Nikos The Impaler(2003) Andreas Schnaas.

Unrepentantly Evil despot Nikos (Schnaas) is slain for his abominable crimes, and 1,000 years later he is bloodily resurrected in a New York art gallery, whereupon he dispatches all the gallery patrons in a zestily gruesome fashion. With a visibly increased budget, Nikos is a demonstratively slicker gore-blaster than Violent Shit III, but unapologetically delivers the ultra violence, with voluminous Goblets of Gore, exceedingly splattery head trauma, sanguinary sword slashing, and super-intense intestinal abuses! Not unlike splatter-cult Violent Shit III, Nikos is a supremely brutal amalgamation of visceral slasher tropes, gratuitous Grindhouse gore, and mindlessly medieval mayhem! Often blackly funny, with compellingly grisly content, Niko's The Impaler's spectacularly OTT New York kill-frenzy makes Jason Takes Manhattan look like My Dinner With Andre! Even with the increased budget/production value, Schnaas's monomaniacal predilection for medieval terror masks, and anthropophagous lookee-likee killers remains absolutely unchanged, making Nikos a more than viable entry-level splatter-overload for any interested Schnaas noob!

 Death Row Diner (1988) – B. Dennis Wood.

A 40s movie mogul (John Content) is executed without being granted his expected final meal, denied even the smallest wafer, his righteous anger, quite naturally, causes his supernatural return, and his hunger for revenge is absolutely insatiable! The low wattage admixture of Prison and Shocker is given an additional charge by the quality thesping of Jay Richardson and beautifully buxom bombshell Michelle Bauer. This DTV schlocker is played strictly for blood-splats and giggles, and I was pleasantly surprised by Death Row Diner's frequently winning boorish humour. This deliciously crass B-horror gag-fest remains no less nuanced than a headless chicken's last tango, the film-makers persuasively noisome bawdy humour, and garishly Tromatic assault on the senses proved so relentless, it gives the viewer nary a pause to question why he, or she, was still watching it! Death Row Diner is a trashy good time, and while you might well find more subtext on a bus ticket, it still ain't no crime wallowing unthinkingly in the shallower end of B-Horror's gene pool!

 Island Fury (1983) – Henri Charr.

Appetizingly lithe teenagers distressingly find themselves trapped upon an eerily isolated island, whose singular inhabitants are hilariously cliched inbred crazies! This anodyne 80s horror/hicksploitation oddity frequently feels as though it were shot by a Hallmark hack, one crippled by a severe brain injury, and upon his fitful recovery, he erroneously believed himself to be Jungle maestro Ruggero 'Cut & Run' Deodato! While the synthetically dramatic score encourages us to be anxious, the podunk acting, Taco Bell text, and rudimentary film-making strongly suggests that Island Fury is best appreciated on a more sardonic level!

The villains are about as scary as a Hello Kitty Bath Bomb, and almost distracted me from the lugubrious pacing, paltry gore, and persistent dearth of imagination. To the director's great credit, he keeps his sleekly hard-bodied cast in their skimpies. I'd like to believe helmsman Charr was actively striving for an auteur-like verisimilitude; terrorized teens in their tighties, what could be more authentically slasher chic than that? An inept, and largely fatuous exercise in hicksploitation horror, Island of Fury is frequently silly enough to provide cherishable scenes of unplanned for mirth. For any with a markedly low threshold for poorly executed genre cinema, this is one island they may not care to tarry upon.

 Forest of the Damned (2005) – Johannes Roberts.

'You're all gonna Die!!!'

A ubiquitously querulous van-load of young folk take an ill-fated trip into an isolated forest, freakishly inhabited by angelic, rabidly lustful succubi, these deliciously hot nubiles are obligingly nude for your erotic edifications! Naked, uninhibited, hyper-libidinous Bi-curious sin sirens are a heaven sent blessing, and if I had to be violently gored to death in an amiable British B-Schlocker, one could a lot worse than being gruesomely mauled by fuck-hungry, forest-dwelling hell vixens! While the dialogue is excruciatingly prosaic, populated by equally inane, eminently snuff-able B-Movie prototypes, I couldn't help but enjoy the prodigious goofiness herein!

Technically, Forest of the Damned proves competent enough, Tom Savini is in it, Slugs impresario Shaun Hutson provides a fun cameo, and I can't be too harsh on a low-budget backwoods Blood-spiller with such sinisterly slinky antagonists! Not excessively gory, but there's bloody bludgeoning, close quarters shot-gunning, moderate neck-rippage, grisly face trauma, overly forceful lip nibbling, and a rigorously administered decapitation! Our tall, red-headed hero is bland, yet handsome, and his attractively willowy squeeze is suitably spunky, with distractingly beautiful eyes. In spite of being so poorly written, the photography is decent, providing one, or two credible spook-outs, making Forest of the Damned a decent watch for less uppity B-Horror fans.

 Cthulhu Mansion (1992) – Juan Piquer Simon.

Successful illusionist Chandu's (Frank Finlay) foolish attempts to incorporate black magic into his act cause the grisly occult death of his beloved wife (Marcia Layton), these activated dark forces, once unleashed, turn the grand family abode into the diabolical realm of...Cthulhu Mansion!!!!!!! The respected creator of celebrated Satanic smut classic Satan's Blood attempt at Lovecraftian wyrd is a watchable, unfairly dismissed 90s occult horror oddity. Plot is hyped-up haunted house schlock, wherein the ambivalent Chandu falls foul of opportunist, thrill-seeking delinquents, absconding after a royally fubar'd drug deal, holed up in this enigmatic magician's demonized domicile, it is not long before all manner of Lovecraftian hells are unleashed! Credible performances from Frank Finlay, Melanie Shatner, and Iberian henchman Frank Brana, with the remaining cast's theatrical deficiencies exaggerating Cthulhu Mansion's enjoyably goofy Euro-horror eccentricities!

The home invasion elements are somewhat tepidly presented, the more boisterous schlock horror material is energetically provided by the engaging creature feature hi jinks, which remain punchy, and luridly entertaining! Finlay's commanding presence can't distract from Cthulhu Mansions pervasively B-Horror milieu, yet it is only rarely dull, suggestive of the fact that helmsman J.P Simon is one of the more reliable purveyors of big-boxed, Video rented schlock! Cthulhu Mansions remains about as far removed from an undiscovered classic, as a partially regurgitated chicken shop bargain bucket is from haute cuisine, trashy horror and junk food both temporarily fill a hole, but the satisfaction is frustratingly short-lived. Prodigiously psychotronic midnight movie lunacy, Cthulhu Mansion would be a fun pairing with Lenzi's Ghost House, or Laurenti's Witchcraft aka La Casa 4.

 Dracula: Rise of The Vampire (2025) – Dean Meadows.

'Devon knows how they make it so screamy!'

Following a grisly massacre in a local church by vampire worshipping occultists, Dracula rises from the grave, and his bloody reign is thwarted by stalwart local plod, and a maverick, not altogether convincing, demon-savvy ex-plod, with questionable Kung Fu skills. This low-budget, high camp attempt to resurrect the full-blooded formula of vintage Hammer Films Gothic proved more credible in intent, than execution. The late, eternally great Sir Christopher Lee is on record stating his dissatisfaction over his dialogue, bemoaning the crude digressions from Stoker's original text, and Meadow's very own silver-foxed Dracula would have benefited greatly from Lee's minimalist ideal, as the preponderance of inane chat prevents Meadows batty indie horror flick from ever truly taking flight.

Dracula: Rise of The Vampire might be argued as being the indirect, not quite diabolic decedent of Dracula A.D 70, mirroring Hammer's enjoyably camp exploration of suburban, pointedly British, Baphomet-inflected, bloodsucking buffoonery! While the cast, text, and action scenes are not especially refined, Eileen Daily's gorgeously unfiltered performance as the vulpine, ruthlessly scenery-chewing Countess Bathory is exquisitely silly, and, perhaps, just might provide Dracula: Rise of The Vampire with a growing campy/vampy following, should the film ever be rediscovered by similarly tweaked schlock-seekers such as I! Steeped in daytime soap satanism, this singular admixture of D.I.Y DTV chop-schlocky, ersatz Dennis Wheatley Devilmongery, and Emmerdale Farm proved horribly irresistible!

 Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976) – Jack Weis.

'A lot of things in these swamps are unbelievable!!!!'

Hidden deep within the primordial swamps, locals fear a haunted island, inhospitable, isolated, and rumoured to be the sole domain of sinister sorceress Damballa (Maureen Ridley). This sinuously shape-shifting siren takes a shine to hunky neighbour, retired ranger Ted Watkins (Ronald Tanet), and following his murder by degenerate Cajun blackguards, Damballa plans her supernatural revenge! I think it's fair to say that the 70s fleeting preoccupation with the occult, and esoteric noodling inspired many of the more entertaining Drive-In schlockers, and Jack Weis's swampily hash-hazed, hoodoo voodoo'd snake lady shenanigans remains a mostly watchable example of Louisianan Witchsploitation.

While the pace is no less sluggish than the murkiest backwaters of the bayou, and the cast's performances are fishier than Cajun gumbo, Crypt of Dark Secrets maintains a certain cheapjack charm. No film is ever truly without value if it provides a sultry satanic siren, performing a gratuitously greasy voodoo boogie in her distractingly luscious birthday suit! I'm sure many will balk at the feature's preponderance of goofy chat, but I massively dug the exotic, percussive sounds, and dishy Damballa can hex me all night, 'til my back ain't got no bone! Arguably not the most overtly psychotronic title of exploitation Maestro Weis's lurid oeuvre, his Crypt of Dark Secrets is certainly suggestive of the escalating B-madness to come!