Hey! We made it! You made it! We’ve reached the end of 2022, which for us—and hopefully you—was a year full of cinematic discoveries beamed directly from other worlds. Bleeding Skull has always sought after new discoveries that redefine genres and crack open our headspaces, and this year was no different. Now we get to look back and think about the titles that made an impact on our souls and changed us at a cellular level. Our DNA has been altered; we are mutants, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
This year we ventured farther out into the fringes and discovered everything from mind-bending, early 00s animations adapted from a Playstation game to an uproarious, surreal film assembled by several porn production companies. We also dived into Analog Horror, a modern genre that blends found footage and crude CGI; these films are less about narrative and more about haunting moods. We continued to mine our love of anime and tokusatsu TV series and, of course, we forever bowed at the feet of director Ngai Choi Lam.
Along with our friends at the American Genre Film Archive, we released Pathogen, our favorite there’s-something-in-the-water horror film directed by a twelve-year-old and Fuck the Devil, which follows a phantasmagorical death machine named—what else—The Fucker. We also reissued a special edition of Wicked World, a chaotic opus of the highest caliber by Barry J. Gillis.
We thank you for your continued support and going on this voyage to the fringes with us. It brings us great joy to discover films that push, defy, redefine, perplex, and gross out. And it brings us even greater joy to share them with you.
Hail, Satan!
Cyclops (Joji Iida, 1987)
Blu-ray / Full Review
“In its lean 50-minute runtime, Cyclops packs a serious punch. The practical effects escalate quietly until it explodes in the final sequence, where there are pulsating head wounds, a tangled jungle of veins, and gelatinous gore that oozes slowly out of gaping abdominal cavities. Cyclops shares many themes with those beloved kaiju films: corrupt officials, government cover-ups, pollution wreaking havoc on our planet and the people on it. But it also has ambitious body-horror effects ripped straight from the pages of the David Cronenberg playbook.”
Final Flesh (Vernon Chatman, 2009)
DVD / Full Review
“Vernon Chatman, co-creator of Wonder Showzen and producer of South Park, among others, did what us mere mortals have only dreamed to do: he wrote four scripts and sent each to a DIY porno production company to produce them. There was only one instruction: Stick to the script. Everything else, do whatever. The result, Final Flesh, is essentially an Erwin Wurm sculpture, only it’s 70 minutes long. It’s an exercise in Dada-level nonsense and absurdity, only with more nudity. It’s clever, hilarious, and at times, oddly poignant. This film is basically a raging drunk uncle who accidentally says something meaningful in between belches and hitting awkwardly on the Applebee’s waitress.”
Futuropolis (Steve Segal and Phil Trumbo, 1984)
VHS / Full Review
“Written and directed by artists and animators Steve Segal and Phil Trumbo, Futuropolis is an exploration of different animation styles and film genres. There’s a mixture of colorful hand-drawn animation reminiscent of Yellow Submarine and stop-motion antics where our heroes spin on the ground and or get cut in half. There are also extended live action sequences that journey through different genres, including sci-fi, Westerns, 1940s propaganda films, and zany Nickelodeon shows. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a fight between two cavemen and an “intermission” with a classic animation of popcorn popping and cups of soda dancing around (it’s an absolute delight).”
Haunted Indiana (Michael White & Frank Haney, 1981)
Streaming / Full Review
“This is the only thing that has ever made me want to set foot in Indiana. A five-story anthology that was broadcast once on central Indiana’s WTTV Channel 4, Haunted Indiana is twenty minutes of total joy. A narrator guides us on a trip through the Indiana University Folklore Archives, where we witness re-enactments of local urban legends. The ghost of a serial killer haunts a forest! The Cable Line Monster (aka Bigfoot) attacks a motorist! A neon-green phantasm with a bloody mouth spooks sleeping kids! Filled with rad vector graphics, lots of tube socks, and stolen music cues from Psycho, Haunted Indiana combines the nostalgic vibe of a classroom scare film with early 1980s shot-on-video textures to create a miraculous snapshot of regional history.”
Kamen Rider ZO (Keita Amemiya, 1993)
Streaming / Full Review
“Watching Kamen Rider ZO is the equivalent of eating at a buffet restaurant that only serves candy. It’s a breathtaking, all-you-can-eat explosion of rotoscoping, CGI morphing, slimy rubber monsters, animated transitions, body horror mutations, and trippy violence. And it rarely slows down. Released directly to home video in Japan the same year as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted on American television, ZO carries the reckless energy of all tokusatsu productions. But it’s totally amped up, as if Golan and Globus from Cannon Films were in the coke-smeared driver’s seat.”
Kidou Keiji Jiban: Great Explosion at the Monster Factory of Fear (Michio Konishi, 1989)
Streaming / Full Review
“The best things in life are defined by their attention to detail. That’s why you can buy a luxury candle for $80 and also why To Kill a Mockingbird has never gone out of print since its publication in 1960. But Kidou Keiji Jiban: Great Explosion at the Monster Factory of Fear takes the cake. This is a hypercolored dreamland that gushes with energy, joy, and a relentless devotion to sublime visuals. There’s a lake of green slime. Puppet monsters who appear for seconds and then disappear. A giant spider that emerges Demons-style from someone’s back. The screen is bombarded with smoke, neon, sparks, explosions, rotoscope animation, stop motion, and kinetic photography. It’s like Robocop was dropped into Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory right before a biochemical acid-bomb exploded, replacing the Oompa Loompas with man-bats and octopuses with robot heads. ”
Let’s Visit the World of the Future (Douglass Smith, 1973)
DVD / Full Review
“Let’s Visit the World of the Future could be a recruitment tool for the Joker’s gang. Or a movie that Alex is forced to watch as part of his rehabilitation in A Clockwork Orange. Or even an opening act for a “Weird Al” Yankovic concert in 1985. But it’s none of those things. Instead, Let’s Visit is a 40-minute landmine of avant-garde angst from stoned hippies who recognized that clowns are inherently horrifying. And it’s kind of amazing. Set up like an instructional classroom film, complete with the tape-warbled narration of a character named Mr. Camera, this movie is a transgressive attack on consumerism, capitalism, and, you know, THE MAN. But like the film’s questionable hot takes on race and sexual politics, the messaging doesn’t fully land in the 21st century. What does land is the crazed presentation, which transforms some drunken clownin’ around into surrealist art.”
Magic World of Ania (Unknown, 2017)
Streaming / Full Review
“Split up into fifteen chapters and running approximately 70 minutes, Magic World of Ania is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The plot is a little flat, feeling like a true crime riff by way of The Vanishing. Luckily, the subtext is grim and multilayered, providing an ideal accompaniment to the film’s gorgeous sense of design. When it comes to visuals, Ania looks like a box of fireworks going off inside the Andy Warhol Museum. The anonymous filmmaker(s) from Poland deploy rotoscope animation, live action footage, paper cut-outs, stop motion, found footage, and anything else you can think of to form a living, breathing collage. It resembles what would happen if artist Kelly Sears made a horror movie on mushrooms, which is basically everything I could ever ask for.”
Meatball Machine (Yudai Yamaguchi & Juichi Yamamoto, 2005)
Blu-ray / Full Review
“Like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and Versus, Meatball Machine is an exercise in body horror with jaw-dropping practical effects and lightning fast editing. Tentacles strangle, cysts burst from necks, tiny alien parasites writhe and ooze. It goes without saying that everything looks like a penis and shoots like a penis. There’s soap opera melodrama, a date-rapey bro who gets his due, and a touching scene where two aliens talk about how stupid and weak humans are, which yes, I agree. There’s jerk-offs and jag-offs and many body parts get ripped off. It’s truly a sight to behold.”
The Peacock King (Ngai Choi Lam, 1988)
Blu-ray / Full Review
“The Peacock King is nothing short of incredible. The film barrels forward in nonstop adventure and the plot is simple and creative. The characters are charming and the one-liners land. There are nods to the Indiana Jones films—including a mischief of rats—but it never feels derivative. The monster designs are heavily inspired by H.R. Giger, and they are absolute spectacles. The beasts transform and pulsate and they may or may not look like murderous toothy vaginas. You just can’t believe the amount of detail and inventiveness that power the special effects in this film.”
