Las Vegas Strangler aka No Tears For The Damned (1968) – William Collins.

'Mother's never wrong!'

This crisply monochromatic, scintillatingly sleazy 60s psychotronic-inflected psycho-slasher luridly presents the escalating insanity of a mentally twisted, murderously misogynist maniac with deleterious mommy issues. Following a catastrophic break from sanity, trophy-hunting loony-bird Jeff (Robert Dix) rampantly indulges all his more sordidly female-flaying fantasies by eerily eyeballing, creepily stalking, and brutally slaying a sinisterly selected selection of sultry sirens. All the denizens of the dingily downcast The Las Vegas Strangler prove anything but sympathetic, but the camera's mostly in focus, and no swinging 60s roughie is ALL bad if it lingers upon a carousel fabulously festooned with a fleshly diorama of tantalizingly topless doxies!

Vegas has always struck me as a hole, but it must be said the garishly glitzy façade has provided a thrillingly gaudy backdrop to a number of sleazy winners. While lacking the weird digressions of a Wishman/Findlay, this recently resurrected psychotronic relic is a doable oner for those predisposed to rudimentary slasher tropes. Prone to monotony, the content is juicily Jushed with hot-flushes of in-out, frantically frugging beatniks, excitable surf guitar, and arguably one of the earliest examples of a stabbed-up titty. Grindhouse addicts might care to note that the cast briefly includes John 'Bud' Cardos, still deservedly infamous for his sci-schlocker miracle The Dark.

 Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989) – Sandor Stern.

'Why would a priest be calling about a lamp?'

The greatly diminishing Amityville franchise manifests itself in its fourth infernal incarnation by the schlockily entertaining guise of Sandor Stern's made-for-TV Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. In one Amityville, the 'evil' hides in a kinky clock, and in part 4, this ceaselessly disruptive demonic entity is unknowingly brought into this cavernous Californian domicile in the ostensibly innocent guise of a chichi looking lamp. I, personally got no specific beef with lamps in cinema, in fact, they even made a decent oner called The Lamp, so horror lamps are all bright in my book! Like many, I regard the original Amityville to be a bona fide supernatural gem, but I also righteously dig the fact that the divinely downward-spiralling Amityville legacy amenably provided examples of primo goofball horror shenanigans. Amityville Four enjoys a conspicuously 80s aesthetic, which, for me, is usually the sticky cherry atop the tastily cliche-clotted cake.

Beautifully executed, or imperfectly presented, gloopily be-slimed, generously blood-basted practical FX are ALWAYS winning content, as in many ways CGI hurriedly rang the death-knell for tactile terror in the 90s, ultimately leading to the digital sloppiness of today's frustratingly fright-less nonentities. Digression done, A-4, has an A-1 (ish) cast, well, Patty Duke's legit, and there's the gumby-looking kid from Puppet Master 3. Some may accuse Amityville 4 of being a lightweight, even low-wattage fright-flick, but I regard it as a luminous, intermittently switched-on supernatural schlocker! I can't believe it wasn't intentional, but the lamp's singular design is almost identical to the malevolent tree stump featured in cult Brit anthology classic Tales That Witness Madness.

 Dying To Meet You aka Serial Killer Massacre. (1997) – Michael W. Johnson.

Two rapaciously bloodthirsty serial killers fatefully meet, and upon discovering they both enjoy a brutal peccadillo for mass murder, this evilly-entwined pair of perfectly aligned psychopaths bloodlessly embark upon a mutually beneficial spree of atypical, (almost) deathless domesticity. While this frequently violent, no-budget psycho-slasher has all the finesse of week-old, high-summer roadkill, it doesn't stink up the joint quite as bad, honest injun!!!! I am a beer-rotten, horribly maladjusted, trash-soaked anthropoid, so my ability to guiltlessly consume moronic murder grottage like Dying To Meet You often manifests itself in more favourable reviews than more highfalutin' folk will think as being entirely just. Hey!!! It's an imperfect world, so it would be absolute hypocrisy to decry the skeezicks entertainment value of a cheapnis, guerrilla-shot S.O.V schlocker solely due on its patent imperfections. My fellow mono-brows can expect hokey repartee, Tromatic sloppy seconds, greasy synth sludge, podunk acting, bloody bath-time frolics, cheapnis gore-blasting, and a botty-wateringly maternal climax. I can vaguely recall a schlock-stuffed DVD label called Brain Damage, and Michael W. Johnson's spunky S.O.V snuff-fest would've have been altogether cosily at home there.

 The Second Act (2024) – Quintin Dupieux.

Four querulous actors are somewhat reluctantly working on an indie, AI created Rom-com when their angsty analogue personal lives appear to permeate strangely into the wholly binary construct of the hokey Hallmark-esque feature. I am a great admirer of the director, Deerskin (2019) is a tweaked, absurdist triumph, and the almost Dadaist delirium engendered of whimsically reality-warping comedy The Second Act only reinforces my admiration of this inventive trope-twister! One of the narrative's more appealing conceits is the fact that, on occasion, one is never quite sure of the content, am I watching the cornball dramady, or the sardonic satire of egotistical actors providing a lively discourse over the subjective importance of art in a world hell-bent on its own destruction? The Second Act's playfully mutable, often hilarious digressions makes it so comedically compelling! Smart, surrealistic, and winningly cerebral, the immaculate ensemble cast are uniformly terrific, generously gifted with an especially sly, irreverent, deliciously bone-dry humorous text. Not only is The Second Act uproariously funny, I had a welcome grin affixed to my face right until its all-too swift conclusion. A genuine Gallic delight, and I couldn't help but recall 80s French comedy gem Le Paltoquet, as Dupieux's mise-en-scene shared a similar tonal quality. I absolutely ADORED this film, the shifting lines betwixt the AI-directed material, and the deliciously acidic, behind-the-scenes sniping proved thrillingly compulsive!

 Killer Nerd (1991) – Mark Stephen Bosco / Wayne Alan Howard.

Accentuate the positive!

A lonely, timid, live-with-mom nerd (Toby Radloff) is routinely humiliated by bullying metalheads, and once his secret love hooks up with the office @-hole, the bloodied, but unbowed Harold Kunkle gruesomely revenges himself during a series of brutal reprisals. The title, and the fact that it was distributed by schlock-scions Troma strongly, and quite succinctly suggests the amenably goofy timbre of the piece. Is the serially abused Kunkle's violent spree justified? I might not win many friends, or influence too many people by this, but I sincerely believe, yes, it was an entirely just culling; frankly, the sleazy office clown deserved to get fragged for his asinine humour alone. The spotty text, and cast's over-egged performances are far from nuanced, but this almost cartoonish aesthetic proves appropriate given the narrative's amusingly exaggerated aesthetic. While episodic, and unapologetically crude, Killer Nerd often provides intentional wit, and winningly unintentional hilarity. To purloin Kunkle's mantra, one must accentuate the positive, Bosco & Howard have successfully created one memorably doofoid protagonist, whose desperate attempts to become cool proved erroneous, as Howard nerd-berg Kunkle was always way better than cool as he's a...KILLER NERD!!! While a more than decent oner, Killer Nerd may arguably play better on repeated, communally booze-enhanced viewings!

 Townies (1999) – Wayne Alan Howard.

'The Captain of America would NOT approve!!!'

Wayne Alan Howard's Low-fi indie schlock-com presents the appreciably grungy, quirkily off-beat antics of the multiform nutballs that populate dog-fart Schlarb, Ohio. There's a jolly good reason polymath film-maker Howard didn't call his eccentric, morbidly-inflected comedy Normies, as these entertainingly maladjusted misfits would require their very own ward at Bellevue! My tolerance for films like Townies has been greatly tempered by early exposure to John Waters, Lloyd Kaufman, Nick Zedd, George Kuchar, Andy Milligan, and Richard Kern etc. Is this a good thing? I have absolutely no idea. While I'm not completely in love with all the tweaker-jackanapes presented herein, it is entirely safe to say that Townies Psychotronic credentials are bona fide! Are monochromatic indie flicks artier than their more garishly technicoloured brethren? I tentatively believe, yes, yes, that could well be the case. Slacker-schlock lore suggests that if you film a posterior on video it appears despicably porny, but the VERY same sit-upon, when exposed to Super-8 is mythically transposed into hot-shit cinema verite, dude! Ultimately, I dug most of this, but I'm a remorselessly listless chode who still believes Tiramisu is Latin for a baby Tsunami. Final thoughts, husky dreamcake Caduceus (Shane Koltnow) got me in the mood for some enthusiastic oral gymnastics, Dickie's (Toby Radloff)isolation made me feel horribly sad, as I could manifestly feel his pain, and The Licker (Jeremy Maes) had erotic potentialities worth investigating!

 Schoolgirl Apocalypse (2011) – John Cairns.

Plucky Japanese schoolgirl Sakura (Rino Higa) must protect her picturesque village from the devastation of rampaging males, armed only with bountiful chutzpah, Kyudo, English textbook and muchas Kawaii kick-ass charm. Like a multitude of others, I see a battling sailor suit siren, and I'm all over it like monster testiculi on a prize bull! Not to disparage the Kawaii hero genre, but one expects plentiful fisticuffs, syrupy sentimentality, an evil villain/Villainess, stoic, blood-spattered combat, plus an endearing smattering of bespoke Asian kookiness, happily, Schoolgirl Apocalypse mostly adheres to type. All I can say is, when the world inevitably descends to hell in an AI-adjacent handbasket, one very much hopes there's an army of warrior-caste, sailor suit champions on call to protect us all!!!! Schoolgirl Apocalypse is a zesty, Sci-fied roller-coaster ride that shares a similar (ish) concept to Stephen King's Cell. Sakura is proper adorable, making for a feisty, sympathetically angel-faced, straight-shooting hero. Bucolic small town Japan has an immensely aesthetic appeal, providing an appealing contrast to all the seemingly inexplicable mayhem suddenly unleashed by their sinisterly zombified menfolk. Having an archer saviour perhaps references Greek mythology (Artemis), and the fun, pulpy plot extrapolates into a gonzo Lovecraftian climax!