CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH (1968)

 Spanish horror(though it was shot in Germany) that takes place(mostly) in an old castle. While this is not your standard haunted castle situation it's kinda hard to decipher exactly what's going on here. Howard Vernon plays a mad scientist trying to bring his daughter back to life with the help of a bunch of gross open-heart surgery footage. There's a bloody wild bear attack, multiple rapes, drunken partying and gratuitous use of a speech from Shakespeare's HAMLET. There's also ample nudity and Janine Reynaud(from Jess Franco's TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS) getting it on. Franco is also credited as the writer of this which makes sense when you watch it. This was probably pretty shocking stuff in 1968. 

 Apparently the original Spanish version has a longer ending but I'm not sure I'd want to watch a longer version of this. 

 AKA APPOINTMENT WITH LUST, CASTLE OF BLOODY LUST, IN THE CASTLE OF BLOODY LUST, CASTLE OF LUST and CASTLE OF UNHOLY DESIRES

ORLOFF AGAINST THE INVISIBLE MAN (1970)

 

 In Jess Franco's original AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, way back in 1962, the doctor(Howard Vernon) is involved in grafting a new beautiful face on his disfigured daughter. In this sort-of sequel, not directed by Franco, but by this French dude, Pierre Chevalier, who ended his career with the amazing PANTHER SQUAD, Mr. Vernon returns but now he's obsessed with making an invisible man(or in this case an invisible ape-man!). I guess Orloff is just a master of all fields of science! 

 This film is generally pretty slow and dull but there is a great deal of nudity on show if you watch the correct uncut version. Watch it only if you really want to see a killer invisible ape on the loose(which I assume is a weird callback to Poe's PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE). AKA DR. ORLOFF'S INVISIBLE MONSTER

 The VHS release of this was re-titled THE INVISIBLE DEAD though it's not a zombie movie at all!:

This sweet double-bill teams our Invisible Man up with a pretty obscure Eurotrash Mummy film!: 

THE BLOODY JUDGE (1970)

 As much as I generally love director Jess Franco I've never been much of a fan of this burn-the-witches flick that he did with Christopher Lee. Lee is great as always in the title role but the film overall pales when compared to it's obvious inspiration CONQUEROR WORM and it never gets as sleazy or bloody(with it's PG-rating) as MARK OF THE DEVIL from this same year.  It is probably one of Jess' most professional and best looking films and it's not terrible it just suffers for reminding me of  better movies in this sub-genre. Franco regular Howard Vernon is pretty great as the executioner/torturer of accused witch-ladies but the movie sadly isn't all about him and his limping sadistic ass. There are a bunch of alternate titles for this which were various cut versions including NIGHT OF THE BLOOD MONSTER, THRONE OF THE BLOOD MONSTER, TRIAL OF THE WITCHES, WITCH KILLER OF BROADMOOR and WITCHES' TRIAL




                                      Didn't spot this monster anywhere in this movie:

THE DEMONS (1973)

 I've seen this called Jess Franco's version of Ken Russell's THE DEVILS but it doesn't really have all that many similarities with that and is really just a kinda crappy nunsploitation movie. Since it's a Franco you get a lot of sex scenes thrown in which manage to stall the plot a bunch and take away from the story which is about a couple of twins who turn out to be the daughters of a witch that was burned at the stake but it does add lots of boobs and euro-bush! It turns out witches actually do have magical powers in this so I'm not sure who the good guys are supposed to be. Howard Vernon might be one of the few characters who seems to have any good intentions. While morally-ambiguous plots are usually a plus for me this one is a little too much of a muddled mess for me to really get into it. Also Franco had already made the superior BLOODY JUDGE with Christopher Lee which kinda makes this feel a bit unnecessary.
 The version I watched of this seemed to be an uncut version that jumped from English to French a lot so I'm thinking that a shorter cut may actually work better but I don't think I wanna watch this again to find out. AKA SHE-DEMONS & THE SEX DEMONS

You're mother was a witch:

WOMEN IN CELLBLOCK 9 (1978)

 While this doesn't top 1975's BARBED WIRE DOLLS as my favorite Jess Franco-directed women in prison flick, it is a pretty similar adventure in the land of ultra-sleazy sex and violence behind bars in South America.  Loaded wall to wall with full nudity, our main female prisoners here don't even get prison outfits of any sort.   There's a wicked lady warden in the mold of ILSA and Howard Vernon as a crazy, torture-happy doctor.  You get a hamster shoved into a vagina, a rhino horn in an ass and other abuses to sensitive female private parts.  Rape, of the living and dead, happens and there's a completely nihilistic ending which is usually my favorite type of ending.   
 Allegedly one of the actresses here, Susan Hemingway, was under 18 when this was filmed which caused this movie to be banned in England.  From what info I can find she was actually most likely 18 at the time of shooting but I guess the censors in England didn't bother finding that out and just went by her young looks.  Because of this some versions have scenes featuring Hemingway deleted.  AKA TROPICAL INFERNO and ESCAPE FROM THE ISLAND OF DEATH

OGROFF (1983)

 OGROFF (A.K.A. MAD MUTILATOR) has got to be one the oddest things I've ever sat through.  What starts out as a really cheap slasher movie (even cheaper than the VIOLENT SHIT series which is the closest thing I would compare it to) warps into a zombie flick about three quarters of the way through and then ends it all off with some unexpected vampire hi-jinks.  The FX are amazingly low-budget.  They include extremely unrealistic Styrofoam dummy heads being hacked off and smashed and intestines being pulled right out of shirts.  There's  almost no dialogue for 95 percent of the runtime (which is a good thing since the copy I have of this is in French) so it all feels like some bizarre silent gore/art flick made on another planet or maybe just the nightmare of a retarded Fangoria reader.          
 Our title character is a Leatherface wannabe who rides an old shitty bicycle (until he upgrades to a nifty motorcycle) and starts the film out with a bang by killing a little kid and chopping him up right in front of his mum.  Somewhere around the 50 minute mark Ogroff amazingly manages to get himself a girlfriend who wears very tight stripey pants.  Because really who wouldn't fall for a cannibalistic, psychopath who lives in a shed full of entrails in the woods and masturbates using his trusty battle-ax?  From there we find out Ogroff has some pet zombies that he keeps in the basement.  Then a zombie apocalypse happens and finally and unexpectedly (like just about everything else that happens in this) Howard Vernon shows up as a vampire priest.  How the hell they got Vernon to appear in this is anyone's guess!
 I think what I love most about this movie is the insane chaotic feel it has where anything can happen at anytime.  There's chainsaw-fu, battleaxe-fu, knife-fu.  Heads roll, legs and arms roll, tongues roll, pretty much everything rolls at some point.  A must watch for gore-hounds who don't mind a zero dollar budget and blatant in-your-face weirdness.