Reviews

'La Settima Donna aka Last House on the Beach (1978) - Franco Prosperi.

Following a bloody bank heist, three violent thugs take shelter in a luxurious, suitably isolated beachside property. Swiftly brutalizing the young naive female occupants, it fatefully falls upon their beautiful guardian nun (Florida Bolkan) to revenge these despicable carnal abuses. Franco Prosperi's stylised, cruelly hedonistic home invasion shocker sticks out from the crowd due to its uniquely italiante twist! Well-made, compellingly acted, with bracingly mean-spirited interludes, a rousing score, plus an exhilarating climax make this an indelible psychotronic treat! Criminally underrated, little seen, 'La Settima Donna' remains one of the more vivid examples of deliciously Disco-drenched 70s degeneracy!

'The Black Belly of the Tarantula' (1971) - Paolo Cavara.

An inventive Morricone score, a dazzling abundance of euro-totty, with bombshell Barbara Bouchet's brief appearence proving entirely memorable! There's a delightfully kinky killer, a singular modus operandi, and handsome Giancarlo Giannini's makes for a charismatic, unusually sensitive detective. Sexy and mysterious, the exhilaratingly kinetic rooftop chase provides additional zest to Cavara's captivating gialli. While The Black Belly of the Tarantula isn't especially gruesome, it is exceptionally well-made, replete with fine performances, and the compelling plot concludes excitingly in a pin-prickingly terse fashion!

Hardline terrorists bloodily execute a kidnapping in glitzy Beverly Hills on able crooner Frank Stallone's watch, their first mistake! Routine 80s cheapnis B-Shoot 'em up is given additional heft by smooth due Stallone and B-legend Cameron Mitchell. Shallow, crass, and technically shoddy, its frequent bellicosity should keep hardened schlock-seekers amused! Moth-balled dialogue, bouncy, low-rent synth score, cheapo pyro, daytime soap thesping, conspicuous Pepsi product placement, and a weirdly dubbed William Smith lend Terror in Beverly Hills some additional schlock-tastic charm! Will the beleaguered president (William Smith) acquiesce to the evil terrorist's demands and release 55 of their Palestinian brothers? Watch the gloriously dopey, goof-laden Terror in Beverly Hills to find out, just don't say I didn't warn ya'!!!!! Snarkiness aside, Cameron Mitchell's hilariously hypertensive Police Chief is an expletive, bad-tempered treat! Slicker than a well-oiled whetstone, tougher than whale bone, granite hard marine Hack Stone is a one-man war zone!!

'Love Stories from Sunflower Valley' (2021) - Rob Lieberman.

This cuddly, earnestly heart string plucking drama stars photogenic Hallmark veterans Erin Cahill and Marcus Possner. Frustrated dogsbody, and aspiring journalist returns to her beloved hometown as assistant to hunky, gentlemanly reporter to write a feature on local altruistic matchmaker. Needless to say, awkward coffee-spilling beginnings belie inexorable chemistry, and true love rapidly blooms in picturesque Sunflower Valley. A bountiful harvest of small-town hospitality, folksy mommy-knows-best schmear, dewy-eyed reminisces, and heartfelt glances over home cooking, warmed fuzzily by sun dappled sentiment! Fine performances, and a lovely location do much to ease the drama's occasional lapses into cloying, love conquers all cliche. I appreciated the pleasing lack of enforced comedy, and don't have a problem with the film's well-meaning, wholly fantastical coda of there's a soul mate for all.

'The song remains the same

The Song To My Heart 2022 - Paula Elle.

Tall good-looking musician with chronic writers block meets beautiful owner of Tea-centric cafe with a killer smile and prodigious lyric writing chops! Excluding the irksome 'temporary estrangement trope', the hearts of our two telegenic songbirds harmonize mellifluously to make some beautiful musical together. Often far too cutesy for its own good, the 'crisis' was embarassingly 1st world, and the maddeningly smiley, serially sandal wearing rock n roll pop needed to get his grump on. Frankly, It's all a tad 'cheesy listening', yet the leads are likable enough and any film whereby the sight of an oversized strawberry arouses paroxysms of pleasure can't be all bad!

'Dracula II Ascension' (2003) - Patrick Lussier.

The fitfully fun, plasma-soaked, frequently fang-tastic sequel to 'Dracula 2001' is a serviceable B-horror bloodspiller with a cool vampire slayer in the muscular guise of kung Fu priest Jason Scott Lee. After a zesty, Hammer-esque intro there's a bit of a lull until the Spike-like vampire is bloodily resurrected. Uneven at times, and excluding the two Jason's I found the stock characters a little dull, plus it's a great shame director Lussier didn't shoot more of the film's exteriors in picturesque Romania. Overall, even with its rougher edges, 'Dracula 2 Ascension' remains a fun, if somewhat forgettable watch for haemoglobin hungry horror hounds!

Love on Trend 2021 - Nicholas Humphries.

Youthful, aspiring fashion designer Allie (Jocelyn Panton) meetcutes dashing tech guy Colin (Giles Panton) and tumultuously, her lofty career aspirations, and love palpitations coloufully intertwine as they discover they are tailor made for one other! Sadly, my terminal lack of interest in fashion remains wholly unmoved by Love on Trend, but Allie's amiable boss/chum Kendra (Amanda Wong)is a propah sweetie, and, unlike cold reality, in fuzzy Hallmarkland all of life's travails are amicably resolved in a suitably cutsey fashion. Real life married couple have a likeable screen chemistry, and their fictitious personas exude a palpable warmth.

Pretty Marta (Ariadna Welta) returns to her ancestral home, only to discover that her beloved aunt is dead, and the once grand estate is greatly dilapidated. The forbidding atmosphere is drenched in dismal doom, her other aunt appears strangely youthful, suggesting something monstrous is afoot! The blood-chilling horror escalates following the arrival of darkly mysterious Count Lavud. With engaging performances, evocative, eerily cobwebbed sets, a charming protagonist, with German Robles making for a mesmerizingly malign revenant! Compelling, immaculately staged Gothic horror, The Vampire is a scintillatingly spooky South American shocker well worth sinking your teeth into.

Zombie Holocaust forms part of the 'unofficial' Ian McCulloch 80s terror trilogy. This certifiably insane, island-set splatter-fest luridly resembles the sinisterly shambling results of a deranged scientist's attempt to splice together Zombie Flesh Eaters & Mountain of the Cannibal God. Abundant gore, a massively underrated Nico Fidenco score, and the infamous 'falling dummy with the wayward arm' has made Zombie Holocaust a bona fide cannibal cult! Time has been inexplicably kind to this ferociously fleshfeasting folly, since the entertainment value, planned, or otherwise, has enjoyably increased since its grisly Grindhouse birth. Now with all its glistering HD viscera bloodily reinstated, Zombie Holocaust deliriously delivers the gory goods!!!!

Pretty Manhattanites, neurotic writer Kate (Jen Lilley), and her more gregarious photographer friend Jayne (Amy Groening) are on assignment to picturesque Band to interview a reclusive author. Upon arrival in this snowpeaked paradise the inevitably cutsey love-matching is above average. The likeable performances are engaging, with an enjoyably effervescent text, and the dazzling winter wonderland backdrop of beautiful Banf provide wonderful distractions. It's somewhat unusual for a glossy Hallmark rom-com to be almost entirely cheese free, Snowkissed feels far less synthetic, as there's a tangibly unforced charm to these handsome couples amorous coupling. I enjoy the sugary, glutinous sentimentality of Hallmark fare, but Snowkissed's life affirming positivity is edifying. The dazzling natural splendour of Banf is no small part of the film's appeal, and Kate and Noah's (Chris McNally) grand gesture is quite lovely!

Gary Daniels is a muscular, rudimentary actor whose limited dramatic capabilities are boldly contrasted by his exemplary martial artistry. Bloodmoon is another violent iteration of the maniacal kung Fu killer, happily, I happen to have yen for maniacal kung Fu killers! The exhilarating fights are plentiful and brutally executed, while the plot and dramatic content are less meticulously rendered.

Frank Gorshin unleashes one of the more noisome, memorably hypertensive police chiefs, Chuck Jeffreys' conspicuous Eddy Murphyisms prove distracting, with Gary Daniels tortured profiler about as convincing as John Wayne's Genghis Khan. Deathdealing dynamo Darren Shalavi's masked psychotic pugilist remains one next level, ferociously femur fracturing fiend! I can't imagine that Bloodmoon is widely regarded as a cult film, but the singular acting choices, dismal dialogue and compellingly kinetic combat elevates Bloodmoon to higher echelon DTV thrill-spiller, and should you appreciate an overwrought rooftop climax, this one's a doozie!

Spawned from the same tweaked mind as Canadian horror cult 'Things', resembling the madly misanthropic progeny of H. G Lewis's The Gore Gore Girls', Barry J. Gillis's similarly warped follow-up is no less unhinged! The appropriately monikered 'Wicked World' is lurid proof positive that gratuitous violence, gratuitous nudity, gratuitous narration and gratuitous tan lines are NEVER gratuitous! Driven incandescently mad by a searing hatred of mankind, drenched in downbeat delirium, the deliciously demented death-spree of this sinisterly storytelling serial killer are not soon forgotten!

Weirdly, the shoestring budget merely tightens the addictive mania of this gloriously wrong-headed mindbomb! Having all the dramatic nuance of an improvised school nativity play, like an especially gruesome carwreck, 'Wicked World' proves morbidly irresistible, one is compelled to watch! Suspending disbelief simply won't cut it, to more fully experience the apocalyptic sensibilities of 'Wicked World', viewers must be willing to temporarily detach themselves from reality! Accept the unacceptable, digest the indigestible, and fathom the unfathomable, like culinary eccentricities laverbread, and surstromming, 'Wicked World' is, perhaps, an acquired taste!

No butchers, bakers, or candlestickmakers but an earnest small-town bookstore owner who discovers that her beloved store is under threat from corporate property developers. Much like the durability a generic plastic chair, Hallmark's success/ubiquity is undeniably down to their dogmatic adherence to formula. Not always compelling, often anodyne, but modestly appealing if you are in the right mood for sugary, treacle-thick sentiment. The Story of Us is genuinely sweet, with amiable protagonists, agressively small-town charm, and the erstwhile lovers O'Dell Sawyer (Sam Page) and Maggie Lawson's (Jamie Vaughn) inexorable romance feels far less contrived than usual.

L. A Heat. (1988) Joseph Merhi.

PM Entertainment's low-budget, bullet-shredded, late 80s shoot 'em up, L. A Heat is greatly elevated by the charismatic presence of big Jim Brown. LA Cops go hard after a violently gunhappy drug dealer which affords bargain bucket action impresario Merhi plentiful opportunities for softboiled B-Movie badinage and righteous amounts of slo-mo squibage! The skeezy downtown L. A setting is grungily atmospheric, and there's a boisterously old school Blaxsploitation vibe throughout that I really dug. Straight-shooting detective Lt. Chance (Lawrence Hilton Jacob ) is a tough, likeable good guy, and psycho copkiller Clarence ( Kevin Benton ) makes for a convincingly malign street thug.

An attractive, altogether edible food taster is tasked to ghost write for a muscular boorish celebrity chef whose strident alpha demeanor belies a sensitive side. Watching this prototypically telegenic couple fall in love served up a surprisingly digestible romance. Flavourfully garnished with two appealing leads, cutesy chat, touchy feely schmaltz, and the perfect amount of cheese! Zesty, rather than stodgy, this eminently snackable foodie romance won't leave a bad taste in your mouth! Frothier than a cappuccino, sweeter than mom's pumpkin pie, Recipe for love, while undeniably a familiar dish, is, for me, one of the more appetizing Hallmark confections. This 'chalk and cheese couple who inevitably become cheese & cheese lovers won't immediately have you reaching for the pepto bismol!

Starring Kanako Kishi and Kazuhiro Sano, Hisayasu Sato's shocking Pinku is atmospherically set on an isolated beach front property. The strikingly sadistic equestrian protagonist's unrepentantly degenerate pecadiloes frequently prove wholly bestial. Gleefully smutty, often outlandish and refreshingly frank, Horse Woman Dog revels in a lurid pick and mix of bracingly illicit exotica! Unlikely to appease those with mainstream tastes, there is sure to be something here to offend/excite fans of furthest flung fleshly fictions! While there are vestiges of genuine tenderness, this is aggressively confrontational material that should certainly spice up an evening's viewing.

I dig rudimentary gore FX, shrill organ themes, monosyllabic red-headed hunchbacks, evilly bubbling vats of acid, and spazzy-looking mad scientists with bravura comb-overs, so the goofball gruesome, Dr. Gore is, like a no-brainer, dude! For me, this enjoyably cheapnis precursor to Frankenhooker has much to recommend it to sleaze-ridden seekers of vintage trash. It's only a movie, but I still don't like how comb-over played Greg the hunchback for a sucker, douchey move, bro! Lacking the bravura blood-letting of gorefather Herschell Gordon Lewis, there's a kooky, can-do Ed Wood quality that proves irresistible, and the bodaciously body shopped blonde is one deadly hot mama!!!!

'Do you wanna haul my ashes?' 'Right on, baby!'

This low-budget, enjoyably goofy British riff on cult favourite Wishmaster includes a bravura performance from Sean Pertwee. He energetically plays the tall tale telling school janitor/cryptkeeper with infectious glee! Not all the grisly interludes work, and dynamic French actor, Dominique pinon appears to be acting in an entirely separate film! Chris Barrie is unusually sedate, and the young, inexperienced, appealingly nubile cast do their breast!

The evilly wish-granting Djinn is a cliché horror clown, happy remedied by a lack of scream-time, but Pertwee's increasingly demented Janitor, and the gory film's trashy, Troma-esque exuberance ultimately won me over! In summation, the uneven feature's appeal is, perhaps, marginal, the more progressive B-movie cognoscenti might enjoy it, exploding warts an all!

I can strongly recommend the fiesty final instalment in this iconic, fabulously zesty girl-fight trilogy! Heroic, yet ill-fated, Rica's violent saga concludes in a suitably exhilarating fashion, once again featuring some stirring W. I. P action! With nary a dull moment, Rica 3: Juvenile's Lullaby even a propah brillo breadstick battle which proves Rica is no less deadly with common foodstuffs than her whirlwind fists! Irrepressible, kind-hearted, brave, cunning, and resilient, this sexy, street-fighting siren takes on a sex-trafficking ring, proving proficient at spearing these vile oppressors with a harpoon gun!!! Kozaburo Yoshimura's exciting feature has plentiful action, slapstick comedy, dramatic interludes, and bravura baguette battery!!! As always, Rika Aoki is never less than captivating, and composer, Jiro Takemura's bouncy soundtrack remains a highlight!

Based on an early Dean Koontz novel, adapted for the small screen by Koontz & Alan Jay Glueckman, this fun, formulaic thriller exceeded expectations. Fearfully trapped within a deserted skyscraper over a holiday weekend, telegenic married couple, Connie Weaver (Pam Dawber) and Graham Harris (Lee Horsley) are relentlessly stalked by buff, self-aggrandising, luxuriously coiffed maniac Bollinger (Kevin Conroy). Competently performed by amiable telly titans, Pam Dawber and effortlessly hunky Lee Horsley, Farhad Mann's slick serial killer TV frequently delivers the escapist goods. While the familiar plot is the purest piffle, the film's stronger points are the likeable protagonists, with some fine supporting work from Bob Balaban, William Sadler, and a neat-o nemesis in the sinisterly smug, baritone-voiced guise of Nietzschean nutball, Frank Dwight Bollinger. No masterpiece, but a worthy time-killer for thriller fans. No explicit language, zero T&A, The Face of Fear's exploitative elements are batso Bollinger's surprisingly intense kills.

Ahoy, matey's!!! Expect far more than the ship's mainbrace to get spliced on this ill-fated pleasure cruise to Hawaii! There's titillating T & A and hot snatches of gore, in Frank Mitchel's cult 70s psycho slasher 'Blood Voyage'. The 1st seafaring slasher has groovy-looking 70s chicks, hirsute alpha dudes, soapy Agatha Crispy theatrics, and salty seamen! Forget about turgid landlubber, Mike Myers, this sinisterly ship-stalking shipmate is where its at! With the directors hand's rock steady at the tiller, this bracingly brine-lashed, bikini-splashed blood-spiller is a killer diller! Not one for the anchors that poo-poo vintage Grindhouse goodness, as 'Blood Voyage' is a yacht better B-slasher than the neg-heads would have you believe.

One of the most intriguing facets to largely forgotten 70s Sci-shocker 'The 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.

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!

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.

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'.