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 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

In shooting second-unit underwater footage three time zones to the east of Universal Pictures’ home, Creature from the Black Lagoon kicked off a semi-rich tradition in the annals of horror history: filming in Florida. A Florida filmmaker himself (Naked Cannibal Campers, Die Die Delta Pi, et al.), Sean Donohue attempts to herald the unheralded in his ambitious documentary, Blood, Guts and Sunshine: The History of Horror Made in Florida, with (extremely) brief commentary from the likes of Joe Dante, John Waters and John Landis.

From Blood Feast to The Uh-Oh! Show, gore godfather Herschell Gordon Lewis often gets a lot of the credit for planting his camera in the Sunshine State, but Donohue aims to spread the love around — perhaps most notably to name-brand directors George A. Romero (Day of the Dead), Bob Clark (Deathdream) and William Grefé (Death Curse of Tartu). A step lower in quality, but not watchability, we find such cult items as Zaat and Satan’s Children.

The most interesting segment shares the coming of age of the VHS generation, primarily Twisted Visions collaborators Tim Ritter and Joel D. Wynkoop. Deservedly something of Florida flick royalty now, Ritter recalls selling Day of the Reaper from a car trunk and remembers his Killing Spree lead, Asbestos Felt, as “always intoxicated, barely coherent.” (And that uproarious movie is better off for it, I should note.)

Most of the doc is devoted to those who followed in Ritter’s footsteps to carry on the Florida horror scene as it stands today, many of them wearing their very best tees and button-down Spider-Man shirts for the interviews. In general, Gustavo Perez’s bargain werewolf epic Light of Blood aside, their efforts look less like fun watches and more like exercises in misery and misogyny.

And that’s where Blood, Guts and Sunshine lost me. The clips Donohue choses to showcase his own oeuvre would give Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis an aneurysm — maybe two. They range from an OB-GYN’s POV of barbed wire-wrapped bat headed for a phony round of genital mutilation (Death-Scort Service) to actual sexual assault captured on camera (Cannibal Claus). Regarding the latter, the titular actor Bob Glazier happily boasts of his improvisational skills that day: Getting turned on during an attack sequence, he pulls out his penis to masturbate over his female scene partner, even slapping her bare skin with it — all too underground for my comparatively delicate tastes.

Whether ’80s pastiches or truly exploitative exploitation, the aggression and attitudes of the newer, convention-crowd movies are not for everybody. Donohue acknowledges as much by including a rant from Unearthed Films’ Stephen Biro, presumably drunk, against their less-than-committed creative process: “None of these motherfuckers are taking acting lessons!” —Rod Lott

Get it at eBay.

In examining the Swinging Sixties’ shift on England’s capital, the narrator of the mondomentuary London in the Raw posits, “Can anything shake a city like London?” Let’s use a stripped-down version of the scientific method to test that hypothesis.

Sample data captured by a roving camera includes gamblers, prostitutes, health nuts, tin whistlers, fez wearers, belly dancers, nude models, scamming barflies, drink-recycling barkeeps, Whisky a’GoGo clubgoers, acupuncture patients and hobos rendered unintelligible by cough syrup.

Particular attention has been paid to a bald man undergoing a hair transplant in bloody, trypophobic, punch-excision detail. However grotesque, it’s nothing compared to the dirty beatniks dining on moist cat food straight from the can. Then, tired from his intrepid reportage — or perhaps giving up on topping that — Arnold Louis Miller (Take Off Your Clothes and Live) turns his research into a filmed pub crawl, complete with full song performances from jazz singers.

After a thorough review and parsing of data collected, I conclude that the city of London cannot be shaken, but it can be lulled to sleep, no matter the number of nipples. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Things get hairy for director Seth Breedlove’s Small Town Monsters production company with Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou, a documentary exploring the Houma tribal myth of the werewolf in Louisiana. With narration by frequent collaborator Lyle Blackburn (Momo: The Missouri Monster), the film captures the bayou so authentically, you can feel the humidity and mosquitoes from here.

Those interviewed don’t seem to agree on the “rules” of the rougarou — fitting for a cryptid study — except that area Catholic parents exploit it to wring child guilt. Believers talk of it being able to shape-shift into human or rabbit or rooster; less universal is the tenet that a rougarou encounter is not to be talked about for a probationary period of 101 days. Some believe the creature is a lost soul; others, the victim of a literally ugly curse.

Skinwalker’s first re-enactment sequence offers a glimpse of the werewolf via red eyes piercing through the night — and it’s chilling. The same goes for one halfway through of a mystery girl in a white dress, followed shortly by home security cam footage of that danged werewolf in a girl’s bedroom. Far, far less effective is an encounter illustrated with subpar drawings; the occasional woodcuts are a nice touch, though.

I confess I’ve never heard werewolves referred to as a “rougarou” before this doc on the upright-walking canids that stalk the rivers, forest and swamps of South. I also confess I never tired of hearing people saying it in that Nawlins drawl. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.