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 chooses 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

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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

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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

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Based on the famed book by Erich von Däniken, the documentary Chariots of the Gods was always from the school of thought that if a white man couldn’t do it, then it had to be aliens.

Throughout, we’re given otherworldly examples of astounding architecture in Egypt, stone wonders in Mexico and so on throughout the non-white world, learning that it was impossible for these ancient cultures — that, quite honestly, we still have barely an idea about — to build them in their wholly primitive and desperately unknowing ways.

The simple solution? Aliens, of course!

Hey, it was the ’70s, as the world was deep into the Mondo Cane-structure of many popular documentaries. Chariots of the Gods was probably on the low end of this somewhat fantastical spectrum, utilizing more of a science class film strip approach to telling its tall tales of universal visitations and, apparently, community rebranding.

The usual suspects are all here, including the famous Easter Island statues and the not-as-famous Nazca Lines, which, we learn, were used to guide incoming spacecraft to the burgeoning brown civilizations. While these ideas, though mildly racist these days, can still be fascinating to hear, they’re also extremely quite dated and filled with mostly made-up facts, like said science class film strip.

Chariots of the Gods takes us back to a time when we so desperately wanted to believe in extraterrestrials that helped to shape the then-Earth, except that it’s viewed through a whites-only telescope that really doesn’t — and really shouldn’t — hold up today. —Louis Fowler

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With his Small Town Monsters label, Seth Breedlove has, well, bred a cottage industry of documentaries on all things cryptozoological and/or mythological. After features on Bigfoot and Momo: The Missouri Monster, he again watches the skies for On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky.

In this one, he and paranormal investigator Shannon LeGro visit the Appalachians and “hills of hollows” of West Virginia, as the Mountain State plays home to several “quintessential cases” in the lore of unidentified flying objects. Mixing clips from 1956’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and stock footage with actual interviews, Dark Sky presents firsthand accounts, hearsay accounts, “anonymous witness” accounts and even the occasional kids’ crayon drawings to present the locals’ stories of encounters both close and close enough. Among them are a diamond-shaped craft sucking energy from power lines, a sighting while playing hoops with the old man, spinning lights, flashing lights and more — all professionally recreated with first-class motion graphics. Without them, Dark Sky would feel feather-light on content.

You can practically watch the doc with a bingo card at hand with squares for all the usual-suspect terms one might hear involving UFO conspiracies and conversations: military ops, psy-ops, Mothman, men in black, Project Blue Book, Dow Chemical, WMD, FBI, CIA, NSA, mobile homes …

Not a follower of UFOs, I’m not qualified to state if On the Trail unearths anything new, but Breedlove brings a theory regarding mineshafts to the table, while an interviewee raises the question of whether aliens target families. Typical of his work, this film impresses with top-notch production value. The only drawback is in LeGro’s narration, which is halting and hesitant, as if she’s not only reading from cue cards, but reading from cue cards written in a foreign language she’s translating on the fly. Her interest and knowledge, however, are not in question.

Whether the movie plays as mere entertainment or belief reinforcement is left for you to decide. —Rod Lott