The Neanderthal Man (1953) – E.A Dupont.

Owing a little too much to Stevenson's immortal Dr Jekyll, E.A Dupont's throwback 50s Sci-schlocker is lent a rudimentary semblance of cogency by the cast's capable performances, and its inalienable goofiness! The nutty backwoods professor Groves (Robert Shayne) wholly unstable formula turns cutesy puddy tats into vicious sabre-toothed tigers, slaughtering livestock and locals with equally gruesome efficiency. Emboldened by his terrifying results, in a mad moment of fateful hubris, he experiments upon himself, thereby transforming himself into the monstrously hateful, elephantine-domed, horribly hirsute horror of...The Neanderthal Man!!!! A clunky, but weirdly watchable mad scientist shenanigans, but one cannot fully avoid the nagging feeling that the author may well have utilized the latterly dormant retrograde vectors of his cerebellum to create this delightfully dopey, Drive-In goof-a-rama. The good doctor's wayward serum clearly appears to be in the beta stage, since the transformative elements only effect the professor's noggin, and fingernails, as his torso and lower extremities remain demonstratively unaltered???!!! To better appreciate The Neanderthal Man, one would ideally be sloppily making out through the banal expository sequences, and appreciatively hurl fistfuls of popcorn at the screen as the crazed, antediluvian mammals wreak their bloody havoc upon the folksy rustics of Chodesville U.S.A.

 Night Eyes II (1991) - Rodney McDonald.

Twin-fisted security man-cake Will Griffith (Andrew Stevens) is hired to focus his inevitably roving eyes upon shady politician Hector Mejenes's (Richard Chaves) hard-bodied, deliciously voluptuous wife (Shannon Tweed) in bemusingly tacky, soft-shunt eroto-thriller Night Eyes II. While the original was pretty thin gruel, the pallidly unnourished, vastly unwarranted sequel is tantamount to cinematic scurvy! Without the appreciably luminous presence of ravishing pin-up Shannon Tweed, the paltry Night Eyes II would be an altogether excruciating experience, not aided one semiquaver by the plastic, truly execrable score! With Shannon's disinterested hubby wholly preoccupied with work, her thwarted libido sultrily seeks validation within the sinewy arms of bodily buff Body Guard Stevens. While the film's fitful attempts at intrigue are risible, Night Eyes II double down's on the aggressive exploitation of Shannon Tweed's distractingly delectable, frequently exposed, gym-toned body beautiful. While lasciviously replete with conspicuously 90s, pastel-hued, candle-flickered, raspberry juicy in-out, the recycled dramatic elements provide the paltriest of soapy shenanigans. In closing, the titillating Tweed is glorious to behold, and co-star Stevens certainly makes the most of his intimate beholding! I don't like to be a negative Nigel, but Night Eyes II is vapid DTV dross, solely enlivened by the slinkily sublime presence of scrumptious siren queen Shannon Tweed.

 Terminal Angels (1987) – Philip Ho.

'Damn this Poon!!!!!!!!!!!!'

Utilizing the anglicized gnome de plum of Philip Frazer, the godfather of gonzo Kung Fu glory Philip Ho presents another brain-blasting production of frenzied Girls with Guns insanity! Journalist Paula discovers damning photos exposing a high profile businessman as being a major drug dealer in heroically bullet-blasted, chop socky-clotted mayhem Terminal Angels. All those Asian action heads savvy to Filmark International will find Terminal Angels boisterously replete with dizzying shoot 'em up/knock 'em down content. Terminal Angels is well served by its winningly ear-wormy synth score, guerrilla film-making, goofball repartee, and gymnastic fisticuffs. Happily, the perfunctory plotting is more than ably compensated with abundant physical combat, and super-agile, fabulously foxy female fighters exhilaratingly laying waste to shambling street skells. Terminal Angels was certainly not made in a vacuum, during the brief VHS boom of the 80s you could have drop kicked a pot of instant noodles in the Philippines and hit another crew of pyro-packed exploitation film-makers! As a B-grade Battling Babes bonanza, I found little fault with maestro Godfrey Ho's zippy, oestrogen-soaked action-fest, while others may well baulk at the generic characters, lacklustre text, and pervasively cheapnis aesthetic.

'A high-kicking jamboree of fleet-fisted, femme fighting ferocity!' - Tor Bronson /Heroic Blood Shed.

 Wicked (1991) – Carlo Lizzani.

'Psychiatry is a Jung man's game'

Grieving the sudden loss of her daughter, Emilia (Giuliana De Sol) exhibits uncharacteristically disruptive behaviour, and after initially being treated by professor Bruckner (Erland Josephson), her complex case becomes the subject of an increasingly tender fascination for staunch Freudian Professor Gustav (Julian Sands). Nominally based on documented experiences of a youthful Carl Jung, Wicked is an earnest, sensitively rendered, altogether watchable historical drama, bolstered by fine performances, and the able direction of noted Italian film-maker Carlo Lizzani. Not essential viewing, since it might well be argued that Wicked's most zealous demographic would be those who appreciate that eminently appreciable, and greatly missed screen idol, Julian Sands. As the handsome professor Gustav gently probes ever more deeply into poor Emilia's troubled mind, his controversial approach ultimately yields credible results, leading to conflict with the rather more stolid, and conventional medical practitioner Professor Bruckner. Perhaps a mite tepid in the dramatic department, the picturesque feature is often visually sumptuous, both the photographic and soundtrack elements prove exemplary, Lizzani's Wicked frequently expressing a humane quality that I found commendable. For any that are interested, the expressly lovely score is by acclaimed maestro Armando Trovajoli.

 Bad Blood (1989) – Chuck Vincent.

Attorney Ted (Gregory Patrick) and his lovely wife Evie's (Linda Blair) upwardly mobile domesticity is plunged dizzyingly into a neo-Gothic nightmare after a wealthy, eccentric artist Arlene (Ruth Raymond) claims to be Ted's birth mother. While indebted to Stephen King, Chuck Vincent's lurid admixture of Misery and Hammer Films classic The Fanatic is a joyously unfiltered psychodrama that wheelspin's dementedly into outright slasher mayhem! While the set-up is too cute by half, Ted is dragged into a schmantsy art gallery, and is eerily confronted by his own portrait, ultimately leading to a gonzo final act of head-splitter psychotronic overkill worthy of Andy Milligan.

Bad Blood caught me wholly unawares, the cornball 1^st act belies a compellingly OTT decent into skeevey incest, matriarchal madness, and full-throttled exploitation horror delirium. Performances prove credible, Linda Blair, as ever, is consummately adorable, but Bad Blood is demonstratively about the Joan Crawford on-monkey-glands freak scene unleashed by batso mega-loon Ruth Raymond! Deliciously camp, Bad Blood is a riot, and is long overdue some spiffy HD TLC. As an aside, if someone told me John Waters had ghostwritten the final act, I'd absolutely believe it, hook line and stinker! Schlock cognoscenti who are unaware of Bad Blood's winningly warped content could certainly do a lot worse than seeking it out.

 Special Effects (1984) – Larry Cohen.

Multifariously gifted indie film impresario Larry Cohen's mercurial genius for tweaked genre cinema is put to especially wicked good use in his tantalizingly twisted, De Palma adjacent psycho-drama Special Effects. Beautiful, and hungrily aspirant starlet (Zoe Tamerlis) absconds desperately from the angry clutches of her possessive hayseed husband, only to fall prey to the insidiously murderous movie machinations of metropolitan, callous, downward-spiralling film-maker (Eric Borgosian). I can't imagine that there are all too many fans of genre cinema that haven't been frequently beguiled by Cohen's raven dark wit, and dazzling artistry, with Special Effects arguably being one of his most refined works. Special Effects commences with alacrity, nary a frame wasted, the viewer is drawn deeply into the myriad psychological complexities of Cohen's compellingly constructed film-within-film mondo milieu.

The exquisitely doomed blonde protagonist of De Palma/Hitchcock is given an amphetamoid boost of NYC grit in the willowy, yet dynamite guise of Andrea, Tamerlis ably delivering not one, but TWO bravura performances!!!! Side Effects strongly suggests that her untimely death sadly denied the world a gifted, dazzlingly unique dramatic artist. As maestro Cohen's skewed narrative wends its deliciously cruel way through the increasingly sinister snuff movie scheming of Borgosian's sociopathic director Christopher Neville, one couldn't help but secretly admire his dementedly creative chutzpah! Like Peckinpah monstrously conjoined with Man Bites Dog's grandstanding serial killer Ben, crazed narcissist Neville's mania for grisly verisimilitude provides for morbidly compelling cinema, as in Cohen's acerbic, grimly satirical shocker Side Effects, the end, most definitely justifies the fascinatingly mental means!

 Human Pork Chop (2001) – Benny Chi-Shun Chan.

A group of incorrigible skells who work in a sleazy hour motel kidnap, torture and kill a hard-luck junkie prostitute Grace (Emily Kwan) after she foolishly steals 10.000 from surly boss Brother Ho's (Yiu-Cheung-Lai) wallet. Based on a true crime history, Human Pork Chop is a sordid Cat III crime extremity that pulls no punches. A largely glum, mean-spirited affair, populated with aggressively asinine individuals, Human Pork Chop is arguably one of the dingier iterations of Cat III exploitation. Director Chan clearly wishes us to actively loathe these despicable dinge-bags, as he inserts a gross scene, wherein two of the toxic thugs arbitrarily slay a small dog for their own skeezoid edifications.

Everyone is absolutely fucking wretched, and initially, boozy/druggie Grace is a far from sympathetic protagonist. This one is proper hardcore nasty, a bruisingly unfiltered trawl through man's sickening capacity for unalloyed cruelty. Human Pork Chop blackly oozes oleaginous downer vibes, unleavened by humour, this grim Cat III shocker remains an especially deep dive into human perversity. I should warn patrons that the consumption of food should be avoided when watching Human Pork Chop, since there is one nauseating sequence that may prove greatly deleterious to your digestion. Not exactly a fun ride, but the performances are credibly douchey, and queasy Salo vibes are strongly maintained throughout.