Ritual was supposed to follow 1995’s Demon Knight and 1996’s Bordello of Blood into theaters as the third in a trilogy of Tales from the Crypt movies. But it didn’t, finally premiering on DVD, and that’s because Ritual is shit-ual. Trust me: You’ll be praying for the return of Dennis Miller.

In this remake of Val Lewton’s classic I Walked with a Zombie, a post-schnozz-job Jennifer Grey portrays Dr. Alice, who, after having her medical license suspended for two years, accepts an advertised hospice position in Jamaica. Once there, she wonders if maybe she hadn’t made a rash decision: “Why does everyone carry machetes?”

Her employer, Craig Sheffer, explains his crazy brother (Daniel Lapaine) believes he’s a zombie. With so much voodoo afoot, lots of hallucinations are experienced in this ridiculously routine shocker: crawling spiders, moving trees, crashing ceiling, Medusa hair and so on. Holy shit, does Grey sure scream a lot. But she has no Principal Rooney to kick in the face immediately thereafter, which makes a huge difference.

That’s because a solid sense of humor is sorely missing; other than the slapped-on opening featuring the Cryptkeeper in dreadlocks, in no way does it ever feel like a Crypt film, much less a Crypt episode. I did like the necrophilia gag, but that’s the last shot of the movie. That’s right: Not even the Cryptkeeper could be bothered to show up and say goodbye. (The post-credit fake bloopers — complete with fart joke — don’t count.) —Rod Lott

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You know that rock musical for the stage? The one that begins with a mop-headed hooker being pulled into an alley by a man in a giant owl head who does flips? And a Marilyn Monroe lookalike playing the sax while her dress billows up? No? Good, because it only exists in Stagefright, so you passed the liar test.

The Italian horror film follows the foibles of the cast and crew attempting to mount this ambitious production. Rehearsals aren’t going great, and that’s before their troupe is infiltrated by a crazed killer. A wardrobe lackey is the first to be murdered (in the face!), and the director eats up the idea of using the publicity to his advantage, because he’s in dire need of a hit.

That’s before he and the thesps get locked in the theater with the killer, who’s now using the aforementioned owl head as his trademark, so take that, hockey mask! Members of the musical get stabbed, drilled, sawed and axed, and they all wonder who, who could it be? (That’s an owl pun.) Meanwhile, the oblivious cops sit outside, talking about James Dean and Popeye.

With its behind-the-scenes setting most of us never see, Stagefright feels more unique than it would otherwise. (The owl head doesn’t hurt, either.) As with many ’80s Italian horrors, it’s heavily stylized — read: MTV-influenced and, therefore, awfully and wonderfully dated. Director Michele Soavi (The Church) hails from the Dario Argento school of filmmaking, so people bleed and get torn apart in graphically gruesome ways. It’s slow as first, but once the killings started, I was prepped to cry, “Bravo! Bravo!” —Rod Lott

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At a time before the word “horror” even had a translated equivalent in Japan, writer/director Nobuo Nakagawa gave the country something to be all shook up about: a cinematic trip to Hell, and one full of gore of that! Jigoku is a real freaker-outer, starting with credits that suggest an Asian 007 adventure, but only if the guy in the audio booth tripped and fell on every SFX button at once. Your ears will hate it.

But your eyes will love it! College student Shirô (Shigeru Amachi, The Tale of Zatoichi) is having a bad run, starting when a drunk yakuza fatally stumbles into path of the car in which Shirô is a passenger. Then his fiancée dies in a wreck, so he drowns his sorrows in the bodily fluids of prostitutes. Then his mom falls critically ill. Then he becomes partly responsible for the deaths of several more people.

Finally, with a little more than half an hour to spare in the running time, he goes to Hell. Worse, Buddhists believe in a Hell comprised of eight Hells, so buckle up! Upon arrival, he gets his throat pierced, has to view a Your Life’s Greatest Fuck-Ups reel and learns just how hot flames of eternity can be. Shirô gets the 25-cent tour and sees the newly dead being flayed, boiled and spiked for punishment — different strokes for different folks, all rather graphically depicted with lots of red acrylic paint.

Weird and wild, Jigoku does drag in the middle, kinda like life itself. But its Hell sequence — if one could call a third of a film a “sequence” — is quite something to see, from both a visual and a historical standpoint. I would’ve loved to witness how it went over with audiences upon release. However, if you want to see some really crazy Asian shit without the heavy-handed morality tale but with all of the “Huh?,” 1977’s Hausu is your best bet. —Rod Lott

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Quarantine 2: Terminal is among that rarest breed of direct-to-video sequels: those not only actually good, but better than the original. Whereas 2008’s Quarantine was a faithful remake of 2007’s Spanish horror hit [REC], Quarantine 2 takes off on its own course, while [REC] 2 revisits the exact same territory by staying in the apartment building whose residents have been zombified.

A good chunk of Quarantine 2, however, takes place on a commercial airliner, where one of the passengers has brought infected lab rats from said apartment building as his carry-on. Another passenger gets his finger nipped trying to help fit the damn thing in the overhead compartment, and before long, he’s puking violently and going berserk, headed straight for the cockpit.

One emergency landing later, the remaining passengers and crew disembark into a terminal that’s sealed off from the airport. They’re flat-out stuck, which wouldn’t necessarily be bad if the infected weren’t hiding in the shadows, either. The behind-the-scenes luggage area gives newbie director (and Rollerball remake screenwriter, but we won’t hold that against him now) John Pogue lots of opportunity to turn his set labyrinthian, at which he excels.

As the lead flight attendant, Mercedes Masöhn (Red Sands) is your sub for Jennifer Carpenter, and thank God for that. You won’t miss Carpenter, nor the camcorder concept. Pogue still keeps things claustrophobic without having to resort to that no-longer-novel technique. Quarantine 2 isn’t perfect — some performances could be better — but it’s effective, and more so than its big brother. —Rod Lott

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A wannabe Blair Witch Project sharted by the hacks in charge of The Asylum, 8213: Gacy House purports to be footage found by the Del Plains Police Department near the remains of the six people who shot it in the abandoned, supposedly haunted home of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. They were out to capture, in one’s words, “hokey-pokey usual ‘Ghost Hunter‘ shit.”

It appears to have been made by a fraternity and a sorority during a moment of relative lucidness, featuring half a dozen douche bags who take time out to fuck. There’s also a busty psychic with a trout pout (Diana Terranova, which sounds like a readymade stripper name) who, while performing a spell, conveniently gets bitten on her very large and presumably surgically enhanced breast, which she has to unbutton her shirt to reveal. (Fear not, fake-tit fans: Gacy Ghost later rips her top and bra clean off.)

The paranormal activity here amounts to flickering light bulbs, closing doors, billowing curtains, strange noises, moving bedsheets and EVP instances of “kiss my ass.” Ooh, dat’s spooky! Speaking of speech, Boobs Psychic says, “Put it near your root chakra. … It’s two inches above the groin area.” Some Douche says, “We are gettin’ some kick-ass shit, knowwhatI’msayin’?” Another Douche, Maybe Even the Same Douche says, “Holy shit! Something just caressed my back!” And Yet Another Douche, Quite Possibly That One reasons, “The problem is not that there’s a demon scratching. The problem is that we’re overly tired.”

No, the problem is boredom — so much that 8213 rates a zero. At the 57-minute mark, there’s a scene in the basement where the entirety of the dialogue is: “Shit. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh, you fucking piece of shit. Come on. Fuck. Frank! Hello, turn the fuck on, shit, come on. This is not a good time. Come on. What the fuck! Oh. What the fuck. Okay! Hey! Fuck. Come on. Aw, fuck this shit. Gaw, fuck. Got it, come on. Why is this — shit. Fuck, man. Fuckin’. Shit. Oh, fuck! Franklin, Franklin, Franklin! Franklin!” Throw some sniffles in there, too.

It could really use a pedophile clown. —Rod Lott

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