Stark Fear (1962) – Ned Hochmann.

Following the sudden disappearance of paranoiac husband Gerald (Skip Homeier), his increasingly tormented wife Ellen (Beverly Garland) plummets ever more disturbingly into the furtive, scheming, desperately tawdry machinations of her congenitally abusive hubby. This zippy, engaging low-budget psychodrama is given an additional jolt of electricity by the dynamic presence of luscious, powerhouse Thespian Beverly Garland, and, to be fair, her boys put on a darn good show too! Stark Fear is crisply shot in B/W, the jagged, Neo-Noirish edges being occasionally muted by a saccharine score, yet Ellen's desperate search, and painful awakening to the sickening depths of her husband's iniquity proved appropriately stark and fearful. The film's mystery elements are robustly handled, the mawkish, melodramatic content is leavened by a number of palpably dark, surprising mean-spirited sequences, giving Stark Fear the pulse-pounding intensity of a vintage B-horror potboiler.

 The Lamp (1987) – Tom Daley.

It frequently proves interesting revisiting moderately neglected horror titles that are, perhaps, inextricably linked to the VHS home rental boom of the 80s. Much like The Kindred, even after all these years, The Lamp still flickered dimly in my video shop haunted memory. Inevitably, nostalgia plays a dominant role in the enjoyably goofy pleasures supernatural slasher The Lamp fitfully provides. 2 parts generic collegiate slasher, and 1 part creature feature mayhem, plus a frantic frisson of home invasion nastiness, it is this lively admixture of B-horror tropes that maintains The Lamp's lurid luminosity. Happily, the boomingly baritone-voiced genie trapped within the ancient, rather spiffy-looking Lamp is violently antithetical to the one popularized by Disney!

Following a brutal home invasion, the mysterious, undeniably ominous lamp is shipped to a museum, and once ensconced therein, it very soon unleashes its malevolence in an entertainingly schlocky series of gruesome, Djinn-delivered death scenes. The Lamp isn't going to win any belated awards for innovation, yet it remains a playful romp, a boisterously bloody reminder that the 80s were emphatically a heyday for gory, exploitative, mostly by-the-B-numbers teen splattering. Not unlike X-Ray, or Hide and Go Shriek, The Lamp benefits from its eerie location, and the divinely silly, The Gate-esque finale is still pretty neat! I've never related to the concept of a guilty pleasure, you either dig something, or you don't, no need to get all fancy schmantsy about it. Enough sermonising, go check out The Lamp, as, hey!!! you never know, it still might turn y'all on!

 The Ghost Dance (1982) – Peter F. Buffa.

While it happily never became a trope, the vengeful Indian spirit did inspire a number of quirkily inventive slashers, with 80s creepy curiosity The Ghost Dance arguably being one of the more entertaining examples. I'm no expert on the obscure mythologies of indigenous Americans, my scant knowledge is strictly second-hand, mostly from the likes of Olen Ray's cult slasher 'Scalps', but I still appreciate this mystic mode of supernaturally shamanistic slaughter. Regardless of the specific origin, in horror lore, ALL those who dabble in the profane mysteries of the occult often receive more than he, or she initially bargained for, as this ghastly Ghost Dancer sure 'ain't pussyfooting around! Seen today in its lushly remastered edition, Peter F. Buffa's compelling chiller The Ghost Dancer has more to offer horror fans than much of the dully recycled terror tripe of today.

Not dissimilar to vampire folklore, once they dig up the desiccated remains of renegade sorcerer Nahalla (Henry Bal), his vengefully resurrected spirit sinisterly stalks his victims in a host body, even supernaturally appropriating mesmerism/familiars, much like Stoker's immortal fiend. The Ghost Dance eschews the ubiquitous teen scream aesthetic, as the main protagonists are mature adults, with beautiful female anthropologist Dr. Kay (Julie Amato) providing for an intelligent, far more nuanced character than is so often the case. Another bonus is the moodily unhurried pace, allowing for a palpably eerie atmosphere to develop. While the stalk n' slash content is bloodily present, its modus operandi is considerably more refined than Voorhees's mostly monotonous minions. A forbidding atmosphere of dread, fine acting, Joseph Byrd's menacing score, picturesque desert locations, and a genuinely thrilling climax, allow me to highly recommend The Ghost Dance without a single reservation!

 The Janitor (2003) – Andy Signore/TJ Nordaker.

Entirely contrary to the angered summation of the aggrieved tagger, I don't share the view that Lionel (Andy Signore) is a big-time asshole, perhaps, merely misunderstood? Arguably one of the most resolutely proletariat slashers, this carnage contriving custodian from hell is still righteously sticking it to the man 20 years on!!!!!! While many, quite justifiably, regard The Janitor as being merely a tremendously gory, retrograde slasher, I believe that there is some argument to suggest that it houses at least a modicum of social conscience, satirically exposing the systemic abuses of the working-class by the shadowy despotic denizens of The Hidden Hand. Janitor is a succinct title, yet it could also be called Janitors, since the narrative also concerns Lionel's fellow, and no less singular custodian compatriot Mr. Growbo (Bruce Cronander), whose shocking act of duplicity precipitates a spectacularly gruesome reprisal!

Unlike his closeted slasher confederates, one of Lionel's greatest attributes is that, he is openly, and unapologetically psychopathic, hiding in plain sight, not behind a schmendrick mask! Extremely gory, blackly funny, sublimely idiotic, deliciously crude, providing a scintillation of eye-popping nubility, and absolutely contemptuous of good taste, The Janitor is one truly mean-spirited son of a bleach! Lionel is quite happy when couples copulate, his blood is only roused when they stop! Oblivious to ethnicity, or social status, Lionel bares no prejudice, he simply lives to kill in a supremely violent manner, he couldn't give any less of a rats ass about your schmantsy postcode address; just DON'T, whatever you do, take a whizz on his work boots! When a splatter-film wallows so nakedly in its own trashiness, it can transcend its limitations, cult chunkblower The Janitor proudly wears its FU attitude like a glistering badge of honour, proving, only rarely, that you CAN miraculously polish a turd!!!

 'To All a Goodnight' (1980) – David Hess.

Following the accidental death of a co-ed at frisky all girls Calvin Finishing School, and not long after the ubiquitous '2 years later' title card, a goodly number of these hot-panted, hyper-libidinous Santa babies are finished for good!!! This fun, easy to watch, largely routine early 80s slasher is stolidly directed by handsome genre icon David Hess, but any Splatter Mad Hatters expecting heroic doses of 'The House on The Edge of The park nastiness will be a mite disappointed. Amongst the festive pantheon of Yuletide slashers To All a Goodnight can still hold its bloodied, decapitated head high, since it remains a fairly gory, bona fide Christmas carnage cracker! This is certainly no turkey, and it's happily more Santa gores, than Santa bores, some may feel that To All a Goodnight needed just a tad more 'cranberry sauce', all the festively frolicsome co-eds are WELL worth stuffing! While the Grindhouse elements are lacking, and Hess's film suffers greatly from its lacklustre score, points are redeemed for the lovely girl next door Nancy (Jennifer Runyon), and make-up maestro Mark Shostrum's gruesomely neck-centric kills are certainly juicy enough!

 Abnormis (2010) – Maik Ude.

This wickedly gruesome German backwoods S.O.V slasher finds young couple Chris (Darkun) & Eva (Andrea Mohr) captured, cannibalised, and brutally Tortured by a monumentally gross, metal-mouthed maniac (Sven Spennagel). While the couple's fractious relationship was tempestuous, NOTHING could prepare them for the savage abuses at the graceless hands of their sadistic, psychopathically bloodthirsty captor! While slightly plotted, Ude's audaciously gore-loaded splatter-fest is more than generous with its heroic dosing of sinew stripping S.O.V butchery! The cellar carnage is intercut with Chris's blonde mistress Kristina's (Divina Buran) stoic investigations, her boozy private eye (Marco Kruse) proving inept, and the ill-tempered gun-thugs tasked to retrieve the dipso detective's gambling debt.

Abnormis provides much visceral pleasures to aficionados of extremely grisly, stridently splattery slashers, and any who especially savour the more demented examples of S.O.V mayhem should be all over this like hot funk on a rutting baboon's fire-red ball-sack! The cast's performances are above average for S.O.V fare, the plentiful practical FX might have been better served without digital manipulation, but the gorily untreated make-up is spectacularly bloody, and the vengeful, J-Horror'd, black-metal-looking banshee rocks no less righteously than the extreme metal title track! Should explicit depictions of a boot-administered abortion, bloody scalping, brutalising torture, monstrous skull-crushing, gratuitous gut-munching, raging kneecap destruction, non-surgical eyeball extraction, and absolutely insane bludgeoning be anathema to your viewing pleasure, Abnormis is manifestly not for you, dude!

 The Hagstone Demon (2011) – Jon Springer.

Hard-luck Ex-Journalist, active boozer Douglas Elmore (Mark Borchardt) works as a caretaker in the derelict, soon to be demolished Hagstone building. He experiences malevolent visions of his dead wife Julie (Gizelle Erickson), and not long thereafter, some of the remaining tenants die suspiciously, Douglas convinced that malign supernatural forces are at work! Jon Springer's engagingly quirky occult horror benefits hugely from Borchardt's sympathetic, winningly sardonic demeanour, amiably providing for an idiosyncratic, yet eminently watchable spook-seeker! The Hagstone Demon proved compelling odd, the doomy setting is eerie, and the lurid incidents of weird necromancy, and eroticized black magic bugaboo are colourfully realised. Writer/Director Springer has done an exemplary job of imbuing The Hagstone building with a bleak, and palpable strangeness, heightening the eldritch mystery that evilly envelops all within its decayed walls.

I strongly believe that The Hagstone Demon will continue to garner an increasing number of horror fans, especially those who appreciate the film's playfully off-beat approach to pulpy Satanic terror. While it's not altogether easy to explain The Hagstone Demon's singular appeal, but, for me, it frequently manifested a uniquely kooky/spooky vibration that I more than happily tuned into. There were sublime instances when the twitchier characters oozed an Eightball/Hate comic eccentricity, the dingy, diminutive comb-over freak being exquisitely Eightballian! Springer's neat-o indie spookshow was not only entertaining, it also revealed my hitherto latent supernatural talent, as I unequivocally knew, just from eyeballing the poster that I would love it, and, by Jove, I most certainly did!!!