Feto Morto aka Dead Fetus (2003) Fernando Rick.

One can safely infer from the charming title that the film's content may NOT be exclusively for all tastes! Brazilian Gore-blasting, like its martial arts, can be a brutal business, and Feto Morto aims to grimly continue that noble tradition. A young mother, and the cruel slaying of her thankfully plastic-looking baby provides the gratuitous entre to a deliciously unsavoury barrage of near continuous carnage, all rendered in exquisitely poor taste! The diabolical Droogs of Feto Mortal make Kubrick's Clockwork Orange's look like timid Tangerines! Sordid, and heroically Henenlotter-esque, this gory, winningly warped exploration of our hero with the partially developed fetus strapped to his gormless noggin is horribly close to Grindhouse genius!

I've never read The Canterbury Tales, but I'm convinced it's tiny taters compared to the gruesomely edifying experiences of this cephalically distorted, plasma-plastered Protagonist. To provide additional savour, there's abundant nudity, vomit-slathered coitus, and a dude being bloodily boinked in a gaping stomach wound with his own severed schwantz! My main takeaway from the fearlessly fetid body-shocker Feto Morto is that I should move to Brazil asap! There may well be some socio-political satire here, but I kept on rewinding the scenes with prodigious oatmeal sticky spattered on deliciously bronzed Brazilian botties!!!!! DO NOT play the drinking game, wherein you imbibe extra-strong libations whenever an increasingly dingy character shouts 'Puta!!!!'

 Mayonaka (2022) – Robert Capria.

Visually arresting, strongly acted downer noir, set during one fateful evening at Japan's Shinjuku station. A lonely, entrancingly beautiful, deeply despairing young woman Kimi (Nanami Akatsuki) happens upon a creep-o Vloggers lost smart phone and spontaneously documents her random experiences, her hopes for happiness, or a sexual encounter materialize in the amiably shambling form of a troubled Middle-aged man Akira(Tsuyoshi Takashiro) drunkenly celebrating his resignation. While low-budget, Mayonaka provides exemplary performances, relatable human drama, and the brightly persistent, harshly inorganic colours of the busy station are crisply captured on HD video. A dark-toned, compellingly interior narrative that benefits greatly from the vivid contrasts of the consistently populous, ceaselessly kinetic metropolitan hubbub at, and surrounding Shinjuku station. Bitter-sweet, melancholy themes abound throughout, with Kumi's exquisitely sad face providing a strangely hypnotic mirror to her unpredictable nocturnal adventuring. A timid, would-be songbird who, sadly, might never find her her true voice. Mayonaka is robustly structured, with an equally rigorous text, and the protagonists felt alive, rather than mere cyphers. To give the writer/director additional credit, while it is made quite clear all will not end well, he is engagingly subtle about it. Deceptively banal, with eloquent silences, the intimate, crimson-hued Karaoke scene between Kimi and Akira proved exceptionally moving.

 Death File 2 (1989) – Susumu Saegusa (Kaoru Adachi).

Adachi's gonzo, mondo-morbid shockumentary series continues with a palpable upscale in explicit scenes of grisly human misfortune. Necro-addicts will enjoy multifarious examples of human physiognomy crudely decimated by explosives, gory murder scenes, bodies incinerated by fire, and horribly pulverised by all manner of monstrously death-dealing vehicles. Thrillingly gruesome content for all those with a salacious interest in human anatomy, namely its luridly crimson-hued contents displayed for all to see! With pun MASSIVELY intended, it is a no-brainer to suggest, the prodigiously gore-blasted Death File 2 provides more than enough sordidly corporeal material to momentarily distract one from the increasing banalities of modern life. Do I think there is something sick about watching this type of blithely gratuitous corpse-sploitation? Absolutely not, humans are innately curious beasts, and there is nothing quite so fascinating as death in all its kaleidoscopically brutalised forms. Do I appreciate the elements that feature animal cruelty? No, I manifestly did not; people mostly suck, while animals are majestic beings. Aye! I'm being a mite fanciful there, but animals demonstratively deserve all the rich bounties of the earth far more than we do. The compellingly explicit Death File 2 remains an intense, frequently bloody compendium of morbidly titillating snuff-gore grotesquery! Non-necro elements include some gynaecological enchilada, a charming indigenous wedding ceremony, and the miserable realities of cruelly impoverished children forced to eke out a meagre existence upon a toxic city landfill.

 Ensuring Your Place in Hell II (2021) -

'The isolated head even reacts to light???!!!'

I thought I would be less anal and deliberately bypass Ensuring Your Place in Hell I, and get straight to hell itself with the magnificently mondo-stuffed Bootleg bonkers sequel. This enjoyably haphazard product presents four prurient parts crudely stuffed into one hole, no, excuse I, four prurient parts that make up a whole lotta gorily grotty what-not. Part 1. An Exorcist in Turkey. This features the best Non-SAG performance of a make-up free zombie. I am led to believe the singy-voiced fellow is shrilly reading aloud from the prohibited Book of Enoch, and should therefore be regarded as being altogether suspect. Part 2. Lurid crime footage from the Wonderland murders crime scene. Quite graphic. DO NOT play the take a drink whenever the cops say 'there's evidence of ransacking!', as you will very soon get rather tiddly. Part 3. The infamous, and intolerably fantabulous B/W 40s Soviet piece 'Experiments in The Revival of Organisms'. I hope to make violent love with great power to this some day. Part 4. High Impact Hand Safety. I foresee a rabid A/V cult forming over this one. Includes splashy scenes of gloriously cheapnis gore, graphically recreating especially grisly workplace accidents.

 Lost Command aka Les Centurions.(1965) – Mark Robson.

This thrilling war history is set during, and following a ferociously bloody, hard-fought battle in French Indochina between hard-line communist Viet Mihn troops and a greatly beleaguered, vastly depleted outfit of French Paratroopers. Not only does Lost Command have an especially capable cast of international icons, it is excitingly photographed by legendary D.O.P Robert Surtees, and features a rousing score by the no less accomplished artist Franz Waxman. With rousing action, and compellingly gritty drama, Lost Command has garnered deserved plaudits for its unfiltered, explosive retelling of the chaotic French colonial wars in French Indochina and Algeria; a morally, and politically complex arena of war that is infrequently examined in non-documental works of cinema. Without sounding trite, the continued interest in Robson's intense military actioner Lost Command may not exclusively be in its uncommon subject matter, but in the robust dramatic portrayals of Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Claudia Cardinale, George Seagal, Antony Quinn, and the always delightful character actor Gregoire Aslan. I sincerely believe, such is the films quality, those without any notable interest over the singularly grim decisions made within the raging crucible of war would still find enormous value in the balanced, sophisticated, gripping, far from Gung ho Military thriller Lost Command. My overview is somewhat unbiased, since I am a lifelong fanboy of Alain Delon, but I certainly won't be the only one who has happily noted, the witheringly handsome Mr. Delon never once phoned it in, and he manifestly does NOT do so here!!!! Not for the first time, I am struck by Quinn's appealing vitality, his roughly hewn Colonel Raspeguy remains a steely warrior that commands respect. In closing, Euro-cult fans will no doubt appreciate the swarthy presence of Aldo Sambrell.

 Reise Nach Agatis aka Voyage To Agatis. (2010) – Marian Dora.

Marian Dora graphically presents another hellish instalment from NROGG, (New Rage of German Gore-blasting)exploring the grisly depredations forced upon a nubile Fräulein while visiting a barren Greek island. I can't help but wonder if the brutalist Reise Nach Agatis isn't refracting Hellenic sleaze opus Island of Death? Sun, sea, sex, and sadism, just what the Herr Doktor ordered! I enjoyed this at extremely high volume, all the better to experience the feral screams of pain, others may wish to experience Reise Nach Agatis at a less shrill level. If this vicious monstrosity had been unleashed during the UK's Video Nasty furore, the unleavened savagery herein would have given Mary Whitehouse a legitimate cause for concern! With much of the unbridled cruelty taking place upon a luxury boat, some viewer's thoughts may inevitably lead to famed Polanksi classic Knife in The Water. It's intelligent, gruesome, and sharply edited, maintaining a consistently queasy aura of threat, right until its absolutely agonisingly OTT climax. I believe the moral of the tale is that, should ever a porcine German Lecher wish to stick his fingers in your sit upon, it might be best if y'all just let him get on with it!

 And Your Bird Can Sing (2018) – Sho Miyake.

This lively, ethanol-spiked drama presents three friends who fatefully become amorously love- triangled during a sultry, happy-go-lucky, increasingly boozy summer. As an eternally melancholic loner, I maintain an especial fondness for romantic drama, since it examines an experience I have had little success with. I remain eternally on the outside, looking in, making me an ideal, somewhat relentless consumer of cinema. While And Your Bird Can Sing's plot covers familiar territory, it does so with considerable charm, and the amiable lovestruck protagonists proved wholly engaging. A great many films deal with the chilling existential angst of youthful vitality slipping inexorably into the turgid miasma of middle-age, and, thus far, the only viable momentary antidote is strong drink, opioids, and extreme heavy metal. I'm manifestly at the age when I can allow myself a wee bit of a nostalgic wallow in the blithely hedonistic, emotional, summer-singed tumult within Sho Miyake's frothy And Your Bird Can Sing. While the themes presented herein are universally relatable, my personal experiences were somewhat darker than these cats, but I certainly won't hold that against 'em! I very much enjoyed how the narrative allowed space for the trio's differing personality traits to be unhurriedly revealed, and there's some palpable truth in the film's blunt conclusion.