Skepticism prevented me from seeing how Room 237 director Rodney Ascher could make a compelling feature documentary on the subject of sleep paralysis. The Nightmare is not only a mind-grabber, but a sphincter-clencher. Even those viewers who do not struggle with sleep paralysis — read: about 93 percent of us — should find it unsettling all the same. After all, bad dreams are bad dreams: relatable, no matter what might scare you.

Yet sleep paralysis is more than mere bad dream. It’s a condition in which the sleeper hallucinates a terrifying scenario, yet feel physically unable to move a muscle in reaction. In interviewing eight people spread about all jagged corners of our nation, Ascher finds startling commonalities in their stories, which Nightmare re-enacts with disturbing precision and visuals simultaneously simple and creepy as hell: shadows, static, glowing red eyes. (Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again, about why on earth you’re doing this to me!)

I should have known better; the guy made an eerie, hair-raising short about the Screen Gems logo that, after three viewings, still gives me the shivers. The Nightmare scares while serving the interest of science, and raises an intriguing theory about the correlation of events reported by sleep paralysis sufferers and by people claiming to be alien abductee; in other words, the latter may “just” be the former and don’t know it.

Anyway, good night! Sleep tight! Don’t let your anus be probed! —Rod Lott

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Fact or fiction or somewhere in between, the box-office smash The Amityville Horror and the Jay Anson best-seller from which it came are responsible for our nation’s collective consciousness surrounding the multiple murders in one Long Island home on Nov. 13, 1974, and the lingering phenomena reported to haunt it ever since. Among that “ever since” phase, the most famous is the focus of the 1979 movie: the short-term residence in 1975 of George and Kathy Lutz, and their three children.

In the documentary My Amityville Horror, eldest child Daniel Lutz recounts — to the sympathetic ears of psychologist Susan Bartell, to the camera of newbie filmmaker Eric Walter and to the curiosity of you, dear viewer — what the family went through in their 28 days at 112 Ocean Ave. Now a middle-aged father himself and a near-doppelgänger for actor Michael Chiklis (TV’s The Shield), Lutz is only just beginning to articulate what he still doesn’t understand, even with 35 years of hindsight.

Not everything that comes from his mouth can be filed under “complete sense,” but one thing is crystal-clear: He believes and buys in to his mother and stepfather’s story that ignited a cultural phenomenon for nearly four decades now (and more recently debunked as fraud in the name of greed). He also drops bombshells not included in Anson’s 1977 quasi-novel or its two screen adaptations (the blockbuster original or the less-successful 2005 remake): that Daniel found himself possessed, that he was physically abused by a priest, that he witnessed George demonstrating powers of telekinesis.

Experts hailing from both sides of the issue — hoax and truth — contribute their opinions as well, including parapsychologist Lorraine Warren (played by Vera Farmiga in The Conjuring franchise with more credibility than is deserved), who is interviewed while her identical twin roosters cock-a-doodle-doo in the background. Ultimately, My Amityville Horror offers no definitive answers — hell, how could it? — but the questions it raises, both old and new, undeniably hold interest. Draw your own conclusions; you’re apt to loan Walter’s documentary your attention regardless whether you believe a word of it or not. —Rod Lott

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After the acclaimed 2009 documentary Cropsey, what does filmmaker Joshua Zeman do for a follow-up? More of the same, with emphasis on “more.” See, rather than spend an hour and a half investigating the truth behind another urban legend, Killer Legends sees Zeman investigating four of them. The film’s style continues in that Cropsey vein, meaning I was glad I wasn’t watching this at night or alone.

Again acting as narrator and on-camera interviewer, writer/director Zeman gains a co-conspirator in researcher Rachel Mills. Together, they form a true-life Mulder and Scully, as they travel across the United States to dig into each case, in hopes of separating the myth from the mystery. Only the occasional and obviously staged bit of setup or transition strikes a false note; it’s no coincidence that both times they venture into pitch-black wooded areas, Mills manages to frighten herself.

As for their subjects, the Killer quartet entails the Texarkana Phantom, as depicted in 1976’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown; tampered Halloween candy; killer clowns; and the terrorized babysitter, popularized by 1979’s When a Stranger Calls. Clips of these films, their remakes and related movies — from Campfire Tales to The House of the Devil — give the doc added production value, but Legends manages to elicit enough chills on its own. —Rod Lott

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Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoran Globus absolutely loved movies. It’s just too bad that, during their 1980s reign as owners of The Cannon Group, they had “cash registers where their hearts should be,” as disgruntled actress Laurene Landon puts it, just before she burns a VHS tape of America 3000, the forgotten flick she regrets making for them. Her anecdote represents the kind of filter-free candor that alights Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, Mark Hartley’s third (and reportedly final) documentary devoted to a specific branch of exploitation film.

Told with the same fervor flavor of his Not Quite Hollywood of 2008 and Machete Maidens Unleashed! two years later, Hartley’s Electric Boogaloo is a wondrous whirlwind tour of the chaos that erupted behind the B-movie label, birthing such releases as Breakin’, Bloodsport, Masters of the Universe, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Ninja III: The Domination and practically everything that decade in which Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson starred.

In general, those larger-than-life Cannon boys kept costs low, opened wide and, if they were lucky, clicked big with a ticket-buying public — a surefire formula until it suddenly wasn’t. Not coincidentally at the end of the ’80s, Golan and Globus bitterly parted ways; ever the dick-swinging showmen, the two then competed to beat the other to theaters with a movie about (of all things) the lambada dance craze. (Spoiler: Both opened the same day, to empty theaters.)

That “duel” is one of dozens of crazy, can’t-make-this-up stories shared by those Cannon alum who survived their time on various projects (and almost all of whom can do a killer Golan impression). We hear about the guys’ delusion that they were Oscar-bound with the Brooke Shields vehicle Sahara. That they stole private photos from Bo Derek’s bag, which they then issued as publicity stills for Bolero. That they accidentally cast Sharon Stone opposite Richard Chamberlain on King Solomon’s Mines because they thought they were getting Romancing the Stone’s Kathleen Turner. That their mid-movie replacement of a real orangutan with a fake one (a man in a suit) would go unnoticed — which it kinda did, since so few ever saw Going Bananas. That they made Michael Dudikoff a star with American Ninja because a super-vain Norris — not wanting his precious face obscured by ninja fabric — turned it down. There are tons more where those came from.

Supplemented with glorious clips, these tales arrive rapid-fire, ensuring Electric Boogaloo remains a live wire for its whole. Fast, loose and easy, the doc is over in less than two hours, yet so invigorating and engaging that I gladly would have sat for two more. —Rod Lott

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Before covering the subculture of cover bands in 2002’s little-seen Tributary, director Russ Forster pursued another “notable” subject in oddball music. So Wrong They’re Right examines the small, but fervent — okay, freakishly obsessed — cult surrounding the music industry’s most Jurassic of formats: the 8-track tape.

Filmed cross-country, the lo-fi movie interviews nearly two dozen 8-track enthusiasts — a few of them falling into what society would deem “normal,” but a majority of them otherwise — about their unusual hobby. Among the notable subjects are members of the ’90s grunge-rock outfit Gumball, who once bought a garage full of 30,000 tapes because they could, and a woman whose fondness for the format is surpassed only by an unhealthy fixation for toothy CHiPs star Erik Estrada.

Too long by a tad, yet always amusing, So Wrong proves not having a budget is insignificant if your camera is aimed at real people with compelling stories to tell. The highest praise I can give it is it made me want to buy one those cool, highly coveted “space helmet” 8-track players — not to play anything; just for purposes of aesthetic display. —Rod Lott