'Virgin Among The Living Dead' – Jess Franco.

A beautiful, naive young woman returns to her grand ancestral home for a will reading, only to eerily discover that those 'living' in her father's house are not only emotionally detached, terribly eccentric, they may actually be quite dead!!!!! Macabre, oneiric, sensual, and fantastically strange, maestro Jess Franco's darkly atmospheric Virgin Among The Living Dead remains one of his more effectively sin-slaked shockers. Evocative of Franco's classic 60s Gothic, the openly titillating aspects of Virgin Among The Living Dead play second 'fiddle' to a truly dread atmosphere, the malignity infusing the diabolical characters is palpably Lovecraftian.

 Monster (2023) – Kore-eda Hirokazu.

This beguiling, immaculately constructed drama by maestro Kore-eda Hirokazu is no less perfect than the very best of Clouzot and Ozu. Exquisitely acted, Monster frequently explores emotional depths and human fragilities with a deftness that you don't often see in cinema. Writer Sakamoto Yuji's luminous, delicately nuanced screenplay impactfully presents a captivating, finely wrought mystery which ultimately proves no less sublimely tumultuous than life itself. The dazzling, wholly humane way in which Kore-eda masterfully obscures the film's truth proved unusually compelling to me, and the utterly glorious final sequence is surely destined to become iconic. As an avid, life-long film fan, there is something uniquely edifying about discovering such an extraordinarily well-made contemporary film, from the very first playful exchange between loving mother and son, I instinctively knew Monster would be pure magic!

 Midnight aka Mideunaiteu (2021) – Oh-seung Kwon.

Stylish and compelling Korean chiller follows brutal serial killer (wi ha jun) as he sinisterly pursues the beautiful, gamine deaf witness (ki-joo jin)to one of his kidnappings. I've still yet to pinpoint the precise reason for my continued predilection for gruesome thrillers about demented, serially slashing nutbags? Perhaps it was my unduly prolonged potty training, the lack of nutritious fluorides in my bathwater, or a precocious interest in all things pertaining to fulsome lady bottoms may, or may not, have had something to do with it. Who knows? Perhaps, if I had suffered a reasonably severe, yet survivable head trauma as a nipper, my 'adult' obsessions wouldn't be quite so degenerated!

I deducted points for the killer's lack of charisma, but awarded top marks for his tenacity, adaptability in a crisis, and prodigious running skills. Midnight's blazing final act is kinetic, the film-makers ruthlessly doing their utmost to torment the pretty protagonist for our perverse delectation. Curiously, Midnight owes far more to shockers of the past than most Korean horror films, and yet it doesn't feel terribly organic, this punter often felt manipulated, like a rat desperately scuttling hither and thither in a lab-coated misfit's cruelly convoluted maze. Much like the proverbial pudding, the busy narrative was a trifle over-egged, not always, but occasionally, what you don't see can inspire one's imagination with greater efficacy.

 Necro Files 2 : Lust Never Dies. (2002) – Ron Carlo.

I'm probably about as leery of sequels to bona fide cult classics as Churchill would have been of alcohol free gin, but Necro Files 2 gorily perpetuates the very same malign mantra of sordid excellence as the infamously prurient original. It was an uncommon joy to witness the rampaging return of the unspeakably ghoulish, grave-dodging malefactor with the rampantly outsized phallus! Griddle hot naked skeezers are hideously snuffed for our sleazy edification, and you absolutely CANNOT post any of the juicier stills without being kicked off the edge of the world. The zeitgeist absolutely does NOT love Necro Files 2 : Lust Never Dies, but I'm quite sure many will. Both uproariously funny, upliftingly crude, trashily gruesome, and deliciously naughty, EVERYTHING that makes exploitation horror truly great is demonstratively present, plus a ruthlessly lustful zombie with a dingy-looking donkey dong!!! Your road to wellness very much begins with Ron Carlo's unrepentantly sketchy Grindhouse brain-fuck Necro Files 2 : Lust Never Dies, I now sincerely believe there is still hope for a brighter, more inclusive world.

 666: The Demon Child (2004) – Cary Howe.

This is manifestly one of the most perversely enjoyable, Satanically stupefying schlock-bombs I have seen in quite some time! Cary Howe's 666: The Demon Child inconsistently provides terrifically trashy, and winningly Tromaesque brain-melt. While annoyingly replete with an ungenerous amount of T&A, the profundity of dunderhead dialogue, bungled Mise-en-scene, and unexpectedly earnest performances are objectively delightful! Howe's ineffably absurd creature feature 666: The Demon Child remains a proper giggle for the unrepentantly ethanolic, overzealous, bargain bin movie cognoscenti. No tweaked, dust bowl-set, demoniacal baby goof-a-rama ever deserves to be thrown under the B-Movie bus should it contain the immortally chucklesome line 'I can protect you from an egg!!!!' Followers of Ancient Aliens, crude Cryptid re-enactments, Mad Magazine film parodies, and Zechariah Sitchin may well appreciate the film's uproariously cheapjack mysticisms, and especially relish its reekingly Gorgonzola'd apocalyptical climax! When all is said and done, I am still left feeling a mite dejected, as I, sadly, should the need arise, have absolutely no one to protect me from an egg! (sigh)

 Maximum Violence aka Popular (2011) – Marcel Waltz.

A Prosecco-happy clutch of glamorous, yet ultimately vapid Fräulein's bloodily fall victim to the supernatural stalk and slashings of a vengeful, back-combed banshee in glitzy German indie slasher Maximum Violence. The moody raven-haired head of their school Frau Beck (Manouch)is a gas, doing a good line in acid hag, but she blew her glowering head off before I could get truly fixated on her delectably cruel Kinskiness! The victim/revenging ghost certainly has grounds for being proper ticked off, grossly tormented by malign matriarch Frau Beck, abused by staff, blithely mistreated by friends, her lamentable match stick girl life is brought to a comparably miserable end, inspiring her collegiate killing spree. High points do not include the routine text, but the lissom lassies are lovely, the Rhineland exteriors are picturesque,and composer Michael Donner ably provides some driving Synth Wave. My singular fetish for indie Krautshock was mostly satisfied, but Waltz's Maximum Violence might be more factually titled as 'Mild, to moderate bloodletting', since there didn't appear to be any use of graphic prosthetic FX, just a squirty, tricked-out Giallo razor, or, the version I viewed had been cut? Obscure slasher completists might care to give this a shot, but due to a dearth of T&A, and curiously minimal chunkblowing, appeal to gorehounds may be quite limited. I have the entirely subjective impression that the film's subtext may concern the various inequities borne of those overtly beguiled by capitalism, and if that is the case, I'll give it a wee bump!

 House of Dreams (1963) – Robert Berry.

'Why is Life such a mess?'

Low budgeted indie psychological chiller, shot on eye-wateringly high contrast B/W stock, does little to belie its penurious $10.000 price tag. Blocked scribe Lee's (Robert Berry) eerily precognitive nightmares about a desolated domicile, fatefully compel him to revisit this childhood haunt, discovering that not all dream houses are heaven sent! If one can overlook the prosaic dialogue, and excruciatingly enervating score, House of Dreams might remain watchable fright-lite for aficionados of goofy, home-made haunted house hokum. Undeniably static, with a lugubrious pace, there is an innate strangeness to the feature's off-kilter psychological discords. Performances are adequate, the dramatic elements are overwrought, soap-opera mawkish, which arguably provides an additional patina of psychotronic grist! The film would be greatly improved by Czech dubbing, with literarily upgraded subtitles, since House of Dreams tangentially expresses an accidental Art-house aesthetic. Even at 71 mins, its an uphill trudge, but some of the non-dialogue sequences have a weirdly expressionistic quality, suggestive of some long-forgotten silent-era short, and I am somewhat leery of the poster suggesting any comparability with Carnival of Souls, gittafook outta here, man!!!!