Written and directed by Christopher Dalpe, Brandon Perras (who also played Tony Two Fingers, as well as doing the cinematography and editing) and Michael J. Ahern (who was Detective O’Hara), Death Drop Gorgeous presents a slasher world that we haven’t seen, well, nearly ever in the form: a campy, gay-positive glitter, makeup neon and booze-soaked — not to mention incredibly hilarious — murder saga.

Dwayne (Wayne Gonsalves) has just had a bad breakup, which brings him back home to Rhode Island and a place on the couch in the apartment of his friend Brian (Christopher Dalpe). As he pieces his life back together, he keeps moving somewhat backward, even getting his old bartending gig back, working at The Aut Haus alongside Tragedi (Complete Destruction), Janet Fitness (Matthew Pidge) and, perhaps most importantly, Gloria Hole (Michael McAdam), an aging drag queen who doesn’t draw in the young customers.

Unbeknownst to our hero, several club patrons and employees have already been killed and drained of their blood by a social hookup app using serial killer named The Vampire, with owner Tony Two Fingers paying off the cops to stay open. But when Brian goes missing — last seen getting into a cab driven by Linnea Quigley alongside Gloria — Dwayne starts keeping his eyes open.

I’ve never seen a movie where a man is killed with a meat grinder at a glory hole, directly followed by a scene with someone eating sausages, so this is quite obviously groundbreaking stuff. It’s even more amazing when you consider that most of the cast were non-actors and the movie was filmed almost exclusively in Providence on weekends over the course of a year and a half.

The film wouldn’t work if it was all comedy, so the slasher/giallo parts all work just as well if not better. That’s a testament to the work on screen.

I’ve always believed that determining that if a movie is a giallo or a slasher means answering a few questions: Do we care more about who the killer is than the killings themselves? Is there good music? And is there plenty of fashion? The answer to all of those questions is yes and I find it happily wonderful that the best two giallo-esque movies of the past decade — and the ones not slavishly bound to the conventions of the genre so much that they become pastiche — would be this film and Knife + Heart, two LGBTQ-positive films in a genre best known for gorgeous and fashionable women being killed in, well, gorgeous and fashionable ways.

That’s not to say that this movie is all Bava lighting and dubbed dialogue. It’s a movie onto itself, filled with high energy, hilarious dialogue and a creative team whose lack of experience surprised me, because unlike the majority of direct to streaming films that come to us, this feels like the kind of movie that I’d rush to the theater — well, you know, in any other timeline — to see.

That said, Death Drop Gorgeous will be released in select theatres and is also available on demand from Dark Star Pictures. If you want to know more, check out the official Facebook page.

The sequel to 2018’s Occupation, this movie takes placed two years after an intergalactic invasion of earth. A ragtag group of survivors in Australia are trapped in a desperate ground war despite the help of several aliens sympathetic to their cause and engaging in a pitched battle to keep our planet from being the new home of our alien invaders.

While this doesn’t have the budget of a summer blockbuster, the effects certainly feel like they belong there. I had a blast watching all of the spaceship battles in this. As for the story surrounding it, well…imagine my surprise when Ken Jeong, of all people, showed up as an American agent that has become fast friends with an alien pothead named Steve.

That said, there’s a dependable cast, including the man who was Jango Fett, Temuera Morrison, as well as Lawrence Makoare from the Lord of the Rings movies (he was the Uruk-hai leader Lurtz, the Witch-king of Angmar and the Orc leaders Gothmog and Bolg) and Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter film series) as the aforementioned pothead from another planet.

You can learn more at the official site. Occupation: Rainfall is now available on DVD and blu ray from Lionsgate.

Jeanne is a withdrawn and shy woman who works in an amusement park, yet has not yet come to terms with being an adult. Has she been in love before? Does she have plans of leaving the home of her mother? And why is she so fascinated by lights and carousels?

However, she soon falls in love with a newcomer to her place of work. Spoilers on, but in case you didn’t guess, she falls in love with Jumbo, the new ride at the park.

Remember when that dude wanted to sleep with Airwolf? Yeah, that’s a real thing. Objectophilia is when you go beyond simply enjoying objects and begin to have deep attachments to them. The kind of attachment that makes you want to make love to them. I mean, if you clean a ride and it begins to make sounds and blink, obviously it is returning your affections.

This is one of those movies that asks that you make this narrative leap with the film. Can you accept the love between human and object? If so, then you’ll be rewarded by what follows. And if not, well, maybe a more traditional love story is something you should watch.

Jumbo attempts to explain why Jeanne feels the way she does. But can any of us really explain love? Why does the heart want what the heart wants, even if it’s to lick the oil of our lover off the floor and communicate in beeps and lights? Maybe those noises and colors are a closer tie than most of our inter-human coupling have anyways.

So yeah, when Jeanne’s mom Margarette wants her to find a really nice guy, maybe she didn’t consider that a Tilt-A-Whirl would be that man. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Hope you like food on a stick, I guess.

This is writer/director Zoé Wittock’s first full-length feature. I feel that this has enough ideas to work as a short, but you can’t fault that she went for it. Here’s hoping for more bright lights and beeps in her future.

You can stream Jumbo on the Arrow Player, which offers a 30 day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices , Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc) and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

Based on the Philippa Gregory novels The Constant Princess and The King’s Curse and the sequel to the miniseries The White Queen and The White Princess, The Spanish Princess is about Catherine of Aragon (Charlotte Hope, Game of Thrones, The Nun), a teenaged Spanish princess — so yes, the title is telling the truth — who will soon become Queen of England after marrying King Henry VIII.

Now, after the first part of the series, during which Catherine travelled to England to meet her husband by proxy, the heir to Henry VII, Arthur the Prince of Wales. As she and her lady in waiting struggled to fit in, she learned that Henry the Duke of York — Arthur’s arrogant brother — has been the one whose letters have romanced her. And when Arthur dies, she keeps the peace by marrying that brother, which brings us to the second part of the story.

The two royals have only gained in popularity and have the most glamorous court, but as Catherine prepares to give birth to an heir, Henry is going to war with France. And as the season progresses from 1511 to 1525, Harry’s eventual madness becomes a danger to our heroine*.

This series takes that history and dynamically brings it to modern life. It doesn’t shy away from the violence of the era, either. There’s an incredibly violent jousting accident in the first episode that may shock many.

Regardless, if you want someone in your life to care more about history, this would be a good show to get them watching.

*Henry VIII had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn and with only a daughter, had no true heir apparent. He sought to annul the marriage, but Pope Clement VII refused the request, which led to Henry proclaiming himself the head of the Church of England and cutting ties with the Catholic Church. Catherine refused to accept this as well as her demotion from queen to princess of Wales and desite being banished, she was still loved by the people.

The Spanish Princess Part 2 is noe available on DVD from Lionsgate.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We reviewed My Best Worst Adventure on November 5, 2020. Written and directed by Joel Soisson (The Prophecy, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Pulse) and starring Lily Patra, Pan Rugtawatr and Eoin O’Brien, My Best Worst Adventure will be available on digital platforms (Amazon, Comcast, FandangoNow, Vudu, Verizon Cable, Overdrive, Vimeo and more) beginning today from Kaczmarek Digital Media Group.

Following her mother’s death, Jenny’s (Lily Patra) battles with her stepfather have reached the breaking point. That’s what has taken her to rural Thailand, where she is to live with her grandmother. Her unhappiness grows and grows, leading to her lashing out and running into the jungle, where she gets lost. There, she meets a mute peasant named Boonrod, who one of the first people she’s ever connected with.

Seeing as how Jenny has refused to speak to anyone and Boonrod cannot talk, their communication is on a much higher level.

Together, they challenge the elites of the village to a buffalo race, which is kind of like a horse race without the benefit or saddles or any rules. Through this event, they both learn so much about themselves and one another.

This was written and directed by Joel Soisson, whose career has been all the place, but mostly involved in making the kind of movies we usually review here. He directed two of The Prophecy sequels, as well as Pulse 2 and 3, Children of the Corn: Genesis, wrote The Supernaturals, Dracula 2000, Hellraiser: Hellworld and one of my favorite movies ever, Trick or Treat. Beyond that, he was in the art department for the gory and underappreciated Superstition, worked the boom for To All a Goodnight and produced Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Piranha 3DD and several more films. He also shot another version of this in 2015 called Buffalo Rider, which you can find on Amazon Prime.

Coming of age movies generally don’t get much watching on our site, but this is the kind of movie that the whole family can enjoy and learn from.

When asked of how HipBeat was inspired, director Samuel Kay Forrest said, “HipBeat is based on true events from my sibling’s experiences as well as myself and friends. It is a fictional narrative scripted film that has moments of realism because we really shot at protests in the film and trains. Everything else in the film was closed set locations except for the protests and train sequences. It was inspired by the films of Jean Luc Goddard, John Cassevetees, Sidney Lumet and very early Martin Scorsese.  We wanted to capture the realism in the streets of Berlin. Where they blended real life into their films.”

This is the story of Angus, or Angy, whose life is a mix of violent political activism and a search for love and belonging within Berlin’s queer community. He’s played by Forrest, who also wrote and directed this movie.

Despite falling for Angie — a rich girl from a family that would never accept Angy, not like he would want them to — his time in Berlin is one of experimentation, not only as he rails against the far right, but as he explores his own fluid gender and sexuality. Yet the man who wants equality barely treats his lovers the same way.

HipBeat is now playing select theaters, such as Arena Cinelounge in Los Angeles. It’s an intriguing story that is very of our time.

I still hate admitting that Tales from the Hood 2 was a let-down. The first film is one of my favorite non-Amicus anthology films, so I was expecting so much. And just when I expected nothing from this film, it surprised me at every turn, becoming nearly as good as the original.

Co-writer and co-director Rodney Cundieff (who wrote and directed this with Darin Scott) even admitted as much, telling Pod of Madness, “The stories, you know, they’re not as big as the first Tales. But I do think that the stories are stronger, overall, than the second one, and the look of the film is better, a lot to do with the locations that we found.”

The framing story, “The Mouths of Babes and Demons,” is about an old man named William (Tony Todd) trying to distract the six-year-old Brooklyn from the terror chasing them by listening to her tell him the four stories in this movie.

“Ruby Gates” is about a real-estate agent struggling to remove the last family in an apartment complex from their home. It’s followed by “The Bunker,” in which we think we’re seeing a MAGA white male (Cooper Huckabee from The Funhouse) rant and rave, which we are, but have no idea exactly why he remains so special. “Operatic” makes perfect use of the talents of Lynn Whitfield in the story of an elderly performer who continually watches the one time she was allowed to perform Carmen before racism took away her singing career and the lengths to which performers will go to succeed. Finally, in “Dope Kicks,” the moral is you can take anything from a man, but never steal his shoes.

While this is the first movie in the series without Mr. Simms, this movie is a strong entry in the horror anthology genre, as well as a return to form for Cundieff and Scott. Here’s hoping that Tales from the Hood 4 is on the way.

Family is a hard thing to deal with. You can’t choose them or change who they are, but only adjust the way that you will deal with them. However, this film’s protagonist Summer Roome has a harder to deal with family than most.

When her driftless younger brother and wayward father reenter her life — along with new knowledge about their past sins — she has to figure out how she fits — or doesn’t fit in at all — with her family.

A spiritual sequel to 2018’s Edge of Town — also by writer/director Christopher Flippo — this film brings back Geoff James, who was Sugar Baby in that movie. Plus, it has one face that horror fans may recognize. Duane Whitaker has been in everything from Hobgoblins — he was Roadrash — to Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Vice Academy Part 2 and Tales from the Hood.

While an independent film, this movie has heart to spare even if it doesn’t have the budget. It reminds us all that at some point, the children start to become the adults, which is an incredibly difficult transition.

One of the many rules of horror that I use to guide my everyday life is that if you get a house in a will, do not go back to your hometown to settle the estate. You will face the supernatural at best, die if you’re lucky or end up in Hell if things go the way they usually do.

Rodger is one of the people who didn’t listen. He’s come back home to settle the affairs of his recently deceased father. Soon, he’s dealing with strange childhood memories about a ghost and those memories aren’t going to stay remembrances for long.

Roger also lost his mother and sister at a young age, so he’s surprised when the diaries he finds show that he was in therapy to get over their loss. Yet he barely remembers things. And while his mother’s equations and his father’s videos guide him, there’s also a twist coming that will change everything.

BJ Verot broke into films doing stunts and when you think about it, isn’t being a director the most daring stunt of all? Good news — he’s survived the attempt and I look for him to jump through all sorts of flaming hoops in the future.

The Return is available on demand from Uncork’d Entertainment.