'Spasms' (1983) – William Fruet.

This cold-blooded 80s shocker features a dynamic performance by Oliver Reed, and fang-tastic effects by make-up genius, Dick Smith! The savagery of this Satanic, extra sensory serpent is off the scale! William Fruet's venomous creature feature hasn't lost its bite! And the Tangerine Dream theme is pretty choice too!

'Embryo' (1976) – Ralph Nelson.

One of the most intriguing facets to largely forgotten 70s Sci-shocker 'Embryo' is the casting. Rumpled icon, Rock Hudson, squirrelly, Diane Ladd, and the dazzlingly exotic, Barbara Carrera suggest lachrymose soap, or chintzy movie-of-the-week melodrama rather more than grimly gestating terror! Another singularity is the lack of archetypal 'Mad Scientist' tropes, and said 'monster' rearing its far from ugly head in the final act is another notable kink in standard creature feature DNA. The benign-ish Dr. Holliston's (Rock Hudson) cavalier usage of an experimental growth hormone on a purloined fetus has dramatic, wholly unforeseen results! Holliston's placental lactogen rapidly transforms this ailing embryo into the captivatingly beauteous, and voraciously inquisitive adult, Victoria (Barbara Carrera).

Domestic life chez Holliston becomes quirky, as twitchy sister-in-law, Barbara Douglas (Diane Ladd) is piqued by the increasingly malign actions of genetically altered Dobermann No. 1, and sleekly sinister, Victoria. Victoria's insatiable hunger to uncover life's mysteries, matched by her greater zeal for unlawful carnal knowledge with warped Svengali /patriarch, Holliston! More Dorian Gray, than Dr. Moreau, as the film's queasier moments are spawned from Victoria's desperate quest for prolonged life! Her accelerated deterioration can only be arrested by gruesomely harvesting the pituitary gland extract from a 5-to-6 month old fetus! The robust performances, maestro, Gil Melle's moody score, and a sordid, hysteria-laden climax all have an undeniable entertainment value, a fact blithely ignored by the film's many detractors.

 

 

 

 

'Teeth' (2007) – Mitchell Lichtenstein.

Teeth remains a gripping cautionary tale about the lurking dangers of teenage sexual promiscuity. Smart, shocking, and deliciously voyeuristic, Mitchell Lichtenstein's tantalizingly twisted, sinisterly satirical indie horror gem is honed to an excruciatingly serrated edge, Teeth is properly dental, mate!

'She bit off more than he could screw!'

'Crotch what you eat!'

'Love bites!'

'Open wide and say...AAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!'

Etc. 

'Trog' (1970) – Freddie Francis.

It lives below a stinking bog, Trog stays alive stuffing fresh human meat in its gob!' The screen has never before witnessed the frightful sight of this terrible troglodyte! Trog stars austere sex siren, Joan Crawford, British horror icons, Thorley Walters, Michael Gough, Euro-cult legend, David Warbreck, and is ably directed by Hammer Films maestro, Freddie Francis. Blindly traversing an ancient fissure, plucky pot-holers disturb the murky subterranean habitat of some rageful, light-phobic primeval horror!!! Freddie Francis's contemplative shocker about a retrograde, half-man, half-ape, cave dwelling cryptid is, perhaps, the primitive ancestor to Neil Marshall's contemporary tectonic terror-scape 'The Descent'.

Oft lampooned, this amiable Brit-Horror throwback is a hoot, festooned with especially quotable exchanges! 'What's on the menu for, Trog?' 'Fish & Lizards!' Aye! The breakfast of champions! Some horror fans share miserable Murdoch's (Michael Gough) view that 70s treat Trog is 'Poppycock!!! Insane nonsense!!!' But I sincerely feel that Brit-horror's missing link still merits study! Admittedly rudimentary in execution, what 'Trog' lacks in sophistication is warmly compensated by prodigious charm. Nattily attired superstar, Joan Crawford, is weirdly endearing as earnest anthropologist Dr. Brockton, and grouchy Michael Gough is enormous fun as the irascible, hypertensive Trog-hater Murdoch. The prehistoric mise en scène is occasionally sluggish, but Trog remains a sublime psychotronic B-Horror artifact, and John Scott's score is objectively wonderful.

 

 

'As Gouda as it Gets' (2020) – Anne De Lean.

I'm someone who quite frequently judges a book's merits by its cover, and I'm also a sucker for the unapologetically sentimental, super-smiley Hallmark brand. In truth, it was wholly inevitable that I would be drawn to a product appetisingly garlanded with such a deliciously pun-tastic title! While 'As Gouda as it Gets' isn't the goat of cheese ball comedy dramas, I'm quite sure that the fragrant, Fromage-clotted courting of these Philly Steak-stuffing lovebirds is bound to spread a little joy in an increasingly lactose intolerant world! On a more subjective note, when Brie reluctantly visited the formal Cheese Festival meet and greet, I thought her pleasing abundance of curly tresses were quite lovely!

Light, easily digestible romantic fare, 'As Gouda as it Gets' explores the love/work travails of sweetly obsessive artisan cheesemaker Brie (Kim Shaw) and blandly handsome Fondue maestro, Jack (Clayton James). While the dramatic ingredients are often curdled, the playfully romantic interludes of our inevitably amorous, cheese-feasting gourmands proved whey more satisfying than I expected. I usually Camembert such overtly gloopy sentimentality, but when a product is primarily an earnest love letter to the world's greatest foodstuff, I'll cut it some major slack, Jack! Lovers of Hallmark's glutinously cheesy fare should make a note in their dairy to catch 'As Gouda as it Gets'.

 

'In The Cold of The Night' (1990) – Nico Mastorakis.

Pixillated 90s thriller 'In The Cold of The Night' doesn't have quite the same notoriety as, Nico Mastorakis's infamous Goat-humping horror 'Island of Death'! Initially resembling a glossily erotic, Zalman King mystery, the film's burnished, neon-hued sleekness belies an inventively disturbing, intricately wrought mystery. Hip photographer, Scott Bruin (Jeff Lester) has his laid-back Bohemian lifestyle upset by a series of uncommonly disturbing dreams which finally threaten far more than his sanity! Emancipated from his feverish fantasies, the voluptuous temptress, Kimberly (Adrienne Sachs), is now corporeally manifested into Scott's Venice Beach studio, her intoxicating physical presence leading lustfully to a torrid affair!

Fatally transfixed by Kimberly's silicone valleys, ace photographer, Scott is quite literally consumed, body and soul by this ravishing enigmatic beauty, their impassioned union culminating in an outlandish, memorably mind-warping climax! Whereupon, the sex-sodden shutterbug is dangerously exposed to the tripped-out truth of his pulchritudinous paramour's scintillatingly shady shenanigans. Hardwired to thrill, Nico Mastorakis's neon-noir naughtiness has diabolically duplicitous dames, deadly diodes, and sinister, sharp-suited savages. 'In The Cold of The Night' remains a tripwire taut, off-beat treat, a cyber-sinister, triumphantly titillating adult thriller Brian de Palma fans won't want to miss!