DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 14, 2026

Clash of the Titans (1981) Though Zeus ordered the city Argos to be destroyed by the enormous Kraken, he allowed his infant son Perseus to be taken to safety. Now a grown man and carrying magic gifts bestowed by the gods, Perseus travels to the cursed city of Joppa to win the hand of Princess Andromeda. The goddess Thetis has no intention of letting this happen, though, since her own son Calibos was going to wed Andromeda before Zeus transformed him into a hideous monster. Taking advantage of a faux pas by Andromeda's mother, who foolishly declares her daughter to be more beautiful than the goddess, Thetis orders the Kraken to be released on Joppa. Their only hope is for Perseus to obtain the only weapon on Earth that can defeat the most dreaded of Titans, the snake-covered head of the Gorgon Medusa. Harryhausen's final movie, chock full of his signature stop-motion animation, was deemed a little too old fashioned by many critics. However, movie-goers, including this one, disagreed, and made it a hit.

If you count the various minor deities, local spirits, and personifications of abstract ideas, the ancient Greeks had in excess of 3,000 gods and goddesses, many of them overseeing specific domains for which they provided patronage. This has led some critics of the Church to declare many Christian Saints as nothing more than rebranded pagan gods. This doesn't hold up, though. Saints, after all, are just humans who lived exemplary lives and are believed to be in heaven interceding on our behalf. They don't have any  divine powers of their own, as any miracles attributed to their intercession comes from God, not the Saint. Plus, it goes without saying, Saints aren't coming to Earth to father children all over the place. Now, all that's not to say the occasional devotions around particular Saints haven't absorbed old local customs, but the idea that Saints are recycled gods just doesn't work.

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) Entrepreneurial cowgirl T.J. hopes to save her failing rodeo with a new act named El Diablo, a toy-sized horse from the supposedly extinct species Eohippus. Unfortunately, instead of generating excitement, the locals believe El Diablo to be cursed and try to return the tiny animal to its place of origin. Attempting to retrieve their headliner, T.J. and her men follow behind, only to discover El Diablo was not the only prehistoric creature still thriving in the hidden valley. Breaking out the lassos, the courageous cowherds manage to snag an Allosaurus whom they christen Gwangi and advertise as the rodeo's next attraction. However, Gwangi's debut doesn't quite go as they hoped. Look, if you can't get behind cowboys vs. dinosaurs with special effects by Ray Harryhausen, I don't know if there's any hope for you. 

Many early cowboys in what is now the Southwest United States were vaqueros who brought their ranching and herding skills along with them. They also brought their Catholic religion in the form of Spanish missions and settlements. It was through such missions that Sister Blandina Segale did her most notable work. She helped establish Catholic schools, co-founded hospitals, built orphanages, and worked against injustices to Native Americans. Of course, her best known story is the one in which she nursed a member of Billy the Kid's gang back to health and convinced the notorious outlaw not to seek revenge against the doctors who had refused the man treatment. A movie based on her journals, At the End of the Santa Fe Trail, came out in 2025. It doesn't have dinosaurs in it, though, so you'll have to look for reviews of it somewhere else.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 9, 2024

Bubba Ho-tep (2002) Weary of the limelight, Elvis temporarily trades places with one of his impersonators, but when said impersonator dies on the toilet and his personal documents are destroyed in a fire, Elvis is trapped in obscurity and eventually ends up admitted to a Texas nursing home. There, The King meets John F. Kennedy who, following his supposed assassination, was forced by Lyndon Johnson to have his skin died black before being secluded away from the public. When thieves steal an ancient Egyptian mummy and lose it near the nursing home, Elvis and JFK must team up to stop the reanimated creature, now dressed as a cowboy, from feeding on the lifeforce of the home's occupants. That kind of insane setup is tailor-made for director Don Coscarelli, the man who brought us Phantasm. It's not just about the weirdness, though. Thanks to some subtle performances from Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis, there's actually some thoughtful reflection on aging and fame thrown into the mix.

While not as extensive as the number of hospitals it runs, the Catholic Church does operate numerous nursing homes and senior care facilities around the world where they offer not only healthcare, but options for daily Mass, prayer, sacraments, and chaplain services. Care for the elderly flows directly from the Fourth Commandment to honor our parents—and by extension any parental figures— as well as Jesus' command to love our neighbors. As the Catechism notes, we are called to provide the elderly with “material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress.” It's good to remember, however, that when performing these duties, we are not to see the elderly as burdens, but as persons with inherent worth, wisdom, and a continuing mission in family, Church, and society.

UFO: Target Earth (1974) After intercepting a strange phone call, an instructor at a Florida university—who used to be kept awake by the light emanating from UFOs as a boy—looks up a local psychic who can sense extraterrestrial energy. The two putter around town a bit before heading to a nearby army base to interview a general, which doesn't seem to advance the plot very much. Eventually they end up camping at a lake where the psychic is possibly possessed by aliens and the instructor learns he may be the savior of all mankind. I guess. With the bad lighting, meandering plot, and distracting visible boom mikes, it's not always easy to tell what's going on. What is absolutely not going on, though, is UFOs, as none whatsoever appear in this movie.

To try and give itself some gravitas, the film ends by quoting Revelation 5:9, which in the KLV goes, "“Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation." The verse is one of a series that celebrate the universal scope of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. It's a part of the Church's understanding of soteriology (doctrine of salvation) in which Christ’s death is not merely exemplary but truly redemptive, effective for those who respond in faith, and oriented toward forming a priestly people who will reign with Him. In other words, it has nothing to do with UFOs. Which, when you think about it, is pretty par for the course of this movie.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 3, 2026

Alien from the Deep (1989) Do-gooder Jane and her cameraman are sent by Greenpeace to a tropical island where they hope to gather video evidence that the evil corporation E-Chem is illegally dumping radioactive waste into an active volcano. The cameraman is captured and tortured, but Jane escapes into the forest with the aid of a friendly snake venom farmer. As if Jane's situation wasn't complicated enough, a biomechanical alien—a 12-foot marionette with a ridiculously large crab claw—suddenly emerges from the nearby lake looking to munch on E-Chem's toxic sludge, and it will pinch anyone to death who gets in its way. The movie's burdened with an extremely padded runtime, even for an Antonio Margheriti flick, but the last 10 or 15 minutes are pretty fun if you stick around for them.

As the subtitle of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si'—on care for our common home—suggests, the Church is all for environmental protection in the name of stewardship of the planet. However, the Church is not too fond of radical environmentalism when it prioritizes nature over human dignity, promotes anti-human or population-control ideas, or uses tactics that conflict with Catholic ethics. So, how does that apply to Jane's bosses, Greenpeace? Alas, one of the organization's co-founders, Patrick Moore, testified before Congress that he left the group because it shifted from protecting people and the environment to treating humans as the enemies of the Earth and a cancer on the planet. If true, that doesn't really sound like it keeps to the spirit of Laudato si'.

 

Night of the Big Heat (1967) It might be wintertime, but the small English island of Fara seems to be in the middle of an unexplainable heat wave. As if that weren't uncomfortable enough for local innkeeper and author Jeff, the new secretary he just hired sight-unseen turns out to be his former mistress Angela, the very woman he and his wife moved to Fara to escape. Amidst this domestic drama, the grueling temperature begins to drive everyone on the island nuts, especially once people begin turning up burned to death. As things reach a literal boiling point, a mysterious scientist shows up claiming the heat is a result of an ongoing alien invasion. There's nothing spectacular here, but if you're going to try and make a pseudo-Hammer film, then hiring Terence Fisher to direct and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to star is the way to do it.

 

Scorching heat appears as one of the final judgements of God in the 16th chapter of the book of Revelation where it states, "The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch men with fire; men were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory." Given the symbolic nature of the passage, the Church does not have an official single interpretation. Instead, rather than definitively say the verses depict some past or future event, many Catholic scholars focus on the themes of God’s definitive judgment on the unrepentant while assuring the faithful of ultimate victory in Christ.

DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 30, 2026

 

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992) A few days after the events of the first film, the remaining children of Gatlin are all adopted by the adults in a nearby town. Sure, the kids massacred their real parents, but they're probably fine now, right? No, they are not, as they immediately head to the cornfields to worship He Who Walks Behind The Rows. When a reporter and his son show up to do a story on what happened in Gatlin, the rebellious boy is quickly lured into the cult by one of the turn the tide? girls. As new murders begin to occur, the reporter is at a loss as to how to get his son away from the crazy corn-worshipers. Fortunately, there's one of those handy Native Americans around who always knew everything there was to know in movies of that time. But will even his secret knowledge be enough to turn the tide? Given the number of sequels that followed, this is, in fact, not the final sacrifice. Instead, it's mostly a sillier rehash of the already silly first movie.

 

Is it really that hard to figure out your new friends are in a corn-worshiping murder cult? St. John Bosco, patron saint of youth and founder of the Salesians, warned , "Fly from bad companions as from the bite of a poisonous snake. If you keep good companions, I can assure you that you will one day rejoice with the blessed in Heaven; whereas if you keep with those who are bad, you will become bad yourself, and you will be in danger of losing your soul… Avoid bad companions, those who blaspheme and steal and do not fear God... Receive the sacraments often; be devoted to the Blessed Virgin; consider bad books worse than the plague; avoid bad companions even more than poisonous snakes." It's interesting to note Bosco included bad books in his warnings against having evil companions. He meant it, though, adding, "No poison is more fatal to youth than bad literature."

Now Showing At A Blog Near Your: For Aleteia this week, I take a look at Pressure, the mostly true story of how one weather forecast nearly derailed D-Day.

DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 23, 2026

Crimes of the Future (2022) At some point in the not too far off future, biotechnology has advanced to the point that most humans no longer feel sensations like hurt or discomfort. These advances have also kickstarted evolutionary changes in the human body, which for some reason doesn't sit well with the government. To help crack down on illegal evolution, the National Organ Registry goes to performance artist Tenser to help infiltrate the evolutionist underground. Tenser, you see, suffers from Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which causes him to grow extraneous organs and makes him one of the rare individuals to feel pain. Because of this, people pay to watch Tenser undergo surgery to remove his extra organs while still awake. This gives Tenser cred with the underground, so they accept him into their ranks. The thing is, Tenser starts to accept them as well. What's Tenser to do; turn the underground in, or join the cause? David Cronenberg's return to weirdness isn't up there with his best, but his fans will find much to appreciate.

 

As Pope St. John Paul II noted in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, "Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [Humani Generis], new knowledge has led to the recognition that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis... The convergence... of the results of lines of work conducted independently of one another constitutes by itself a significant argument in favor of the theory." Evolution is, in fact, taught without reservation in Catholic schools and universities as a likely part of God's natural order. But what about the notion that we might still be evolving? There's no official statement on that idea, but since microevolution has always been a part of the overall theory, it's probably safe to assume the Church would accept the idea of continuing evolution to some degree as long as it is understood within a framework that includes God's creative role and His special creation of the soul.

Now Showing at a Blog Near You: For Aleteia this week, I hang out with The Sheep Detectives. No movie about a bunch of sheep trying to solve a murder has any right being this good. Definitely in my top five of the year so far.

DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 22, 2026

Chiller (1985) Millionaire industrialist Miles Creighton isn't too fond about dying, so he arranges to have himself cryogenically frozen. After about ten years, though, the machine he's in malfunctions and Miles must be revived. Fortunately, during Miles' long nap, they've invented a procedure to fix his fatal condition. Unfortunately, they can't do anything about Miles' missing soul, which apparently didn't exit the freezer with him. Now a conscienceless monster, Miles sets about purposely ruining the lives of his employees by jettisoning anyone he feels is hampering profits. He also commits a few murders on the side. It's a Wes Craven made-for-TV film, so the movie is probably trying to say something about the perceived heartlessness of Reagan-era capitalism, but nothing Craven does can save this movie from being a complete bore.

Since the Church opposes the creation of human persons outside of the conjugal love of a husband and wife, the cryogenic freezing of embryos is right out. But what about the freezing of adults in hopes of reviving them later? Well, Justo Aznar, director of the Bioethics Observatory of the Catholic University of Valencia, notes that current cryogenic technology would kill a living person, so the person being frozen is required to be dead before the procedure takes place. Obviously, the killing part is right out. As for the preserving of the corpse for later, that goes against the Church's teachings on the proper handling of the body after death. Finally, there's the fact that the soul leaves the body after death, returning only for the final resurrection. So, the whole procedure is a pipe dream to begin with. Based on that, it's safe to assume the Church opposes cryogenics.

Dust Devil (1992) As a traditional Namibian healer named Joe warns us of Dust Devils, demons who materialize from the desert winds and roam the highways looking to kill those who have given up on life, we join one such creature as he burns down a woman's house and dumps her corpse in the back of a car. The Dust Devil then hitches a ride with his next intended victim, Wendy Robinson, a forlorn woman who has just left her husband after being falsely accused of infidelity. However, after Wendy overcomes her despair and decides against ending her own life, the Dust Devil decides to just hang out with her for a while rather than doing the thing he usually does. Meanwhile, thanks to the trail of bodies the Dust Devil has left behind, the police are now tracking him, aided by Joe and his magic stick. Richard Stanley's follow-up to his cult favorite Hardware is just as stylish and moody as its predecessor, coming across a little like if Sergio Leone had made a horror movie. It's ridiculously hard to find, but worth it if you can.

Aquinas was no fan of despair because it basically arises from the false belief that God is withholding his grace. Interestingly, despair seems to be a favorite tactic of the devil when it comes to attacking Saints. For example, St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote how she endured intense temptations to despair, especially when she was near death, feeling like heaven was nothing but a "night of nothingness" and that her faith was illusory. For 50 years, as her letters noted, St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was deeply tempted by feelings of spiritual desolation and abandonment. She spoke of feeling “forsaken,” like Jesus on the Cross, and feared becoming “a Judas to Jesus.” Heck, St. John of the Cross wrote a whole book about his struggles, Dark Night of the Soul, in which he describes those times when God seemingly removes consolations, leading to aridity, confusion, and a sense of abandonment. However, as he explained, such times can lead to a deeper union with God because it's during them when the soul must walk by faith alone.

DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 8, 2026

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) The titular professor decides to visit his 60-year-old brother Kenneth after seeing visions of floating skulls, but never gets to as the brother dies after finding a shrunken head right before Jonathan gets there. The cause of death appears to be cardiac arrest, which is weird because Kenneth's the latest in a long line of Drakes to die at age 60 in the same manner. Perhaps odder is that his corpse is later decapitated. Jonathan soon discovers that his ancestor Capt. Wilfred Drake traveled to Ecuador in 1873 and ended up massacring a Jivaro tribe, causing the local witch doctor to curse any male in the Drake bloodline to die at 60. That may not sound that bad if you're 20, but as the years pass, it begins to sound way too soon. Anyway, Jonathan must discover who's carrying out the curse and stop him before he loses his own head. Nothing spectacular, but fits the bill if you're looking for something a little different than the usual late '50s monsters and mutants.

While not on the same massive scale as the Aztecs, the Incas, including those in Ecuador, also engaged in human sacrifice and enslaved their neighbors. So, when Pizarro and pals showed up and started putting an end to such things, they found eager allies amongst many of the other indigenous peoples in the region. Unfortunately, the Spanish also engaged in some abuses of their own, and it was for those that popes starting with John Paul II began to issue apologies for any role that the Church may have contributed to such actions. In 2023, the Vatican issued the Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery which formally rejected any 15th-century papal bulls that attempted to justify European claims over non-Christian lands and peoples, noting that such beliefs “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples”.

The Sea Serpent (1985) Banned from piloting anymore ships because the courts didn't believe his tale of a shrieking sea serpent sinking his boat, Captain Pedro Fontan (played by Timothy Bottoms, who in no way looks like any Pedro I've ever met) seeks out the only other witness who can verify his claims. The hard part is she's currently locked away in an asylum. As the constantly screaming monster munches on a few more people, Pedro frees the falsely committed woman and assembles a small crew to track the beast down and destroy it once and for all. Overall, this is pretty standard stuff for a low-budget quickie from Spain, but the effects for the titular monster itself are so outlandish, like Reptilicus-level outlandish, that it instantly gains at least one star from fans of this kind of thing.

What we know for sure about St. Senan is that he was born in Munster, Ireland, was a soldier before becoming a monk, and was named Abbot at St. Natalis at Kilmanagh in Ossory. When it comes to the Saints, though, their stories rarely stop with the verifiable facts. There is a legend referenced in the late eighth century Calendar of Oengus about St. Senan's confrontation with a sea serpent named the Cathach. This was a horrible creature with a spiked back, scales, a fish-like tail, clawed feet, and a spiraling nose which took to terrorizing the locals, gobbling up people and animals alike. With some timely aid from St. Michael the Archangel, St. Senan confronted the Cathach, made the sign of the cross, chained the beast, and banished it to Doolough Lake. True? Who knows. Cool? Definitely.

DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 24, 2026

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) The Big G died in his first movie, but not to worry, there's a backup. While attempting to rescue a fellow pilot who has crashed on Iwato Island, Shoichi Tsukioka discovers a second Godzilla fighting another giant monster soon to be named Anguirus. Shoichi alerts the authorities, who try to lure the beasts away from any cities by turning off all the lights and sending up flares in the opposite direction. Alas, some idiot thieves attempt a robbery during the blackout and the explosion they set off brings the two monsters straight to Osaka. Godzilla makes swift work of Anguirus, which is helpful, but that still leaves Japan with the problem of finding some way to put the rampaging King of the Monsters on ice. There is no such thing as an unenjoyable Godzilla movie, but this first sequel is a hug step down from the excellent original, with its only claim to fame being it started the trend of introducing a new kaiju in each film for Godzilla to battle.

When the same guys who altered the original Godzilla for American release got ahold of Godzilla Raids Again, they made even more drastic changes, going so far as to change the name of the movie to Gigantis, The Fire Monster in hopes of convincing audiences it was a brand new monster. Producer Paul Schreibman later admitted regretting the decision, as it turned out viewers weren't fooled and would have preferred to have been given the real thing. It's like with the Bible. A study by LifeWay Research indicates that the overwhelming majority of readers prefer word-for-word translations that prioritize fidelity to the original text over those that use dynamic equivalence to paraphrase Scripture. This is because the more literal versions preserve nuances, word connections, and ambiguities in the original Hebrew/Greek while the paraphrases leave too much room for biased interpretation. In Godzilla movies and Bibles, always stay as close to the original source material as possible.

Conquest of Space (1955) Aboard the Wheel, an enormous space station orbiting the Earth, Colonel Merritt is busy training astronauts for an expedition to the moon. Unexpectedly, Earth's government instructs Merritt to ready a small crew to land on Mars instead. Merritt assembles three men, including his own son with whom he has a strained relationship, and blasts off for the red planet. They soon discover they have a stowaway in Sgt. Mahoney, who was deemed too old to tag along but refuses to be separated from Merritt, whom he idolizes. The sergeant's hero worship is quickly tested, though, when Merritt succumbs to space fatigue and begins to sabotage the mission under the misguided belief that their efforts to reach Mars violates the edicts of God. With things turning deadly and no chance of returning to Earth for at least a year, do the men have any hope of ever seeing home again?  While not on the level as other George Pal productions like War of the Worlds or The Time Machine, Conquest of Space gets points for trying to be The Martian of its day.

Merritt's problem is that, in his madness, he has misinterpreted those parts of the Bible that state how God gave dominion of the Earth to mankind to mean that everything else outside our planet's atmosphere is God's only and therefore off limits. Merritt is mostly correct that the "dominion" granted to humanity is explicitly tied to this particular planet as it's the one God created as both humanity's home and the stage for the drama of salvation. However, Merritt's error is that this dominion doesn't preclude traveling to other planets, assuming our actions there are guided by the same rules of responsible stewardship which are supposed to govern how we treat the Earth. As Archbishop Ettore Balestrero noted in an interview, "The Church’s central message is that we must not turn space into a jungle … Space must be explored with responsibility, solidarity, and respect for subsidiarity, for the benefit of present and future generations … We must prevent it from becoming a theater of uncontrolled competition, or worse, conflict." Merritt definitely flubbed that part.