From the annals of DVDisgo (RIP) and DVDresurrections


La Settima Donna









This nasty slice of Italian exploitation will please fans of rough fare like Last House on the Left and They Call Her One Eye. In fact the movie was marketed in some territories as Last House on the Beach, which should give clued in viewers an idea of the queasy unpleasantness that’s packed into this stylish but depraved little...

From the pages of the sadly defunct DVDisgo and the happily active DVDresurrections



La Cabina







This amazing short film was directed by Antonio Mercero for Spanish television in 1972. It's a wonderful example of efficient, lean horror story telling which squeezes in plenty of thrills and shocks in its 40 minute running time.

Essentially a European riff on a Twilight Zone style format, the film...

I'm using this blog to get all the writing I've done that's still floating around online in one place.

To this end, I'll be reposting reviews that were published first on my Myspace blog DVDisgo and also on DVDresurrections, a great Australian cult films website. Please pay them a call.


The Star Wars Holiday Special








Chewbacca is racing across space to spend the holidays with his family in...

The Uncanny





The lowly house cat; cherished pet, cute furry fluff ball, loyal companion...

Or are they part of some vicious and malignant plot to destroy humanity as they gather in hairy packs under streetlights, looking for trouble. The rather naff kids film, Cats and Dogs, put forward the proposition of a global feline conspiracy in which Machiavellian moggies plotted man and canine downfall but a small British horror anthology picture...

Nosferatu





Werner Herzog's late 70s sound and colour remake of the classic silent horror Nosferatu.

Starring well known thespian lunatic Klaus Kinski as the hideous vampire and lord of the rats, this is an arty take on vampiric lore that might at first alienate straight ahead horror fans but stick with it...it's a moody atmospheric piece with some vivid imagery. One scene that springs to mind is of a formerly well to do family trying...

Medusa Touch





A forgotten classic starring Richard Burton at the height of his late 70s hamming, it combines the horror and disaster genres to great effect and then hits the viewer with a killer downbeat ending, as was the fashion for horror flicks at the time.

Burton plays Morlar, a man who is recovering in hospital after being battered round the head in his home. The police are investigating the assault and also how he may be implicated...

Witchfinder General





Michael Reeves only directed three films before his tragic death from an overdose of downers in the late 60s. Luckily he left us with some fantastic films including a great late Boris Karloff vehicle, the Sorcerers, but of the three, Witchfinder General is his masterpiece, a slice of harrowing 17th horror that's a million miles away from the campy fun of it's Hammer contemporaries.

Vincent Price dropped the melodramatic...

Scum





The daddy of British youth crime movies and based on an instantly banned BBC production, Scum is a brutal portrayal of the harsh conditions in a Borstal, an archaic youth offenders unit that sort to brutalize prisoners into conforming to societies rules but instead turned out a generation of hard case psychos who'd had the humanity beaten out of them. Rife with racism, male rape and violence, Scum is not an easy watch, even by today's more liberal...

Black Mama White Mama





Queen of 70s black cinema, Pam Grier (Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, Jackie Brown) stars in this "Chicks-in-chains" rehash of the Classic Tony Curtis/Sidney Poitier prison escape film, "The Defiant Ones".

Two women prisoners, one black, one white, exist in a hellish prison where bullish lesbian guards hound them. During transportation an uprising from their fellow inmates allows our pair to escape into the jungle, joined...

Rosemary's Baby





"This isn't a dream... This is really happening!"


Mia Farrow stars with John Cassavetes in Roman Polanski's timeless chiller about Guy, a jobbing actor, and his elfin wife, moving into an old fashioned apartment building in New York City*. The filmmakers used the Dakota Building, which became infamous later on as the place outside which John Lennon was shot. The loving couple soon become friendly with the apparently...

The Honeymoon Killers





A raw low budget classic from 1970, the Honeymoon Killers is based on real events in which a couple united by their outsider status go on a murderous rampage. When When Raymond and Martha meet through a lonely-hearts club they seem like a match made in heaven; she obese, obsessive and needy and he weak, slimy and deceitful. Together they hit on a vile scheme where he poses as a lonely guy who takes women from the dating club out...

Thirst





Deep Red and Blow Up actor David Hemmings stars in this amusing late 70s Australian vampire offering that predates the Blade movies in it's portrayal of blood drinkers as a well organized society, building human farms for harvest.

Returning readers may have read about my love of Near Dark, which portrays vampires as trailer trash predators in contrast to the high born sophisticates of most vampiric cinema. Normally, I'd side with...

Get Christie Love






Get Christie Love is a TV movie spin off from the blaxploitation movies of the early 70s that featured ballsy afro queens who didn't take any crap and meted out justice with a Kung Fu kick and a mean one liner. Think movies like Coffy, Cleopatra Jones or Foxy Brown. The film was successful enough to spawn it's own shortlived TV series.

Following the usual path of female lead black movies of the time, Christie...

Black Fist





"The Big Bad Black Dude of the Streets... He'll bust you up, slam you down and blast you into pieces!"


With a tag line like that how could I resist! I love blaxploitation movies. It's the music, the fashion, the hair and the ghetto kung fu action. I got sucked in by seeing Shaft at a young age but it's the less well known, cheaper and generally more exploititive ones that hold my interest now. Their more violent and...

The Nun & The Devil






Following the huge success of Ken Russell churching baiting classic The Devils, the Italian B-movie industry kicked into gear with a slew of "Nunsploitation" cash-ins designed to rack up the sacrilege, sex and bloodshed to get punters into theatres. The Nun and The Devil is one of the better examples of the style and is a good movie despite being in extremely dubious taste. Taking place in a 16th century holy order, it shows...

Rollerball





High-end 70s Sci-Fi fun in the paranoid future mould that seemed to thrive in the post-hippy era. This would make a good triple bill with Logan's Run and Soylent Green, all three sharing that combination of dark conspiracy theory and an air of 70s camp.

In this head-spinning future sport classic James Caan plays a champion Rollerballer. Rollerball is a high-speed combination of rollerskating, American Football, motorbike racing...

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes





The stella success of the original Planet of the Apes movie spawned a franchise that encompassed live action TV, a kids cartoon and four sequels. All the follow up films are entertaining, although diminishing budgets mean that some of the films are fun to watch for the wrong reasons! Beneath the Planet of the Apes is the first sequel and relates to a new crew, sent to rescue Taylor, the astronaut from the first movie....

Death Walks at Midnight





A Great Example of the Italian Giallo horror genre that flourished in sleazier European cinemas during the late 60s/early 70s. A fashion model is drugged as part of a publicity stunt and while tripping out witnesses a nasty murder involving a masked man with a spiked glove. When her story is published she finds that the evil fiend is now stalking her and taking out her friends.

Typically stylish but nonsensical...

Female Yakuza Tale





For fans of other Female lead Japanese exploitation movies like Lady Snowblood or the Female Prisoner Scorpion films, Female Yakuza Tale is going to be a must see. The Japanese made sleazy movies with undeniable style and this film has all the graphic elements that make these movies so good even 30 years after they were first produced.

In this one a women called Ocho is captured by a drug dealing cartel who use Chinese...

Danger Diabolik





Well, here it is, one of the greatest slices of kitsch 60s pop-art cinema ever produced.

Directed by Italian genre expert Mario Bava, this comic book tale of crime capers and daring heists is the source the Beastie Boys video for Body Movin', in which they use footage from the movie.

Telling the OTT story of Diabolik (John Phillip Law), a masked international thief and his blond bombshell girlfriend as...

If I was 30 years older I'd marry Ingrid Pitt...

Countess Dracula





Hammers most voluptuous Scream Queen, Ingrid Pitt stars in a film loosely based on the notorious Countess Bathory, a genuine character from the darker annals of medieval European history, although I wouldn't want to vouch for the veracity of Hammer's take on here story.

She is a withered old crone who longs for the erotic attentions of a young stud who has...

I Monster





I Monster is an early 70s retelling of the old Jeckyll & Hyde story in which the names have been changed, presumably to protect the innocent.

Produced by UK horror studio Amicus in the early 70s and starring the always intriguing Christopher Lee, It tells the grisly tale of a Dr Marlowe, who discovers a drug that lowers all inhibition, causing rather proper English ladies to divest themselves of their clothing while reducing...

I really rate these odd Spanish oddities. These are from "that high street retailers" site that I used to pen reviews for. So there's some repetition. Don't let that spoil the wonky euro-trash fun though...


Tombs Of The Blind Dead





Classic low rent zombie action, a product of the prolific Spanish horror industry of the 70s. As the countries dictator Franco's power faded in that decade new generation of exploitation film makers...

Dracula





A late 70s, big budget studio take on the Dracula tale starring a vampire lord whose style is more Discotastic Barry Manilow then broodingly Gothic Bela Lugosi. Frank Langella is the brooding count in this beautifully staged if campy version of Bram Stoker's classic horror tale of blood sucking terror.

When a ship is grounded off the coast of Whitby the only survivor is Count Dracula. He has arrived with a big consignment of...

The Blood Beast Terror





A shaky but fun slice of British Schlock from the Tigon studio, who brought such classics as Witchfinder General and Blood On Satan's Claw to the screen. Although this cheap programmer isn't in the same league as those movies, it's still a good watch for fans of the ropier end of Brit horror thanks to the ridiculous concept of a "were-moth" on a killing rampage, combined with Peter Cushing, as ever remaining quietly dignified...

The Beast Must Die





Extremely naff but riotously funny British horror movie from the mid 70s which features a silly gimmick that B-movie hustler William Castle, producer of prop heavy 50s drive-in shockers like The Tingler, would have been proud of...

This strange horror movie asks the audience at the top of the film to try and identify the lupine fiend responsible for a spate of bloody killings and then pauses for a "Werewolf Break" at...

Hanzo the Razor





Having shelled out top dollar for a pricey import, these three notorious and slightly dubious Japanese exploitation movies are now available in the UK.

These are Katzu productions, the same people who brought us the Lone Wolf & Cub (Shogun Assassin) and Lady Snowblood pictures. Hanzo is a samurai police officer in the Edo period of Japanese history. Unlike his fellow officers however, he is above corruption, which causes...