KISS OF THE TARANTULA (1975)

 I'd never heard of this weird little 70's horror flick until I picked it up on a  double-feature disc with the Piper Laurie vehicle RUBY and I thought it was actually way better than the main feature.  As a lover of killer spiders in films and the owner of a pet tarantula it was hard not to love this story of a gal who lives in a mortuary and gets revenge on her shitty dysfunctional family and her horrible friends using an army of her pet tarantulas.  Where you might expect a straight ahead animals-run-amok type of a film this one throws in murder, incest, coffin antics and a general creepy feeling over everything.  The plot sorta rips off WILLARD except with a chick and spiders and lots of added elements.  There's also a drive-in scene where DIRTY HARRY and MAGNUM FORCE are playing which would be a pretty cool night at the movies(at least until a carload of kids start freaking out over some awesome-looking spiders and inadvertently kill each other in a ridiculous display of pussy-ness)  While this is only rated-PG and there's not really any blood or gore to speak of I think it's messed-up enough for lovers of the strange and bizarre to appreciate it.

SATANIK (1968)

 This Italian/Spanish film starts out with a crud-faced lady(Polish actress with the cool name of Magda Konopka) killing a doctor to obtain his youth serum. She becomes beautiful and younger looking but the downside is that she becomes kinda homicidal at times. Though technically she wasn't above killing anyway since she already did it so no big deal.  I always assumed this was a superhero movie along the lines of DANGER:DIABOLIK because of the masked character on all the posters but apparently that is just an outfit that our main character wears while stripping. This film was based on an earlier comic book but it's definitely no superhero, or super-villain, type of a thing. I've seen this movie referred to as a giallo which would be really stretching the definition of that word. I think I would just call it a Euro-thriller. It tends to delve a little too much into the police procedural area for my liking but it's still an OK movie. You get a cat-fight, some murders, a few bare breast shots and they throw in a couple of neat plot twists at the end. Without giving it away the very end is really absurd and unbelievable. This whole thing might have been a better watch for me if they went for a more straight forward giallo or at least stuck to the horror elements more. Despite the title Satan never shows up nor does any devil-worshiping go on.

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

 While Christmas movies, children's films and musicals are some of the worst things ever created by the human race this one here at least has the decency to be full of kitsch value, bizarre elements and it appears to have been filmed by maniacs who tried to throw everything into the film that a kid of the early 60's could want(besides maybe some monsters which would have been fantastic).  Of course you get the titular Martians who are just idiots with their skin painted green wearing stupid hats with antennas on them, a possibly insane Santa Claus who laughs uncontrollably at nothing, a guy in a ragtag polar-bear suit and a guy in a shitbox robot suit who both terrorize some annoying little kids.  There's also a bumbling Martian who acts like Gilligan and Pia Zadora(who would go on to get very naked in NC-17 rated films when she got older) as a little Martian girl.  While this film is extremely stupid with dumb sci-fi elements it's at least stupidly mildly amusing and not even close to the worst when you dig into the holiday crap that's out there. I also appreciate that they kept the music part down to just one awesomely obnoxious song about Santy Claus that should have become a seasonal classic.




                                                           This inspired a comic-book:

                                                 
                                          and my favorite punk band of all time:

DOCTOR OF DOOM (1963)

 
 Some lady Mexican wrestlers, or Luchadoras if you're the international type, take on a  mad scientist who enjoys dressing like an evil masked Mexican wrestler.  He throws a gorilla brain into a guy to make a gorilla-man named Gomar and also hypnotizes a masked lady wrestler named Vendetta to do his evil bidding.  Even with all this wackiness going on this movie is pretty dull and sleep-inducing.  There's lots of female wrasslin' matches and a head-scratching finale that uses the classic KING KONG ending.  Director Rene Cardona went on to remake this in 1972 as the way better and way gorier NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES which I would highly recommend checking out.  This earlier version is only for real lovers of Mexi-crap cinema.  There's also a re-edited version of this film with a redone soundtrack called ROCK 'N' ROLL WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC APE(done by the great Johnny Legend) which at least throws in some amusing music bits to liven things up.  There's also a version titled SEX MONSTER and I have no idea what they added to that one but it sounds interesting.  A sequel appeared the following year where our ladies take on the Aztec Mummy which is pretty much the same film but with a long-haired mummy and there's another one where they fight a robot of some sort and probably a few others that I haven't seen yet.  I usually find myself watching these movies at around 3 a.m. when insomnia is plaguing me and they usually cure that very quickly.

 Science!(only duller):

THE DUNGEON (1979)

 I'm not sure if the way cooler, and more descriptively titled DR. JEKYLL'S DUNGEON OF DEATH version of this 70's torture film is more graphic than this one but it does feel like they cut away from anything too gory in the print that I viewed which is a shame because there isn't a whole lot else to recommend this flick for.  Whatever edition you watch though I imagine it's still pretty tedious for most of it's running time.  Most of the film consists of Dr. Jekyll(who is the great grandson of the original Dr. Jekyll) beating on women inter-cut between scenes of his captive victims, who he experiments on, having karate fights.  Why Jekyll only kidnaps karate students is never explained but I guess martial arts was big at the time so what the hell.  The actor who plays Jekyll is very grating to watch and I guess his intent was to show how evil he is by acting in an annoying over the top fashion but it makes for a long ride.  His brilliant idea is not to inject himself with his great grandfather's Mr. Hyde potion but use it on others(just brilliant!).  He is helped by a large, limping, scarred and deformed black manservant named Boris(who looks a bit like Blackenstein), a black sharpshooter/psychopath and Jekyll's mute nutso sister(throw in some incest here for the hell of it).  At least there are some interesting characters present even if they never really do a whole hell of a lot.  The ending is OK with just about everyone ending up dead which is the sort of 70's ending I prefer.  I imagine this film would appeal to sadists(who enjoy seeing people beaten to death in boring, crappily choreographed American kung-fu fights, women having hot water poured on them and other general misogyny) and masochists who enjoy being beaten senseless with horrendous acting.  I don't think I could make it through another watch without some heavy psychedelic drug usage.  AKA THE JEKYLL EXPERIMENT

EROTIKILL (1973)

 FEMALE VAMPIRE is one of my fav Jess Franco directed films.  It's also one I've re-watched a whole bunch but I've never seen this version of it before.  What EROTIKILL is, is a re-edited version that takes away some of the more crazy dream-like scenes and makes things more stream-lined and typically horror/vampire movie like.  It is almost like watching a different film and I'm not sure if I like it more or less but it's an interesting viewing after seeing the original version so often.  This would probably be the preferable edition for people that aren't into the whole artsy-aspect of Franco's work but I'm sure it would still seem pretty strange to the average viewer.  There's also a hardcore version, titled INSATIABLE LUST, out there with full explicit blowjob scenes amongst others.  
 The story is pretty simple as it basically consist of Lina Romay playing a vampire who roams about in a mostly undressed state(bare vagina and full euro-bush proudly on display) feeding on folks and sucking out their blood and semen.  Jack Taylor from PIECES(and a million other eurotrash flicks) plays one of her victims and Franco himself(with sweet 70's moustache and long greasy hippie hair) plays a doctor who is the only one who knows what's going down.  There's also a non-ending finale, lesbian antics aplenty and gratuitous blood bathing and air-humping.  A good watch for europerverts and non-retarded goths(do those exist?).  AKA's= BARE BREASTED COUNTESS, JACULA, EROTIC KILL, SICARIUS: THE MIDNIGHT PARTY, THE LAST THRILL, THE LOVES OF IRINA and there's at least two dozen more in various cut and/or uncut form.

BLACK ROSES (1988)

 Back in the 80's heavy-metal was very scary to old people, church going kooks and conservative nutjobs and this film tries to cash in on that scary image.  Of course nowadays it just all looks extremely silly.  I'd always assumed this was some kinda slasher movie but it's really not so much.  It's actually the story of a Satanic heavy metal band that turn a bunch of small-town high-school kids into homicidal killers.  Things do get a little slashery here and there but I would call this more of a demonic possession kind of film since they also tend to turn into stupid-looking demons.  Big Pussy from THE SOPRANOS shows up and gets promptly eaten by an insectoid speaker-demon and  Tony Iommi from Vanilla Fudge plays drums in our hellspawn band.  I think my favorite death bit here involves a guy whose heart explodes after he peeps a pair of bare tits.  With an overload of dumb metal songs, some story elements lifted from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and a final fight scene with rubber-suited monsters that looks like it belongs in a GODZILLA movie this might be slightly amusing just for it's cheese-factor but I think I'm gonna stick with HARD ROCK ZOMBIES if I wanna re-watch something dumb from the 80's crapheap.

HATE THY NEIGHBOR (1968)

 The coolest thing to me about this spaghetti-western is seeing big George Eastman(best remember by horror/gore fans as the cannibalistic monster-man in ANTHROPOPHAGOUS) as a leader of a band of outlaws. Besides this it's a pretty standard revenge tale that's kinda forgettable. A few things do stick out though such as our main villain(Horst Frank) making his henchmen/slaves duel it out GAME OF DEATH-style wearing metal claws like Wolverine from The X-Men and there's an elaborate torture device that Eastman ends up in that involves snakes and rats in an unpleasant manner. For this stuff alone which adds more of an exploitation style to the western action I would say check this one out. According to the poster above this played at some point along with DJANGO THE LAST KILLER which seems like it would be a cool George Eastman-filled night at the movies!

DIXIE (1976)

 Lots of porn flicks from back in the 70's featured characters who may or may not have been slightly retarded(PRETTY PEACHES with Desiree Cousteau is probably the best examples of this style of fuck movie) and that's exactly what you get here.  In this one we're also told our titular Dixie is very young(14? 15? it's never made totally clear) in addition to being very stupid.  Abigail Clayton stars and she would go on to make a bunch more porn and finally end up in the great slasher film MANIAC with Joe Spinell.  There's really not much going on in this but if you like to watch someone who's clearly not underage but pretending to be constantly get taken advantage of this is for you.  I can't imagine that they could make a porn today even pretending to be a day under 18. 

SANTA CLAUS STORY (1945)

 This starts out as just another pro-Christmas propaganda short with old Santa Claus telling some sneaky ass little obnoxious 40's kids the story of Christmas then  after a few minutes of that this crazy old(presumably drunken) fuck starts babbling about how monkeys celebrate the holiday just like us people do.  To prove this point we are treated to some stock footage of little nutty monkeys goofing around eating pretzels and bananas and whatnots.  Then the holiday portion of our narrative takes us to a monkey Christmas where one little gentleman is dressed as Monkey Claus and the other fellows jump around a tree and play with some toys.  It all ends with more pseudo-religious talk from this fat weirdo.  Judging solely from this film the 40's musta been a very strange time to be alive and have half a brain.  Worth a look if, like me, you're a fan of oddball simian cinema.

OPERATION PINK SQUAD II (1987)

 
 The grand tradition of mixing stupid slapstick comedy with horror elements in Hong Kong action movies continues with this sequel to a movie that I'm not exactly sure I've ever seen but that doesn't matter because this seems to be a story within itself.  It all starts out like some episode of THREE'S COMPANY where a married man mishears his wife talking to various people, thinks she's cheating on him and then overreact because of it.  There's also a silly crime drama thing going on with a group of female cops posing as prostitutes to catch a dealer of some sort.  This film keeps on getting exceedingly dumb as it goes on.  About 15 minutes in they shoehorn in a ghost story with kung fu Buddhist monks fighting ghosts.  There's also a gangster character running around and a headless body and matching floating head creating havoc.  In one of the weirdest scenes two guys have a contest to see who can piss the furthest and the loser gets castrated which some how will stop ghosts since they hate castrated penises and eunuchs.  It's all very bizarre yet watchably dumb, at least for me.  I think I just appreciate the idea of mixing a kung fu ghost movie with a slapstick comedy and crime story.  The kitchen-sink method of Asian exploitation cinema.  The average viewer's threshold for stupidity will most likely be much lower.  AKA THUNDER COPS

NAUGHTY NURSE (1969)

 Paul Bartel's 2nd film is all about a kinky nurse and what kinda crazy s & m bondage antics she gets up to on her lunch break.  While this plays for under 10 minutes Bartel manages to tell a coherent story and even throw in a couple of twists at the end.  This film would be a great opening feature to play before EATING RAOUL since they both deal with sexual perversions.  Thanks to this film Gene Corman decided on Bartel to direct PRIVATE PARTS and we got some great slices of cinematic weirdness. 

THE SECRET CINEMA (1968)

                                      "I can love only one thing Jane, the cinema"

Paul Bartel was one of my favorite directors from the 70's & 80's.  From PRIVATE PARTS to DEATH RACE 2000 to EATING RAOUL his films all have a crazy energy to them that I can really get into so it was great to get a chance to check out his first film here which is a pretty neat 30 minute short.  The story concerns a woman named Jane who has a suspicion that her life is secretly being filmed for a movie.  This basic story has been recycled by Hollywood for that stupid TRUMAN SHOW movie and before that Woody Allen made something similar and I'm sure there have been others but for me it works better in short form here.  It's a horror/comedy/drama mix that Bartel was only able to make cuz he stole some film and equipment from a company he worked for.  That's what real dedicated filmmakers do.  My favorite character is Jane's boyfriend who splits up with her because she doesn't share his obsession with cinema.  I can really relate to that fellow and I feel his pain.  The insane director is also a nice touch.  I think the main thing I find amusing is that the horrifying idea presented in this film, being filmed constantly and having no privacy, is something internet-obsessed, reality TV-loving people today would love to have happen to them.
 Bartel later remade this as an episode of Steven Spielberg's AMAZING STORIES but I can't imagine that a bigger budgeted TV-version of this would be all that great.