Gore, Psychedelic, Horror, Obscure, Rare, Cult, Cannibal; DVD - Ex Used condition From the title Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, one might expect a Herschell Gordon Lewis style B-movie gore fest. Instead, one gets a creepy, atmospheric, low-budget cross between art and exploitation. A young woman and her parents discover strange goings-on at the run down carnival at which they recently began working, and they find themselves having to escape from a nightmarish situation. The plot is fairly minimal, with the movie feeling more like a creepy tone poem than a strictly narrative piece. The cast and crew use the run down carnival location to great effect. The amount of atmosphere they generate using found materials and a very limited budget is quite impressive. Filmed in 1973 and thought lost for almost 30 years, the film is not as widely known or seen as other films of that time. Its experimental and psychedelic atmosphere makes it an interesting artifact from its era and essential for fans.

Cult, Mondo, Shockumentary, Documentary, Classic, Something Weird, Riz Ortolani; 4K scan DVD double feature - New Sealed According to George Sanders, Ecco means to “Look, witness, observe, and behold.” He takes us on a narrated and somewhat fractured tour of various areas of the world, revealing many unusual practices of people from different nations and backgrounds. Highlights include German fencing amongst young men, Mardi Gras taking place in Rio, a secret Satanic ritual, graphic footage of men hunting whales, a Grand-Guignol theater performance, the nightlife activities of teenagers in Stockholm, blindfolded buttocks-touching, sliding sharp implements through various body parts with no apparent pain, mass reindeer herding, and much more. While some of it is fairly tame due to decades of exposure to many of the same or similar events, some of it is still quite offensive and gruesome. In The Forbidden, we primarily witness moments of the erotic and unlawful variety, such as floating strip clubs, Swiss sex rituals, Parisian dancers, virgin strippers, a faithless husband and his vengeful wife, erotic nightclub acts in Brussels, teenage protests on the Sunset Strip, Nazi strippers, and much more. The footage presented here is more of an attack on so-called perversion rather than a neutral exploration like its predecessor, meaning that the narrator makes repeated judgments as we see the various activities taking place. For those of the delicate persuasion, only one instance of bloodletting occurs in one of the film’s re-enactments.

Arthouse, Surreal, Mexico, Dark, Disturbing, Award Winning, Perverse, Import; DVD - Ex Used condition An urban family, having moved to the countryside of Mexico, experiences raw drama and ambiguous fantasy in this cinematically fresh and rewarding film by Reygadas. The cinematography is ethereal and at times haunting when combined with such unsettling imagery. That's not to say the films imagery is horrifying in itself. The imagery of Post Tenebras Lux is unsettling in that it's picturesque and lush while also being new and confounding. This is partially due to it's hypnotic, almost tunnel vision take on the 4:3 ratio. This way of presenting the story only adds to it's mysterious nature. The narrative in itself is overtly expressionist as it's partial auto-biographical and moves with fluidity removed from reasoning. It's a film that's entrancing and bewildering at the same time - an atmosphere that just seems to work. It certainly worked to make one of the most original films of the year.