The Burning Baby (2020) – Paul Kindersley.

Eerily set within an isolated, breathtakingly picturesque Scottish island, the director presents a colourfully twisted family unit, a deliciously mentalist matriarch (Jenny Runacre), two wickedly twisted sisters, and a man-sized, blithely mistreated, allegedly two year old baby. While narratively oblique, this terrifically tweaked, visually sumptuous psychodrama is a playfully idiosyncratic, strangely erotic, occasionally maddeningly obscure folk horror-inflected psychodrama. If artistes Ken Russell, George Kuchar, and Alistair Crowley had performed a prohibited magick ritual that had manifested a mystic-fleshly Burning Baby, should it have waxed to its 2 year old maturity, it may well have created a work not entirely dissimilar to this winning kaleidoscope of freaked-out Freudian misanthropy! The giddy film's greatest strengths reside in its eccentricity, lunatic couture, patent cruelty, scenes of outre erotica, and frequently skewed flights into delirious phantasmagoria!

Some of The Burning Baby's most arresting sequences are non-verbal, the sublime silhouetted scenes of these misfit nymphs cavorting rapturously in the trees, their orgiastic dancing, and crying out in staccato alien tongues proved undeniably fabulous. I think it is entirely fair to say that The Burning Baby is more of a freakishly far-flung fable than standard cookie-cutter shocker. That being said, it has a frustratingly meandering quality, which dilutes the more visually striking interludes. The painterly photography is absolutely exquisite, the hyper-real personalities are energetically performed, with the stunning sound design/score providing an additional highlight. Like marmite on raisin bagels, or stinky wee fishies on Hawaiian pizzas, for all its creativity, The Burning Baby's appeal is arguably not universal.

 French Blood 1: Mr Pig (2020) – Rodolphe Bonnet.

Splendidly gory French anthology horror, expect gratuitous splatter, naked, hard-bodied French hotties, refried horror tropes, and bloody eviscerations, all atmospherically rendered with a modicum of Gallic style. An exhilarating, super-grisly pick n' mix of gnarly, graphic splatter-a-rama with some heavy 80s backwoods slasher/torture porn vibes, plus a generosity of tantalisingly trim poonany!!! French Blood 1: Mr. Pig is a stylish confection of eroticized ultra-violence, bejewelled with a distractingly beauteous bevvy of nubile young women. I think it's fair to say some of the terror themes herein are familiar, but there's a tendency towards raven black humour that I really enjoyed. Performances and technical elements are top-notch, and some of the butchery is satisfyingly meaty. If I had to choose a favourite bit, it would manifestly be the mean-spirited backwoods slasher homage, being a winning melange of Mother's Day and TCM, but, as a personal preference, I wish they had eased up a tad on the shaky-cam. I dug this, and I am quite keen to see part II.

 Death Metal Zombies (1995) – Todd Jason Cook.

The party-heartay lives of a group of amiable suburban metalheads suddenly takes a super sinister turn when Living Corpse fanatic Brad (Bill DeWilde) wins a special tape from his beloved band, and upon excitedly listening to the bespoke track 'zombified', they become malevolently murderous, dead-eyed minions of this evilly metal minion-making death metal outfit. The righteous Death Metal Zombies boisterously remains an entertaining, gore-blasted S.O.V 90s chunkblower that should prove essential to splatter craving, D.I.Y horror-loving extreme metal freaks. The Splatter FX are rudimentary and generously Tomato Ketchupy, while the maniacal minions make-up is rather basic, a thick daubing of Kohl around the boggling eyes, I actually found it strangely effective. While lacking finesse, Death Metal Zombies proved unexpectedly winning, the excitable amateur performances actually add to the no-budget feature's enormous appeal. There are many more explicit metal-inflected S.O.V horror films, I believe Death Metal Zombies is arguably the heaviest, featuring a mind-melting mix of Relapse bands delivering a constant barrage of heavy riffage throughout. I tend to favour heavy metal horrors, and happily the 80s provided a number of choice hair-metalled splatter classics, with the veritable apex of 90s metallic horror being absolute banger Death Metal Zombies. In closing, not only do I heartily approve of the director's energizing choice of music, his decision to have his lively blonde heroine jolly herself about in a pair of snug black short-shorts proved astute.

 Satan Lives! The Rise of The Illuminati Hotties ( 2022 ) - Sean Donohue.

'We have to remove his face to complete the death ceremony!'

Aye! I'm unashamedly part of the downer demographic that will happily watch a sleazy horror cheapnis solely based upon the rapacious luridity of the title! Satan Lives! The Rise of The Illuminati Hotties had me at Satan Lives! And I allowed myself to be lured by the alleged hotness of the said illuminated hotties! While I don't believe Satan would be very much impressed, the more debased consumers of smutty low-fi S.O.V Satanic Panic might get a skeevey kick out of this sticky cauldron of sordid sluts, dingy douche-bags, octogenarian occultists, refried cheesy synths, gut-bucket gore, pole-dancing vixens, goofball interludes, and an admirable lack of sophistication. That being said, who needs cinematic smarts when y'all have such a pulchritudinous preponderance of nude, enticingly jiggle-some Illuminati hotties!!!! This torrid, micro-budgeted, big busted, skuzzily shot on video fromage to Russ Meyer, and Ted V. Mikels is a raunchy one-stop-shop for grab-ass, Neo-Grindhouse slop!!! What fundamentally prevents Satan Lives! The Rise of The Illuminati Hotties from being a freezer bag full of reeking lipo-waste is the deliciously buxom, beautifully bottomed assassin Patricia (Jessa Flux)!!!!!!

 The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969)- Oliver Drake.

'Day of the Jackal(Man)'

Archaeologist David Barrie (Anthony Eisley) takes possession of a pair of Egyptian Sarcophagi, and during his subsequent researches, the 4,000 yr-old princess Akana (Marliza Pons) awakens, followed by guardian mummy Sirahk (Saul Goldsmith), and via ritualized B-Movie hocus pocus, Barrie is horribly transformed into JACKAL-MAN, culminating in an enjoyable tumult of next-level bonkers Creature Feature shenanigans. Extraordinarily, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is even better than it sounds, a divinely trashy B-movie bonanza of psychotronic lunacy, excruciating dialogue, hep-cat music cues, monochromatic acting, and a deeply entrenched atmosphere of beguiling silliness. I can easily imagine that The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals would have made a perfect date night flick for psychobilly heroes Poison Ivy & Lux Interior! If one took the more gonzo ingredients of Drive-In demi-gods Ray Dennis Steckler and H.G Lewis, back-peddled on the gore, but double-downed on the bizarro music choices, you may well have Frankenstein'd something truly extraordinary like The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals. While it is always the fans that make a B-movie cult, it wouldn't surprise me at all if The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals became a go-to mind-bender in the none-to distant future. Expressing a personal preference, this sublime freak-fest would make an exquisite pairing with Andy Milligan's The Rats are coming! The Werewolves are here!

 Vampires and Other stereotypes (1994) – Kevin J. Lindenmuth.

During a night patrol in NYC, our pair of querulous metropolitan spook-hunters, while doing their heroic duty keeping all the devil boogers at bay, end up in the noisome company of hottie, would-be ravers who have inadvertently opened up a gateway to the netherworld! On paper Vampires and Other Stereotypes sounds goofy, and experienced on HD video, it IS majorly goofy, but gloriously goofy in all the best ways! Like Nightbeast before it, micro-budget impresario Lindenmuth's cheapnis monster-mash Vampires and Other Stereotypes offers rabid S.O.V freaks a bloody smorgasbord of psychotronic terror tropes, cornball badinage, kooky tangents, and some objectively righteous-looking practical FX! No doubt preaching to the perverted, Vampires and Other Stereotypes demographic are arguably those weaned on a lifetime of fromage enriched B-horrors, neophyte schlockers who stayed up past their bedtime and excitedly watched all the scratchy midnight monster movies of old. While Vampires and Other Stereotypes is inevitably hampered by a low budget, it is absolutely watchable, since it remains a winning example of a creative film-maker utilizing his enthusiasm, and prodigious imagination to successfully visualize his project far beyond his meagre financial means. I must also once again congratulate Visual Vengeance for putting together an exceptionally handsome-looking package, featuring the exuberant, wonderfully entertaining 8mm shorts of precocious teenaged fright-maker Lindenmuth.

 Demon Divas and The Lanes of Damnation. (2009) – Mike Watt.

'I can't believe I ate the whole thing??!!!'

Things go supernaturally askew during some boozy sorority shenanigans at a local bowling alley hang-out, as the sultry owners of the joint get their demon on! Having a lurid moniker like Demon Divas and The Lanes of Damnation, no one is going to expect nuanced film-making on the level of Bela Tarr, or Andrezj Zulawski, and with a slinky-malinky cast of bouncy B-screamers, including icons Brinke Stevens and dishy Debbie Rochon, one may expect plentiful top-popping, smutty banter, and righteous levels of schlocky splatter-a-rama-ding-dong! I think that it is entirely fair to say that this is one horned-up horror-com that will encourage the more excitable members of the audience to give their balls a vigorous polish! Mean Girls spliced with Gutterballs, all smothered in the pungent aroma of Troma and y'all get the unholy spawning of Demon Divas and The Lanes of Damnation. This is a fun n' frisky B-Horror ride, expect quality buffoonery, sparky badinage, and a goofy gore-blasted climax! Taffy (Sofiya Smirnova) and her bestie Lisa (Nikki McCrae) are likeable, wholly sympathetic protagonists, and I also massively dug on the deliciously demonic antagonists, making this, pretty much, a win-win deal. Demon Divas and The Lanes of Damnation is light on T&A, but it gets a pass, since it is a genuinely funny, playful, consistently entertaining B-Horror lark!