Joseph James DeAngelo is the man who has been charged with 13 murders, 51 rapes and 120 burglaries over 12 years while he worked as a cop, often investigating the crimes that he had caused. He was also known as the Visalia Ransacker from 1974 to 1976, the East Area Rapist from 1976 to 1979 and the Original Night Stalker.
He also sent letters and made phone calls to past victims and the police after.
For a long time, people thought that each of those killers were different people. They were all the same man.
If you watch as much true crime as gets watched in this house, you already know this story. But that’s how it is — I may have seen the same story on other networks, 48 Hours, 20/20, Dateline and more. I still watched this and despite everyone’s complaints about the podcasters in it, it’s not bad.
You just might know all of it. Every horrible detail.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
No long-time kaiju fan was more pleased than I when rumors began to swirl that Godzilla Minus One – the first Japanese Godzilla film in more than a decade – wasn’t just good. It was great. I didn’t want my expectations to ruin the experience of seeing the film for the first time, so I avoided spoiler-laden websites and subreddits.
Secretly, I was super excited. I hadn’t seen a Godzilla movie on the big screen since the 2014 American series launch Godzilla. A film that left me with the same feeling one has when they’re hungry and they eat bad pizza. It fills you up, but the calories are empty. I never saw any of the sequels because I was now certain that Hollywood, regardless of how much money they spend on effects or how many great actors they cast, will never truly be able to make a great Godzilla movie. It’s a film series that is uniquely Japanese. No other country on earth has had an atomic weapon dropped on it in a time of war. And that makes them uniquely qualified to make movies about an atomic monster. The original 1954 film was infused with melancholy and a foreboding sense that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.
Godzilla Minus One recreates that feeling better than any other Godzilla film made since then.
The film begins at the end of WW2. When Japan had nothing. Zero. Then Godzilla shows up and things get worse. Minus One.
Kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) abandons his mission and lands on nearby Odo Island with “technical problems.” While there, a giant lizard known by the locals as Gojira goes on a rampage. Once again, Shikishima freezes and cannot bring himself to shoot the monster. Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), the only other survivor of the attack, blames Shikishima for the death of his comrades.
The next act in the film shows an accurate portrayal of the grim life of post-war Japan where people survived on their wits and the kindness of strangers. Shikishimi, now suffering from PTSD and cultural shame, forms a makeshift family with a young woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an orphaned toddler named Akiko (Sagae Nagatani.)
He gets a job on a boat sweeping mines from the sea and it isn’t long before his old buddy from Odo Island makes his next appearance. This time he’s huge, having grown even bigger from America’s A-bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the pacific.
The boat team crosses the big guy’s path, and a chase ensues. Despite the film’s paltry (by Hollywood standards) 15-million-dollar budget, the jeopardy in this scene feels real. I’ve always loved it whenever Godzilla swims, but it’s the first time I’ve felt like I was watching Jaws with a kaiju.
When the big guy finally makes landfall and attacks Ginza, it’s one of the best sequences ever achieved by Toho Studios. Not only is the destruction from G’s heat ray astounding in its execution, but it’s also one of the rare times we see Godzilla himself suffer what appears to be painful injuries after unleashing his weapon. (See GMK from 2001 for another great example of this.)
The resulting nuclear explosion blows Oppenheimer’s bullshit a-bomb away. And that’s important. I for one, am pleased as punch to see transnational audiences embrace a low-budget monster movie. IAs I’m writing this, Godzilla Minus One has grossed over 104 million dollars globally and is Oscar nominated for Best Special Effects. It should have been nominated for Best Picture. This movie succeeds on every level where every other budget-bloated major Hollywood 2023 release has failed.
Godzilla Minus One is a compelling drama. It’s also a period piece that’s historically accurate. Are you listening, Ridley Scott? It’s scary, exciting and fun. All for a cool 15 mill. This movie is proof positive that story and well-developed characters matter and you don’t need a billion dollars and 3 hours to do it. Did I mention the film was released globally entirely in Japanese with subtitles? So much for the “audiences don’t like to read” argument.
In the finale, Shikishima joins forces with Tachibana and a team of war veterans to do what the Japanese government can’t do and what the U.S. government won’t do. They defeat Godzilla in a thrilling finale. Or do they? Godzilla has powerful regenerative abilities. In Godzilla 2000 these cells were called Regenerator G-1. Here, they don’t name this ability, but it’s a nice callback for die-hard fans and the end result is the same. Godzilla is never defeated for long in any movie. If it were that easy, he wouldn’t be the star of cinema’s longest running series in history. Kudos to writer/director/effects artist Takashi Yamazaki for achieving something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. He’s made Godzilla relevant again in a serious way. Without cheesy dubbing.
Set over a 24-hour period in 1978 Florida, this movie has a man named Ted (Andrew Sykes) shoplifting and trying to get with someone, anyone and always getting shot down. Director and writer (with Eric Pereira and Brandon Slagle) Devanny Pinn buries the lead quite well, even if I knew who Ted was, knew what would happen next and have seen the story so many times. This is a very different take and if you want to be surprised, well, stop reading.
One night, Ted goes out drinking, following some sorority girls, but he gets too drunk, he comes on too strong and he gets thrown out. Yet he can still follow those girls home and instead of trying to pick them up, he becomes a destroyer, wiping them out one by one because he’s Ted Bundy and this is his story.
There’s a solid cast on hand — Jeremy London from Party of Five, Kathleen Kinmont from Halloween 4, Lisa Wilcox from Nightmare On Elm Street 4 and 5 and Eileen Dietz from The Exorcist amongst other talented actors.
Unlike so many true crime stories, this puts you in the world of the victims, letting you get to know them before the inevitable. It’s very effective and quite disquieting, as the violence doesn’t let up.
In this film, Dario Argento explains the difference between fear and panic (the panico that gives this its title). He claims that fear is like a fever of 100.5 F, one that has you terrified. Panic is just a degree higher, something that takes you beyond to a place that you can’t control.
If you’ve read Argento’s book Fear, he often speaks of writing his scripts isolated in a hotel room. In this documentary, the director finds himself returns to the place where he completed his latest script and speaks as part of an intimate interview, all while being followed by a film crew documenting his life for a movie about his illustrious career.
He’s joined by friends, collaborators and fans — many of whom are today’s most important filmmakers — to discuss the story of his life and films.
Director Simone Scafidi made Fulci For Fake in 2019, a film that attempted to explain the movies of Lucio Fulci. In that effort, he didn’t have true access to Fulci. Here, he has Argento speaking to his greatest successes and why he makes movies, as well as some of the most essential people in his life, including his daughters Fiore and Asia, his first wife Marisa Casale, Claudio Simonetti of Goblin, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi, Luigi Cozzi and current directors Nicolas Winding Refn, Guillermo del Toro and Gaspar Noé.
Del Toro speaks most effectively on the power of what Argento can do and how he’s “getting high off his own supply.” He makes a case that Deep Red presents a world where anything at any time can happen and that you must accept that — “here’s is a killer doll, alright” he laughs — and that it’s also full of ancient evil waiting on the outside of the frame, a film where no one is safe.
There’s a lot more that I’d like to have heard about, such as the time in American making Dawn of the Dead and Inferno, as well as what inspired his later films. This skips quite a bit — sorry fans of Dracula 3Dand Mother of Tears — but it’s impossible to get a multiple decade career into a short running time. What does emerge is that even when people have had rough relationships with Dario — such as actress Cristina Marsillach, the star of Opera — they feel as if they have learned from the time they spent with him. It makes for an interesting companion to his aforementioned autobiography, as you only hear his side of the story, where Asia presents a more nuanced vision of him, including a surprising moment of tenderness and vulnerability.
It’s very hard for me to be objective on this film’s subject, as his movies form the nucleus of so much of my love for cinema. I am pleased with the results, as it gives me as much as I need to know and I could honestly listen to Soavi, Bava and Cozzi speak for hours.
As a film nerd, I am beyond happy that this mentioned The Card Player. As you may know, my parents’ first date was to see The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and for years they used it as a barometer of films they hated. I think my gialli addiction started in those formative film discussions as a form of rebellion. Also: Yes, I did cry when they showed the Louma crane from Tenebrae.
You can watch this starting February 2 on Shudder.
To commemorate the release of Dario Argento Panico, Shudder and the IFC Center will present Panic Attacks: The Films of Dario Argento, a series of films celebrating the works of the Giallo horror maestro, revealing his profound impact on horror and his lasting influence on cinema.
The series screens January 31 to February 8 (Full schedule here) and will feature the following films:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
The Japanese title of The Boy and The Heron translates to “How Do You Live?” The title of one of Miyazaki’s favorite books, although this film has nothing to do with that story.
After his mother passes away in a fire during WW2, 12-year-old Mahito finds it difficult to adjust to life in a new location following his father’s re-marriage. After he is bullied in school, he self-harms to avoid going to class.
Mahito is visited by a talking heron who tells him his mother is still alive. He takes Mahito to an abandoned tower which serves as the portal to another realm. There, Mahito searches for his mother and meets all manner of mystical characters including a younger version of his mother.
The Boy and The Heron is Hayao Miyazaki’s most personal and abstract film to date. He made it for his grandson. It’s about the old and the young and loss and acceptance.
It feels like classic Miyazaki with a bit of David Lynch thrown into the mix. Visually, there’s so much detail, even in the quieter moments where nothing is happening, that it’s a film that will take most people more than viewing to absorb and unpack the meaning of everything on screen.
The possible interpretations are limitless. Is this a warning about perceived power in alternate realities i.e. the internet? Is it showing us the human side of militaristic societies like the ones that sprung up in WW2? Is it a Buddhist parable involving the realms of the gods (deva), the demi-gods (asura), humans (manuṣa), animals (tiryak), hungry ghosts (preta) and hell denizens (naraka)? I honestly don’t know. And I like it that way.
I’m fairly certain the granduncle, who lives in isolation with his pencil is Miyazaki. A man who neglected reality in favor of the worlds he created. It’s well-known that following the success of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki threw himself into his work so much so that he neglected his wife and son Goro, with whom he has a strained relationship to this day. There’s also a lot of Miyzaki in Mahito, who grew up during and after WW2.
At one point, the grand uncle in the other realm taps 13 building blocks with his pencil and indicates a desire for a successor to all he has created. I’ve heard it suggested that the number 13 represents Miyazaki’s films, but this theory holds no water. There are only currently 12 films if you count the feature length works and if you count the shorts directed for exclusive screenings at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka Japan, there are substantially more than 13. I saw the short, titled Mei and the Kitten Bus at the museum (the official sequel to My Neighbour Totoro) and it was delightful, even if there were no English subtitles. Totoro’s first appearance in a crowd of creatures carrying his umbrella solicited substantial “ooohs” and “ahhhs” from the audience, owing to how beloved this character is in Japan.
Whether Miyazaki-sensei makes another short or feature, it seems likely that The Boy and The Heron will be studied by future film scholars as one of his most important films. It’s rare that an aging director produces something this interesting.
For example: In the other realm, there parakeets. These birds are fascist militaristic, but they also love their families. Notice, in the adorable image below, the parakeets cuddling their unborn young? Clearly, the parakeets aren’t really the “bad guys.” They’re just like humans. They have merely fallen prey to the flock mentality and follow their king – who resembles Mussolini- blindly. Once the flock crosses over into “reality” they are rendered harmless.
Will it be his last? Time will tell. He’s “retired” several times before, but it seems as if creating the worlds in his mind is what keeps him going. Just like Granduncle.
The film ends with a new beginning. Mahito is free to create his own stories. There is no “The End” as appears in all his other works, so I’m betting there will be at least one more short or a partial feature that goes into production before Miyazaki-sensei departs this earthly realm. If it turns out to be his last, I consider myself extremely lucky to have shared this reality at the same time as this master storyteller.
Years ago, Blaine Richtefield (Lorenzo Lamas) killed Diego Padilla’s (Ryan Padilla in the present, Andres F. Croci-Valdes in the past) father and mother over their farm, which was the last place he needed to own all of the land in a Texas town. He’s saved by Richtefield’s driver Silas and sent to China to be raised by Silas’ father Bingwen Hsing (Craig Ng) alongside that man’s daughter Xin Yi (Alyssa Leanne So in the present, Brylee Hsu in the past). The older man trains the boy in martial arts and tells him that Silas saved him because he reminds him of the daughter, Catherine, that he could not save.
Directed by Jose Montesinos (Five Star Murder), who co-wrote the script with Jacob David Smith, Prepare to Die has Diego sailing back to America to confront Richtefield and get revenge. He has to start fighting from the minute he’s on the boat as two men to rob him, He nearly kills one of them when one throws his mother’s necklace overboard.
Meanwhile, Richtefield and his henchman Ryan Fruitwood (Quentin “Rampage” Jackson) have an entire storage locker full of women under their control, just to show you what horrible people they are. He also has the law on his side in the form of the sheriff (Michael Madsen).
Diego comes to town and goes to a bar where he plays pool against William Freeman (Rylan Williams) which turns into a fight against two of Richtefield’s henchmen. He gets outside and even more are waiting, which causes Diego to come outside and watch. When he learns that Richtefield is involved, he saves Freeman. He loses his cool and starts choking the life out of one of them before the cops arrive. They also meet up with Bianca (Paula Rae-Taylor), who tries to steal Freeman’s truck because it has Richtefield’s name on it. That’s when it comes out that he used to be his boss. She’s been trying to find her sister, who is one of the girls kidnapped by Richtefield.
They also run into James Swiftwater (Andrew Pinon), whose land they are staying on. He makes sure that no one sneaks around Richtefield’s land. Nobody likes working for the guy but they are all forced to. Swiftwater claims that Freeman brought drugs into his community and cost his brother his life. Freeman is trying to make amends, as he lost his sister too. Everyone has made mistakes working for one bad person in the middle of it all.
Of course, it all comes down to Richtefield fighting one on one with Diego, as well as everyone getting the revenge they want. Not everyone makes it out alive which makes it weird when everyone goes and eat afterward, as if someone major in the cast didn’t just die and they didn’t just kill so many people. I mean, I’ve never had to get bloody revenge before, so perhaps it does make you hungry.
Zelda Adams, Lula Adams, John Adams and Toby Poser — known as the Adams Family — have made several films: Rumblestrips, The Hatred, Halfway to Zen, Knuckle Jack, The Shoot, The Deeper You Dig and Hellbender. Together, the family has directed and written this tale, which is the story of a family of murderous sideshow performers.
The sideshow that travels the country is filled with strangeness. There’s Mr. Tipps (Sam Rodd), who has made a deal with a demon for a heart that he uses in his act. And that act? He cuts off his own fingers and then Eve Axon (Zelda Adams) sews them back on. She never speaks, only sings, and is the near-silent witness to the madness of her parents, Seven (John Adams) and Maggie (Tobey Poser) who have war and childhood trauma-caused PTSD that fuels them as they murder their way across the gray backroads of an anachronistic Depression-era setting that still has modern tattoos and fashions.
As Maggie murders, Eve films the madness while Seven blindfolds himself. Shot in their neighborhood — Lulu shows up as an axe girl — this feels bleached out and fuzzy, with a soundtrack by the Adams’ band H6LLB6END6R. The Axon Family is on their way to a Buffalo horror show and things get darker as they go.
Any movie that starts with a legless man nearly dragging himself across the stage to read a poem about the demon Abaddon is going to get your attention. I’m excited that this movie is on Tubi — previous Adams Family films were on Shudder — as it allows them to reach a big audience with this color-shifting road movie. While there are some similarities to what has come before, this feels new and strange. In their notes for the film, the family said, “Creating our own supernatural mythologies is important and joyful for us – here shifting the biblical story of the fallen angel, Abaddon, into a love story that devolves into a family story (always and also built on love, in all its frailties), but refracted through the muddy, bloodied, cracked lens of personal traumas, unfortunate compulsions, and bitter victories.”
Some of the CGI is a bit off, the juxtaposition between soundtrack and film may put some off, but by the end of this, you’ll be captivated by something truly different. I can’t wait to see what this family does next.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by CK Fortune, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.
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Circle of Death is an anthology horror film that is hosted by late night podcaster Deadman Dave (Mark Ricche), who takes his listeners through four macabre tales of obsession, madness and murder. It’s written by Christian Bareford and BC Fourteen, with segments directed by Fourteen, the Bareford Brothers and Scott Vangrootenbruel. The DJ Deadman Dave connecting sequences were directed by Mark Ricchie and were written by Christian Bareford and BC Fourteen. They don’t just quote classic stories, but also a Geto Boys song.
The first of these stories is “3 To Go,” directed by Scott Vangrootenbruel and written by Christian Bareford. Four acquaintences reunite once a year to compare tales of the fantastic. They are Erving Rosseau (Erik Thompson), Miranda (Delaney Hathaway), Dr. Bartholomew Chambers (Olav Carter) and their host, Dante Beaumont (Bill McLaughlin). They each draw numbers from a chest, which must be part of their story. Dr. Bartholomew tells about a patient named Mitch Ermer (BC Fourteen), who had an abdominal tumor and died in a surgical accident. Beaumont then tells the story of a small town named Cyril and the McMullen family and how they died in a fire. Miranada tells of Michael Williamson, a single man and sports columnist who was killed as he looked for the darker side of love. Erving is last, filling everyone’s glass before he tells the story of a wanderer, a woman who was in a car crash. Yet Erving has the darkest secret story of them all and the connection to all that we have just heard. This feels like the story was shortened to fit into the running time and I feel would be a much better full-length story with more time to breath, as there are some good ideas in this.
The second story of obsessive madness, starting with the words of the “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. “The Heart and the Hunted” is directed and written by BC Fourteen. It has Del (Jason Bareford) in a hunting stand with a crossbow, then having a rough night dreaming of running through a field before screaming at someone unseen and repeatedly firing his handgun. As he drives in the day, we find Mary (Jennifer DiBlasio) getting out of the shower and getting ready for an evening on the town that ends with Del and her getting together, only for her to wake up bound with her mouth covered with duct tape. He’s in the tree stand, waiting to shoot her if she tries to get away, leaving her in the woods all night while he watches. He’s been waiting for a monster known as The Thing (Michael Kolence) and is using her as bait. This looks really great at the end and the creature design is so fun. It reminded me a lot of Humanoids from the Deep and again, as I said after the first story, I would have loved to have seen this as a full-length movie.
“The Dirty Hands Man” is directed by the Bareford Brothers and stars Mark Sebetch as that character, who was created bt Christian. A day at a house on the egde of the lake becomes a waking nightmare for a young man named Jakob (Logan Monaco) who discovers more about himself, as well as her legal guardian Catarina (Reagan DeFazio) and her family and friends. She looks down on Jakob so much that she won’t even let him go to the bathroom inside the house, which may seem weird to you, but I had a girlfriend — who I dated for years — whose mother wouldn’t allow me to use their bathroom because I was low class. Once Jakob is allowed to use the toilet, Katarina follows him and makes him wash his hands again. She also meets Robert (Erik Thompson) and Ashleigh (Brittany Stoler), the rest of her family. But because this all starts with him being questioned by the police — Boggs (Boomer Payne) and Merkle (Jason Bareford) — you know this all isn’t going to work out.
As they sit around the fire, Robert and Ashleigh explain their life story to Jakob, including how they lost their parents in a car wreck that left her with pins in his leg. They also learn that Catarina had a child that she gave away, all in time for the Dirty Hands Man to appear out of the woods and murderer everyone and knock out Jakob. Or so he’d like the cops to believe. There’s a big reveal in this and again, I wish the story had time to breathe because the conversations between the characters feel real and I was just starting to get into it when it was time to move quickly to the resolution.
The last story is “Perfect” and it was directed by BC Fourteen. He also wrote the story with Josh Garrell. A plastic surgeon Clay Smith (Andrew Hopper) meets Patricia (Laura Leigh) and tells her about his friend Peter (Lance Arthur Smith), whose emails brought them together for what seems like a blind date, even if she’s been dating Peter. Clay is someone who operates on several movie stars and is known from gossip magazines. Worried about Peter, she brings him to meet him in person and to possibly speak to him about what he’s been doing. When Clay gets there, he learns that Peter is operating on brains and covered in blood. This entry has some dark imagery and really effective lighting throughout that really adds to the darkness within this episode.
The Circle of Death has some interesting stories within it. It’s definitely worth exploring to scratch your anthology film itch and it’s great to see a movie made around Pittsburgh with this level of quality. I’d love to either see these movies expand or another collection of them, as it was a fun watch. You can watch it on Amazon Prime.
Many of the bad guys in this series of movies — Crosscoe the Werewolf, Bartholomew the Man-Made Monster, Tickles the Clown and Megalodon — are going crazy and it falls to our hero Bigfoot, as always, to pick himself up and defend what’s left of humanity. Luckily, he has a new look and actually seems to look more like a Bigfoot than an ape. So there’s that.
Meanwhile, new commander Grace Sherwood comes into the forest and runs into a witch version of herself, ending this on a cliffhanger, there’s a Dr. Frankenstein playing both sides of the war, a new astronaut partner named Holmes and finally, Bigfoot and Megalodon fight for real, even if it takes the entire movie to get there. That said, it’s only an hour long, so it won’t ruin your plans for the day.
If you ever wanted to watch a movie where an evil clown flies a spaceship, I mean, there are several of these for you to watch. I’m nearing the end of all of them and I’m hoping that director and writer BC Fourteen has like three more to unleash on Tubi or I’m going to have to start watching Criterion movies or something.
Bigfoot is burned out from all the battles in space afterBigfoot vs. Megalodonand Bigfoot vs. Krampus. He’s takes a vacation just in time for Earth to get nuked for the third or fourth time in this series, while Lucifer sends Baphomet to create even more madness in the universe as well as eliminate the last humans. Bigfoot tries to stop him but gets blown up and sent to Hell, where he believes that he’s in some kind of mall and wanders around looking for a meat lover’s pizza.
Director and writer BC Fourteen has kept making this series of films and in each one, weirder and wilder things keep happening, like Lucifer lecturing the viewer, telling you that there’s no God and that at the end, you just end up in Hell serving him.
I’m still in love with the strange way that Bigfoot walks and how every long speech in this is illustrated by stock photography like how an ad agency would pitch new business. So much of this is the same animation and everyone looks like they come from Halo, except for Lucifer in a wheelchair and the swaying arms of Bigfoot as he lumbers into the scene.
If BC Fourteen makes thirty of these, I’ll watch them all.
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