THE DOGS (1979)

 Going into this French flick I was expecting more of an animals run amuck kind of deal. What you get here seems a bit deeper than that though. It involves a town that are really into having dogs for protection and they train them to kick ass which is a good thing I guess since there's also a rapist and a bunch of hooligans running around. It's basically a very odd version of a vigilante film involving a lot of canines of many different breeds. There really aren't any clear cut "good guys" here though since we also deal with racism and, like with most vigilant films, taking things too far. 

 Director Alain Jessau mostly did artsy movie and you can certainly lump this one into that category. 

 Star Gerard Depardieu allegedly took the role here of a pretty mean dog trainer after being bitten by a dog and attempting to overcome his fear of them.  

                                   Known in Italy as DOGS MAN!:

BEACH BABES FROM BEYOND (1993)

 You get a cavalcade of celebrity relatives in this feature from director David DeCoteau. Joe Estevez, Don Swayze, Joey Travolta and Jackie Stallone round out that quartet. You also get TV's Robin Burt Ward and scream queen Linnea Quigley who seems to be playing a character who's supposed to be a good deal older than she obviously is. Our main beach babes, and much of the rest of the cast, are comprised of porn stars and models with very minimal acting ability. The movie itself alternates between goofy beach party movie with some goofy ass music to softcore sex flick with every scene taking way longer than it has any right to. The boobs and butts are definitely top notch though.

 There is also an unrated more explicit version of this out there and a sequel that came out in 1995 called BEACH BABES 2: CAVE GIRL ISLAND minus all the z-list "stars" that looks even worse than it's predecessor if that's possible. 

SINNER'S BLOOD (1969)

  This is a very weird little biker flick. It starts out like a family drama until a couple of bikers are introduced eventually. There's a peeping tom, incest, preacher abuse and some homosexual antics, both of the male and female variety, that feature into this but it's not really all that exciting and I can't imagine this would be on anyone's top 10 biker movies list. It is an odd one though and the ending doesn't make any sense at all. 

 There is a porn movie from 1973 titled HARD RIDERS with Rene Bond which used footage from this. 

UNDERCOVER (1995)

  Fairly unremarkable softcore tale of a lady cop(Athena Massey) who goes undercover as a hooker in a whorehouse trying to find out who killed one of the ladies of the evening. Former porn director Gregory Dark directs this and you can really tell. Surprisingly Meg Foster is the madam and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who would go on to play Negan on THE WALKING DEAD show, has a big role. AKA UNDERCOVER HEAT

PANIC (1982)

  I caught a trailer for this Italian horror flick at the drive-in recently during a weekend of zombie flicks so I naturally assumed it was a zombie movie. Turns out it's not really but is more of a mutated monster on the loose deal concerning a virus that turns a scientist into an ugly murderous freak. It's ok for what it is but I guess I was expecting more. It basically plays like a crappy European slasher film. David Warbeck from Fulci's The Beyond stars as Captain Kirk(no not that one!). 

Released on DVD with the slightly more memorable title of MONSTER OF BLOOD, though that makes it sound like one of those Filipino "Monster of Blood Island" movies.

HOLLYWOOD MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE (1976)

  You would think a movie most commonly known simply as MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE might actually contain someone getting killed with a meat-cleaver but don't count on that. There is a massacre though consisting of strangulation, bludgeoning and a kitchen knife, but no cleaver action, which sets the story into motion and then we focus on the sole survivor of said massacre getting his revenge from his hospital bed which kinda reminded me of that movie PATRICK(which wouldn't come out for a couple of years) though in this case he uses some kinda Satanic demon conjuring instead of just psychic powers like in that one. It's not very exciting. Christopher Lee pops up in the opening and closing to tell stories that vaguely relate to the main movie. Apparently the producers just bought some footage of him to get his mug on the poster.

 Released on video as REVENGE OF THE DEAD. 

DEVIL STORY (1986)

                                                    "Fuck the mummy!" 

 This is one of the wackier movies I've seen in a while. What we got here is a French horror flick that starts off like it's going to be a slasher gorefest(something along the lines of OGROFF also from France) featuring a mutant Nazi killer before it then turns into a fever-dream involving a possessed horse, a mummy(complete with bride), a black cat(that gets tossed around in various scenes) and an old murderous hag. Director Bernard Launois seems fairly incompetent with his repeated act of cutting to the same scenes over and over again but somehow he did manage to make 6 previous films before this one so I guess someone believed in him. Obviously this is for real hardcore aficionados of low-brow trash cinema only. 

PEEPING TOM (1960)

  This classic British film is kind of a proto-slasher flick but way classier than any slasher flick of the 80s. When it was originally released in England it was not considered classy at all though and was taken out of theaters after only 5 days. Our peeper here, Karlheinz Bohm always reminds me of Peter Lorre thanks to his accent. While nothing is really all that graphically shown this still works as a disturbing piece of cinematic history. 

 Shown on TV in the U.S. as FACE OF FEAR.

                                        Known in Italy as THE EYE THAT KILLS:

CEMETERY MAN (1994)

  This is one of those horror films that it seems like everyone I know, that's into such things, just loves and I can never really figure out why. Sure there's sex and violence and some pretty lame zombies show up intermittently but I guess the mixture of a faux-artsy-fartsy Italian gore film with a comedy just never sits right with me. It's probably also due to being such a fan of Italy's superior 70s and 80s horror junk that this one seems so pale and pointless by comparison. It seems to get praise for being intellectually deep which it isn't while also appealing to the gorehound which all the philosophical nonsense negates but apparently my view is in the minority so judge for yourself I guess.

CREEPOZOIDS (1987)

  This is a pretty monotonous exercise in tedium as a group of  people roam around an abandoned research facility with giant rats and an ALIEN-like creature(or a CREEPOZOID if you will) picks them off. Some gooey FX work. a creepy mutant killer baby and Linnea Quigley are the only real bright spots. Due to the small cast and infrequent action a lot of this seems like it could almost be a stage play(a really terrible one too!). 

 There was supposed to a sequel to this but luckily we were all spared of its existence. 

 10 years later Fred Olen Ray remade this as a shot-on-video thing called HYBRID which I would assume is even worse!

EVEN LAMBS HAVE TEETH (2015)

  I have extremely low expectations for any horror film made in the 2010s so this one at least slightly exceeded those. It starts off with 2 annoying gals which makes you want to turn this off after a few minutes but if you stick with it you do get a modern interpretation of the classic rape/revenge plot. The tone of the film is all over the place with brutal sexual assault(with no actual nudity or rape shown since we now live in strict puritanical times for some reason?) followed by stupid jokey-jokes complete with terrible music video montages. There's a rapist who wears a pighead mask that might remind you of MOTEL HELL and that's maybe the biggest problem with this movie is that it constantly reminds you of and references much better films from the past from DELIVERANCE to DEER HUNTER. Clearly the director, Terry Miles, has seen quite a few Quentin Tarantino movies. 

SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006)

               "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"

  I know I'm almost 20 years behind everyone else who's seen this already but I had so much better stuff to watch first. This might have been a bit better if every snake didn't look like a cartoon CGI thing but then again maybe not. I'm more of a horror film fan and this is more of a thriller/action movie with some slithering killer snakes thrown in for a few gross-out thrills. OK for a one-time watch but pretty mediocre overall. 

CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS (1994)

                                  "Professor, how long have you been fucking fish?"

  Really stupid Italian horror flick about 5 people who decide to take a ride out into the ocean on a small raft and end up stranded on an experimental research ship that's full of mutant fish monsters. There's a lot of things that don't make sense in this but do make for a fun watch if you dig dumb trashy movies. For one thing the inside of the ship is designed more like some weird futuristic hotel where there's a talking clock, a smart-shower that talks sexy to you and a lamp that has it's bulb on the end of a lawn-gnome's large erection! Besides the interior decorations things aren't really ever fully explained, probably thanks to the shitty dubbing job. The only surviving scientist on the ship apparently enjoys fucking fish, but only if they're "old enough" whatever that means for a fish-fucker. Our main characters are also either annoying or just really dumb but if you can overlook that this one's good for a laugh and has some pretty crazy cheap-o FX work on display ranging from Claymation to what looks like cartoon monsters(no doubt this is due to the director being Italian FX artist Al Passeri). Originally titled PLANKTON. Known in Asia as PIRANHA 4 which is kind of fitting since some of these fish monsters look like piranha and fly around like the ones in PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING.