Hello Zombie aka Haisai Zonbi(2014) – Soichi Takayama.

Passionate, yet down on his luck indie director Domon's no-budget zombie flick takes a terrifying turn into reality after they closely encounter a bona fide, brain-munching denizen of the dead!!!! Takayama's consistently lively Zombie-com doesn't take itself too seriously, and bouncily provides many juicy, boisterously executed splatter-gags. Hello Zombie is a playful, entertainingly goofy example of super-jocular, J-Horror jackanapes, and if you keep your brain in a jar, a gorily good time will be had by all! I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I watched this solely based upon my zealous appreciation of the fabulously lurid poster art, which effectively captures the spirited energy of this indie gem. While it's clearly spoofing the innate absurdity of the genre, it does so with great charm, and a wholly infectious wit,and it packs a lot of engagingly blood-spattered buffoonery in its 60 min. running time! Hokey Hollywood horror is like a prodigiously watered down JD & coke in a club, whereas J-horror frequently delivers a roundhouse kick like the heroic doses of JD & coke you prepare at home. I'm not even that partial to Zombie horror, but I massively dug this, and Takayama deserves kudos for the righteous, sexy-freaky Geisha zombie, which, I must openly admit, got me feeling more than a tad sexified! Gorehounds may care to note that the bodaciously bloody FX are by madman Yoshihiro 'Tokyo Gore Police' Nishimura.

 The World of Kanako (2014) – Tetsuya Nakashima.

An estranged father chaotically undertakes an increasingly disturbing odyssey as he searches for his missing daughter (Nana Komatsu), starkly discovering her multitudes of sins on his descent into her profoundly twisted world. An extremely bloody, compellingly stylised, live-wired, deeply engrossing crime thriller that offers viewers a number of grisly twists and turns as we follow the tormented ex-detective into Nakashima's violent, deliciously squirely rabbit-hole! It's safe to say The World of Kanako is a frequently hectic one, Nakashima's bravura aesthetic is often day-glow bonkers, providing some exhilarating scenes of truly visceral violence. The World of Kanako references Natural Born Killers, Schrader's Hardcore, and Arthur Penn's downer noir classic Night Moves, and has a sledgehammer performance from charismatic Thespian Koji Tyakusho. The World of Kanako provides Asian genre cinema fans with a high-voltaged jolt of adrenalized thrill-spillage, and while often somewhat shrill, you could never call it dull!!

Moi, Christiane F (2022) – Claire Laborey.

A fascinating discourse over the cultural/sociological import of a German teenager's unexpurgated experiences as controversially precocious heroin addict/protagonist Christiane F. Both the epoch-defining autobiographical book and the subsequent, appreciably gritty film ultimately became an international phenomenon. Laborey's earnest, insightful, informationally dense documentary is winningly replete with some especially compelling period news footage. Well made, and appreciably humane in its outlook, Moi, Christiane F covers a lot of emotive, sociopolitical ground in under an hour, providing a cerebral deep-dive into the social tumult of post-war Berlin/West Germany, and the extraordinary, ultimately melancholic life of this remarkable young woman's terrible battle with addiction. The increasingly displaced youth of Berlin, mirroring the similarly disenfranchised plight of London's urban teenagers of the 1970s, oppressed in the concrete, inhumane colossi of new build Tower Blocks, forced out into the streets to discover their own identities in an increasingly repressive state.

 

 Blue Money (1972) – Alain Patrick Chappius.

Beloved smut-schlockers Crown International Pictures provides a period-hip expose of handsome beleaguered pornographic film-maker Jim (Alain Chappius) struggling with rapidly decreasing finances, shady distributors, lacklustre 'adult artistes', heavy-handed cops, marital issues, and a piping-hot liaison with an especially vivacious nubile starlet (Inga Maria). Arguably less in-sync with the paisley-hued, hashish-infused optimism of the 60s, than the openly hedonistic, coke-raddled nihilism of the 1970s. Chappius's Blue Money remains an intriguingly odd duck, part soapy soft-core melodrama, spliced with a lurid Drive-In discourse over the turbulent schematics of XXX cinema production during a governmental crack-down on hardcore. Blue Money's text, performances, and technical aspects proved surprisingly robust. On a personal level, I kinda dug the film-maker guy, he had himself a pretty sweet set-up, Dolly of a wife, button-cute kid, and a bodacious-looking boat, dishy blonde dude's got me beat on all counts! It might be somewhat of a generalisation, but Crown International Pictures International 70s output proves far more watchable that their more garish 80s offerings.

 Liverleaf (2018) – Eisuke Naito.

Relentlessly bullied by callous classmates, desperately beleaguered Nozaki (Anna Yamada) is understandably pushed to breaking point after both of her parents are killed in an arson attack, she then steels herself for righteously bloody revenge! An engaging, credibly acted, beautifully twisted drama, generously spiked with savage bursts of visceral ultra-splatter. The small town, increasingly enshrouded in bitter squalls of snow, provides an atmospheric backdrop for Nozaki's thrillingly gory reprisals, perhaps a sly reference to the hyper-sanguineous, snowbound slayings of Lady Snowblood. Nozaki is not only a hugely sympathetic protagonist, she's also a complex antagonist, making Naito's wintry Liverleaf an altogether memorable, snow-burning terror treat! What begins as a deceptively linear tale of bloody vengeance in an insular Japanese backwater, culminates in an extraordinarily layered, gore-sotted tragedy of nigh on Biblical proportions! My advice to those contemplating a move to the country...DON'T!!! as is so often suggested in backwoods horror lore, small towns are frequently toxic hives of homicidal Borgias! While much of contemporary horror is no better than refried baloney, every now and again, my faith in the genre is restored by the inventively gruesome likes of Liverleaf.

 Death File 1 (1989) – Susumu Saegusa (Kaoru Adachi)

Both Tru-Gore cognoscenti and Gore-slop newbies should find a modest amount of sinister grist for their prurient mills in Saegusa's grisly cheapnis anthology of frequently explicit physiological carnage. Initially released on Mad Video, and long-since resurrected on the internet for the edification of morbidly curious Mondo mentalists, those who get their skeevey kicks observing the majesty of the human temple in multifarious states of gruesome disarray. The most prevalent footage in these works is graphic video of shredded victims of catastrophic vehicular misfortune. One often hears the claim of 'Cars being a far more perilous mode of transport than aeroplanes, and Death File 1 provides ample gory evidence to support this. I'm always keen on cinematic firsts, and Death File 1 unexpectedly provided the darkly whimsical moment when a curious cockroach enjoys an exploratory nibble from a succulent node of human brain tissue! Lacking any form, or harmony, Death File 1 crudely compiles a sordid selection of the gracelessly exploited death scenes of grossly unfortunate human beings. Visceral, but ultimately vapid, and is manifestly NOT suitable for dog lovers! High point is a brutalist post-mortem, wherein the good doctor violently bisects the cadaver's skull with a wood saw in this tawdry travelogue of terminal travesties!

 Engineering Red (1993) aka Konstruktor Krasnogo Tsveta. - Audrey Yi/Armen Petrosyan.

An elegiac mondo melange of archival material featuring gory eviscerations, surgical procedures on human extremities, graphic harvesting of flesh/epidermal tissues, Siamese twins, clinical observations of  microscopic/bacteriological organisms, mechanized bloodlettings, and brain surgery, spliced with openly surrealistic content. Unusual, grisly, and thrillingly voyeuristic material, mondo fans, or any with a pronounced interest in the more outré iterations of art-house extremity are unlikely to be disappointed by Engineering Red's striking cornucopia of anthropomorphic/cellular/entomological curiosities. In the same way that Boyd Rice, or Stockhausen won't appeal to everyone, the more openly feral mise-en-scene of transgressive cinema is demonstratively NOT for all tastes. Bodily invasive content like Engineering Red will have a select audience, for the very little it is worth, I found this contemplative, darkly aesthetic piece to be grotesquely compelling. Eerie and hypnotic, the singularly discombobulating effect of witnessing so much alien imagery in C/U/extreme C/U draws you uncomfortably deep into quite another realm altogether! I'll openly admit to wussy-ness here, the creepy crawlies, and the brutalist scene of a poor young girl enduring an excruciating seizure skeeved me out. Engineering Red has an appealingly surrealistic, almost Bunuellian quality; exploratory, rather than gratuitous, philosophic, rather than prurient.