THE LAKE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1981)

  Better known as ZOMBIE LAKE(or ZOMBIES LAKE on some prints) this is a movie so crappy that allegedly director Jess Franco turned it down(who then quickly went on to make the equally crappy OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES). It's been credited to Jean Rollin, at least partially, Spanish director Julian de Laserna is blamed for about half of the film, though this is his only credit. The main problem with this movie is that the pacing is so dreadfully slow it's almost as if it's daring the viewer to remain interested in anything that's going on. On the plus side there's plenty of nudity(at least in the unclothed version; all the nudie scenes were also shot with clothing, so watch out for that edition!) and maybe a few laughs at how badly done everything is(including how every time we see the lake from underwater it magically transforms into a swimming pool!). You get very minimal gore as these creatures only bite the necks of their victims like vampires. This is one of the only zombie films I've seen where 2 zombies fight each other. Sadly this scene, like pretty much everything else here, is shot in super slow-motion. I have watched this more times than I can recall though outside of the boobs and bare ladies crotches on display I'm not sure why. 

 This did play one year on Halloween on a local UHF channel and if you think watching this movie uncut is bad imagine it without any nudity and commercials thrown in to slow it down even more!

 

BILLY JACK (1971)

  Hippie-fu classic as Tom Laughlin takes his character from that great biker flick THE BORN LOSERS and has him defend a school full of hippie youngsters who just keep getting hassled by "the man". If you can deal with all the acoustic folk music it's easy to see why this was a big hit back in 1971 as the flower-power era had not totally ended and been overshadowed by the nihilistic-tinged later 70s. This kind of acts like a last-gasp for the "make love, not war" generation as it depicts rape, racism and plenty of violence to go along with it's message of hope. 

 Dr. Johnny Fever, from WKRP IN CINCINNATI, himself(Howard Hessman) shows up as one of the students (even though he's clearly in his 30s by this point).   

Laughlin would go on to make 2 more sequels with diminishing returns each time.  

GERMAN ANGST (2015)

  The only reason I watched this artsy-fartsy gore movie is that director Jorg Buttgereit, of NEKROMANTIK fame, was responsible for the first(and probably my favorite) episode in this anthology film. I can't say it was the best thing I've ever seen but it certainly does deliver on the brutality and gore quotient. Deliberately plotless tale of a young gal who castrates and decapitates her tied-up abusive dad. The fact that we don't actually see any of this abuse, and just the torture and death, makes it pretty clear that the constant narration about her pet guinea pig are very apropos. The 2nd chapter is an equally blood-filled story about a couple who are accosted by some toughs and get some help from a magical amulet. This one has some crazy gore-filled Nazi flashbacks and almost non-stop ultra violence. The 3rd part deals with a sex-club with a secret sexy monster-lady or something like that. This one was my least favorite and seemed to drag on. Overall I guess this is worth a look if you just wanna see some gruesome imagery with not a lot of plot to get in the way. 

X (2022)

                                      

                                    "We're gonna be rich...feel how hard my cock is!"

  Most new horror films are not worth seeing or even mentioning so I'm as shocked as can be that I could find anything enjoyable about modern-day productions. Director Ti West made the fairly enjoyable HOUSE OF THE DEVIL back in 2009 before following it quickly with the crappy sequel to CABIN FEVER which made me completely disinterested in anything he had anything to do with up until just this past week. X deals with a group of porno filmmakers back in 1979 that go out to an isolated farmhouse to make a groundbreaking sex flick(this seems pretty ridiculous since they only have 1 male performer and what seems like the same plot as any other X-rated film from that era, but o.k.) and then the movie becomes a pretty good simulation of an 80s slasher flick. Since the bar is set so low by the amount of terrible slasher flicks there already are it wasn't hard for this to exceed those, but I'll take a standard slasher flick over most anything else released in the horror genre in the last 20 years any day.  

HORRORS OF THE RED PLANET (1965)

 If you thought that THE LORD OF THE RINGS was a movie with a lot of walking in it, wait until you get a load of this piece of crap! In the far-off futuristic year of 1975, four astronauts(the scientist, the leader/hero, the hothead younger guy and the gal) end up crash-landing on Mars and go for a long walk until they run into a Martian castle where some big-brained aliens hang out. John Carradine's disembodied head then appears, like in the WIZARD OF OZ(alternate title of this is THE WIZARD OF MARS), talks a bunch of gibberish and then maybe it was all a dream or some kinda wacky(but very boring) hallucination. AKA JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN. VHS title = ALIEN MASSACRE. 

 Footage from this were later on edited into HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970) and DOOMSDAY MACHINE (1972) 

 One of the weirdest things about this movie is that the VHS tape I own has the Millennium Falcon from STAR WARS right there on the cover. A movie it couldn't be any more different then!

 Lon Chaney(Sr. or Jr.) does not appear in this film despite being credited on some video box covers.

                                                               Sci-fi drive-in hijinks!: 

                              In new Ultra-Depth!(whatever that means!):

THE POSSESSION OF NURSE SHERRI (1978)

  Director Al Adamson rarely fails to bore the crap out of me with his films and this one is no exception. The plot here is about our titular nurse who gets possessed by a patient, who's also a Satanic cult leader, who dies after trying to resurrect a body, having a heart-attack and then croaking on the operating table.  He's now seeking vengeance from beyond the grave and all those who let him die. There's a bit of meat-cleaver mischief, a guy gets pitchforked to death, there's a crappy car chasing a truck scene, there's weird green animated junk to show someone's getting possessed and most importantly we get to see a couple of large black boobs along the way. There is a sexier version of this simply titled NURSE SHERRI that removes some of the horror elements and makes it into more of a sexploitation flick with way more boobs. including Sherri's!

  Other various aka's of this are BLACK VOODOO, HANDS OF DEATH, HOSPITAL OF TERROR, TERROR HOSPITAL and KILLER'S CURSE Those certainly sound like the more horror-centric version. This was also shown on T.V. as  BEYOND THE LIVING, which I'm sure wasn't very sexy at all.   

                                                              The non-sexy poster!:

They really tried to fool people into thinking this was a blaxploitation flick with this poster!:

The worst thing about this movie is that it's title makes this dumb song pop into my head!:

BODY COUNT (1986)

  Italian director Ruggero Deodato, who most famously gave the world CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, now gives us a pretty crappy slasher flick. You get a bunch of dumb "teens" camping out in the woods and a killer Indian shaman(so we know this isn't supposed to be set in Italy) with a shrunken-apple face, who doesn't go for that kind of thing. David Hess, who previously played a brutal rapist in the legendary LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, now plays a grumpy dad of one of the kids, an abusive husband and the biggest suspect for actually being the killer simply because he is David Hess. It's all pretty basic, there's a fat annoying guy(whose peen we get to see for a second), boobs, not very spectacular kills and a double twist ending to wrap it all up.   

Not to be confused with Ice-T's metal band that didn't care for the police: 

BODY PUZZLE (1992)

 Pretty late in the giallo game here. There are a couple of decent murder scenes, mostly with stabbings but one in a toilet involving a hand being lopped off really stands out. Joanna Pacula, who went on to be in a few big Hollywood films, stars and does an o.k. job but overall besides the few bloody bits this one is pretty dull. It's also not much of a mystery since we see the killer right from the beginning. There are a few twists to at least make it mildly interesting but definitely not essential viewing for anyone. 

I kept waiting for THE TOXIC AVENGER to show up since his musical cue happened so often in this!:

                                                                 Alternate Italian title!:

CHEERLEADER CAMP (1988)

 I've been revisiting a few movies that I thought were terrible when I first watched them lately and this qualifies as one of those. It is still terrible but there area few bright points, especially if you have very low standards and just want to see some tits and ass in a dumb slasher movie that also seems to be trying to be a comedy. The funny bits are never really all that humorous, there's a fat guy that is pretty grating and the kill scenes are not very gory or inspired. There is a decent cult movie cast though featuring Betsey Russel(who I mainly know as having played Angel in the 3rd ANGEL movie), Lucinda Dickey(star of NINJA III: THE DOMINATION and BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO), Teri Weigel(who went from Playboy to hardcore porn), Leif Garrett(former teen idol) and George 'Buck' Flowers doing  his traditional old homeless bum shtick. It's too bad there's not much for any of them to do beyond the girls looking fantastic! 

 Strangely this is a U.S.A./Japan co-production which I never would have guessed except I know slasher movies were popular in Japan at the time(probably boobs were also). AKA BLOODY POM POMS

                                                                    Turkish poster!: