EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

You know, I find myself cursed by Amityville more than anyone because I have the kind of OCD that demands that every single time a new Amityville-related film comes out — however tenuous and damn, they can get tenuous — I have to watch it and document it for you, dear reader. Just like Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. felt compelled to murder his family, I feel the horrific pull. And no one dies, except for time which is the resource we never get back.

Imagine my surprise when Amityville Cop, a movie that has nothing at all to do with Amityville, was actually pretty good!

Sure, it’s a ripoff of Maniac Cop, but is that such a bad thing?

Directed by Gregory Hatanaka (Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance) and written by Geno McGahee (Satanic Meat Cleaver Massacre), this has the requisite cop-killing homeless people, but if he’s powered by a Satanic ritual gone wrong led by Laurene Landon — from Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2 — I think all can be forgiven.

Someone yells, “He looked like a cop but he was the devil,” which is a thing I have thought many times. And sure, the humor is forced, the effects are bad, the stock footage is overused and a rocket launcher is represented by fireworks — and oh yeah, no one even says the words Amityville — but I was entertained.

For anyone writing reviews saying, “This is the worst Amityville movie I’ve ever seen,” at least this is only 68 minutes and I have a murderer’s row of Amityville films that are worse.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

To the tune of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” by Bruce Springsteen:

Man walking through the Walmart store

Has so many DVDs, needs so many more

Looking at covers to see what catches the eye

What number Amityville is this, seventy-five?

Is that a werewolf I spy on the case?

What’s next Amityville in Space?

My wife sleeps as I watch all this mess

No taste, no standards, no limits, no rest

(Chorus)

Well, the internet highway is alive tonight

But nobody’s kidding this movie’s any good

I’m sitting down here in front of my TV

Watching the multiple ghosts of Ron DeFeo

Now Sam said, “Wherever there’s a cop comes from Amityville

Wherever a hungry Amityville shark appears

Where there’s a monkey that’s possessed and a 1/2 star review in the air

Look for me, I’ll be there

Wherever a family fights a possessed clock

Or an evil lamp or is in 3D

Wherever a demon is trying to get free

Look in their eyes and you’ll see me

You’ll see me!

So this movie — surprise! — has nothing to do with Amityville. It does have something to do with a halfway house and a werewolf and how did Lions Gate, a somewhat major studio, sully their hands with this?

Thomas J. Churchill also made The Amityville Harvest, which I’m sure I’ll be watching soon enough, and just finished Amityville Uprising, in which “a chemical blast at a military base sets off a supernatural disaster in this tense action-horror thriller.” Oh no. Oh no…

This also has Cody Renee Cameron in it, whose IMDB describes her as “a cool cocktail comprised of raw acting talent & badass stunt work, sprinkled with sexy, then shaken and poured into a chilled glass.” She should have written this movie, or maybe her publicist because that’s better than anything I just sat through.

Tuesday Knight from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is also on hand and she just made a movie called Amityville Bigfoot and seriously, they’re just making movies for me now to make me have crossover between my many Letterboxd lists. “The newest entry to the Amityville franchise follows a new story with Bigfoot and a new terror in the very special house” says IMDB. And who directed it? Shawn C. Phillips, who is also making Amityville Karen and Amityville Shark House because we needed two shark movies set in Amityville.

There’s also an Amityville Thanksgiving coming.

You know it’s bad when Common Sense Media — in their review of is this movie proper for your family or not — includes this discussion question: “Families can talk about sequels that aren’t really sequels, like The Amityville Moon. Why do you think Hollywood makes so-called “sequels” that have little, if anything, to do with the previous movies in the series?”

I wish my parents had talked to me about Amityville sequels but it’s too late. It’s just too late. I’m up at 4 in the morning watching movies like this when I should be sleeping. But you need me, don’t you, dear reader? If anything, I’m protecting you from 112 Ocean Avenue.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

Look, I’ve seen enough Amityville movies now that it takes a lot to surprise me. But the fact that this was directed and co-written by Tim Vigil knocked me out.

Tim Vigil may not be a huge name to you, but those that loved black and white outlaw comics know and revere his name. Starting with the comic book Grips — imagine Wolverine being allowed to murder people — and getting to beyond out there books like EO and Faust — which became the Brian Yuzna film in the 2000 movie Faust: Love of the Damned — Vigil’s incredible art made him the kind of creator worth following from book to book.

The cleanest Faust image I could find

Even some of my fellow comic book mutants had no idea this movie was coming. I had to hunt down the truth — was this the Tim Vigil? And yep, right in the middle of his Instagram, which repeatedly gets shut down because Tim loves posting images that upset pretty much anyone decent, there was the art for this movie.

Much like Danzig’s Verotika, this is the movie that you’d expect Tim Vigil to make.

If you love his stuff, you’ll be excited. If you hate it, well, stay far away.

The first nice thing you can say about this film is that the Amityville House actually shows up in the movie as a cleaning crew comes to do their work at 112 Ocean Avenue. Sure, this footage is a different aspect ratio than the rest of the film and the cleaning crew scenes were directed by someone else and they try to explain why the evil gets in the woods. It’s pretty much like how Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror is a werewolf movie but has a Frankenstein title because Sam Sherman already had 400 theaters lined up for the Al Adamson film Dracula vs. Frankenstein and had promised those grindhouses and drive-ins a Frank-centric double feature.

This leads to two people in the woods making out, but when his girlfriend won’t put out, Kurt sends her to the doom of being attacked by the titular vampire, who is played by the astoundingly named Jin N. Tonic, who was also in not only Dracula in a Women’s Prison but Frankenstein in a Women’s Prison. Somewhere, probably in Hell, Bruno Mattei is pleased.

Meanwhile, radio DJ and former rock star Johnny (Anthony Dearce) and Fran (Miranda Melhado) are on the way to those very same woods. He keeps telling her stories of how it’s haunted, making this kind of an anthology, which works better than it should. Except that the place they’re going is Red Moon Lake and not Amityville, but come on, we knew that was coming.

So there’s a story about Lilith — the vampire from the opening — inviting a woman to Thanksgiving and another where a man begs Lilith to do what God can’t and save his dying wife. Why he would tell her these stories happened in the place they’re going to is beyond me, but don’t look for life lessons in Amityville ripoff movies.

Meanwhile, Kurt now has a bunch of friends that are looking for women to assault. Yes, this is a movie filled with women showing up only to show off their breasts, long conversations that go nowhere, women being punched in the face and then laughing about it, a sexual assault filmed like the Austin Powers joke gag that really is reprehensible, a seeming encouragement of suicide, horrible looking blood, a decent looking vampire, a breast signing in a parking lot that doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the movie, some of the most over the top line reads and reaction shots you’ve ever seen in a movie and all the quality you expect from a direct to streaming poorly lit, filmed and soundtracked effort by a first-time director.

In short, it’s exactly the kind of movie I look for. What a glorious mess and man, I hope Tim Vigil makes tons of movies. It’s not good, but it’s not good in the violently bad way that says to me that his films are only going to get weirder, wilder and less concerned with petty concerns like continuity, color balancing, story and realistic effects and more worried with creating the kind of boundary-pushing magic that the Satanic mass orgy scenes in Faust delivered.

I mean, Tim Vigil tried to sell a 15-year-old me an art print of it and when I told him, “Well, I still live at home with my parents because I’m in high school,” he called me a pussy and I thanked him for it.

Dear Tim Vigil,

I now have my own home.

Make more movies.

I will buy them all.

Thanks,

Sam (former pussy)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

First, there was Amityville Toybox, in which a cursed toy monkey from the house on 112 Ocean Avenue caused chaos. That was followed by Amityville Clownhouse, which amped up the Satanic possession with, well, an evil clown. Now, the circle is complete as Amityville in the Hood goes to the inner city and shows just how deep the roots of the evil of Amityville go.

This is Dustin Ferguson’s third trip to Amityville and this time, he directed, wrote, stars and edited this movie. Heck, he even performs two songs as MC Dirty D, “The Amityville Rap” and “Slide Into My DM.”

You know how much I love continuity, so Peter Sommars (John Walker) is on hand again, a reporter who has been in everything from Amityville Clownhouse, Ouijageist, Tales from the Grave and Meathook Massacre 4  to Angry Asian Murder Hornets, Arcachnado, Zombi VIII: Urban Decay, Amityville Hex, Ebola Rex, Archnado 2: Flaming Spiders and the upcoming Axemas 3: Santa Insane, Axemas 4: The Axemas Legacy and Ghoul.

An Eastside gang is using the Amityville property to grow marijuana — yes, I know, this is the best idea ever — called Amityville Possession. I mean, when in doubt, name your strain after the best of the many movies, right? Well, those drugs get stolen and taken to the Westside streets of Compton as Amityville is in Los Angeles in this universe and whomever smokes that sticky icky pays for it with their soul.

Jennifer Nangle, who plays Malvolia the Queen of Screams, is in this briefly — too briefly — as a sex worker named Cheyenne who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I mean, do I have to sell it any more to you? I guess all that blood flowing out of the walls and ghosts and shotguns and cursed monkeys — look for a quick sprint through the last two films — all add up to the perfect planting soil. Or maybe they grew it hydroponically inside the red room?

Seeing as how this movie was not blessed with a tag line, let me give some:

• For God’s sake, smoke up!
• This time, Amityville gets smoked.
• If these walls could talk, they’d be stoned.

Look, it’s basically an hour of your life. This week has been horrible and this is the first time that I laughed in some time, if only when thacymbal-playingng monkey started slapping his percussion together and the ghost of Mario Bava showed up in the lighting. This is my 38th trip to Amityville, not my last and not my worst.

Also: I completely believe that this movie is way better on drugs. I’m not telling you to be on drugs but…I’m kinda telling you to be on drugs.

Want to know way too much about Amityville? We got you covered with a deep dive into every single movie in the series. Check it out here. We also have a Letterboxd list because, well, of course we do.

Thanks to the incredible folks at Wild Eye, who knew we’d need to see it immediately as it was released.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Note: While this didn’t come out when 21st Century announced it — there’s an ad that has it listed in their films — it’s still worth inclusion as I cover their movies.

New York Ninja was filmed in New York City in 1984. Don’t worry if you didn’t see it at your mom and pop video store, because its original distribution company 21st Century Distribution Corporation — before Menahem Golan was given the name — went bankrupt. Years later, the footage was acquired by Vinegar Syndrome, except they had no final script, audio or idea of what the movie was about. Thanks to new director — “re-director” — Kurtis M. Spieler, the movie came together, including new dialogue from an amazing cast.

Each film reel — six to eight hours in length — was put together to match what Spieler thought the film was meant to convey at the time. All he had was a shooting script that even mentioned a character named Detective Dolemite, who may have been planned to be played by Rudy Ray Moore. We may never know.

The cast is a literal who’s who of genre cinema:

Don “The Dragon” Wilson is the voice of John Liu, who is also the New York Ninja, and who is also the original director, writer and star of this film. He made three other vanity kung fu movies — Dragon Blood, Ninja In the Claws of the CIA and Zen Kwan Strikes Paris — that are all worth tracking down and watching.

Michael Berryman is the Plutonium Killer, which is where the majority of this movie’s effects budget went.

Linnea Quigley is Randi Rydell, John’s co-worker and love interest.

The cops on the case, Detective Jimmy Williams and Detective Janet Flores, are voiced by Body and Soul star Leon Isaac Kennedy and martial arts legend Cynthia Rothrock. And yes, that is Ginger Lynn’s voice as John’s wife!

The film starts with John finding out that his wife is pregnant. As he runs to work as part of a news crew, she sees another woman getting abducted. In moments, she’s dead and he’s decided to become a white ninja on rollerskates, keeping New York City safe.

If you thought the gangs in Italian post-apocalyptic movies were wild, well, the ones in New York Ninja challenge even Mexican cinema like La Venganza de Los Punks for how colorful the gang members can get. The Plutonium Killer also likes to expose himself to radiation before assaulting women, which is something I’ve never seen as a plot element before.

There are also people cashing in — kind of like the merchandise sales out of nowhere in Yeti Giant of the 20th Century — with people selling I Love The New York Ninja shirts. And there’s also a gang of precocious ninja kids who show up and save our hero every now and then.

I always wondered if another movie could make me feel as much joy as Miami Connection. This is it.

You can get the 35mm trailer from Vinegar Syndrome, as well as the movie itself on VHS and a comic book.

Originally known as Freaks Out, this Italian film is directed by Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg Robot), who co-wrote it with Nicola Guaglianone (The Legend of the Christmas Witch). It’s heroes are the stars of the Mezza Piotta Circus: the albino insect commanding Cencio (Pietro Castellitto), human magnet Mario (Giancarlo Martini), super strong wolfman Fulvio (Claudio Santamaria), the electric Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo) and their ringmaster Israel (Giorgio Tirabassi).

A Nazi ringmaster named Franz (Franz Rogowski) — with twelve fingers — has seen visions of the circus under the influence of drugs and wants to take them. The first step is sending Israel to a concentration camp, then making them work at his Berlin Zircus. He believes that they can stop Hitler from killing himself and saving the Third Reich.

This movie is totally up my alley, because it is all at once a war movie, a superhero film, a movie about sideshow performers and filled with magical realism, as well as strange moments like Franz playing Radiohead’s “Creep” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” nearly half a century before they were released. Well, he can see the future when he huffs ether, as in his drawings at the end, you can see the Jeeg Robot, a movie that both Mainetti and Guaglianon created together.

It’s also overloaded with both ideas and running time, clocking in at around two hours and twenty minutes. That said, Mainetti is a creative force, someone who is at once an actor, writer, director and composed. And he even made a Tiger Mask-influenced short, Tiger Boy. This movie may be kind of all over the place but it looks amazing and I’d love to see these characters return.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As the war between what is left of humanity and the demonic Illuminati continues, it turns out that only the blood of criminal Tickles the Clown (voiced by Bill Oberst Jr.) can make an antidote to a virus created by the beasts that come from Hell. But to get it, he wants to see the breasts of Commander Kali, something that she doesn’t tell Bigfoot or her sort-of boyfriend Van Helsing.

The next part of BC Fourteen’s digitally animated space saga, this movie is mostly Tickles sexually harassing Kali and I think the third time that I remember Van Helsing getting killed. I guess that can happen with clones.

It is kind of weird to have this animated clown in a space jail propositioning a space commander and it’s all the same animation repeating itself with voiceover. I’ve watched all of the movies in this series so far and am used to it, but I’m just warning you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Fresh Meat: Jeffrey Dahmer (2021): Directed by Kevin Barry. this Tubi original documentary has drawn some ire online for featuring podcasters in the place of actual experts as well as several inaccuracies, including it claiming that Dahmer lived in the Oxford Apartments in 1988 when he didn’t move in until May 1990; that he accidentally took Halcion when he killed Steven Tuomi in 1987, but this actually happened in May of 1990 as well. They also are three years off on the Konerak Sinthasimphone incident which happened on May 27, 1991, not September 26, 1988. Thanks to IMDB user corbettc-23259 for pointing this out.

It also talks as much about other cannibals and killers like Ed Gein and Luka Magnotta when most are watching this to learn more about Dahmer. Then again, if you are watching this, you probably have already seen so many other documentaries all about him and will be upset by how little this gets into his homelife and reasons for killing, much less how much it gets wrong. Like how  Ed Gein is from Plainfield, WI. Not Plainville. This is a simple editing issue that should have been caught and yet, like so much of this documentary, so much is just plain incorrect.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Fresh Meat: Killing Dahmer (2023): This was directed by Victoria Duley, who directed or produced several Tubi Originals like Scariest Places In the World, Scariest Monsters In the World, Queen of Crypto, Scariest Places In America, Love You to Death: Gabby Petito, Defying Death: Surviving Jaws, Evil Among Us: The Golden State Killer, Queen of Cocaine, Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy, Mystery Unsolved: The Adnan Syed Story, Love You to Death: The Jodi Arias Story, Evil Among Us: Ted Bundy, Suburban Nightmare: JonBenet Ramsey, Lights, Camera, Murder: Scream, Battle of the Beasts: Bigfoot vs. Yeti, Killing Diana, Suburban Nightmare: The Menendez Brothers, Sins of the Father: The Green River Killer, Scariest Monsters In America, Mysteries from the Grave: Titanic, Gone Before Her Time, Pass the Mic, Suburban Nightmare: Chris Watts, Zombies! Preparing for the Apocalypse, Celebrity Exorcism, Famously Haunted: Amityville and The Secrets of Christmas Revealed! It was written by Chip Selby, who wrote a few of those.

Unlike the first Fresh Meat on Dahmer and how he was arrested, this is more about how he became a victim himself within the walls of Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin when he was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver. Through interviews — you know, as always in these Tubi docs, podcast experts but I guess that’s where journalism is — and dramatized re-enactments, this tries to get to the bottom and tell the truth of just how the most famous killer could be murdered when he should have been guarded.

You can watch this on Tubi.

From the Urban Dictionary: Trappin: The act of dealing or selling illegal drugs for the accumulation of wealth. Drug dealers often partake in “Trappin.” The word originates from Atlanta. “I was trappin’ on the corner when the 5o rolled up” or “He is trappin’ at the party and making a killing.”

Midnight Black is an Atlanta record producer who has worked with Young Jeezy, 8Ball & MJG, Greg Street and others. He wrote and did the music for this.

Director and co-writer Lisa Maydwell also wrote Haunted Trail, a movie that was on the site a few weeks ago.

As for the story, it’s about Granny Mae (Rita Kendall), who is about to lose her house to the bank, but her grandchildren 808 (Kadar Brown) and TR (Brian Loving) work to use their trappin’ skills to save it. There’s also a sex worker named Pretty Peach (Phyllis “Tank” Allen) who is scammed men out of money, a dude named Mooshie who is running all sorts of scams when he isn’t getting the weird curl in the middle of his heap worked at in the barbershop, a Trap News TV crew with a British girl (Erica “Erica Duchess” Stinchomb) reporting on the goings on and actors named Mr. Fireball, Mr. Elmo, Crum.com and Trap Boi Hot who are all basically yelling at the camera.

Everything that can get called trap in this movie is. Like, there’s trap milk. There’s also an amazing scene when the tax bill comes in and it’s just a piece of paper that has a handwritten note. “Tax bill. $10,000.”

You know how people looked down on Cheech & Chong and then ICP made movies and people saw what Cheech & Chong did as high art? This is kind of like the same thing. That said, everyone has high energy and really believes in what they are doing, even if it’s stuff like a guy named Drum getting made fun of at a barbershop and then screwed over by a girl and then butt naked on the news.

There’s a Bad Santa but I have no idea what Christmas has to do with this other than the fact that the grandmother is losing her home at the worst time of the year. This is not the worst Tubi Christmas movie that I have watched which really says something.

As this movie would say, “Merry Trapmas.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Christina Chance (Tori Anderson) is trying to get Love Handles to make her the ambassador for their new line of products through her web show. They’ll give her the deal if she gets two million views on her Christmas Eve livestream. Except her family and image are all fake.

She’s divorced and her web husband Steve (Bradley Husband) is really dating her mom Wanda (Lisa Langlois, Class of 1984). Her dad Rick (Tim Progosh) isn’t married to her anymore, either. Her daughter Kaylee (Habree Larratt) hates the show and thinks it’s why her dad left. At least her son Hugo (Declan Cassidy) is into it.

The problem is that Love Handles employee Devon (Mykee Selkin) shows up at the wrong time and finds out the secret life of Christina. Yet the show — thanks to everyone’s hard work — goes well. But they don’t get the numbers they need, Christina doesn’t get the deal and Devon gets fired. Luckily, they hired such a great Santa (Nick Allan) that he actually is Santa, who gives them all another chance. Actually, so many chances until they finally just don’t even do the show. Devon films their entire day of just being a family and uploads it, which upsets our influencer protagonist, but when she learns that that’s what got her all the subscribers, all is forgiven and reality gets normal.

Director Stefan Brogren also made Twisted Neighbor and Obsessed to Death for Tubi. The movie was written by Brian Graves and Jacob Michael Keller.

You can watch this on Tubi.