The Evil Clergyman (1988/2012) – Charles Band.

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, the once lost The Evil Clergyman is a short, sharp shock of compelling eroto-Gothica. Featuring expectedly exemplary performances from Re-Animator alumni, David Gale, luscious Barbara Crampton, and Jeffrey Combs, plus another electric turn from British icon David Warner, scintillated by Richard Band's atmospheric score. Grieving Mrs. Brady's (Barbara Crampton) emotional return to the fateful room, wherein her charismatic lover Jonathan (Combs) killed himself proves darkly eventful. Sensually reunited by means supernatural, their fleshly union heralds a truly sinister revelation, as the honourable padre was, in reality, a malign sorcerer, evilly coveting her sweetly voluptuous body for desires more monstrous than she could ever have foreseen! As always, Barbara Crampton is a living dream, not only uncommonly beauteous, she delivers a bravura performance, with full-blooded character actor David Gale's diminutive demon rodent providing for a magnificently verminous nemesis! While brief, The Evil Clergyman is stirringly cinematic, dramatically presenting Lovecraft fans with a vividly macabre evocation of phantasmagorical perversity, which, I'm sure, the infamously misanthropic author would have (black) heartily approved of!

 Blutnacht 2 (2202) – Jochen Stephan.

Not especially sinister, Satin-clad occultists seemingly invoke a grotesque-looking fiend who, quite typically, unleashes bloody mayhem in the not exactly undeservedly obscure German S.O.V splatter Blutnacht 2 aka Blood Night 2. Zero production value. Zero acting ability. Zero attempts to record audible sound. And ZERO chance of me tracking down the original, and only partially redeemed by prodigious levels of enjoyably sloppy H.G. Lewis-tastic gut-bucket GORE. Blutnacht 2 is fucking pony, and yet, like a melt, I kept on watching, and begrudgingly, kinda dug the bloodier/stoopider parts of it. Not a cheapnis horror title I can recommend, but that of itself, is certainly no good reason for anyone curious enough to not try out this seemingly unknown D.I.Y slasher.

One of the more bogus decisions by the film-makers are the uniformly unlikeable protagonists, it simply CANNOT be a coincidence that they are all so mindlessly wretched, but, then again, why deliberately alienate the audience with such unflinching rigor? Director Jochen's attempts to appease the audience with luridly repeated scenes of blow-jobbing stoner youths being violently destroyed in the blackened forest are not without a moderation of skeevey appeal. Nil budget Blutnacht 2 is the crudest slasher paradigm boiled down to a bloodied sludge of none-lowest common denominators, which, arguably, is why I foolhardily chose to write some words about it. The moral of Blutnacht 2 is that should one accept oral sex from an almost hot German Goth, you SHALL be horribly mutilated by said bog-faced shitter. The End. If y'all edited out all the REALLY bad scenes, there'd barely be enough viable film left to moisten a Sardine's anus.

 A Garden Without Birds (1991) – Akira Nobi.

A Garden Without Birds explicitly presents a grisly tale of an artist without inspiration. Socializing boozily in a hotel, his companions include excitable call girls, and in true Nikkatsu Porno tradition,a pair of conspicuously pilled-up, rubber-clad S&M sadists! For all its brevity, Nobi's outré A Garden Without Birds luridly provides recidivist smut-junkies a gruesome cornucopia of delicious degeneracy! An aggressively hedonistic trip, A Garden Without Birds comes atcha pretty gnarly, its savagely surrealistic cavalcade of sinister sex, and carnal depravity vibes twistedly like Un Chien Andalou on Beta-tested MKUltra hallucinogens! I'm surprised that Akira Nobi's memorably mad short didn't include a disclaimer warning patrons that the baby being barbecued was fat and ugly, therefore absolutely safe to eat! In closing, I've never been quite sure whether the usage of plaintive classical music over rampant scenes of bloodletting, softens, or increases the overall impact of thrillingly gratuitous, body-rupturing ecstasy!?

 Pola X (1999) – Leos Carax.

Leo Carax's vibrant, consistently intriguing, exquisitely French drama presents an effete, greatly privileged young author Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), who dramatically rejects his bourgeois status, absconding to the city with Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva)a breathlessly beautiful, desperately pale, itinerant woman who claims to be his estranged sister. Pierre's urge to escape his overtly tactile, smothering older sister (Catherine Deneuve), and plainly neurotic fiance Lucie (Delphine Chulliot) is not only relatable, I believe it is nigh on essential, otherwise he would inevitably be absorbed into the vastly indolent corpus of the ruling elite. Like all works of anguished existentialist cinema, a series of tragedies fatefully befall the two isolated, increasingly intimate protagonists. The performances are really rather lovely, and Carax's visually compelling narrative proves cinematic, rather than literary, which is so often usually the case with French cinema.

The increasingly frantic final act, is, for me, absolutely compelling, the arrival of the fragile, waif-like Lucie certainly provides for a classically tragic ménage a trois. While I can see why many would find tousle-haired, neo-beatnik Pierre a spoiled, dilettantish character, perhaps, even a little vapid, I believe his drive to write something truly exemplary is quite genuine. His vagabond existence in this reclaimed industrial squat is not only sustaining, but may provide the galvanizing inspiration he previously lacked. Cinema, at its very best, should provide ambiguities, make space for ambivalence, thereby allowing the viewer to inform his, or her own views on the protagonists inner motivations, good, bad, or ugly! Tragic, sensual, hysteric, visually sumptuous, and surprisingly humane, Leos Carax's divinely immersive drama was a film I was more than happy to experience again!

 The Undertaker (1988) – Franco Steffanino.

Murder maestro Joe Spinell returns to heavy breathing duty in morbid Necro-slasher The Undertaker, arguably one of the VHS-era's most entertaining Necrophilic shockers. Produced in the tail-end of 1980s, The Undertaker is frequently nasty, atmospherically imbued with a palpable 70s Grindhouse griminess. Not at all stylised, the overly flat lighting, obligatory T&A, largely static camera, and crudely effectively Practical FX, prove bluntly effective. Joe Spinell's sordidly cadaver collecting, sweaty-eyed sicko mortician Rosco, manifestly cementing his legacy as one of the silver screams most magnetic of maniacs! The sinisterly staked hotties are bona fide B-babes, all being gruesomely dispatched in a monstrously macabre fashion by the fascinatingly grotesque 'Uncle Roscoe'.

Ever since I first espied the striking-looking Joe Spinell in Rocky, I was almost instantaneously struck by his singular charisma, unique physiognomy, and his wholly natural dramatic talent, all of which provides 'The Undertaker' with far more depth than most cash-cow stab-fests of the period. While it is not for me to say whether, or not, his great talent was given the best opportunities to shine, Uncle Roscoe remains a compelling example of his bravura gift for bringing additional gravitas to a horror project, regardless of its meagre budget. No longer embalmed in some forgotten film vault, the restored HD edition of The Undertaker is sure to beguile a new generation of slasher addicts.

 Vlad (2003) – Michael D. Sellers.

I'm not saying I'm proud of the fact that the 'Billy Zane in' lure still works, but, frankly, dishy Mr. Zane is not an actor I can stay mad at for too long. Four demographically aligned, conspicuously pretty-pretty young scholars are tasked by faintly sinister professor Brad Dourif to research Vlad Tepes on his own turf, with their handsome guardian Zane providing audiences with a sweet, one-size-fits-all Baltic accent. Glossy, romanticised, pseudo-mythic, and almost bloodless, Vlad proves watchable, in spite of some singular choices. There's some additional guff about evil Vlad's cumbrous, fancy-schmancy occult amulet, and this ancient Dracul clan, which pretty much fizzles out to little of any significance.

Vlad takes his sweet time to arrive, but his loyal fangs shouldn't be too disappointed, as like a true blue-blood, he makes a grand (Guignol) entrance! Hey!!! ONE measly bloody impalement does not an iconic Impaler make!!!! jus' sayin'!!! No offence, dude! but I think the legendarily bloodthirsty warlord deserved better. The screenplay is another example wherein characters seem to appear, and disappear at random, to whit, Brad Dourif is ghosted, Zane is dispatched without fanfare, and this obscure sect remained in the shadows. What Vlad lacks in gore is compensated with lavish, expository flashbacks, a modicum of T&A, and moonstruck couples staring adoring at one another. While Vlad was often in desperate need of a revivifying transfusion of blood, the striking medieval Romanian setting proved atmospheric.

 Teen-Age Strangler (1964) – Ben Parker.

Lithe collegiate women in Huntington, Virginia are being snuffed out by a crazy, daubing the victim's faces with a crude lipstick'd cross. Could the perpetrator be a bloodthirsty beatnik? Turn on to 60s schlocker Teen-Age Strangler and find out!!!!!!...if you DARE!!! The buttoned-down cop believes that the maniac is one of The Fast Backs, a delinquent gang of fresh-faced drag racers! In a giddy era of Teenage werewolves, and teenaged monsters from outer space, Ben Parker's acne scarred screamer Teen-Age Strangler proves no less adolescent.

The score is peppy, the arid dialogue is hilariously pedantic, and if the director dug how his cast 'acts', then he's kinkier than his Teen-Aged Strangler! A delicious time-capsule to a brilliantine'd/ beatnik'd world that can only ever truly exist in delightfully cheapnis exploitation flicks. The Teen-Aged slaying is largely inconsequential next to the heady pubescent diorama of hormonal fisticuffs, impromptu performances of saccharine rock n' roll, and a singularly low-geared Drag race! The film's title proves more 'gripping' than its content, but I still appreciated it, vibing frothily like a vanilla, Mormon-friendly version of The Sadist!