Tales From Deep Hell (2018) – Davide Pesca.

'Like a triple-espresso mega-dosed with rabid kangaroo blood, Pesca's body-shocker has quite a kick!'

Sadism, sinister bodily abuses, gratuitous Gore-blasting, perversely administered eviscerations, blood-basted breasts, and all-manner of close-quartered carnage is luridly exploited in teasingly gruesome torture anthology Tales From Deep Hell. Italian Gore-blaster Davide Pesca wastes precious time with expository blarney, and gets straight to the meat with pleasing frequency, and should viewers appreciate gorily palpating lady flesh, Tales From Deep Hell won't prove wanting. I must applaud Pesca's macabre, darkly voyeuristic mise-en-scene, all pinky vectors of the sublime female physiognomy are ruthlessly exposed, brutally flayed, savagely sliced and diced for the sordid delectation of those who favour spicy spaghetti splatter with additionally generous portions of gooey ragu! I can state with relative surety that the expressly sanguineous segment exploring extreme beauty hacks would surely meat with the approval of bloody countess Erzsebet Bathory! Foot freaks and grisly eyeball fetishists will not be disappointed, some of the anthology's more compellingly bloody content might be filed under body horror. Avid Tru-Gore aficionados are sure to relish the spooky-loopy body mod sequence, as these outré images are sure to get right under their skin! In conclusion, I must absolutely commend the film-makers on producing such a visceral example of perversely artsy-fartsy Gore-mongery that plays out sans dialogue, with the 'Two Sisters' proving especially memorable, having a schlocky Rollin/H.G Lewis vibe!

 Cape Cod Cthulhu (2025) – Mark Polonia.

Rehearsing Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven takes an inauthentic gambol into camp Gothica, after a beach discarded beach initiates a risibly cheapnis, Cthulhu-inspired end of days. Gotta be honest here, not a fan of super-clean digital video, and find cheapnis CGI absolutely lacking in the pleasing tactility, and boundless charm of low-fi practical FX. Manifesting Cthulhu on a micro-budget is asking more of the audience than the film-makers, just how much of a penuriously pixelated protagonist can one stand in one film? Analogue video is not without technical problems, but one of its greatest strengths is that it often obfuscates budgetary/FX shortfalls, whereas HD video glaringly puts it all, front and centre, and, sadly, this is not always beneficial to a credible suspension of disbelief. I may have missed something, but why does the pale stabby dude in the graveyard pointedly resemble Biff from Back To The Future? One of the film's grislier elements is the aimlessly prolonged sequence wherein the lassies butcher Poe's immortal prose, and as much as this genuinely pains me, Cape Cod Cthulhu should have remained inert, continuing its abyssal slumbering undisturbed. Episodic, anodyne, and dully written, with bafflingly tepid protagonists, possessing absolutely nothing that made 'Hallucinations' such a singular D.I.Y treat. To be fair, the location is utterly lovely, but Cape Cod Cthulhu is to Lovecraft's mythos, what Fentanyl is to continued bodily wellness. In conclusion, snarky Levi is a cutey, but the maddening mystery over Mad Axeman Biff's bloody spree remains frustratingly unresolved. The only good ending viable to Cape Cod Cthulhu is by having no beginning.

 Boltneck aka Teen Monster (2000) – Mitch Marcus.

Playing fast n' loose with the Frankenstein mythos, Teen Monster is an affably camp iteration of Mary Shelley's Gothic opus, wherein the grislier discords are replaced with zany, ghoulish knockabout humour, and hormonal High School hi-jinks. While Wes Craven's cult fave Deadly Friend has moments of palpable horror, Boltneck aims squarely for a comedic jugular vein, and, happily, more often than not, it hits the sweet spot, boisterously evoking the fuzzier frolics of Teen Wolf, or a campy vampier Real Genius. The one thing I never quite understood about oft purloined Frankensteinian lore, if you pump major volts into a skell on Death Row, he's turned crispy critter, hook up a dead guy to a Universal doohickey, greatly increase the voltage, and you get a shambling icon of the resurrected dead? Digression aside, I surprisingly enjoyed Teen Monster more than I thought possible, which I put down to premature senility, induced from injudiciously prodigious exposure to doltish DTV pulp. I could never be hugely down on a goofy Gothic teen romp that featured a Cramps track, and provided decent comedy shtick from Charles Fleischer, Richard Moll, Judge Reinhold and Shelley Long. Hey! Teen Monster sure ain't rocket science, but, for me, it mostly remains a cutesy Happy Halloween spoof-a-rama, suitable for goofs of all ages!

 Bad Magic (1997) – Polonia Bros.

'It squashed Calico's head like a melon!!!!!???'

Renny's (Vincent Simmons) brother is slain during a robbery by local gang-bangers The Red Claws, desperate for revenge he is schooled in the eldritch power of Hoodoo Voodoo by Voodoo guru Doctor Topanga (Bruce Hardy), summoning the demonic Blahkeeblahkay, acting as a preternatural proxy to bring unholy doom upon those ill-prepared hood rats. Unsurprisingly, this lively supernatural S.O.V demon-fest is another compellingly lurid tribute to the tenacity, and no-budget chutzpah of these beloved S.O.V siblings. Bad Magic proves to be an ambitious D.I.Y gem, with the Polonia brother's singular facility for producing gonzo B-horror gold from only the most base elements, suggests they may be in cahoots with dark forces themselves, aiding them on their inexorable ascent to worldwide, Schlock & Awe, S.O.V supremacy! This heroically home-brewed, hocus pocus-inflected creature feature remains a garishly analogue testament to the strange wonders of non-professional acting, crudimentary practical FX, dopey dialogue, judicious usage of fright wigs, murderous mummification by Loo Roll, and a hypnotic largess of low-fried, dime-store delirious, in-camera chicanery. While the revenging demon Blahkeeblahkay sounds like a Beatles song, this netherworldly entity is pretty metal! It seems entirely appropriate to conclude with a line from Bad Magic itself : 'Amos!? You can't be killing everyone, it's impossible!!!!' Implausible? Absolutely, but I don't believe anything is truly impossible in the inspirationally can-do S.O.V mythos of the Polonia Bros.

 Tiki : God of Horror (2006) – Ron Ford.

'This demonic doll is a Tiki time bomb of terror!'

Writer/director Ron Ford luridly presents the engagingly kooky, EC Comics-ish yarn of naïve Hawaiian teenager Amy (Joleen Smith) who is rendered comatose by cruelly pranking classmates, and her spooky aunt Maelea (Maria Caprille) mystically transmigrates Amy's angered spirit into a vengefully death-stalking Tiki doll. While the premise is brain-nullifyingly silly, this surprisingly winning, hellaciously goofy fromage to the 'Amelia' segment in cult classic Trilogy of Terror is a relatively undiscovered B-horror treat for fans of far-flung pulp horror shenanigans. I've long had a penchant for diminutive death-dealers, and being a hardened Full Moon addict, Tiki: God of Horror looked like it might Tiki all the requisite number of schlock-mongous boxes, which it does with commendable brio, the film-makers bravura commitment to its loony premise not infrequently delivers some memorably psychotronic content! Points are deducted for ripping off Fulci's Aenigma, with additional points gained for the hilariously geeky Tiki terror tactics, and for the welcome fact that raven-haired Ashley (Heather Swanstrom) is a cutesy dead-ringer for a younger Brinke Stevens! Hubba-Hubba!       

 Blood Stalkers (1976) – Robert W. Morgan.

'You're on the right road to hell!!!!!!'

Appropriating the ur-old trope of 'escalating weirdness following the inheritance of an isolated abode', noted Big Foot enthusiast Robert W. Morgan places two vacationing couples in swampy jeopardy, as ornery locals, and increasingly malign hirsute anthropoids turn their Everglade jaunt into a hokey Hicksploitation nightmare! While soggy-bottomed proto-slasher Blood Stalkers remains Morgan's sole venture into narrative film-making is self-evident, its plethora of B-Movie buffoonery provides bad movie addicts with a serviceable oner. For my sins, I am no stranger to Mr. Morgan's contributions to cryptid classics: 'Big Foot: Man or beast (1972), The Mysterious Monsters (1975), and psychotronic pseudo-science gem 'In Search of Big Foot'. Blood Stalkers aka The Night Daniel Died strongly suggests to me that being an aficionado on all things 'sqwatch' proves of little value when producing a dramatic feature.

Morgan generously piles on the B-clichés, but to be quite fair, a great number of recent retroid slashers make lurid usage of the 'Cranky Swamp Rat', so amusingly portrayed herein! The text is a snooze, but bodacious redhead Jeri (Celea-Anne Cole) has a magnetic rack, that sublimely distracted me from the verbal inanities. One of the more infamous Drive-in hucksters bawdily claimed: 'If your screenplay is a bust, hire a delirious dish with giant hooters, as two busts are ALWAYS better than one!!!!!' Blood Stalkers is a mostly anaemic Drive-In dud, but Jeri's pulchritudinous physique, and Stan Webb's funky score prove legitimately top draw. In closing, the inter-cutting betwixt the desperate slow-mo running dude, Gospel Choir, and 'Blood Stalker' attack was actually pretty neat.

 Kingdom of The Vampire (1991) - J.R. Bookwalter.

'Here kitty kitty, come to Mommy!!!!!'

Timid centenarian, live-with-mom vampire Jeff (Matthew Jason Walsh) falls for pretty local lass Nina (Shannon Doyle), thereby provoking the considerable ire of his altogether more murderous mom (Cherie Datry). The initially benign bloodsucker is a familiar, oft-used terror trope; ergo, can a card-carrying vampire ever truly deny his more dastardly urges to survive? In B-Horror lore, the answer is frequently no, animal plasma just don't cut it, so they all ultimately have to revert back to their original (blood) type! J.R. Bookwalter's small-town S.O.V features are fitfully watchable oners, nothing truly offensive therein, but additionally nothing to notably galvanise your interest. That being said, one of the prolific indie film-maker's more stolid attributes is a certain reliable consistency. If you partly dug one of 'em, y'all will definitely vibe strongly with Kingdom of The Vampire's blackly funny tale of bloodily disharmonious Vampire domesticity. Right off the bat, I really liked Jeff's worn-out Night of The Living Dead Tee, but why on earth would a seemingly gentle, blood-shy vamp be so enamoured of 70s sleaze-fest I Spit On Your Grave to such a degree as to own the poster? Kingdom of The Vampire is a hugely fun, pop-corny Halloween flick, pleasingly replete with a lively Carpenter-esque score, playful text, amiable protagonists, and a deliciously wicked nemesis vampire mommy!