Having been a cult-film cutthroat for most of my life, Al Adamson is a brand name that fans of filmic trash have come to know and adore. Having rented titles like Satan’s Sadists, Dracula vs. Frankenstein and I Spit on Your Corpse as a teenager from the local video joint, I knew that as dirt-cheap as his flicks usually were, you were at least guaranteed a good time of breasts, blood and beasts.

What I didn’t know about Adamson, however, is the lurid way that, at 65 years of age, he was ruthlessly murdered by a conman. Yikes.

The son of an Australian Western star, Adamson became famous in America’s grindhouse theaters and rural drive-ins, pumping out outrageous titles and usually making more than a few bucks on them. The documentary Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson goes into great detail, with hard-boiled talking heads like Greydon Clark, John “Bud” Cardos and Fred Olen Ray coming together to tell tales of low-budget excitement in cinema’s gory days.

Adamson’s life, however, took at dark turn in the 1980s when, after having directed a lost “docudrama” in Australia about unidentified flying objects, he allowed a drifter named Fred Fulford to work on a couple of his houses; Fulford would eventually take over Adamson’s life, stealing his money and then burying him under 6 feet of concrete in the basement.

Director David Gregory — who did the equally great Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau a few years back — crafts this film as if it were one of Adamson’s double-bill shockers: one half a rip-roaring action flick and the second half a true crime mystery. Despite the terrible ending, I think Adamson would have been proud. —Louis Fowler

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On June 4, 2004, Colorado resident Marvin Heemeyer was mad as hell and was not going to take this anymore. After years of sparring with the “good ol’ boys” town hall and Granby city court over a sewer line dispute at his muffler shop, the middle-aged welder fought back in the only way he felt he had left: with a bulldozer he had secretly modified with enough concrete, steel and fully loaded rifles to become a homemade tank.

It’s quite a story. Although it sounds like Guns & Ammo fanfic, Tread is not pretend. It’s a documentary detailing the whole sordid story as a man-vs.-government squabble in a town of less than 2,000 people boils into worldwide headlines.

Tread spends about an hour interviewing the principals to get both sides of the story. Then we get a third: the truth, with footage of Heemeyer’s two-hour rampage of unbridled property destruction and threats to lives. As it unfolds, director Paul Solet draws upon his background in horror films (including Grace and a segment of Tales of Halloween) to ratchet up a considerable amount of tension and sustain it, even if Heemeyer’s real-life Killdozer moves at a mere 2 mph. —Rod Lott

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Growing up in the late ’80s, it was impossible to turn on the radio without hearing the voice of Michael Hutchence cooing an unseen paramour in tunes like “Need You Tonight” and “Devil Inside.”

It was a power that I, even as a 10-year-old, wanted desperately to possess, so much so that I even dressed up as Hutchence when my rural Texas school had a “come as your favorite celebrity” day. It was almost as good as the previous year’s George Michael costume.

A longtime INXS fan, I’ll admit that I have always had trouble reckoning the final years of Hutchence’s life, when he seemingly transformed from a likable cipher to a pretentious buffoon, more interesting for his problematic personal life than the music that had made him a vaunted superstar the world over.

It’s something that director Richard Lowenstein explores in-depth in the seductive documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence; while the hits with his Australian band are casually mentioned, the film primarily seeks to explore the life of Hutchence outside of music, to great effect. Although it skips output like Dogs in Space for a bit too much about side project Max Q, for example, it’s a film of marked choices, most of which adds a surprising layer of humanity to the long-locked frontman.

What truly shocked me, however, was learning about Hutchence’s head injury in the early ’90s that apparently severed nerves and left him a different person, wildly erratic and often depressed. It’s this injury that is believed to have led to his 1997 suicide.

As mortifying as it all sounds, it’s really not all doom and gloom, as ultimately, Mystify is more a celebration of Hutchence as his family and friends remember him and want him to be remembered. It’s the way I want to remember him, too. —Louis Fowler

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Certain films feel more like a devilish fever dream than an actual movie made by human hands; the silent film Häxan is definitely one of those wholly unholy flicks.

Filled with the most satanic of imagery this side of heaven, this Swedish silent film — purported to be a historical study of witchcraft — opens with at least two full acts of drawings and woodcuts as the title cards tell the malicious tale of fiendish covens that gather in the middle of the darkest night to give Beelzebub a gentle kiss on his pert bottom, as well as other diabolically sexy goings-on.

And, as interesting as all of that is, Häxan earns its demonic name from the spooky reenactments that feature, of course, ol’ Nick Scratch and his dirty little pranks on poor humans, such as dumping gold coins all over an impoverished woman’s bed. What a dick!

But really, it’s the story of the Inquisition and the holy men who led it that is perhaps the most frightening part of this film. Like a malevolent game of telephone, the trail of witches and their accusers is as long as the Prince of Darkness’ curled tail; the various medieval torture techniques are also displayed here to cringeworthy effect, many looking far too real.

With the Dark Lord essayed by director Benjamin Christensen himself, he seems to have cast the most destitute and elderly of Sweden as the tortured fools of the tumultuous time, bleary-eyed, scab-covered and missing most of their teeth. It’s a haunting recitation of evil — or what they, at that moment, thought was evil, including the woefully disturbed and sadly handicapped.

If you are averse to silent films, however, in 1968 Häxan was re-released as Witchcraft Through the Ages, an edited version which manages to be even creepier, thanks to William S. Burroughs’ cronish narration and an absolutely unsettling score by Jean-Luc Ponty. Now you can’t tell me that the archfiend didn’t have a hand in that … —Louis Fowler

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The Rolling Stones, while being indisputably one of the greatest bands of the rock era, are, for the most part, an unattractive group of dudes. But, for some reason, former bassist Bill Wyman is the one that the media singled out from day one, dubbing him the slightly rude “Stone Face.”

Wyman, featured in the documentary The Quiet One, at least has a good sense of humor about most of it as he not only narrates the flick but opens up his vast archive of near-obsessive Stones (and Stones-related) memorabilia — from childhood pictures to backstage films — much of which has never been seen before, mostly because only a few people knew it even existed.

I guess at age 82, Wyman figured it’s now or never to tell his story before one of the other Stones (read: Mick or Keith) characteristically bad-mouths him in place of a meaningful pull quote. And while it would be well within Wyman’s rights to beat them to the punch, instead, he does it for himself, giving us (what I’m assuming are) truthful accounts of his good and bad years with the Stones.

All the stories you want to hear are here: guitarist Brian Jones’ death, the tragedy at Altamont and the disastrous recording of Dirty Work. But Wyman even goes into a few tales that were formerly thought of as taboo, like his notorious sexual attraction to a 13-year-old girl in 1983, and shooting the hideous music video for the funky solo hit “(Si Si) Je Suis Un Rock Star.”

Hey, at least it was better than She’s the Boss.

Currently touring with his band, the Rhythm Kings, Wyman comes off as probably the most “normal” Stone — the jury’s still out on Charlie Watts, though — and The Quiet One works hard to make him a warm-enough grandfather type who, you know, lived the demonic rock ’n’ roll lifestyle while probably being all up inside your coked-up mom backstage on the Stones’ ’72 Tour of the Americas. —Louis Fowler

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