Pick Up (1975) – Bernard Hirschenson.

Two foxy, hot-to-trot hitch-hikers take an increasingly far out trip into the Floridian everglades, wherein they turn on, tune out, and get righteously hip to all the heavy psychedelic bacchanalia they experience during their fleshly fabulous off-road odyssey. Pick Up is Crown International Pictures attempt to cash cow the new age zeitgeist of Tarot, recreational occultism, freeze dried eastern mysticism, and THC-Hyped pagan mind-benders. Taking a free ride on the bonking bus to Freaksville are two enticingly nubile, amenably libidinous hippie hotties, transposing their overripe Haight- Ashbury dogma into the sultry swamplands of the alien-looking everglades provides for a heady concoction of luridly lysergic escapades. Pick Up remains a steamy Aquarian time-capsule, a kinky kaleidoscope of free love, aggressively psychedelicized montages, monotheistic downer vibes, and enough pea-brained Timothy Leary-isms to herald Manson's second coming. It is oft claimed that The Manson Family's maniacal misdeeds killed the 60s, but I believe the 60s merely suffocated up its own arsehole, whereas the 70s simply got the lead out and rocked!

 Sin in The Suburbs (1964) – Joseph Sarno.

Vintage smut uber stylist Joseph Sarno vibrantly presents another Jazz-fuelled slice of scintillatingly Sapphic interludes, and booze-soaked infidelities within the super-heated lust-pits of middle class, lipstick-collared Suburbia. As always, Sarno lays on a generously spicy smorgasbord of sultry skin-mingling and increasingly exploratory, extra-marital monkey business. Needless to say, all of this permissively libidinous behaviour culminates melodramatically in a gloopy egg salad of Freudian guilt and shame. When you peel back the lustrous veneer of middle/upper-middle class propriety, the debased ooze beneath resembles the roiling, maggoty core of an especially odoriferous artisan French cheese. Tormented female characters are often driven to unfiltered displays of alcoholic anguish, a Sarno trope I find utterly irresistible! In the altogether more hyperbolic works of Wishman and Findlay, dramatic verisimilitude plays second fiddle to the way-out in-out, whereas maestro Sarno's certainly no less fervid erotica frequently include palpable moments of genuine pathos.

 Psychotica (2006) – Sebastian Radke.

A pretty blonde Fräulein (Carolin Meyer) awakens in enormous distress, she is tightly bound to a chair and is forcibly dosed with an experimental serum, whereupon she will experience her own demise in a series of increasingly unpleasant ways! It's quite a novel methodology by which an inventive, low-budget splatter-impresario can arbitrarily string together a dastardly number of gruesome abuses/slayings. Psychotica provides some deliciously unsavoury S.O.V fare, the altogether vulnerable protagonist being physically, and emotionally tormented by her very own unexpurgated, deep-seated fears and neuroses. I found Psychotica to be a bracingly minimalist, enjoyably primal work of experimental Euro-gore, I empathized greatly with the horrifically beleaguered young woman, and I wished sincerely that her grotesque ordeal might have come to an alternative conclusion. While, perhaps, of limited appeal, Radke's grisly, mean-spirited Psychotica is a worthwhile watch to fans of nihilist blood-letting from one of the more obscure perpetrators of Germanic gore-blasting.

 Spectres (1987) – Marcello Avallone.

'No one has crossed this threshold in 2,000 years!!!!'

I'm not an archaeologist, but if I were, I'd absolutely be the kind that would deliberately profane cursed ancient pagan tombs,rather than Professor Lasky (Donald Pleasence), who doesn't plan for the royal drubbing he and his students receive at the demonic hands of his especially wrathful spectral nemesis! When I was younger, and even stupider, many film scribes predictably made derisory comments about 80s Italian horror, but their continued popularity on boutique DVD/Blu-ray editions proves the snarky naysayers wrong. Looking a tad more lavish than Filmirage product, Avallone's atmospheric splatter-Gothic freakscene benefits greatly from quality photography, Mr Pleasence's unique charisma,and its evocative Historical locations. Avallone stages some effective shocks, creatively contrived in-camera, heightened by some strikingly lurid practical FX. The restored edition of Spectres is a Bobby Dazzler, the doomy claustrophobia within the crepuscular catacombs notably pops on HD! Spectres remains a slow-creeping descent into sinisterly subterranean Euro-horror, wherein a malevolent pre-Christian entity destroys any who foolishly disturbs its primordial slumber. Spectres continued value as marvellously mental B-Horror shenanigans has increased over time, this loopy labyrinth of demon-delivered death is no mere VHS-era relic, but a veritable treasure trove of enjoyably OTT Italian horror.

 Loving Feeling (1968) – Norman J. Warren.

Sporadically groovy, if ultimately inane swinging sixties romp presents hip, totty-hungry DJ Stevee Daly (Simon Brent) weighing up the pros and cons of fixing his shaky marriage, or blithely schtupping a bonking bevvy of comely, fashionable, and altogether frolicsome young fillies. Not much in the way of profound existential insight, but appreciated as a frothy, day-glow time capsule of eye-wateringly luminescent schmutter, happening pop sounds, bijou crash pads, and Dolly-looking motors, Loving Feeling is proper gear! Drossy dialogue proves hilariously trite, being no less contrived than the wholly specious fantasy of the 60s swinging for anyone outside of the liverish minds of Soho myth makers. 

The nookie element, while present, is singularly subdued, often suffering from smutus interruptus, conforming to a strictly lie down, pants on, legs only mildly akimbo, and think of England variety! It proved impossible mustering up any sympathy for the self-absorbed DJ, at best he's a philandering tossbag, and worst, Steve's an outright misogynistic Khunt. I have a fondness for whimsical sequences, wherein lissome young ladies gambol exuberantly along the beach, especially when their limber movements are playfully accompanied by a bucolic-sounding flute. On the objective upside, Loving Feeling features the achingly sensuous Euro-starlet Francois Pascal, captured voluptuously in all her dazzling Mary Quant glory! In truth, the 'best before date' on Loving Feeling would have expired 6 months after its initial limited release.

 The Misfit Brigade aka Wheels of Terror.(1987) – Gordon Hessler.

'If we lose the war, we win!'

Hessler's boisterous 80s warsploitation about a belligerent unit of German malcontents, punitively tasked with a suicide mission on the Russian front is bolstered by a quality text, lusty direction, and an exemplary cast. In the late 70s, and early 80s Sven Hassel paperbacks, with their compellingly lurid covers were somewhat ubiquitous, libraries, W.H. Smiths, innumerable 2^nd hand book shops were copiously replete with his populist WWII actioners. Wheels of Terror remains an outstanding example of a bayonet-sharp feature proving mightier than the originators pulpier pen. Storming yarns of blazing, steel-thewed military action set within the sweltering confines of U-Boats, or tanks have maintained their appeal. Like the higher profile Cross of Iron, Wheels of Terror proves sympathetic to that largely unheralded section of the Wehrmacht who actively abhorred the evil machinations of the Nazi elite. Much of WWII warsploitation is naked, gung ho warmongery, but some prove to have more subversive agendas, Wheels of Terror is not only a thrilling military actioner, it additionally provides sardonic food for thought over the devastating insanities unleashed by those who instigate global wars. I'll end with the old adage 'war sucks, but at least we got some damn good movies out of that shit show!'

 Tale of a Vampire (1992) – Shimiko Sato.

Handsome, enigmatic Julian Sands is exceptionally well cast as melancholic revenant Alex in this moody, stylised, and altogether sombre examination of the plaintive nocturnal peregrinations of a floppy-haired vampire. I think it is entirely just to claim that Tale of a Vampire owes more to the literary Gothic romances of Anne Rice than the visceral pulp aesthetic of Subspecies. Atmospheric, interior and contemporary spin on macabre Gothic lore, Alex is a beautifully bereft, utterly solitary, exquisitely pale creature, and his amorous fixation on an attractive, withdrawn, and no less anguished librarian (Suzanna Hamilton) provides emotional grist for a compelling, somewhat neglected British iteration of vampire phantasmagoria.

With potent themes of carnal desire, revenge, grief, isolation, and ardent blood-letting, Sato's elegiac Tale of a Vampire is a classical, innately British, darkly seductive metropolitan Gothic romance. Arguably more of a mood piece than a blood-spattered, Hammer Horror bodice ripper, with strong performances, chiaroscuro lighting, and a suitably mournful text, director Sato constructs a beguilingly baroque, candlelit diorama of ill-fated trysts, malign hungers, deeply shrouded secrets, and sweetly illicit sensuality. In closing, esteemed character actor Kenneth Cranham, not for the first time, stealing every scene with the sly, effortless grace of a seasoned pickpocket.