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.

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

Get it at Amazon.

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

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