mood that endlessly loops into your brain. This isn’t perfect but it gets the idea right. I’d love to see more of what Alexander can do in this definitely acquired taste of a genre.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Necropolis: Legion (2019): Necropolis is one of my favorite late 80s direct to video movies probably ever. How else can I do anything but become obsessed by a movie in which an evil witch — who looks like Tianna Collins or Lois Ayres — eats human brains to give the proper nutrition to her demon babies through her six breasts?

There’s no way that this movie can live up to that one, trust me.

Instead, this film seeks to be a reimagining of that tale. Satanic vampire sorceress Eva (Ali Chappell channeling Cinzia Monreale instead of acting as a punk rock devil woman) frightens the villagers of the past so much with her sex magick that they murder her inside her lair. A hundred or so years later, occult writer Lisa (Augie Duke) movies into that home and soon becomes the body with which Eva will return to our world.

Director Chris Alexander was the third editor-in-chief of Fangoria and the co-founder/editor of Delirium. You may have seen his other films, Queen of Blood or Female Werewolf. Working from a script by Brockton McKinney, who has worked on several other Full Moon efforts like Blade the Iron Cross and Weedjies: Halloweed Night, he puts together a decent enough film, but the love in my heart for the original is so strong. That said, the psychedelic visuals are strong in this and they didn’t skimp on the blood, the gore and the breasts with fangs in them, because isn’t that what Necropolis is known for? Even better, Lynn Lowry is always a welcome sight.

I want more of this story*, however, and here’s hoping that the end of this film isn’t the last that we see of Eva or Lisa. I’m usually one for less is more, but at sixty-one minutes, I found myself wanting more.

Necropolis: Legion isn’t going to replace the first movie and that’s fine. It’s still awesome to see someone else’s vision, much less knowing that someone other than me has seen the original movie.

*There’s also a comic book — available from Full Moon — that tells the origin of Eva.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The year is 1994. This is when a demonic cult who has planned the end of the world will bring their ritual to a music festival in a small Colorado town. Soon, demons will rule the land and three very human people will have to try and stop it.

Sure, you’ve seen this type of movie before. But have you seen it as a cut paper animation?

Attack of the Demons would be an interesting experiment if its story didn’t work, but it actually becomes truly engaging and succeeds because of it.

Director Eric Power also made another animated film called Path of Blood. Here he’s working with writer Andreas Petersen, who also provides the voice of Jeff, to make a movie that would completely fit into the 1980’s direct to VHS era — if it were a live-action movie. Being animated allows it to go wild with its visuals and create a world beyond an everyday budget.

The Dark Star blu ray of Attack of the Demons is available from Vinegar Syndrome. It also has three different audio commentaries, one from Power and Petersen as well as one by Dread Central Editor In Chief MaryBeth McAndews and Gayly Dreadful Editor In Chief Terry Mesnard and a comedy commentary by ScoffTracks’ Lucas Taughn. There’s also a making of, a music video, the KTUTV commercials, a proof of concept trailer and the final trailer.

Directed by Julie Kimmel, who wrote this with Ken Del Vecchio and David Landau, all of whom I can only assume are aliens from some other plane of reality who had never met human beings before but sent this to our planet to show us that they want to be our friends yet have no idea how humanity reacts to things, kind of like how there’s that scene with the orange tree in The Last American Virgin and we’re all supposed to say, “Yes, that’s a universal symbol that makes perfect sense.” Imagine that kind of disconnected emotion for an entire film.

Jesse Genesis (Mario Del Vecchio, whose father is the writer of this in case you wondered, I can only assume that he is also extraterrestrial) is a ten-year-old whose father has been missing since his father went to a movie theater where James Whitmore (Eric Roberts) appears and gives his daughter Aurora (Lacy Marie Meyer) the ownership of the place before a gun rights meeting and then a clown shows up and shoots up the place. Jesse thinks that if he completes a series of tasks, including getting his black belt in five days, his father will come back.

At the same time, his busy advertising agency working mom Abby, (Mila Milosevic) goes to find the psychic who told her that she would get married, Elizabeth (Julie McCullough, who was in The Blob remake!), who is now a law professor. Elizabeth still has visions that she can’t control and those same images are being seen by Jesse. Also, he talks on the phone with Martin Kove, who used to own the theater.

This movie has left me with so many questions. Is Jesse like Bruce Lee, creating his own martial art and awarding himself his own black belt? Is McCullough’s character insane and why do we get the scene where she sees her old boyfriend at the bar and it never really pays off other than to crush her dreams and show that her visions rarely come off? How does Abby keep her job when she just walks out on a major pitch?

Anyways, all the theater footage is recycled from Joker’s Poltergeist: The Aurora Massacre, a movie that Del Vecchio made to cash in on the real life July 20, 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater. If you think that movie sounds upsetting, he also made The Life Zone, a story of Robert Loggia’s character going all Saw and kidnapping three pregnant women who want an abortion and it turns out that everyone is in Hell. He also made a sequel, Cries of the Unborn, as well as An Affirmative Act (a positive gay marriage film with Charles Durning, so this guy can’t be pigeonholed), The Great Fight (an autistic man become an MMA fighter in a movie starring Loggia, Durning, Joyce DeWitt and Martin Kove) and O.B.A.M. Nude (a movie he wrote and starred in as Barrack Obama, who sells his soul to Satan to be President). He was a former New Jersey judge who quit that to make movies and host the Kenneth Del Vecchio’s Hoboken International Film Festival, where this movie premiered (and Martin Kove was given the Hall of Fame Award; ironically many of the award winners at this festival have been in Del Vecchio’s movies).

Yes, Kenneth plays Bob, the missing dad.

Yes, this was shot at Caldwell University, a Catholic university in New Jersey where the film’s co-producer — and Kenneth’s wife and Mario’s mom — Dr. Francine Del Vecchio is a full-time Professor of Education.

Yes, the dad comes back because all it takes to be a black belt is to break a board.

This movie is baffling because it is somehow both religious and secular, embracing the divine and the occult. There are so many missing pieces, as if the entire movie is one big plothole in search of a story, all explained by psychological terms and a long rambling explanation of what the belts in karate mean.

Once, as a kid, my rich neighbor paid for me to be the tackling dummy for her grandson and teach him how to fight back against bullies. I was told I was to learn nothing and be there simply to be thrown and struck. I ended up becoming a pro wrestling with a few MMA fights on my resume. I have no idea what happened to that kid because once I started showing some skill, she told me that I was not there to learn and fired me from a job where I was not getting paid.

None of these lessons involved breaking boards.

You can watch this on Tubi.

We’ve talked about Thanksgiving horror films before — see our list right here — but now there’s a new one. Directed by Mark Newton and Matt Stryker*, Derelicts is all about a dysfunctional family suffering a home invasion on the day that people eat too much, watch football and pass out.

There’s an actor in here named David Lee Hess, which might give away the home invasion inspiration for this movie. Actually, it seems to have a fair bit of Rob Zombie in it, if you like that kind of thing. But this does a fine job with a $150,000 budget, with really interesting flashbacks, flashforwards, long moments of silence and plenty of gore.

I mean, there’s a killer with a stuffed animal mask. That alone should probably give you a reason to watch this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*IMDB lists the director as Brett Glassberg, in case you are wondering.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally appeared on the site on January 31, 2022.

I’m so excited that Cauldron has released this. Their blu ray release has a director’s commentary and behind the scenes footage. You can get it from MVD.

Jordan Graham took seven years to make this movie, thanks to the limits of its budget, but he also built the cabin that it takes place in, did nearly every job of making the film and cast his grandmother, June Peterson, who has been haunted by the demon Sator since 1968 in real life, automatically writing a lot of the words that are shown in the film. She spent time in a mental hospital, which makes you wonder if this movie was just exploiting her mental illness or could potentially be the story of a real demon that might, you know if you’re a Christian fundamentalist, be using this movie as a way to get into your mind.

Director, writer, editor, producer, cinematographer and editor Graham told Flickering Myth “In 1968, she brought home an ouija board and conjured up Sator. She then spent the next three months talking with him through something called automatic writings. She sat in a chair with a pen and let Sator speak through her. She wrote thousands and thousands of pages across the course of three months. And then, at the end of those three months, she ended up in a psychiatric hospital.”

Deciding to use her home as a location and having her act in a scene where she’d discuss Sator, she began sharing things she’d never told him. Over the shooting of the film, Peterson’s dementia got worse and she was taken to a care home, where Graham would visit and interview her, as well as study thousands of pages of her automatic writings and a diary where she explained how Sator guided her, using those interviews to write and then rewrite the movie based on what she told him.

In the film, her grandson has disappeared into the woods, obsessed with Sator. Perhaps his grandfather sacrificed himself to the demon, but definitely, there are other followers in the woods, wearing skulls and eventually, the protagonist becomes lost in the timeless world of the woods and the call of a demon.

It’s a slow build, but if there’s a movie that proves that folk horror doesn’t exist simply in the past. The truly frightening thing is that Sator itself is so powerful that even as the ravages of age made Graham’s grandmother forget her family, she didn’t forget the demonic spirit that dominated her life. It makes me wonder if mental illness is real or is demonology or both?

This isn’t a perfect film, but it’s a singular work by an auteur and there are times that it works perfectly and other times that it feels like it’s going nowhere slow and then it rewards your patience. I can see some loving it as equally as I can understand people hating it.

Sadly, June Peterson died before it was finished.