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Old 27th April 2019, 11:38 AM
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Frankie Teardrop Frankie Teardrop is offline
Cultist on the Rampage
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Leeds, UK
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LURKERS – Mid-eighties scuzz from Roberta Findlay featuring a woman who is haunted by the ghosts of a traumatic childhood and, well, some actual ghosts. Shows promise in places with its depictions of gnarly rubber-faced spirits, but I’d have liked it more if it had been slimier. As it stands, will probably appeal to those who get cheap thrills from depictions of knackered eighties NYC and can take a hit or two of boredom.

HORROR EXPRESS – First viewing – can’t believe it’d passed me by till now. Cushing and Lee are on a transcontinental express train along with a revived prehistoric ape-man thing who later turns out to be a vessel for alien life. There’s a bit of gore and a lot of groovy weirdness – although it’s set in the early 20th cent, it’s very definitely a product of a psychedelic Euro mentality. Keeper for sure.

DELIRIUM – Speaking of psychedelic Euro mentalities – well, it’s not very mind-expanding, but it tries to throw in a few wacky visuals now and again to make up for its obvious lack of anything interesting to say. I do however quite like this effort from a slumming-it Lamberto Bava (not really recognisable here as the maker of turbo-powered thrash horror ‘Demons’ from a year or two before); it plays a bit like a lame soap set in the world of soft-porn, ‘cos, thinking about it, that’s basically what it is. There’s a gialloesque main plotline and some tits along with actually pretty great scenes like the photo-shoot where models do a strip with some mummies. Genuine plastic rubbish.

SHAKMA – Mmm, quite liked although it is basically a very formula nineties pot-boiler whose only boast is a properly furious actual real-life baboon. Otherwise get ready for a lot of my fave genre time-filler, the old ‘panicked and running down corridors…endlessly… endlessly’ routine so relentlessly employed by much bottom of slush-pile product from around the time (and before, and since). To be fair, you would be panicked if Shakma was on your ass. That baboon sure has a creepy face… rigid, blank, yet hate-filled. The other thing I like about it is how effortlessly it shoehorns fake biological research disaster into a plot-device about playing computer-guided live D&D in an abandoned office block. The nineties, huh?
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