As a teenager, while most of my peers thought that George Lucas or Steven Spielberg were the end-all, be-all of filmmaking, I instead spent most of my free time repeatedly renting and always watching the shot-on-video flicks of Todd Sheets, Tim Ritter and, my personal favorite, Ohio’s J.R. Bookwalter.

Perhaps best known for the zombie epic The Dead Next Door, it was the 1995 movie Ozone where I believe he came into his own, crafting a hallucinogenic tale of clean cops and dirty mutants in their own war for the titular designer drug Ozone and its nightmarish effects.

During an ambush with some drugged-out creeps, plainclothes policeman Eddie (former Cleveland Brown James Black) is injected with the mysterious narcotic. As he tries to track down the manufacturer, he begins to experience horrific drifts in and out of reality, including that of an underground fight club filled with Ozone-addicted monsters.

Designed by a grotesque blob in a basement with vague worldwide ambitions, the real reason why the drug has become so popular with maniacally obsessive users is more nefarious than expected, edging into dark religious territories I wasn’t anticipating.

While many of these backyard horror movies sitting on rental shelves were often more laughable than anything else, Bookwalter always seemed to strive for a look and feel that suited the very low budget instead of hindering it, oftentimes coming up with audacious films that played better than they really had any right to; Ozone exemplifies that.

In addition to Bookwalter’s direction, much of the film sets on Black’s broad football-player shoulders, forging an unheralded action hero plagued by demons, both literal and figurative. And while the film just exudes a ’90s sense of camcorder-based nostalgia, I realized it’s something that is sorely missed in these heady days of high-definition flicks shot and edited on a computer. —Louis Fowler

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Warns the poster of Enter the Devil, “it’s too late for an exorcism!” But let’s give credit where credit is due, because director/co-writer Frank Q. Dobbs’ regional feature beat The Exorcist to theaters by a year — not that the movies are remotely similar, because this pic lacks possession, but a true exploitation filmmaker knows to use every trick in the book. (One of those tricks is retitling, which accounts for the alternate moniker of Disciples of Death, but don’t confuse this Enter the Devil with the Italian one better known on our public-domain shores as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.)

After yet another hunter disappears in Brewster County, the sheriff (John Martin, The Tell-Tale Heart) sends Deputy Jase (co-screenwriter Dave Cass, Smokey and the Bandit Part 3) to sniff out some answers, what with it being an election year and all. That task takes Jase to a cabin outpost run by good ol’ Glenn (Joshua Bryant, A Scream in the Streets). It sits near the ol’ iron ore mine from the pre-credit sequence — you know, where the robed religious nutsos sacrifice the most recent missing hunter by tying him down with barbed wire, then flame-roasting him after piercing his heart with a big, black crucifix? Yep, that’s the one!

Shot in and around the Texas town of Lajitas (rhymes with “fajitas”), Enter the Devil has both the misfortune and fortune of making the UK’s “Video Nasties” list, presumably from the title alone — misfortune because the PG picture sheds hardly any blood, fortune because the notoriety helps keep the little film alive, which it deserves. With talk of border walls and acts of sexual assault factoring into the plot, it’s arguably (and accidentally) more relevant now than upon release.

Not to overpraise this venture from Dobbs (Uphill All the Way), but its homegrown Lone Star spirit and flavor grant it character a Hollywood treatment would likely polish beyond recognition. Rattlesnakes and rock formations carry automatic production value, as do members of the local-yokel cast. They speak a dialect too authentic to be fake, helping give the viewer a contact buzz from the cheap canned beers they slurp. You also can practically smell their acrid breath from their constant smoking, and feel the omnipresent dust leaving a grimy coat on your skin as it does theirs. When the robed cult members finally show the skin of their faces, you’ll hardly be surprised, but you’ll be satisfied. —Rod Lott

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Commercially available under the alternate, slightly more generic title of Bloody Movie, Nick Marino’s Terror Night gathers a bunch of D-list has-beens ripe for the dispatching, including Alan Hale Jr., Aldo Ray, Dan Haggerty and Flick Attack Hall of Famer Cameron Mitchell.

But don’t worry — the usual 20-somethings playing teenagers get killed, too.

The murders go down at the abandoned mansion of silent matinee idol Lance Hayward, your rough-and-tumble Douglas Fairbanks type. The star hasn’t been seen in years, so the night before his condemned casa is to be torn down, several young couples sneak onto the property to check the place out. Someone is already there, however, and he dons a different costume from Hayward’s most famous film roles, complete with appropriate prop to kill. Because Hayward played Robin Hood, Zorro, pirates and other swashbucklers, you can expect death by arrow, sword, hook and whatnot.

This is a great gimmick for a slasher movie, making it more original than most — and apparently legally problematic, because with each murder, Marino splices in a few frames from the appropriate old film of Hayward’s. However, since Hayward doesn’t actually exist, the movies tend to be actual Fairbanks flicks, like The Thief of Bagdad.

Word on the street is this is why the 1987 film went unreleased until oh-so-quietly hitting 21st-century DVD. Word on the street also is that Marino, who never directed before or since, had uncredited “help” from one-eyed House of Wax helmer André De Toth and porn director Fred Lincoln (star of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left).

What we know for sure is this: The kill effects are pretty impressive, and VHS scream queen Michelle Bauer (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) ditches her biker leather to run around fully naked. And even if she didn’t, Terror Night deserves to be better-known. Copyright issues aside, it’s the single slasher most likely to be tolerated by your Paw-Paw next time you visit the nursing home. —Rod Lott

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When suspiciously tainted milk kills three wholly irritating women, they inexplicably come back from the dead a few hours later with mysterious decomposed faces and ravenously start eating the penises of oversexed men in rural France. If that doesn’t sound entertaining, then I’m sorry, I can’t help you.

Using the age-old social issue of waste pollution near graveyards as a somewhat acceptable reason for the zombie ladies, there is enough talk about toxic seepage and water tables and possibly fracking to fill a sizable revision of the Kyoto Protocol. But — and correct me if I’m wrong — I don’t remember that document having a spontaneous abortion in a bathtub, like Revenge of the Living Dead Girls does.

Called the “most extreme French gore film in history” by people with far more credentials than I, Revenge indubitably earns that title with as much cheap grue as possible, although I’m not sure who else is really reaching for those lofty goals these days. Like most Eurosleaze flicks, the screen is typically filled with more bare flesh than dead flesh, with mildly confused sex scenes happening every four or five minutes. Add a nonsensical ending that leaves so many more questions than answers and you’ve got a French horror flick that even Jean Rollin probably wouldn’t touch. —Louis Fowler

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With actor Dave Franco casting his wife, Alison Brie, in his directorial debut, one can’t help but wonder, “How much of this is autobiographical?” For their sake of their union, I hope the answer is “none,” because no character in The Rental is what we would call “in a good place,” literally or figuratively.

Brie (The Disaster Artist) and Dan Stevens (The Guest) play spouses Michelle and Charlie, who do the Airbnb thing for a weekend getaway. Tagging along are Charlie’s troubled brother (Jeremy Allan White, Movie 43) and his bro’s good-influence girlfriend (Sheila Vand, XX), who happens to work with Charlie. The house is amazing; its owner (Toby Huss, 2018’s Halloween), much less so — definitely a creep and possibly a virulent racist.

Without getting into specifics that would spoil the film, the house — again, amazing — offers neither the serenity nor the sanity the couples seek. One red flag is the discovery of what appears to be a camera lens embedded in the showerhead. In the process, given the criss-cross-applesauce nature of the foursome, the lines of their relation to one another are bound to be redrawn.

While The Rental is ultimately a horror film, it only gets comfortable with that identity in the last 20 minutes. Until then, it treads the thriller waters with the occasional dip of the toe. More attention to the interpersonal drama is paid than expected, which gives a big chunk of the movie an ambling, possibly even improvisational quality. Turns out, there’s a rational explanation for that: Joe Swanberg, the king of the loosey-goosey “mumblecore” movement, is credited as co-writer. His first-draft vibe most affects the middle section, tugging engagement levels downward — having generally unlikable characters (although well-acted) further yanks that chain hard — until Franco finally commits to the frights he so skillfully sets up an hour earlier.

And wow, what a primal, powerful 20 minutes follow, right to a truly chilling montage that overtakes the closing credits. That’s the movie I wished The Rental were for the entirety, and why I suspect Franco’s follow-up will deliver more on that promise. —Rod Lott

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