German Angst (2015) - Buttgereit. Marshall. Kosakowski.

Like a great many other splatter mad hatters, I find the lurid lure of a grisly extreme-horror anthology hard to resist, and Teutonic terror trilogy German Angst proved darkly irresistible! Macabre Maestro Jorg Buttgereit's compellingly stark contribution, a glacial, surgically sharp dissection of a captivatingly strange young Fräulein's deservedly savage censure of a domestic abuser cuts pretty deep! Brutalist, gory, and inventively twisted, the bracingly confrontational portmanteau shocker German Angst remains a bravura, blut-basted blitzkrieg of sinister, ultra stylised Kraut-shock! The intense material herein provides for a thrillingly unconventional trip into coutured ultra-violence, psychosexual extremis, and stylised outré splatter. For all of its divinely nasty digressions, German Angst cannot completely disguise the palpable intelligence behind each of these cruelly cautionary tales. While all of the gifted filmmakers contributions have points of interest, for me, Buttgereit's sordid slice of skewed suburbia was the moist queasily memorable.

 Dirty Weekend (1992) – Michael Winner.

Kindly wallflower Bella (Lia Williams) transforms dramatically into Poison Ivy following a series of increasingly toxic encounters with predatory men in Michael Winner's brutal, yet often playful fatal female fantasy revenger Dirty Weekend. Watching the once timorous Tinkerbell's triumphal ascension to dominant, ice-cold Amazonian antagonist delivers a truly exhilarating cinematic experience. Dirty Weekend received a somewhat tepid reception upon its release, mostly due to critics expressing an ingrained prejudice against Mr. Winner's populist oeuvre. Like a long-neglected jug of moonshine, this confrontational 90s seaside shocker has aged disgracefully well, with all of its more intoxicating elements remaining resolutely undiminished. Bella is a vulnerable, altogether human, vividly drawn character, the jeopardy she unjustly endures feels unsettlingly authentic. The oppressive confrontations with her perverse, openly sadistic stalker (Rufus Sewell) appears terrifyingly genuine, her paralysing fear, and subsequent bloody catharsis remains absolutely thrilling to behold! Violent exploitation cinema only rarely has performances of this calibre, and the surprisingly nuanced text by Winner and novelist Helen Sahavi provides for a number of memorably striking scenarios. While there are missteps, for the most part, Dirty Weekend is a spirited, sure-footed, frequently suspenseful, darkly eroticized revenge thriller about an abused proletariat woman who courageously chooses to turn the tables on her misogynistic aggressors.

 Hansel & Gretel (1990) – Giovanni Simonelli.

Beautiful, ailing, morally bankrupt lady boss (Brigitte Christensen) has her lucrative trade in black market organ trafficking royally fubar'd after the kidnapping/slaughter of loveable tykes Hansel and Gretel yields the unexpectedly haunting results of postmortem vengeance! At this point, the boom in Italian horror was rapidly diminishing to bust, Filmirage was almost defunct, with Hansel & Gretel arguably providing one of the last theatrical examples of spaghetti splatter, as the small screen would later only provide fitful opportunities for genre icons Lamberto Bava and Lucio Fulci. Often blithely maligned, Hansel and Gretel is certainly not without modest interest to Euro-horror junkies, hardcore chunk-blowing it is emphatically not, but this whimsical supernatural yarn still contains trace elements of Italian horror's inventive, ragu-soaked supremacy.

If one is frequently told that the spooky kids modus operandi in Hansel and Gretel is goofy, then goofy it shall appear, but approached with unbiased eyes, this is a charming B-horror curiosity, replete with some nasty kills, an ear-wormingly kooky theme, a despicable Villainess, and two utterly adorbs, hugely sympathetic, wee vengeful ghosties. I genuinely adore this film, thus, my positive view is absolutely biased, but I'd like to be one that humbly suggests Hansel and Gretel is not quite the chronic absurdity so many have vociferously claimed it to be. Granted, the text is weak, and the film-making is often prosaic, but the premise remains sound, the bloody tractor kill is phooken awesome, and I believe there's room in the fairly sizeable horror pantheon of killer kids for fairy tale terror tykes Hansel and Gretel.

 Absolutio Erlosung Im Blut (2014) – Philip Lilienschwartz.

This pleasingly graphic Anti-Moby fever dream, gorily presents an insular, disturbingly sexless, shaven-headed Anti-Moby who undergoes a delirious, pseudo-religious epiphany following the death of his beloved mother. Galvanized to perpetrating puritan acts of arbitrary cruelty, Jesaja (Stefan Vancura) undertakes a grisly suburban crusade, kidnapping, and torture-monologue-slaying all those who he deems are heretically flouting god's commandments. Maniacal Mutti's boys are ubiquitous in Grindhouse horror, following in the fevered footsteps of the Templars, and Witch-finders of old, our demonstrably bland Anti-Moby gleefully kills for Christ, although to be pedantic, the overly mythologised Templar Knights favoured John the Baptist. As demented splatter antagonists go, nebbish Jesaja is a rampantly unlovable cove, but the plentiful practical FX prove both effective, and horribly gruesome. Humans have been killing humans to appease their blood-thirsty gods since time immemorial, so why should the nerks in chunk-blowers be any different. In truth, I prefer secular slayers like Frank Zito, or Madman Marz, but every now and again, I don't mind watching a hyped-up holy roller do the lord's work. I must commend Herr Vancura who portrays a proper skeevey douche valve, his limpid, anodyne performance proved unexpectedly compelling to me.

 Angel Enforcers (1989) – Godfrey Ho.

This notorious purveyor of crazed cut n' paste Ninja Brain-melt was also a more than credible director of dynamite Kung Fu epics, and hell-for-leather heroic bloodshed. With dazzlingly acrobatic fight scenes, red-lined vehicular mayhem and bravura, Berretta blasting bellicosity, Angel Enforcers remains an incendiary, bona fide Girl with Guns master-blaster! Maverick cops taking on nefarious dope/diamond/flesh peddling gangsters were ubiquitous during HK action's gloriously blood-soaked heyday, and the scintillating introduction of fearlessly fighting females proved altogether welcome. It was not uncommon for the violent death of an undercover cop, or brother gangster to galvanize the protagonist/antagonist to vengeful retaliation, in this instance it is the latter, but he soon discovers that he must contend with the resiliently pistol packing, Kung fu Queens known collectively as the Angel Enforcers! Like placing a coin in a pinball machine, right from the get-go, the kinetic battery proves relentless, fellow fans of the inspector wears skirts, Iron Angels, or Rothrock's iconic Lady Reporter, Angel Enforcers is an eminently rewatchable, oestrogen-powered, furiously femme fighting, nitrous-injected, heroine bloodshed classic!

 Secrets of Sex aka Tales of The Bizarre. (1969) – Antony Balch.

Torrid, pop arty, serially strange sexploitation by beloved genre iconoclast Antony 'Horror Hospital' Balch dialectically explores the multifarious machinations of an, almost, exclusively heterosexual coitus. While a trifle self-conscious, and prone to clumsy slapstick n' tickled buffoonery, I can still dig it. Secrets of Sex is playfully inflected with a hash-hazed eccentricity that expresses the kaleidoscopic complexities of sexual desire. As with all anthologies, some episodes shall prove more edifying than others, much like a variety pack of breakfast cereals, there will always be a clear favourite, I favour the sublimely sadistic photographer, and the gruesome fate of her mortally unfortunate male muse. Balch's psychedelicized invocations of human sexuality is artificially veneered with the sinister baritone gravitas of legendary British character actor Valentine Dyall's deliciously portentous narration. My main takeaway from Secrets of Sex is that Mummy always knows best, and hateful middle-aged harridans who feloniously capture men's souls, evilly transplanting them into potted plants shall deservedly reap what they hath sown! While no less indelibly a product of the 60s than pre-decimal coinage, and the more outré day-glow fashions of Carnaby Street, Secrets of Sex remains a splendidly salacious, inventively kinky iteration of hedonistic Brit-smut.

 Trilogy of Lust (1995) Julie Lee/Tun-Fei Mou.

This brassy, sordid, uncommonly explicit Cat III skinflick features hardcore in-out, absolutely NO Pixelization of said naughty bits! A slovenly Fishmonger (Wai Dik-Chan) ventures to the mainland in order to find/purchase a wife (Julie Riva), once the deal is struck, their somewhat abusive matrimonial union is rocked to breaking point by his wife's increasingly flagrant extramarital nookie with a younger man. Needless to say, all this rampant cuckoldry, and the sinister scheming of his errant wife fatefully boils over to a bloody crescendo of cathartic Cat III unpleasantness. While it is indeed mighty lusty, it is NOT part of a trilogy, spawning an equally lurid, unrelated sequel, huzzah! I must confess that I found the graphic sex absolutely gratifying, I would also be interested to find out how it was initially marketed in China, and was it released entirely uncut in all Asian territories? Trilogy of Lust is arguably one of the most sexually extreme Cat III I have seen, and I can't help believe that many of the more outré examples of Nikkatsu Roman porno would benefit greatly from a similarly progressive lack of censorial interference.