March 30, 2026
movies out there inspired by the silent horror classic Häxan, and here to remedy that is The Pocket Film of Superstitions, a eccentric, stylish, and delightful curio designed as a silent film with music and narration charting the quirks of old beliefs, charms, and ancient practices both large and small in England. Also reminiscent at times of early Peter Greenaway, The Wicker Man, and very little else, the film by Tom Lee Rutter is a whimsical and sometimes macabre chronicle of superstitious practices involving sacrifices, Macbeth, fairies, black cats, spiritualism, tarot cards, 
birds, wedding ceremonies, ladders, salt, and even bakery, with a lovely music score and often hilarious narrative tidbits from your guide, punk rocker The Shend, making for an unpredictable ride you can either watch in one sitting or break up into multiple little visits. Also on hand are a variety of guest stars including Caroline Munro, Lynn Lowry, Pauline Peart, Dani Thompson, and Annabella Rich, with character actors like Andrew Elias, Cy Henty, Annabella Rich, and Martin W. Payne popping up as well.
but a lot more lo-fi is 2024's Coven of the Black Cube, which emulates the dupey shot-on-video aesthetic that's become an unlikely rage on Blu-ray. Sort of a vigilante DIY version of The Craft from director/co-writer Brewce Longo with guest stars like Joe Swanberg, Tina Krause, Acid Witch, and David "The Rock" Nelson, the film charts a variety of characters connected to a coven that's killing off all the jerk guys around town and leaving severed body parts in alleys that ruin perfectly 
good slices of pizza. Exactly how and why takes a while to unfold, with a stoner-catering video store and pizzeria at the epicenter. Meanwhile after a bad breakup at a black metal show, Vi (Morrigan Thompson-Milam) decides she wants her ex back and goes to a witches' shop for help. In the process she messes up a sex magick ritual big time and gets into a relationship with Cover (Zoe Angeli), which drags things in a very twisted direction. Extremely specific in its influences, this is an often amusing and occasionally startling throwback to camcorder-shot genre benders complete with blown-out white levels and dodgy sound quality all over the place. Whether that's a good thing is going to be up to the individual viewer, but either way there's no denying that the two leads are a lot of fun to watch. Generally it isn't all that extreme in terms of violence or nudity, but you do get a bloody hand here and some wildly absurd male genital abuse there. The Blu-ray from Bloodsick distributed by MVD looks accurate to the intentionally dupey source, with a surprisingly active LPCM 2.0 stereo English track and English subtitles. Extras include a fun commentary with Longo, writers Zoe Angeli and Josh Schafer (who also has a meaty role in the film), and director of photography Michael DiFrancesco, an 18m58s blooper reel, a 19m20s batch of behind-the-scenes footage, and bonus trailers for Blood Sick Psychosis, A Corpse for Christmas, this film, The Pumpkinman Saga, Pumpkinman Lives, and Busted Babies. Buy here.
our main feature (no relation to the much more famous film of the same title made a year later), Euro-exploitation veteran Richard Harrison headlines as Earl Dent, a cop on the trail of serial killer Toby Gilmore (busy TV actor Benton Jennings) who's escaped from prison to embark on a fresh rampage of mayhem across Texas. Stuck in the middle is Fran (Blue Thompson), whose day out taking photos gets ruined when Gilmore takes her hostage and forces her to participate in wildly unsafe driving techniques. Lots of chasing, shooting, and yelling ensue in a fast-moving, very cheap quickie that delivers exactly what it promises. Released on VHS from Rae Don Home Video in the early '90s, this was a more ambitious project than usual for Texas filmmaker Bret McCormick (The Abomination) but still one you had to dig around for at mom and pop shops at the time to discover.
kind seemed unlikely until a pristine VHS copy turned up from one of the cast members. The Blu-ray looks very "as is" under the circumstances, and it's nice to have the film back at all given how few people ever saw it before. McCormick delivers a new audio commentary and a 6m9s video interview covering the extreme difficulty of finding any source to release this, the film's status as his first to make any kind of profit, the process of working with a known name in Harrison, shooting in Texas, and lots more. "Red Hot Asphalt" with Harrison clocks in at 1m26s with credits longer than the two sentences he says, and it's guaranteed to crack you up. Then in "Road Trip" (12m48s), Thompson chats about the luxury of having an actual crew on this film, not ever working with Harrison apart from one fleeting moment, and the recruiting of locals for talent in front of and behind the camera. The brief "Blue Thompson Answers Tough Questions" (3m38s) is exactly what the title indicates, with her talking more jokingly about the film in front of the most gun-crazy virtual background. "Writing A Road Map to Hell" (7m43s) with screenwriter Gary Kennamer covers the Dallas filmmaking scene, the inspiration he drew from The African Queen, the quick two-day use of Harrison, the day jobs everyone was holding during production, and other memories from the shoot. Finally an interview with actor Tom Fegan (4m37s) goes into his connections to the other participants and has a comparison to Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless that'll make you do a spit take. A 38s image gallery and trailer are also included, and the aforementioned bonus movie (which barely clocks in over an hour) directed by Kennamer basically features to dumb guys who talk exactly like Bill and Ted making their way through the backwoods, talking a lot with everyone they meet, and eventually getting into low-voltage trouble. That one comes with a McCormick-Kennamer commentary, a McCormick interview (6m45s) about the connections to Fred Olen Ray and David DeCoteau, and a Kennemer interview (12m15s) about how it all came together, plus a trailer. The set also comes with a fun "stick your own" VHS sticker sheet and a fold-out mini-poster. Buy here.
have had the market corned on shot-on-video slasher movies in the '80s, other countries got in on the act with some crazed entries of their own. One of the earliest examples is 1982's The Bleeder from Sweden, which actually came out the same year as the one that started it all in America, Boardinghouse. Directed by local pop music magazine innovator Hans Hatwig, this one checks all the boxes as we follow all-girl rock band Rock Cats (played by members of the real band Vevanch), sort of a mixture of new wave, punk, and rock, as they head home from their latest tour through the wilderness. Of course their van breaks down, which puts them in the vicinity of the bleeder of the title, a 
homicidal maniac whose hemophilia causes him to shed blood while he lurks around in the sprawling abandoned estate he's taken over. One by one, they... well, you know the drill. Though low on actual gore despite the title, this is high on kitsch value with the lookalike band members getting chased around in the woods while still wearing their performing outfits. As you'd expect it's technically rough and devoid of any artistic value, but that's a given.
how about an '80s horror-musical hardcore film inspired by the bestselling album of the entire decade? As you can guess from the title, 1984's Driller riffs on a certain smash hit Michael Jackson album and particularly its epic-length title song music video, courtesy of one-shot director "Joyce James," a.ka. Cindy Cirile, wife of Black Roses and Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare's John Fasano with whom she served in numerous production capacities. Here we dive into the delirium unleashed by the musical success of pop star Mr. J (an anonymous not-really-lookalike actor) who has a particularly potent impact on bobbysoxer fan Louise (Taija Rae). After an unsatisfying post-concert tryst with her boyfriend, 
she descends into a sexual nightmare involving lots of dancers, Mr. J turning into a werewolf while ravishing her, and a trip to a dungeon and graveyard populated by orgy attendees and monsters. It's basically a bunch of music video-style scenes strung together with explicit coupling with familiar faces like George Payne involved, but the highest entertainment value comes from the ridiculous soundalike songs that come as close to the film's inspiration as possible without getting sued. You've never seen anything like it. Shot on 35mm with actual prints struck but never all that great-looking on home video, Driller hit VHS from VCA and apparently had all of its film elements lost somewhere along the way. The 2026 Blu-ray from Wild Eye Releasing is pulled from the Betacam master tapes and looks watchable for dated SD, also porting over a couple of extras from the 2011 DVD from Devil's Den. The hilarious "Driller with Bits & Pieces" with producer Timothy Green Beckley (27m46s) is a very colorful account of his time working as a critic for Hustler and his time in the industry including the circumstances that birthed this unusual pop culture curio in an industry where parody was the easiest way to avoid getting into legal trouble. Also included is a strange and random audio interview with actress Esmerelda (4m25s) and "Mr. Creeper" talking about monster movies and other random subjects over footage of her and Quasimodo... well, you[ll see. An image gallery, teaser trailer, and Blu-ray trailer are also included, and the disc comes with a fold-out poster. Buy here or here. 
industry but aiming for a much more mainstream audience is the abrasive 1992 indie "youth gone wild" film Dead Boyz Can't Fly, which somehow got a wide and aggressive direct-to-VHS release in 1992 from VCI. Though you wouldn't have guessed it at the time unless you recognized the "Command Cinema" branding, this turned out to be the handiwork of adult filmmaker Cecil Howard (under his real name Howard Winters) in what would turn out to be his last feature before his retirement. Very few rental customers were happy when they brought this one home, and apart from the opening sequence, you won't find much of Howard's colorful, chic aesthetic here in this jaded diatribe against modern violent culture. A Vietnam vet janitor, John (David John), narrates the story at a typewriter as he relates his experiences tangling with the havoc unleashed when artist Buzz (Jason Stein) shows up at his building for a job interview. Things go 
very badly, prompting the violent, unstable Buzz to attack and kill a Marilyn Monroe lookalike secretary that night and then enlist his creep pals Jo Jo (Daniel J. Johnson) and gender-bending Goose (Brad Friedman) into staging an all-out assault on the premises the next day to rob and terrorize anyone in sight. 
at the time for Black neighborhood video stores where labels like Xenon had been flourishing. The dark world of folklore and nursery rhymes hangs heavily over a community where legend tells of Undertaker Zach, "a mortician who went craaaazy and slaughtered his entire family with a scalpel. Then he regretted it so he embalmed them with a special embalming 
fluid so he can keep them around." Now anyone could be a target for Zach's occasional need to snatch a victim to keep his family preserved in his "old and raggedy" house, once a funeral parlor with ties to the Underground Railroad. After multiple murder sequences (including the well-deserved castration of a puking hobo who kicks dogs off-screen), the film settles into focusing on multiple teenagers with a slew of personal problems who run away from home for some booze and making out. Soon they get chased by cops after running a red light which has them ending up at Undertaker Zach's house, where the legend proves to be all too true. Featuring more depth and plot twists than the norm, Embalmer packs a lot into its 86-minute running time with an effective final stretch and a nice stinger ending. Obviously the pacing and acting can get bumpy at times given this was made for very minimal money, but director S. Torriano Berry and his cast get a lot of mileage out of it here anyway including some squishy gore effects.
between his debut film The Roost and his breakthrough with The House of the Devil, Ti West's Trigger Man from 2007 is a curious entry in an unpredictable career probably closest to one other outlier later on, In a Valley of Violence. Getting away from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, three friends -- Reggie (Reggie Cunningham), Ray (Ray Sullivan), and Sean (Sean Reid) -- take some time off to go deer hunting in the wilds of Delaware. After much bonding and beer drinking, they come across a seemingly abandoned processing mill where they suddenly become the target of 
an unseen sniper. Fighting for their lives and with their number dwindling, they have to use their wits and any remaining physical strength to survive. Very spare and simple, this one is, as you'd expect from this point in the director's career, very languid and chatty for the initial stretch but then bursts into an effective survival story. Shot on standard def miniDV in one week with very little funds, it's obviously far less polished than what was to come but has some effective atmosphere and a good knack for building suspense. The premise feels a bit like a partial, stripped-down riff on the now long-unseen 1976 Canadian film Shoot, which oddly enough made entertainment industry news very recently when it was plagiarized for the Apple series The Hunt from France. 
films for decades, but it gets a very novel twist in the 2021 horror film Slapface, a kid's-eye monster movie guaranteed to unsettle. First seen engaging in a harsh game of slapping each other, Lucas (August Maturo) and his older brother Tom (Mike Manning) have recently lost their mother who raised them alone after leaving 
their abusive dad. Lucas is fascinated by the local Fishkill Wakefield House, home of the dreaded Virago Witch according to local lore, and gets his chance to explore it by force thanks to the only three bullying classmates who will give him the time of day. There he meets a robed, fanged, shadowy creature who has a violent, punitive effect on Lucas' life that will soon build up a body count.
outside any normal classification is the direct-to-video oddity Psychotropic Overload, a 1994 micro-budget arty thriller largely taking place in a therapist's office with a camera capturing the proceedings. Mixing analog color video with a mixture of black-and-white and color 8mm and 16mm footage, it's a 75-minute reality-bending experience with 
director Joseph F. Alexandre playing Christian, a possibly homicidal, overmedicated, and sexually confused man whose sessions are being taped by his distracted and highly unprofessional therapist, Steven (David Wittman). All of it may be tied to a string of male model disappearances and murders which mingle with flashbacks and dream sequences, with the inevitable big twist waiting in the wings. The kind of film that could either fascinating your or turn you off completely a few minutes in, this one mixes long, mundane shots of therapy speak with stylish interjections and flashes of violence, and though the result gets more than a little muddled at times, it's obviously the work of a distinctive voice. The director-star himself sheds some light on the film and doesn't shy away from its shortcomings either on the Blu-ray release from VHSHitfest, which presents the film in all its SD analog glory with optional English subtitles for the DTS-HD MA 2.0 English stereo audio. (And yes, it really does have an aggressive stereo mix, a rarity for this caliber of film at the time.) The production itself gets covered in three featurettes, "Making of Part 1: Ideation & Influences" (10m3s), "Making of Part 2: Production" (17m14s), and "Making of Part 3: Legacy" (5m5s), with the filmmaker talking softly with varying degrees of facial hair in his car and an office, plus "Critical Response" (21m14s) with him covering the film's reception and a 1m29s gallery of press coverage. On top of that the film itself comes with three(!) audio commentaries: Alexandre and actor Tracy Reis, and two solo ones by Alexandre, all spoken very softly. Good luck if you decide to marathon through all three. Buy here. PREVIOUS SICK PICKS:
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