SATAN'S BLOOD - Seventies satanic smut with square Spanish couple held captive in household of swinging devil worshippers. Orgiastic nudity, ad hoc sex assaults and dog murder all follow. Despite the fairly conventional set up, this film has something strange going on. A well developed looming atmosphere, the constant presence of an evil doll, dog bowl licking villains and, craziest of all, the random eruption of a desiccated crocodile from a cupboard LIKE A MASSIVE COCK JOKE FOR NO REASON AT ALL. The whole thing is simultaneously hysterical and coolly rendered. My second viewing, and I much preferred it this time around. It felt a couple of notches down from the insane weirdness you always want obscure Euro-horror to be, but, realistically, given the options, it's near enough to the source to work for those who want.
MERMAID IN A MANHOLE - My favourite G-Pig. Crazy artist finds a mermaid in a sewer, nominates her as his muse and takes her home for a live drawing sesh only to find that she degenerates into a seething bag of puss and worms. Really, I can't say fairer than that, can I? It doesn't matter whether it's good or not, its sheer conceptual scumminess trancends any notion of cinema. This is film with all the form and content of a pustule (with a worm inside it). The fact that its actually-quite-competent-to-the point-of-being-pedestrian rendering is undercut by stabs at poetry (the rotting mermaid bleeds the colours artist guy needs to paint her death - how cruel is life? How cruel is art?) just adds another layer of bonkersness to it all. In spite of any intended eloquence, the film really only exists to show a violent slurry of foetid decay imagery. Screamingly pretentious but really just in it for the horrible shit - I wonder why I like it so much?
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