Ring of Darkness (2004) – David DeCocteau.

Once popular Boy band Take 10's lead 'singer' Gordo (Greg Cipes) is hungrily sacrificed by fellow band members for his attempted abscond, softly sinister manager Alex (Adrienne Barbeau) begins auditioning for an equally anodyne replacement. This should be a relatively simple procedure, as surely one moronically butt-grinding, Von Dutch-clad doofus is indivisible from the next? Apparently not, since all new members must be goofily initiated via occult rites of Hammer Horror blarney. Greatly experienced B-Movie impresario DeCocteau does his level best to maintain your ebbing interest in this splendidly foofy homoerotic fantasy. His fleshly gambit of languidly photographing lithe male torsos should tantalize all who share his fetish for youthful, well-tempered men in their grundies!

Ring of Darkness isn't especially strong on its fantasy/horror elements, the vampiric/ghoulish content is curiously bloodless. As a tepid, ostensibly hetero supernatural thriller, it strongly makes for an amusingly camp satire of mainstream media's asinine fetishization of cliched male archetypes. I don't believe Take 10's absurd music is any less excruciating than the likes of Coldplay, or Ed Sheeran, but, sheesh!!! their schmendrick 'dance moves' are more than my sensitive soul can endure! In similar B-fare, it is usually the management who are portrayed as bloodsuckers, at least Ring of Darkness sorta flips that script, suggesting that burnished mainstream pop is evilly sucking the very marrow out of the world. Not for the first time, Adrienne Barbeau is magnificent, delivering an effectively low-key performance, bringing much needed verisimilitude to a story with none!

 Lone Wolf (1988) – John Callas.

Horror fans have endured a scourge of Hard Rock Zombies, rampaging Werewolves on wheels, so why not a surly, computer-hating, soft metalled, chronic-haired Lone Wolf? Cuz' Lone Wolf sounds better, good dude! Lone Wolf's High School hierarchical elements are frequently hilarious, as are the so-called class punks, patently indivisible from the boorish, micro-mulleted jocks, but the supposed school tramp delivers, Deirdre's (Ann Douglas) far spunkier than Eddie's (Jamie Newcomb)limp noodle bar band. The gumby plot adheres rigidly to the goodly folk of Fairview being predated by a wolf, or feral dogs, or mutant squirrels, but the irksome preponderance of conspicuously tight medium shots, and frustrating CU's, obscure the ability to 'ave a decent butchers at the hirsute, Colorado-stalking cad!

While Callas's wintry indie shocker remains a schlocky, but pretty fun B-Howler, it also exemplifies the inherent flaws of all low, no budget Werewolf chunk-blowers, y'all can't ever truly give rabid Wolf-fans what they REALLY wanna see! It's such a shame that no one ever thought of making gorily gourmandizing Gerbils a thing, much easier/cheaper to jerry-rig an awesome-looking full-body transformation of a bloody mental Gerbil than its larger arthropoidal cousin! It might not be a popular view, but I kinda dug on how the previously querulous Scooby Squad, temporarily put aside their tribal grievances, and courageously bound together for the almost gnarly Wolf hunt at the school dance.

 Panic aka Bakterion (1983) – Tonino Ricci.

Horribly mutated, the hubristic professor Adams (Roberto Ricci) is driven completely insane, and proceeds to lay violent siege upon the small town in a bloody, uniquely shoddy Euro-Schlock manner. Panic has long been a gateway drug for neophyte schlock-seekers, and once exposed to this titillatingly toxic, David Warbeck/Janet Agren B-gem they are forever altered. Italy and Spain has an altogether credible history of producing winningly gruesome horror, unleashing exquisite exploitation lunacy for generations of B-movie-raddled freaks to enjoy. 'Panic' is arguably Patient Zero, the perfect splatter shitshow, the onerous dialogue, and perfunctory dubbing creates an eerily cosy familiarity, like a shot of good whiskey, or an especially libidinous woman, vintage sci-schlock is the gift that keeps on giving!

The true joy of prodigiously trashy films is that there's never any need to suspend disbelief, one is pleasurably stupefied by the disarming tomfoolery. From the 2^nd act onwards Panic feels like one of the more bucolic episodes of Pertwee-era Dr. Who, the cloddish military personnel clearly in dire need of the brigadier's steely hand! The scene in the cinema is bona fide glorious, both the music, and righteous monster-a-go-go-ing is arguably up there with Slithis. One aspect of Euro-schlock that I have always appreciated is the weird dissonances generated of intercutting between UK exteriors, and Spanish interior/exteriors, which finds its sublime apotheosis in Bakterion! Panic's sluggish pace, inane text, unabashed goofiness, and crude FX is certainly not beloved by all, but fans wouldn't have it any other way. 'In 2 minutes, we bail out!' I'm quite sure, some less enthralled viewers might care to do the same!

 Johnny 316 (1998) – Erick Ifergan.

'He wore a white suit, looking just like John Holmes!'

Aesthetic, and Oblique 90s art flick finds an immaculately beauteous-looking, if not altogether angelic Vincent Gallo as a white-clad street preacher on Hollywood Boulevard, seemingly slinging the word of god like much refried hash. Clearly a man with a past, one that remains enigmatic, stoically(ish) abjuring all fleshly sin, he fatefully attracts the obsessively lustful attentions of spectacularly stunning wastoid Sally(Nina Brosch). Give, or take, a theological nuance, his absolute rejection of her instigates his martyrdom, ersatz, or otherwise. Johnny 316 is steeped in biblical allegory, but since I never had much faith in monotheism, all the whore of Babylon/Salome/John The Baptist spiel is anathema to a secular grot like myself.

A Scorsese/Pasolini would have far more of a scholastic handle on Johnny 316, and talkin' about maestro Pasolini, the compelling observations by icon Seymour Cassel, and the seamier denizens of the Boulevard, all of whom believed our boy to be a legitimate godhead, appeared utterly authentic. This apparent usage of amateur/non-actors, perhaps, referencing the neo-realistic ideals of the Italian maestros of yore. Closing on another entirely subjective viewpoint, as I don't believe it was in a anyway deliberately intended, Ifergan's film occasionally recalled John Huston's equally fervid Wise Blood. Initially, Johnny 316 didn't get its tentacles too deeply into me, but, to be fair, a good few days later, I started to mull over certain sequences again.

 'Bleed' (2002) – Devin Hamilton.

Post-Scream heralded some egregiously opportunistic horror trash, yet goofy masks, and an unrepentantly cheapnis S.O.V splatter aesthetic can infrequently produce righteous terror toss like Bleed. Not terribly big on smarts, but generously endowed with pleasingly gratuitous top popping and gnarly blood-spillage, Bleed remains a bloody good retrograde slasher. I also appreciated the fact that the first gruesome kill was an appetisingly leggy bro in a miniskirt, suggesting that the killer was an equal opportunity psycho. I'd like to say I was above all the crass, Uber-frat dude pool party shenanigans, but it's indelibly part of Bleed's winningly unsophisticated charms.

The hokey 'murder Club' gimmick rang a tad falsely, but triumphant B-Babe Debbie Rochon's lusciously loony tunes Maddy proved authentically tweaked. Whack job broads in reality are a legit nightmare, while stabby, hump-happy screen sirens are curiously foxy delicious, and ravishing Rochon is magnetically mental! Bleed's T&A quotient is respectable, exposing some exceptionally fine specimens of male and female anatomy, delectably hard bodies that were luridly penetrated by the be-masked hottie slayer. Outside of Ms. Rochon's beautiful eyes, I was additionally distracted by himbo Shawn's (Danny Wolske) office décor, which conspicuously appeared to display the full gamut of Full Moon poster art! Props to the film-makers for giving Lloyd Kaufman and Brinke Stevens an especially choice little scene!

 Le Sexe Nu. Aka Naked Sex. (1973) – Jose Benazeraf.

Lusty 70s Gallic nookie-fest Le Sexe Nu does exactly what it says on the tin, proffering a Pornucopia of hyper-sexualized nudity, but there's also a sizzling bounty of partially nude sex, and a sultry frisson of stockinged sex, the unjustly reductive title greatly short-changes the intoxicating content. There are introspective, pseudo intellectual musings to embiggen the artsy content of erotic enfant terrible Benazeref's undeniably attractively put together boudoir romp. While the flowery text is largely facile twaddle, the talented cast are exceptional, cocksure Alan Tissier is strikingly handsome, as is the enchanting Chantal Arondel, glacially portraying his increasingly bourgeois screen wife.

Celebrated smut scion Jess Franco was arguably better at this mode of sexploitation than Benzeraf, but there is certainly some credence to the general consensus that 'Le Sexe Nu' is one of Jose's finer works, especially as it retained its scintillatingly sensual allure. Like Jean Rollin, Benazeraf had a pronounced gift for composing an exquisitely tantalizing tableau, there's nothing sordid, or cheaply voyeuristic here, the viewer is offered a stylistically voluptuous feast of picture perfect pulchritude. Like so many who admire luminescent siren Nathalie Zeigler, I can unequivocally state that she burns through the celluloid with no less intensity than a brightly descending angel.

 Berserker (1987) – Jef Richard.

'This Berserker is snout to lunch, dude!'

Berserker might be more ironic than previously thought, the slasher prologue is usually a kid goofing off deadly, then cutting yadda-yadda to '20 years later', whereas Berserker gets fully medieval, and prologues from the 10^th century, by Crom!!!! Since it features B-icon George 'Buck' Flowers, all the acting can't suck absolutely. Insipid text places cookie cutter teens in a mountainous region haunted by a muscle-head in a bear mask, and, of course, the cop's a hard-on, and the kids are even bigger hard-ons, so their backwoods exsanguination is to be celebrated! The pre-slaughter isn't improved by the egregious A.O.R slop, plus the puritanical lack of T&A, and cliched, to the point of utter inanity fireside shtick didn't help! Soft kills are heralded by copious wafts of dry ice, and bassy Maniac-esque synth drones, interestingly, no one gets any nookie, so its safe viewing for the Mean Too generation.

The prodigious amounts of smoke do little to obscure Berserker's innate lack of satisfying mayhem. My advice, watch 'Night of The Demon' again, a dude gets his pee-pee totally ripped off, and that ornery behemoth REALLY knows how swing a set of intestines! As always, Buck Flowers delivers, even though he is clearly taking the proper mickey with his SNL Swedish accent! Berserker is the kind of plasma-lite, cash-in slasher that is best forgotten, but it certainly merits a remake, with Galifianakis, a shoo-in for Pappy Nyquist. It's merely my subjective sartorial observation, but I don't believe the almost-crop top will ever truly succeed the real deal. My mind wondered rather haphazardly during Berserker, right until I pretended that it was the Ultimate Warrior behind the bear mask!!!!!