Unless you’re a pinko commie, hearing the phrase “Olympics upset” should conjure memories of 1980’s “Miracle on Ice” — or at least the 2004 Kurt Russell movie about it — when the U.S. men’s hockey team out-pucked the Russians to surprise gold. Less known (for now) is a similar story of victory over the USSR, this time by the 1964 women’s volleyball team from Japan. The players’ global accomplishment capped an extraordinary streak of 258 consecutive wins — a feat so mighty and magical, it earned them a moniker adopted by a new documentary about the team: The Witches of the Orient.

As the septuagenarian surviving members relate to French director Julien Faraut (John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection), being part of the Nichibo Kaizuka volleyball team was less fun and games, and more conscription: After a full day of factory work, the young ladies hit the gym until midnight, then did the same all over again, often operating on a mere three to four hours of sleep.

After this context, Faraut delineates the team members’ individual personalities behind the often-demeaning nicknames (Fugu, Horse, et al.) given to them by mercurial coach Hirofumi Daimatsu. In present day, as the women relay stories from their grueling path to the 12th Olympic Games, the film incorporates relevant clips of a Witches-inspired anime series, as well as historical footage set to an atmospheric but uptempo electronic score by K-Raw and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle. Although lengthy, these marvelously edited musical sequences work to the doc’s enormous benefit, pushing it beyond 30 for 30 territory into modern art. (I need this soundtrack album, although it doesn’t exist.)

Taking up Witches’ final third is, of course, a condensed version of the Land of the Rising Sun’s on-court attack against the Iron Curtain at the Olympics. Quite simply, this is one of the most captivating half-hours in sports-doc history. Hosted in Tokyo, those Games represented the loftiest of stakes for Japan as a crucial step in post-WWII rebuilding. That burden is evident by the sheer aggression and swiftness of the Witches’ strike-and-spike strategy to conquer their Soviet Union counterparts, revealing our heroines as an even more formidable threat than Faraut has shown us thus far.

When they win, the pride, humility and exhaustion shining from their faces is COVID-level infectious. That their gold-medal moment comes free of ego makes the scene — and the film — all the more moving. —Rod Lott

Long hidden from the public eye for its supposedly controversial content, F.T.A. — translating to, in case you need to be riled up, “Fuck the Army” — is a documentary about the anti-military roadshow headed by Jane Fonda, already a controversial character in her own right, mostly for being a woman who dared to speak up against the war.

Filmed over a few years in the early ’70s, this alternate-universe Bob Hope special went right to the military bases — or as close as they possibly could — and performed dated skits and songs about America’s then-current war with Vietnam and this intense need to leave, featuring interviews with servicemen who have experienced racism and other ills while in the military.

Along with Fonda, Donald Sutherland and a team of somewhat-comic actors perform mostly unfunny comedy bits written by the likes of Jules Feiffer and others, but the musical interludes by folk singer Len Chandler are rabble-rousing enough to forgive the inane jokes and lackluster parodies; I guess it was the only live entertainment anti-war protestors had at the time.

But where the film really succeeds is not only in the interviews with disgusted military men, but with the citizens in Asian countries where America kept (keeps?) its bases, as the local anti-war movement marches against soldiers being in their neighborhood; especially sobering and particularly moving is a trip to a Hiroshima museum.

The thing about F.T.A. that truly surprises me, however, is just how dangerous the American government considered Fonda and this film to be at the time — and probably even do now — attempting to stop the concerts and even reportedly forcing the doc to be pulled from theaters a week in its initial release. It kind of proves what a farce the First Amendment is, especially for the enlisted people who die to fight for it. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

When you ask the many fans of The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years what their favorite scene is, they’ll probably say those involving an absolutely drunk Chris Holmes, the guitarist for W.A.S.P., nearly drowning in a pool as his mother sits on the edge leering. It is for me.

While I thought he died shortly after that glimpse of living the high life, but turns out he’s alive and kicking around in Europe, where he’s something of a draw with his new band. So that’s a relief, I guess.

In the documentary Mean Man: The Story of Chris Holmes, we learn that W.A.S.P. lead singer Blackie Lawless was an idiotic showman who had no real respect for Holmes; to be fair, almost every night Holmes would get blackout-drunk, culminating in losing his house and sleeping on the couch of his fellow rock buddies, as you’d expect.

Still, even after a couple of new bands and a W.A.S.P. reunion, he needed to express himself “artistically,” culminating in this new tour. From traveling to gigs, playing onstage and recording a new album I’ll never listen to, there are so many moments of inspired comedy, this almost becomes a true-life Spinal Tap.

While there seems to be a lot that doesn’t work for Holmes musically, I’m surprised how much actually does in his own life, at least what the camera shows us. He has a loving and understanding wife; he’s genuinely nice to his fans; and he seems, at least in his head, poised for something of a comeback.

If you can take the corrupt past of Holmes and genuinely separate it into this recent life, Mean Man becomes something of a rock ’n’ roll survivor story. That being said, I’m still not listening to any of his music, but I’m glad he’s still here and still pushing the envelope. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sometimes, a great project falls into your lap. Less often, it falls into your bushes.

Yet such was the case for struggling actor Ryan Sexton (The Toxic Avenger) when, outside his apartment, he found one Eldon Wayne Hoke blackout-drunk. As Sexton soon discovered, Hoke was not only better known as El Duce, leader of shock-rock band The Mentors, but also quite a character whose wayward, doomed-for-brevity life was worthy of chronicling with a camcorder. Some two dozen VHS cassettes later, shot between 1990 and ’91, the resulting shenanigans and conversations live on as the documentary The El Duce Tapes.

Whipped into fine narrative shape by directors Rodney Ascher (Room 237) and David Lawrence, who also edits the film, The El Duce Tapes begins with a crash course in the executioner-hooded Mentors and the bald, bearded, bulky frontman who proudly salutes Hitler and more proudly brands their music as “rape rock.” His lyrics are simple yet juvenile rhymes one would expect from drunken high schoolers — to wit, “My woman from Sodom / Lets me fuck her in the bottom.”

His zeal for misogyny and white supremacy is matched by perpetual homelessness and full-blown alcoholism, resulting in not just a warts-and-all doc, but an all-warts look at the raucous L.A. club scene and the sad reality awaiting Hoke between gigs, from which he tried his best to numb. A product of abuse, Hoke admittedly spits back the kind of hatred he received growing up. While not exactly smart, he was certainly shrewd, knowing how to push PC buttons and slam them into disrepair.

Judged from a standpoint of “any publicity is good publicity,” his antics worked, landing him on the hostile stage of The Jerry Springer Show and, his lyrics, decried in U.S. Senate hearings of Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center. A decade later, with major-label backing, the likes of Marilyn Manson rode a similar strategy all the way to the bank; El Duce got no further than the welfare line. (That’s not a metaphor, either; visits to pick up his government handout are in the film.)

Although The El Duce Tapes isn’t the only documentary on this ever-colorful character and his awfully patient bandmates, Sexton strikes something akin to gold with the unfiltered rawness of his subject. It’s as if a particularly vile segment of Penelope Spheeris’ Decline of Western Civilization trilogy were spun off into a full, free-standing case study of the anthropologic and anarchic. On its own, Sexton’s footage would be captivating, but Ascher and Lawrence amplify it with clips of Hoke’s influences — everything from Walking Tall to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (!) — and his cultural environment, informing or reminding viewers of what was in the water — or cesspool — at the time. In the closing moments, the line they draw from Hoke to, well, today is staggering. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Undoubtedly one of the oddest tours of all time — at least until the 1980s, that is — much of the Rolling Thunder Revue was seen in the 1978 Bob Dylan flick Renaldo and Clara. As watchable as that four-hour movie is to only the biggest of fans — and yes, I’m one of them — much of what was billed as a freewheelin’ variety show has been distilled to about two and a half hours here, thanks to director Martin Scorsese.

In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, Marty recounts the Rolling Thunder tour with a music fan’s eye, while Dylan recounts the matter with the acerbic tongue of a wealthy dowager. We find Dylan back in the mid-’70s, driving the magical mystery tour bus on a musical journey across America and, I guess, Canada, leading his troupe of semi-professionals and hitting on a very young Sharon Stone in between all the musical interludes.

Clad in his shocking-white pancake makeup, the death mask of Dylan took to the smaller stages of many areas usually without such big concerts, oftentimes with singing stagehands and spiritual schlockers such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg and Joni Mitchell, mostly there to keep this train of tra-la-las a-rollin’.

Sure, it might seem like the kind of tragic thing that wouldn’t make it to the next town, but somehow Dylan and crew kept it going, which is especially triumphant considering he was spending far more than he made with each stop. Even though it wasn’t earning anything, the tour gained plenty of ground and earned Dylan plenty of fans. Still, in the end, this is a Scorsese flick and he manages to make a great documentary out of another man’s canister-rotting film. Besides, how else was anyone going to see it? —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.