The Occult: An Echo From Darkness (1970) – Tom Doades.

Some primo 70s satanic Panic! The fabulously furry hippie cat in the comfy dress and pipe ensemble is manifestly my new god, I just hope baba gee will forgive me!

 The Lady Avenger (1981) aka Feng huang nu sha xing – Yang Chia-Yun.

A pretty model is sexually assaulted following a dispute on a shoot, and during the following, absolutely biased trial, the wealthy, privileged abuser is corruptly pronounced innocent of any wrong doing, and the aggrieved, dogged crime reporter (Lu Hsiao-Fen) later suffers a similar fate, but eschews the elite-run system, ruthlessly seeking out her own justice in a heroically brutal fashion. While the often sordid rape/revenge milieu has inspired a number of unwatchable dirges, The Lady Avenger remains one of the more exhilaratingly exploitative, grittily violent, and gruesomely executed examples of unleavened female wrath. Unlike the mostly turgid 'I Spit on your Grave', The Lady Avenger is kinetic, compellingly acted, and remarkably well-made, with many rewardingly inventive executions, and providing one of the most stunning man slayers in Cat III history!

The dramatic/expository elements are credible, lending additional gravitas to the carnage, that our sympathetic heroine righteously unleashes! While it is upsetting witnessing the brutal mistreatment of such an intelligent, charismatic, and exquisitely beautiful young woman, I don't believe director Yang's visceral Mise-en-scene was in any way gratuitous. Not long after her terrible ordeal, our bruised phoenix, while cruelly bloodied, remains resolutely unbowed, arising nobly from her despair, vengefully taking flight as a truly indomitable angel of death! It is not altogether frequent that a wholly unfamiliar exploitation title explodes so vividly on my radar, memorably providing such exceptionally WTFuckable content, The Lady Avenger is ripe for rediscovery!

 Hotel St. Pauli (1988) – Svend Wam.

After an expressly bleak title sequence, portents of existential doom heightened by a morose theme, we see the isolated, melancholic existence of young farmer Morgens (Oyvin Bang Berven) rural travails, contrasted by some voyeuristically metropolitan nookie, energetically performed by the equally handsome, actively bohemian participants of this ill-fated ménage à trois. Curiously, once the nervy country lad arrived at the train station, he hurriedly avails himself of the W.C, and proceeds to craftily knock one out? Is he an extrovert? Or does he simply have a perverse yen for the inglorious pen and ink of a public loo? His motivations remain unclear, as I don't Parlez vous a word of Swedish? The no longer amorous couple appear to have a fractious relationship, as Gerda (Amanda Ooms) didn't appear keen on her mullet-ed lover's (John Ege) persistent bedside scribbling? The Elvis-loving bumpkin Morgens then picks Gerda up, thinking she was a prostitute, and they return to the couple's studio apartment for a bit of the old in-out, but the naïve lad gets far more than he bargained for. I can't imagine the text being especially nuanced, since I question the rapidity of Morgens almost complete mental collapse, following a little rough sex, and one and a half spliffs? Perhaps Scandinavian home-grown has a prodigiously high THC content?

Singularly traumatized by the evenings events, a wan-looking Gerda has absconded to a dingy locale in Germany, presumably to wallow in nihilistic, opiated despair, rather than enjoying the country's renowned beer, and delicately spiced, pork-based delicacies. Even without he benefit of subbies, Hotel St. Pauli is sleazy, and pessimistic, being a somewhat shrill, melodramatic downward spiral, concluding brusquely in a pointedly hopeless fashion. I have always been a tad cynical about overly angsty yarns that include the ubiquitous anguished-in-a-church trope, I myself have been battered quite severely by life, and, as yet, I have never once been compelled to seek momentary succour in a draughty old church; I must still have too much heathen in me for that! I don't wish to disparage the actor playing Morgens performance, but there were one or two moments when he appeared to be over-egging it somewhat!?! With one part Fassbinder Sturm und Drang, a minim of Bergman, plus a major of Joe D'Amato, the intermittently erotic drama Hotel St. Pauli remains a hysteric, yet absolutely watchable example of noisome Scandi-gloom.

 Acceleration (2019) – Michael Marino / Daniel Zerilli.

'I don't want loser DNA in my house!!!!!!!'

A determined, physically capable woman (Nathalie Burn) is coerced by phoned-in Villain (Dolph Lundgren) to expedite certain tasks, in order to reclaim her kidnapped son in brisk DTV actioner Acceleration. Having to endure increasingly severe trials for personal gain/freedom goes back to Homer, so y'all don't need to be a Delphic oracle to predict Acceleration's outcome. Acceleration is a professionally mounted, formulaic B-crime actioner with a decent cast, so-so action, and a pedestrian text, so raddled by cliché, even the steely, monolithic presence of Dolph can't sweeten the ride. At this point, mainstream action, and especially horror, is left pretty much flogging a dead horse, any vestiges of relevance, or genuine excitement in genre cinema is being solely maintained by Asia. While it has become common practice to witness bloater Steven Seagal sitting/whispering throughout his execrable oeuvre, diminishing Dolph like this is a catastrophic miscalculation, like using a McLaren Artura for the midnight 7-Eleven snackky run! Sean Patrick Flanery is a usually reliable B-Action presence, but no actor is wholly immune to pony dialogue, and dour, rent-a-thug Liddell's slab-like persona has all the appreciable charisma of raw shellac. Like weirdo religious sects who must copulate through gauze, it ain't nothing like the real thang, and, sadly, Acceleration ain't even close to the real deal.

 Night Screams (1987) – Allen Plone.

I like saying the director's name aloud...ALLEN PLONE!!! ALLEN PLONE!!!! The 'Plone' part is strangely satisfying, much more so than his muddled/fuddled 80s slasher. I believe PLONE done PHONEd in his torpid Night Screams, bit of a dog's dinner, this one, the bloody parts are surely meaty enough, but it's put together sans finesse, doable if y'all are drunk/blazed enough, and the fridge is barren. Elucidating upon the dopey plot is an exercise in futility; angsty, emotionally unstable, med-skipping jock has a house party with largely unlovely friends, and they are fragged by folk, or folks unseen. The End! That being said, as lowest common denominator slashers go, it's not the nadir, Night Screams is notably less reekingly poo-slaked than 90s% of contemporary horror films. Happily, it's not all shocking mediocrity, the two jug-headed loons that bust out of Leavenworth are pretty live wired skells, and if Night Screams has focussed more on their freakazoidal home invasion antics, the experience may have proved duckier for this particular viewer.

Absolutely worth boggling if y'all are an obsessively list-making, see-every-slasher-ever-made demographic, but even with my increasingly compulsive issues, I struggled enormously with the film's desperate dearth of creativity. To recap, Night Screams is proper pony, but the moderate, pseudo-psychotronic elements arguably include an objectively bangin' dance sequence, we enjoy a tantalizing snatch of the brillo Graduation Day at the start, the squirrelly red head is one lava hot honey pot, and two of the more insipid party goers are enlivened by their watching a vintage John Holmes stag flick; observing lingeringly, and gratuitously soapy jubblies is no quality individual's idea of dead space! Now that I've royally slagged Night Screams, my initial negativity has tempered somewhat, it remains a schlock sandwich, with extra cheese, but, upon reflection, other Slasher fans may well find it far less irksome than I did.

 Teenage Gang Debs (1966) – Sande M, Johnsen.

'Nuts! To you, Buster! No one's gonna cut me up!!!!'

Any twitchy low-fi B/W roughie that commences with a Tempest Storm reference, and some douchey flop-haired cads slapping the tar outta some smart mouth strumpet can only get better, or much worse? Scheming hot tamale from Manhattan (Diane Conti) makes a righteous play for Rebel prez Johnny, who I assume is leader material due to his spiffy-looking 4-button, Bing Crosby cardigan? While the dishy Debs are feistier than a hornet highball, their dude's are a milky mess of button-down goofs, not one looking like he could make a dent in a day-old rice pudding? Presenting itself like a cheapnis, back-alley Macbeth, tough broad Terry connives and cat-fights her way to the big-time, but, perhaps, she has bitten off more than she can screw?

The plenitude of soft-boiled beatnik banter is no small part of Teenage Gang Debs skeezicks charm, and the bongo-happy, jazzoid score nails this quickie gang-flick indelibly to the era it was shot. I'd like to think that Coppola saw this, and made a concerted effort that nothing of it should influence his Rumblefish! I have absolutely no doubt Teenage Gang Debs would have been perceived as being squaresville at the time, seen today, it camply offers a nostalgic look at 60s fashions, ephemeral dancing fads, and a delectably down and dirty NYC. I wasn't hugely surprised that the first dude to get iced wore a cardigan, even back in the day Marlon knew no one was gonna make a poster boy rebel out of some schmendrick in a cardigan!

 Shock 'em Dead (1991) – Mark Reed.

'Rock me, Asmodeus! Rock, Rock me, Asmodeus! Asmodeus, Asmodeus! Rock me Asmodeus!'

Dumb trailer Park Nerd (Stephen Quadros)sells his soul to play stunt guitar like vapid shredder Michael Angelo Batio in triumphal 90s trash disasterpiece Shock 'em Dead. Arguably the worst comedy horror Troma never made, Traci Lords-starring Shock 'em Dead is a fascinatingly awful, fearlessly facile, torpor-inducing hair metalled horror absurdity that remains an excruciating voodoo rite of (anal) passage for generations of bad movie masochists! I sincerely believe that Freed's deliciously doofoid Shock 'em Dead is some kind of tweaked Steel Panther fever dream, since fleet-fingered Satchel, creepily, hasn't aged a minim since '91, either an excess of Aqua Net has miraculously preserved his party hard life-force, or somewhere on Sunset Strip resides the ugly truth, his silently suppurating portrait lies rotting, horribly consumed by syphilis! My only beef with Shock 'em Dead is that once seen, it can't ever be truly unseen, like acid reflux, the mind is unable to fully digest it, forced to expel the more indigestible elements in a caustic, green-hued torrent of B-Movie bile! I can imagine that the 'music' written for Shock 'em Dead was intentionally awful, immaculately doubled by soulless speed-freak Batio, and therefore, was it also deliberate to replace the film's 'fake' bad guitarist, with a legitimately terrible 'real' guitarist????? I await confirmation with basted breasts.