The Asian Connection (2016) – Daniel Zirilli.

'I want his head, put on this tray!!!!!'

A pair of opportunistic ex-cons commit the egregious error of ripping off a Cambodian Bank holding Gang Boss Seagal's loot, leading to duplicity, and bloody, bullet-blasted retribution. Shot against an especially picturesque backdrop, The Asian Connection benefits greatly from its exotic, sun-slaked location, happily providing a distractingly glossy sheen to these stock, one-heist-too-many shenanigans. Featuring ubiquitous double-dealing, a lunkheaded, trigger happy sidekick, a slinky Thai siren (Avalon), noisome, but somewhat synthetic-looking action, with bubble-butt Seagal making for more of a glumly constipated villain than usual. I'm not saying that okay-ish DTV actioner The Asian Connection benefits from Seagal's prolonged absences, but it would be fair to say, that it didn't hurt! As a fan of vintage Seagal, and his more gloriously goofy noughties misfires, I must confess that it proved to be more watchable fare than I thought. Happy Jack (John Edward Lee) and his beautiful beau Avalon (Pim Bubear) are sympathetically doomed, Seagal-crossed lovers, there's appealingly exotic scenery, and it's all over before any guilt about watching yet another formulaic Seagal flick kicks in!

 London Heist (2016) – Mark McQueen.

'He's a no good, dog cunt wrong 'un!!!!'

Charismatic man-cake Craig Fairbrass plays formidable blag artist Jack Cregan, the brawny brains behind a successful series of high profile heists in Mark McQueen's pacey gangland thriller London Heist. While the serviceable plot and dialogue aren't too lively, they are given additional pep by a fine cast of familiar faces, with national treasure James Cosmo being on chillingly understated, especially menacing form. With a couple of enjoyably boisterous set-pieces, London Heist proved far more compelling that I had imagined, and to the director's credit, the lairy, lad-tastic shenanigans climaxes bloodily in a thrillingly muscular manner. If you're going to hire someone to repeatedly snarl 'Slimy Cunt!', and other equally savoury epithets, you certainly can't do much better than Steven Berkoff! I must hereby confess to being an avid fan/collector of the Brit-Thug milieu, so in many instances I tend to be a trifle overgenerous with my praise, so I think fellow fans will appreciate London Heist more than those who wouldn't know a Long Boat from a cushty portion of Salmon Rushdie.

 Naked as Nature Intended (196) – Harrison Marks.

Enjoyable 60s peek-a-boo cheekiness that follows the flighty adventures of four young ladies on their nudie holiday in historic Cornwall. A playful, bracingly bucolic, expressly scenic example of a modestly immodest vintage British skin flick. Quite charming in its own way, featuring light-hearted narration, appealing countryside vistas, natty period fashions, stridently pastoral score, and exquisitely lovely English maids in the blissful buff, pretty as a picture, just as nature intended! Sweetly wholesome, strangely uplifting, seemingly forgotten fare, very little to offend the zeitgeist, and avid paganauts will certainly appreciate the intimate footage captured at Stonehenge. Tasty, and eminently tasteful, 60s gem Naked as Nature Intended offers keen nature lovers a mildly titillating travelogue and vivid time capsule of a lushly green Great Britain of yore. It is, perhaps, an unexpected irony, that the earnest Naturists credo, so often espoused in the film of naturism promoting a healthy body, and equally healthy mind, may not be relatable to the more furtive viewers lurking in the audience! Speaking solely for myself, I maintain an especial fondness for the more enlightened exploitation titles that strongly support the beneficial practice of men and women therapeutically getting their beautiful botties out!

 Adam and Six Eves (1962) – John Wallis.

'He's a big man, but he ate like a bird, a six foot vulture!'

This frothy 60s skin-flick finds a doltish, implausibly fortuitous treasure hunter, dangerously adrift in the desert, finding fleshly succour within an exotic oasis solely populated by six hypnotically nubile nude natives. Aptly named Randy Brent stars as the hapless Adam, sultrily beguiled by this bouncingly buxom bevy of blissfully boff-able babes. Should one be able to temporarily suspend one's disbelief for 60 cheesecake-stuffed minutes, the jocular text proves modestly mirthsome, I could never completely resist a sardonic, serially quipping mule, coupled with a perky panoply of permanently topless totty! What the tantalizingly titty-licious Adam and Six Eves lacked in profound intellectual substance is more than generously compensated by spectacularly voluptuous substance! On an entirely more subjective note, I thought the fabulously fulsome Fatima was a peach, even with her crooked witchy beak, and I manufactured additional amusement by pretending the disproving donkey was voiced by Peter Falk!

 The Commando (2022) – Asif Akbar.

A routine, mid-budget DTV shoot 'em up that is certainly enlivened by the charismatic presences of a seemingly ailing Mickey Rourke and agile Kung Fu phenomenon Michael Jai White. The mediocre plot is conspicuously recycled Seagal/Lundgren fare, wherein 'I got a bad feeling about this!' is said without irony, merely highlighting the literarily moribund text. Ex-jailbird, biker skell Johnny's (Rourke), violent attempts to reclaim ill-gotten loot, secretly stashed in PTSD stricken veteran James's (White) house concludes with predictably Fubar'd results. The action is competent, though not especially thrilling, whereas Michael Jai White's nuanced performance as a physically capable man struggling with debilitating mental health issues was sensitively portrayed, revealing a greater depth than many of his action hero peers. The Commando has a rather unhurried pace, the bloody climax being preceded by a gnarly home invasion, with handsome star Michael Jai White heroically protecting home and hearth with consummate brutality. I mostly enjoyed The Commando, my appreciation largely due to a continued fondness for Mickey Rourke, and a great admiration for Michael Jai White's prodigious martial arts prowess.

 The Necro Files (1997) – Matt Jaissle.

Following the gruesomely Blood Feastian slaughter of a nubile, the vile rapist's remains are cartoonishly reanimated by a Walmart Satanist in a knock-off Gwar outfit, thereby diabolically disgorging one of the most ghoulish goof-offs in S.O.V history. Bereft of even a minim of plausibility, Jaissel's exultantly trashy trawl through buckets of animal entrails, gratuitous gut-spillage, squirrelly performances, puerile perversity, and doggy-doo dialogue miraculously transmogrifies into a bat shit bonkers B-movie banger! The dime-store diabolism, spectacular crudity, trite TV Cop-isms, deliberate avoidance of nuance, and unrepentantly D.I.Y splatter FX, suggests that The Necro Files's infamy is despicably deserved! All that being said, this is plainly a case of preaching to the perverted, as some mainstream horror fans may baulk at Jaissle's relentlessly doofoid mise-en-scene.

The Necro Files dingily entertaining content proves that, on Blue Moon occasions, one can indeed make a Silk schlock purse from a cow's bloody ear! When a cheapnis chunk-blower revels so joyously in the absurdity of its premise, pointedly ridiculing credulity with the comedic ingress of a child's denuded doll, poorly masquerading as a wire-borne demon spawn, this is hugely deserving of our respect and admiration! A frustrating number of no-budget schlockers are merely turgid facsimiles of formula-flaccid Hollywooden slashers, whereas The Necro Files's continued popularity and preservation on HD is not only meritorious, it proves that John Water's immaculate credo of trusting one's own bad taste remains invaluable advice for any would-be splatter-maker!

 Twilight (Szurkulat) 1990 – Gyorgy Feher.

An uncommonly bleak, Bible black Hungarian thriller from 1990 that eerily seems to exist in a sinisterly primordial age all of its very own. A seasoned detective's search for a brutal serial child killer draws him inexorably into an obsessive manhunt which leads him ever deeper into a malign vortex of his very own increasingly tormented psyche. Twilight is a morbidly crepuscular, unhurried, almost wholly interior crime procedural, an existentialist nightmare which slowly envelops the spectator within a dense pall of creeping disquiet. An astonishing, absolutely unique iteration of a murder mystery, Gyorgy Feher's singular vision is strikingly visual, unsettling, yet never less than mesmerising. Utilizing his fluidic camera with consummate skill, the detective's expressly grim, psychologically devastating odyssey is illuminated in only the blackest of hues. An exquisite work of immaculately photographed doom, both manifestly human and utterly primal, breathtakingly beautiful and utterly profane. Films are actively voyeuristic, and if made especially skilfully, they momentarily turn us all into Peeping Toms, and some truly rarefied films, do the very opposite, they stare deeply into the viewer, pitilessly probing our viscera and brain flesh like a mortician; this is just such a paradigm shifting work. Feher's Twilight is quite unlike any crime film I can recall seeing, Jean Cocteau on tainted Ketamine, an unholy guttural shriek of despair condensed to the deathly smothering consistency of icy concrete.