August 11, 2025
2013's A Life in Dirty Movies, a documentary about prolific American writer-director Joseph W. Sarno and his actress wife, Peggy, whom he married in 1970. At the 
point Joe had established a career in successful softcore erotica mostly shot in the U.S. and Scandinavia like Inga, Sin in the Suburbs, and Moonlighting Wives, and together they turned out a slew of softcore and eventually hardcore films well into the '80s. Completed three years after Joe's death, the doc got considerable play at genre-themed festivals and ran numerous times on Showtime -- but it stubbornly refused to get a physical media release in the U.S. for years. (It did turn up on DVD in Sweden from Klubb Super 8 and with very little attention from Film Movement, belatedly.) Directed by Wiktor Ericsson, the film captures the final days of Joe and Peggy trying to put together one last film, with a number of fans, actors, and scholars turning up here including John Waters, Michael J. Bowen, Michael Raso, Annie Sprinkle, and more. It's a valuable snapshot of the married couple at home and at work over the course of 82 minutes, complete with a generous array of film clips (all sourced from SD and looking sad next to the remastered versions we've gotten in more recent years). Eventually the film made its way to American Blu-ray from Film Movement, featuring a nice presentation of the digitally-shot production with English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo or 5.1 audio options with optional English SDH subtitles. The region-free release also has an audio commentary with Ericsson and Rickard Gramfors about the process of putting the project together and being around the Sarnos for an extended period of time, extended segments dedicated to Come Blow the Horn (6m5s) and Young Playthings (2m17s), and additional participant interview footage with Tod Moore (4m46s), Katinka (4m33s), Sarah Denby (3m10s), Annie Sprinkle (2m51s), and Jamie Gillis (2m50s). Buy here and here.
be found with 2023's Sharksploitation, a survey of the ongoing cinematic fascination with the giant creatures who have captured audience's imaginations since they hit blockbuster status with Jaws. Since then 
sharks have earned a reputation as mammoth movie villains, a far cry from what they are in reality, and in more recent years they've exploded to absurd pop culture status with Sharknado and its many cut-rate imitators and offshoots. Here they get covered across the spectrum from their pre-Jaws depictions in film and TV to real-life shark attacks and the array of spoofs, copycats, and cameos over the years with guests including Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Mike Gingold, Rebekah McKendry, and lots of actors, directors, conservationists, and marine biologists. The usual big studio fare like Deep Blue Sea and The Meg get acknowledged here, though the feeding frenzy of microbudget jokes gets a lot of attention as well for better or worse. It's a craze that shows no signs of abating (especially with the endurance of Discovery's Shark Week still going strong), and both newbies and veterans alike will probably hear something new here. The doc was originally made for and aired on Shudder, who brought it to Blu-ray under their own imprint in 2025 as a special edition including the usual limited slipcase option. As you'd expect it looks great (with the obvious fluctuations when it comes to archival material) and comes with a fine DTS-HD MA 5.1 English track with optional English SDH subtitles. An audio commentary with writer-director-producer Stephen Scarlata and producer Josh Miller explains how the whole project came together with them wrapping their arms around the topic from collecting essential research material (including the obvious Peter Benchley digging) and tracking down a wide spectrum of participants who could offer different perspectives on the topic. Also included are extended and deleted interviews with Mary Roach (4m22s), Glenn Campbell (4m10s), Mark Polonia (7m46s), David Worth (10m38s), Misty Talley (10m42s), Joe Alves (17m35s), Mario Van Peebles (8m44s), and Scott Devine (6m24s), which can be played as one 70m23s reel as well. Gingold turns up again for the new "Endlessly Fascinating" (24m35s), a deeper solo dive into the topic exploring the compelling nature of sharks and their role as arguably the reigning current movie monster champs in pop culture. The release also comes with an insert booklet featuring a new essay by Samuel Cohen. Buy here or here.
hasn't been exploited all that much in horror movies, with occasional entries including the rampaging red dresses from In Fabric and I'm Dangerous Tonight. A very Canadian attempt with a lot on its plate over the course of its 
trim 77 minutes is 2020's Slaxx, which tackles predatory capitalism, labor exploitation, TikTok superficiality, blind consumerism, racism, environmentalism, and homicidal sentient dancing jeans... not necessarily in that order. At a flagship Montreal store for a trendy clothing manufacturer, young new employee Libby (Romane Denis) arrives in time for the launch of Super Shapers, a hot new design that can adjust to your body's shape. However, the shipment proves to be deadly when the jeans start killing off the staff by bisecting, hypnotizing, and mangling anyone unlucky enough to be alone in a room with them. As the survivors locked in for the night figure out what's behind the bloody events, will they live long enough to tell the world? Predominantly created by women including writer-director Elza Kephart and co-writer Patricia Gomez, Slaxx gets a solid amount of mileage out of its central concept with an evolving string of twists for its bloodthirsty casual wear including various means to express itself. The Shudder Blu-ray looks excellent and features a functional DTS-HD MA 5.1 English track with optional English SDH subtitles, plus a production-oriented commentary with Kephart and Gomez who have a lot of fun chronicling how local talent was wrangled to pull off the location scouting and effects feats. You also get an insert featuring an essay by Tori Potenza, and though it wasn't advertised with the specs, the disc also includes an 8m39s making-of featurette, a trailer, a 2m43s effects featurette, and a 1m44s EPK promo. Buy here or here.
different way is The Killing Tide, a virtually unknown action thriller made in 1997 (shot on film but edited on video) set in Michigan over the course of a very eventful Fourth of July weekend. After burying a dismembered body in the 
woods, hit man Frank Carillo (Steve Jones) hops into a boat with his bikini-clad girlfriend accomplice Darlene (Rebecka Read) to the accompaniment of an amazing synth-soul ballad... and we're off to the races. Sheriff Cody (Carl Lamb) is tangled up with some shady land developers and politicians who are trying to figure "which bear shit in the buckwheat" allowing the mob to muscle in on their turf, and after he horseplays with a bunch of all-female roomies, Frank is dragged into the criminal shenanigans that are setting him and fellow greaser assassin "Benny the Weasel" (Benedetto Sorrentino) up as one of the targets. Massive shootouts, car stunts, boat mayhem, and a crowd scene climax with an incendiary helicopter gag are among the highlights here from a film you can't believe was mostly shelved outside of a Japanese VHS release. Sure, there's a lot of standing around and yapping in the first half, but it's worth the wait and you can enjoy plenty of regional Michigan flavor along the way. The Blu-ray release from VHSHitfest will obviously be a first-time experience for pretty much anyone who grabs it, and the "new transfer from the original master" looks about as good something edited on tape in the late '90s possibly could. For fun they've also thrown in a rip of the Japanese VHS with burned-in subtitles, which is a nice throwback to the gray market tape days; content-wise it seems to be the same otherwise. You also get a new commentary with Jones about his experiences making the film and an interview with writer, director, and co-producer David DuBay (56m16s) who chats about putting the film together with his brother and sister after his career doing marketing and sales at Disney and Columbia. An interview with Sorrentino (26m34s) covers his acting career path, the cinematographer who'd worked on Mork and Mindy, the backgrounds of some of his fellow actors including a weatherman, and more. Also included are a very action-packed trailer, a 5m14s locations featurette, and the 1995 VHS-sourced local documentary Clinton River Chronicles (76m23s), also made by the DuBays and covering the high points and tourist appeal of the same filming area. Buy here or here.
production, Twisted Issues from 1988 is the debut film from Charles Pinon who got quite a bit of attention among SOV hounds in 2022 with the Saturn's Core release of Red Spirit Lake and We Await. Here he combines two things that should have crossed paths a lot more often: skateboarders and zombies. Shot around Gainesville, Florida and soaked in pop culture media, the production started as a loose chronicle of the punk skateboard culture in the area (and still feels like it) but coalesced into a horror film loosely involving a guy named Paul who gets jumped and eventually killed by some lowlifes late one night. 
A mad scientist brings him back to life and, equipped with a skateboard bolted to his foot, he embarks on a hazy path of revenge. Lots of punk music gets played, political TV clips pop up at random, Pinon sits around watching TV, and disaffected youths spout philosophy. There's also a fair amount of stage blood and Mario Bava-style lighting. Mostly self-circulated on VHS, this one finally got its due with a 2025 Blu-ray from Saturn's Core featuring what's touted as a "band new restoration of the feature supervised by director Charles Pinion." Whatever that might have entailed, it still looks like an interlaced VHS tape from 1988, so keep your expectations in check (and ditto for the DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono track, whose English SDH subs do a valiant job of trying to transcribe everything). Pinon turns up for a fun new audio commentary chatting with Mike Hunchback about the evolution of the film and the colorful personalities involved, and you also get two more tracks -- a somewhat muffled and loose one with the cast (Pinion, David Peck, Victor Wilkinson, Debra Fetzer, and Lisa Soto) and a much more legible screenwriter track with Pinion, Steve Antczak, and James Bassett. If all that doesn't scratch your itch to find out everything you could possibly want to know about this film, there's also a video interview with Pinon, "The Twisted Truth" (10m46s), and a second conversation with him and S.A. Bradley of the Hellbent for Horror podcast called "Horror is the Punk Rock of Cinema" (17m56s), all about the merits of underground art and its sources of inspiration. The Heather Drain visual essay "Painting with the Blood of False Gods" (8m20s) follows suit exploring how the film marches to the beat of its own drum, followed by the behind-the-scenes featurette "Blood & Laughs" (12m8s), a "Twisted Singles" (31m43s) collection of unedited live music performances from the film, a full 17m37s set by Mutley Chix from 1987, a full live set from the same year by The Doldrums (36m44s), and a Pinon trailer vault (11m56s)-- plus a 28-page insert book edited by Jason Pankoke with essays by Drain, Vincent Albarano, Mike Watt, and Pinion. Buy here or here.
Italian horror films but a whole lot squishier is 1998's Disembodied, which was beautifully shot on 16mm but ended up going straight to VHS from Dead Alive looking like a shadow of its intended self. Now it's been chosen as the inaugural 
UHD release from Bleeding Skull, with an eye-popping HDR presentation that looks far more striking than you could have ever expected. At a grungy hotel that feels like Basket Case crossed with Dr. Caligari, crazed young scientist Connie Sproutz (Anastasia Woolverton) has set up shop inside one of the rooms to perform ghastly experiments involving a Cronenbergian growth popping out of her face and a brain in a jar. There are also some psychedelic trips to an alien world, a weirdo clerk downstairs, and various tenants and pickups who get sucked into her biological nightmares being brewed up in her bathtub. If you like your body horror on the wilder side with plenty of brains, blood, and oddball dancing, this is just the ticket. Both the UHD and Blu-ray feature an audio commentary with director William Kersten chatting with Unsung Horror's Lance Schibi about the multiple versions of the film, the crafting of the effects, the decision to shoot on 16mm, and the recruiting of the actors. Woolverton and Hannah Neace (who plays alluring neighbor Trixie) appear separately in a new interview featurette (11m20s) about their acting backgrounds including stage work and their memories of the shoot, and you also get two more viewing options for the film: a 2016 "director's cut" (which tightens it up by two minutes, adds some digital effects, and sports a pretty good stereo sound mix versus the original mono one) and the full Dead Alive VHS version complete with the original trailers at the beginning. Also included are an 8m23s "Japanese VHS introduction" (some trailers and an odd new prologue), the Japanese VHS trailer as Killer Virgin, and the U.S. VHS trailer, plus a booklet with an essay by Bleeding Skull's Annie Choi. Buy here or here.
example of colorful, gloppy body horror can be found in 2024's Street Trash, a Vinegar Syndrome original production that serves more or less as a sequel-remix-reboot of the 1987 cult classic. Set in the future year of 2050 in Capetown, our story unfolds among the disenfranchised population who make up the only social class besides the utterly corrupt and heartless rich. The newest addition to the group, Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson), quickly notices that her peers are disappearing and realizes it's all tied to a brand of booze called Viper being implemented by the evil mayor to clean up the streets... permanently. The premise of the original was a very clear, extremely profane unrated response to the brutal social policies that had been 
flourishing throughout the '80s, and a redo here actually feels a little ahead of the curve given the treatment of the growing impoverished population today. That isn't really what you get though as director Ryan Kruger (Fried Barry) goes for something that feels a lot more like an updating of Death Warmed Up, complete with weird fourth wall breaking, colored gel lighting galore, and practical fluid-spraying effects. As with Strange Darling around the same time, this one made a big deal in its promotion about being shot on 35mm film and finished in 4K, which makes it a bit of a puzzler (lukewarm fan and critical reception aside) that Vinegar Syndrome only opted to release in on Blu-ray. It still looks quite impressive though with the synthwave-worthy color scheme popping nicely off the screen, and the DTS-HD MA 5.1 English track sounds solid apart from some clunky mixing choices in the original mix. Optional English SDH subs are provided along with an alternate 2.0 mix, plus a commentary with Kruger, producer David Franciscus, and actors Sean Cameron Michael and Joe Vaz about the nuts and bolts of the production including the standout meltdown effects. "Trash Talk" (7m12s) features executive producer Roy Frumkes (who produced and wrote the original) discussing his role in the film including getting the blessing of the original's director, Jim Muro, his take on the Jewish jokes in the script, and his thoughts on how it updates a cult favorite. In "The New Trash" (11m54s), producer Justin Martell covers the development of film through various phases after deciding to not do a direct sequel as well as the production process in South Africa. Also included are a behind-the-scenes featurette (9m15s), a music video by Joe Vaz / ten Athlone, a 19m41s serving of deleted and extended scenes, a red-band trailer, and a 2m38s still gallery. Buy here or here.
there's also a much-belated Blu-ray release of 2005's Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, which basically followed the path of Little Shop of Horrors from micro-budget black-and-white curio to Off-Broadway musical 
(in this case originating in 2001) to splashy color musical movie. In this case the film was picked up by Showtime who debuted it on their cable channel, followed by a VHS release with a limited theatrical release in a handful of countries. Alan Cumming appears in a variety of roles here but most prominently as The Lecturer, a voice of doom straight out of the '30s scare film tactics of the original warning parents about the grave dangers their offspring can face by partaking of the devil's weed. Case in point: wholesome teens Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell, who originated the role) and Mary Lane (Kristen Bell, during her first year on Veronica Mars), who are separately dragged into a psychological and spiritual hell thanks to the neighborhood reefer house owned by dysfunctional couple Jack (Steven Weber) and Mae (Ana Gasteyer). Hallucinations, criminal acts, and psychotic musical numbers quickly follow, with John "The Cryptkeeper" Kassir stealing all of his scenes as the weed-crazed Ralph. By this point the original film had been long entrenched as a college midnight movie favorite for decades thanks to its goofy alarmist depictions of the consequences of indulging, and this one runs wild with the idea tossing out barbs at political and social prudishness as well. It's especially fun seeing Bell near the start of her career going wild including a great bit in a dominatrix outfit terrorizing Kassir, and the silly songs are all performed with plenty of gusto. The film was part of a spate of intentionally kitschy retro films in the first half of the '00s (a la Psycho Beach Party, Down with Love, etc.), and like those it's been somewhat under the radar ever since. A 2005 DVD from Showtime was okay for the time, but the film looks a whole lot better on the 2025 Blu-ray from Dark Star which comes from the greatly improved HD master that's been out on streaming for a few years. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English stereo track sounds vibrant throughout, with a Dolby Digital track also thrown on for some reason (plus English SDH subs). The disc is bare bones apart from a few bonus trailers, but at this point we'll take what we can get. Buy here or here.
the following year on Blu-ray, it's a bloody, Tarantino-inspired spaghetti western pastiche mostly shot in Kansas by indie filmmaker Austin Snell. After her husband is assassinated by a bounty hunter, pig farmer Molly Pray (Sheri Rippel) goes gunning for justice and picks up some allies as she uncovers a web of murders and financial crimes with a corrupt sheriff at the center. As you can probably surmise from the title, 
this one veers into horror territory more than a few times including a very gory gut-ripping sequence early on and some trippy genre criss-crossing during the final stretch. The 16mm lensing has been treated to give it a vintage look with intentional damage specks and weak black levels, so take that for what you will; if you want lots of blood spattering and a clear affection for '70s Euro exploitation, dig on in. The Yellow Veil Blu-ray appears to be true to the source and has plenty of texture and atmosphere, with English audio options in DTS-HD MA 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 with optional English subs. Snell and producer-visual effects artist Adam Jeffers provide the first audio commentary covering everything from the numerous cinematic influences (from Shane onward) through the casting from around the Topeka area and the filming process on found locations. A second commentary is devoted entirely to the actors with Rippel, Jeff Boyer, Devan Garcia and Jason Puff looking back at the DIY nature of several scenes, their own background experiences, and their approaches to their characters as well as their rapport with the rest of the crew. On the video extras side you get a fun interview with practical effects artist Jake Jackson (18m32s) in his shop, a visit by Snell to the Vinegar Syndrome Archive to stash this film's negative (15m20s), a lengthy making-of doc (46m13s) mixing cast and crew interviews with on-set footage, a huge panel Q&A at the Liberty Hall Theatre (41m31s), two storyboard-to-scene comparisons (3m18s), and a trailer, while the disc comes with an insert featuring an essay by Gregory Lamberson. Buy here or here.PREVIOUS SICK PICKS:
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