ROBOT MONSTER (1953)

Lux Interiors favorite film!  This movie would probably be totally forgettable if not for the worlds stupidest monster outfit consisting of a cheap-ass gorilla suit and a diving helmet.  Ro-Man our alien invader manages to wipe out all humanity except for a couple of stupid people living in the desert.  For some reason Ro-Man keeps a bubble machine in his cave.  I guess he just digs bubbles.  There's an annoying little kid and our ridiculous monster looks like he's getting ready to molest a lady until he's interrupted.  This then leads to a stupid KING KONGish "twas beauty killed the beast" ending.  Then some claymation dinosaurs show up and some lizards and alligators fight(all stock footage from ONE MILLION B.C. and LOST CONTINENT.).  Then the worst ending possible happens where we find out it was all a dream.  At least I think that's what happens.  It's also possible that Ro-Man was a ghost of some sort but who the fuck knows?  This was shot in 3-D but I've never seen it shown that way.  You would have to be really hardcore into crappy B movies to enjoy this movie which fortunately I am.

SHEBA, BABY (1975)

My main problem with this Pam Grier action flick is its PG rating.  It means I'm not gonna see any boobs, not much bloodshed and I might as well watch STARSKY AND HUTCH or something like that.  There is a bloody shootout early on but that didn't help this movie from being a big flop when originally released and thanks to that it helped stall Grier's career for many years up until Quentin Tarantino gave her the starring role in JACKIE BROWN.  Director William Girdler had done some nifty horror films before this like THREE ON A MEATHOOK and ABBY which are both worth checking out.  On the positive side here you do get that bad D'Urville Martin from DOLEMITE as one of the bad guys and a memorably flashy pimp character named Walker but besides that you'd be way better off watching COFFY or FOXY BROWN for some quality classic Grier action.

THE BIG SNATCH (1971)

 "You're all very pretty pigs"

Early 70's roughie produced by softcore sleazemeister David F. Friedman.  This movie is sort of like a more sex-filled version of  BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD.  A long-haired sleazy fellow kidnaps five girls and uses them however he wants.  He's helped by a mute henchman named Momo. The odd thing is that the girls don't really seem to be all that upset about these events.  This is probably due to the horrible non-actors used but you would think they could have tried a little harder to seem a little bit upset.  One of the girls is played by Uschi Digard who is billed here as Barbara Que(get it?).  In fact all the cast and crew are given cutesy little aliases like our main bad guy Harry Chest and make-up by Mary Goround and sound by Less Noise etc, etc.  You get girls called pigs, unexpected lesbianism, expected rape, penises squished with a wrench and in the most memorable scene a girl is thrown on top of a car's radiator and has her "clam" steamed open.  It all ends up with some revenge served up by screwing our evil baddie to death.  How he keeps it up for all of that I'm not sure.  Especially since we never see him get it up in any scenes at all.  Also after all that they still find room for a twist ending.  Overall a pretty ridiculous movie for true lovers of bottom of the barrel sleaze only.

"Love means never having to say you're horny"

 Uschi!:

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971)

"One of these days, I'm gonna come in here, and ZAP!" "Zap?" "You know, Zap. R-A-P-E: "zap"

While, technically, there were women-in-prison flicks before this one this is the movie that really kick-started the whole cycle thanks to it being a huge drive-in hit when originally released. It was made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures company and he was pretty much disgusted by the more gratuitous content. But you can't argue with success. Pam Grier plays lesbian inmate Grear and Sid Haig plays a sleazy salesman who dreams of getting raped by an inmate some lucky day. You get some mild torture scenes, junkie-dancing, full cavity searches, shower scenes, mud-wrestling and lots of other cat-fighting. Also all these type of movies after this had to have a big food fight scene. Compared to the later WIP pictures, by the likes of Jess Franco and similarly low-brow Italian directors, it is all pretty tame stuff but done well enough by director Jack Hill to be entertaining.  There's a nonsensical bit of dubbing at the end to give the whole movie a sorta happy ending which was apparently forced on the filmmakers for some strange reason. AKA WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY III (VHS release)

BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (1973)

AIP cranked out a bunch of these cheaply-shot action flicks in the Phillipines around this time.  This is one starts out as a women-in-prison movie and then turns into a fugitives on the run from the law tale.  There's the obligatory shower scene of course and plenty of female nudity to go around, lesbian guards and a stupid prison-slop food fight.  Pam Grier is the black mama, who's a hooker and Margaret Markov is the white mama who's a revolutionary freedom fighter.  They get chained together and make a break for it, catfighting with each other the whole way.  Neither one of them is very convincing in their roles but then again nothing is very realistic about this film.  You also get Sid Haig in some funky shirts playing this cowboy/criminal type.  He has a great scene in his tidy-whities wrestling with some half-naked Filipino chicks. There's also a strange scene where he examines guys dicks and threatens to shoot off the smallest one!?  Overall there's enough going on to keep things from getting too boring and make this worth checking out even if it's not the best example of a Pam Grier action flick.  AKA WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY 10 (video release title)

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

While Quentin Tarantino's idea to bring Pam Grier back from the 70's action star she was and put her into the spotlight with a starring vehicle is a good one there are a few problems I've always had with this flick.  The main one is the stupid replaying of one scene towards the end of the movie over and over from different points of view.  A more capable director could have easily edited every different viewpoint into one coherent scene instead of spreading it all out.  This could be simply done with some decent editing.  This also adds to the film being overlong which is a problem with most all of Tarantino's output.  There's also the issue of people doing things that seem way too dumb for them to be doing.  The cops being the most blatant but also Samuel Jackson's character who seems so street smart through most of the movie and then puts himself directly into a dangerous situation at the climax.  There are also some things I do appreciate about this movie though.  For one thing, I think it's the last time Robert DeNiro actually played a character and not just a parody of himself in stupid Hollywood comedies.  Sid Haig shows up as a judge and Bridget Fonda looks especially hot even though I don't have a foot-fetish like Mr. Quentin who shoots her from the feet up many times.  Also the soundtrack to this is awesome with blaxploitation tracks, Johnny Cash and even some music from VAMPYROS LESBOS thrown in.  And ultimately I understand most people that hate this film saw it after seeing PULP FICTION and that is a tough act to follow.  It doesn't have the violence or pace of that movie but I think taken on its own it's an interesting if not perfect movie from a decade that was otherwise full of garbage cinema.

ART OF THE DEVIL II (2005)

Well this Thai movie is very gory and that's about the only thing it has going for it.  There is a simple story of a teacher getting revenge for something that her students did to her but I think the main idea is just to showcase a bunch of gore FX.  A girl plucks her own eyes out for some reason involving a voodoo curse, and a bunch of people are tortured to death by having their toenails and teeth pulled out and then a guy gets blow-torched and has the skin ripped off his legs in the nastiest scene.  If you're a fan of movies like SAW and HOSTEL and want something with an even nastier edge this might be a good time for you.  I found the whole thing pretty annoying with tons of flashbacks and what I think were dream sequences to add to the confusion.  I never saw part one but apparently this isn't even really a sequel anyway but just a retitling.  There is a part three, which is actually part two to this film(confused yet?), but I don't think I'm gonna bother wasting my time with that one.

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE (1980)

This was originally supposed to be a film about the Hollywood Hillside Strangler so while technically a slasher flick it features a killer/rapist who strangles his victims so it's not very bloody in the standard slash and kill tradition. It's also from 1980 before the strict template was set that almost every film in this sub-genre followed so for that reason I find it interesting. It's also memorable for the crazy-ass performance of our killer played by Nicholas Worth who went on to play small roles in a bunch of movies and TV shows. I'll always remember his fantastic role as that fat guy who arm-wrestles Mama on that stupid Mama's Family show. In this flick he has some great rants while communicating with his dead dad. Also he calls into a radio show and talks with a Spanish accent. Porky from PORKY'S shows up as a sleazy porn publisher in a couple of great scenes and there's some equally sleazy pimp and whore action in a standout scene. Plus you get lots of boobs although they're all on girls that get snuffed so if you don't mind that check it out even if it may not be the best example of a slasher you'll ever see.

TAOISM DRUNKARD (1984)

Kung fu comedy flick featuring some of the characters from SHAOLIN DRUNKARD.  I actually recall liking this movie a lot when I was younger.  I must have been doing a lot of psychedelic drugs at the time because this movie makes absolutely no sense and just seems like an insane Chinese person decided to make a movie.  There is the great watermelon monster or in some prints he's called the banana monster(I guess cuz he tries to eat the banana in your pants) and there's this buck-toothed idiot who drives around in a big shoe with a mouse face on it.  For some reason he's looking for some virgin boys(cherry boys as he calls them) and this leads to some totally inappropriate gazing at little boys penises.  There's also a fat lady who falls down a lot and an old grandma who's clearly played by a man or the world's manliest old Asian lady.  The coolest character though is our bad guy who kicks lots of ass and I think he's supposed to be the devil.  Also he seems like he belongs in a more serious chop-socky flick.  Also listen for Howard Jones' New Song that shows up for one stupid scene where some break-dance-kung fu is going on.  While being drunk might help you get through this movie I'm not sure that would be enough of a mind-altered state for the average viewer. There's supposedly another film in this sort-of trilogy called THE MIRACLE FIGHTERS from 1982 but I can't imagine it's anywhere near as insane as this one.
Watermelon Monster!!!:

BAT PUSSY (1973)

"Are you gonna suck the mother-fucker or are ya gonna forget it?  Now whatcha gonna do?"

This is one of the most mind-numbingly strange examples of a porno that I've ever seen.  What exactly is the thought process here?  Let's take a belligerent drunken hillbilly fellow and have him and a completely disinterested woman argue and insult each other for half the movie and then have a woman dressed as Batgirl(called BAT-PUSSY here for legal reasons) show up for the world's worst threesome scene ever put on film?  Yeah, that will surely make for hot viewing.  Never once does our main actor even come close to getting a hard-on or penetrating anything and all the sex scenes look like a terribly choreographed mixed-gender wrestling match.  At one point this whiskey-drinking rube knocks Bat-Pussy off the bed and then falls ass-first onto her head.  The stand-out scene has to be Bat-Pussy on a hippity-hop racing alongside a freeway to stop our dirty-motherfucker would-be porn makers from recording their stupid sex antics.  The movie mercifully isn't even 60 minutes long and while no human being in their right mind would call this a good movie I found it worth watching just for the fact that there's really nothing else like it in the annals of crazy 70's porn.

Put out by Something Weird Video and there's not much that's weirder than this!:

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)

This is one of my all time favorite films.  It doesn't strictly fit into any genre except maybe the generally insane art-house one.  The sets are amazing and could have only been created and filmed by a true artist at the top of his creative output.  The outfits seem as if someone took 70's glam rock and mixed it with a militant/religious-look if that even makes any sense.  You get castration, an old man tranny, a crippled dwarf, a gang of scantily-clad whores(including one who looks about 7 years old), crucified lambs, a monkey named Chucho-Chucho dressed up like a little man, a toad vs. lizard war complete with exploding eaten lizards and exploding toads, shit turned into gold, birds flying out of open wounds, green blood and way more bizarre spectacle.  To even try to list every insane thing that happens in this movie is overwhelming.  True to its title there's also a very real spiritual side to this film with a clear final message of embracing reality.  Then again if there's a better movie to take hallucinogenic drugs before watching I can't imagine it.  To think that Jodorowsky was set to direct DUNE after this and the fact that the film never happened is really a damn shame.  I'm sure it would have been about a thousand times more interesting then that boring piece of shit David Lynch made. 

EDMOND (2005)

In almost every movie I've ever seen William H. Macy in he seems like a pretty nice guy and usually plays a pretty sympathetic character.  In this movie, by RE-ANIMATOR director Stuart Gordon, Macy plays the complete opposite.  He's about as unsympathetic as possible and really a complete asshole to just about everyone in his life.  In fact at one point he even goes so far as to stab a girl(who has just had sex with him!) to death because they have a disagreement.  While this sounds pretty cool, and I tried really hard to relate to the main character's mid-life crisis and all that. it's just not at all an enjoyable film to watch.  Maybe if Macy/Edmond didn't make such obviously stupid degrading choices in life it wouldn't have seemed so intentionally self-destructive.  There's a bit of a twist ending and the whole thing plays like an uglier version of that movie FALLING DOWN from the 90's.  It's also based on a play and you can kinda tell because everything kind of plods along with little momentum to the ending.  You get some boobs, strippers, whores, racism and one super hot Asian chick but overall this would probably be more appealing to fans of the "thriller" or "drama" genres, which I'm not, but I can't imagine anyone really getting much of a good time out of watching it.

HOBGOBLINS (1988)

I've seen a lot of terrible GREMLINS-rip-off movies over the years but this one has got to be about the worst(you could also argue MUNCHIES).  I saw this on an episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 and this is another great example of a film that is nearly unwatchable if it wasn't for the additional silly dialogue from Mike and his robots.  Everything about this movie is awful.  The plot makes no sense.  The hobgoblin creatures(who look like puppets and/or stuffed animals) have some unexplained magical powers that make your dreams come true.  One character(who is doing a Rambo impersonation throughout the movie) dies in an explosion in one scene and then reappears with a scraped arm in the next.  It's also full of horrible embarrassing 80's Cyndi Lauper-esque outfits.  The nightclub where the goblins have their final stand is named Club Scum and that's probably the coolest thing about this whole film.  Director Rick Sloane went on to do the VICE ACADEMY series of movies which helped keep many B-movie actresses employed for a few years .