The wave of homemade horror films from average folks with access to a Super 8 camera or a camcorder resulted in countless idiosyncratic bodies of work around the world, and there's nobody else out there quite like Antoine Pellissier, a French doctor who funded his own DIY cinematic nightmares with lots of energy, gore, and love for the genre. His exploits were chronicled in the 2009 documentary Dr. Gore, which was issued on French DVD by retail store Metaluna with a sample of his work included, but the real gold mine is the 2026 Bleeding Skull two-disc Blu-ray set, Folies Meurtrières and the Films of Antoine Pellissier. Chock full of rarities, it's a real rollercoaster ride through the world of backyard Gallic synth-scored splatter.

The first disc is devoted to the director's early works from 1977 through 1985 with the centerpiece being 1984's Folies Meurtrières ("Murderous Madness," 50m26s), a straightforward stalk-and-slash film for most of its running time with five different women being stalked in vignettes by a motorcycle-riding, goggle-wearing killer whose hunting grounds range from a country home to a rock quarry with weapons including a pickax and a chainsaw. A climactic twist and a detour into the possibly supernatural give this one an extra kick, and the pounding synthesizer score, lack of dialogue (unless you count a little bit of narration), and splashy kill scenes make this a textbook example of the hypnotic slasher template that continued for decades into more recent fare like In a Violent Nature. The film also comes with a quick 49s optional intro by Pellissier, a 7m16s gallery of production photos and video art from multiple films, and the archival featurette "The Doctor in Spite of Himself" (28m42s) from the Metaluna release, a great, frequently split-screen batch of colorful interviews with the filmmaker and his colleagues and family members sharing highlights from the whole crazy filmmaking trajectory. We keep going with another 1985 short, L'élue des enfers ("Hell's Chosen One," 36m1s), which opens with the credit "inspired by the William Friedkin film The Exorcist." That's sort of accurate but the perspective is very different here as we open up with a little toddler girl in the woods surrounded by hooded figures performing a thunder-augmented occult ceremony that will curse her on her 20th birthday to be possessed by Satan.

Then we jump forward to said birthday with lots of Sam Raimi-inspired camerawork leading up to the devil taking her over, prompting a very dramatic exorcism attempt. The makeup effects and lighting here are a lot of fun, as is the blood-and-thunder sound mix which again is extremely light on dialogue. Cute little demonic stinger at the end, too. Presented here in its full-length version for the first time (and possibly the longest Super 8 horror movie around), 1982's Les Proies du Mal ("The Prey of Evil," 152m47s) has previously only been viewable if you really, really tried hard via a very dupey copy of the first 90 minutes. Dreamlike, crazy, and compelling, it's another Casio-flavored nightmare that starts with a long sequence of a stranded woman exploring a house with bleeding paintings and walls, sentient table decor, creepy dolls, and a Satanic diary. That sets the stage for a flashback to our main story in 1857 about a new arrival at a pastoral convalescence home run by the mysterious Dr. Stan Afoson. Over the course of the following year, escalating nightmares proliferate within the mansion's walls as a diabolical secret comes to light. An ambitious, sprawling period piece soaked in atmosphere complete with Andy Milligan-worthy costumes, this is a truly unique stab at Gothic horror on a big scale and a minuscule budget with lots of grisly charm if you just sit back and roll with the long running time. It gets extremely gruesome, too, especially once you hit the 70-minute mark and all the sacrifices and zombie attacks kick in. There isn't really any dialogue either here per se, just lengthy diary narration with lines like "These foundations are rooted in the magma of hell." Also, the last five minutes are wild. The silent 1981 short Du sang sur la neige ("Blood on the Snow," 8m38s) delivers exactly that, a parade of monster masks and robes in a snowy forest as they hunt down and attack their latest victim. Also silent is 1980's Le vampire contre attaque ("The Vampire Strikes Back," 16m34s), which is sourced from video here and depicts a woman's afternoon memorial visit to a cemetery taking a scary turn through the woods. Finally 1977's Le refuge des maudits ("The Refuge of the Damned," 38m46s) is a very rough, scrappy silent short, again with lots of monster masks, in which a zombie shambles over to a house where a Dr. Frankenstein type and his assistant are assembling a creature. Things don't go well for anyone.

Disc two is devoted to a pair of his more recent shot-on-video films along with the Dr. Gore documentary (51m16s) by Pauline Pallier chronicling the production of his 1998 feature Maleficia, also included here in its entirety. It's fun to see both in tandem together here as you get a sense of the genre commitment at play here, including Pellissier exhibiting his work and dealing with found, sometimes challenging locations. Maleficia itself clocks in at 101m49s and feels different here with the switch in format, bigger cast, and ridiculous computerized title sequence. On the other hand, it's still a period piece, this time set on the outskirts of Transylvania where a traveling family runs into a group of hooded Satanists doing their thing in the woods around a homemade altar. After the cult's very bloody, protracted sacrifice is finished, some zombies get unleashed in the woods which triggers a string of attacks and narrative switchbacks as the idyllic setting gets soaked in gore with nobody exempt regardless of their age. The film also gets a teaser trailer here.

Then 2001's Horrificia (110m20s) rekindles that Andy Milligan vibe for a partially medieval splatter fest in which a knight named Thibault delivers a cursed, demonic box back to his lords and inflicts an evil curse upon his castle. After some protracted, extremely squishy torture scenes including Lloyd Kaufman as one of the inquisitors, a well-placed Wilhelm scream, and some sword and sorcery craziness, we jump to the present day for a Halloween party at the same castle. Of course, it isn't long before the sins of the past come roaring back and more sacrifices have to be made to appease the devil's appetite. Again the blood flows heavily here, but the tone is a little campier here with some odd technical goofs like audio dropouts and so on cropping up. There's plenty of lo-fi enjoyment to still be had here, but at nearly two hours this may be too much for some viewers. Also included for this one are a "Blair Witch Kaufman" featurette (8m3s) with Lloyd Kaufman on location in France, a behind-the-scenes reel (11m27s), a 5m18s collection of bloopers, and a 12m28s gallery of video art and production photos for both films. The set also comes with a fun fanzine-style insert booklet featuring a Pellissier interview with Bleeding Skull's Joseph A. Ziemba about his enduring dedication to films when he isn't doing his day job and the process of putting his homegrown epics together for a very specialized audience.

Reviewed on February 28, 2026