Little Corey Gorey. (1993) – Bill Morroni.

'I wouldn't be caught dead with a 9nth grader'

Following the tragedy of losing his father in a fatal car accident, Corey finds life in new house with vile elder brother Biff, and equally toxic stepmother increasingly intolerable. This rapidly escalates into absolute Gorey mayhem after boorish Biff score's with Corey's dream girl. Morroni's ludicrous suburban splatter anomaly clumsily combines grislier slasher excesses with a hyperbolic, wickedly warped John Waters-inflected dissection of a Divinely dysfunctional Proletarian family. It is this absurdly crude conflation of lurid exploitation tropes that endows Little Corey Gorey with its continued watchability, through plainly way past its sell-by date! Little Corey Gorey is a little match girl until he sees the light and maniacally initiates his gore-blasted revenge, it's like the Antichrist of John Hughes took a bloody ice pick to Ringwald's face, and ritualistically smeared the warm crimson icky all over the silver screen, and thus, a little Corey Gorey is born. What's doubly delicious is how terribly awkward it all is, there's absolutely no chemistry, assisted or otherwise, between any of the characters, the dialogue is purest sludge, and irritant Corey has all the appeal of flesh eating bacteria. At times the levels of rampant suckage becomes intolerable, but if you squint, think happy thoughts, and pretend you're watching The Toxic Avenger, baby Jesus will still love you. If you happen to know someone who REALLY digs this, it might be best to check their snuggest orifices for hamster skeletons before initiating coitus. All that having being said, Morroni's Little Gorey Corey and Flesh Eating Mothers would make BEAUTIFUL music together!

 South Mill District (2018) – Joe Meredith.

Secret military experiments attempting to combine an alien species with human subjects yields an unexpectedly monstrous arachnid hybrid. This grotesque bipedal mutation proves unviable, part-alien, part human, and seven shades of grody!!! The aggressively mutagenic results are gruesomely examined in two doomed inhabitants of the derelict South Mill District. This bravura, low-fi splatter-punk Gore-blaster provides a winningly gory testament to the inventiveness of creative film-makers working on a greatly restricted budget. Expect lugubrious pacing, inane chat, bodaciously splattery practical FX, creepy stop-motion arachnoids, a skeevey preoccupation with vomitus, dinge-oid synths, and a slinky Skinny Minnie (Cidney Meredith)with awesome tresses! South Mill District is a sterling S.O.V Sci-splatter short, the macabre antics of the twitchy spider brainiacs herein spookily recalled 'The Brain Eaters', which is no bad thing at all!

 One-on-one (2014) – Kim Ki-duk.

Following the abduction, and brutal slaying of a high school student, the seven shadowy suspects are individually tracked down by members of a cunning vigilante group. Definitely not one for the squeamish, as this brutalist underground cell administer an especially ruthless form of justice. One-on-one is a visceral examination over the terrible effects of totalitarianism, can you nullify evil with equal acts of reciprocal violence? I found the premise to be unusually compelling, while an inevitably complex issue, I ultimately sided with the unrelentingly vengeful vigilante leader (Ma Dong-Seok), at some point, ugly as it is, those who enact their will by acts of brute force can only be dealt with by enforcing even more extreme levels of violence. National Socialism wasn't stopped by philosophical discourse, their obscene reign of terror came to a justly bloody end due to a courageous rebuttal of catastrophic military might. While not suitable for all tastes, there are those born who can do such unpalatable work, but if you don't have the stomach for it, the psychological effects of unthinkingly following orders can be most severe. It's been quite a while since I last watched a film that forced me to consider my own personal views on the morality of meting out extreme justice for extreme acts of criminal maleficence. Kim Ki-duk is an exemplary film-maker, and I greatly appreciated his Bad Guy (2001), 3-Iron (2004), Moebius (2003), and the equally compelling Real Fiction (2000) no less so than the brilliantly intense One-on-one.

 Face aka KAO (2000) Junji Sakamoto.

'I like people who are wrong!'

KAO presents a beautiful drama about the lonely, insular existence of isolated, socially inept, plump young woman Masako (Naomi Fujiyama)whose dully repetitious life is challenged by the emotional schisms borne following the sudden death of her mother, and increasingly poor relations with her brash, bullying sister. Masako initially seems an usually plain protagonist, her almost wholly interior, numbing day-to-day routine at her mother's dry cleaning and tailoring service is meticulously examined by ace film-maker Sakamoto. Sympathy for the rather lumpen, monosyllabic Masako is hard-earned, but KAO is skilfully constructed as to balance feelings of ridicule and genuine compassion for the altogether tragic Masako. Querulous families have often provided creative grist for film-makers, but rarely in the captivatingly singular fashion of a fascinatingly slow-burning, ultimately humane drama like KAO. An unadorned triumph, for two rigorously compelling hours, one is drawn breathlessly into Masako's eventful existential awakening. At the onset it feels as though it will be a monumental downer, and yet, confounding all expectations, some admittedly dark humour began to filter through. I don't believe it is hyperbole to state that Junji Sakamoto's sublime KAO is a small masterpiece. 

Le Manoir De Draguse aka Draguse or The Infernal Mansion. (1976) – Patrice Rhomm.

'I'm meeting a fantasy who thinks she's Nostradamus!!!'

Impoverished historical novelist David Leger (Olivier Mathot) rents a storied old property to hopefully complete work on a commissioned work of lurid erotic fiction. It very soon becomes apparent that he is not alone, there are suggestions of sordid spectres, and enticing ethereal muse Draguse (Monica Swinn), who suggestively proceeds to envelop him within his very own evilly immersive prose. Sultrily steeped in fleshly phantasmagoria, and pseudo-Gothic modalities, this pleasurably smutty French-Belgian curio remains a decent oner for the more completist Euro-cult cognoscenti, and arguably a must-see for those, like me, who maintain a continued affection for urbane stud Olivier Mathot. Mathiot was a suavely prolific B/schlock Thespian, certainly no stranger to Jess Franco flicks, but, for me, he will always be Prof. Gruber in Euro-Goth schlocker The Devil's Kiss. Rhomm's episodic series of voyeuristic vignettes is palpably enlivened by a luscious bevvy of beautiful Euro-babes, their occultic shuntings buoyed energetically by a sleazy/loungey funk score. Expect suggestively gyrating posteriors, bawdy humour, frequent flashes of full-frontal female nudity, and all manner of racy, soft-core erotic delirium! Patrice Rhomm's colourfully permissive milieu is not unlike fellow Gallic smut impresario Jose Benazeraf.

The morbidly mystifying mistress of the manor Draguse is one memorably macabre muse!

 Kite Liberator – Angel of Death (2007) Yasuomi Umetsu.

Another adorably Kawaii killer is called into bullet-blasting action after an experimental off-world foodstuff goes rogue, once exposed to solar radiation, two space lab technicians are transmuted into terrifying monsters, and there's but one pony-tailed, pistol-packing pop-tart who can vaporize their fugly asses into space-dust! Somewhat unrelated to the 98 Grindhouse Manga classic, Umetsu's 2007 space-raged shoot 'em up lacks not in compellingly gun-happy Manga mayhem! When Voorhees was reimagined in space, it lacked atmosphere, whereas the eerily extraterrestrial, thunderously entertaining Heroically blood-shedding triumph Kite Liberator is anything but lost in space! A-1 student Monaka moonlights as a part-time waitress, and when she's not serving customers their chow, she's acrobatically blasting sinister skells into blood-mottled oblivion! Arguably more politically correct that its rawer 90 incarnation, Monaka is an engaging figure, and the armour-plated mutants provide for some righteously splashy gore-blasting! I openly admit to being a sentimental old sausage, but I got deeply involved in the emotional final act, and it's a great shame this exciting story didn't continue.

 Kite (1998) – Yasuomi Umetsu.

Sawa is a strikingly beautiful, absolutely deadly teenage assassin, groomed and manipulated by corrupt cop Akai to kill on his command all those he claims are paedophiles/sexual deviants. Isolated, and increasingly distrustful, she befriends fellow assassin Oburi, through their shared histories, they become close, and this bond ultimately acts as a powerful catalyst, sending their subjugated lives onto a more autonomous trajectory. Thrillingly gory, madly bullet-blasted, sleazy, bracingly raw, and never less than exhilarating, Umetsu's Kite remains an explicit, wickedly satisfying CAT III Manga overload, with rampantly OTT visuals, gonzo heroic bloodshed, and scads of queasily wrong-headed rumpy-pumpy, there's plenty to stimulate a good filth-loving mind to a tumultuous gore-gasm! It may simply be a case of acute arrested development, but my fascination for ultra-splattery Manga remains undiminished, if anything, I can now appreciate Kite on a far deeper level today, then when I initially got into the more hardcore iterations of animated Asian carnage. Kudos for the Jazz-inflected brutality, Sawa's super-gnarly combat scene in the W.C., and DOUBLE-kudos for the breathtaking downer ending; that got me like an incendiary bullet right between the eyes....BLAMMO!!!!!!!!! While the lurid subject matter is unapologetically raw, with unsavoury tangents, the dazzling animation is exquisite, Yasuomi Umetsu's turbulent Kite is one explosively bullet-shredded Manga whose lofty rep is well deserved!