Tag Archives: 2022

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Do Not Disturb (2022)

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I had a friend that once said that he knew that if someone, anyone he knew would take pills that he found laying on the ground, it would be me. Well, maybe not after watching this.

Made-in-Florida, shot in Miami, infused with the madness that drugs like bath salts and Krokodil were supposed to unleash on all of us, this is the story of a honeymooning couple — Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher) — who are looking at all kinds of experiences to strengthen their relationship, from an abortive attempt at swinging to taking peyote that a near-lunatic blood covered man gives them on the beach before he literally walks into the ocean.

Soon, their not-so-perfect new marriage isn’t their only problem. Whatever the drug that’s in their system, it does more than cause them to dance all night. It awakens a desire for human flesh.

Do Not Disturb is a totally confident film that is as much about eating other human beings as it is about devouring them emotionally through a relationship that should have really run its course. So yeah, unlike all those death of a relationship movies that usually bore me, this one sung right at my heart, because of course some people deserve to be eaten and then the leftovers tossed into the surf.

Don’t miss this one.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: The Curse (A Praga) (1967, 2022)

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Coffin Joe may be dead and yet he lives. How else do we have a new film that he hosts? Yes, through the fire and the flames, he comes back to us, warning us about making a joke of the unknown world. Perhaps he would also do well to warn us that if you see a witch in the countryside, there’s really no reason to take her photo.

José Mojica Marins, the human repository for the evil being known as Coffin Joe, originally filmed The Curse for his Brazilian TV show in 1967, but it was lost when a fire burned down the station two years later. In 1980, he started a second version, but production was halted due to financial issues. The existing footage went missing until 2007 when producer Eugenio Puppo rediscovered it while preparing a retrospective of the work of Marins.

Years of intensive restoration later — including shooting new scenes and recovering the lost dialogue with the assistance of a lip-reader — The Curse is making its U.S. debut along with a making of documentary The Last Curse of Mojica.

Based on a story in the graphic novel series O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão, this near-hour-long story has Juvenal (Felipe Von Rhine) and his girlfriend Mariana (Silvia Gless) meeting that witch we discussed above (Wanda Kosmo) and deciding that it’s not only a good idea to take that photo but also to be rude to her. He’s soon left with a gaping and festering wound in his side that demands raw meat at all times or it will destroy him. Of course, his lover would make the perfect meal to stop that insatiable hunger, right?

How magical is it that we can find this film as part of our lives? All hail Coffin Joe. You shall never die.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Cryptid (2022)

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A mysterious animal is destroying the people of a small town in Maine, yet the officials seem to quickly write it off as a bear attack. Freelance journalist Max Frome (Nicholas Baroudi) suspects it might be something more. This could be his ticket back to the big time and big city — instead of writing about high school sports — or it could be the last story he ever writes.

Director and writer Brad Rego does it right: rainy and foggy darkness, small town mystery, a cop named Sheriff Murdoch (Chopper Bernet) who seems to be on Max’s side, Max’s photojournalist coworker Harriet (Ellen Adair) who comes into the heart of cryptid darkness and — most importantly —  practical effects and knowing how to showcase the monster for maximum effectiveness.

Also: any movie that has a lizard man that walks on two legs and eats humans — and animals — before hibernating instead of going with something easy like Bigfoot wins my heart. It’s a little talky in places and could be trimmed somewhat, but for a low budget shot in Massachutesettes horror movie, it’s pretty darn good.

These guys are going for a 70s or 80s monster movie and that makes me super happy.

Learn more at the official site.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: The Creeping (2022)

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Due to a traumatic childhood experience — look, I feel like I say this every time in the way of giving advice to horror movie characters and I feel like a broken record, but please please please never ever forever go back home again and set things straight — Anna (Riann Steele) hasn’t been back home in years. She makes the next cardinal modern horror mistake: she takes care of her dementia-suffering grandmother Lucy (Jane Lowe) — The Taking of Deborah Logan has been such a big influence in the near-decade since it was released — but soon realizes that a dark family secret remains and that only her murky childhood memories may hold the key to surviving.

The first full-length movie from director Jamie Hooper after a series of shorts, this movie was written by first-time screenwriter Helen Miles. Even from the start of the story, the old English cottage is quite a foreboding place, as we see a young Anna go from being read a ghost story by her father to being chased under the covers by something she can’t see but has it to be real.

Unlike so many modern ghost stories that descend into herky jerky motions and dark whispered dialogue alternating with strobing light to show us hauntings, The Creeping settles for what has always worked, appearing closer to a traditional and classic ghost story than what we’ve had to take in modern films. It’s quite welcome.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Bundy Manor (2022)

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The Penrod family moves to a small town where they soon find an extreme haunted house run by a charming retired surgeon. Sure, things seem great at first, but then they learn that he’s the kind of person that just keeps pushing things down a darker and more evil path.

Directed and written by Alexander Boyd Watson, I wanted to write this off originally as Jorgenson’s followers wear masks that look right out of The Purge while there are also found footage-style moments and asides of other torture moments throughout the town, but I stuck with it and was rewarded. I loved the end of this which keeps twisting and turning and changing and becoming darker and more sinister with each passing second.

There have been quite a few “extreme haunt” films in the last few years, such as The Houses October Built, Haunt and Hell Fest yet Bundy Manor earns its place at the head of them through its devotion to telling an emotional and personal story about how difficult keeping a family — even one of devoted followers — together can be.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Brightwood (2022)

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Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger) are in the type of relationship where you start to wonder what it would be like without the other person. He’s embarrassed her yet again and as she runs to clear her head, he tries to follow her. The only problem? It feels like they keep going around again and again, around the same path, going through the same motions, the paranormal version of what it’s like to be with each other.

They’re not alone, as the trail around the pond has others who are trapped and doomed to wander in circles as well. Can they escape?

Based on director and writer Dane Elcar’s short film The Pond, this is a dark story that progressively gets grimmer. Some couples are like that, endlessly going through the motion, one trying to stay ahead of the other, both realizing that they are trapped.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Agatha (2022)

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Hoping to find a cure to the disease that is destroying him from within, The Professor follows Agatha on a strange and risky journey into a forgotten but not entirely deserted urban wasteland. Sure, that’s the logline, but this film makes getting there so different, so trippy and so intense.

Kelly Bigelow and Roland Becera did just about everything in this movie from directing, writing, editing, costumes, casting, effects and animation. It’s a truly singular work that presents an ever-evolving series of images that creates a dark mood while presenting what it calls “the disintegration of nature, institutions and people.”

It’s more a series of imagery and tone than an actual narrative film, so if that’s what you’re expecting, well…then this just isn’t going to work for you. If you’re feeling adventurous, however, this movie has a rewarding look and feel. It’s like exploring a series of dark paintings and nearly falling through them, unsure if what you’re seeing is either live action or animation or something in the middle.

You can learn more at the official site.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

Amityville Uprising (2022)

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Directed and written by Thomas J. Churchill, Amityville Uprising is the story of an explosion at a military base, acid rain and zombies being created as a result, all of which are endured by police officers Dash (Scott C. Roe), Howie (Tank Jones), Nina (Kelly Lynn Reiter) Lance (Mike Ferguson) and Malloy (Troy Fromin). There’s also Dash’s son Jimmy (Kole Benfield), infamous criminal Joe Gallo (Micah Fitzgerald) and the news crew there to interview him.

Churchill also made The Amityville Moon and Amityville Harvest, making this the third Amityville movie that Churchill has made for Lionsgate, which kind of shocks me that they’d get into the Amityville game. Yet here we are, a third movie that has little to nothing to do with the Amityville house and is instead set there. There’s only one moment, when a prescription bottle has the 112 Ocean Avenue address on it, that has a reference to the original film.

This is very Assault on Precinct 13 but nowhere near the magic of Carpenter’s film. But that’s the idea. And you know, it’s almost shot too well for an Amityville film, having some actual quality and color balancing, things I don’t expect from this subgenre.

What it doesn’t have is the bizarre ideas that so many of the lower budget Amityville movies do have, instead being content to make a cops versus zombies film with cut in news footage that goes from bad to worse, so fake by comparison that it breaks the narrative. The blast that starts all of this also looks quite poor in contrast to the good special effects for the undead segments, as if there are parts of this movie at war with one another.

The first half of this is more about the breakfast orders of a bunch of cops, which I kind of admire, as there’s so much effort given to the ordering and delivery of a series of sandwiches and breakfast foods. I wish I had some breakfast right now thinking of this film, which is something I have never said about any other Amityville movie.

This does mention events from the other two movies, so I appreciate that there’s a goal of creating a shared universe. I want this so badly. I want someone to connect the Amityville stories in space, in the hood, with clowns and theaters.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Infernal Machine (2022)

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Bruce Cogburn (Guy Pearce) is a writer whose book, The Infernal Machine, was a huge success that he’s never been able to follow up on. Now, an obsessed fan seeks to draw him out of hiding. However, that fan seems to not have Cogburn’s best interests at heart.

Based on “The Hilly Earth Society,” which was written by Louis Kornfeld and produced by Jonathan Mitchell for The Truth podcast, this movie was directed and written by Andrew Hunt.

Cogburn’s novel inspired Dwight (Alex Pettyfer) to kill thirteen people, which is one of the reasons why he’s never written anything else. He lives alone in a desert home, drinking himself into oblivion, but the confrontation with his past may be something that pulls him from his depressive state if it doesn’t kill him.

There’s not much more to the story beyond that, as it seems like a short stretched too far, but Pearce is astounding in this. I loved every moment he was on the screen. He’s a force in this and I hope he keeps the momentum for whatever he chooses to do next.

Amityville In Space (2022)

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Directed by Mark Polonia, who has been to Amityville before with Amityville Island, Amityville Exorcism and Amityville Death House, and co-written by Polonia and Aaron Drake, this brings back Father Benna (Jeff Kirkendall) from Amityville Exorcism and begins with a final battle against the darkness within the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. The demon inside cuts off the priest’s hand and in pain, the holy man begs for God to help him. His prayers are answered as the house is blasted into not only space, but the far future.

I mean, I’m here for all of this. You know how I am about Amityville, not to mention horror sequels set in space.

The moment that I knew I would love this movie is when the space ship that finds the Amityville house floating within a black hole, we see the crew contains a robot named Vox. Said robot’s costume looks like a silver foil welding suit version of Wildfire from the Legion of Super-Heroes. That’s topped by this film’s version of the demon, which looks like a Spirit store version of a final boss from a Mortal Kombat ripoff game from 1993.

Additionally, this movie is amazing because it’s just as much sub-budget Event Horizon as it is an Amityville film and once I realized that, my heart grew 666 times.

If you can’t get into a movie being made in a small town in Pennsylvania with foil covering the windows to simulate a starship, as well as a giant priest battling an enormous demon outside of a black hole with a glowing pentagram between them, why are you even watching movies?

Also: I did some science research. This movie has its vessel doing Dark Star work sending nukes into black holes. I found the answer, of course, on Reddit. One answer said that “All that happens as a consequence of the bomb exploding is in the future light cone of the detonation event, which is all inside the black hole.”

Someone asked the same question on Quora and the answer there by Shane Kennedy was “Nothing. Even if it did explode, the energy released in a “nuke” explosion is irrelevant compared to the energy in a black hole. The chances are that it would just be torn apart without exploding.”

This answer by Hardik Prajapati gets super scientific: “Blackholes are spheres with very very high gravitational force. Even light can not escape that force. So even if the bomb explodes, we won’t be able to observe it. Blackholes are made from high density neutron star. You can’t expect a black hole to be destroyed just by an explosion of nuclear weapon.

Bomb explosion would release a huge amount of energy (assuming it reaches the “surface” of a blackhole and explodes). Blackhole treats energy and mass equally. So it will absorb all the energy released by the bomb.

Lets assume we throw the bomb at event horizon. Time is slow there, much much slower then in our normal world. So before the bomb reaches the center, we might have passed 100s or 1000s of earth years. So if you are the person to drop the bomb, you probably wouldn’t be the person to observe it when it explodes. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Finally, this answer by Christopher Barnes says it best: “Not much. Black holes absorb nuclear explosions already – they’re called “stars.” You’d add a bit more nuclear fire and a bit more radiation to an environment that’s already fairly rich in both, to a net result of precisely dick.”

I’m not watching Mark Polonia movies for science. I’m watching them to be entertained. If a Satanic house can fly through space and take over an advanced civilization a thousand years after Earth is no more, who am I to discuss matters of physics when all I really know are shot on video and Italian ripoffs?

You can get this from MVD.