SANTO VS. THE KING OF CRIME (1962)

  I generally love Santo movies and while I don't hate this early one it's probably down there around the bottom on my list of favorites. The main problem with this is the long drawn-out Jai Alai matches that serve to pad the film out. I know these movies always have long wrasslin' matches thrown in, this one has a couple of those also, but they really focus on the Jai Alai more in this entry. It's also kind of a weird origin story of Santo being a role, and a mask, that a father hands down to his son. There is a very fat criminal kingpin with a humpbacked midget helper so it's not a total loss but I think if I'm looking to re-watch a Santo flick I'll stick with his 70s monster mashes. 

               Santo using the immense power of Jai Alai!: 

THE MAJORETTES (1986)

  Directed by the guy who played the first zombie in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD(Bill Hinzman), written by the guy who co-wrote NOTLD(John Russo) and featuring appearances by those 2 guys and the guy who played Johnny in NOTLD(Russell Streiner) this is clearly a Pittsburgh production. With all that local star power it's kind of a letdown that this is not better. You get a pretty basic slasher movie about cheerleaders getting offed and some religious overtones thrown in for motivation. Has a decent amount of blood, nudity and even a couple of explosions when it turns into an action movie for a bit. Might keep you entertained if you've seen all the big slasher flicks already. 

GIRL BOSS BLUES: QUEEN BEE'S COUNTERATTACK (1971)

 The first of the GIRL BOSS BLUES series despite the title sounding like it's a sequel(AKA QUEEN BEE STRIKES AGAIN). This would be followed by 6 more movies of which I think I've seen maybe half. I caught this one as part of a marathon of Japanese girl gang movies yesterday and quite a few of those also starred Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto. They also all had pretty similar themes of young girls getting mixed up with The Yakuza, great soundtracks and they seem to all start out as women-in-prison films before our main characters get released back into the underworld of Japanese crime. This one does stand out for one particular scene of a group of bikers incorporating fucking on motorcycles into a race. Beyond this it all does become a bit of a blur.

 

MORITURIS: LEGIONS OF THE DEAD (2011)

  One of the more nasty films I've seen in a while. The easiest way to describe this is for about an hour it's reminiscent of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT with all the expected brutality that entails(a pair of scissors in some private parts was the part that got to me the most) before then swerving off into resembling TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD. I am generally a fan of this type of sub-genre-mixing and was surprised that anything made in 2011 was halfway decent. Check it out if you have a strong stomach. 

 This was apparently inspired by a real-life crime that occurred in Italy where a group of lunatics raped and tortured a couple of young girls, murdering one of them resulting in it being banned there. I'm assuming the 2nd half where some ancient Roman zombies show up to add to the nastiness is not based on anything real. 

ASSAULT OF THE PARTY NERDS (1989)

  In my ongoing quest to see everything that Linnea Quigley ever acted in before I die I arrived at this. A very USA UP ALL NIGHT-type of sex-comedy/boobie-movie, this one is clearly inspired by ANIMAL HOUSE which only came out a mere 11 years earlier. It involves a nerd-filled fraternity dealing with a rival group of jocks(or are they preppies? Maybe both). Linnea and Michelle Bauer both get their tits out but beyond those highlights it's the expected really stupid stuff.   

 There was a sequel 6 years after this which is most likely just as dumb. 

                                                 Glorious VHS cover!:

RUN AND KILL (1993)

   One of the rougher and better Hong Kong category III movies I've seen in a while. This one features Fatty(Kent Cheng) who gets himself mixed up with not just one but 2 mobster factions that you don't want to be involved with. You get lots of violent fighting, various murders, torture and a very notorious child death scene. For hardcore Hong Kong  fans only.

 The first time I saw this was in a little art theater near me and it was hosted by the author of a book titled THE SWEETEST TABOO which was a look at child death in films and this was the very fitting film which they chose to exemplify that. 

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (1973)

  While I'm a bit too young to remember when this made-for-T.V. movie originally played I do recall bits and pieces of it from one of it's many re-broadcasts over the years. It's definitely one of the highpoints of television horror and despite the absurd-looking onion-headed miniature monsters here it still manages to be a creepy classic. 

 I know there's a modern remake of this written by Guillermo Del Toro but I'm not sure I want to see a big budget version of this since the original manages to pull of the atmospheric chills with very little. 

 Uncle Charley from MY THREE SONS is the featured harbinger of doom here who is sadly ignored.

THE BLACK CAT (1989)

  Luigi Cozzi gives us his version of the 3rd movie in the SUSPIRIA trilogy way before Argento gave us the official one with MOTHER OF TEARS. While I didn't completely hate M.O.T. this one is way more enjoyable and wackier watch. We get a movie-within-a-movie which is also a sequel to SUSPIRIA, a crud-faced witch who likes to puke green slime on people, a black cat lurking about(which is really the only thing this has to do with Edgar Allen Poe), Caroline Munro being her sexy self, an outer space fetus, laser beam fights, time travel, a rocking soundtrack which includes Bang Tango and a bunch of other nonsense that makes no sense but boy do I love it! 

 Released in Italy as DEMONS 6, and it has even less to do with the DEMONS series than it does Poe!

SLAUGHTER HOTEL (1971)

               

 Although the ad up there tries to make you think this will be about serial killer Richard Speck it's really more of a standard Eurotrash giallo deal featuring Klaus Kinski as a doctor at a rehab center and a mystery slasher hacking people up. I say standard but this one does feature quite a bit of nudity and sleaze thanks to Rosalba Neri and all the other ladies in the cast. There is some mass nurse snuffing towards the end though so it's not total false-advertising. 

 The original version features explicit vaginal shots which were edited out of the U.S. release to get an R rating. AKA ASYLUM EROTICA

Original Italian title is THE BEAST KILLS IN COLD BLOOD:

This ad just steals a shot from fellow sleazy Italian classic FRANKENSTEIN 80!:

VALENTINE (2001)

 Slasher movies from this time period are generally not very good and this one fits right in with the rest of the crap from this post-SCREAM/pre-HOSTEL era. To make matters worse there was apparently a bunch of blood and violence cut out the movie to make it even blander. I guess if you like really slick-looking slasher movies give it a look, I'll stick with the original MY BLOODY VALENTINE for a better V-Day thrill. 

RUSSIA 88 (2009)

  Before watching this I guess I never thought about the idea of their being militant neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Russia before but that's what we get here. I probably would have liked this more if it wasn't filmed in that found-footage/shaky-cam style. Obviously influenced by stuff like ROMPER STOMPER(which it name drops), AMERICAN HISTORY X and MADE IN ENGLAND it drags a bit and gets repetitive but is an interesting obscure oddity. 

KISS ME MONSTER (1969)

                      

 The 2 sexy secret agents(Janine Reynaud and Rosanna Yanni) from SADISTEROTICA return in this sequel. Just like that movie this was advertised in America as a horror flick which it is not. You get another goofy James Bond-inspired romp. A lot of nonsense and comedy bits ensue which is not what one usually comes to director Jess Franco for, There is one scene of a bloody surgery(only included in the English version), go-go dancing and some black hooded baddies that look like bizarro-world Ku Klux Klansmen but not much else stands out in this. 

ZEIRAM (1991)

  Pretty simple Japanese sci-fi flick about a bounty hunter(Yuko Moriyama) and her computer sidekick Bob come to Earth to capture a monster/biological weapon named Zeiram. Reminiscent of John Carpenter's THE THING in the way it can transform throughout the movie. They throw in a couple of goofy electricians(phone repairmen?) for a laughs. Some great practical FX work make this worth a look for people into that sort of thing or maybe just fans of ULTRAMAN. 

 While this would seem like something that was based on a prior animated show it wasn't but there would be an animated version in 1994 and also a live-action sequel that same year(which from what I've read is really just an inferior remake).