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

Get it at Amazon.

It’s a hazy shade of winter at the Icelandic fishing station of The Damned. With their meager shelter snowed under ’til spring, no one’s going anywhere, despite dwindling provisions.

But when widower Eva (Odessa Young, HBO’s The Staircase) spots a sinking ship in the distance, she convinces the men to row, row, row their boat toward the wreck. The rescue mission goes tits up, and misery follows them back to shore, haunting and taunting thereafter.

Without revealing details, the plot of this 19th-century story draws from a pair of John Carpenter ’80s classics: The Fog and The Thing. From the former, it takes the harrowing shape of a threat whose identity is obscured by weather; from the latter, burgeoning paranoia and distrust of those sharing a confined space. As one of the fishermen tells Eva, “The only thing I know is that the living are always more dangerous than the dead.” 

Just as the villagers of The Damned attempt to navigate through a storm to safety, only to be thwarted at each turn, the film itself forever stands on the precipice of getting somewhere. Long on atmosphere, this superstition-steeped slow-burner doesn’t build upon initial pressure so much as re-build it in the next sequence — and without surpassing the previously established mark. As a result, by the time it finally escalates toward a payoff, we’re no longer invested.

Like Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, another horror period piece currently in theaters, Thordur Palsson’s first film is visually first-rate. The difference here is the devotion to craft doesn’t compensate for stretches of monotony. —Rod Lott

Opens Friday, Jan. 3.

In the late 1970s to early 1980s, it seems like you couldn’t pass an intersection without seeing the original pop-up shop: some guy selling velvet paintings propped against his van. Remember those? 

Good. Now cast aside all assumptions of reality and imagine the dude’s entire inventory were worth half a million bucks. Now imagine the perfect person to broker that sale were Tara Reid. Now you’re prepared for Art of the Dead, from writer/director Rolfe Kanefsky (The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man).

The gaudy and gauche oils at this horror movie’s necrotic heart depict the seven deadly sins as represented by animals. All come from the brush of the appropriately named Dorian Wilde (Danny Tesla, Attack of the Unknown), who looks like a cross between Frank Zappa and a haberdashery. Wilde’s septet of “masterpieces” — at best, they scream high school art class — is in high demand, despite making people go nuts upon gazing. The prologue illustrates just how, with a cameoing Richard Grieco (Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill!) slaughtering his family.

After outbidding others for the cursed collection, members of the Wilson family find out its downside fast. The goat painting makes Mom (Jessica Morris, Reel Evil) so horny, she fucks a goat — or an NBA-mascot facsimile of one. The snake artwork makes Sis (Cynthia Aileen Strahan, TV’s The Offer) give herself a boob job — using the torn-off breasts of her bully. The frog one makes her brother (newcomer Zachary Chyz) paint the nude body of a sex worker (Sarah French, That’s a Wrap) — with words like “WHORE CUNT SLUT BITCH.” 

Too much? But but but I haven’t even gotten to Wilde creating canvases from the skin of a prostitute! And paint from her blood to match! It’s like Ray Bradbury’s legendary short story “The Veldt,” but with 100% more demon-tonguing.

Yes, Art of the Dead is completely preposterous in premise, yet I can’t deny the appeal of its gimmick. Luckily, the film puts you in the proper frame of mind upfront with the credit “a Rolfe Kanefsky flick,” rather than “film” or “movie” or “picture” or another Pauline Kael-friendly synonym.

Even if it hadn’t, is anyone in danger of taking this Mahal Empire production seriously? If so, then they’re not paying attention to the auction worker who drinks from a hose until his belly literally explodes. Or the priest with a milky eye. Or the twin kids turning into giant snails. Or the snakes earning credits as “Hisser” and “Pumpkin.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Something odd is happening in the tiny town of Galesburg, Illinois (actually a convincingly rural Auckland, New Zealand), and it’s up to local police chief John Brady (frequent Robert Altman collaborator Michael Murphy) to figure out what’s going on. There has been a string of grisly murder of late, all seemingly committed by different individuals. One corpse is discovered in a field dressed and mocked up to resemble a scarecrow.

John begins to suspect a research lab at the nearby university might be involved, but what he doesn’t know is his son, Pete (Dan Shor, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), has signed up to be the latest guinea pig for the lab’s bizarre mind control experiments, conducted by the suspicious Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis, Innerspace). Will Pete become the next murder victim, or will Parkinson’s experiments turn him into another killer? Louise Fletcher (Exorcist II: The Heretic) and Marc McClure (Superman) also star.

Released as Dead Kids in its native New Zealand and elsewhere, Strange Behavior serves up a unique blend of sci-fi-horror intrigue and slasher-grade kills. There’s also a suspenseful scene involving a hypodermic needle to the eye that will make viewers squirm, as well as a knife-wielding maniac in an oversized Tor Johnson mask. All of this set to a mesmerizing electronic score by Tangerine Dream.

Director Michael Laughlin co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Condon, who would go on to have a successful Hollywood directorial career, helming Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls and a pair of Twilight films, among other works. The pair would reunite two years later for Strange Invaders, which involved aliens and was the second in an intended “Strange” trilogy, the third of which sadly never came to be. —Christopher Shultz

Get it at Amazon.

First things first: I have no idea why The Pumpkin Karver chooses to misspell its own title. It’s about a carver who moves to a small town named Carver, with nary a K in sight.

That’s where clean teen Jonathan (Michael Zara) moves with his big sister, Lynn (WWE Diva Amy Weber), for a fresh start. See, a year earlier, Lynn’s asshole boyfriend, Alec (David J. Wright, TV’s Sons of Anarchy), pulled a mean prank on Halloween night by donning a truly creepy pumpkin mask, locking Lynn in her garage and coming toward her with a knife. Thinking it real, Lynn screamed, and Jonathan ceased carving his pumpkin (not a euphemism) to save his sis by fatally stabbing the guy. Sucks to be Alec.

Anyway, a year later, they pull into Carver, where the population hovers around 666 — enough for the local teens to have a blowout kegger and dress in their best Austin Powers costumes. Jonathan is smitten by Lynn’s single friend Tammy (Minka Kelly, Blackwater Lane), even though she wears a beret and says a lot of things that could get you thrown into special ed.

Threatening to snuff out their burgeoning love is that Jonathan is forever tormented by visions of Alec in the aforementioned mask. (Let us pause to note the Slipknot-esque visage on the movie’s cover thankfully appears nowhere.) Worse, someone is killing the partiers — and, in the cases of obnoxious, toga-clad Pauly Shore stand-ins Spinner (Alex Weed) and Bonedaddy (David Phillips), not soon enough.

With the victims’ faces sporting a gourd-ready rictus, are these murders the work of a resurrected Alec? Or perhaps the weird old pumpkin farmer (Terrence Evans, 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) who shares his expert karving carving techniques and tools with Jonathan? (Whoever it is, props for choosing a theme and sticking with it. And adding the shoved-in-mouth candle? Chef’s kiss.)

If the internet is to be believed, Robert Mann’s movie served as something of a gateway horror for impressionable tweens and early teens in the era of straight-to-DVD trash proliferation. I can see why. With its Halloween-driven storyline, pumpkin-patch backdrop and slasher setup, The Pumpkin Karver is practically built to court and foster viewers’ growing nostalgia, clouding how silly it actually is. I gained little from watching, but I don’t regret the experience, either. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.