As is de rigueur with the giallo, the title is meaningless. But The Scorpion with Two Tails is no giallo. It’s more like Jell-O, but if director Sergio Martino didn’t bother reading the recipe, so the result fails to cohere. It’s a mess that falls apart almost instantly.

Joan (Elvire Audray, Ironmaster) is plagued by nightmares of an ancient Etruscan cult killing its members in a cavern filled with dry ice. The cult members wear full masks seemingly donated by Dumb Donald from the Fat Albert cartoon. These visions might have something to do with her archeologist husband (John Saxon, Cannibal Apocalypse) studying ancient whatnot in an Etruscan cemetery at that very moment. If only he were killed while sharing this info with Joan on the phone, we would know for sure.

He is killed while sharing this info with Joan on the phone, not even 11 minutes into the movie. So she has no choice but to investigate what happened to him, what’s happening to her and what her wealthy asshole of a father (Van Johnson, Concorde Affair ’79) has to do, has to do with it.

Martino being Martino (Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, American Rickshaw, et al.), more murders occur; the film has more neck-twisting than the average chiropractor’s weekly appointment book.

Reportedly, Two Tails is edited down from an eight-hour miniseries. I cannot fathom watching this at that length, because what’s here amounts to so little action and other items of interest. We get slithering snakes, phony bats and, memorably, Joan’s hands swarming with real maggots. To be honest, I got more anxiety from the sheer amount of tiny Styrofoam beads thrown about as Johnson frantically searches for a vase by tearing open crate after crate. Cleaning up said beads requires more effort than Scorpion’s script received. —Rod Lott

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Evil Dead Rise reminds us that when it comes to today’s popular horror flicks, fuck them kids.

Failing to follow up on 2013’s re-imagining before now was a cinematic sin. Directed by Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground), Rise is a welcome resurrection of the blood-soaked franchise. But a smooth 97-minute runtime, hilariously gory sequences and delightful new Deadites make this return well worth the decade-long wait.

After a few zoomers get scalped, dismembered and read some of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the film rewinds a day prior to introduce Beth (Lily Sullivan, 2017’s Jungle). The career roadie takes a break from her band’s tour on account of her unexpected pregnancy. Meanwhile, Beth’s sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland, Blood Vessel), struggles with an abrupt separation while raising three kids.

An awkward reunion at Ellie’s apartment is cut short by an earthquake. The high-rise complex’s parking lot splits open, revealing a vault of religious artifacts — including everyone’s favorite flesh-bound tome. Ellie’s son (Morgan Davies, TV’s The Girlfriend Experience) naturally opens the book. One vinyl recording of a curious priest reciting the magical words later, it’s off to the Deadite Derby.

As the first possessed, Ellie takes the lead as the most fucked-up Evil Dead villain yet. (Linda’s a close second; Evil Ash never stood a chance.) Sutherland’s performance is as mesmerizing as it is maniacal. Her zombified zingers are a welcome return to the series’ marquee campiness, even though 2013’s entry was still stellar without it. Murder Mommy takes the depravity a step further as she tortures and even tattoos her children.

Most of the sequences capture the franchise’s frenetic pace despite the new setting. In lieu of a fruit cellar, Ellie spends a chunk of the film stalking the hallway outside her apartment. The unit door’s peephole sets the stage for a vivid bloodbath that makes the most of the movie’s limited budget. Continually, Evil Dead Rise delivers frights that far outclass movies like It Chapter Two, which had over four times the financial backing.

It’s rare that this film stumbles. The final act is just a little too bloated with callbacks — a group recital of “dead by dawn” is more than enough. Perhaps more egregious is when it diffuses its own dread. A portion of the recording reiterating all of the ways one can’t kill a Deadite is almost immediately followed by several scenes of — you guessed it — doing all of the things that definitely don’t kill Deadites. Though Cronin was likely shooting for comedy with a heaping helping of despair, a slight swap of scenes could’ve given the terror that much more bite.

Ultimately, Evil Dead Rise delivers exactly what the franchise’s faithful could hope for. Those unfamiliar with the Book of the Dead will painfully laugh and piss themselves all the same. Even the most reluctant viewer will spend a weeks trying to get the phrase “titty-sucking parasites” out of their head.

Please excuse me — I gotta go call my mom. —Daniel Bokemper

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In a gator-infested swamp town (played by Australia), the main employer is a greedy oil corporation drilling on Native American-owned land. According to tribal legend, a swamp monster — a Man-Thing, if you will — comes to life for vengeance on the honkies. And hey, whaddaya know, the myth is true!

Played by 7-foot wrestler Conan Stevens, Man-Thing isn’t shown much until the film’s final quarter, when he’s revealed to look like an upside-down stalk of broccoli with glowing red eyes and ever-flowing tendrils. In the Marvel comic book on which this ecological terror tale is based, the character was more akin to DC’s Swamp Thing: a kindly creature with a human conscience. Here, he’s simply a peakaboo monster — window dressing for the sole purpose of bloodletting. More thought went into how to animate him than what to have him do. No wonder this one skipped theaters.

But Man-Thing’s biggest problem is it’s just a snore, mate. Director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man) gives the flick a slick look, but the script by Hans Rodionoff (Deep Blue Sea 2) gives him so little to work with. This is ironic, considering Rodionoff turned in terrific work with Man-Thing: Whatever Knows Fear …, a then-recent comic miniseries that serves as this movie’s prequel (and its superior).

At one point, a wise, old Native America — you know he’s wise because he draws things with his finger in a pile of sugar — tells the sheriff (Matthew Le Nevez, 2005’s Feed), “Maybe he’s in the swamp. Maybe the swamp’s in him.” This totally reminded me of Wes Studi’s “until you learn to master your rage, your rage will become your master” aphorisms from Mystery Men. This fleeting realization gave me more pleasure than the giant-sized painful entirety of Man-Thing. —Rod Lott

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Recovering drug addict Massimo (Michael Klug, House of Black Wings) credits his girlfriend (Christine Nguyen) with his sobriety. They’re madly in love and destined for a wonderful life together … until the “millennial soy boy” (to quote his racist stepfather) gets bitten by a vampire, which fucks everything up.

Look, if Monte Light wants to call Blood Covered Chocolate an homage to the 1922 classic Nosferatu, he has every right. This is his movie, after all. But I found it to be original (or as original as one can get within the vampire genre) — very much its own thing, Lynchian light zaps excepted. Garlic, sunshine, crucifixes — all mean diddly squat in this overall impressive indie.

Doing a 180˚ from 2020’s Space, Light shoots Blood Covered Chocolate in crisp black and white, with the occasional nod to color in kaleidoscopic-pattern cutaways, Zoom calls, cartoon clips and tinted scenes. Most visually arresting among the latter floods the screen’s left side blood-red as a shadow of a vampiric hand (the most overt Nosferatu reference) slowly nears Massimo’s oblivious mother (Debra Lamb, Deathrow Gameshow), who’s standing in the frame’s grayscale right. In addition to flashing to public-domain works from Fritz Lang and Max Fleischer, Light cribs the iconic floating-head-and-spine monstrosity from the Indonesian oddity Mystics in Bali.

A staple of Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorksi erotic comedies (including the recent Bigfoot or Bust!), Nguyen uses her Blood Covered role to her advantage, proving she can act. She still has to take her clothes off, but for once, that’s secondary. I wish Klug were as skilled, but I found his affectations in timing and delivery awkward. Luckily, this flick flows fast, like a bladder draining a liter of water. Balls are required to begin your closing credits with the words “YOU HAVE JUST EXPERIENCED” filling the screen, but Light earns it. —Rod Lott

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First-time actor Thomas Parigi plays the title role in The Strange Case of Jacky Calliou, a young man orphaned by a car wreck. He lives with his grandmother (fellow neophyte Edwige Blondiau) in the French Alps, where she makes a most meager living as a “magnetic healer.” From achy body parts to depressed farm animals, she’s got the touch; she’s got the power.

After he expresses interest in learning her trade, the old woman passes away. But after reviving a bird, Jacky accepts his hands indeed are imbued with the gift. Thus, he takes on his gammy-gam’s last client: a beautiful young woman (Lou Lampros, The French Dispatch) whose right shoulder bears an inexplicable patch of what looks like a Petri dish’s worth of mold spores.

Is Jacky a healer or enabler? Great question, acknowledges feature-debuting director Lucas Delangle, whose script with Olivier Strauss takes deft, measured steps to approach the edge of answering without quite stepping foot on or over it. That’s by design, and as is common in folk horror, this ambiguity is one of its strengths. Not only are we left to gauge the reality of the Caillou power, but how deeply Jacky and his grandmother believe in it. (Lest we ruin it, let’s not even touch the issue of village sheep brutally murdered in the dead of night.)

Chilly in look and feel, Jacky Calliou (as it’s blandly titled on home turf) employs the slow-burn technique that earns every reward, which it turns over to the audience. Majestic setting aside, nothing about the film is showy; Delangle asks for patience and gets it without the viewer even noticing the point at which he or she yields. Although this Strange Case is hardly for everyone, anyone curious how Blood on Satan’s Claw might play like in contemporary times, here comes the evidence, ready to make the hair on your back stand up. —Rod Lott

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