Courtesy of Death Cat Entertainment, the horror anthology Grave Intentions presents a quintet of tales hosted by voodoo retailer Magical Madam Josephine (Joy Vandervort-Cobb). Before each, she spotlights a relevant product in her shop, including charm pouches, voodoo dolls, crystals, talismans and even a candelabra prestuck with a Rainbow Coalition of candles. Josephine addresses the viewer with lines like, “Most believe bravery is a good t’ing,” “Oh, I pray this customer uses puppet magic wisely” and “Are you the hero … or the villain?”

While Jocelyn and Brian Rish’s wraparound is new, the stories Josephine introduces are not, being unrelated independent short films as old as 2014. Moreover, coming from half a world away is Matthew Richards’ The Disappearance of Willie Bingham. Easily Grave Intentions’ highlight, the Australian short is a blackly comic look at a child killer (Kevin Dee) used by the judicial system as an experiment for scared-straight schoolchildren and other would-be offenders; rather than put Willie to death for his crimes, he is gradually relieved of appendages, limbs, organs and then …

Running a not-so-close second in quality is James Snyder’s Violent Florence, whose title character (Charly Thorn, 2020’s Relic) demonstrates why it’s not wise to mess with a stray black cat. Meme immortality awaits.

I wish the rest of Grave Intentions were as appealing as this pair. Lukas Hassel’s The Son, The Father … gets close, but its tit-for-tat scenario of a boy (Lucas Oktay) whose alcoholic mom (Colleen Carey) to die on his 11th birthday is more depressing than entertaining, despite good performances.

Another abused child is at the center of the final segment, Brian Patrick Lim’s Marian, which stands alongside the first, Gabriel Olson’s The Bridge Partner, as the portmanteau’s weakest links. Ironically, Olson’s film is the only one with star power, as sultry newcomer Olivia (NYPD Blue’s Sharon Lawrence, vamping up a European accent) vows murder to the Moss Harbor Bridge Group’s mousiest member, Mattie (Beth Grant, Southland Tales), unprovoked. I really expected to click with this, especially with the late, great Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) aboard as Mattie’s husband — but its ending is as flat as day-old Tab, and Forster appears only in one short scene. That minor and painless disappointment aligns with Grave Intentions being an overall mixed bag — neither hero nor villain. —Rod Lott

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Given how many times Richard Burton eventually married before his death (five!), more than a little irony exists in viewing Bluebeard today. From Superman producer Alexander Salkind and The Caine Mutiny director Edward Dmytryk, the film version of France’s felonious folktale casts Burton as cerulean chin-bristled World War I hero Baron Kurt Von Sepper, returning from aerial battle to only wage the war of the sexes on the ground by marrying — and killing — one beautiful woman after the other.

Bluebeard the movie’s first victim is Bluebeard the character’s sixth wife (Karin Schubert, The Panther Squad), felled by a bullet in an hunting “accident.” Before long, Bluebeard finds himself entranced by flapper girl Anne (future Happy Hooker Joey Heatherton). Despite all the red flags surrounding the guy — a one-eyed cat, a cobweb-strewn castle, a crazy old woman combing the hair of his mother’s corpse — Anne happily becomes Wife No. 7, the Jell-O to his jam.

When she finds his … let’s just call it a “scrapbook” of past wives, he confesses everything to her chronologically, doomed spouse by doomed spouse. Buckle in, viewers, because the result is an all-star panoply of acts of uxoricide, with Burton’s master of misogyny wearing more shades of purple than the Joker and Prince would find tasteful. Virna Lisi (The Statue) is seduced into a guillotine; Marilù Tolo (My Dear Killer) is drowned; and Agostina Belli (The Night of the Devils) takes a falcon to the face.

Most amusingly, Raquel Welch (The Last of Sheila) plays against type as a nun whose inventory of global dalliances angers Bluebeard into such a rage, he locks her in a coffin. Genuinely funny is how increasingly annoying he finds the gorgeous Nathalie Delon (Le Samouraï) for her endless baby talk and for naming her breasts “Jasmine” and “Sicumin.” When she hires a prostitute (Sybil Danning, Chained Heat) over to give her husband-satisfying whore lessons, Bluebeard catches them au naturel and penetrates them both … with a pointy-tusk chandelier, so get your mind outta the gutter.

If “prestige Eurosleaze” exists, Dmytryk’s Bluebeard is the default example, with Burton at his most bombastic. The Gothic gaslighter pops with color and delights with a campy tone, trashy sequences and an Ennio Morricone score that positively fucks. Bluebeard will tickle you pink, if you let it. —Rod Lott

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Having lived in Japan only six months, the English-speaking Karen (Ariel Sekiye) is having a rough go fitting in with fellow housewives in her community volunteer work — so much so, the gaijin resists attending the group’s two-day camping retreat. (True, it doesn’t help the trip is to a village protected by a fox spirit who “will punch you and drag you to hell.”)

The night of arrival, boss Akiyo Yoshihara (Eigi Kodaka, Headcrusher) and her fellow mean girls play kokkuri-san, the Asian country’s coin-on-paper version of Hasbro’s Ouija board — hence this film’s title, Ouija Japan. Folklore has it that breaking the rules brings consequences; sure as Shinola, the ladies awake to find their group thinned by one. Karen’s idea of calling for help is to run outside half-yelling, “Somebody! Somebody!”

How could this trip get any worse? For starters, that fox deity could self-install an app on everyone’s phone: a game that pits every girl for herself in a fight to the death.

That happens. And — just like Candy Crush, I assume — the more they kill, the more features they unlock. By sword, rifle, pipe and electric-powered gadget dropped in a full bathtub, Karen and the others battle it out until 15 lives are claimed. The upper-left corner of the screen — yours, not the app’s — keeps a body count so viewers don’t have to put forth that effort.

In Ouija Japan, first-time director/writer Masaya Kato (not the actor) has a premise that, while not exactly original, is plenty perfect for this genre — or for a mix of the horror and action genres, as we have here. However, it’s not well thought-out, with early scenes merely repeating information from the previous; by design, scuffle after scuffle make up the latter half, yet each feels so endless, it’s exhausting. Perhaps Kato was checked out as well, because the final shot is not only a cliché, but a cliché so clichéd, it’s used as the sign-off for all five Scary Movie entries.

There is no nice way to say this: Taken individually or collectively, the acting is awful. Kodaka overplays the villain role to twirling a nonexistent mustache; after vowing to have the metaphorical last laugh, she physically utters one. Worse, in her first credit, Sekiye has a sleepy and lifeless presence; if she had a line that didn’t begin with some unnatural variation of “Oh, um, uh,” I missed it. —Rod Lott

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