Arrow in September: Mutants!, Deutsche Horrorfilme, and Judgement Day

Arrow in September provides a distinct collection of new and cutting edge horror entertainment in conjunction with the cult and international classics for which the streaming service is known.  Their special September selections of classic and cutting edge cult cinema are presented in in three different “seasons” – a curated group of movies revolving around a central unifying theme:  Mutants!, Deutsche Horrorfilme, and Judgement Day.

Arrow in September starts with a curated collection of MUTANTS!

September 2nd (yes, I’m a week late) they unveiled MUTANTS!  Mutant horror films are the original body horror of the genre and this group features a motley crew of bloodthirsty creatures who exist only to terrorize the humans who have the misfortune of becoming trapped in their worlds.  This collection offers the following five specimens:

Head of the Family is American independent black comedy directed by Robert Talbot and written by Charles Band from 1996 about exactly what the title suggests: a giant head on a wheelchair-bound body of withered limbs who is also the proverbial head of the Stackpool family – fraternal quadruplets with differing birth defects who kidnap people and perform freak experiments on them in their basement. When a philandering couple blackmails the Stackpools, hilarity ensues.

Hideous is a 1997 horror movie directed by Charles Band in which human oddity collectors and traders, in an effort to double cross each other, find themselves locked in a castle with several live mutants.  Hideous features rod puppets along with the human actors, and the plot involves breast feeding, sword fighting, and acid baths.

From sci-fi director / practical effects artist Brett Piper, 1988’s Mutant War is the sequel to Battle for the Lost Planet (also called Galaxy Destroyer) and features stop motion animation and zero-budget battle scenes when the survivor of Galaxy Destroyer must face off with an actual human monster to save sisters from being used to breed mutants.

Trapped Alive, the campy Christmas movie from 1988, is about underground dwelling cannibal mutants whose dinner of prison escapees with their carjacked female hostages basically drops in their lap after the criminals lose control of the car and careen down an old mineshaft.

Finishing out the mutant offerings is 1987’s Creepozoids which features scream queen Linnea Quigley as part of a group of deserters who escape the nuclear fallout of WWIII by running to the desert but find themselves trapped in a subterranean lab with a suspicious fluid that creates bloodthirsty beasts.

Even MORE mutants on Arrow in September for North American subscribers!

Also available on Arrow in September on the 2nd and excusive to North American subscribers are Shocking Dark and Absurd.

Shocking Dark, originally titled Terminator II  but actually a rip off of Aliens (so it’s also been referred to as Aliens 2), is an Italian sci-fi movie from Bruno Mattei (master of Spaghetti Plagiarism) from the year 1987 and set in the year 2000.  In this world, the Venice canals have become so polluted that the city has been evacuated and the only residents are scientists from the Tubular Corporation working in underground labs to reverse the pollution.  A tough military unit called “Mega-Force” receives a distress call from the lab and sends a unit that is lead by a woman and includes a scientist and nefarious corporate representative.  Obviously the unit is decimated by laboratory mutants.

Absurd, another Italian exploitation film from 1981 that goes by multiple names, closes out the mutant season with a priest-doctor pursuing a mad-man who recently escaped from a medical facility with regenerative powers into a small town where he’s gone on a killing spree.  Hooray for mutants!

More exclusive content on Arrow in September for North American subscribers is this duo of cannibalistic crap

In Cannibal Terror, a French film from 1981, the horror is truly the torture the director subjects his audience to in having to watch the awfulness.  In a heist-gone-wrong, two bumbling criminals kidnap the daughter of a rich couple and lie low in the South American Jungle to await their ransom.  Things go awry when one of the criminals rapes their host’s wife and they are forced to flee into the waiting clutches of the local cannibal tribe.

1980’s Devil Hunter, which also goes by multiple names, is another film about kidnappers dragging a woman into the jungle (this time South African).  A Vietnam veteran and friend take a helicopter to rescue the damsel in distress from not only the clutches of cannibals, but also their bloodthirsty devil god.

September 16th Arrow heads to Germany for a collection of Deutsche Horrorfilme

Pull on your lederhosen and dust off your schnitzel recipe, because Arrow is celebrating Oktoberfest in September as we head to Germany for a collection of Deutsche Horrorfilme.

Titles include: Sleep, a 2020 psychological thriller that grapples with Germany’s past where a sleep demon threatens a village as the nightmares of a single woman are driving the inhabitants insane; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a 1920 black and white silent classic that is widely considered to be the birth of the horror genre about a doctor and his prophetic sleepwalker that follows a series of murders and growing madness; The Golem, another silent black & white film from 1915 or 1920 about a creature made of clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect the Jewish people of Prague; and Hagazussa a 2017 film set in the 15th century where a young goatherd living alone in the Alpines senses a dark presence in the woods.

Also available on September 16 are foursome of cult titles featuring depravity, incest, graphic violence, and gore: Tourist Trap and The Pit and the Pendulum, and exclusively for North American subscribers: Bloody Moon and Beyond the Darkness.

Available on September 26th exclusively for North American subscribers is The House on Straw Hill (also known as Trauma and Expose), a psychological thriller from 1976 about a disturbed writer in a remote cabin whose girlfriend’s arrival unleashes a storm of sex and violence.  It stars Udo Kier and has been banned in Britain for almost thirty years.

Also available September 26th is A Fugitive From the Past,  an adaptation of Tsutomu Minakami’s 1700-page novel that is considered the magnum opus of the five decades-long career of Tomu Uchida. In this epic crime drama from 1965 a successful businessman’s murderous past comes back to haunt him when a prostitute recognizes him as a killer.

The 30th of the month is Judgement Day on Arrow in September

The Judgement Day season features crazy cult filmmakers presenting a barrage of bizarre and brilliant bastardizations of faith and religious horror.

Titles include: The Righteous, a 2021 Canadian existential psychodrama in which an ex-priest questions his faith while he and his wife grieve the mysterious death of their adopted daughter; Children of the Corn, the1984 classic where a young couple is stranded in a town full of children that believe anyone under 18 must be sacrificed to their deity; The Day of the Beast, the Spanish-Italian comedy from 1995 where a Catholic priest teams up with a Black Metal aficionado and Italian occultist to commit as many sins as possible to prevent the birth of the Antichrist; Dream No Evil, a 1970 rural gothic about an orphaned tight rope walker who imagines her dead father and kills to protect her fantasy; and Hell On Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of Ken Russell’s The Devils, an hour-long documentary about one of the most controversial films ever made.

Wrapping up Arrow in September are two offerings: Laserblast, the 1978 film in which an outcast teenager finds and alien weapon in the desert and goes on a murderous rampage, becoming more alien with every blast of his gun; and available to North American subscribers exclusively, A Day of Judgement, the 1981 slasher film set in the 1920s where a man in black rides into town killing those who have strayed from the path of righteousness in various bloody ways, closes out the month.

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