Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976) – Jack Weis.

'A lot of things in these swamps are unbelievable!!!!'

Hidden deep within the primordial swamps, locals fear a haunted island, inhospitable, isolated, and rumoured to be the sole domain of sinister sorceress Damballa (Maureen Ridley). This sinuously shape-shifting siren takes a shine to hunky neighbour, retired ranger Ted Watkins (Ronald Tanet), and following his murder by degenerate Cajun blackguards, Damballa plans her supernatural revenge! I think it's fair to say that the 70s fleeting preoccupation with the occult, and esoteric noodling inspired many of the more entertaining Drive-In schlockers, and Jack Weis's swampily hash-hazed, hoodoo voodoo'd snake lady shenanigans remains a mostly watchable example of Louisianan Witchsploitation.

While the pace is no less sluggish than the murkiest backwaters of the bayou, and the cast's performances are fishier than Cajun gumbo, Crypt of Dark Secrets maintains a certain cheapjack charm. No film is ever truly without value if it provides a sultry satanic siren, performing a gratuitously greasy voodoo boogie in her distractingly luscious birthday suit! I'm sure many will balk at the feature's preponderance of goofy chat, but I massively dug the exotic, percussive sounds, and dishy Damballa can hex me all night, 'til my back ain't got no bone! Arguably not the most overtly psychotronic title of exploitation Maestro Weis's lurid oeuvre, his Crypt of Dark Secrets is certainly suggestive of the escalating B-madness to come!

 A Real Young Girl (1976) – Catherine Breillat.

'Disgust makes me lucid!'

The 1^st film from gifted auteur Breillat unflinchingly presents us with the deliciously twisted adolescence of anguished, increasingly exploratory teen Alice (Charlotte Alexandra), and her beautifully bizarre series of not altogether harmonious sexual awakenings. At home for the summer holidays, Alice soon finds the banal domesticity oppressive, becoming listless, adrift, morose, and increasingly carnal. I still find the bracing A Real Young Girl to be fresh, vital, and utterly compelling. Sadly, it is still not all that common to enjoy an insightful feature written and directed by a woman, about such a uniquely fascinating protagonist, giving one the distinct privilege of witnessing the singular interior world of a precociously voluptuous young woman, not so much as burgeoning into adulthood, but erupting with a Vesuvius-like intensity! While there is little wrong with a film remaining emblematic of the period it was shot in, Breillat's vibrant, sultry, surrealistic reverie A Real Young Girl remains remarkably lucid, angsty, probing, and thrillingly alive, certainly no less so than the exquisite teen temptress Alice, her hungry peek through the looking glass proves far raunchier than one might expect.

 'Ghosts of Hanley House' (1968) – Louise Sherrill.

'Only evil spirits come here!'

In order to dispel rumours about incumbent ghostly spirits in a murder house, that is proving hard to sell, a party is organised, and during this inopportune soiree, events soon take a turn towards the macabre, has the killer returned? Or is the fabled haunting absolutely genuine? Ghosts of Hanley House is the kinda swinging supernatural 60s shindig that might have starred Frankie Avalon, if they had the additional moolah, but the stolid cast earnestly do their very best to bring some theatrical pep to the formulaic, but not altogether unamusing haunted house shenanigans! Low budget, not absolutely competent, this modestly obscure indie spook-house is certainly not without interest to those who savour more home-grown B-horror fare.

While the plot fell out of a vintage Count Chocula serial packet, and much of the blocking/lighting/sound recording is strictly bush league, it nonetheless manages to engender a few cob-webby discords. There's one nifty bit when the attractive Sheila (Barbara Chase), saucily clad in her skimpies, distractedly descends the crepuscular stairs repeatedly calling out for 'Dick?' Dick? Dick?', which provided for an unexpected frisson of pleasure! Creakier than Queen Victoria's chastity belt, The Ghosts of Hanley House was imbued with an eerily Ed Woodian quality that mostly held my interest. An unabashed highlight are the film's musical choices, the minimal, echoplexed score proved moodily atmospheric, and the noisome usage of killer garage fuzz guitar was pretty F'n sweet!

 Violent Shit III - Zombie Doom. (1999) – Andreas Schnaas.

A querulous group of friends anchor their boat on a remote island, populated by bloody tyrant overlord The Meister, his scarred, Anthropophagus-looking henchman, and multitudes of metallically masked, madly machete-wielding maniacs! Swiftly captured, they escape, and are forced to battle black demon ninjas, attack zombies, and The Meister's increasingly disposable minions. With heroic levels of gore, exceedingly bloody martial arts mayhem, and graphically chunk-blowing Zombie insanity, Schnaas has demonstratively upped his game for his relentlessly mental S.O.V splatter grenade Violent Shit 3! Should I ever have the good fortune to meet a horror film neophyte alien, who wanted me to suggest a batso B-Horror bloodbath that luridly expressed all that was best in S.O.V splatter, I would have little hesitation in strongly recommending Schnaas's inventively gruesome kill frenzy Violent Shit 3.

While it wouldn't be entirely correct labelling Zombie Doom as merely being a plotless excuse for unleashing plentiful cheap jack, chop socky carnage, there is an absence of plot, the vivid practical FX are surprisingly sophisticated, including a number of memorably graphic annihilations! Like Halloween before it, Violent Shit goes above and beyond in its 3^rd WTF instalment, Schnaas violently concluding his unrepentantly crude splatter trilogy with a ferociously flesh flaying finale! With such boisterously orchestrated slaughter, squib-heavy action, and such appalling dubbing, being almost tantamount to self-sabotage, no fan of trashy horror can be without at least one viewing of the gut-burstingly OTT Zombie Doom, as Schnaas's S.O.V schlock-gun delivers a double-barrelled, body rupturing blast of gratuitous Gore-mongery!

'Violent Shit III arguably remains the most righteously fucked S.O.V Zombie slasher brain fart, that your smarty pants film buddies have never heard of!'

 Nonnes A Tout Faire - Pere Cabanel.

Much like maestro Walerian Borowczyk, I maintain a healthily prurient curiosity as to what really goes on Behind Convent Walls, and director Cabanel generously provides a heavenly diorama of ceremonially cloistered in-out! I think it is fair to claim that by utilizing a raw cast of non-actors, and comprised moistly of hand-held camerawork, this unabashedly erotic film may be seen as a continuation of the groundbreaking verisimilitude formalized by the leading lights of the nouvelle vague. I am certainly not the first, and I shall not be the last to state that watching fleshly frolicking nuns can become devilishly habit forming. Since love is a universal language, the lack of subtitles shouldn't prove too distracting.

 Fatal Bond (1992) – Vincent Monton.

'Don't open a can of worms you can't eat!'

This unexpectedly thrilling 90s Aussie psychodrama centres around kindly hairdresser (Linda Blair) falling hard for handsome, enigmatic rogue Joe (Jerome Ehlers), and, soon, just like the song says, Too much love can kill you, baby! What begins as an apparently routine 'Did he, or did he not do a very bad thing?' erotic road thriller, very soon excitingly develops into an utterly compelling Oz-Crime barnstormer! Competently made, frequently suspenseful, with winning performances, and attractive Australian vistas, Fatal Bond is a more than watchable adult thriller, proving to be an additionally delicious treat for Linda Blair fans!!!!

Granted, she only gets one out, but even ONE delicious Linda Blair pectoral gland is sure fire better than NO Linda Blair pectoral gland, guy! Closing on a less salacious observation, the delectably pulchritudinous Blair, and partner Ehlers appear to have palpable chemistry, which genuinely kept me guessing as to the dark narrative's credible twist. In addition, it must also be said, Linda's abundant curly blonde tresses are absolutely exquisite to behold! (Keen muscular male botty watchers may also care to note that Ehlers brazenly gets it out, and it's a jolly fine specimen of steely Gluteus Maximus!)

 Stripped To Kill (1987) – Katt Shea.

Sexy strippers are being brutally slain, the cops, and fellow dancers believe Pockets (Peter Scranton)committed the fell deed, a regular gawker, prone to gifting favoured dancers with a plastic flower. While demonstratively a legit cuckoo bird, but is he a killer? spunky can-do undercover cop Cody (Kay Lenz) thinks otherwise, and stoically shakes her delectable booty as she bravely ferrets out the terrible truth! Right off the bat, whoever came up with the juicy gimmick of producing a supremely saucy slasher with pole-to-pole grinding hotties deserves at least TWO stars on Hollywood Boulevard, and if they additionally suggested the delicious Kay Lenz for the role on the pole, they righteously deserve another!

While the plot/killer is no less conspicuous than Rudolph's brightly crimson Xmas hooter, it doesn't distract the tiniest iota from Stripped To Kill being one of the most perfectly pulchritudinous, and ridiculously entertaining slashers ever made! I can readily accept that many don't share my conviction in Stripped To Kill's flawlessly lurid watchability, NO ONE can legitimately question the fact that firecracker Lenz delivers the finest acting performance of ANY slasher, then, or now, by quite some considerably artful margin! Likeable characters, suspense, slinky suspenders, properly banging 80s choons, bawdy banter, grim pyro deaths, and goddess Kay Lenz!!!!!!! F'N A' RIGHT!!!! Granted, there's been a lot of blood under the bridge, but Stripped To Kill pointedly contains the most beautifully slash-able bodies to have ever been stuffed inside a prop body bag! Hey!!! If y'all don't get wood at least once while watching this banger, it's absolutely time you finally pulled the trigger on that new penis upgrade, you've long been promising yourself!