Ho Ho Yikes! This year the Underground Film Journal is breaking up its annual Underground Holiday Shopping Guide into a couple of different posts by genre. That way it’s easier to really match up your loved one’s entertainment tastes with the best that the underground has to offer!

First up: If there’s a special someone you know who’s bored with traditional blood and scares, here are some outrageous fright flicks that will make them scream with delight when they see them under the tree.

New on DVD:

Strange Girls

One of the Underground Film Journal’s favorite horror flicks of the past five years finally made it to DVD in 2011. In her debut feature, filmmaker Rona Mark created two of the most original on-screen murderers in Virginia and Georgia Gruczechy — twin, socially-reclusive, psychotic girls with their own invented language who kill anyone who they think is deserving. Shot in the gritty working class neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, the film features fantastic performances by real-life twins Angela and Jordana Berlinger. A totall winner all around!
Buy on Amazon!

The Uh-Oh Show!

The Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, makes a spectacularly twisted return to the genre he invented. This black comedy sends up the greedy world of reality TV, from the slimy executives who’ll air anything to attract advertising dollars to naive game show contestants looking for an easy hand-out. Lewis tosses everything he’s got into this satire: Bad jokes, gory fairy tales, over-the-top acting, piles of severed limbs and lots and lots of blood and guts.
Buy on Amazon!

Satan Hates You

James Felix McKenney has mimicked the style and tone of old Christian “scare films” so perfectly here that it rises above being a spoof of the genre and becomes an earnest plea against living a wicked, wicked life. In the big city, a young girl’s fast living starts catching up to her while a lonely man’s mordant self-loathing drives him to brutally murder unsuspecting victims. Featuring a guest appearance by producer Larry Fessenden as a pesky demon!
Buy on Amazon!

Underground Horror Classics

Brain Dead, dir. Kevin S. Tenney
This over-the-top gorefest has it all: Boobs, beasts, blood and bad jokes. And lots of ’em! Tenney takes a familiar horror trope — a group of strangers stranded in a remote cabin surrounded by flesh-hungry zombies — and pushes the action to insane levels for an energetic romp that makes horror fun again.

Basement Jack, dir. Michael Shelton
Jack Riley is kind of like Santa Claus. Except, he doesn’t come down the chimney. He breaks in through your basement window. And he doesn’t leave presents. Instead, he slaughters everybody in your house while you’re sleeping. Talk about “you better watch out!”

Circulation, dir. Ryan Harper
Road trips are fun, right? Maybe not if they involve getting brutally assaulted by your ex-husband, then driving around in circles around the desert avoiding people who want to spew flesh-dissolving bile all over your body and chow down on your decomposing corpse.