Stranger (1991) – Shunichi Nagasaki.

A beautiful, consciously isolated Taxi driver (Yuko Natori) enigmatically works the night shift, pointedly avoiding intimacies with male colleagues, she nonetheless becomes the violent obsession of an anonymous stalker, whom she bravely confronts, culminating in a brutally suspenseful climax. As a dynamic exercise in breathless tension, Stranger remains a paranoid, razor-edged, cold steel masterclass in suburban terror, referencing Duel, Taxi Driver and Hitchcock, with the grittily tenacious Kiriko courageously enduring excruciatingly oppressive ordeals of stalk and slash. Directed with muscularity, and consummate skill, the meticulously orchestrated vehicular action and close-quarter peril are especially memorable. The viewers sympathy for the sinisterly beleaguered Kiriko is profound, her bloody, increasingly combative confrontations with her shadowy nemesis are unsettling, providing exquisite moments of almost unendurable tension! Shunichi Nagasaki's exemplary, frequently intense metropolitan shocker is not only a high benchmark for Asian film fanatics, it should prove no less enthralling to those who simply appreciate a prodigiously suspenseful thriller with a supremely capable heroine!

 Meat Market (2000) Brian Clement.

Much like ladies who smirkily telegraph their fanny farts, Clement's infamous Canuck zombie-schlock trilogy remains a no less divisive pleasure. Being an unrepentantly prurient, pro-bodily functions guy, I'm an ideal Meat Market consumer! While Clement's splattery S.O.V references Romero, the crusty make-up evokes the deadlier denizens of Matul, the attack zombie paradigm has been incrementally shifted by the forward-thinking usage of NANO-TECH created monsters, and saucy Sapphic vampires. Meat Market's hybridic approach to the prosaic zombie milieu has much to recommend it. While the pseudo-Romero shtick is partially alleviated by rampant, slinkily spandex-clad vamps, the colourful, 'enthusiastically' dubbed Lucha Libre tribute, Il Diablo Azul provides a zesty psychotronic addition, so I heartily second the exultant battle cry of 'Viva Il Diablo Azul!!!!'.

That being said, it might be this brazenly opportunistic appropriation of genre archetypes that has made others feel less enthusiastic about Meat Market than I. It is not altogether uncommon for B-Horror's entertainment value to be derived from bad acting, cliched scenarios, rudimentary practical FX, and Meat Market certainly doesn't disappoint, although, it must be noted, some of the conspicuously Fulci'd Zombies still look good enough to eat! Meat Market remains a remarkably good value, one-stop shop for all your grisly delicious B-Zombie indelicacies, freshly plucked brains, gourmet gizzards, and raw, wholly organic viscera at knock down prices! In an increasingly nauseating era of fashionista food fads, faux wellness fakery, and dingy Tik Tok dilettantes, Meat Market's prodigiously bloody, old school menu of Vegan-unfriendly, aggressively chunk-blown cuisine proved surprisingly Moorish!

 Neo Chinpara: Zoom Goes The Bullet. (1990) – Banmei Takahashi.

Junko's (Show Aikawa) dreams of earning a higher status within his yakuza clan become an unsettling reality once he is tasked to kill a rival clan member, his Yakuza uncle's (Joe Shishido) jibes acting as a catalyst, pushing him ever closer to fatefully pulling the trigger. Freewheelingly unconventional, blackly comical, and winningly heartfelt, Banmei's witty Neo Chinpara: Zoom Goes The Bullet is arguably one of the more atypical Yakuza features Toei ever produced. Ostensibly a blissfully boisterous, comedy-inflected coming-of-age crime/romance thriller, presenting the inexperienced Junko's somewhat inglorious transformation from lowly lackey to black-clad, pop-noir cool killer! An existential journey that is observant of Toei Yakuza tropes, and a wickedly progressive reinvention, uproariously funny, melancholic and thrillingly tense. It is an additionally welcome treat to see virile young gun Aikawa firing on all cylinders, with inimitable Japanese icon Shishido on especially charismatic form as his eccentric, Teflon tough Yakuza uncle.

 Network First ITV (1994) UFO.

I love finding vintage documentaries on crypto-facto phenomena like our alien forebuddies, Frightful Floridian Lizardmen, and stink-footed sasquatches! This unusually measured piece of far-flung telly journalism provides more detailed information on the Rendlesham incident than hysteria-laden contemporary productions. There's footage herein which absolutely proves that a great many sky-bound images are merely distortions of the video camera's auto-iris. Telly-makers today will show the very same footage, and not mention it was empirically debunked in 94'????? The media disinformationists need to replace 'made for entertainment purposes' with 'FU!!! we're Blue Book bullshit artists!!!'

 Granny of The Dead (2017) – Tudley James.

A small, sleepy Welsh village is suddenly cursed by an ancient malediction that evilly possesses the equally sleepy octogenarian population, turning them into magnificently creepy, arthritically slow attack zombies in playful indie Zom-com 'Granny of The Dead'. Horribly jaded by the ubiquity of attack zombies on the small screen, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I warmed to this Zimmer Winner. Grisly, and intentionally funny, Granny of The Dead proved to be anything but a toothless terror flick! The splatter is prodigious, and well-done, there's quality banter, likeable characters, and a few palpable belly laughs. It's usually the self-proclaimed cognoscenti, or privileged elite that arbitrarily 'decide' what is, or isn't a cult film, but I abhor hierarchies, and I strongly believe Tudley James's lively, lavender-hued Granny of The Dead is wholly deserving of cult status. One of the old bill enthuses about watching 'Hobo With a Shotgun', and I couldn't help but think, the world might in fact be a far groovier place to live in, if more members of the King's constabulary were avid fans of exploitation horror! I think it's entirely fair to claim that by producing a legitimately fun, low-budget zombie horror at this late stage of the game, the film-makers are objectively ticking all the right B-Horror boxes. For me, the true acid test of a quality horror film is whether I am strongly compelled to rewind the gorier elements, and Granny of The Dead has a choice amount of eminently rewindable splatter! I found the absurdly overhyped Shaun of The Dead moderately amusing for 20 minutes, whereas Granny zombie kept me chuckling throughout!

 Fantacide (2007) – Shane Mather.

Enchantingly gory, Mather's 1hr 50 min S.O.V schlocker about chavvy, occultist Neo-Nasties, and their lunatic yen for the infamous spear of longinus is skeevily overpopulated with hapless nerks sans acting ability, manifesting the misanthropic, grotty, and unrepentantly psychotronic skuzz-bomb Fantacide!!!! Some viewers may regard a micro-budgeted travesty that so indelicately conjoins gratuitous ultra-violence, toilet humour, livid misogyny, hirsute homosexual henchmen, sordidly Satanic Shitlerians, and diabolically deviated degenerates to be an altogether unholy admixture. Like some miraculous B-movie alchemist, Shane Mather transforms sado-schlock into guffaw-laden, salaciously gland-goring gold! The towering absurdity, profoundly entrenched cheapnis, and sublime idiot savantism of the performances coalesce into Fantacide's singularly asinine appeal! Like some lizard-brained, Peter Sutcliffe wet dream, Mather's madman mise-en-scene rudely eschews all vestiges of good taste, luridly assaulting the viewer with a plasma-packed panoply of graphic gore, outrageously bloody body-squibs, unleavened crudity, boorish badinage, and all manner of generously gore-blasted buffoonery! Contrary to expectation, my initial pessimism over the film's seemingly protracted running time proved unwarranted, since I would have happily wallowed in Fantacide's tawdry terror trough for another hour. I should like to conclude by openly stating that for my many misdeeds, I remain hugely deserving of Oppenheimer's degenerate 'Special Treatment'.

 The Occult: An Echo From Darkness (1970) – Tom Doades.

Some primo 70s satanic Panic! The fabulously furry hippie cat in the comfy dress and pipe ensemble is manifestly my new god, I just hope baba gee will forgive me!