Savage Vows (1995) – Bob Dennis.

'Screw off! You Deliverance-looking Fuck!!!!'

Following the tragic death of Mark's (Armond Sposto) wife, his closest friends opt to stay over the weekend, offering their emotional support. Early into the increasingly uneasy gathering, a menacing, black-gloved slasher shadows them, taking enormous satisfaction in attempting to snuff them all out, one at a time. The status of Bob Dennis's Giallo-inflected cult S.O.V has deservedly grown over time, due to its being made more readily available on physical media, and, of course, the internet. Themes of grief, and mental anguish are adroitly spliced into an entertaining, prodigiously stabby D.I.Y death-fest. The lurid analogue video aesthetic proves complimentary, as contemporary film-makers often contrive a faux Grindhouse look, whereas Savage Vows remains atmospherically steeped in gritty S.O.V authenticity. Savage Vows legacy is sustained by its not inconsiderable creativity, able performances, suspenseful text, lively score, and lingeringly gory kills do much to belie its no doubt meagre budget. Produced by The Polonia bros, and starring 'Hallucinations' main man Rob Polonia, this outstanding regional classic provides top tier analogue gore-blasting, making the shuddersome Savage Vows a thrillingly bloody, twist-laden terror treat! The unsettling atmosphere is greatly heightened by tasty deep dish synth drones, that doomily accentuates the maniacal slasher's aggressively grisly M.O.

 Beyond The Wall of Fear (2016) – Joe Sherlock.

This regional, micro-budgeted horror anthology's notable ambition is unfortunately stymied by amateur theatrics, a lacklustre script, and a conspicuously restrictive paucity of production readies. All that being said, Beyond The Wall of Fear is certainly not entirely without value to more forgiving fans of low wattage, Lovecraft-inflected shenanigans, and those who remain unable to resist the lure of a schlock-stuffed portmanteau shocker. Arguably, the continued popularity of indie horror anthologies is down to fond recollections of the late-night Midnight Movie, which would often be Amicus's influential Asylum, or, personal fave Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Persistent, numbing nostalgia, and garishly recycled plots/tropes remain frustratingly ubiquitous in far too many contemporary horror flicks.

Beyond The Wall of Sleep, whoopsie-doodle, Fear, is a somnolent offering, sporadically leavened by bemusingly trite dialogue, 'enthusiastic' acting, and a few righteous moments of exquisite goofiness! To be fair, while none of the segments are expressly awful, sadly little care has been taken in producing any especially memorable content, excepting the canine-scoffing beastie scenario which was intentionally chucklesome! One of Sherlock's more winning peccadilloes are the pleasing preponderance of plus-sized female protagonists, as a card-carrying Chubby Checker, these luscious lovelies provided a welcome distraction. George Stover completists can expect a scintillatingly succinct Stover-load of his Stover-sized B-Thespian charisma! In closing, I started to modestly groove on this during the Dopey-Dagon effort, and I'm still not completely sure whether I massively dug on the muzaky synths, either way, they certainly made an impression!

 Amityville : A New Generation (1993) – John Murlowski.

'Let's dance with the demons!!!!'

At this point in the Amityville multiverse quality control might be a tad wobbly, as the title is sans number, opting for a rather bland moniker, which is better suited to a long-running Sci-fi series, or a spiffy line in sportswear. Murlowski's DTV outing has a nifty cast, fortuitously snagging credible D.P/Director Wally Pfister, plus an atmospheric score by respected artiste Daniel Licht. In this iteration, the eternally 'hitch-hiking evil' haunts a mirror, able to beleaguer all those with the ill fortune to gaze fatefully upon its sinisterly reflective surface. Malevolent mirrors are a familiar trope, Milton Subotsky successfully utilised it in the Amicus portmanteau classic From Beyond The Grave, hell! Like the man said, if it ain't broke, right? In an Austin Powered nutshell, Amityville A New Generation condenses 7 years bad luck into 1 and a half hours of doable supernatural DTV schlock. Having a far better text that I recall, some lively exterminations, engaging characters, watchability being demonstratively boosted by Licht's notably on-point score. I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this revisit as much as I did, running contrary to all expectations, Amityville : A New Generation enjoyably remains a pretty serviceable, slickly-shot time-killer, and the sardonic asylum scene with spooky siren Lin Shaye is a peach! I would happily add this to my collection, and no small part of its continued appeal being the distractingly luminous presence of Suki (Julia Nickson).

 The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow aka Invasion of the girl snatchers (1973) – Lee Jones.

'Stay away from any Heavy Metal!'

During a seemingly routine investigation of a nefarious drug and kidnapping ring, private dick Sam Trowel (Hugh Smith) and stoner partner Kaspar (Ele Grigsby) discover the outlandish extraterrestrial plot of alien souls transmuted into their recently slain, and then evilly resurrected prey!!!! This ditzy D.I.Y Sci-schlocker takes the tabloid hot-topic of alien abduction, and infusing it generously with hazing clouds of hashish smoke. The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow goofily provides Ed Wood/Don Dohler/Robert Emenegger/Fat Freddy's Cat fiends with a low-fi'd, sky-highed cheapnis presentation of alien occultic skulduggery, dopey line readings, wing and a prayer FX, and a whole mess of bargain-binned B-Movie ballyhoo!

Most who go out of their way to catch an (almost) forgotten regional freak-scene with the admittedly flavoursome moniker of The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow will have more than an inkling of what they are in for, and, happily, Lee Jones certainly doesn't disappoint! The more stoned-immaculate schlock-seekers can expect a lively rudimentary concoction of grainy Grindhouse goof-a-rama, bad hair, cloddish acting, bong-blasted repartee, batso Ufoccult fanatics, and cathode ray oscilloscopes. If one vibes with the sluggish pace, Lee Jones's 1973, heroically spaced out oddity remains a backwoods bonkers, body snatching treat! This is a whole buncha dime store pulp hooey, but I got a boner the size of Christmas for dime store pulp hooey, and besides, lines like 'Yeah!!! Nice Glyphs!' don't just fall out of a party cracker everyday, dude!!!

 Salvage (2008) – Lawrence Gough.

Christmas Eve goes off with a bang as a sleepy, middle-class suburban cul-de-sac is suddenly quarantined by heavily armed special forces, and not long thereafter, the tense situation takes a grisly turn for the worse. You can definitively file Salvage as a Crimbo Chunk-blower, as once the turkey hits the bloody fan, it's gory giblets and gooey cranberry sauce all over the gaff!!!! Siege horror is a popular trope, beleaguered suburbanites, maniacal monsters, and a shadowy, gun-happy military are soothingly familiar horror archetypes, while Salvage wasn't especially novel in its approach, it provides familiar ground for bloody carnage and some robust final girl action. The main problem with much of noughties horror is the over reliance on shaky-cam, which I always found distracting, an irksome aesthetic Salvage failed to avoid. Weirdly, Salvage also recalled Euro-schlock oddity Bakterion aka Panic, which shared a similarly rampaging, melt-faced monstrosity, and manifestly remains much more of a goofily entertaining watch. UK indie horror Salvage is a mostly doable oner, but it kinda vibed like a feature-length, Halloween edition of Brookside, a sinking feeling reinforced by the prosaic dialogue. I didn't exactly dislike Salvage, but it needed additional blood-spurty monster-mashing, and a lot less stoic redemptive mummy shtick. Hey! I don't have anything personal against stoic redemptive mummy shtick, but less is more, guy!

 3 Days of a Blind Girl (1993) – Wing Chiu-Chan.

Angstily home alone, convalescing from an eye op that renders her temporarily sightless, Mrs Ng (Veronica Yip) experiences escalating terror after a stranger (Anthony Wong) arrives unannounced, and not long thereafter, it is disturbingly revealed that his agenda is altogether malign! I would happily watch a film about a dude jumping up and down in a puddle, if said dude was Anthony Wong, fortunately 3 Days of a Blind Girl finds him in signature skeevey form, nastily portraying a monumental creep,the very last type of man you would want sleazing around your loved-one, temporarily blind, or otherwise! Firebrand Wong has a truly unique gift of expressing all the most degenerate aspects of man with aggressive fluency, to whit, he can even make eating a bag of Maltesers appear palpably threatening! Morbidly voyeuristic, deliciously macabre, suspenseful, and not just a little bit perverse, Wing Chiu-Chan's 3 Days of a Blind Girl remains a wickedly compelling, tantalisingly tweaked, er, must-see Cat III shocker. In the sadly modest pantheon of imperilled blind women horror, the electrifying 3 Days of a Blind Girl stands lofty, and the exquisite Veronica Yip is truly a sight for sore eyes!!!!!!

 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.