Automaton Transfusion (2006) – Steven C. Miller.

'I'd like to drive this chainsaw right through his face!'

Any splatter fan worth his, or her salt will have endured a multitude of Apocalyptic bloodbaths, realising at a young age that the formula is not often changed. Unifying factors being copious gut-munching, mayhemic looting, temporary refuges bloodily besieged by hordes of blood-drooling dead-heads, prosaic iterations of confused 'what's happening?!', a frequently nihilistic conclusion, referencing Romero's immortal classic, and hopefully, a far greater preponderance of splashy practical FX, over CGI slop. Automaton Transfusion's 'grabby' title frantically heralds an entertaining, satisfyingly gruesome, dutifully formalised Zombie chunkblower. The collegiate protagonists are a weirdly likeable bunch, creating a paradigm shift, as usually, I'm all for the gruesome annihilation of alpha jocks, window-licking dweebs, and ditzy cheerleaders, but I was genuinely rooting for the charismatic, chainsaw-rocking main dude (William Howard Bowman).

The generous chunk-blowage herein delivers groovily old-schooled ganglion neck-bites, bloody eviscerations, and righteously gross flesh flaying! Automaton Transfusion adheres gloopily to accepted Zombie tropes, but it does so in a boisterously entertaining fashion, and I dug the usage of bouncy pop punk on the score. The 'Shooting 'em in the head!!!' dogma is observed, and less retentive gorehounds should relish the fetus munching, mandible mashing, grisly shot-gunning, blunt force goring, cranial carnage, and being monstrously engulfed in a screaming miasma of raging, ambulatory death! I happened to be in the perfect mood for enjoying a locomotive, attack zombie brain-melter, and the enthusiastic young cast do a credible job selling their justifiably desperate fear of grisly zombification!

 Celluloid Nightmare (1999) – Daisuke Yamanouchi.

Popular Adult AV idol Mai Tsurumi's sudden, prolonged disappearance engenders rumours of her being abducted, and slaughtered in a 'Snuff' video, investigative Journalist (Yuki Emoto)digs resolutely into the case, discovering that Snuff is no mere Urban legend! Celluloid Nightmare's seamless mockumentary style proves enormously effective, drawing you ever deeper into the increasingly macabre mystery herein. The dramatic, thrillingly suspenseful lead up to the grisly revelation is satisfyingly rendered, with naturalistic performances from an altogether credible cast.

I think the suggestion that the increasingly extreme examples of fetishistic porn, and actual snuff being inextricably linked is not entirely specious, at which nexus point do violent sexual fantasies fatally intertwine with actual psychosis? The simulated, not so simulated abuse of women in sleazier pornography, if violently increased could culminate in death, and would demonstratively attract minions of the darkly curious. Sharp, concise, and wickedly penetrating, Celluloid Nightmare remains impactful, and disturbingly contemporary, keeping its sinister plot very close to its chest, right until the tantalizingly turny-twisted climax, which is now the snuff of legend!

 Igor and The Lunatics (1985) – Billy Pardini.

'Her head was so full of Paul's holly roller garbage, she was spitting plastic Rosary beads for a week!'

Even before the scratchy opening credits have ended, a lithe young lady has her nakedly bouncing breasts forcibly exposed, and is ignominiously sawn bloodily asunder! Troma's breathlessly moronic Igor and The Lunatics ably provides the crudest rebuttal to the adage that 'less is more': More breasts!!!! More beer!!!! More embiggened breasts!!! Bigger and bloodier eviscerations!!! More cheapnis carnage is ALWAYS best! If maestro Antonioni were regarded as providing the giddy apogee of artfully composed cinema, then Troma is arguably the nadir of refined cinematic style and taste. Igor and The Lunatics is both resolutely artless, trenchantly inane, and yet somehow manages to hit the elusive sweet spot of remaining vastly entertaining crud!

The grossly 'unfiltered' performances, risible text, and bouncily goofy soundtrack intertwine magically into an exaggeratedly schlocky bounty of irresistible B-Movie buffoonery. Dumber that a glass condom, Igor and The Lunatics has all the cinematic sex appeal of a grizzly bear's scat-clotted sit-upon, and the ceaselessly crude repartee herein is purloined from the greasiest bowels of Charlie Manson's outhouse. I sometimes like to imagine what contemporary mainstream horror might look like if Igor and The Lunatics had equalled Halloween's legendary box-office? Personally, I would rather endure a gory glut of shrill Igor's than the mindless monotony of multitudinous Meyers we have today. Hey!!! You don't have to be a lunatic to enjoy Pardini's Igor and The Lunatics, but it certainly helps!!!!

 Zombie Cop (1991) – J.R Bookwalter.

'Some cops are rotten, but Zombie cop really stinks!'

J.R Bookwalter's indie-horror legacy is absolutely assured by his epic chunk-blower The Dead Next Door, but if Zombie Cop had been his initial foray into film-making, it would have been a whole other kettle of mouldy sardines! The Hoodoo-voodoo trope in splatter is NOT a favourite, maestro Fulci nailed it with Zombie Flesh Eaters, Umberto Lenzi kinda didn't with 'Black Demons', and Zombie Cop may have been better off leaving it unresurrected! Religion is an unholy crock, but it has frequently provided us with some genuinely beautiful art, energizing music from musicians vitriolically decrying it, and 'The Exorcist, and 'Beyond The Door', so for that, I'll give it a pass. You cannot claim Zombie Cop was 'written', I would suggest that it was ungraciously wiped from an especially ailing bottom, and artlessly smeared upon some A4 paper. A truly dire text quite often provides for a mirthsome bounty of B-horror buffoonery, and Zombie Cop is an odoriferous fromage-fest with an additionally supersized portion of corn-holed badinage.

The music is poor, clumsily executed by a wannabe Wakeman on a busted Stylophone. Having a conspicuously white dude play an Asian shop clerk was pretty classy, and I'm surprised the Clan didn't turn up to put a kink in Dr. Death's heathen neck. I must openly admit that I kinda dug on Dr. Death's anachronistic, Sax Rohmer bad guy shtick: 'She'd scream even louder, but she never had no face!!!!' and I sympathize hugely with his murderous hatred of those vapid suburbanites who indulge so iniquitously in their bourgeois 'tea parties', as they MUST BE DESTROYED!!!! To be fair, I think I may have low-balled the soundtrack, as by the zesty, car-chased conclusion, I had started to feel the groove, apologies for my initial lack of faith, good dude! Zombie Cop is luridly coated in 10 shades of schlock, and provides for a mostly fun hour, goofily well spent.

 Dard Divorce (2007) – Olaf Ittenbach.

'Do you like me like this?'

Mother, and dipso lawyer (Martine Ittenbach) sues her deadbeat husband Tim (Barrett Jones) who is then killed, his body disappears, and a squalling blood-storm of lurid Ittenbach carnage ensues. Can anyone truly give a toss about a lawyer, and a lush ta' boot? Not on your mom's jelly belly, Nelly! Maybe that's the point, who cares. Pfft! Just make with the exploding intestines, guy!!!!! Ittenbach's insanely violent, corpse-laden shockers offer less than robust narratives, merely the hollowest vessels into which he furiously crams an elephantine abundance of eviscerated body parts, and grossly steaming viscera. Saying that bloody revenge/survival bloodbath Dard Divorce is extremely gory is like saying Stalin was often a wee bit naughty, the daytime soap theatrics, and gruesomely weird tangents are boosted by an off-kilter roller coaster of consistently grisly mayhem.

Drugs are purloined, corrupt cops get medieval, and a ferociously resilient female fights back, as copious gallons of luridly crimson bodily fluids are beatifically discharged, and it is thus, how Ittenbach freaks know all is well in their basement-dwelling worlds. Dard Divorce's plot, such as it is, would bear all the scrutiny of a no-budget pre-glasnost Russian war bunker snuff porno, perhaps then, not one of Ittenbach's best, but still a far better option than a stick in the eye, unless it's Lucio Fulci's/Giannetto's poke in the eye, natch! Ittenbach's A la carte splatter menu is plentifully stocked with mortal disembowelling, graphic shotgun trauma, torturous amputations, splashy blood squibs, maniacal meat cleaver mutilations, and vicious knife goring! I don't believe Dard Divorce has the option of a vegetation menu, since it is an aggressively meat-centric production. Watching a naked man meticulously dissecting a pimp's cadaver proved more edifying than I thought possible.

 No Reason (2010) Olaf Ittenbach.

A beautifully lean, frequently nude woman Jennifer (Irene Holzfurtner) bloodily endures unconventionally gruesome deprivations for the viewer's morbid edification in Ittenbach's theologically tweaked blood feast No Reason. Fans of spectacularly shrill acting, rubber Cthulhu masks, and graphically executed mutilation are unlikely to feel short-changed by the generous volume of feral screaming, and audaciously brutalizing gore herein. As an admirer of Premutos, I am predisposed to Ittenbach's signature predilection for grandiose ultra-violence, and others that remain manifestly Team Ittenbach should trip out hard on this exhilarating carnage as though having chewed a portal through a ten ton psilocybin mushroom! Appreciating grisly mortification of the flesh is absolutely key to digging this crazed Bavarian's work, and, interestingly, the most compelling visions in No Reason surrealistically plays out like an extended version of the famed demoniacal diorama from 'Witchcraft: La casa 4'. I don't imagine that it was in any way deliberate, but they certainly share thematically skewed, stridently S & M'd similarities. If you crave an extra shot of strong bloody violence with your strong bloody violence, No Reason will definitively deliver the unholiest, and Bloodiest Mary of all Bloody Mary's! As an tangential aside, do vegan's object to Ittenbach's mega-splatter shockers, or do they openly respect the fact than no live peni are ever hurt during his singularly sanguineous film-making process?

 G.B.H (1983) – David Kent-Watson.

A satisfyingly Bloody gang war is gleefully precipitated by the obtusely single-minded thuggery of Notoriously bellicose bouncer The Mancunian (Cliff Twemlow), Culminating in a bicuspid-bashing tumult of cheapnis ultra-violence. Formerly banned during the UK's reactionary splatter panic/Video Nasty debacle, David Kent-Watson's G.B.H's reputation for clunky-thumpy S.O.V savagery had given it an almost mythical cache, a conspicuously northern bar-room bloodbath that soon engendered an equally bizarre cult over its twin-fisted, slab-faced 'star' Cliff Twemlow. Cliff Twemlow is the kind of retrograde handle a 40s, wannabe Hollywood actor would have changed even before he got off the bus. Clearly an iconoclast, staunch proletariat Twemlow earnestly believed that his name and chemically-enhanced musculature would make his fortune! For all his great size, and street tough notoriety, Mr. Twemlow has a curiously lugubrious charisma, proper handy, yet dramatically exuding all the magnetism of a wet sock!

A lifetime of dully intoning 'Your name's not on the list, so you can't come in!' manifestly didn't have much of a galvanizing effect upon his monologuing skills, fortunately, the amusingly inane text proves equally rudimentary. S.O.V slug-fest G.B.H's main claim to cinematic fame is that it arguably provided the template for the popular 'Rise of The Footsoldier' franchise, Twemlow's Mancunian being a serviceable prototype for Fairbrass's psychotic hooligan Pat Tate. G.B.H remains niche, boy's own stuff, some openly adore it, and there's no earthly reason why they shouldn't, while many have yet to experience the stolid, blunt force trauma of ex-Nastie G.B.H. Simple Simon plot, happy meal text, and basic stunt choreography don't tax Twemlow's limited theatrical resources, which, no doubt, forms a major part of the film's continued appeal. I believe what muted my appreciation of G.B.H was the fact that I experienced the no less bonkers Twemlow opus 'The Eye of Satan' (1988) many years earlier.