When the last Blockbuster Video in my neck of the woods closed recently, I smiled on the inside. Then I got nostalgic for the era of movie-watching that corporation exploited and killed: the VHS revolution. Anyone who recalls the days of frequenting mom-and-pop video stores or now spends weekends trolling flea markets for unwanted tapes will feel that joy return in a rush from Rewind This!

Josh Johnson’s documentary chronicles the VHS format from birth to death, and those for whom the words on its “Be Kind Rewind” sticker remain a way of life. In 94 minutes, he covers a ton of ground: the Beta vs. VHS showdown, the porn explosion (pun intended), the dawn of sell-through tapes, the lost art of cover art, the proliferation of the aforementioned Blockbuster, the legion of DIY filmmakers inspired, the tape-trading and bootlegging circuits — heck, even how the sudden glitch on a tape signaled that a lucky renter was seconds away from seeing sure-as-shit nudity.

Among Johnson’s interviewees are Something Weird Video’s Mike Vraney; Basket Case director Frank Henenlotter; Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; Full Moon’s Charles Band; Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman; and a number of film programmers, shop owners and obsessive collectors still touting VHS’ dominance. What I can’t tell — and it’s impossible to know — is if their love is misplaced; the format is inferior, but the sheer volume of titles it brought to their homes is mind-boggling.

Rewind This! is rife with clips, including oddball releases and outright obscurities. It’s a kick to see snippets of Bubba Smith’s workout video, Until It Hurts; Corey Haim’s misbegotten vanity project, Me, Myself and I; Leslie Nielsen’s Bad Golf Made Easier; a shot-on-video Western titled Death Rider; the first SOV adult film, Football Widow; 1984’s tasteless “horror” movie Black Devil Doll from Hell; and other atrocities, now preserved for the enjoyment and delight of future generations. —Rod Lott

Buy it at iTunes.

Word association time: Does hearing the title Orgy of the Dead make you think of Ed Wood? Odds are, it does, and man, did that ever piss off Stephen C. Apostolof! See, under the A.C. Stephen pseudonym, Apostolof directed that 1965 cult curio, whereas Wood simply wrote what few pages the script entailed. But who did Tim Burton choose to make a biopic about?

That jealousy is one of the major takeaways of Dad Made Dirty Movies, a documentary about the wild and crazy career of the “Bulgarian erotic director.” Because Apostolof died in 2005, his story is told largely by his third wife and four of his five children. It’s certainly an interesting one, since before the man hit it big on Hollywood’s fringes, he toiled in a concentration camp, worked as a whorehouse piano player and fought in the French Foreign Legion.

But what made him “one lucky donkey” was directing movies that featured “the world’s cheapest special effect”: female nudity. Including such titles as Suburbia Confidential and College Girls Confidential, his sex flicks had no actual sex — just big, bare breasts, which he called “ticket sellers.” And sell tickets they did until hardcore pornography — and worse, the combination of that with the VCR — had to spoil everything.

Rife with great stories — from Criswell intoxicated on the Orgy set to Apostolof supposedly being poisoned by his first wife — Jordan Todorov’s Dad Made Dirty Movies shines the spotlight on a guy who, yeah, is way overdue for his turn. I just wish the documentary were longer; at 58 minutes, not a moment is wasted, yet I could have been held captive for at least another half-hour. Other than that, the only complaint is having the thing narrated by someone doing an Apostolof imitation, wavering accent and all. This one’s tough to find, but well worth the hunt. —Rod Lott

Get it at Vimeo.

Director George Ratliff’s Hell House is a documentary that follows the parish of an Assembly of God church just outside of Austin, Texas, as it prepares for its 10th annual haunted house.

But the show they put on is not your average haunted house with Leatherface lookalikes and heads of cauliflower subbing for brains — the “Hell House” seeks to scare guests into fearing the Lord by depicting sinners at their worst: an AIDS patient rejecting Christ as he withers away on his deathbed; a girl about to commit suicide and blaming God after being roofied and raped at a rave; and a picked-upon student taking revenge on his classmates by killing them, as Satan has instructed.

In all cases, they are shown heading toward eternal damnation. The goal of the attraction is to have as many as of its tens of thousands of visitors converted to Christianity by the time they enter the final room.

At turns hilarious and sad, entertaining and disturbing, Hell House is a terrific, fly-on-the-wall look at this regional phenomenon, yet takes neither side. The characters may come off as sympathetic or zealots — that depends upon your own interpretation of their behavior. My favorite shot notes a pentagram the event volunteers have painted for a devil-worship scene, but mistakenly (?) made the Star of David instead. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I spend very little time with video games, but when I do, it’s Tetris. The play gets so ferocious that I later have stressful dreams about maneuvering its falling pieces. Turns out, this is perfectly natural — a problem shared by many of the Tetris-obsessed gamers profiled in the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters.

As a narrator informs us, two out of three Americans have played the game. This causes Portland resident Robin Mihara to wonder why the world’s arguably most-played game doesn’t have a world champion? Director Adam Cornelius’ camera follows Mihara as he locates and assembles the best blockers for a proper Tetris championship event.

The contestants include a woman who wears a Mercedes hood ornament around her neck, a guy whose strategy entails making his eyes veer in separate directions and, most notably, the enigmatic Thor Aackerlund, who won a national Nintendo championship at the age of 14 and since claims to have cracked the game’s fabled level 30, yet has offered no photographic proof. Watching them square off against one another raised my pulse.

The obvious comparison to Ecstasy of Order is 2007’s The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, the documentary about dueling Donkey Kong champs — so obvious, in fact, that it’s name-dropped by one of the players. But Ecstasy lacks that work’s Billy Mitchell, an arrogant bully to keep conflict and drama at a breathless high. In this doc, there are no villains; everyone’s a Steve Wiebe. That keeps Ecstasy from being as delirious entertaining as King of Kong, but makes it a natural for a second half of a double feature … because if you run it first, you’re just going to want to play Tetris, guaranteed. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Italy has America to thank for inspiring the subgenre known as Eurocrime, and we have director Mike Malloy to thank for compiling the definitive feature-length documentary on its origins, heyday and legacy in Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s. The exclamation point in the title is well-earned, as I didn’t want this work to end so soon. (It breaks the two-hour mark.)

As the prologue notes, the Italian film industry thrived by copying what worked in the U.S., from sword-and-sandal and spies to horror and Westerns. Stateside success of The Godfather and The French Connection quickly beget the poliziotteschi: in simple terms, the police film, but with insanely rushed production schedules that emphasized quantity over quality, and story elements that pushed the limits of sex and violence — exactly why so many Eurocrime pictures are so beloved today.

While Malloy’s doc oozes credibility in its many interviews of principal players from both sides of the camera (among them, John Saxon, Chris Mitchum, Fred Williamson, Franco Nero, Henry Silva, Joe Dallesandro and an arrogant Antonio Sabato), it’s the multitude of clips that makes Eurocrime! a blast to watch. The more extreme the movies got, the better, with neither children nor pets spared. You’ll witness montages of not just the standard chase scenes and bloody shootouts, but urine torture, genital attacks, tranny fights and junkyard tussles. Particular attention is paid to Jean-Paul Belmondo, who insisted on doing his own stunts. From all evidence, I can see why Jackie Chan was inspired by him, but not how he survived all that on-set self-abuse.

Both Malloy’s objectivity and passion drive Eurocrime! to greatness; he neither looks down on his subject nor exaggerates its importance. Adding to the fun are brief animated sequences and an absolutely kick-ass soundtrack featuring the music of Calibro 35, Glows in the Dark and others. This joyous work of dangerous cinema is destined to please the movement’s fans and convert everyone else. —Rod Lott

Learn more at its official site.