In its seven-word title, Uncle Sleazo’s Toxic and Terrifying TV Hour promises a lot. It even overdelivers on that last word by running an extra 28 minutes. Still, it comes up short in the one word that counts most for a horror film: “terrifying.” It’s anything but that.

Now, what the title doesn’t signal is that portions of the pic are funny — better, even intentionally so. We’ll get there shortly.

Lucky Cerruti’s anthology comes positioned as a horror-hosted show à la Elvira. Armed with equally awful puns in “boils and ghouls” mold, the eponymous Uncle Sleazo (first-timer Jordan Hornstein, outfitted to be one foot too close to a schoolyard) intros three “movies.” These include a tiring werewolf tale in black and white, a one-note psychic romance and a sci-fi-tinged slice of body horror that, while slow, at least closes with a terrific gross-out visual.

All three segments share a core problem: They’re neither scary nor suspenseful; frankly, each exhibits weak plotting and dreadful pacing despite minimal running time. Serving as something of a saving grace, however, are the commercial breaks in between. This is where the jokes come in, from a cartoon about a Basket Case-esque vestigial twin to a musical with a talking, singing puke puppet.

Whether these inspired bits toss you a fake trailer for the movie Clown Cop or an ad for Dahmer’s Apartment Playset, the influence of Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special on Cerruti (2020’s Freak) is apparent. I could go for a full feature of them. Now, whether these smatterings of humor belong sandwiched between stories we’re asked to accept at straight-face value depends on your tolerance for tonal whiplash.

To diminish their weaknesses, the three stories could stand to be more zippily paced, even if it brought Uncle Sleazo’s closer to that titular Hour. —Rod Lott

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If Devils Stay has the nerve to call itself a possession picture, why does the title lack a possessive apostrophe? Ba-dum-tss!

That joke is to prove to my English teachers I paid attention. Devils Stay, however? No laughing matter.

Schoolgirl So-mi (Lee Re, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula) dies of cardiac arrest shortly after a heart transplant. Her father (Park Shin-yang, The Big Swindle) takes the tragedy hardest of all, because he’s also the surgeon responsible for her procedure.

Looking back, Dr. Cha notes his beloved daughter did act strangely after getting her ticker swapped out. What’s more, he believes his little girl is still alive. Say, you don’t think that secondhand heart could have something to do with it, do you?

Of course! We’ve all seen Body Parts.

A young priest (Lee Min-ki, 2009’s Tidal Wave) explains it all: So-mi is possessed by a demon who will rise again in three days, using her fresh corpse as a vessel. As Dr. Cha and his family grieve, So-mi’s “guest” kills some people and an oversized moth crawls from the girl’s cakehole. This is either the first feature for TV director Hyun Moon-seop (Nightmare Teacher) or the weirdest episode of ER ever.

Soused in South Korean customs and universal superstition, Devils Stay earns points for finding a new angle into the exorcism subgenre. The movie may not exist without The Exorcist, but minus one short scene, it’s not ripping off The Exorcist. One could argue the strangest element is its front-and-center embrace of Catholicism since Asian films usually default to Buddhism.

On one hand, Hyun cues up rote scares, accompanied by suddenly loud music stings as if he distrusts his own abilities. And he has abilities, because on that other hand, Devils Stay displays some arresting, imaginative visuals — none more potent than So-mi’s body hovering outside in mid-air. Still, with a drawn-out denouement, Hyun’s theatrical lacks the trickery to ascend to next-level special where recent Korean spookers Sleep and Exhuma reside. Maybe next time? —Rod Lott

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Few things in life frighten me more than the prospect of “life” in a nursing home. (Knock on digital wood.) Sharing a room my freshman year of college was traumatic enough; add the forced fun, failing health and hovering scent of death urine, and I’m filing that under “DO NOT WANT.”

So when a judge (Geoffrey Rush, Mystery Men) earns placement in one following a courtroom stroke, I understand his surliness. Despite his stay’s temporary status for rehabilitation, he’s irritated to be trapped in an environment he can’t control with the tap of a gavel. And that’s before he attracts the ire of longtime resident Dave (John Lithgow, 2019’s Pet Sematary remake).

You know Dave, right? He’s the guy whose arm basically ends in Jenny Pen, the hand puppet of a baby doll with hollow eye sockets. The object’s inherent creepiness is nothing compared to the cruelty it inflicts upon the elderly. Your mileage may vary along Dave/Jenny’s reign of terror, but their particular shenanigans with a catheter gave my willy the willies.

Something within The Rule of Jenny Pen’s bones screams Stephen King to me. In actuality, it’s based on a short story by Owen Marshall, a writer unknown to my brain, but clearly a favorite of director James Ashcroft; the New Zealand filmmaker’s previous feature, Coming Home in the Dark, also adapts Marshall’s prose. (I can’t help but wonder if the source material also ignores why a facility with an investment in keycard entry would have no security cameras. Maybe they overspent on acquiring all the Matt Monro and Gene Pitney LPs?)

Ashcroft’s film doesn’t exactly zip along at the speed of the judge in his motorized wheelchair. Even acknowledging its slow-burn ambitions, I’d argue Rule runs 30 minutes past what the plot allows. But then we’d be denied the scene-stealing whole of Lithgow at his most sinister — even more so than his Emmy-winning run as the Trinity Killer on Dexter.

Even if the picture lacks a payoff as diabolical as the setup demands, it has a lot to say about bullies and the systems that allow them to keep terrorizing their targets. Watch with a morbid mix of fascination and curiosity. —Rod Lott

Turns out, things aren’t always bigger in Texas. This homemade Amityville Horror coattailer chronicles the experience of newlyweds moving into an absolute bargain of a starter home in the Lone Star State. Because the devil, y’all.

Immediately, Count Floyd-level “spooky” frights occur. The crucifix on the wall does a 180. The coffee carat overflows with chocolate pudding. A kitchen chair hits the wife in the butt. The phone rings, yet no one’s on the line. You yawn.

Because Satan War is shot on 16mm — and mostly in the dark at that — things can be difficult for the eye to discern. In that way, it achieves an accidental artiness similar to the shaggy, lo-fi vibe of Skinamarink, but with 100% more macramé.

The highlight of Bart La Rue’s film finds the wife (one-timer Sally Schermerhorn) getting felt up while she’s scrubbing dishes. That’s the only element of the 64-minute movie that pushes the envelope — or rather, drags said envelope along the surface of the armoire by a string. 

Two longer versions of Satan War exist, at 77 and 92 minutes. The prospect of viewing either is more shiver-inducing than anything onscreen. —Rod Lott

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If Timothy Leary and Kenneth Anger made Midsommar … well, who the hell knows what that would turn out to resemble. But I reckon Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, “an underground film by Christopher Bickel,” comes closest in cosmic proximity. Nothing else need apply. 

Alt-AF record store worker Max (first-timer Adara Starr) comes across a vinyl title so scarce, it’s worth a grand: “It’s this weird hippie psych record. This commune put it out in the early ’70s. Rare as shit.” Acting on a tip, she finds a thick stack of four of their five LPs at a thrift store; the missing album, with a rumored five-copy pressing, is supposedly cursed. 

One mysterious phone call later, Max and four friends accept an invitation to visit the commune, Wunderlawn. It’s run by spiritual leader and titular alchemist Pater Noster (Mike Amason, Bickel’s Bad Girls). He’s the kind of unkempt wack job whose followers get hallucinogenic powder blown onto their faces — and, um, into other places.

The trippiness that follows is so immersive, it feels as if some particles of that substance may have blown through the screen and up your sinuses. That not everybody will make it out alive is a foregone conclusion; that you’re ill-prepared for how that all happens is nearly as certain.

Don’t let the initial High Fidelity in-store shenanigans fool you, much as the montage of customers’ stupid questions may try, but this is one wild occult pic. Shot in South Carolina for the price of a used car, Mission of Light finds Bickel carrying over Bad Girls’ propulsive energy, but now it aims squarely to shock. Once that starts happening, his performers’ acting deficits shrink.

The situations Max and friends find themselves in are unsettling enough; add the discomforting soundtrack and we’re pushed, if not shoved, into “Should we even be watching this?” territory — not in the negative “this sucks” way, but with the unshakable feeling that Bickle tapped into Genuine Evil to fuel the frames. —Rod Lott

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