'Maximum Overdrive' (1986) - Stephen King.

Trucking Hell!!! Celebrated Horror scrivener, Stephen King's turbocharged road-wrecking creepshow 'Maximum Overdrive' is still the Mack Daddy of calamitous Truck Stop carnage! These bloodthirsty, high-octane, devil-possessed, diesel drinking death machines are Hell on Wheels, all enacting one unified apocalyptic plan, for sinister reasons entirely alien, these wide load, wantonly reckless, wrecking ball behemoths are ghoulishly geared up to massacre all mankind! All brakes are off! as 80s cult classic 'Maximum Overdrive' is grandiose vehicular manslaughter on a biblical scale, a comet-induced Carmageddon, it's the end of days on the sun-soaked, gore-caked highways! Buckle up B-Horror freaks! Stephen King is about to take you on an pedal to the mental, adrenaline-fuelled, full throttled terror trip into a terrifyingly Twilight Zone'd diorama of gruesomely mechanized slaughter!     

 

 

 

 

'Trapped Alive' (1988) -  Leszek Burzynski.

A good few years before X-Factor, many years after Max Factor, neophyte horror director, Leszek Burzynski was,perhaps, percolating ideas for 'Trapped Alive’', and, I, for one, am jolly glad that he did! Quite frankly, if he didn't, this devilishly diverting, dirty minded horror film would have remained a mere figment, and with all the good will I can muster, any figment, no matter how well intentioned will ever play on my Sony region 2 Blu-ray player! (That said, should you be an avid fan of figments, I certainly meant no offence!) By the end of the 80s, the slasher cycle neared extinction, and, sadly, Leszek Burzynski's likeable, modestly satisfying subterranean, skin-flaying backwoods blood spiller ‘Trapped Alive’ was prematurely entombed as a Slasher relic. 

It is a joyful experience to finally experience, Leszek Burzynski’s previously buried underground shocker in this new, glisteringly gussied up Blu-ray presentation. Is it worth the wait? Well, that entirely depends on how receptive one's 80s horror gland is, fortunately mine remains an uncommonly virile organ, thrustingly appreciative of any lovingly reclaimed, long-forgotten historically hysterical horror opus from the gory days when film meant just that, film. Like any form of art, good, bad or indifferently made, its perceived beauty lies wholly in the perversely inclined peepers of said B-Movie beholder! If you still relish the likes of the majestically mutilating ‘The Mutilator’, 'Madman' or eccentric Mephistophelean murder-fest 'Satan's Blade' then you should embrace the Cameron Mitchell-starring, creepily claustrophobic, mine shaft-trapping, rot-faced cannibal redneck mutant rampaging shocker 'Trapped' with all the brutal tenacity of a Prison Yard coupling!

'Trapped Alive' aka 'Trapped', like Mapplethorpe’s intimate photography, or that second over-generous serving of Blow fish Sushi, certainly isn't going to be everybody's fulsome chalice of frothing grume! For those with lead-lined stomachs and a more refined appreciation of the cinematic absurd may well ‘unearth’ much schlocky spectacle to amuse themselves in 'Trapped Alive'. This is a roughly hewn, frequently fun, rumbustious slasher obscurity you can laugh 'with' or 'at', making it an ambidextrously amusing underground shocker! Burzynski’s Trapped Alive maintains it's own unique charm which raises it far above the mirthless mire of routinely plagiarized horror grot clogging cinema's sinless slasher sewer of today.

 

 

 

'Witchcraft' (1988) - Robert Spera.

Wholesomely pretty, god fearing, Grace (Anat Topol-Barzilail) appears to have put her troubled, drug-addicted past behind her, and, yet, fate has other plans. After the birth of their bonny son, William, Grace, and apparently doting hubby, John (Gary Sloan) stay with John's palpably ominous mother, Elizabeth (Mary Shelley). Not long into her uneasy convalescence when the increasingly distraught young mother disturbingly discovers that very little in her new picture-perfect domesticity is quite what it appears to be!

This formulaic, conspicuously low budget Rosemary's Baby surrogate remains creakily entertaining despite its lack of originality. The capable cast proves solid, and likable, Anat Topol-Barzilail makes for a sympathetic demonically-oppressed protagonist. While light on splatter, 'Witchcraft' generates a modestly unsettling atmosphere, and these Satanic, smoke-slathered shenanigans culminate boisterously in an appropriately infernal fashion. Not without missteps, 'Witchcraft' has an endearing Hammer House of Horror meets Danielle Steel aesthetic that I found rather appealing. Not for all terror tastes, but, Robert Spara's 'Witchcraft' certainly casts a schlocky spell some may find devilishly irresistible.

 

 

 

 

'Fiend Without a Face' (1958) - Arthur Crabtree.

Shockingly invisible, brain-sucking fiends run gruesomely amok in, Arthur Crabtree's immortally terrifying, cerebellum chomping 50s Sci-Shocker 'Fiend Without a Face'! Beyond all earthly expectations, this grisly telekinetic terror trip remains a spectacular, spine-slurpingly sinister journey into an expressly macabre, diabolically demented dimension of Atomic Age rage! Impossibly spawned from the mesmerically powerful, misbegotten mind of, Professor R. E. Walgate (Kynaston Reeves) his monstrously malign, mind-masticating entities manifest morbid frights hitherto unimaginable! Fiendishly fun, British B-Horror gem 'Fiend Without a Face' is a deliriously disembodied descent into a nerve-nuking nightmare realm of spaced-out shock! Blazingly brisk, competently made, compellingly acted by a fine cast, and steeped in eerie alien atmosphere, the freakish practical FX fascinatingly retain much of their weird allure! 

 

 

'Protection' (2001) – John Flynn.

I tentatively purchased this as the howlingly generic, Stephen Baldwin-slathered artwork and portentous tagline tickled my B-Movie fancy: 'The Greatest Threat To His Future Was His Past. When I got said Pre-Viewed DVD home I happily discovered that 'Protection' was directed by a filmmaker I greatly admire, John Flynn, which, perhaps, suggested that it might be more than a forgettably Greasy-Goombah schlock-fest. Flynn delivers a surprisingly solid B-Gangland thriller, enlivened with a great cast, engaging text, and a splendidly steely performance from, Stephen Baldwin as ice-cool killer, Sal. 'Protection' certainly makes no attempt to reinvent the wheel, and yet the proliferation of mob handed cliches are outweighed by the credible performances, and fine filmmaking by Flynn. By no means essential, but 'Protection' is a must-see for, John Flynn/Stephen Baldwin fans.