DEEP THROAT (1972)

Arguably one of the most important films in the annals of exploitation film making as far as pushing boundaries for what was acceptable in onscreen explicitness.  Also arguably one of the most profitable films in the history of motion pictures(hard to prove due to all the organized crime involved with its distribution).  This movie helped spawn the porn industry that was to follow and became part of the mainstream in a way no porn films really would after it.  How do you even judge a film like that looking back at it today?  The film itself is very silly and pretty typical of a lot of seventies porn.  The soundtrack music is great with it's absurd lyrics and funky style.  The sex scenes are fairly standard for the era.  One guy drinks some Coca-Cola out of a cup in a vagina in the weirdest one.  Star Linda Lovelace would go on to write a book claiming she was abused and forced to make these kinds of movies then she would retract that and flip-flop a couple of more times to make herself out to be not very believable either way.  Male star Harry Reems would get dragged into court on obscenity charges which seems completely fucking insane in retrospect!  Director Gerard Damiano(credited as Jerry Gerard) would get cheated out of making a fortune by people you don't want to question too much about where your money is.  There's a great documentary called INSIDE DEEP THROAT that tells the whole crazy tale of this milestone film.  While this is not the first hardcore type film ever shown in America it is the one that started the ball rolling and worth checking out just for historical purposes and 60 minutes of goofy sex thrills.



The Rialto Theatre promised the greatest film ever and it's hard to argue against that:

ONE DARK NIGHT (1983)

An evil murdering psychic dies and then comes back to haunt a mausoleum or something like that.  I found this movie really hard to pay much attention to since it was really dull for most of its running time and also very silly towards the big finale.  Maybe it's just dumb supernatural horror flicks I have a problem with or maybe it's the PG-rating that made me not care very much.  You get a weird cast consisting of Jennifer Tilly's sister Meg, E.G. Daly from PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE and Adam 'BATMAN West.  There's also a black girl who chews on a toothbrush throughout the whole movie for some reason.  There's also some sorta zombies towards the end of the film but they're actually more like corpses that the bad wizard guy just flings around.  A.K.A.= MASOLEUM (watch the other 83' MASOLEUM instead, at least you get Bobbie Bresee's boobs in that one)

LUNCH MEAT (1987)

If you were to make a list of the worst slasher films of all time this one would get a high spot.  The story of a family of insane backwoods cannibals.  Where have I seen that before?  Yes, if THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was remade as a crappy shot-on-video movie in the 80's, complete with shaky cam and non-actors it would look a lot like this.  Instead of being hacked up for barbecue our idiotic heroes are made into hamburgers, also there's no chainsaw.  Porn star Ashlyn Gere, under an alias, gets the final girl role though the whole movie looks really ugly and none of the actors in this thing seem the least bit attractive or anyone you would want to see naked.  The original big box VHS of this goes for quite a bit of money.  Must be because of it's rarity since I can't imagine too many people actually liking this all that much.  Not much gore and lots of boring and repetitive chases scenes. 

An ass-load of retarded crap!:

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE (1974)

The third film in THE STREET FIGHTER series starring Sonny Chiba.  As a martial arts movie this isn't the worst thing you could watch but as part of this classic series it is pretty weak.  The main problem is that they soften the character of Terry Suguri up too much and make him way too much of a hero.  If you know anything about this series it's that The Streetfighter is not very much of a good guy.  He's supposed to be a ruthless hitman for hire but not a secret agent spy with disguises or a secret hideout or any of that crap.  You do get some blood and boobs, the fight scenes aren't bad and you get that kick-ass theme song.  Not a complete waste of time but don't expect anything as great as the original.

CANNIBAL MERCENARY (1983)

APOCALYPSE NOW meets CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST?  That sounds awesome!  You don't really get that but you sorta kinda do in a cheap-ass Thai movie kind of way.  What you mostly get is a junky Vietnam war movie with a few bloody kills and decapitations here and there for the first hour and then towards the end our heroes get captured and tortured and the cannibal part of the title kicks in.  You see this Vietnam seems to take place in some kind of alternate reality where the war was fought by a handful of Thai mercenaries who take on the whole Vietnamese army also the Viet Cong are cannibals.  The movie is just chock full of weirdness.  For example our band of heroes keep getting pissed on, then one of our heroes inexplicable starts munching on maggots(I guess he was super hungry), then the torture starts and a guy has a spike rammed through his head and his brains eaten(his "brains" strangely look a lot like creamed corn) then a guy has his eyes ripped out and arm hacked off and eaten(his eyes also look like creamed corn) also one guy is named Bunion.  Blood shoots out like a sprinkler went off, you get kung-fu and gun-fu and some music from DAWN OF THE DEAD is played over and over again.  By the end our main hero is completely batshit insane with his Nam-flashbacks and after viewing this I can relate.  Check it out if you're into RAMBO or golden showers or creamed corn. AKA= JUNGLE KILLERS: THE JAGUAR PROJECT(which sounds neat) and THE MERCENARY(which sounds fucking dull).

I guess THE JAGUAR PROJECT is a re-edited version of this film cuz there weren't any white people with stupid mullets anywhere in the version that I saw:

BASTONI: THE STICK HANDLERS (2002)

A plodding, slow-moving, drama about two people in the Japanese porn industry and then it turns into a love triangle kind of a deal when someone's ex shows up.  I think some of it's supposed to be a comedy also but I'm not sure since it's all just really dull and uninteresting.  The only memorable scene has our main actress giving blowjobs to a line-up of guys at her wedding and then getting married with a face full of bukkake love juice.  Classy sleaze and you do get to see lots of hot nude Asian ladies in simulated sex scenes but it's not really worth trudging through this whole pseudo-student art film to see it.

Thong soccer!:

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008)

We all know MAD MAX and its sequels.  Some of us remember that giant killer pig movie RAZORBACK but this Australian-made documentary digs way deeper than that into the world of insane exploitation flicks from the land of kangaroos and psycho stuntmen.  You get tons of clips from great looking movies full of blood, breasts, beasts, kung fu and general mayhem.  Tarantino shows up to give his trademark super enthusiastic opinion and isn't overly annoying.  The coolest thing to me is the obscure titles they dug up that even a film junkie like myself has never heard of.  I definitely need to track down some of the slasher films shown. Also the behind the scenes shots of stuntmen setting themselves on fire and jumping off cliffs or doing some unbelievable car crashes is pretty amazing.  CGI probably coulda saved a lot of broken bones and maybe a few lives but of course it would never have looked this authentic.  This would probably also serve as good background visuals in a party situation.

THE MUMMY'S REVENGE (1973)

Not one of Paul Naschy's best films and probably only watchable to die-hard Naschy fans.  In this one he plays a mummy who looks more like a crud-faced monster that just crawled out of a lake.  He also plays an Egyptian descendent of the mummy who serves as the resurrected mummies henchman.   A pretty slow-moving, talky experience but quite violent(especially surprising since the version I viewed was a TV print)  You get throats sliced and lots of head trauma.  Heads are squeezed to death, smashed to a bloody pulp and bashed against walls.  Apparently this mummy has a problem with heads.  It sure beats the classic mummy method of boring old strangulation.  Unfortunately that's about the only thing this Spanish horror tale has going for it.  The hero is played by Jack Taylor who is one of the most boring actors ever.  I got to see this projected in a theater otherwise I'm pretty sure I woulda been asleep pretty quickly.

                                 head smash!:

KURONEKO (1968)

If Akira Kurosawa ever made a horror flick I think it would look something like this.  A mother and daughter-in-law are raped and murdered by a gang of samurai soldiers and then come back as vengeful ghosts who vow to kill and drink the blood of every samurai in the world.  What they didn't count on was their son/husband returning as a samurai himself.  Also they get helped somehow by a black cat which is where the title comes from.  So you get a creepy ghost story(or are they ghost-vampires or ghost-cat people?), a samurai flick and a bit of a love story all thrown together in a really well filmed piece of Japanese cinema.  There is blood and nudity although nothing is super graphic as the film relies more on atmosphere than anything else.  Similar to director Kaneto Shindo's earlier horror flick ONIBABA.  I would say check it out if you're into older horror flicks at all.

GIRLS NITE OUT (1984)

With a title like GIRLS NITE OUT plus a poster like that you would think you might get some boobs or at least a bare ass on display.  Unfortunately, there's none of that here unless you count all the shirtless men that we get long lingering shots of as they horse around in a very homo-erotic fashion.  What you do get though is a very silly, ultra-generic slasher from the 80's.  Which, while lacking greatly in the boobs department, I still find goofy enough to enjoy for what it is and would recommend to anyone who loves these brainless teens-getting-chopped-up flicks like myself.  Where else are you going to get a slasher in a full bear suit with Freddy Krueger claws and a bow-tie slicing up semi-retarded college kids?  Plus the killer's name is Dickie.  That's just precious. 

BLIND BEAST (1969)

Japanese softcore sex flicks from the 60's and 70's (or Pink films to all you movie snobs out there) are some strange pieces of cinema.  They can either be offensive due to the submissive role of Japanese women on display or exciting depending on your perspective.  This one has a really simple plot about a crazy blind sculptor and his mom who kidnap a model and hold her in a nutty studio where all kinds of insane sexual hi-jinks ensue.  The set-design is really something to see as the studio is filled with sculptures of giant boobs and various body parts and also two giant female figures.  What starts off as simple gratuitous ass fondling leads down a weirder and more violent path as the film plays on and you get an appropriately bizarre ending to what seems like a S & M-fan's wet dream.  It is a little long for such a thin story but worth checking out for its oddity and  you should add extra points if you're into submissive fetishistic type of stuff.

ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1985)

O. K. so there's this island full of little homicidal killer creatures that look like that killer doll from TRILOGY OF TERROR and on the island lands some survivors of a boat wreck.  Was it the Titanic?  Maybe since they sorta look like they are dressed in outfits from the 1920's or maybe they were just in the middle of some kind of masquerade dance or some shit.  So anyway not only are there little stupid monsters but all the water on the island is acid which one guy finds out after he sticks his face in it and it melts off in a gory spectacle.  Unfortunately in between the face melting and little ferocious guys attacking there's nothing but people arguing with each other and lots of boring dialogue.  It is all completely ridiculous and still a must see for fans of watching full grown adults wrestle with dopey-looking dolls .  Any sane person would most likely completely hate this so of course I love it. AKA HELL ISLAND

                                Look at those silly little fucks run!:

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1970)

While HG Lewis was grossing people out in the early sixties with stuff like BLOOD FEAST at the same time way down south in Brazil the man who would become known in America as Coffin Joe was cranking out some gore flicks of his own.  These had a more serious edge to them and a decidedly anti-religious message that seems pretty ballsy for the time and country in which they were made.  This one came along in 70 and is a sorta behind the persona look at the man behind the character, Jose Mojica Marins.  It's a unique structure because you get Marins playing himself being questioned by psychiatrists for being a bad bad man and then you get LSD experiments where Coffin Joe shows up to brutalize folks(mostly women) and things get weirder and weirder until you end up with a spaghetti slurping fat man, gratuitous ass-kicking, blatant sexism and a bunch of asses with faces painted on them.  It is quite the disjointed mess yet I still found it totally enjoyable.  In the end there's even a pro-drug message about how people's minds are way more fucked up naturally than any artificial drug is capable of doing.  Brilliantly cheesy stuff!