To enjoy the documentary about Rochester-based moviemaker Chris Seaver, you don’t have to be a fan, assuming you’ve even heard of the guy. You need not have seen Anal Paprika or Scrotal Vengeance or even Anal Paprika 2.

Just know he’s made upward of 75 flicks now, and, as one of his regular cast members notes, “most of them have come out.” My sole exposure to his work was a tasteless segment he contributed to the Hi-8 shot-on-video horror anthology. His backyard epics may be hard to like for the average viewer, but Zero Budget Heroes: The Legend of Chris Seaver & Low Budget Pictures is easy to love.

For this introspective retrospective, first-time director Zach Olivares captures the shooting days (all three of ’em!) of the ska-obsessed, rarely not ball-capped Seaver’s then-latest crass comedic opus, A Stoinkmare on Halloween Street. His titles — and penchant for terminology like “clam flaps” — suggest a juvenile approach to cinema. Proud yet humble, Seaver doubles down on this risk-free theory, telling Olivares’ camera, “I am a very immature human being.”

And he doesn’t apologize for it. (Well, except for playing the role of Bonejack in blackface. But hey, when an actor doesn’t show, it’s the director’s job to make lemonade.)

A modern-day Andy Hardy, Seaver enjoys a loyal band of repertory players eager to debase and deride themselves in the likes of Filthy McNasty, Moist Fury and Taintlight — barely scripted vehicles for “boobs and cum and poop jokes” — for no monetary reward.

And you know what? Now I kinda get it.

The more Seaver and company revisit his relative hits, affectionate misses and never-weres, the more you see the appeal — foremost for them; the audience, second. That’s by design, as no one is more surprised than Seaver at the level of success he’s enjoyed in the DIY realm. He and his friends make the movies to amuse themselves; that anyone devotes attention or time after that is pure bonus. One would think the enemy of this real-life story would be monetary deficiencies, but the Low Budget Pictures gang has turned that into an asset. (Also, the true enemy is Troma.)

I didn’t expect this doc to move me. But, like Seaver responding to the magnetic pull of making movies, I couldn’t help it. By the end, Olivares has done an excellent job of getting to the heart of the man’s work and why he and his comrades even bother. You’ll be glad they do, even if Sexquatch and Terror at Blood Fart Lake never, ever land in your queue. —Rod Lott

Often, changing the world takes a big idea and a bit of bravado. Nowhere on that path does a sign state narcissism as a toll to be paid, yet it happens. Money corrupts, kids! 99 Homes director Ramin Bahrani illustrates that never-truer concept with the first-rate documentary 2nd Chance, an American excess story about the valiant rise and ignoble fall of Richard Davis.

After a pizza delivery turned gunfight in ’69 Detroit, Davis developed and patented the modern bulletproof vest in the early 1970s. Calling his company Second Chance, his goal was to save the lives of 100 police officers; before long, he cracked 1,000. And wouldn’t you know it, a God complex was born.

To tell this riveting tale of greed and guns, Bahrani interviews family members, ex-wives, ex-employees, ex-friends and, yes, Davis himself. Now nearly an octogenarian, the willing subject is one colorful, ornery character. You’d expect that from a guy who’s shot himself 192 times on camera to demonstrate his product’s effectiveness. Then its efficacy … um, let’s say “is significantly lowered.”

As fascinating as Davis is, it’s infuriating to watch the man live in complete and utter denial of provable facts, show no remorse, fail to accept responsibility, refuse to apologize and, even with evidence literally in front of his face, flat out lie.

At its conclusion, 2nd Chance introduces someone who played an indirect role in the success of Second Chance the business. Unlike Davis, this person does penance and, before our eyes, achieves peace decades in the making. Davis, meanwhile, does not appear to have learned his lesson — any lesson — no matter how many opportunities Bahrani kindly provides: more than are deserved. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mondo movies are known — and in some circles, beloved — for their aggressive exaggeration of (and/or full disregard for) the truth. Journey into the Beyond, however, is dead-on in one instance: when narrator John Carradine promises in the preface that the following “journey will test your sanity.” Amen.

Its negligible thesis is this: Science and technology, phooey; the paranormal, groovy. Before the film jets around the globe to (attempt to) prove it, Carradine warns the squeamish to listen for an alarm before the gory parts, if they wish to hide their eyes. The contrasting sound is pleasant and near-identical to the Tinkerbell notes on the Walt Disney “Read-Along” records of my childhood, prompting tots when it was time to turn the page.

Beyond features footage of gum surgery (under hypnosis instead of anesthetia), an exorcism (kinda), a tribal fertility ritual (with Nat Geo boobs a-floppin’), psychic surgery (memorably debunked in Arthur Penn’s Penn & Teller Get Killed), telekinesis (magnets, how do they work?) and spiritual healers (Ernest Angley-type bullshit). It says a lot about our changing world that the grossest segment — pus emerging from a cyst like an endless piece of slightly liquified linguini — is now the rationale for the long-running cable show Dr. Pimple Popper.  

Six years later, German director Rolf Olsen would make a bigger splash in mondo’s mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world with Shocking Asia. I haven’t seen it, but Journey into the Beyond is such a trying bore, I don’t feel the need to take another trip with Olsen at the helm. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

As brave and unsettling as Evan Peters is in the title role of Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, that Netflix series won’t likely stick with me the way 2012’s The Jeffrey Dahmer Files has for a decade.

The documentary is built largely on interviews with three people tied directly to the notorious, 17-time serial killer: apartment neighbor Pamela Bass, medical examiner Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen and aggressively mustachioed police detective Pat Kennedy. Each grabs your attention and holds it with his or her recollections, but given this most unusual case, that’s expected.

The wild card is the other half of the movie, in which pieces of Dahmer’s ho-hum life — trips to buy bleach, to acquire a barrel for acid, to solicit a trick — are depicted via re-enactments, with co-writer Andrew Swant portraying Dahmer. He does so without any hint of playing a monster; not once does he appear unhinged or go over the top, yet somehow, Swant’s performance rings super sinister.

Similarly, Chris James Thompson (We Are Not Ghouls) directs with a clinical detachment, which I mean as a compliment. His decision not to show any acts of violence is genius — not for reasons of prudishness, but because he relies on viewers’ minds to fill in the blanks. You imagine what’s going on behind that closed door, what’s in that suitcase, and whatever your brain whips up is more chilling than Thompson could fake.

Even if you already know the story, it sounds all the more terrifying when told from the mouths of those who were close to the case. Produced in part by American Movie’s Chris Smith (look for that doc’s subject, Mark Borchardt, in the optical-shop scene), this film will haunt you. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

On May 19, 1984, Michael Larson changed game shows forever, earning the largest single-day take by a contestant: $110,237. He did it on CBS’ Press Your Luck, going dozens of rounds without landing on one of the game board’s bankrupting “Whammies.” While not statistically impossible, his streak was statistically improbable. More remarkable is Larson didn’t cheat. Instead, the unemployed, former ice cream man took advantage of patterns he discovered by obsessively watching episodes on his VCR for months.

The whole sordid story, complete with unhappy ending, is told on Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal, a Game Show Network feature-length documentary. Hosted by Peter Tomarken, the host for Luck’s original run, Big Bucks could have taken the easy route of planting narration over the pair of Larson episodes to discuss how he did it. Instead, the doc employs frickin’ CSI-level forensics to show how he did it, using every video tool at their disposal: slow motion, timecodes, unaired footage.

Tomarken even invites Larson’s never-had-a-chance opponents to try their hand at the strategy nearly 20 years later, before sharing the rest of the story. Yes, as with every get-rich-quick scheme, Larson’s one true hit was followed by miss after miss — including running afoul of federal law. A big bonus round to Big Bucks writer J.V. Martin for prefacing the considerable downfall with this hilarious line: “The ultimate whammy came for Michael Larson.”

And how! This is my kind of American history. —Rod Lott