TOURIST TRAP (1979)

  I'd first seen this on a TV showing when I was pretty young so it must have been only a few years after it first came out. I found it to be pretty disturbing back then. The scene I was bothered by the most was where our killer(the great Chuck Connors) slowly covers his victims face with plaster while describing how she is going to die to her.  Watching it more recently I feel like it hasn't lost much of it's punch despite there not being a whole lot of blood or gore shown. It definitely has a TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE-feel to it and since that's one of my all-time favs this is also ranked highly. The inclusion of our killer possessing telekinetic powers also adds to the bizarreness factor and despite there being no nudity Tanya Roberts adds to the overall sexiness quotient. Probably one of the best PG-rated horror films of all time!

                                                      An excellent night at the drive-in!:

Known in Italy as HORROR PUPPET:

and just PUPPET:

THE DARK (1979)

  Easily forgettable title and an equally fairly forgettable film that deals with a monster from outer space, nicknamed "The Mangler" ripping people's heads off and shooting killer laser beams out of it's eyeballs. You would think that maybe with some better FX this would have made more of a splash but apparently this movie was originally supposed to be a pretty standard slasher-type deal with an actual human killer but then a little movie named ALIEN came out which caused producers to switch gears and do a bunch of re-shoots to scenes which I'm guessing didn't help the outcome of the final product. You get some decent acting by Cathy Lee Crosby, William Devane and even American Top 40 radio program host Casey Kasem but it doesn't help enough to give this one a higher ranking.   

 Director John 'Bud' Cardos(who replaced Tobe Hooper after he split) would go on to make that  zombie/monster movie MUTANT a few years later which has similar generic elements but I think was an overall improvement.  AKA THE MUTILATOR

THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

  If you take the classic 1930s movie FREAKS and add in a FRANKENSTEIN-ish mad-doctor(Donald Pleasence who instead of trying to reanimate the dead is trying here to splice human and plant DNA for some reason which just results in Venus flytrap monsters)  you would get this weird 70s British horror flick. 70s DR. WHO himself, Tom Baker under some heavy ugly facial makeup, is the leader of the carnival freaks which include a few midgets, that black "Popeye" fellow who can make his eyes bulge out of his head and of course Dr. Pleasence's rejected experiments.   A strange grimy little English oddity that doesn't get much attention but is worth a gander. AKA THE MUTATIONS

 

2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983)

  I had first seen this way back in the VHS days and it kinda just blended together with all the other Italian post-apocalypse movies of that time. My favorite is probably 1990 BRONX WARRIORS  but this one is not terrible and hits a lot of the same beats as that one. You get flame-throwing government troops, the wastelands of New York City complete with rats and mutants running amuck and a borrowing of the plot to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK as your framing device. You also get George Eastman back, this time as Big Ape, the hairy leader of a gang of mutants who are also extra hairy and seem to have been genetically-spliced with actual apes for some reason which is never made very clear. Michael Sopkiw takes over the Snake Plissken/Mad Max role and he certainly seems tougher than Mark Gregory. They also throw in androids, a midget gang and lots of ridiculous violence to make this an excellent midnight exploitation movie watch. 

  

                                                                    Italian poster!:

French poster!:

Known in Germany as FIREFLASH: THE DAY AFTER THE END:

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970)

  While this is not my favorite of director Dario Argento's giallo films(DEEP RED holds that position) it is the one that kicks off his run of super stylish mystery-killer flicks and made him a director to watch from then on in the process. So it deserves credit just for historical purposes if nothing else.  Argento was called "The Italian Hitchcock" after this for obvious reasons but his films would get quite a bit more graphic and colorful than anything ol' Hitch ever put on film as time went on. This one was somehow originally only rated GP when released in American but it's still an important starting point and essential viewing for Eurotrash connoisseurs.  AKA POINT OF TERROR and THE PHANTOM OF TERROR

Japanese poster:

THE NESTING (1981)

  I'm not the biggest fan of ghost movies, which this is. It's also kinda disappointing that director Armand Weston, whose filmography, besides this, consists almost entirely of roughie porn flicks, basically went the pedestrian route of a generic horror movie with not all that much sex or violence. There seems to be ample opportunity too with this film centered around a haunted whorehouse that is the scene of a massacre and all. There is some blood, including a sickle to the head, and a smattering of nudity here and there but nothing all that exciting to recommend about this one. AKA MASSACRE MANSION

 Also in my head I always mix this up with the later 80s mutant cockroach flick THE NEST and get disappointed when no killer bugs show up!

A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975)

  I'd been wanting to see this post-apocalyptic(post World War 4!) sci-fi flick for a long time now but had somehow avoided it all these years. The premise, about a young man(Don Johnson, who went on to become famous for MIAMI VICE in the 80s) who can telepathically communicate with his dog(Tiger from THE BRADY BUNCH!) who helps him sniff out women for him to rape is certainly intriguing. The actual execution of this idea is pretty wonky and the film seems to suffer from a fairly low-budget. Still a movie where our "hero" is a rapist and possible cannibal before everything is over is a unique one. Also the bleak 70s ending is a big plus in my book. 

ASSAULT (1971)

  This movie deals with some pretty sordid events including the raping and murdering of teenage schoolgirls but since it was made in England things never get all that graphicly shown. It plays out more along the lines of one of those police procedurals but still managed to maintain my interest. Suzy Kendall, known mostly to me as the gal from Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, stars as an art teacher who is used as the cheese(cheesecake?) to lure our rape-happy killer out into the open. A mixture of sleaze and British-classiness that I found worth a look. AKA SATAN'S PLAYTHINGS, MOLESTED, THE CREEPERS and IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN. Released on  American TV as TOWER OF TERROR

                                       Known in Spanish as PANIC IN THE FOREST:

Released on VHS as THE CREEPERS(not to be confused with the similarly titled Dario Argento movie from the 80s):

At the bottom of a double bill with this Eurotrash classic!: 

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1971)

  This is not your typical Italian giallo. It does star Edwige Fenech as is often the case but more than being a proto-slasher flick with a bunch of people getting offed by a razor it deals with a woman going through the traumatic combination of losing her child and recalling her mom being murdered when she was a child. A lot of the film is full of what might be hallucinations or not when she imagines a knife-wielding maniac and a Satanic cult. This film was clearly influenced by ROSEMARY'S BABY but is not really a rip-off of that classic at all. There is some Satanic ritual animal violence involving a dog getting sacrificed so that might not be for everyone but besides this it's a very stylish crazy trip. AKA THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU(which sounds a lot like a zombie movie to me!) . Released on video as DAY OF THE MANIAC.

THE CHOOPER (1971)

 Ray Dennis Steckler directs one of the most simplistic proto-slasher flicks ever with this tale of a cursed shack(hence the alternate title of BLOOD SHACK) in the middle of some dusty desert town that people end up getting killed in.  Pretty dull stuff and to make things even worse ol' Ray stuck a 10-minute long rodeo sequence right in the middle of the movie. 

 One bright spot though is that rockabilly legend Ron Haydock sings the Chooper's theme song so at least that's a little something. 

Released on video as CURSE OF THE EVIL SPIRIT:

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)

  I had successfully managed to avoid seeing this for many years up until a few nights ago when a friend of mine took me to a midnight showing in a local theater and it was just as stupid as I had anticipated. I know it's a favorite of many 80s kids, in fact there were a few folks in attendance all dressed up in full clown attire for this event, but I've never really seen the appeal of clown cinema(unless you're making a John Wayne Gacy docudrama of course!) I will give the film high points for all the great-looking practical effects done by The Chiodo Brothers. Can't say much for their directing abilities but apparently most people don't seem to mind. Luckily for me Stephen Chiodo never directed another feature. 

This could have been a much better film if it was 4 minutes long and starred The Dickies!:

THE MAN IN THE ATTIC (1953)

  Jack Palance acts his ass off in the title role of a movie that asks the question of "what if Jack The Ripper was your upstairs tenant?" It's clearly very loosely based on the facts since I don't think they ever got this close to catching ol' saucy Jack in reality. There's no gore or anything since this was the 50s but it is a good gloomy period piece with solid performances. Aunt Bee from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW herself(Frances Bavier) is Jack's landlord and has a few freak out scenes as she is wont to do. 

 This is technically a remake of 1944's THE LODGER though that one was more of a mystery and was itself a remake of a few earlier film adaptations of a 1913's book called THE LODGER starting off with Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG.  There was also a 2009 THE LODGER movie. 

                                  

                                     Simply known in Spanish as JACK THE RIPPER: 

SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM (1976)

  So this Italian exploitation flick is a bit weird because it starts off like it's going to be one of those polizziotteschi movies where it's all about a tough cop kicking ass. The alternate title of BLAZING MAGNUM really makes you think this! Surprisingly though it turns into a more giallo-esque situation so I'll give this one extra credit for combining two genres. I'll also give it credit for having a scene where our main tough guy cop(Stuart Whitman) shoves a hot curling iron up the ass of a tranny the very same year as BLACK SHAMPOO which features a very similar sequence(in that case though it was a villain not the hero which makes this film even nuttier!). There must have been something in the air in '76! Loaded with sleaze, car chases and great character actors John Saxon, Martin Landau, Tisa Farrow etc. this one stands out from the pack despite some slow bits and monotony. AKA STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM and .44 SPECIAL

Known in Spanish as THE LAW OF THE MAGNUM:

Known in Italian as A SPECIAL MAGNUM FOR TONY SAITTA: