Blood Freaks aka La Puta es Ciega. (2020) – Omar Jacobo.

In a spectacularly lurid, sublimely sleazy fashion, Mexican film artiste Omar Jacobo boisterously presents his punk-shocked deep-dive into the morally murky interstices of Mexico City. By graphically pulling back the protective scab of society, viewers are privy to a bracingly unsavoury view of the morass of abject human virulence swarming beneath it. Jacobo's aggressively grotty underworld milieu is strongly suggestive of the more outré, sordidly salacious Grindhouse miasma from the late 60s/70s. These deliciously dingy, downward-spiralling degenerates all comport themselves in a divinely deplorable manner, colourfully providing vidiotic sleazehounds with a perverse plethora of exquisitely insalubrious content. Armchair misanthropes, recidivist wallowers in celluloid grotesquery, and jaded consumers of Grindhouse grottage are sure to experience electric jolts of darkly vicarious pleasures. I don't think an underground horror film is ever truly complete without an intense, blood-spattered mini-maniac measuring up a beautiful cadaver for ritualised dissection. Wholly unexpectedly, Blood Freaks not infrequently provided carnal thrills that proved altogether stimulating. Others may well feel differently, but I found the skuzzoid subject matter and musical choices to be hugely compelling.

 Emmanuelle V (1987) – Walerian Borowczyk / Steve Barnett.

'He's not a man, he's a photographer!'

The erotic adventures of mischievously mucky-minded mistress Emmanuelle (Monique Gabrielle) continues lustily in perky part V, wherein our Bi-curious, horned-up heroine finds herself in the despotic clutches of a dastardly dictator's harem, with only her wicked wits, and saucy bits to make her bid for freedom! Historically, genre films were fatuously doddering into redundancy by part V, even the once rigorous Michael Myers and Rocky were pretty geriatric at 5, and yet, lissome Emmanuelle's soft-core escapades still fitfully provides serial smut-bogglers with a sultry smattering of her hot-panted peregrinations. Demographically, exploitation cinema garishly replete with prodigious rumpy pumpy maintains a longer commercial shelf-life, often having a more lasting appeal than more chaste B-features, as, quite frankly, the allure of a beautiful woman in her delectable birthday suit remains eternal.

Maestro Walerian Borowczyk has stylishly authored some of the more creatively artistic examples of Euro-cult majesty, Emmanuelle V, sadly, offers fans little that made Immoral Tales and La Bete so exotically exhilarating. While the sexy scenarios, lighting, text, and film-making proves universally flat, the same manifestly CANNOT be said of the film's perfectly pulchritudinous star, whose scintillatingly curvaceous form proves absolutely magnetic! The amusingly crude Romancing The Bone elements are not without a frisson of entertainment value, as viewers are treated to a prison break, and a bullet-blasted interlude of hectic, jungle-set action. I'm sure Emmanuelle V has been ruthlessly disparaged over the years, but this schlocky iteration of our tantalizingly trashy temptress is not without flashes of psychotronic interest to connoisseurs of top-popping tosh.

 Shock 2000 aka Snuff Perversions 2 : more bizarre cases of Death. - Todd Russell.

'Heinz likes to squeeze things!!!!!'

Shock 2000 is grab-ass title, but it is milkily suggestive of the millennial computer meltdown that, until now, has yet to manifest, so I'll go with the far grab-assier Snuff Perversions 2 : more bizarre cases of Death!!! No one without an yard of muscular meat in their sinewy sit-upon should miss out on this scuzzy compilation of pseudo-snuff S.O.V carnality. Horndog papists, basement-smelling dingle-dippers, unrepentant gooch sniffers, and retrograde preverts will prove the ideal demographic for this deep-diving death-dirge of synthetically synthesized S.O.V slaughter. I once experienced unnatural relations with a partially narcotized coelacanth, a not unpleasantly queasy sensation, which only partially resembled the darker scintillations borne from exposure to Shock 2000 aka Snuff Perversions 2 : more bizarre cases of Death.

These strange, analogue captured facsimiles of unauthentically administered exterminations, gaudily auto-eroticised asphyxia, gruesome thrill killings, and sleazy bedroom brutalising is winningly distracting fare. There's one scintillatingly sordid segment of savage siren snuffing, wherein a skeevy dude, clad in uncomfortable-looking bleached jeans busts a terminal number of caps into a pair of saftig pop-tarts, a bravura, blood-squibbed scenario of exquisite trashiness! Snuff Perversions 2 : more bizarre cases of Death proved too much for one Hollywood actor, that he called the cops, who confiscated all the masters, allowing grey market opportunists to release grotty 3^rd gen copies of this fabulously fetid Found Footage farrago. Ideal viewing should you wish to sharpen yourself up for some especially sadistic in-out, and the absolute absence of any narrative connective tissue or music proved weirdly refreshing.

 Bikini Carwash Company II (1993) – Gary Orona.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but I'm sure human lightning rod, and ex-forest ranger Roy Sullivan would beg to differ, happily, the creamy-delicious cheesecake formula of bodaciously bouncy beach bunnies goofing-off in peek-a-boo bikinis doesn't appear all too troublesome to replicate. Distractingly busti Kristi Ducati and her luridly lingerie-clad clique have their Carwash franchise bought from right under their perfect 10 attributes; will our pneumatic pop-tarts be able to raise the 4 mill required to keep hold of their sizeable assets? Bikini Carwash Company II's frantically frolicsome antics raunchily does its level breast to flesh out its paltry premise. Ravishingly buxom brunette Melissa's statement 'that money isn't everything', while banal, proves unquestioningly true, as scandalously soap-slathered, prodigiously perky, arbitrarily top-popping, playfully cavorting starlets are far better! While this takes a less grindingly crass approach to bawdy, Bikinisploitation jackanapes, the goofy, Brady Bunched, soft-bonking buffoonery proved episodically amusing. There is a certain integrity to unapologetically exploitative fare like the generously babe-stuffed Bikini Carwash Company sequel, the garish, nudie-cutie artwork truthfully suggests punters will enjoy a squeegee-brained, relentlessly hair-metalled hootenanny of hard-bodied hooters!

 UFOs: It has Begun (1979/76) – Ray Rivas.

The greatly cherished writer/TV Avatar Rod Serling hosts/narrates this fascinating UFO documentary, consummately aided by the estimable dramatical talents of Jose Ferrer and Burgess Meredith. As an avid, life-long consumer of vintage documentaries examining the multifarious mysteries of unexplained aerial phenomena, cypto-science, and alien interventions of varying degrees of credibility, I appreciated the palpably sober approach of UFOs: It Has Begun. Rivas's exemplary documentary arguably remains one of the rarer examples of an empiric, rigorously fact-based document studying the myriad aspects of alleged extra terrestrial phenomena. While it is purely subjective on my part, the use of 16mm, analogue animations, and a functional, no-frills approach to film-making remains far more appealing than the dully drone-centric, AI/CGI/HD, busily edited, Ancient Aliened hypothesizing Slop so prevalent today. Fans of Ufology should find enormous value in the measured contributions of trailblazing luminaries Dr. Jacques Vallee, and Joel Allen Hyneck especially edifying. Concluding on a more personal note, as one who values his work, Robert Ememenegger provided much of the text, and composed the score for Ray Rivas's compelling, otherworldly suggestive UFOs: It Has begun.

 The Bikini Carwash Company (1992) – Ed Hansen.

An ailing L.A Car Wash is about to fall on its ass, when some future tycoon cheekily initiates a bodacious increase in T&A, and, unsurprisingly, this additional display of nubile pulchritude soon puts the business bouncily in the pink! If y'all keep your brain in the toilet for the duration, this synthetically smutty, day-glow, slap-sticky workplace romp actively provides a salacious preponderance of aerobicized female fecundity. The dramatic content remains flimsier than the perky parade of hot-bodied babes string bikini's, with 'comedy' stylings that would have been dismissed as old hat during Mack Sennet's heyday, The Bikini Carwash Company's dazzlingly unapologetic display of plasticity is arguably good for a beer-goggled oner. While I'm certainly not proud of the admission, but I could never be fundamentally opposed to any bawdy bikini bonanza that featured such refined repartee as 'I'll cover your boobs!', 'Over my @ss!', and its winning retort 'You lazy bum!'. I must contradict the deluded fellow, as I can't readily recall a more energised display of extremely busy bottoms! Seen today, this may be objectively described as a tawdry, inexcusably crude, boorishly exploitative, booty-centric barrel scraper, but if your grasp on reality is no less tenuous than mine, The Bikini Carwash Company presents itself as a refreshing, top-popping tonic against the zeitgeist's smut-blocking Political Correctitude. In conclusion, more forgiving fans of exceptionally crass Americana, a cameo by B-Movie impresario Jim Wynorski, and the shrill hair metal buffoonery of Shake City might appreciate this bawdy Bikini bombshell more than others.

 Alien Apocalypse (2005) – Josh Becker.

'You like wood so much, eat this!!!!'

When astronauts Dr. Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and Lt. Kelly Lanaman (Renee O'Connor) return after a cryogenically-enhanced 40 year long mission, any hopes for much needed RNR is royally fubar'd by the grim reality of an alien takeover. Needless to say, both of our intrepid space trekkers are militantly bummed, press-ganged into slave labour camps, Dr. Ivan and the plucky Lt. Lanaman attempt to rabble rouse the enslaved humans to take up arms against their alien oppressors. Alien Apocalypse remains very much on the good side of goofy, a fun, retro Sci-fi romp, the 70s version would have perhaps featured Doug McClure, but I kinda prefer the signature studly wise-Assery of Horror's most heroically handsome head-knocker, the beautifully bestubbled scourge of these ornery insectoid malefactors.

The playful ironical tone is engagingly maintained throughout, with Campbell delivering a typically out-sized performance as 'The Great Healer', wholly credible as the courageous bug slayer, bloodily earning the moniker of 'The Great Exterminator'. It's been a minute since I last enjoyed a bona fide throwback, bug-eyed B-Movie monster mash, psychotronically replete with gruesomely head-chomping, green-goo spurting, eco-unfriendly aliens. I almost can't believe I'm about to say this, but the CGI'd creatures are kinda okay, I think the director having the enslaved humans sporting hellaciously fake beards/fright-wigs actually made the aliens look pretty sweet in comparison! In conclusion, as expected, Bruce Campbell rocks like vintage Girlschool, but I'm still in two minds about the purloined 'Im Spartacus!' business, and from the look on Bruce's boatrace, I think he had his doubts too!