Tulsa-based filmmaker Darla Enlow’s The Last Trick or Treater seems calibrated to get viewers into the Halloween spirit. While only around a half-hour, so was Walt Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon. Flaws and all, I embrace it with as much love as went into it. Play it as an aperitif before any All Hallows’ Eve film of your choice.

In the Headless Horseman’s place, this shot-on-video shocker has the hobo-masked Scabby Bobby (Gavin Wells). As terminal cancer patient Morley (Chris Cameron) tells his hospice nurse (Dana Pike, Enlow’s Toe Tags) on Halloween night, Scabby Bobby was a stuttering kid they bullied mercilessly at school. Each Oct. 31, he returns to take vengeance on those who taunted, terrorized and traumatized him, one tormenter per year. Tonight, it’s Morley’s turn, and never has the playground rhyme of “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat” sounded like a legitimate harbinger of doom.

From Scabby Bobby, we go to serial killer Mr. Buttons in Carthage, the bonus movie on Last Trick or Treater’s difficult-to-find DVD. Turns out, it’s a dry run for Enlow’s The Stitcher, her 2007 feature. One more segment and she would have a full anthology of colorfully named killers. We should be so lucky! —Rod Lott

In the Florida Everglades, several locals have vanished; Bigfoot is blamed. Making a documentary about the cases, Sarah and pals hire a self-proclaimed skunk ape tracker to help them investigate. One guess as to whether The Wild Man is shot as cost-conscious found footage.

Director Ryan Justice (Followers) offers a unique climax, in that the cryptic carnage unleashes inside a “gubermint” (to quote the locals) lab facility. Unfortunately, it takes a load of filler to get there, including too many too-long confessionals Sarah (Lauren Crandall, Share or Die) delivers straight to camera — snot-free!

Crandall is fine in the lead, and Michael Paré (Dawn) does his reliable cameo duty, but most of the cast members aren’t convincing as “real” people. Some don’t appear to be trying; in particular, David E. McMahon (Bonehill Road) as the aforementioned tracker seems to approach the material as an SNL sketch — and not a good one. —Rod Lott

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Outside of The Most Dangerous Game, has genre cinema latched onto another concept more often than Eyes Without a Face? It’s the story gift that keeps on giving, as long as you change just enough elements to avoid litigation. Just ask character actor Michael Pataki (The Bat People), who leveraged it for Mansion of the Doomed, his first of two movies as director.

The eventually mad doctor of this early Charles Band production is Leonard Chaney, a successful surgeon played by Richard Basehart (1977’s The Island of Dr. Moreau). When his lovely daughter, Nancy (Trish Stewart, 1976’s Time Travelers), is blinded in a car wreck, Dr. Chaney’s days of reading newspaper articles about meatloaf while she romps in the pool with her beau (Lance Henriksen, Aliens) are over.

Or are they?

Good news: Dr. Chaney restores Nancy’s sight by transplanting another person’s eyeballs! Bad news: They belonged to her boyfriend! But that poor sap doesn’t need them anymore, what with being kept in a basement cage like an animal and all.

Worse news: When Nancy’s eyesight proves short-lived, her father drugs hitchhikers and “job” applicants to swipe more peepers. Pataki more than delivers the ooey-gooey goods in the surgical scenes, with full orbs in their bloody, hanging-optic-nerved glory. As for all the unwitting eye donors now left with hollow sockets, the makeup effects by future four-time Academy Award winner “Stanley” Winston (Jurassic Park) are more convincing than films of this ilk usually got. (You might also recognize the name of the cinematographer: Andrew Davis, eventual director of 1993’s The Fugitive.)

Although Basehart by no means slacks on the job, he’s not as at ease slumming than his more storied, Oscar-anointed partner in crime, Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful), playing his assistant to the hilt. Look for her Blood and Lace co-star Vic Tayback as a detective and Marilyn Joi (C.O.D.) as one of Dr. Chaney’s, um, patients.

Mansion of the Doomed rides its cruel recruiting cycle hard before the blind learn about strength in numbers. Speaking of, Pataki’s second (and final) director’s gig found him mining another well-trod tale for Band in Cinderella, but he made it his own by adding fucking and other things Walt Disney would not have been able to unsee. —Rod Lott

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Pierre Tsigaridis makes a knockout directorial entrance with the two-fisted Two Witches, a wickedly delightful pair of interlocked tales involving the devil herself — yes, her — and the titular women who do her bidding. To paraphrase the kid at the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night in Say Anything …, “Witches, man!”

Not since Rosemary’s Baby has a young, pregnant woman gone through as much trimester trauma as Sarah (Belle Adams, The Manor), the center of chapter one. After an unkempt “boogeywoman” (Marina Parodi) gives her “the evil eye” in a restaurant, Sarah grows more anxious and nauseated, not to mention plagued by nightmarish visions. It’s all made worse by a visit to friends who dig out the Ouija board.

The second chapter illustrates why having roommates is a living hell. For grad student Rachel (Kristina Klebe, 2007’s Halloween reboot), her difficulties amount to the waifish Masha (Rebekah Kennedy, 2011’s Season of the Witch) being needy, manipulative and, well, a witch.

One of Two Witches’ strengths is Tsigaridis’ script isn’t concerned about explaining the witchery, which makes it all the more chilling. Another is how far mere facial expressions can go in creating fright in viewers; he relies on that as much as the ol’ standby of contact lenses that make its wearers look as though their eyeballs have been swapped with freshly peeled hard-boiled eggs. (I only wish he had more trust in his audience; we don’t need flashbacks to understand characters appearing in the second story are the same key supporting players we just saw a few minutes before in the first.)

Highly influenced by Eurohorror, the witches are terrifying, fitting alongside the coven from Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Going further, in emphasizing scares over style, this is the witch movie you likely hoped Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake would be. I can see it becoming a perennial favorite from Halloween to Christmas, given the second half takes place at that supposed most wonderful time of the year.

From subliminal flashes to unflinching scenes of violence and the vile, Two Witches works hard and pays off, begging to be seen in a crowded theater. Bow to the new queen. And stick around after the credits. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

As Infrared recently showed, with the right role, The Room sidekick Greg Sestero can act. While Miracle Valley isn’t his greatest showcase, he proves he can direct, too — on his first outing, no less.

With girlfriend Sarah (model Angela Mariano, doing just fine in her acting debut) down in the dumps due to a gravely ill mom, David (Sestero) takes her on a weekend road trip to an out-of-the-way ranch in the unforgiving Arizona desert. Besides, he’s trying to snap a pic of the elusive, never-before-photographed “silver hawk.”

Birds should be his least concern, given the area’s bats: the members of a cult settled in the area. When a menacing motorcyclist (scene-stealing live wire Rick Edwards, Skatetown U.S.A.) invites them to an event — Father Rick’s Awakening — a spiritually thirsty Sarah talks David into going.

Upon their departure, David’s pal jokes, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!” As we’ve established before, the noxious beverage he’s referencing was Flavor Aid. Still, the sugar-powder shoe fits; with Miracle Valley being about a cult, the friend’s barb soon no longer lands as funny.

So you think you know where Miracle Valley is going. And you’re right … but also not. Sestero’s script follows the well-tread path of all krazy-kook movies before it, until he chooses where to head next seemingly by throwing a stack of old Marvel Comics in the air — The Incredible Hulk and The Tomb of Dracula in particular — and letting the fallen pages guide him.

That’s largely a compliment. While he doesn’t always make the right choice, he at least makes a different choice. In doing so, Miracle Valley upends your expectations while fulfilling your hunger for exploitation, and leaves a good-looking corpse. With the epilogue at Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater home, how could it not? —Rod Lott