Hiruko The Goblin (1990) - Shinya Tsukamoto.

A seasoned archaeologist and his mustard keen pupil disastrously disturbs an ancient, demon-possessed burial ground, inadvertently unleashing the hatefully head harvesting, horribly arachnoid hobgoblin Hiruko! Made after Shinya Tsukamoto's hugely successful independent body horror masterpiece Tetsuo, his thrillingly gory, wickedly playful, equally kinetic creature feature remains a dazzlingly eye-popping treat for fans of inventively blood-spattered horror. Beautifully made, with energized performances, a spectacularly sinister beastie, memorably vivid practical FX, and an exhilaratingly intense climax. The wickedly entertaining Hiroku The Goblin is well served by Third Window Film's exceptionally crisp looking, and dynamic sounding Blu-ray edition. Maestro Shinya Tsukamoto's cult 90s classic has been immaculately restored, the deliciously grisly palate of shockingly crimson hues and luridly green goblin-y gloopiness really packs a slimy wallop on HD!

 Gonjiam : Haunted Asylum (2018) - Jung Bum-shik.

A livestream of a popular online horror series is disturbingly interrupted by inexplicable, increasingly supernatural events that very soon threatens the lives of our freaked out ghost hunters. The creepy South Korean shocker Gonjiam : Haunted Asylum is a fun, jump-scare laden treat for found footage horror fans. Not the most inventive Korean horror film, but it's well-made, energetically mounted, and aficionados of Asian horror should appreciate the spooky content. I'm actually quite surprised how much I enjoyed this, the young cast are lively, the oppressively dank-looking asylum is a suitably grim location, and the capable director certainly delivers the ghoulish goods in the enjoyably hectic climax!

 Le Combat Dans L'ille (1962) – Alain Cavelier.

Powerful noirish thriller about an increasingly tormented terrorist's (Jean Louis Trintignant) descent into escalating paranoia, monomania and murderous mayhem. With fascinating performances, lively filmmaking, and an especially gripping text, maestro Cavelier's masterful, politically savvy drama is utterly vital cinema, with many of the themes certainly no less relevant today. Once again, Radiance provides a beautifully restored monochrome print, and cinephiles are sure to appreciate the extras, including a truly exquisite Cevelier short. It must be noted that goddess Romy Schneider is on utterly ravishing form, luminously beautiful, she remains one of the most captivating screen presences of all time.

 SHINOBI TRILOGY.

The iconic Shinobi Trilogy remains absolutely essential viewing for action aficionados with a yen for all things Ninjitsu! Exquisitely made, consistently rousing action, with superb performances, great pathos, and fascinatingly complex plotting. Once again, Radiance are to be congratulated on restoring these uncommonly thrilling examples of vintage Japanese cinema, and, for me, the truly sublime Shinobi trilogy is one of their crowning achievements thus far. Sharper than a Shuriken, the B/W photography is absolutely ravishing, the kinetic, compellingly blood-thirsty battles really 'pop' on HD, allowing one to imagine the impact of seeing these hugely influential films at the cinema. I must openly admit to being an unapologetic fanboy of Asian cinema, prone to gushing hyperbole, but I can state quite plainly that Shinobi is objectively great cinema, with many indelible sequences that are sure to linger long after the credits.

 Woods are Wet (1973) – Tatsumi Kumashiro.

This explicitly raunchy De Sadean romp finds innocent babe in the woods Sachiko (Hiroko Isayama) drawn into increasingly perverse depredations initiated by massively corrupted couple Yoko (Rie Nahagawa) and Ryunoske (Hatsuo Yamaya). A highly regarded naughty Nikkatsu classic, and personal favourite, this spectacularly lurid period pinky gem is voluptuously replete with a fascinating cornucopia of sinisterly erotic set-pieces. Lusty performances, inventive filth-making, and a teasing plenitude of illicit content provides armchair masochists with 65 delectable minutes of artful smuttiness! Woods are Wet is gloriously endowed with an especially nubile protagonist, and her debasing ordeal proves powerfully compelling. The technical aspects of this HD presentation are outstanding, giddily highlighting the bravura, blood-soaked obscenities with dazzling clarity! Not only thrillingly erotic, there's a delicious streak of wickedly dark humour throughout that I found wholly irresistible!

“it's like boiled cabbage, it goes in crisp, comes out floppy!!!”

 Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon. (1971) - Shogoro Nishimura.

The naïve, beguilingly beautiful, increasingly frustrated wife (Kazuko Shirakawa) of an insensitive white-collar stiff is coerced into prostitution, and her increasingly erotic awakenings are teasingly exposed in Shogoro Nishimura's voyeuristic extramarital shunt-serenade Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon. Sensual, rather than garishly explicit, this lusty Nikkatsu Roman Porno is, perhaps, more of a saucy melodrama than many of the more outré examples of this rewardingly perverse genre. While relatively tame, I still very much enjoyed the film, as the charming lead Kazuko Shirakawa is both sympathetic, sweet, and distractingly lovely! The HD presentation is a most welcome one, film transfer is sharp, with appetising flesh-tones, and natural-looking exteriors. The splendidly seedy Pinky trope of virtuous wife/girlfriend forced into multitudinous levels of degradation is a familiar one, frequently taking more sadistic tangents than seen in western smut. My own preference is for the nastier 'Assault : Jack the Ripper' type, Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon is certainly not without zesty incident!

 Blood Delirium (1988) – Sergio Bergonzelli.

Neurotic artist (John Phillip Law) is driven luridly insane by the death of his beloved wife (Brigitte Christensen), and his spectacularly vile necro-cannibal manservant (George Mitchell) diabolically turns the maniacal maestro's ancestral pile into a gruesome, cadaver-strewn nightmare! While the text is an amusingly camp, cliché-sodden shambles, the goofy exchanges, wanton sexual perversity, bloody eviscerations, unleavened hysteria, and endearingly rudimentary practical FX provides a cornucopia of bloodthirsty B-movie mayhem! This tantalizingly trashy, goriously tasteless Gothic slasher has scintillating Schlocky sensibilities on par with John Waters and H.G Lewis, thrillingly making 'Blood Delirium' a delirious treat for Euro-cult horror fans! Technical aspects of the splendid Screenbound Blu-ray are exemplary, pristine sound and vision enhances the plasma-plastered shocker's dazzling idiosyncrasies, and the extras offer compelling insight into the making of a sleazily demented Italian cult classic!

 To Kill a Mastermind (1979) – Chung Sun.

Invidiously clandestine marauders, the greatly feared Qi Sha Clan have long been terrorising all and sundry with their bloodthirsty chicanery. Deviously dominated by a malign martial arts mastermind, it will take uncommon heroism and prodigious Kung Fu savvy to bring these murderous misfits to book! Chung Sun's far from sluggish, tremendously exciting martial arts epic has all the dastardly machinations, savage gorings, flamboyant outfits, and dazzlingly acrobatic spectacle one expects from the iconic Shaw Brothers studio. To Kill a Mastermind may not be the most thoroughbred title in the esteemed SB stable, but the handsomely restored HD edition is a delight, as there's nary a dull moment in Chung Sun's engagingly plotted, consistently thrilling cavalcade of exemplary Kung Fu bellicosity!

 Magic Cop (1990) – Stephen Tung Wai.

Successfully capitalising on the wholly deserved popularity of Mr. Vampire, charismatic HK icon Lam Ching-ying returns as taciturn mystic rural cop Feng, summoned to the mainland in order to solve the confounding case of a zombie drug mule! Hugely inventive, exciting, winningly playful, and frequently very funny, Magic Cop remains a compelling admixture of athletic physical comedy, kinetic action, lively badinage, and exhilaratingly strange interludes of arcane Chinese sorcery! For me, Stephen Tung Wai's wild, deliciously eccentric, intricately bizarre opening sequence remains one of the most dynamic expressions of a hero's heroic persona ever conceived, with palpably more cinematic vitality than John's increasingly flaccid Wick!

The Invisible Man 50s TV series.

I absolutely love this vintage British Sci-fi series! Action-packed and consistently entertaining, these are properly cracking yarns, but the real unleavened joy is spotting the legit film & telly icons that turn up in each episode. The quality isn't especially spiffy, but it looks like it was either shot on 16mm/35mm, and the handsome B/W photography remains quite evocative at times. Lots of exterior locations, which is choice, since it is always a treat to see a long gone 50s Britain. The bits when he biffs the villains is nicely done, he gives 'em a right walloping, mayte!

 Fear in The Night (1972) – Jimmy Sangster.

I remain a huge admirer of this splendidly atmospheric Hammer thriller, positively roiling with malign Machiavellian discords, and fascinatingly replete with hysterical hot-flushes of macabre mania, arguably comparable to the very best sinister scheming of Hitchcock and Clouzot, H.G, not the other fella, natch! Like Symptoms, much of the villainy takes place during the day, which suggests that the title might be playfully ironic! As ever, Cushing is positively immaculate, and his notable fellow artistes deliver no less exemplary performances, with a dishily deviant Dame Collins being on exquisitely horrid form! 

 Smile (2022) – Parker Finn.

1^st there was the snoozy shocker It Follows, which then flaccidly begot the equally unexciting, Jumpscare-grotty Smile. I have quite severe OCD, so, annoyingly, I must endure all films to the bitter end, even if they almost immediately prove themselves to be as ruthlessly insipid as Smile! That being said, it wasn't entirely without mirthful incident, I undeniably smirked at the amusingly silly twisty-turny head bobbins, and Marilyn Manson's bravely make up free cameo at the film's glaring anti-climax engendered a modestly-sized grin! Sadly, two splendidly silly bits do not a credible horror film make. Therefore, I humbly propose that someone produces 'Rictus', a big boy horror film with ACTUAL scary bits! Granted, it's a crazy idea, but it just might work! 

Like so many, no less Jump Scare-spastic contemporary horror films, Smile suffers greatly from its lacklustre text, placidly invoking all the genuine terror of a Playmobile Pirate. It genuinely saddens me that so many horror films are produced today without a vestige of originality, all under the gross misapprehension that gratuitously photorealistic gore, and dully repetitive Jump scares can miraculously compensate for a prodigious lack of narrative invention!

Such a generosity of pallid jump scares gives horror fans very little to smile about. - Semolina Spunkpuddle.