EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was originally on the site on September 25, 2021 as part of FantasticFest. It’s now playing on Shudder.

17 year old me discovered Gwar and life finally made sense. What other band outright claimed that they were going to murder you when you saw them in concert? Coming from space, destroying the ozone layer, that had game shows on stage that gave the people what they want — “the senseless slaughter of the gutter-slime that litters this nation for cash and prizes” — and could somehow turn lyrics like “you know I snuffed a million planets, but I still find time to cry” into a tender ballad?

Gwar went on Joan Rivers and made fun of everything thrown at them. And in a world that didn’t make much sense, they made sense. It was a badge of honor to see them in concert. Sure, the band has changed — I haven’t kept up honestly since Oderus went on to the next world because it just doesn’t feel the same — but I’m glad they’re still out there.

Director Scott Barber has put together the interviews and stories that form the real story of Gwar and by and large, it’s intriguing stuff, punctuated by stories by celebrity fans like Weird Al, Thomas Lennon, Bam Margera, Alex Winter and Ethan Embry.

As an art collective with a 35-year history, there’s plenty to learn here about how some art school punks went from playing small shows to becoming an industry. Of course, personalities clashed, egos grew and the band may not have lived up to what some members wanted it to be. By the end of the first sixty minutes, the doc starts to grind a bit, as various members feel the urge to tell you exactly how much they contributed even if they weren’t onstage. I understand, as this may be their one opportunity to do so.

A major oversight — in my eyes — is that no mention at all was given to new singer Vulvatron, played by Kim Dylla, who was in the band from 2014 to 2016, leaving under not the best of terms. Perhaps by the end of the film, everyone was tired of the constant drama that was getting dredged up. But for a band with previously only two female members, this felt like a glaring omission.

Even if Gwar’s music isn’t for you, you can hopefully appreciate their sense of humor and the fact that they took their art beyond expectations. They still do.

Filmed across India at all the sites of the Beatles’ visits — Mumbai, New Delhi, Rishikesh and Dehradun — and featuring an array of unseen photographs, footage and interviews uncovered in India during research on the project — including unseen footage from a film shot at the ashram but never released and an interview with George Harrison recorded with All India Radio unheard since it was recorded in 1966 — The Beatles In India tells how George, John, Paul and Ringo took a break from their lives as the biggest band in the world to travel to a remote Himalayan ashram in search of spiritual enlightenment and ended up unleashing an entirely new level of creativity from the band.

This movie seeks to answer two questions: How did India influence perhaps the most important musicians of the 20th century? And how did The Beatles change India?

Co-director Ajoy Bose also wrote the book Across the Universe to mark the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ historic trip to Rishikesh. At the time they visited, he was just a young boy fighting with his father over his mop top hair. Joining with cultural researcher and co-director Pete Compton, Bose seeks to answer those questions and show why this moment united and transformed two very different worlds.

The band’s three-year immersion in Indian culture and studying Transcendental Meditation under teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a moment in time that fascinates me. I loved the end of the film, as Indian musicians share just how important The Beatles were to them. The world can be a better place, if we want it, and this film is a great reminder of how it can happen, even if there are some rough patches and strangeness along the way. It does not shy away from the issues of the Maharishi nor the death of Brian Epstein.

If you love music, culture, history and learning, you must experience this.

You can get The Beatles and India from MVD. You can learn more at the official site.

Created by a group of Chicago theatre artists locked out of their livelihoods by the pandemic, Fresh Hell was a movie I thought I’d struggle through. No offense to directors Ryan Imhoff (who also wrote the script and plays The Stranger) and Matt Neal, but I’m on Microsoft Teams all day for work and struggle to get through up to ten virtual meetings a day. Could I handle one in my non-work free time?

Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley), James (Randolph Thompson), Kara (Christine Vrem-Ydstie), Cynthia (Crystal Kim), Brian (Tyler Owen Parsons), Scott (Will Mobley), Todd (Rob Fagin) and Laura (Christina Reis) all gather for a video chat and by the end, The Stranger appears in place of their friend Laura. Their call ends with him knowing too much about them, hints that Laura is dead and the sinister man slicing his own cock off and showing the bloody wound left behind.

This is where the film changed and brought me in. Grace lost her sister in the early days of COVID-19 and while everyone else thinks Laura’s death is some kind of joke, she worries that what they’ve seen may be real. That’s when The Stranger starts coming for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Scott has become an alt-right firebrand, human puppies show up in the background of the others when Grace tries to warn them and then the finale is an on-stage talk show with the surviving characters and The Stranger, which again, is unexpected.

I’m glad I stuck with this movie. I was honestly expecting it to be background noise, but it becomes more deranged, unsettled and surprising as it goes on. And isn’t that what we want from movies these days? Trust me: stick around for that first videochat and then buckle up.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie appeared on the site on September 26, 2021 as part of Fantastic Fest. 

You think the pandemic we’ve had has been strange? Well, in the world of Glasshouse, an airborne dementia known as The Shred has left humanity adrift with no memories left inside their brains, unable to even remember who they are. Meanwhile, a family has remained inside their airtight glasshouse until a stranger arrives who changes — and maybe ruins — everything they’ve worked so hard to build.

Director Kelsey Egan said, “I’ve been working towards directing features since I made my first short back in 2008, so to end up directing my first film in 2020 of all years feels like some form of dramatic irony. To shoot this intimate post-apocalyptic fable during the pandemic was a surreal experience.”

Even the location for this movie is strange and eerie. The Pearson Conservatory is a Victorian glasshouse marooned in the Eastern Cape of South Africa since 1881.

The occupants of this glasshouse are  Mother, her three daughters and one son. Their days are spent tilling the garden that keeps them fed, protecting one another from the outside world, conducting story rituals and creating stained glass windows to remind them of the past. But when one of the daughters, Bee, takes in an injured man, his manipulative ways may spell the end of this idyll.

Yet the girls are not without the ability to protect their family, as we see them murder an interloper and use the body to fertilize their crops. And their brother has begun to lose control, as exposure to The Shred has destroyed his mind.

At once post-apocalyptic, folk horror and even a riff on The Beguiled, there hasn’t been a film quite like Glasshouse ever. It’s a future without the need to show massive effects or change. Instead, it traps us inside the walls of the home as those very walls close in around its characters.

When I turned 12, every other kid was outside playing and I was hidden in my room devouring every gigantic issue of the Comics Buyer’s Guide, a newsprint tabloid packed with the hidden occult knowledge behind the pages of funnybooks by the same people who made All In Color for a Dime, a book I’d checked out of the library for years at a time.

Before the black and white comics explosion, I discovered Cerebus, which began as a Conan parody and then became an exploration of whatever creator Dave Sim — working with background genius Gerhard — wanted to have it be about like politics and religion.

Sim was inspired to create 300 issues of this comic when he was hospitalized for a bad acid trip. Self-publishing as Aardvark-Vanaheim, Inc. and encouraging others to do the same, he was the kind of creator that inspired others to make their own comics that they owned themselves.

By the late issues, Sim underwent a religious conversion to his own unique form of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And where the comic once was quite female positive, so much of the book misogynist. Sim even claimed that it was anti-feminist. It was quite a shift for so many who wanted to make the journey through all three hundred issues.

As Robin Bougie said, quoting Coop, in his sketchbook exploration of the anti-vax cartoon that Robert Crumb recently drew, “Crumb is the ghost of xmas future for all of us maladjusted fuckhead artists.” Much like movie nerds — me — who spend much of their time in a basement, most comic artists aren’t people who go around others all that often and are often taught to never trust anyone. So when one of them goes off the rails, it can be hurtful. But maybe you shouldn’t be suprised.

Sim’s follow-up to Cerebus, Glamourpuss, further explored Sim’s theory that women can’t create like men — I’m really simplifying here — so they steal from them while looking like a fashion magazine with photorealistic imagery of teenage women and a story about the death of Flash Gordon artist Alex Raymond.

Cerebus learned at one point that he was destined to die alone, unmourned and unloved. Maybe Sim will be as well. But somehow, some way, a movie was made from his comics. I was shocked to find it with no fanfare on Tubi.

Oliver Simonsen spent more than a decade making this unauthorized film, knowing full well that Sim may nix the entire project once he saw it. Luckily, he liked the work of Simonsen and a team of animators who made this movie for nearly no budget whatsoever. Don’t expect Hollywood animation but also don’t expect to be disappointed. You’ll be quite surprised how great this looks and moves, getting in the story of Cerebus against Necross the Mad, the theft of the jewel of wizard Maki and appearances by Lord Julius, Prince Mick, Prince Keef, Elrod the Albino and G’ar and T’ar, who believe Cerebus is the next manifestation of a pig god.

This is an incredible effort — as difficult and near-quixotic as Sim’s 300 issue goal — but I consider it a success. There’s a lot of cover across its 80-minute story and those who have a strong foundation in the comics will do better at deciphering it. I’m just so pleased that this exists. 12-year-old me is so excited about it.

You can watch this on Tubi and learn more at the official site and the director’s Facebook page.