IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982)

Chock full of great B-movie clips from the golden age of trash cinema this is a bad-movie lovers wet dream. If you don't mind the pseudo SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE style skits in between the awesome scenes this is for you. The funniest guys in this are Cheech and Chong. It's too bad that with all the various copyright owners this thing will probably never get a proper DVD release. Look for it on the old VHS or a bootleg DVD or just watch the whole thing on YouTube. Good times, giant monsters, aliens, gorillas and Ed Wood. What more do you want out of one movie?

DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE (1980)

 Good early 80's slasher flick.  I would highly recommend it to fans of the genre.  Not very bloody though due to the murderers method of burning his victims alive.  The effects look really good for the era and low budget.  A disturbing look into a psychopaths life similar to MANIAC with some mommy issues taken from PSYCHO.  I find the most humorous parts involve the main psychos co-worker and his desperate attempts to hang out with this nut-job.  I mean who would even want to have to spend time with someone this crazy at work, never mind on your own time?  So check it out if you dig the slasher scene.  Would probably make a good double feature with DON"T ANSWER THE PHONE.

FEAR NO EVIL (1981)

Ultra boring nonsense. They take the basic idea from THE OMEN and mix a little CARRIE in there but it's not a good mix at all. Some highlights are a kid getting killed by a dodge ball and a guy turning into a demon and growing breasts for some reason. Some zombies show up at the end but way too late to save the movie. There's also some really bad effects with a guy made up as Satan looking particularly horrible. I really wouldn't recommend this one at all.

BURIAL GROUND (1981)

"You look just like a little whore, but I like that in a girl."

This is easily the world's strangest, batshit-crazy zombie flick and it is just chock full of inexplicable moments that leave you scratching your head and for me that makes this one of the most re-watchable of any of the living dead flicks.  I first came across this lovely cinematic treat back in the VHS days and had no idea of the bizarre  spectacle that I would be viewing.  The main oddity on display is an odd little man playing the role of a little boy named Michael.  If just the appearance of a miniature Dario Argento-looking fellow, with a  terribly fake dubbed-in voice of an obvious adult trying to sound like a child, isn't weird enough for you he also spends most of his screen time lusting after his mother's tits which isn't something you will find in something like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  Besides this little nightmare-inducing chap you also get a professor trying to make friends with the shambling rotting corpses, pretty intelligent zombies that make a battering ram, use a power-saw and throw spikes and use all kinds of weapons.  There's also tons of gore, a head gets slowly sliced off with a sickle, a boob gets bitten off(in fact the show-stopping scene has to be when the creep-o kid turns into a zombie and his mom decides that would be a good time to breastfeed him!?), there's eye violence, lots of zombies get their paper-mache heads smashed in etc, etc. It's pretty much exactly what you want from an Italian zombie flick of the 80's, sex and extreme violence. Also the movie ends with a quote that has a couple of misspellings in it that just hammers home the idea that this is a really dumb movie! There's not much to dislike about this film unless, of course, you're some kind of fancy-pants who only watches "good" movies and then you're probably pretty boring anyway.I've actually seen this one a few times on the big screen and it is a great film to watch in a theater with a bunch of unruly drunks. I even got to see it a few years back as part of an all-night horror marathon and it definitely was the highlight of that night.  Good times!  A.K.A. THE NIGHTS Of TERROR


This plays more like a highlight reel than any kind of a real trailer:

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD (2008)

 If you took THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY and remade it in Korea then threw in a large helping of INDIANA JONES and action sequences from a Bugs Bunny cartoon you would have a close semblance of this.  More of an absurd all-out action movie than a spaghetti-western really.  It just uses the basic outline of the Clint Eastwood predecessor and the basic trappings of that genre.  It does give a weird glimpse into how another country takes something foreign and morphs it into its own entity.  Worth seeing just because of its weird amalgamation and uniqueness.   I've heard it compared to Takashi Miike's SUKIYAKI DJANGO WESTERN but they both feel pretty different.  I would say that movie went for a deliberate weird vibe while this one feels more slapsticky and concerned with keeping its energy levels at their highest throughout.  Is it a good movie?  It's just O.K. but uniqueness counts for something too in my book.

ISLAND OF DEATH (1975)

This movie from Greece is like a highlight reel of random violent scenes strung together with barely a plot. The highlights, or low-lights depending on your point of view, consist of a goat getting fucked and then killed, a golden showers scene, a woman being decapitated by a bulldozer and various other silly murders. Plus you get multiple rapes, incest, a crucifixion and a weird caveman-like character who's also a rapist but also sort-of the hero. It's all very confusing.  The killers are moralizing ass-hats so that gets grating really quick. Plus none of the victims through most of the movie even lift a finger to fight back against getting killed when they clearly could and would. What the fuck? It's worth watching once if you're into violent 70's cinema but there's not much else going on to recommend it.

THE NURSES (1971)

 Have you ever seen anyone take their pants off but it still looks like they're wearing shorts?  If your problem with porn films is that the actors and actresses are just too damn attractive then this might be the movie for you.  Filled with people you've never heard of who can't act at all and whose bodies sort of resemble Mr. Potato-Head I dare anyone but the most perverted among us to get turned on while watching this film.  There are some strange yet funny bits of dialogue and an enema sequence thrown in along with your more typical nurse-bangs-patient segments.  One memorable part has a fellow giving a nurse a facial and then telling her he has VD.  Yes that's the level of humor here.  Another part has a guy wearing a giant paper-mache penis helmet for no reason or maybe I dreamed that.  This film exist as a sort-of anti-porn that might make your penis retract into your body and induce sleepiness.  For advanced sleaze-beasts only.
 I originally came across THE NURSES under a bunch of typical-looking boring 1990's VHS tapes in the back of a store and of course bought this over all that boring jerk-off garbage.  I also own this on a specially remastered DVD where I think the movie is even longer which might not be a good thing.

MANIAC (1980)

                                                         "fancy schmancy"

I feel like if you locked someone in a room and just showed them this movie on a loop in about a week you would have created your very own psychopath.  So don't do that you weirdo.  Of course the same thing could probably be said of many slasher flicks but this one I think would be the most thorough in drilling itself deep into the mind.  Maybe it's the sweaty voice-over Joe Spinell narration or the fact that we are just dumped, right from the offset of the movie, deep into the psyche and point of view of a maniacal nutjob.  Of course it is only a movie and a very effective one, at that, dripping with sleaze and gore.  If you're into that sort of thing this is one of the top examples.  I got a chance to see this on the big screen with director Bill Lustig last night and I'm really glad I did.

GONE WITH THE POPE (1976/2010)

This movie has it all bloody mafia action, ridiculous 70's attire, comedy, naked obese women, awesome soundtrack and absurd clunky acting.  Yeah I really loved this follow up by Duke Mitchell to his entertaining first feature MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE.  I think this one even tops that by being more enjoyable and keeping an even pace throughout the whole film unlike MMS which starts off with a bang and then slows down for a long stretch.  Grindhouse releasing did a good job in putting this thing together and cleaning up the print from years of sitting around somewhere.  Don't let the 2010 release date fool you this is one of the lost greats of the 1970's loaded with style.