THE B-MOVIE CATECHISM 
DAILY CALL SHEET: JULY 8, 2025
A Dark Song (2016) Unable to get over the death of her seven-year old son, Sophia comes up with a desperate plan. She persuades Joseph, a dubious practitioner of magic, to move into a rental home with her and engage in a grueling months-long ritual designed to manifest her guardian angel, who in turn will allow her to communicate with the spirit of her son. The catch is that the rite eventually requires a ceremony of forgiveness which Sophia will have nothing to do with. As a result, things go horribly, horribly wrong. This dark and brutal tale of grief definitely falls into the category of "not for most people", but if it clicks with you, it will click hard.TIL: The ritual in A Dark Song is actually derived from a real life Kabbalistic novel called The Book of Abramelin written sometime around the year 1400. Kabbalah at its most benevolent is an esoteric way of thought formulated primarily by 12th and 13th century Jewish mystics which focuses on pondering God's creation of the world, and at its worst is a gateway to Occultism. From a Christian standpoint, the more benevolent path of Kabbalah leads to errors about the nature of God (e.g. Lurianic Kabbalah suggests evil originates from God), errors which can endanger the soul. The worst path, the one that has stuff like trying to usurp God's will through conjurations and such, leads straight to Hell.The Cat from Outer Space (1978) When his downed spacecraft is seized by the military, a feline-like alien named Zunar-J-5/9 Doric-4-7 (or Jake to his friends) enlists the aid of an Earth scientist to help get it back. Lots of family friendly hijinks ensue as Jake and his pals outwit the government and a cadre of corporate criminals who want Jake's powers for their own purposes. Likely released to cash-in on the booming UFO craze in the wake of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this perfectly pleasant live-action Disney fare is probably a tad bit too long, but nostalgia and the simple fact that it stars a cool cat keeps me from ragging on it too much.TIL: The Church has no official position on aliens other than their existence would have zero effect on her teachings. However, if there were an extraterrestrial rational species (ETRS) with rational souls and free will (basically made in the image of God like us), Notre Dame's Christopher Baglow has some thoughts. He speculates that under the principle of particularity (the divine tendency to deal with a particular people first rather the entirety of humanity), it's hypothetically possible an ETRS might experience an Incarnation of God particular to their own unique physicality. In short, if Jake was real, his planet might have experienced a cat version of Jesus. Yeah, probably not, but it's a fun thought exercise.
Time Barbarians (1990) In an age long past, super-buff King Doran gives a magic amulet to his wife for protection, so naturally she's murdered by his worst enemy Mandrak almost immediately. Using the amulet, Mandrak escapes to L.A. circa 1990, but Doran finds a way to follow. There, Doran meets his wife's future doppelganger and the two team up to take down the bad guy. I'm pretty sure the word 'inane' was invented for movies just like this. It's hard to name a favorite facepalm moment, but the one in which a guy looks at his obviously dead friend lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his head and asks, "Are you okay?" is a strong contender.TIL: Most of the time the word barbarian comes up in the New Testament, it's simply referring to non-Greeks. It turns out those with a Grecian education like St. Paul and St. Luke had a hard time understanding the rougher sounding language of some foreign peoples and so referred to them as "bárbaros", or babblers. Not very scary. However, in the letter to the Colossians, he does also apply the word to the Scythians. With their generally uncouth and savage behavior, these guys were more along the lines of what we think of when we use the word barbarian these days and nobody liked them. Even so, Paul makes a point that Christ came for the barbarians as well.Beginning of the End (1957) Scientist Peter Graves leads the battle against giant grasshoppers, which is fitting since it's partially his fault there are freaking giant grasshoppers to begin with. It's impossible to review this Bert I. Gordon riff on Them! without mentioning that the "special" effects consist of real grasshoppers crawling across blown up photographs of buildings. Then again, why wouldn't you mention it since the movie's cheesiness is part of its charm.TIL: Lots of dieticians point out that the Kashrut in Leviticus had health benefits over and above the religious and tribal reasons for its list of culinary do's and don'ts. For instance, grasshoppers, which were approved for eating, are about 40% protein, 43% fat, and 13% fiber. Basically, they're good for you. But, healthy or not, being allowed and being required are not the same thing, so you'll be hard pressed to find the little buggers on too many kosher menus these days.
DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 22, 2025
The Food of the Gods (1976) On a remote island, farmers feed their chickens some mysterious stuff which bubbles up from the ground, because why wouldn't you, and they start to grow enormous. So do the bugs, bees, and rats who get into the food as well. Soon, the whole island is in danger of being overrun by the big beasties who've gotten a taste for more meaty meals. While there's only a little bit of H. G. Wells to be found in this adaptation of his novel, there's a whole lot of Bert I. Gordon, and that brings with it all the good and bad you would expect.TIL: In ancient Greek mythology, the food of the gods was called ambrosia and it is said to be the stuff that granted them their immortality. For the Jews and Christians, of course, God is conceived of as an unchangeable, immaterial spirit, meaning he has no body and therefore needs no food. As Irenaeus explained, “Far removed is the Father of all from those things which operate among men, the affections and passions. He is simple, not composed of parts, without structure, altogether like and equal to himself alone. He is all mind, all spirit, all thought, all intelligence, all reason.”Final Exam (1981) After a couple is butchered at the local lover's lane, students at Lanier College spend the last day of exams talking about it. They also pull some pranks, cheat on tests, question their relationships, consider the future, read some books, try to make a drug deal, eat lunch... Eventually the killer gets bored with lurking in the bushes watching all of this and pops out to massacre the majority of the cast in the last 15 minutes. You would think a slasher film which bends over backward to flesh out its characters would be a welcome change of pace, but if you think that then you've never watched Final Exam. The movie spends over an hour of its brisk 89 minutes letting you get to know the characters, and yet by the end we still just get the jock, the geek, the slut, the stoner, etc., the same tired stereotypes that have shown up in countless slashers. And yet I still really enjoy Final Exam because something's wrong with me I guess. Sigh.TIL: As the Catechism notes, “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of Heaven– through purification or immediately, – or immediate and everlasting damnation.” There's a second judgement coming at the end of time, though, a sort of final exam for all of creation where those still living will get their failing or passing grade, those still in detention in Purgatory get to graduate to Heaven, and the earthly campus of the old world will be shut down for good to make way for something new. Since everyone is destined to face one or the other of these exams, best to do the homework assignments beforehand so you're prepared for either.
DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 6, 2025
Eight Legged Freaks (2002) Crickets contaminated with toxic waste are fed to the various arachnids residing at an exotic spider farm, causing them to grow to the size of a mini-van. At first the freaks are content to hang out in the closed mines beneath a small Arizona town, but soon the temptation to catch a bite at the local mall becomes too strong to resist. Lots of familiar faces like David Arquette and teeny-bopper Scarlett Johansson never take any of the sketchy early 2000's CGI seriously and neither should audiences. For lighthearted fun only.TIL: Some Ukrainians put spider web ornaments on their Christmas trees in honor of an legend about a poor widow and her children who had no money to decorate the tree which had grown in the middle of their cabin. However, while the family slept on Christmas Eve, a spider covered the tree with webs. As the sun rose on Christmas morning, the Child Jesus appeared and turned the silken threads into gold and silver, providing the family with beautiful decorations and a ticket out of poverty. Some claim this story is where the custom of putting tinsel on Christmas trees comes from.Now Showing at a Blog Near You: For Aleteia this week I take a look at the latest exorcism film ‘The Ritual’. Al Pacino as a priest? I guess he's doing penance for playing the devil that time.
DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 27, 2024
The Alien Factor (1978) A craft of extraterrestrial origin carrying specimens for an intergalactic zoo crash lands on Earth, loosing three murderous mutants into the woods of Maryland. The monsters soon find a small town to terrorize and all seems lost, but thankfully doughy stranger Ben Zachary shows up to try and put things right. Like most of Don Dohler's low-budget regional efforts, this one has some dull spots and questionable acting, but this unapologetic love-letter to 50's sci-fi gets by on nifty creature designs and just plain old heart.TIL: The Church has no official position on zoos per se, but writing for Catholic Answers, Prof. Paul Gondreau notes, "To inflict needless pain and torture on animals or to place them in inhumane living conditions is to engage in insensitive cruelty and to foster a kind of hardness of heart - which is very bad for our souls. It corrupts and perverts our moral character, and thereby disposes us to treat others with an adjacent hardness of heart or insensitive cruelty." Under this reasoning, zoos should take care to see their animals are well cared for and have humane habitats.Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) In a setup that's like Goosebumps on steroids, space aliens resembling grotesque circus clowns descend upon a town and begin collecting the citizenry in order to turn them into cotton candy. Their weapons of choice include carnivorous popcorn ray guns, flesh dissolving ice cream, and a very lethal version of the old spring loaded boxing glove in a gift box gag. Uniquely surreal horror flick that guarantees good, clean PG-13 fun for everyone except maybe sufferers of coulrophobia.TIL: Secretly baptized by Polycarp against the wishes of his Christian-killing father, St. Maturinus grew to be a performer of miracles, an expert at calming the over-excited, and a renowned exorcist. It's said he even drove a demon out of the stepdaughter of the Roman emperor Maximian. That this would lead St. Maturinus to being invoked against mental illness is no surprise. For some reason, though, he is also the patron Saint of clowns, which probably says more about clowns than it does the Saint himself.
DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 14, 2025
The Lift (1983) A high-rise elevator with an experimental microprocessor loses its mechanical mind and starts offing anyone who, literally, pushes its buttons. Fortunately, Felix Adelaar, elevator repairman extraordinaire is on the case. You would think this would be as silly an idea as something like The Mangler's killer laundry machine or The Refrigerator's killer… well, you know, and yet it's got that little bit of something that's rightfully earned this obscure little Dutch horror a cult following over the years.TIL: In noting in the Catechism that an object can be exorcised, the Church recognizes an object can become the focus of outside evil forces just as a person can. Now, that doesn’t mean your toaster is someday going to gain awareness and bite your hand off. It just means that, for whatever reason, the demonic can become fixated on a physical object. Such an idea should be no big shock to Christians who accept the notion that there’s a spiritual dimension to reality.The Corpse Vanishes (1942) A somewhat mad scientist uses specially scented orchids to put virgin brides into death-like comas, then whisks their bodies back to his lab where he extracts gland fluid to keep his own wife young. A female journalist tracks the scientist down, but quickly runs into trouble when she discovers the deranged family who lives in the basement where the scientists dumps his victim's bodies. Except all those dead brides might not be so dead after all. Yep, it's another cheapie from Monogram starring Bela that doesn't make too much sense at all, but it only runs for one hour so you'll barely notice.TIL: One of the odder reasons skeptics try to give for the reason Jesus' corpse vanished from the tomb is that he didn't really die on the cross, but rather swooned, was taken down, and healed with aloe and myrrh. Pesky science gets in the way of this conspiracy theory, though. A 1986 article published by medical experts in the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that the combination of extreme blood loss, shock, dehydration, soft tissue damage, extreme fatigue, nail wounds, pierced heart and lung, and general asphyxiation Jesus experienced would have left no room for survival. Points for trying, though.
DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 4, 2025
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) Hungry witch Debbie Harry prepares a young boy to be her supper, but agrees to postpone putting him in the oven for a while if the lad can pull a Scheherazade and keep her entertained with stories. The tales he spins include a Bram Stoker story in which Steve Buscemi meeting a mummy, a Stephen King yarn in which David Johansen battles the world's most indestructible cat, and a variation of Japanese folklore in which Rae Dawn Chong hides a secret about gargoyles. Simply put, if you liked Tales from the Darkside the TV show, you'll pretty much like this.TIL: Speaking of source material, skeptics like to note some similarities in certain Bible stories such as the Great Flood and similar stories in earlier myths. The wishful thinking seems to be that the existence of these antecedents somehow disprove what's in Scripture. Another way to consider such parallels, though, is that maybe something like the flood actually happened way back when and various civilizations interpreted it through the lens of their individual cultures. The goal then becomes to figure out which of those versions best reflects spiritual and/or historical reality. The Bible tends to win such arguments.For Aleteia this week I take a look at the new documentary on our soon-to-be Saint, ‘Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality’.
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 26, 2025
Invisible Ghost (1941) Bela Lugosi's wife abandons him, but shortly thereafter becomes brain damaged and starts showing up to stare vacantly through the windows. Whenever she does so, Bela slips into a trance and becomes a homicidal strangler. The thing is, he doesn't know he's doing it, and the number of people who might figure it out is slowly dwindling. Nobody's invisible and there is no ghost, but if you can live with the misleading title, this has a nice enough atmosphere to make it an easy way to fill an hour.TIL: The movie may not have had an invisible ghost hanging around, but the world does. Pope Saint John Paul II spoke of the Holy Spirit as the “hidden God,” observable only through the effects of His actions in the world and the actions of those He resides within. Of course, just because He's invisible, that doesn't mean He's some impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person, meaning we have to develop a relationship with Him as we would anyone else. That can take time.The Unholy (1988) After somehow miraculously surviving a fall from a skyscraper, Father Michael is sent to New Orleans to battle a demon who targets priests for temptation and murder. Following his acclaimed turn as a priest in The Assisi Underground, Ben Cross returns to the cassock in this lesser known (at least he probably hopes it is) late 80's horror outing. To be honest, the flick is on the mediocre side and the tempting more often than not involves little more than disrobed women. However, it does have plenty of rubber monster suit action, plus it's always nice to watch a film where the priest actually makes it to the finale with his vows intact and is portrayed as a hero for doing so.TIL: Priestly celibacy (no marriage, therefore no sex) is not dogma, but rather a discipline imposed by the Latin Church after the turn of the first millennium when some priests started trying to leave Church property to their children. Celibacy has become to be viewed as a gift that God bestows on priests who, like the unmarried Jesus before them, can extend to all people the familial love usually reserved for spouses and children. So far, the discipline seems to have been a net positive for the Church. Naysayers have tried to link celibacy to sexual abuse; however, as celibate priests account for less than 1% of total child sexual abuse cases in most countries, that theory is patently stupid.
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 20, 2025
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966) When a ginormous opal turns out to be an egg (when will people in movies learn giant oval things are always an egg), it hatches the monstrous Barugon. This doesn't sit well with Gamera, who returns from space to save the world. But can even the terrific terrapin survive Barugon's phallic ice-spray tongue or the even more destructive rainbow death ray that shoots out of Barugon's back? Yes, rainbow death ray. Look, it's a Gamera movie. If you can't go along with a rainbow death ray, you shouldn't even be here.TIL: Most everyone knows the story of God putting a rainbow in the sky as a promise to Noah that He wouldn't destroy the world anymore until it's absolutely the right time. However, they usually forget it shows up again in John's vision of Heaven in Revelation where the apostle sees a rainbow encircling the throne of God. It's a call back to the lid (named the mercy seat) which covered the Ark of the Covenant, and it symbolizes that even at the end of all things, God is encompassed with mercy.Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Still recovering from the mental and physical wounds suffered during the first movie, Dr. Frankenstein wants nothing to do with the flamboyant Dr. Pretorius' plans to create a mate for the quite alive but horribly lonely creature. However, after Pretorius convinces the mopey monster to kidnap Frankenstein's wife Elizabeth, the sullen scientist reluctantly agrees to the experiment. The rest is true celluloid history. From Karloff's sympathetic performance to Whales' subversive humor, just about everything works here, even the Bride's signature fright-wig hairdo. Likely to forever have a spot on the list of greatest sequels ever made.TIL: To modern audiences, it's pretty obvious the super-gay Pretorius wants to conceive with Frankenstein without any of that messy female stuff mucking up the process. Now, the Church does not condemn all uses of technology to help with conception. However, it does conclude that any method that doesn't involve sex between the husband and the wife is immoral because it does violence to the dignity of the human person and the institution of marriage. As Pope Pius XII put it, "To reduce the common life of a husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory."
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 19, 2024
Killer Workout (1987) Rhonda Johnson owns the hottest fitness club in L.A. However, business starts to drop off a little once someone begins using a giant safety pin to slash up her clients. Could the grisly murders have anything to do with the tragic tanning bed accident which befell Rhonda's twin sister a few years earlier? With at least 20%-25% of the film devoted to spandex-clad exercisers gyrating to 80's bands you've never heard of, this is hardly the best entry in the aerobicide sub-genre (yes, such a thing exists). But c'mon, a giant safety pin? That's slasher gold right there.TIL: With its required routine of sit, stand, kneel, stand, etc., participation in Mass is often jokingly referred to as Catholic aerobics. The movements have meaning, though. Genuflecting before you take your seat is a sign of reverence. Standing at certain points like the reading of the Gospels is a symbol of honor and respect. Kneeling and bowing signifies adoration and gratitude, especially before the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Even sitting in the pews itself has meaning as a posture of listening and receptivity. So, when it comes to Catholic aerobics, there's devotion in the motion.Now Showing at a Blog Near You: The guys over at The Official List of 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See have recently finished their list of... well, 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See.
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 18, 2025
Dr. Cyclops (1940) A group of notable biological experts travel to the Peruvian jungle only to discover the mad scientist who invited them has bad eyesight and just needed someone to look in his microscope. When the biologists get testy over such a slight, the scientist shrinks them to doll size and chases them into the wild. Revenge is plotted. The story is pretty rote, but the three-strip technicolor and Oscar-nominated special effects are worth the intermittent trudging. Besides, without this, those of us who were kids in the 70's would likely have never gotten Dr. Shrinker, and that would have been a crying shame.TIL: Jesus said, "The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness." Now, the Lord wasn't condemning the vision impaired. As St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (don't hear that last name too much anymore) explained, "The single eye is the love unfeigned; for when the body is enlightened by it, it sets forth through the medium of the outer members only things which are perfectly correspondent with the inner thoughts. But the evil eye is the pretended love, which is also called hypocrisy, by which the whole body of the man is made darkness."Vampires (1998) The original bloodsucker Valek is looking for a an ancient relic that would make vampires immune to sunlight. It's a good thing the Catholic Church has been raising Jack Crow since he was a child to be her master slayer of the undead. This barely broke even when it was released and has never been highly regarded but, like many of Carpenter's lesser works, Vampires is aging better than it has any right too. With James Woods leading the cast in a bevy of unhinged performances, it gets by on entertainment value alone.TIL: In the novel Dracula, Van Helsing acknowledges all of the Vampire Lord's supernatural powers, but notes his greatest asset is mankind's total rejection of religion in favor of secular scientism, the misguided belief that science is the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. He says, "For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be [Dracula's] greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies."
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 9,. 2024
The Toxic Avenger (1984) Bullies force 98-pound weakling Melvin into a barrel of toxic waste which horribly disfigures the put-upon janitor, but also grants him superhuman strength which he uses to dismember local nogoodniks like Bozo, Slug, and Cigar Face. This disrupts the criminal empire of Tromaville's crooked mayor, who decides to frame Melvin for murder. What's a grotesque superhero to do? What we think of as Troma Entertainment starts here and it pretty much defies criticism. You either grok with its weird combination of lowest of low-brow humor and semi-socialist vibes or you don't.TIL: As Christians are called to be good stewards of God's creation, the responsible handling of industry's toxic waste is a no-brainer. However, at a 2009 synod, Pope Benedict XVI warned of another form of toxic waste to be wary of. He noted, "There is absolutely no doubt that the so-called 'First' World has exported up to now and continues to export its spiritual toxic waste that contaminates the peoples of other continents, particularly those of Africa." What wastes was he speaking of? That would be the West's toxic materialism and lack of moral values. God expects us to clean those up as well.For Aleteia this week I take a look at 'The King of Kings' which is tailor-made for kids (as Dickens intended), but just might have something for grown-ups as well.
DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 3, 2025
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) After King Arthur assembles his knights, God sends them on a quest for… oh, come on, you know the story, or you should if schools are doing their jobs. And, if you're of a certain age, you know every word in this movie. The website Ranker has a number of lists devoted to the most quoted movies of all time and Monty Python and the Holy Grail is always in the top five. Deservedly so, as it never gets any less funny no matter how many times you watch it. And anyone who disagrees with that is simply an empty-headed animal food trough wiper, and I… well, you can finish the line yourself.TIL: Check out any list of the most quoted books of all time and the Christian Bible is invariably at the top. As an article at MSN puts it, "The Bible is not just a religious text; it is a cultural artifact that has influenced art, music, and law. Its teachings, such as 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' resonate across cultures and generations, offering a moral compass for billions… This timeless tome continues to guide individuals and shape societies, making it a cornerstone of Western civilization." So, even if you aren't Christian, accurate knowledge of the Bible is a must if you want to claim any understanding of the world in which we live.Slither (2006) A small town blowhard is infected with an alien parasite bent on becoming the only consciousness on the planet. Along with being transformed into a tentacled mess, the poor guy's also compelled to impregnate the local floozy with thousands of slug-like larvae that explode forth to take over everyone they can get inside. Soon, it's up to a small handful of uninfected to stop the growing hive-mind from taking over Earth. James Gunn's feature directorial debut showcases the beginnings of the wit and visual flare that would soon become his trademark, but the gross-out effects let you know he definitely earned his filmmaking diploma working for Troma.TIL: While we can only speculate as to what exactly the state of being we call Heaven will be like, one thing for certain is that it will not be a hive mind; we will not be absorbed into the consciousness of God and lose our individuality. Since we were created with free will, which God will not remove, and promised glorified versions of our existing bodies, this pretty much ensures we'll remain rational individuals. Yes, the singular focus of each person will be on glorifying God (why wouldn't it be), but the expressions of that focus will likely be as varied as the number of people there.
DAILY CALL SHEET: MARCH 27, 2025
Tomb of Torture (1963) Someone with a really messed up face kills two girls in a castle where a countess was long ago murdered. Unaware of those events and plagued by visions that she is the reincarnation of the dead noblewoman, a young(ish) woman and her father travel to the castle looking for answers. They don't like the ones they find. The film tries valiantly to be a Bava-esque gothic thriller, but the unfortunate choice of cartoonish library music makes the whole thing feel like a hard PG-13 episode of Scooby Doo.TIL: "Music, great music", Pope Benedict XVI remarked after attending a concert by Chinese pianist Jin Ju, "distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer." Of course, the qualifier there is the word great. The choice of lackluster or inappropriate music, be it at church or on a movie soundtrack, can ruin the desired atmosphere.Still Voices: Gamera vs. Jiger (1970) - "And the turtles, of course...all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be." - Dr. Seuss
DAILY CALL SHEET: MARCH 18, 2025
Funny Book Philosophy: Nighthawk 001 (1998) Remembering that time Nighthawk ran into Daredevil at mass and Matt gives him a quick lesson on Easter.