'A Bucket of Blood' (1959) - Roger Corman.

 Towering Terror icon Roger Corman's blood-basted beatnik B-Movie classic, the cat-astrophically crude, carnivorously canvas corrupting creepshow 'A Bucket of Blood' (1959) starring the heroically handsome, diabolically deranged Dick Miller in a terrifically twisted, terminally titillating, audaciously thrill-spilling, ominously omnivorous, orgiastically outrageous, beret-blastingly bonkers, gore-inspiring, shock-stirring, marrow-curdling, midnight movie nightmare! 'Inside every artist lurks.......a MADMAN!!!!' 

 

 

 

 'Zombie 3' (1988) – Lucio Fulci.

While remaining one of the more divisive terror-tripping titles in beloved maestro Lucio Fulci's majestically macabre oeuvre, this Philippines-set, panther-paced, gruesomely gut-spilling zombie apocalypse, wherein vainglorious scientists cook up some apocalyptically dangerous toxic goo called 'Death One' for reasons wholly obscure, which promptly turns their tormented test subject into a rabidly blood-thirsting, pus-drooling, terminally contagious, spleen-sucking zombie, and before you can say 'Fast-Moving, machete-weilding Zombie classic', the military instigate a monumental error of judgement, causing the calamitous contagion to spread with monstrous alacrity, the hellishly humid jungles are now sickly slathered in the plentiful gore of rampaging Zombie slaughter. Maestro Lucio Fulci, with a little help from schlock-rocker Bruno Mattei delivers some primal, juiced-up jungle splatter with heroic amounts of old school crusty attack Zombie mayhem, kinetic action scenes, sinfully sexy synths, bodacious pyrotechnics, and the daddy of bird-pecking, eyeball-popping perfidy, Lucio Fulci's gallopingly gory, doom-drenched Armageddon delivers diabolical death like a terror tsunami unleashed from the murderously mephitic bowels of hell itself! 

 

 'Deadly Embrace (1989) – David DeCoteau.

While being a far from exact science, thus far, my 'watch as many Linnea Quigley horror movies as possible' has generously yielded a goodly many titillatingly tasty horror treats from this most delectable of hard-bodied Scream Queens, and this serially smutty, late night flesh-peddlar about a persistently philandering husband (Jan-Michael Vincent), his bored, grossly neglected, increasingly neurotic wife, and their young, lusty, altogether handsy handyman coalesce into deliciously steamy skeezoid overkill, all of this heady, sweaty-palmed B-Movie ooze given additional zest with the preternaturally perky presence of bodaciously pop-topping, hot-botting creamy 80s scream dream Linnea Quigley, and I found much trashy edification in this smouldering hot 'Deadly Embrace'. Boozy cooze-hound Jan-Michael Vincent amusingly made for a suitably sleazy slime-bag in this low budget, body glossy, steamily skeevey, fleshy fabulous, garishly voyeuristic, psycho-headed soft gore suburban romp that'll get far more than your neighbour's curtain's twitching!

 

 'The Village in The Woods' (2019) – Raine McCormack.

'You must cut the thing that binds you!'

Low-budget horror films all too frequently rely on copious gore, and exploitative nudity to clumsily disguise the inherent lack of narrative originality, and while the macabre folk horror 'The Village in The Woods' is undeniably derivative, owing much to 'The Wicker Man', and the menacing, smog-slathered 'Horror Hotel', writer/director Raine McCormack's quirky backwoods chiller has a delightfully eccentric Pagan perviness that pungently permeates the smoke-shrouded, sinfully satanic shenanigans fulminating deep within the desolated, mist-obscured environs of this especially benighted village, wherein a penurious young couple, rather down on their luck, are ostensibly lured to this demonstratively inhospitable locale as the inheritors of the long-abandoned, woefully neglected hostelry 'The Harbour Inn', only to grimly discover that the altogether bizarre villagers harbour a most devilishly degenerate intent which creepily culminates in a diabolically degenerate climax, that saucily suggests that some more outre local customs can be deleterious to your health! 'The Village in The Woods' while lacking the hyperbolic grue of the more retrograde hipster horror movies made today, has an amusingly eccentric, old school, inherently British quality that, perhaps, fans of Brit-cult classics 'Virgin Witch', and 'Satan's Slave' might also appreciate, and if you are able to see beyond the obvious budgetary constraints, and courageously peer through this kooky horror film's dense swathes of voluminous smoke, you, like me, might just find much weirdness to enjoy! 

 

 'Night Tide' (1961) – Curtis Harrington.

'Night Tide' is a rather splendidly surrealistic, endearingly whimsical, doom-tinged romance betwixt handsome naïve young sailor Johnny (Dennis Hopper), and the breathtakingly beautiful Mora (Linda Lawson) who meet adorably cutely, and not long thereafter their budding courtship, and increasing intimacy very soon becomes darkly entwined with delectably strange events, all sinisterly set against the garish carny vitality of the waterfront amusements, fun houses, dingy beatnik dives, and the corrupted, brine-weathered austerity of Venice Beach, and its myriad eccentric denizens that lend additional colour to writer/director Curtis Harrington's sublimely melancholy, quasi-mythical Mermaid melodrama about this 'vortex of evil' that surrounds the mesmerising Mora, and the macabre fate that inexorably befalls all her young lovers! The weird fragility of Harrington's elegiac film is perfectly represented in a young Dennis Hopper's endearingly earnest, emotionally raw performance as the strongly beguiled sailor Johnny, whose burning love for the profoundly mysterious Mora makes for genuinely affecting, nightmare-tinged drama, whereby the skewed, off-beat dreamy atmosphere of 'Night Tide' is eerily redolent of 'Carnival of Souls', and 'The Witch who came from the Sea', taking the eerily entranced viewer deep into a sinister squall of psychological strangeness you shan't soon forget!

 

 

 

 'Command Performance (2009) – Dolph Lundgren.

Dynamic actor Dolph Lundgren has not only frequently proved himself to be one of the more versatile, charismatic, physically competent action heroes of his generation, the handsome He-man is now rigorously fashioning for himself a more than credible reputation as a no less thrilling action director, and dreamboat Dolph's suitably rigorous command of film-making can be readily seen in his propulsive, hard-hitting action-thriller 'Command Performance'. Ex-outlaw biker Joe (Dolph Lundgren) has his hopes about finally escaping his dark past by drumming in an increasingly popular rock band shattered during a break-out presidential 'Command Performance', as a dissident group of paramilitary terrorists hijack the venue, forcibly take the president, and his young daughters hostage, and during this grisly, bullet-shredded siege, many music fans are slaughtered, and therefore juiced-up avenger Joe must down sticks, and reluctantly take up arms, and proceed to bloodily John McClane his whirlwind way through the ensuing carnage in a brave attempt to thwart the maniacal onslaught of these especially murderous mercenaries, and as an action director, the real-life powerhouse percussionist rarely misses a beat, rhythmically keeping the adrenalized action popping fast and furiously, additionally putting in in a demonstratively heavy-hitting performance as hard-rocking, head-knocking hero Joe! Durable action icon Dolph Lundgren quite literally sets the stage alight with his explosively hard-hitting 'Command Performance'.