'Sola ante terror' aka 'Alone Against Terror' (1983) Dir. Jess Franco.

For me, one of the compelling, lesser known genre features shot during Franco's latter-day Alicante period is Sola ante terror (Alone Against Terror). Alone Against Terror's relative obscurity is due in large part to its unavailability, rather than the quality of filmmaking, which in this pleasing instance is remarkably more sophisticated than one may think! This low-budget, captivatingly lurid psychodrama centres around the increasingly ignominious plight of fragile, mentally traumatized invalid Melissa (Lina Romay). Witnessing the grisly death throes of her beloved father (Antonio Mayans)traumatizes her so severely she is rendered comatose with shock. Paralysed, Melissa becomes bed bound, begrudgingly nursed to adulthood by her boozy, prototypically wicked, evilly inheritance-coveting stepmother.

The main strengths of Franco's hysteria-laden thriller reside in the charismatically tweaked protagonists and welcome generosity of sublime eccentricity! Oppressively confined to her bedroom, forced to listen to her stepmother, and her equally degenerated sister's hedonistic carousing, Melissa's nightmares become ever more intense. Melissa's precarious grip on reality fatefully shattered by the haunting apparition of her gruesome-looking father demanding that she revenge his brutal murder! As always, Lina Romay's energised performance is exemplary, watching the tragic, disarmingly angelic, Melissa righteously dispatch her villainous in-laws proves enormously edifying! 'Sola ante terror' is professionally shot, has a fine score, a sympathetic heroine, and the sordid, Sangria-sotted sister's antics have a deliciously camp, Almodovar-like quality!

 

 

 

'City Dragon' (1995) – Philthy Phil Phillips.

This enjoyably eccentric Hip-Hop head-knocker features buff, poon-playing pugilist Stan Derain aka 'MC Kung Fu' as the relentlessly rhyming, alpha dog Ray. Ray proves equally adept at dazzling the honey's with his cunning linguistics, or heroically handing bellicose barrio nitwits their asses with dynamite dexterity! City Dragon is some righteously next-level BMG, and 'Bad Movie Genius' of this magnitude comes along all too rarely! Like 'Samurai Cop' & 'Miami Connection, 'City Dragon' is another gnarly example of O.G Kung Fuckshituppery! The almost continuously rhyming dialogue provides inspired comedic continuity, and I honestly can't readily recall seeing anything quite so dementedly dope as 'City Dragon'!

Saccharine Hallmark dramaturgy, scintillating syntax, unexpectedly hot chicks, explosive nun-chuckery, Kentucky Fried Kung Fu, plus a mentalist rooftop climax that can be considered one of the most singularly strange confrontations ever conceived! Check out 'City Dragon' with alacrity, and give your chuckle glands a monstrously rigorous workout! Everyone should watch at least one vanity actioner starring a cocky, super-ripped dude called MC Kung Fu! For all its galloping cheapnis, and prodigious absurdity, 'City Dragon' remains far more watchable fare than any of the dully recycled drivel Netflix/A24/Blumhouse routinely inflict on the world. City Dragon would make a seamless pairing with, William Lee's equally stupendous D.I.Y actioner 'Treasure of The Ninja', since both are clearly made as a loving tribute to the legendary Bruce Lee.

 

 

'Oasis of The Zombies' (1981) – Jess Franco.

'Oasis of The Zombies' is arguably one of the more innately tweaked, exotically far-flung Euro-zombie nazisploitation gems. Much like, Jean Rollin's enjoyably bizarro 'Zombie Lake', it is all too readily dismissed as lugubriously unwatchable Eurocine cheapnis, yet I adore both unreservedly for their wholly unique narrative quirks. While Franco's filmmaking is undeniably rudimentary, some of the dusky death scenes have an eerie beauty, happy accident, or not, the stark zombie silhouettes remain visually enticing apparitions. The melodramatic 'Oasis of The Zombies', almost in spite of itself, successfully manages to engender a palpably weird atmosphere. While the crusty Zombie make-up FX are crudely unsophisticated, these tottering, bug-eyed, worm-ridden Nazis retain their rather unsettling aura!

With its funereal pace, and prosaic text, Franco's flesh-flaying folly is often hilariously inept, and yet, his haphazard mise en scène occasionally has a strangely compelling, dare I say it, surrealist quality. The increasingly less furtive rumours of 6 million dollars worth of Nazi gold bullion lures our rather nondescript protagonists to this cursed, far from idyllic desert oasis! The sadly forgotten B-Hero, muscular beef-lord, Henri Lambert's prolonged death scene in 'Oasis of The Zombies' is a bravura masterclass of manly acting prowess. As someone with modest thesping skills, I must bow deferentially to his dynamic display of unfiltered energy! At no point was I ever remotely in doubt that he had been terminally mauled by a narzee zombie, now THAT'S some propah acting, mate!!! I honestly find 'Oasis of The Zombies to be a far less arid version of 'Shockwaves', 'Schlockwaves', if you will!

 

 

 'Sadomania' (1980) – Jess Franco.

Young newly-weds foolishly trespass the sprawlingly mountainous grounds of an all-women labour camp, evilly run by gleefully sadistic warden Ajita Wilson. The loving couple's spontaneous search for adventure leads them darkly into a vile labyrinth of unimaginable cruelty, sexual perversion, brutal cat-fights, sordid flesh peddling, and steamily uninhibited prison cell nookie! There's an expressly thrilling interlude whereby a nubile blonde inmate is ruthlessly hunted down in a swamp, which excitingly recalls the joyfully exploitative sensibilities of, Al Adamson & Ted V. Mikels. I think it was Kazan who playfully opined that all you need to make a film is a lusty hot-panted chick and a plastic crocodile! I still have a great fondness for Franco's lurid Alicante period, and forgiving the tawdry text, these exuberantly wanton W.I.P larks often provide an illicit panoply of virtuosic eccentricity! To whit, 'Sadomania' boasts a bravura sequence with an uncommonly frisky Alsatian that still gives me paws for thought!

 

 

 

'Shadowzone' - J.S Cardone.

This somewhat neglected Full Moon Sci-shocker has a fabulous cast, a doomily claustrophobic location, and a surrealistically sinister monster, think Creepozoids on DMT! Something genuinely nightmarish has been murderously unleashed deep within a dangerously dilapidated, subterranean, government facility! It shouldn't come as any great surprise that the capricious human experimentation instigated by twitchy brainiacs, James Hong & Louise Fletcher might require a plentiful supply of body bags! 

Nasa Himbo Capt. Hickock (David Beecroft) dramatically discovers that the test subject's prolonged, artificially induced dream states has unexpectedly manifested a rampaging, eerily mutable pan dimensional entity! The formulaic text is additionally hampered by a conspicuously modest budget, but what remains is some boisterously fun B-Monster mayhem! Shadowzone's brighter points include, Mark Shostrom's gooey FX, Hong & Fletcher's able thesping, with Lu Leonard stealing the show as the irascible, Rat-hating chef Mrs. Cutter! We've seen this schlocky Sci-stalking shizz many times before, but, frankly, Hollywood has never held much stock in originality, if it ain't broke remake it until it is etc.

 

Succubus 1968 - Jess Franco.

With an unusually fascinating protagonist, Succubus remains an enigmatic, erotically engaging Jess Franco classic. A darkly hypnotic delirium, bold, elegiac, and vividly photographed, Succubus delivers a veritable pandora's box of tantalizing exotica! Starring the ravishingly ribald redhead Janine Reynaud, surrealistic slap n' tickle was never manifested with quite the same panache as Succubus! A personal favourite, and I'd very much like my future wife to share my passion for this dazzling diorama of fleshly far-out sinema. The luminous Euro cult cast, eclectic score, picturesque Lisbon setting, and Franco's playful mise en scène has certainly lost none of its lustre. A heady cinematic feast to rival the very best psychodramas of Roman Polanski and Radley Metzger. 'In a furnace, In a fiery hell she will rot!' 'A devil who must swallow the living in the pursuit of her earthbound desires, but a devil who must devour the dead in pursuit of her hell-born lust! - 'The day for me only begins at night!'