Destroy All Monsters was a band and group of filmmakers who got their start in the early ’70s, and that’s where most of the material on Grow Live Monsters comes from. The music the group made could charitably be called avant-garde; most would consider the cacophony to be little more than noise.

But that’s what the group (Niagra, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, and Mike Kelley) had in mind – a weird soundtrack to the weird films it made. Shot on 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm film, the short, no-budget pieces packed into this film run the gamut of strangeness from a bloody gothic movie about vampire-looking cannibals to a bit of sci-fi with “spacemen” running around in very hokey costumes.

The pieces are sequenced very nicely and that creates a sort of hypnotic effect; watching is almost like peering into the life of a primitive ancient culture where you can’t believe the simplicity of it all, and you can’t look away.

Extras include live performance footage from a special show the group did in Seattle in 2000.

Grade: B

Grow Live Monsters is currently available.