20 Years Of Doomed Moviethon

My Favorite First Time Watches Of 2025

 

Silly as it sounds, I can't help but get so freakin' excited around this time every year because it's time once again to get out my creepy notebook and peruse my first time watches. My hope is that you will find something in here you forgot about or haven't heard of before to add to your "To Watch" list for 2026. My brain is already electrified with all of the stuff I can barely wait to get to in the coming year. Sadly, I only watched like 90 new-to-me movies this year. Ugh, that is awful! I did a whole mess of rewatching favorite shows and movies. 2026 will be different, trust me. I did watch one new show that I loved called "Murderbot" (2025). Highly recommended.

Before I get started, I want to mention a couple of things I did that I would be grateful if you'd lend your eyes/ears to. I put out two albums of ambient music this year. One on the techno side of things and another of the ambient guitar variety. The first is Light Pollution and the second is Sleep/Walk Situationer. I'm immensely proud of these releases, and don't worry, I'll make more! My musical moniker is The Slow Wizard and my YouTube channel where I share my meager attempts at learning synthesizers and other doodads is chugging along. And lastly, the Hello! This is the Doomed Show podcast is still going strong as is my Doomed Moviethon channel. 

In other news: Doomed Moviethon Dot Com celebrated its 20 year anniversary in 2025. I can't believe that I've been writing about horror and cult movies for twenty freakin' years. Unreal. To all of you who have been there supporting my work all this time or folks new to my nightmare worldview, thank you one thousand and five times. I guess I'll keep doing this shiz. 

Okay, that's enough self advertisement -though you should really check out this commercial I made. Anyway! Here are my favorite films I watched this year. As usual, this is not a top 10 list and the order is mostly random, though my favorite film of the year always gets the top spot. Let's go!

Keeper (2025)

Anyone who knows me definitely saw this choice coming as my favorite film of the year. What can I say? I'm always up for the strangeness that Osgood Perkins is going to deliver. And Keeper is certainly a strange one! I went to the theater and it turned out that I was the only person who'd bought a ticket for that night's showing. So there I was, alone in the room, dead center in a sea of empty seats, and regretting not being able to convince LeEtta to come with me. Why? Because I was freakin' scared! (And also this film should have done better.) I can't wait to get this on disc and see it again!

The Vourdalak (2023)

Oh, hello there, France. I remember seeing an early trailer for this and thinking, "I NEED TO SEE THIS." Then finally, it popped up for rent and I went for it. Between the masterful version of this story from Mario Bava in Black Sabbath (1963) and the gory version called Night of the Devils (1972), I never expected another adaptation to hit as hard for me as The Vourdalak does. First time feature film director Adrien Beau (not to be confused with Adrian Belew) takes this film to some very atmospheric, ghoulish, and surreal places. What a treat!

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

LeEtta and I watch a whole bunch of Agatha Christie adaptations all the time, so I've seen multiple versions of her classic tale. And yet somehow, I had missed this star-studded affair from total boss, Sidney Lumet. Everyone in this film is a who's who of awesome A-listers from multiple generations of Hollywood, but it's Albert Finney's gleeful portrayal of Hercule Poirot that makes this one a new favorite I'll enjoy time and time again. 

Oddity (2024)

I can't get excited about The Conjuring or Insidious movies. They're fine, but I've never seen past the second installments of either franchise. Then a movie like Oddity comes along and, for my money, does what those films do, but better. Or at least, it does ghosts really, really well without the cheap -I'm not talking budget- feeling. This spooky ass film also has Carolyn Bracken in it, an actress that I can't take my eyes off. And she is great in this! 

Loft (2005)

I kept stashing this one for a rainy day and when that rainy day arrived, I was totally blown away. Kiyoshi Kurosawa has had the most incredible career, and every time I find another one of his that I haven't seen before, I feel hashtag blessed. How he manages to get so much dread and creepiness into his films is nothing short of miraculous. One of the things I love about him, and something that is absolutely true of Loft, is his films move in such unexpected ways. A fine journey to Hell. 

Sinners (2025)

Usually, I am prepared for a film to hit me in the emotional solar plexus. For instance, I knew Godzilla Minus One (2023) was going to get me, and it did! But the ugly crying I did after Sinners was nearly out of control. Even trying to talk about this film had me choking up for a days afterward. It comes down to emotionally connecting with the characters. The performances, the script, the music, and the production design all came together exquisitely. Those things along with the assured hand of a great director, this was bound to hit and hit hard. The night I saw this film, I was in the presence of greatness.

L.A. Bounty (1989)

I was feeling sad about the passing of Wings Hauser, and I snagged a few of his lesser known (to me) titles and L.A. Bounty was my favorite of the handful I checked out. He plays the whacked out villain in this one and not surprisingly, he almost steals the whole movie. This one is Sybil Danning's show through and through. She plays a mostly mute bounty hunter who will kick your dick inside out. You need to see this.

Hercules (1983)

Luigi Cozzi made a sci-fi sword and sandal movie in the 1980s packed with eye-popping special effects?! And it's got Lou Ferrigno, Sybil Danning, William Berger, Bobby Rhodes, AND Gianni Garko? Then sign me up! Hercules has just tiniest bit of lag in its energy in the last reel, but otherwise this one is damn near perfect. It's pretty wild. I have to give credit to my childhood favorite, Clash of the Titans (1981), for inspiring the little wave of fantasy films like this and Lucio Fulci's Conquest (1983).

Furiosa (2024)

Sadly, the negative hype of this one got to me -partly that it was a prequel and partly that it was going to be more CGI-heavy than Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)- so I didn't see it in theaters last year. That was dumb of me! I should have had faith in George Miller, because I enjoyed Furiosa so damn much. The weirdness and the contemplative moments of Fury Road were expanded into this insanity. As usual, I'm looking forward to rewatching the whole franchise from start to finish, and I'll be excited to see how this one plays out with the rest of the films.

Strike Commando 2 (1988) 

While I very much enjoyed Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso's Strike Commando (1987), this sequel never missed a beat for me in terms of the awkward, cornball bullshit I want from a shockingly derivative Italian action film. The characters are total weirdos that make me laugh every time they open their mouths, usually to scream at each other and the action scenes are actually cool even though they almost make zero sense sometimes.  

The Monkey (2025)

Did I actually get two Osgood Perkins films in one year and they were both great? Yes, but also yes. While Keeper was more in keeping with what I crave from Perkins's work, The Monkey is a solid entry in his filmography. While I'm pretty much done with gore for comedy sake -though there are exceptions like Psycho Goreman (2020)- there's a great deal of heart stashed away in this outrageous film. 

Black Tight Killers (1966)

I had never heard of this film until Radiance posted the boffo trailer for it, and I turned it off after just a few seconds because the fire had been lit. When the Blu-ray arrived, the film exceeded my expectations! If you need some dynamic spectacle in your life, then Black Tight Killers is for you. It's a pop art explosion with a bonkers ass plot. 

The Night of the Walking Dead (1975)

Rod and Troy of the The Naschycast covered this film ages ago on their show and I very patiently waited for someone, somewhere to put this one out in a non-shitty bootleg/download. Sure enough, Severin Films came in like champs and I was finally able to see this one on a nicey nice Blu-ray. This León Klimovsky jam was totally worth the wait. If you need more strange and atmospheric Spanish horror in your life, then bump this one up in your queue. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)

Well, dress me up in a tinsel tutu and call me Rudolf, I did not see this last one coming at all. This new take on the freaky ass SNDN franchise hit all the right sleigh bells for LeEtta and I. We absolutely loved this. I love how they too what folks who are familiar with the first film and threw a whole new spin on it, and I think made this just a cool film for newbies. I can't wait to get my hands on this one in the new year.

Honorable Mentions

Surf II (1983) - Truly bizarre spoof movie and sequel to nothing. 

Ferrari (2023) - Classy. Cars are cool or whatever.

The Lady Vanishes (1979) - A cozy and delightful film. 

Mickey 17 (2025) - Do we need more dystopian sci-fi? Always.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) - Essential 1970s trash. 

Trancers II (1991) - Oh my God! Almost better than the original. 

Stopmotion (2023) - Sad and damn good horror to depress you.

Lady Morgan's Revenge (1965) - Excellent Italian gothic.

Camp Fear (1991) - Almost a fave of the year but I can't remember it.

Prime Cut (1972) - This is so good and so badass that I can't even.

Hired to Kill (1990) - Outrageous and cheap action. A parody?

An Eternal Combat (1991) - Very imaginative Hong Kong goodness.

The Power (1984) - Ambitious horror schlock.

Cut (2000) - Aussie slasher goodness that is pretty wild. 

Weapons (2025) - I want to bottle and sell this one's energy.  

Mister Scarface (1976) - Silly but charming poliziotteschi from my birth year.

Worst Films I Watched This Year

Bloody Psycho (1989) - Just jaw-droppingly bad. Kind of infuriating.

Summer Catch (2001) - Cinematic food poisoning.

Children of the Living Dead (2001) - Brutally sucky, but in a bad way. 

Hello! This is the Doomed Show - Strike Commando 2 (1988)

Sleep/Walk Situationer

My new album, Sleep/Walk Situationer, is available right here. I wanted to make something a little different, so instead of recording it digitally, like normal, I recorded the entire thing directly onto some late 80s/early 90s (and very used) Radio Shack Supertape brand cassettes. Then I imported the tapes onto my PC and mixed the sounds I recorded very minimally, spliced them all together, and then recorded them back onto cassette before finally saying, "Okay, that is enough of that!" 

I quite enjoy the results of recording the album this way, though I will probably never do it again! The unpredictability of old cassettes and old analog gear is awesome but the way the album sounded as I was playing it was on a different planet than what I ended up with. The normal bias cassettes and my old tape deck stripped almost all of the low end out and overall, the album is too treble-heavy for me. And full disclosure: when I had the files on my computer, I turned the bass back up only for it to be stripped out again when I put it back on tape. "LOL" as my grandparents used to say.

My co-worker described the album as being like walking by the hidden speakers in Tomorrowland. And I like that very much! I also got a review from a very kind soul on Bandcamp. Warpfan said: "This album is not only the perfect cure for your Night Journal Forgery symptoms (it handily dispatched with mine), but also for overly-commercial, cookie-cutter music. Armed only with a guitar and a few pedals, the slow wizard weaves a warm, curious blanket of sound that at times evokes Autechre, theremin music, Boards of Canada, Japanese koto, and Doctor Who soundtracks. If this sounds good to you, snap up one a hand-drawn cassette today. Less is definitely more on this album. [wizard emoji] Favorite track: Side B."

I gave the album some lore about the titular device and hand drew and hand colored all of the cassette covers. That process, like making the music for the album, was very soothing. It's called "art therapy" and I invented it. Pretty soon, I'll be teaching courses on my revolutionary technique.  

As for the music of Situationer, I limited myself to one guitar and all the guitar pedals at my disposal. There are no drum machines or synthesizers this time around. I wanted to see if I could make something soothing or, at the very least, moody, with a limited amount of tools. And I had a stash of 90-minute tapes that needed to be used. So, I recorded about 2 and a half hours of music and then cut it down to 90 minutes for the tape. 

But what about that lore? Here's the story of Sleep/Walk Situationer from the liner notes: "In May of 1994, Dr. Eva Jelion received word that her estranged daughter Era had been killed in an unlicensed somnambulistic spelunking accident. Dr. Jelion set about inventing the Sleep/Walk Situationer, a preintuitive synapticolater in order to prevent sleepwalkers from ever coming to harm again."

Here's how I decided to promote the album: 

How To Play A Necromancer’s Theremin

I have read some strange novels in my time but Chase Griffinand Christina Quay’s How To Play A Necromancer’s Theremin (2023) is easily one of the most unusual. The book is about a young writer named Echo and his friends touring through locations made famous by their hero Rocco Atleby, an experimental literature rockstar and expert necromancer’s theremin player. Their journey is particularly hazardous because they are bingeing on vast amounts of ground up book pages. In the universe of this book, book powder is highly hallucinogenic, and everyone is consuming vast quantities of it (and several other chemicals) at every turn.

Reading Necromancer’s Theremin is kind of like speed-reading Naked Lunch backwards while simultaneously someone is whispering in your ear as they describe the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). The characters and the reader alike are bouncing around this demented plot like bumper cars that have escaped the amusement park. The rubber reality of this tome of magical realism is stretched way beyond the breaking point as the fourth (and possibly fifth) wall is constantly broken.

My one complaint about the book is that it gets a little overwhelming at times as its strangeness and pacing steamrolled right over me. I don’t know if I recommend reading it in as many or as few sittings as you can. To call this dizzying, and just a little anxiety-inducing for me personally, is an understatement. But I stuck with it and I’m very glad that I did because overall, Griffin and Quay’s book is worth the new grey hairs it gave me. Necromancer’s Theremin is a circuitously dense, bizarrely funny, sometimes frightening, playful, beyond drug-addled, horny, and downright bookish bender gem from (where else?) Florida.

Hello! This is the Doomed Show - Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Secret Menu Items At Dracula Castle

 I made some spooky music for the holiday of Halloween. Hope you dig them! 

Hello! This is the Doomed Show - Jack-O (1995)

Hello! This is the Doomed Show 291 - Spookies (1986)

The Addams Family - "Puttergeist" (1992)

[Wednesday and Pugsley dressed as you know who.]

I checked out "Puttergeist", the Halloween episode of the 90s "The Addams Family" cartoon. This was my first exposure to the show and it's um... pretty weird. Or maybe I'm pretty weird. Who can say?

The plot of this episode is that it's Halloween night and the Addamses are preparing for two things: 1) spooky festivities and 2) the appearance of the legendary Puttergeist. In a not subtle reference to Caddyshack (1980), a foolhardy golfer dies at the 13th hole during a thunderstorm after being struck by lightning. Now every Halloween, he haunts the neighborhood on a souped up golf cart, launching golf balls at unlucky residents. 

The voice acting for this show is all excellent though Debi Derryberry's (real name?!) performance as Wednesday is probably too monotone to the point of distraction. I appreciate her commitment to the bit, but she was out-shined by legends like Carol Channing, Rip Taylor, John Astin, Edie McClurg, etc. The animation is goofy and well done, but the voice acting talent they managed to wrangle into the studio is where it's at. 

The big joke that made me laugh out loud featuring Gomez having his back walked/stomped on by Lurch to make him less relaxed. Afterwards, as he's suffering in pain quietly, Morticia asks him to stop being selfish and scream loud enough so the whole family can enjoy it. He then proceeds to crawl around on the floor, bleating in pain. 

The adult humor the creators snuck in is smartly tempered by a mountain of absurdity, which I greatly appreciate. Obviously, this is par for the course -see what I did there?- for Addams adaptations. I recommend this episode, but I can't tell how I feel about the series overall based on this small sampling. I suppose I'll need to see more than just "Puttergeist".  

Live. Laugh. Lurch. I guess. 

The Three Mother Trilogy In Podcast Form

We finally finished talking about Dario Argento's Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears on Hello! This is the Doomed Show. Special thanks to listener Glenn Del Rossi for encouraging us to take on this monumental task. Here are the episodes in the order that we talked about them! Of course, we did them out of order. Who wouldn't? I hope you enjoy these episodes because we put A LOT of work into them. We all need more moms.  

My Horror Shelfie 45 - From P2 to Phantom of the Paradise

My Horror Shelfie 44 - From Oasis of the Zombies to Over Your Dead Body

Light Pollution

Howdy! I've been a bit busy making some sounds lately, and I am here to share the results. This is my sometimes spooky, sometimes listenable music I make. You can listen to the album on Bandcamp. I've been working on this album since February of this year but it was in the planning stages for much longer than that. I'm fascinated by light pollution and I hope I've captured the vibe of those inescapable city lights. Look, if you're a little reticent to check it out, that's okay. Let this commercial sell it to you:

Franco Friday 64: Dark Mission: Evil Flowers (1988)

Hey there, folks! Did you know that’s it’s been 9 years since a proper Franco Friday and 5 years since I’ve reviewed a Jess Franco film at all? It's all true. Sorry about that. I got a little distracted. Some more of Old Jess’s work has been popping up over the years that I had always been curious about, so here I am. My list of films isn’t very long, but I really felt like I needed to bring the randomness of our guy’s canon back into my life. You ready? I amn’t.

Dark Mission: Evil Flowers
Directed by Jesús Franco
Written by Jesús Franco, Georges Friedland
1988
Starring Christopher Lee, Christopher Mitchum, Richard Harrison, Cristina Higueras, Henri Lambert, Alicia Moro and Brigitte Lahaie
85 minutes

Even though his boss thinks he’s a drunk and a womanizer, soldier guy Derek Carpenter (Christopher Mitchum) is called in to identify and then capture or maybe assassinate -that part was unclear- a drug lord named Luis Morel (Christopher Lee), who’s hiding out in Spain. Derek must go undercover as a photographer doing a story about the effects of drugs on society to get close to his target. How is that going to work? On his flight, he meets the lovely Linda (Cristina Higueras), a fun-loving gal who might be the daughter of his target. Wouldn’t that be wild if she was?! 

The mission, which is already complicated enough, gets even more sticky when Derek is being saddled with two different sets of contacts, both from opposing (I think) sides, who want him to either do something or not. On the one hand you have blonde beauty Elena (Alicia Moro) and her boyfriend who have a connection to some soldiers who want him to take out Morel. On the other, you have blonde beauty Moira (Brigitte Lahaie) and her team of agents who want him to take out Morel. As Linda learns that her daddy might be a not nice man and her relationship with Derek is getting serious, the- Ooh! Look over there! Helicopters!

When this movies starts up, there’s a grating computer voice providing some heavy info on the life story of the drug lord to Chris Mitchum’s character for like three solid minutes. I said to myself: Maybe Franco Fridays should have stayed dead. But Chris Mitchum has a weirdly alien charm that I always dig, and Christopher Lee is totally on board with this slop, so I kept going. He and Miss Higueras have a decent father-daughter chemistry. I liked that quite a bit. Both actors really light up in their scenes together, hokey they may be. Speaking of chemistry, I wish there were more scenes of Richard Harrison berating Mitchum. The three that we get are very important.

Some of the music is decent. I liked the Latin-style nightclub pieces, and the lounge-y jazz crud scattered throughout this thing. I think there was also a drum solo played on a drum machine. Lovely! Some of the actors are dubbed, but the real magic comes from the actors who may or may not be speaking English phonetically. I did actually laugh out loud at a couple of the intentional jokes in the film though. So, bonus points there. What isn’t funny is the film’s half-assed attempts at an anti-drug message and worse still, the "ABC Afterschool Special" section completely wastes Antonio Mayans’s cameo as a rehab doctor who makes a very serious speech.

Dark Mission completely falls apart during the climactic battle between the ground forces and the helicopters, the footage of which I assume was from a totally different film. The whole sequence is super confusing and just about the biggest and most complete failure of film editing that I’ve seen in a long while. I mean, the stakes at this point were never super high because the plot is so muddy and the intrigue so damn mild. But jeez Louise, I had no clue what was happening onscreen other than explosions and stuff. The number of times this film switches aspect ratios from shot to shot during the climax is freakin' hilarious.

Overall, Dark Mission: Evil Flowers is a kinda bad but okay-ish timewaster (that has more than a few unintentional laughs) for a dull Sunday afternoon. I liked some of the locations and Franco sneaks in a bit of style, although most of the camerawork is pretty flat. However, seeing Brigitte Lahaie firing a machine gun that is almost as long as she is tall made me pump my fist in the air and cheer (literally). That woman is impossibly beautiful. She makes up for the shots of Mitchum trying to eat the faces of his female co-stars during kissing scenes. Speaking of sex and nudity, this film has none! Does that mean that this isn’t a Jess Franco film? See you next week! (Hopefully.)

My favorite quotes:

“Well, hello. Is this that vampy Cinderella who likes to take advantage of poor weary travelers?”

“Oh, where are you going, dream boy?!”

“You haven’t seen the worst of it.”