“Oh, no,” you say, “not another exorcism movie!”

And The Exorcism of Saint Patrick isn’t. Although it does contain the requisite expulsion of green puke, blame falls not to satanic possession, but a glass of ipecac syrup.

But try telling that to the fiercely religious parents of Patrick (newcomer Michael J. Cline), an obese, socially awkward teenager. Wanting to rid their son of his homosexuality, they send him to a secluded cabin for “conversion therapy” — aka abuse in the name of Jeeeee-zus — with a pastor (Steve Pinder, channeling the dapper smarminess of Justin Kirk). Really bad shit happens.

It’s like Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased redressed as a microbudget indie with a third-act jaunt into experimental horror. Before then, the horrors are real-world, and Quinn Armstrong’s work as the film’s writer and director feels deeply, disturbingly personal. Its turn to the ambiguous and allegorical is likely to frustrate viewers invested in the story, however spare. Be warned that about-face is preceded by snippets of hardcore gay porn as the conversion therapy becomes aversion therapy, bringing the aforementioned emetic into play.

I enjoyed Armstrong’s first feature, the bizarro cop comedy Survival Skills. While it wasn’t entirely successful, its subversive streak and VHS aesthetic felt original in the throes of COVID-19. The most creative piece of Saint Patrick is that it kicks off a trilogy Armstrong has branded under a Fresh Hell Presents banner, with the interconnected Wolves Against the World and Dead Teenagers following this first tale to VOD with one-week gaps between each. Whether the entire experience delivers a payoff that this one-off viewing cannot, we’ll know soon enough. —Rod Lott

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Who is Agatha Black and why is a chef’s dozen of tracks trying to frighten her? As appealingly (albeit a bit stiltedly) played by Bridie Marie Corbett, Agatha is practically a recluse — or “ree-cloose,” as a family member drawls — who barely gets out of the house she shares with her sickly aunt. 

Make that shared, past tense, as Aggy is healing from the horror of a recent break-in that ended with her aunt murdered. To cope, she absorbs herself with a beloved childhood curio: a stack of ghost story LPs her late father gifted her.

As she revisits the stories, which get progressively more grisly and adult, elements from the slabs of vinyl bleed into real life, like a neighboring couple fatally hammered beyond recognition. As they say in Dallas, where this was shot, just what in the Sam Hill is going on here?

13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black is a perfect title. I admire not only its rhyming structure, but also how it sounds like the names adorning so many of the spooky albums that entertained kids in the 1960s and ’70s. I should know; I was one of them (for the ’70s half, at least). Before we were allowed to see horror movies or read horror comics, we could listen to horror story records. They were a gateway. As such, I hold reverence for them, even if I never want to hear them with middle-aged ears, preferring to leave that spell unbroken. 

Whatever writer/director Bradley Steele Harding’s relationship is with 33 1/3 rpm novelties, his idea for 13 Tracks is ambitious, but also kinda brilliant! Other first-time filmmakers should be as lucky. Each time the needle drops on another tale, the fuzz on the soundtrack is so, so satisfying.

However, I almost didn’t watch it past the opening credits (narrated by cult legend Udo Kier, incidentally) because the dialogue-free prologue depicting Agatha as a child is off-puttingly overacted with motions befitting a mime’s routine. To be bluntly honest, I abandoned the movie twice across two years’ time before finally ceding my full attention, encouraged by a rave review in David John Koenig’s Lowest Common Denominator review guide. I’m glad I did. 

While not “sure to give you the whim-whams” — a Monster a Go-Go reference, I assume — Harding’s movie bears enough ingenious touches for a rainy afternoon’s entertainment. I’d love to see his idea fleshed out with real financial weight behind it. Additionally, I look forward to his sophomore feature, Occult Canvas, which appears to mine another object of 1970s nostalgia: Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. —Rod Lott

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Poor Becky. After walking for the length of the entire opening credits to her apartment, hopes for R&R get decimated by a phone call from an unnamed man who wants to tell her some “scary stories” and says she’s in … grave danger!

And also she’s in Jim Haggerty’s Grave Danger, a no-budget, shot-on-video anthology from the New York-based moviemaker whose name adorns the title. Not exactly the cachet of Tyler Perry, but perhaps a PSA of sorts, lest someone thinks they’re renting Quentin Tarantino’s CSI two-parter.

In the first story, paranoid Victor (Jae Mosc) believes he’s being followed by a tuxedoed chap, whom no one else sees. Becky’s reaction to this tale o’ terror? “Yes, it scared me. It was scary. Okay, is that what you want? Yes, it scared me.”

Then, there’s Carol (Kate Webster), who buys a gaudy tribal statuette that entrances her into donning lingerie and seducing deliverymen, only to kill them.

Thirdly and finally, Abe (Bud Stafford, The Putt Putt Syndrome) is a washed-up ventriloquist struggling to afford meds for his ailing wife (Kaye Bramblett, Squeeze Play). When a birthday party gig stiffs him on payment, Phineas extracts the debt in blood. Phineas is his dummy, BTW.

Oh, in between those vignettes, the caller (Jonathan Holtzman, Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl) convinces Becky (Debbie Kopacz) to undress to nothing. She complies.

Needless to say, none of Grave Danger qualifies as scary, outside of characters’ goombah pronunciations like “PAH-k,” “TAH-k” and “re-TAHD” for, respectively, “park,” “talk” and, well, let’s not get canceled. It needs a fourth story in which Haggerty explains how he convinces all these women — friends? family? apartment complex neighbors? — to take off all their clothes for, what, maybe $20 and free cardboard pizza?

Strangely, the one who doesn’t is top-billed Cathy St. George, erstwhile Playboy Playmate for August 1982, as Dr. Geraldine Masters, which I take as a reference to Don’t Look in the Basement. —Rod Lott

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