Piggy (2022) – Carlota Pereda.

I greatly enjoyed Piggy, but, truth be known, I had very much hoped that the appealingly rotund female protagonist (Laura Galan) might have enjoyed an exhilarating, albeit brief romantic union with her lumbering, serial killing beau! I couldn't honestly say that I had much sympathy for any of the characters outside of Sara and the big fella, Sara's family were altogether vapid, and her bland tormentors manifestly deserved to die. In reality, bullies never change, they remain thus for all of their miserable lives, happily, most horror films adhere strictly to their own rules, thereby offering redemptive arcs, bloody catharsis, and triumphant Final Girl blah blah blah. I have always enjoyed non-supernatural screen maniacs utilizing the prodigious strength of their powerful bodies to kill, Slaughter House and Don't Answer The Phone being firm favourites, and Piggy's husky hatemonger is, arguably, a chunky chip off the old B-Slasher block. For me, the true mark of a quality horror film is whether I would happily watch it again, and I believe 'Piggy' would prove no less enthralling the second time around, since there is so much more to her than meets the sty!

 I'm Not Feeling Myself tonight (1976) - Joseph McGrath

'Dr Smith to The Ejaculation room!'

In order to seduce an attractive work colleague he secretly lusts after, sexually frustrated sex researcher Jon Pigeon (Barry Andrews) invents a portable aphrodisiac-transmitter, which leads lustily to multitudinously pulchritudinous jackanapes in boisterous Brit-smut absurdity I'm Not Feeling Myself tonight. David Mcgillvray's stupendously silly premise is brought to low brow life by girls come first director Joseph McGrath, blessed with a game cast, including a salacious snippet of Mary Millington, and James Booth mugging up a storm as the rapaciously randy boss Mr. Nutbrown. Playing out like a painfully overextended Benny Hill skit, this bombastic barrage of bawdy buffoonery is manifestly not subtle, ageing about as well as Barry Andrews consistently egregious outfits, but any film that references 'Nipple Distension Tests' is not entirely without value.

 Lipstick and Blood (1984) – Robert Bauer.

Solitary, sinister, sexually frustrated loner (Joseph Peters) kills a prostitute, crudely sticks her in the cupboard, angrily slashes up his sex doll, before planning to kidnap a foxy burlesque dancer (Jane Linter) he has long obsessed over. Bauer's stolid S.O.V rape/revenger is given an additional kink by the upbeat, new wave score, and its undeniably weird, conspicuously amateur performances. The protagonist is nigh on somnolent, expressing all the emotion of beached seaweed, with the pallid antagonist expressing too much, none of which resembles credible acting. The garish video format lending scuzzy curio Lipstick and Blood an additional patina of porn-y grottiness, even though the lack of nudity proved puzzling, yet his singular request of having her shower fully clothed caught me wholly unawares! For all its myriad missteps, and tonal inconsistencies, I found the film rather fascinating, it's cheap and unsophisticated, which never loses its charm, plus the kills are surprisingly nasty, in spite of the cheapnis video post production tomfoolery. Far from essential, but for Brit-grind aficionados, Lipstick and Blood is certainly not without sporadically skewed interest.

 Multiple Maniacs (1970) – John Waters.

I have heard it said that Multiple Maniacs inspired Mel Gibson to make his very own religious epic, if true, I don't feel we should hold this against Mr. Waters, as I believe his intentions were entirely dishonourable. An exhilaratingly mad melange of Roger Corman and Frederico Fellini, Multiple Maniacs remains an exquisitely outré descent into Divine depravity. With a rousing plenitude of fabulously permissive filth, who needs a cogent plot, Multiple Maniacs is 'Big Bad Mama' for the post-Manson miasma. Devine, a polymorphously perverse hybrid of Shelley Winters and an aggressively porcine Liz Taylor, a sultry skid row screen siren, erotically elephantine queen of the obscene.

I absolutely cannot find fault with Multiple Maniacs, it is the 'real' world that is sick, while John Waters films are a sublimely titillating, profoundly penetrating examination of man's insatiable predilection for annihilation. Everything dies, the sun will eventually burn out, but Devine's brassy brilliance shall never fade. My love of John Waters is of a religious fervour, and therefore, must be treated with scepticism, if you don't regard Waters as a saviour, that's fine, some believe Jesus died for our sins, while John Waters gave us good reason to keep on sinning! It must be said that Devine looked hotter than a witch's flaming titty, her creamily voluminous botty is such a thing fever dreams are made of!

 The Wild Ride (1960) – Harvey Berman.

'He's big, he tuned me in!'

This curiously low-geared Bongo & Beatnik B-quickie presents all-round narcissistic A-Hole, and psychopathically kick-seeking hot dog Johnny (Jack Nicholson) descending precipitously into a hot rodded downward spiral to delinquency in The Wild Ride. A bit of a lame duck, daddio, funky midnight fare for those with an exceptionally high tolerance for overripe beatnik patios, distractingly shaky photography, toxic peer pressure, asinine macho posturing, and dingle-berry dramaturgy. Not so much a curates egg as altogether rotten one, The Wild Ride conjures up all the daredevil impetus of a palsied turtle. There's scant evidence of Jack Nicholson's darkly magnetic charisma, but I was momentarily distracted by his most brazen display of manly nipples. The Wild Ride played like a spectacularly crude road safety propaganda piece, since Nicholson's loathsome skell Johnny, and his equally malodorous cronies are all portrayed in such a brutally unsympathetic manner!

 Knochenwald 3 : Sudden Slaughter. - Utz Marius Thompsen.

Knochenwald, arguably one of the more aggressively bloodthirsty S.O.V slasher trilogies concludes in an exhilaratingly gory fashion, in what sadly remains slasherdom's best kept secret. Why has the outrageously carnage-happy Knochenwald franchise been denied the bloody infamy it so palpably deserves? Sadly, I believe so much of home-made S.O.V splatter remains obscure as they haven't been pushed by smug online genre 'experts', and if mentioned at all, they are usually given undeservedly snarky short shrift. A classic example of this is the almost universally derided 'Violent Shit', by disdainful twerps who couldn't enjoy themselves with free lube, and a weekend pass at a Tijuana cat house.

With better promotion, and higher visibility, Knochenwald's gas-masked maniac Mike Mansfield would very soon stand omnipotent amongst the blood-spattered pantheon of hardcore slasher gods. The objective joys of Knochenwald 3 : Sudden Slaughter are manifold, presenting a generosity of inventive, and tremendously gory kills, even the most degenerated body count junkie will find NOTHING wanting in these thrillingly graphic displays of wanton slaughter. The third OTT instalment benefits hugely from slow-mo splashy practical FX, a pulsing score, and the welcome presence of another psycho, one whose murderous misanthropy energetically equals nemesis Mike Mansfield's orgiastic levels of mayhem!

 In Fabric (2018) – Peter Strickland.

Genre iconoclast Peter Strickland's work is artful, dazzlingly stylised, captivatingly strange, and profoundly sensual, his wickedly compelling euro-horror tone poem 'In Fabric' feels tailor made for midnight movie mavens. At times, unsettlingly bizarre, and teasingly oblique, it is the tantalizingly twisted narrative's raven dark humour that beguiles so absolutely. It's certainly no mean feat tailoring a vintage suburban vista that is both recognizable and massively alien, the department store's diabolical machinations, with its bewitching bevvy of sensually satanic sirens provides for a bespoke trip into a memorably macabre mercantile fantasy. Only indirectly conventional, and often directly sublime, Peter Stickland's decadent, scintillatingly immersive cinema is tactile, and no less deliciously intoxicating than single malted breakfast.