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.

What happens when a speedometer-cable factory worker mortgages his house, car and furniture, and takes two weeks of “sick leave” to make what he’s certain will be “a masterpiece” of horror cinema? Something far short of that, as demonstrated by that eventual film, 1977’s The Demon Lover, and this warts-and-all documentary on its making, with apologies to the word “making.”

Never officially released commercially and not likely to, Demon Lover Diary was captured by the camera of Joel DeMott as her boyfriend, Jeff Kreines, volunteers to shoot the debut film of his friend, the aforementioned toiler Donald G. Jackson, who co-directed with Jerry Younkins, an arrogant hothead who cut off his own finger to get $8,000 of insurance money to fund their dream. They should have dreamed harder.

Don and Jerry are revealed less as creative geniuses and more as temper-prone diva babies. For some reason, they don’t want the donated efforts of a sound man, Jeff’s buddy Mark Rance; Don deceives his kindly mother, at whose house they’re crashing; and one of their recruited female stars is missing one of her front teeth. Plus, she’s 14 — a year for every scheduled day of principal photography.

While Don and Jerry claim to have worked their asses off, Jeff, Joel and Mark instead find an extremely disorganized set. Don won’t help move any equipment: “A director really shouldn’t be carrying anything. I’m carrying the weight of the whole film.” The only continuity among their scenes, Jeff notes, is stupidity. Don and Jerry are all talk and no action: “We think we’re going to come up with the best low-budget horror movie ever made,” says Jerry.

They didn’t. All this and a cameo by a belching Ted Nugent! —Rod Lott

I’m no fan of professional wrestling as sport, entertainment or otherwise — I’ve always had an aversion to it, and always will — but I was intrigued by Saturday Night Live scribe Barry Blaustein’s documentary Beyond the Mat, which tells the stories of the wrestlers outside of the ring, from the perspective of a fan who nonetheless doesn’t shy away from showing the pitfalls of the game.

While pro wrestling is all staged and all show, the violence can be real. But the ring footage is boring compared to the remarkably candid peeks in the thick-necked personalities’ lives. See “living legend” Terry Funk put off retirement, although he needs new knees. See Jake “The Snake” Roberts go on a crack-induced rant-’n’-rave. See WWF head honcho Vince McMahon come off as more repellent and slimy than ever before. See the audition of the new recruit Puke — so named because of his ability to barf on cue (and, as the end credits reveal, now paralyzed following a fight).

Best of all, see family man Mick “Mankind” Foley’s young kids watch in tears and sheer terror as their father gets beaten up by The Rock. It happens.

The doc is alternately interesting, funny, uncomfortable and touching. It has more spandex and mullets than should be allowed in a feature film, but that goes with the territory, right? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

As if Mark Hartley’s 2008 documentary, Not Quite Hollywood, weren’t deliriously entertaining enough, the director follows it up with the equally outrageous Machete Maidens Unleashed! Whereas Quite cast its probing eye on Australia’s deep history in exploitation film, Unleashed examines the Filipino revolution in moviemaking, even if much of that wave was due to American invaders — namely one Roger Corman.

While the Philippines was home to many a native production, it wasn’t until director Eddie Romero dipped his toes into horror with the likes of Terror Is a Man and the Blood Island trilogy that local audiences gave a damn, not to mention dollars. When Corman launched New World Pictures, he found he could make his cheap women-in-prison opuses even cheaper by shooting there, bringing an authentic bungled-jungle look to his Hollywood product.

Chock full of interviews with the movement’s filmmakers and performers who remain alive (plus John Landis), the excellent Unleashed also considers the careers of Cirio H. Santiago (Savage!, TNT Jackson), Bobby Suarez (Bionic Boy, One-Armed Executioner) and pint-sized actor Weng Weng (For Your Height Only, The Impossible Kid), all of whom helped keep the industry busy. So active was the Asian republic that Corman eventually parodied his productions there with Hollywood Boulevard, and Francis Ford Coppola turned it into a war zone with Apocalypse Now.

With intriguing sidebars on the safety measures not taken by Filipino stuntmen and the film fandom of shoe addict Imelda Marcos, Unleashed showcases so many movies of questionable quality — Twilight People, Beyond Atlantis, Vampire Hookers (“Blood isn’t all they suck!”) — that you’re advised to keep a notebook handy. Your “must-see” list will grow by the dozens. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.