I’m very much a lover of Werner Herzog’s works, having seen most of his collaborations with Klaus Kinski except, oddly enough, Nosferatu the Vampyre. Though it’s highly acclaimed and critically loved the world over, I instead watched the lackluster sexual improprieties of the pseudo-sequel, Nosferatu in Venice, where the famed monster (still played by Kinski) goes on an Italian adventure! Pass the marinara, paisans!

Or not. Employing five different directors — including Starcrash’s Luigi Cozzi and Kinski himself — instead we’re left with a mostly drab and melancholy journey through the stench-filled canals of Venice, with grandstanding actors like Christopher Plummer and Donald Pleasence taking on questionable roles in their battle to not only take on evil at its root, but apparently stave off real-life hunger in the lean ’80s.

As an obvious Van Helsing knock-off, Plummer comes to a Venetian house filled with statuesque young women, square-jawed young men, wholly off-putting crones and, of course, Pleasence as a hungry priest who seems to have been paid in craft services. Somehow, they resurrect Nosferatu (Kinski), now with a bitchin’ haircut the ladies seem to lust after.

Apparently, the only way to destroy the suave creature is for him to fall in love with a virgin, which, if I might be blunt, is pretty stupid. Still, with large holes blasted in his chest by the cowardly lot of supposed heroes as they run, the film comes to an ending I’m sure is supposed to be meaningful, but honestly seems more like a quick shot of Kinski on the way to his plane as villagers go pheasant hunting.

Final writing and directing credit was dropped in the lap of Augusto Caminito, who I guess did the best job he could with the big ball of film stock he was handed. Still, the ultimate shocker of this horror flick is the music by Vangelis that, while it don’t class up the movie, at least attempts a sheen of sorts almost comparable to Chariots of Fire. Almost. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Beginning in the mid-’80s, I’ve been attracted to steamy, sultry redheads, with lusty firecracker Tawny Kitaen constantly on cable television. From hair-metal videos by Whitesnake to raunchy flicks like Bachelor Party, that crooked smile and ample, um, talent made her this young person’s dream girl — or one of them.

But when my parents brought home Witchboard — then a new release! — that crush reached its youthful erectile zenith. And while I find the horror flick to be somewhat boring today, I can honestly admit that Kitaen, though not in the movie as much as I remembered, is still a welcoming presence, David Coverdale’s penis be damned.

Linda (Kitaen) is throwing a party and her boyfriend, Jim (Todd Allen), decides to get wasted and be the world’s worst significant other — at least that’s what I’ve been told from my own mirroring actions. When a partygoer whips out his Ouija to contact the small child he’s been talking to — already weird if you ask me — strange things begin happening, like building sites caving in, metal barrels collapsing and masked men with axes splitting dudes right in the skull.

While the sight of a possessed Kitaen clad in a men’s suit and mimicking a middle-age male voice is both tantalizing and worrisome for a variety of reasons I should probably see someone about, the mostly boring film does offer three explosive finales I didn’t see coming. So thanks for that, director Kevin Tenney: I liked the wedding one best!

Two years later, Tenney directed Night of the Demons. I only saw it recently, because when it came out, my mother forbid me to rent it, because in her words, watching it would “invite the devil in the house.” —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

With movies being a great escape from the grind of daily life, it’s ironic that the global pandemic has kept them off-limits for about a year. Now that we have figured out how to co-exist with the virus — well, some of us, anyway — we can attend an actual theater again!

Among our scant few choices? A film about our very real COVID conundrum: In the Earth. Good thing it’s pretty close to great. Coming from writer/director Ben Wheatley — returning to the folk-horror roots of 2011’s brilliant Kill List, his greatest success in a chameleon of a career — its core message is this: Can’t wait to get back to your old, pre-coronavirus ways? Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

After a year in lockdown, a remote wilderness lodge reopens to host scientist Martin Lowery (Joel Fry, 10,000 BC) for field research. He’s studying its fertile forest land to develop more efficient crops. As he’s setting up shop, others at the lodge mention a local folktale of a spirit in the woods, talk of mysterious deaths in a nearby village, reports of people lost in the woods, rumors of a professor missing for months — omens Wheatley dispenses to his players as often as hand sanitizer.

When park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia, Midsommar) guides Martin into the woods to show him the ropes, they encounter Zach (Reece Shearsmith, Wheatley’s High-Rise), a babbling kook who performs rites in an effort to communicate with Mother Nature. An act of violence traps this unlikely triumvirate, forcing Martin and Alma to wonder if even a shred of truth exists in Zach’s freakish theories and activities.

I’m purposely being vague to let In the Earth’s surprises do their dirty work on you, too.

It gives nothing away to say In the Earth finds a “happy” medium between the ghostly phenomenon of The Stone Tape and the ghastly witchery of Suspiria. Just as those works span varying styles of horror, Wheatley begins his high-strung story with the cheeky innocence of urban legends as campfire tales before invading that purely mental space with the unflinching physicality of modern gore. Will audiences cringe more at a rather pointed instance of ocular trauma or an impromptu amputation and subsequent cauterization? It’s a toss-up, but Lucio Fulci would be proud of the former, while the latter makes Kathy Bates’ famous swing of the sledgehammer look like T-ball practice.

As the film expands into ever more disturbing territory, sound becomes a critical factor; as a viewer, you feel the pummeling the characters take. Add strobe lighting, subliminal imagery and X-Acto editing by Wheatley, and you’re no longer watching a movie but experiencing a potentially allergy-triggering exercise in psychedelic immersion. The effect is not unlike my most recent trip to the dentist, when an overdose of nitrous oxide caused my hand to vibrate loudly as it existed in 16 places at once. You had to be there.

Or you can be here, under Wheatley’s divisive spell, which I recommend. Those daring to cross the threshold will emerge 100 minutes later with one of two educated opinions: that In the Earth is either a tool of torture best reserved for war criminals or a generous dose of terrifying, cinematic sensory bliss. Following end titles unlike any I’ve seen before, I left with a headache. I’m serious when I say that’s a plus. —Rod Lott