Back in my zine days, sometime in the ’90s, I traded ad space for a handful of VHS dubs, bootlegs of flicks not available in America legitimately. One of these tapes was the Mexican movie Satanico Pandemonium, a nunsploitation film with a moral message: to not make a deal with Lucifer.

It’s worked so far.

Comely Sister Maria (the oft-nude Cecilia Pezet) is picking wildflowers one afternoon, as nuns did in the days of the Inquisition, when she meets Lucifer himself (the oft-sleazy Enrique Rocha). After tempting her with a very red apple, he promises to make her Mother Superior if she gives in to his unholy caterwauling.

Of course, she does, seducing the town’s young goat herder, forcing a nun to hang herself, and strangling the O.G. Mother Superior after unleashing a torrent of blasphemies. As a celebration, the remainder of the nunnery strips down and dances around in a Satanic bacchanalia that would make a medieval woodcut artist justifiably proud.

With not one, not two, but three shocking endings, Satanico Pandemonium — subtitled La Sexorcista for reasons unknown — has gained notoriety in the past 20 years as being the inspiration for Salma Hayek’s vampire queen in From Dusk Till Dawn. But, beyond that name check, the film stands on its own cloven hooves just fine, a bloody gem from comedian Tin-Tan’s director of choice, Gilberto Martínez Solares. —Louis Fowler

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Behind the camera of Dance Macabre stands a trifecta of 20th-century cinematic cheese in director Greydon Clark and producers Menahem Golan and Harry Alan Towers, so it’s a shame this Russia-lensed terror tale is more Limburger than Parmesan.

In what originally was intended as a sequel to his 1989 turn as The Phantom of the Opera, Robert Englund stars as Anthony Wager, famed choreographer of the fabled Madame Gordenko’s ballet academy. For the school’s inaugural class of students from outside the Iron Curtain, rebellious American teen Jessica (Michelle Zeitlin) is enrolled, to whom Anthony takes a great liking because she resembles his late, beloved Svetlana. As for Madame Gordenko, well, she’s bound to a wheelchair and (apparently) sunglasses, and speaks using a throat harmonica.

To the surprise of no one, Anthony’s rising interest in Jessica is inversely proportional to the school’s student population — why, it’s almost as if someone is trying to eliminate the competition so she can cop the top spot by default! Also to the surprise of no one, those kills come rather rote and unimaginative — something one can’t say about the dialogue, which is so bewildering it sounds like Clark had his script translated into Russian, then translated back into English and shot that version; to wit, “Do you want to get wet with me? Do you like bubbles?”

Do you like Dario Argento’s Suspiria? Because in setting and premise, but nothing else, Dance Macabre is indebted to that horror classic — and I mean a lot, as in the-mob-will-come-to-break-your-legs a lot. In something of a cosmic interest payment, Clark presages an element of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake by — spoiler alert, although it should be evident from the trailer — having Englund bend gender to also play Gordenko. While the makeup is unconvincing, it adds a touch of the perverse to a dull film lacking originality and energy. —Rod Lott

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A TV mainstay of the 1970s, Fantasy Island ran for seven seasons successfully by adhering to a four-step formula, sprinkled liberally with Ricardo Montalban as suave resort host Mr. Roarke:
1. Guests fly to the titular isle.
2. Guests experience their fantasy.
3. Guests learn a lesson.
4. Guests depart the island.

Jeff Wadlow’s film version of Fantasy Island does the same, yet can’t succesfully make it through less than two hours. The concept’s second step is so malleable and ripe with possibilities that it would be difficult to botch, yet the Blumhouse production does just that. It isn’t the incompetent train wreck its savage reviews may suggest; it’s just boring, which is arguably worse.

In for Montalban is End of Watch’s Michael Peña as Roarke. Among his weekend guests are a sandblasted Lucy Hale (reteaming with Wadlow from Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare), out for revenge; Priest’s Maggie Q, out for love; Swallow’s Austin Stowell, out for closure; and brothers Ryan Hansen (Central Intelligence) and Jimmy O. Yang (Patriots Day), out to get laid. Other than keep these subplots on separate tracks as the TV show, anthology-style, Wadlow attempts to unify them into one big plot weighed down with rules and mythology no one wants or needs explained.

The problem in doing so is that each begins with distinct elements, from torture porn to raunchy comedy to family drama, then all shoved under the veneer of the supernatural. And since no subplot works on its own, they underwhelm even more in tandem. As a mor(t)ality tale, Fantasy Island throws viewers a lot of things that sound inviting — duplicitous duplicates, sea snakes, Charlotte McKinney’s bouncing breasts — but add nothing to its spooky stew of emptiness. I wish I had seen it in theaters, if only to witness audience members’ reaction to the last shot’s “reveal”; I suspect they groaned, and they had every right. —Rod Lott

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With his parents divorcing, simpering teen Ben (John-Paul Howard, 14 Cameras) catches the bus to a coastal New England town for the summer to live with Dad (Jameson Jones, Hollywood Homicide) and work at the harbor. There, Ben romances a cute co-worker (Piper Curda, School Spirits), runs afoul of local bullies and starts suspecting the MILF next door (Zarah Mahler, Nightmare Cinema) of being a witch.

He’s not wrong. We know this upon seeing, well, something crawl out of a deer carcass in the dead of night. The Wretched’s witch looks nothing like Broom Hilda or Margaret Hamilton; she (it?) is a feral force of evil who hops among human hosts in order to snatch babies on which to snack. With binoculars and all-around nosiness, believer Ben becomes a Hardy Boy in a hoodie to save the town. It’s Disturbia cast with a spell of toil and trouble.

Following up the 2011 zombie comedy Deadheads, their directorial debut, Brett and Drew Pierce do a few things right in The Wretched: They accurately capture that summer-at-the-lake feeling, pump in the proper amount of the supernatural, and focus on making the witch look as creepy — and real — as possible. Although I didn’t find their sophomore effort scary, its production values are impressively high.

Working against this, however, are the two young leads, with Howard and Curda turning in performances that would be at home in the cheap, tossed-off movies made for the now-defunct Chiller channel. Howard, in particular, is particularly unlikable; while his character is realistically flawed, he way overplays the cool and, as a result, comes off as just a jerk — not exactly the surrogate audiences seek when hoping to fully engage with the material. —Rod Lott

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Rituals is Canada’s answer to Deliverance. Therefore, this is the weekend they didn’t play ice hockey.

Or go curling. Up to you.

Maple-flavored stereotypes aside, Peter Carter’s film follows five surgeons in matching terrycloth fishing hats. They helicopter in to a forest for a weekend of roughing it — and certainly get just that. When their boots disappear overnight, followed by a beehive ambush and more playing-for-keeps activity, it becomes clear someone — or something — is trying to kill them … and does.

The great Hal Holbrook (Creepshow) serves as the Voice of Reason among the tortured crew, right from his opening-scene inquiry of “Is it ethical?” Despite him asking that during his unlikable colleagues’ breakfast discussion of penile-enhancement surgery — complete with X-rays! — those three words ring throughout as Rituals’ theme, especially when the doctors’ common, credulity-stretching thread comes to light. Let’s just say their antagonist has unrivaled organizational skills (and could forge a successful career as an event planner, if only he didn’t look like Chris Elliott in Scary Movie 2).

Rituals has its freeze-dried, alcohol-doused, head-on-a-stick moments. What it doesn’t have is the power to keep one engrossed for the whole of the trip. Repetition becomes the doctors’ sixth unofficial member of the group — or fifth or fourth and so on, if you want to adjust the number in real time. One physician’s tearful, on-the-fly eulogizing of another is odd, to say the least: “He was a boob … such a gentle boob.” Rituals isn’t always gentle, especially in its cabin-set climax, but lacks the sphincter-clutching suspense of other, better wilderness horrors. —Rod Lott

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