Milano Calibro 9 [Caliber 9]

A stunning piece of Italian gangster cinema, let down by police who spend too much time yelling politics at each other, improved by the fact that the lead looks a lot like a run down Italian Jason Statham.

Spookies

A surfeit of bad actors are placed in an abandoned mansion by negligible plotting so they can each endure a rubber FX laden death, often involving a puppet, always at an awkwardly slow pace and completely butchered by atrocious editing. Enjoyed it.

The House On The Edge Of The Park [La casa sperduta nel parco]

A murderous rapist and his simple minded buddy get invited to a party full of rich folks where they attempt a bunch of raping and murdering until the inevitable final twist appears. I say inevitable because none of the rich folk behave as you’d expect under the threat of rape and murder, the main bad man is David Hess playing the same type of character he played in Last House On The Left and the title itself is a lift from the very same movie. It’s not like they tried very hard to hide what was going to happen.

Ultimo Mondo Cannibale [Last Cannibal World/ Cannibal/ Jungle Holocaust]

Deodato’s forerunner to his notorious Cannibal Holocaust was originally intended to be a sequel to Man From Deep River, a movie that was only vaguely about cannibals. This alongside the fact that this movie never featured on the DPP video nasty list in the eighties had led me to believe that I was to watch a mild jungle romp saddled with a trashy name. I could not have been more wrong and spent most of the movie wondering just what the fuck the Director of Public Prosecutions was on back in the eighties whilst trying to hold down my breakfast.

Francesca

A modern take on Giallo that focusses a bit too much on the J & B, leather gloves and pointy object side of things but forgets to include a healthy dose of casual sleaze, an abundance of razor sharp seventies style and a series of outrageous revelations that abandon all logic. So, close but not quite.

Cats

A film that absolutely everybody insists is crap, and about which absolutely everybody is correct.

In My Mind

After all this time is there anything else that needs to be said about The Prisoner? Well if it’s being said by Patrick McGoohan in previously unseen interview footage, then yes there is.

Drunken Master [Zui quan/ Drunken Monkey In The Tiger’s Eyes]

Chan does a lot of impeccable fighting, a bad haircut does a lot of impeccable swearing and a drunk fella is drunk. And not a lot else happens, but sometimes that’s all you need.

Zebraman 2: Attack On Zebra City [Zeburâman: Zebura Shiti no gyakushû]

An avalanche of utter madness all filmed in a style that suggests that at the time Miike was far more keen to make music videos than coherent movies. Also a surprise to find that The Purge is entirely a rip off of this.

Toys Are Not For Children [Virgin Dolls]

A film squarely aimed at attempting to make regular patrons of the sleaziest fleapits as uncomfortable as possible by offering up the tale of a young lady’s sexual awakening, a theme often exploited for leering back row fiddlers, but then embedding it in a masturbation minefield of rape, incest and pedophilia. If you’ll excuse the pun, anybody trying to crack one off to the end of this would have no idea whether they were coming or going.

Man From Deep River [Il paese del sesso selvaggio/ The Country Of Savage Sex/ Deep River Savages/ Mondo Cannibale/ Sacrifice!]

A photographer gets caught by a savage tribe deep in the thai jungle, and ends up living with them, learning their way of life and becoming accepted as a tribesman. Except nobody watching gave a shit, instead audiences only wanted to talk about the excessive weird sex, the abundance of hideously graphic animal cruelty and the cannibals that rock up in the last 20 minutes to chew on some rubber body parts which set the tone for an entire sub-genre of Italian cannibal movie.

Day Of Anger [I giorni dell'ira]

Another Western.

Enter The Ninja

A rather awkward collision of important Eastern philosophies like honour, wisdom and immense self control clashing with lunk-headed, outdated Western philosophies such as solving problems by kicking the shit out of them, how women just require a good fuck and how brotherhood is only ever formed in cheap representations of war.

Coherence

A brave attempt to adapt quantum states into a dinner party. Filmed in an improvised manner with actors given information at the same pace as their characters to generate genuine confusion and surprise on their little faces, this also generates some of the clumsiest exposition I’ve ever witnessed - the worst being when a character exclaims that his scientist brother left a book at his house, which he now conveniently has with him and when it’s opened he immediately find some notes with a basic stripped down explanation of the complex theories that are behind everything that’s happening.

Edge Of The Axe [Al filo del hacha]

As masked killers from slasher cinema of the eighties go I’m surprised this one isn’t more well known because their mask is cool as fuck and the numerous axe killings are relentlessly brutal. Maybe it’s because this one is named Charlie, a clear stumbling block on the path toward infamy.

Godmonster Of The Indian Flats

Once you get past the film maker’s inability to coherently introduce characters, get over the fact that the titular Godmonster only ‘rampages’ in the last 10 minutes and get your head around why the fuck everybody dresses and acts like a cowboy then you end up with a neat little film that attacks the ideologies of investing in traditionalism rather than progress. Very prescient.

Flavia, The Heretic [Flavia, la monaca musulmana/ The Rebel Nun/ The Muslim Nun/ Flavia, Priestess Of Violence]

A reluctant nun struggles with why men should be in charge of everything, so one day when a group of marauding muslims turn up she seduces the leader and uses her new found position of power to kill all the men who wronged her. This goes well for a bit until the muslim leader doesn’t like the fact that she’s calling all the shots and has her graphically flayed. Also includes a woman climbing into the carcass of a cow, real horse castration and a man being revenge buggered by several soldiers.

Touch Of Death [Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio/ When Alice Broke The Looking Glass]

In which Fulci puts in a lot of effort to ensure that audiences watching this mess are as bored and uninterested as he clearly was in making it.

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man [Uomini si nasce poliziotti si muore]

If Sesame Street’s Bert & Ernie became cops, expressed off the chart levels of sociopathic sadism and fucked anything that moves.

The Black Belly Of The Tarantula [La tarantola dal ventre nero]

Giallo are well known for spending disproportionate amounts of screen time on red herrings in order to hide the final reveal, but this one takes the piss. The cocaine smuggling ring uncovered by the police? Nothing to do with the killings. The blackmail network that is stumbled across? Nothing to do with the killings. The killer’s motivations when finally revealed? Nothing to do with the rest of the film. Even the main cast on the poster is a red herring with both Bach and Bouchet receiving minimal screen time before being dispatched. And the title? Nope, red herring, it turns out a wasp is more important here than tarantulas.

The Whip And The Body [La frusta e il corpo/ Son Of Satan/ What!/ Night Is The Phantom]

Top of his game Bava takes on sadomasochism, insanity and Christopher Lee being a stone cold asshole, but films it all as sweeping gothic romance demonstrating how he excels at making sleaze classy as fuck.