Directed, written, edited by and starring Todd Flaherty, Chrissy Judy is the story of a determined gay man whose best friend and drag sister suddenly finds love, leaving him a solo act in both his personal and professional life. Can these two men split and find what’s been missing in both of their lives?

Chrissy (Wyatt Fenner) and Judy (Flaherty) have a duo drag show that’s starting to get noticed. But when Chrissy decides that it’s time to grow up and see if anything can happen with Shawn (Kiyon Spencer), she moves to Philadelphia. Judy is left alone for the first time and must figure out not just art, but life as an individual.

Shot in black and white, this movie has an interesting message: even if you choose your own family, you still need to create a life for yourself, with a job, relationships and reasons to be outside of the people that keep us sane and prop us up.

Chrissy Judy is in select theaters and is also available on demand and on DVD from Dark Star Pictures.

Al Gomez, a producer and actor in this movie, sent it to my attention with an interesting premise: What may seem like your typical micro-budget attempt at horror, Craving is a much bigger film comparable to the horror movies made in the 1980s.

Well, I’m in.

And yeah, when your title sounds like the American name for Paul Naschy’s Night of the Werewolf, well, I’m also in.

It all starts the night after the story we’re about to watch, as a rural bar is covered with blood, internal organs, a several foot and one frightened survivor. What happened to get everything to this point?

As Les (Felissa Rose!) and Shiloh (Rachel Amanda Bryant) tend bar, four strangers — all obvious addicts, all very armed — show up and barricade the bar. It feels like Feast, but the story moves in its own direction quickly.

Will (Xavier Roe), Mac (Kevin Caliber), Frenzy (Ashley Underchuffler) and Gail (Holly Rockwell) and Gail (Holly Rockwell) take over the bar and tell the assembled patrons — including Travis (Gregory Blair), Hunter (Al Gomez), Rudy (Frankie Guzman) and Rylee (Miranda Bourke) — that something horrible is tracking them. Meanwhile, a man outside by the name of Red (Greg Tally) is shouting on a megaphone that one of the four is a monster and everyone is in danger.

There are a ton of people — nearly too many to keep track of with all the flashbacks, yet they all get their own unique moments and have characters instead of just being fodder — all gathered around just one location. And then, when the gore happens, wow. This movie in no way skimps or holds back or the tension, as the addicts inside start going through withdrawal while whatever group lies in wait outside gives them an hour to give up the monster.

Director J. Horton (VHS Violence), who co-wrote this with Gregory Blair, knows how to film a horror movie and washes this all with bright red and blue light directly from the promised 80s. It looks incredible and the monster looks awesome, which it better, because it’s on screen for such an extended period of time. I also loved the end credit sequences and that the title comes up just like Demons. So much of the cast and crew worked on The Campus together and that’s good, because the ease with which they worked together created something really fun here.

Craving is now available on VOD and digital on demand from Indie Rights Movies. To learn more, you can check out the official Facebook page.

When a recovering drug addict named Massimo (Michael Klug) is bitten by an ancient, shapeshifting vampire named Sofia (Meghan Deanna Smith). Now, he must fight to save his girlfriend and former alcoholic Tien (Christine Nguyen, Giantess Attack vs. Mecha Fembot) from being turned in the same way and get his mother (Debra Lamb) and organized crime boss stepfather (Joe Altieri) to accept her.

Director and writer Monte Light shot this in black, white and red while blasting images of other films, including Mystics In Bali, Die Nibelungen Siegfried, the 1898 Santa Claus and the Fleischer Studios cartoon Bunny Mooning. It all becomes apparent that Sofia is trying to take all of the negative elements out of Massimo’s life. Well, I mean she also tries to get him to feed on a sex worker and he can’t do it, so she kills her for him. But is the addiction the vampirism or the cure? I wasn’t really sure.

There’s also a lot of comparison to Nosferatu, mostly in the sales materials related to this movie. Well, they’re both in black and white.

That said, there are definitely some ideas here and while they don’t always add up, it’s anything but expected or normal. That’s to be noted and appreciated.

You can watch this on digital platforms worldwide from Terror Films, as well as Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I first saw this at Fantastic Fest on October 1, 2022. This will be in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles April 7 and on demand and DVD on April 11 from Dark Star Pictures.

Once, Jacky (Thomas Parigi) was content to wander the village and record sounds to use in ths songs that he made in secret. But after the death of his grandmother Gisèle, who was known to be the village healer and magnetizer, he finds himself developing her powers. Just in time — wolves are attacking and a young girl named Elsa has shown up either suffering from a mystery disease or possession. Or maybe she’s doing Blood On Satan’s Claw cosplay.

Lucas Delange, who directed and co-wrote this with Olivier Strauss, has an eye for beauty. Jacky has an eye toward dreams and miracles, which may not work outside the world of fantasy. It’s an interesting film that definitely will get you thinking.

Karim (Fahd Larhzaoui) tells his parents Fatima and Abbas (Lubna Azabal and Slimane Dazi) that he is attracted to men. This is based on the real experiences that Larhzaoui has had in his own life. And this movie is about the lead up to that moment and what comes after and how Karim must come out to himself, basically.

Directed by Sharrif Nasir, who wrote this with Phillip Delmaar and Larhzaoui, all of these moments are set in motion when Karim’s father catches him in bed with Kofi (Emmanuel Boafo), which finally sets in motion the long avoided coming out. The real avoidance comes in when his family decides to not listen to him and avoid hearing his explanation, so he barricades himself within a storage room under the stairs of his family home until they finally break down and hear him out through the door.

This movie has humor and warmth to tell its truth. Karim’s family doesn’t seem against his life choices, but instead it seems if they just pretend it doesn’t exist, they never will have to deal with it or change. That’s perhaps much worse than even arguing. They create their own walls.

El Houb is available on digital and on DVD and Digital from Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I watched this at Another Hole In the Head film festival and now it’s available on digital platforms.

Director and writer A.T. Sharma has created a film in which a young therapist (Tim Torre) tries everything he can to save his patient (Adam Johnson, who is really great in this) including hypnotism. The problem is that that backfires and soon the issues that his patient is undergoing begins to slowly go even more unhinged than a man who is struggling to keep his business solvent and his family together.

Starting with “The following is based on actual case studies” and ending with a long quote about the Catholic Church trying to keep exorcism relevant — “There continue to be cases of demonic possession that goes mis-diagnosed as mental illness today. The Catholic Diocese states that there has been a recent increase in exorcisms in the United States and around the world. As faith is in decline, more people are opening themselves up to the reality of evil. Father Vincent Lampert (Diocese appointed exorcist)” — this film has some disquieting moments, including a grisly suicide scene that shocked me.

By the way, Lampert is the designated exorcist of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and part of the Pope Leo XIII Institute in Milwaukee, a training school for American clergy to learn how to perform an exorcism.

This is a little all over the place, but it’s got an interesting take on possession and how modern medicine attempts to stop it. I sometimes ponder how much of possession is just mental illness and how much of mental illness is possession.

Danger: Diabolik! may be my favorite movie of all time, so I was nervous when Diabolik came out in 2021. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a disappointment. The strange all on a soundstage feel of the movie was quite exciting. Yet I feel that the sequel abandons that to feel more like it fits into our world. Well, it does also have time for Bond-like video segments like the incredible opening number that turns into the credits and the first action scene without ever slowing down.

Directed yet again by Antonio and Marco Manetti, this replaces Luca Marinelli as the antihero Diabolik with Giacomo Gianniotti while smartly keeping Miriam Leone as Diabolik’s lover Eva Kant and Valerio Mastandrea as his nemesis Ginko.

After that aforementioned dance/singing/music video/Bondian intro, Diabolik steals the Crown of Armen and the Armen Jewels in short order. Yet he doesn’t realize that it’s all part of Ginko’s plan, as the jewels have been coated with a radioactive tracking substance that permits Ginko and the police to infiltrate one of Diabolik’s secret bases.

As Diabolik and Eva escape, she hurts her ankle and the master criminal abandons her to sneak away. The police now have all of Diabolik’s wealth, the way that he makes masks and his girl, who Ginko is trying to convert to his side so that he can finally stop Diabolik.

Now, before you come into this cold, you have to realize that Diabolik is kind of a James Bond level character in Italy. Created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani, he’s a master thief and cold blooded criminal who often steals either for the thrill or because he wants to outdo another criminal. Just as often, he’s doing something to upset Ginko, who can never seem to hold him for long.

Based on the sixteenth Diabolik story Ginko All’Attacio, this is a strange movie to introduce an audience unfamiliar with the comics to. It’s more about Ginko and his quest than it is Diabolik, who remains in disguise for most of the film. Also, because of how they’re kept apart, this has less of the draw of Diabolik and Eva, which at heart is always the reason why I love the series and characters.

This film also introduces Duchess Altea, Inspector Ginko’s secret companion, who is played by Monica Bellucci. She’s always a welcome sight and having her gives Ginko a near equal partner to Diabolik and Kant.

There’s already a third movie and I’ll definitely watch it, mostly because I want to see if it also makes a shift in look and feel as this one did. This is shot well, has a pretty exciting soundtrack and sure, it may not be as perfect as Mario Bava, but what movie released in this time has his genius? It’s unfair to expect anything to live up to that.

The other thing some may miss is that in the comics, Diabolik went from being a killing machine who didn’t care about human life to one with his own code of honor. This didn’t happen from story one to story two, but over a few years. There is an abrupt change in here where our lead doesn’t kill a police officer that make it feel like he made that leap perhaps too quickly.

Again, maybe I’m still too jazzed over Bava when it comes to this movie or perhaps its that all modern movies seem to be TV movies shot with a little better color balancing and budget, but while this looks like it used its budget, it also struggles to find intriguing camera angles or even attempt to bring a comic to film life. I’m being unfair, but I want a Diabolik movie to knock my eyes out of my head. Not to say this isn’t pretty in parts, but broken record, there’s so much I want for this movie.

That said — if you’re a fan of the whole Diabolik series, it’s nice that the world of superheroes on film is a little less America-centric and that we can get three new movies in as many years.

The end of the story, well, you’ll see coming, but here’s to where this can go next.

Millicent (Morgan Saylor) is taking a semester off of college and making money by caring for Johnny (Danilo Crovetti), a mute child whose allergies are so bad that he has to wear something that looks like a spacesuit. Meanwhile, the kid’s mom Rebecca (Kat Foster) is a self-help sex positive guru obsessed with being a perfect mother yet cursed with a philandering handyman husband named Jacob (Myko Olivier) who walks around with his shirt off in front of his son’s new live-in companion.

Millicent has never had a family before and the foster dad she does have is played by David Yow from the Jesus Lizard as exactly the kind of character you’d expect he’d play. And her therapist Dr. Welsh (Keith Powell) has the hypothesis that LSD can make her less childish and awkward.

If tripping can fix her, maybe it can fix Johnny. Right?

Like every movie about a nanny ever except probably the one it references in title, Mary Poppins, Spoonful of Sugar is about a strange young woman trying to work her way into a family and take it over.  Isn’t that what she’s done with every family she’s been part of — spoilers coming up — which always ends with her killing them? She’s also a woman in a young girl’s body, something men seem to want to sully, and they all pay for it.

But that’s not the only twist, which is appreciated. And that one, well, I won’t reveal.

Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan and written by Leah Saint Marie, this has some intriguing turns and looks interesting, but man, who would bring someone like this around their family? It isn’t until that final surprise that it all makes sense.

Hunter White (Alicia von Rittberg) started her life as a baby, abandoned in a cemetery, left in a blanket covered with occult symbols. After a DNA test determines that she’s all Scandinavian, she leaves her adopted father Raylan White (Clarence Smith) behind and heads to Norway to learn the truth and oh man, never ever go home in a horror movie, right?

If you’re going to Norway, you’re going to get into some metal, right? Hunter meets a singer of a band named Cecilia (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) who she thinks is her mother. She’s not, but leads her down the path to finding out who they really are. Hunter is really the daughter of her old bass player Kristian and his partner Anna. Anna had her when they were on tour in America and left her in that cemetery.

After that, Anna went missing and when Kristian found her, he locked her inside a church and set it on fire. This led to a jail sentence of 21 years — the maximum sentence, pretty much, because that’s how long Varg Vikernes got for burning churches and killing Euronymous — before he was sent to a mental hospital.

The truth of it all is that her mother’s family has been involved in some dark business for years and she probably never should have sought them out. They go the opposite way of the darkness of Black Metal to true Christian darkness. Actually, they’re Calvinists. Cecilia keeps seeing visions of a woman being set on fire who warns her to give up, but she feels that she must know the full truth of where she came from.

Directed by Alex Herron and written by Thomas Moldestad, this movie promises some Satanic Panic and gives you very little of it. Ah well — we can’t always get what we want.