Eyes Without A Face (1960)

Eyes Without A Face also known as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus comes out of France in 1960 by a director named Georges Franju. At the time Franju was mainly known for his documentaries. His first big hit was a documentary about a slaughter house in France. The film was called Blood Of The Beasts and the shocking footage was something that society just couldn't ignore. This would become a staple pattern in Franju's body of work. A mix between the artsy-fartsy and shocking imagery would make him stand out from the rest.
Eyes Without A Face is the story of a deranged doctor named Genessier or Faustus depending on which version you are watching and his daughter Christiane who lost her face in a car crash. Dr. Genessier blames himself for his daughters disfigured face because he was behind the wheel during the accident. The brilliant yet mad doctor will stop at nothing to repair his daughters damaged face.

Through most of the movie we never get to see the Christiane's face. It is either hidden from the camera with slick angle's or it is covered with a blank white mask with no facial features. Only the eyes are visible which comes off rather creepy, hence the title. Even with the lack of any facial features Christiane's eyes and body movements say a million words. The audience can feel her pain, her anger and her sorrow. Christiane's scarred face is shown more then once in the film. The first time it is through a blurry lens but the viewer can easily see that her face is not a pretty sight. The next time we see her unmasked is in a series of stills which show that her latest surgery was a failure and her flesh is rotting away.
Her father keeps her locked in the house so he can perform numerous operations on her face. Dr. Genessier is abducting pretty young girls off of the city streets and chloroforming them. Once the girls are knocked out the mad doctor cuts off their face with the help of his female assistant. The real money shot takes place in one of these surgery scenes. First the doctor draws an outline on the victims face and then with a scalpel and various other surgical tools he removes the face. The camera doesn't cut away as the doctor pulls the face off and this makes for a pretty nasty scene, especially for 1960. There is nothing campy (or H.G. Lewis) about the gory images. They come off very realistic and its disturbing even by today's standards.
The other big gore scene involves a man having his face mangled by a pack of viscous dogs. I have a lot of respect for the stunt man who pulled that scene off. Eyes Without A Face also supplies a scalpel through to the throat and a girl who throws herself through a window and comes fatally crashing down on the pavement. Criterion Collection has a very nice DVD print of this. Way better then the old VHS copies that were circulating back in the VCR days. The DVD also has Blood Of The Beasts as a bonus short feature. Worth a watch for anyone who likes a hint of art with their gore.

Eraserhead (1976)

People have been gathering amongst themselves since 1976 discussing this god of a cult film. What does it all mean? Is usually the topic, since the film doesn't really have a any sort of straight forward message that the audience can follow easily. Instead its a bunch of strong images strung together and it makes for an amazing piece of visual art. Eraserhead is filled with metaphoric imagery and I am not about to put my personal incite on the films meaning. However I will praise Eraserhead for what it is... A cult film that deserves its audience for its weirdness and its ability to keep people talking.
Eraserhead is truly one of the great independent cult flicks of all time and it is so out there that it almost seems to have no time or place. The setting is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the strange images that flash before the viewers eyes.

The movie follows a man named Henry who just found out that he is a father. His baby is a weird mutant that looks like something you would find in a butcher shop. The baby eventually splits open and spews blood all over itself as a sort of foam bubbles out from its insides. Another very memorable moment is a diner scene with Henry and his girlfriends family. Henry sits there in a awkward nervousness as he family goes about their normal routine. Its impossible to tell who is weirder. Is it Henry or his girlfriends family. His girlfriend goes into random hyperventilating fits followed by crying while her mother brushes her hair and her grandmother appears to be a corpse as she just sits in the kitchen frozen. Mom puts cigarettes in grandma's mouth and uses grandma's limber hands to toss the diner salad. Dad runs around ranting about plumbing and his knees. I can't help but relate to the weirdness of this scene. I feel like I have had to sit in on some very strange diner parties with ex girlfriends families. Once everyone sits down for diner dad asks Henry if he will cut the chickens up but these aren't normal chickens. They are about the size of a human fist. When Henry tries to cut into the first chicken the legs start to move on the dead animal and blood shoots from its ass onto the plate. We also get some strange song and dance from a girl with what I like to describe as cauliflower cheeks. Theres also a strange decapitation scene with lots of blood and weird little creatures being splattered against the walls. The creatures look like a cross between the monsters in Fiend Without A Face and fetuses.
Eraserhead is perfect for anyone who likes strange art flicks and doesn't necessarily need a story that is spelled out for them. Take a journey into David Lynch world and check out Eraserhead.

Burnout (1979)

No this movie is not about pot-heads. Its about drag racers and it is one of the most boring movies I have ever sat through. For 90 minutes we are forced to watch guys in shinny suits and helmets race their nitro burning funny cars and there is nothing entertaining about it. Each race lasts from anywhere between lets say 5 and 8 seconds and the rest of the time we are watching the racers burn rubber or Burnout as the title says.
There is one of the smallest subplot's going on in here and its about a spoiled brat who's rich daddy wants him to take over the family business. The spoiled brat wants to be a drag racer and that's what he becomes.
Please don't make the same mistake as me. Avoid this movie at all costs.

Eating Raoul (1982)

Heres another great one with cult couple Paul Bartel & Mary Woronov. This time they are a happily married couple. Or at least sort of happy. Or maybe not at all. They are both stuck in a small apartment working dead end jobs. They are behind on their bills and they don't quite fit in with the rest of society. Paul and Mary feel they are surrounded with filthy perverts and criminals. All they want is to be able to open up a resturaunt in the country and escape from the city and the human garbage that dwells within. Everything changes for the prude couple when they accidently kill a swinger (with the old frying pan to the head trick) who tried to rape Mary. While going through the dead perverts pockets they realize that he is loaded with cash. They soon come up with an idea to put an add in the personals as sexual fantasy makers, or prostitutes if you will. The couple has no intentions of actually performing any sexual acts with their clients. Instead they decide to make a profession out of killing and robbing them. After all this will help them get the restaurant that they want and in their eyes they will be doing society a favour at the same time.

Eating Raoul touches on all sorts of sexual perversion from S&M to role play, from swingers to bestiality. We get midgets, bondage, a silly hippy-dellic sex scenes, a swingers party massacre, bare breasted women including Mary Woronov which never seems to get old. We get Nazi fetish and lots of frying-pan-fu.
My personal favorite scene involves Paul Bartel picking up supplies at the local sex shop and being belittled by the sleazy clerk behind the counter. Don Steele also shows up in here who is known for all his roles in Roger Corman flicks and this time he's naked.
Eating Raoul is campy fun all the way through and it doesn't take itself serious. It also has a very sarcastic tone to it and doesn't show moralists in  a much better light then the sexual deviates. There really aren't any good guys in this one and those are always my favorite kind of movies. If someone was to tell me they were looking for a comedy that dared to be different and had a raunchy side to it, this would be at the top of my recommendations. So climb into your latex suit, lube yourself up and have a swinging time with Eating Raoul. Its as fun as a frying pan to the head!

Just Before Dawn (1981)

Jeff Lieberman is one of those directors that puts out very entertaining work but its hard to tell if there is any talent there or not. He's better known for his killer worm movie Squirm and the incredibly strange Blue Sunshine about hippies who were given bad acid and turn murderous. Lieberman's films usually have a odd pace to them and they almost feel like some aspect is missing but you just can't pin point what it is. For me its hard to tell weather or not this is intentional or not but the weird pacing and awkward scenes help add to the creepiness of his films.
Just Before Dawn has the same strange feel to it. This early 80's slasher is basically a Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff. Five kids venture deep into hillbilly territory for a camping trip up in the wooded mountains. Right from the beginning they reject all warnings (after all it is a slasher flick) from towns folk who speak of killers and demons up in the woods. They even bump into George Kennedy (who played the old man in the Old Chief Wooden Head segment of Creepshow 2) and he delivers a great line "At least tell me where you heading so I will know how to fill out the report when you don't come back.". Well the kids don't listen to Mr. Kennedy either and eventually they start getting knocked off one by one in slasher fashion by a fat, machete wielding hillbilly who squeaks and giggles during the kill scenes.

The killer always seems to be in more then one place at a time and it throws us off as the viewer and adds to the strangeness. Eventually we find out that there is actually two killers and they are inbred brothers who look identical. We also have a strange hillbilly family running around with shotguns and yelling at anyone who comes on their land. We get a few cool slash-em-up scenes and a bit of very unattractive tit. One of the better murder's shows a man having a serrated machete shoved through his crotch and then the killer saws up to his lower back. We also get a machete to the hand, a machete through the gut. One guy is pushed off a cliff and another is shot with a riffle but the most memorable scene is probably the mouth fisting scene. A guy is suffocated with a fist shoved into his mouth and down his throat. It really is a odd moment.

There is no doubt about it. Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a lot of influence on this movie. Everything from the kids driving trough redneck territory in their camper to the demented hillbilly families. Jeff Lieberman yet again makes a weird entertaining horror flick with what can be style or just dumb luck. Either way Just Before Dawn is pure slasher fun and shouldn't disappoint any fans of the genre. So pull your sister close and check out what happens when kin folk keep it in the family for a bit to long with Just Before Dawn.

Fuego (1969)

Isabel Sarli plays a woman on fire in this Argentinian Sexploitation film. She is hot as hell and we get to see plenty of her. Apparently this Spanish beauty has done over 30 films, most of which her husband (Armando Bo) directed. This is the only one I have seen from the duo of Argentina sleaze but I would like to see em all because I just cant get enough of  the big breasted brunette.
Fuego opens up with Isabel Sarli frolicking in the nude on a beach with her lesbian lover. Armando Bo watches the voyeurism in true creep fashion. When the lesbians realize they are being watched they run off. Its not long before Bo and Sarli meet again and they almost instantly have a love scene in front of a chicken coup. Bo convinces Sarli to marry him and she agrees. Now that the couple is married we are treated to the bodacious body of Isabel Sarli pretty often and it seems every time she is in the nude we get to listen to the equally awesome Fuego theme song. After watching this movie you will be singing the song in your sleep. Speaking of sleep, Isabel Sarli is sleeping with all of the men in town, behind her husbands back of course. She is warned by her lesbian lover that she will drive her husband crazy and it will lead to her death.
I know what you're thinking... you're thinking that Sarli is a slut! Well its not her fault in this one. Even her gynecologist says "its a abnormality in the genitals." Sarli suffers from nymphomania and although her heart belongs to her husband her body belongs to other men and we know this because she screams "I need men! I need men! I need Men" over and over again.
Fuego eventually takes a depressing turn when Sarli decides the only cure for her is death. She tries to convince her husband to kill her but he can't go through with the deed. I wont give away the ending but I will just say its not a happy one.
Fuego is my kinda movie. Hot brunette's with big 60's pre-silicone boobs and a downer ending and its all strung together with great head bopping Spanish music.

Don't Go In The Woods Alone (1981)

Ever watch a movie and shout at the screen a bunch of questions? That's what happens when you watch Don't Go In The Woods. This early 80's slasher is a prime example of inept film making. There is no real plot and things happen with no explanation. In the earlier part of the film people are being mangled and mutilated but we don't see who is doing it. There is a good amount of gore and splatter but it all happens so fast with cut-shots and bad editing. You kinda just stare at the screen and say "what the hell just happened?".
Eventually we get to see the killer and for some reason he looks like a caveman. He has no back story and none of his actions are ever explained. He carries around a big club that jingles but somehow this never gives away his where-abouts in sneaky stalk and slash scenes. The killer also has a large array of machete's, spears and plastic bags that he puts the bloody bodies of his victims in.
Don't Go In The Woods also has a very strange sense of humor to it and at times its hard to tell which scenes were intentionally funny and which ones were not. There is no way that all of the scenes were supposed to be funny but the bad (very bad) acting puts a layer of camouflage over the film, once again leaving the audience confused. Don't Go In The Woods Alone can be enjoyable with the silly musical score and the blood and guts but only for those who aren't looking for a serious horror flick.
One of my favorite scenes shows a fat guy in a wheel chair ,alone at the top of a rocky mountain. He is decapitated and his head falls through the trees. I know that nothing makes sense in this movie but how did this guy get up a mountain by himself. This would be like Franklin escaping the wrath of leather face in the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Then we get a crazy scene where a woman is slashed up pretty brutally while she is painting a picture and her young child bops up and down in a swing right next to her. The knife goes through the woman and through her canvas right in front of her child's eyes.
There  is also a few dismembered arms and one of which is a pretty gory splatter scene. A girl is speared, A man is strangled and thrown from a cliff and his body hits a bunch of rocks leaving a bloody mess. Another guy gets cut up outside his camper and has his face smashed into the window while his wife stares out at him. The the camper is pushed over a cliff of course goes up in flames with the wife in it. Even the killer himself has a pretty bloody ending.
It's bad and it's bloody. Don't Go In The Woods, stay home and watch a bad movies.

Vampire Girl VS. Frankenstein Girl (2009)

The new trend in Japanese splatter films is their answer to our big budget flashy cgi horror flicks, like the Resident Evil movies and when I look at it that way these movies are slightly more tolerable. Still I am not a big fan of any of these blood soaked computer generated horror flicks.
This one is from the same director who did Tokyo Gore police which I found to be slightly more entertaining then this one. If you're a young gore-hound and you're looking for some way over the top gore I suppose these would be the movies for you. I guess its like what Dead Alive was for my generation. Somehow no matter how ridiculous it sounds, I am able to take Dead Alive a little more seriously and there is nothing serious about that movie at all aside from its practical effects. Vampire Girl VS. Frankenstein Girl on the other hand is 100% all computer graphics and half the time it just looks like a video game.
Don't get me wrong the movie does entertain, especially if the viewer is brain-dead but it plays way to much like a comedy and there is so much silliness going on that the movie tended to be a bit of a nuisance for me.
I enjoyed watching some of the gory fight scenes with heads exploding and any kind of bodily dismemberment you could think of but then the movie goes into this really lame territory of song and dance and it almost seems like a demented musical.
The music on the other hand was probably the highlight for me. The soundtrack was pretty bad-ass and I found myself wanting to sing along which unfortunately would take a lot of practice for me due to the fact that I do not speak Japanese. Another highlight is all the pretty Asian girls running around in school girl outfits and this one super hot babe in a nurses suit who of course has a pretty violent death.
If you're gonna watch this one I'd recommend leaving your brain at home. This one is truly for the mindless.

Devil In Miss Jones (1973)

Gerard Damiano has his second huge hit after Deep Throat with The Devil In Miss Jones. He brings back Harry Reems and makes Georgina Spelvin a star in the golden age of American pornography.

From the opening scene The Devil In Miss Jones is as far from anything you would see in a porn flick today as possible. It opens up with Georgina Spelvin slashing her wrists and taking her life in a bathtub. The blood spews from her wrists and the bath water turns red. The combination of the graphic suicide and the down trodden music makes for a pretty depressing scene and the film manages to hold this mood till the final. After the opening suicide Spelvin finds herself at a long table discussing her eternity in hell. In the film Spelvin lived a clean life and died a virgin. She tells the man at the table that if she had a life to live over "she would live a life consumed and engulfed by lust", her wish is granted and she is de-virginized by Harry Reems who plays the devil. 

 Reems takes her vaginal and anal virginity and teaches her how to please the opposite sex. Once Spelvin is sent back amongst the living she sinks deeper and deeper into depravity and becomes more jaded with every sex scene. Spelvin does a good job in not only her sex scenes but is convincing as an actress as well. She also delivers some pretty shocking scenes especially for the time. One of which is double penetration scene. Another is a enema in a bathtub and the most memorable image involves a snake. Spelvin allows a snake to slither between her legs and over naked body. She holds the snake to her open mouth and she takes turns flicking tongues with the reptile. The music is excellent and adds a lot of atmosphere to the film.

The films tagline stated If You Have To Go To Hell... Go For A Reason. It suits the film pretty well in a witty way and in the end of the film Spelvin is brought back to the underworld and she excepts her fate in a place with no pleasures of the flesh. The film ends with Georgina Spelvin and the director Gerard Damiano locked in a room. Spelvin sits in front of Damiano and masturbates, begging for him to touch her. Damiano rants on and on about demons and flies coming for him when he sleeps and other nonsense. It makes for a pretty bleak ending and shows the hopelessness that the couple will endure for a eternity.

The Devil In Miss Jones doesn't paint a happy picture and is able to be depressing and sexually stimulating at the same time. All in all its one hell of a movie.

Death Machines (1976)

From the looks of the poster, most would probably think that Death Machines is a post apocalyptic Mad Max type of jam. Well this is not the case. If you want to talk about misleading exploitation posters, Death Machines is a classic example.

What we have here is a no frills, martial arts B-movie blast chock full of bad acting, bad Kung Fu and even worse dialogue. Its not that the dialogue itself is awful, its more of the fact that the actors just can't speak English. Good luck trying to understand anything that the main female villain is saying... She mumbles her lines through a very thick accent and it almost becomes laughable as you try your hardest to figure out what she is saying. Where she lacks in her verbal skills she makes up for it with hair-insanity. You have to see this hair to believe it.

With first viewing most would probably not like this one but Death Machines grows on you with time. Once you get past the technical problems, you realize that Death Machines is jam packed with ridiculous fight scenes, dismembered limbs and some really goofy characters. My personal favorite of all the goofy characters is a fat, balding biker who picks a fight with the Death Machines. We are also treated to the total destruction of a titty-bar in what might be the films most absurd fight scene. Between the crazy hair, explosions & chop-socky insanity, Death Machines makes for a good mindless time waster.

Saw : A Hardcore Parody (2010)

One of the better pron parody's to come out in a little while or maybe it just appeals to me. Ron Jeremy takes on the role of the Jigsaw character but in this parody his name is Screwball. Jeremy is killing off the so called stars in the porno industry with stupid contraptions that aren't to far off from something you would see in one of the Saw movies.
The movie opens up with a man who has his penis chained up to a meat grinder and his ass chained to a huge dildo. The man has to take his pick between losing his genitals in true Ted V. Michael's meat grinding fashion or having his anus penetrated by a huge fucking dildo. Right from the beginning Saw : A Hardcore Parody had me laughing and the only audience I could really see this movie arousing would probably be the hardcore fetish crowd because most of the scenes contain bondage, leather hoods, fuck machines, gas masks and other contraptions of the same class.
Once I got to the half way mark I started to sense a sort of mockery towards new pornography or fuck tapes as I like to call it. The movie pays homage to classic porn like Behind The Green Door in more then one scene and as the plot (If you can call it that) unfolds we learn that Screwball (Ron Jeremy) has a deep animosity for new porno movies. His best line in the movie is "you call this smut a film? There is no plot and no climax other then a girl taking a load between the eyes! Wheres the art?" His words were my thoughts exactly and its no secret that I am a avid viewer of classic film in general and pretty much hate the modern format of movie making.
Ron Jeremy has a bit of trouble getting it up at first but eventually manages to keep it up and he digs deep into his old bag of filthy tricks and brings back his infamous countdown. This time he climaxes on the count of 15 seconds and it was nice to see Jeremy do something other then sweat.
This one also managed to keep a good sense of humor and one of the better examples is a scene with a brain-dead porn-star strapped to a electric chair. She has a certain amount of time to spell the word fellatio correctly or she will be fried alive. Another entertaining scene involves Evan Stone in a threesome. Stone is sewn up after a surgery and has a device planted in his chest. He has to keep an erection and last in a hardcore sex scene for 30 minutes. His sewn up chest was actually convincing and a bit disturbing to watch in a sex scene.
Saw : A Hardcore Parody also offers up one squirter, one salad tossing scene, 2 threesomes, one anal scene, eye balls being poked out, a drill through the back of the head and a gang-bang. Worth a watch for anyone who likes horror movies and porn parody's but a better watch for anyone who wants a sleazy flick that isn't afraid to make fun of genre flicks of today.

Hausu (1977)

Hausu is probably my new favorite movie. Its kind of like Evil Dead on acid. The whole movie plays out like a dream with extremely one dimensional characters. Their names alone show the depth of the character. One is named Gorgeous and shes of course the beautiful one. Then you have Fantasy who has the wild imagination. Another is Kung Fu and I'm sure you can guess her characteristics. All together there is seven of these girls and they all take a trip to spend the Summer at Gorgeous's aunts house. The house is haunted and Auntie is a sort of ghost/vampire who feeds on the blood of pretty young girls.

From what you have just read you would naturally think this is a horror a movie and technically it is but Hausu never tries to be scary. Instead it chooses to be one of the wackiest, silly horror movies of all time with the brightest uses of colors and very stylish camera work. All together it makes for one of the most visually stimulating films I have ever seen. You can't help but be reminded of the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Holly Mountain in particular but unlike Jodorowsky, Hausu makes no attempt to be deep or meaning full.
I was lucky enough to see this thing in the theater last Summer with some friends and my eyes were glued to the screen with jaw dropped. I don't think anybody in the audience was quite prepared for what they were seeing. It was interesting to hear people comment and voice their opinions after the screening. It almost felt as if we were Beatniks in a sort of time warp. Some of the people thought there was some sort of artistic message to the movie which there absolutely is not but others took it for what it is, a chaotic barrage of visuals packed into a fast paced 88 minute film. I over heard one conversation in the lobby, where one cat asked his friend what he thought. His buddy replied "Eye Candyyy!" I couldn't agree with him more.

Some of the off the wall madness Hausu has to offer is a girl being eaten by a piano as her dismembered limbs fly all over the place and bright red blood sprays through the air as her chopped off fingers play a tune on the piano. Then we have my personal favorite scene where a mattress comes to life and attacks a girl. Feathers fly through the air with some very Argento esque lighting while the camera records the chaos from below through what looks like a glass floor. It really just has to be seen to be believed. We also get a crazy scene where a decapitated head flies from a well and bites a girl on the ass. There is also a small bit of naked flesh thrown in here and there for extra viewing pleasure and who can argue that. Hausu is filled with weird happenings from beginning to end. Theres dancing skeletons, demonic cats, rooms fill with blood, A girl turns to glass and her face shatters, another girl gets stuck inside a clock, dismembered legs fly about and cause destruction. The list of weirdness goes on and on.
Hausu is a 70's oddity in Asian cinema and its a must see for anyone who likes strange movies.
I always loved this tagline for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Once you stop screaming, then you'll start talking about it. It could have been reused for Hausu.

Inception (2010)

Once again I give into the pressure of others and attempt to watch a big budget Hollywood blockbuster only to be let down and annoyed. All I have heard about this movie since it hit the theaters was how smart it was and the general public didn't understand what was going on. Well all I have to say to that is that the public is pretty dumb because there was not any secret hidden message of genius in this one. I can see how someone might be confused for a short moment because the movie weaves in and out of dreams and reality. At times there is dreams within a dream and the viewer can lose his bearings.
The movie stars Leonardo Dicaprio as a man with the ability to enter other peoples dreams and either plant or erase parts of the individuals subconscious. Okay Ill give it to the writers, its a good idea but the idea is to deep for the movie. Inception had some very visually stimulating scenes with huge amounts of detail but the movie gets tired and annoying with the constant surreal theft of reality. Inception might be slightly more watchable then the average box office hit but that's still not saying much.
Another thing that bothered me was the runtime. Inception clocks in at 148 minutes and that's just way to long for a movie that is holding onto one good idea. This thing has a replay value of zero and the ending was so drawn out it made me sick. Only worth a watch for those who love flashy cgi special effects.

The Hellcats (1967)

For some reason or other The Hellcats was marketed as a female biker gang flick. The alternate title was Biker Babes and the tagline states Leather On The Outside... All Woman On The Inside! Well I guess that's why we call them exploitation flicks because The Hellcats is not a woman's biker gang. If that's what you're looking for you're better off with something like Angels Wild Women with Ross Hagen. What do you know Ross Hagen is also the star of this film. I have really taken a liking to Mr. Hagen as I am a big fan of him in Sidehackers. I know I am probably the only fan of Sidehackers in the world but my answer to that is, well the rest of the world is crazy because Sidehackers is awesome!
This time Hagen plays a soldier named Monte and his brother is a narcotics agent who was just murdered. Monte and his sister inlaw discover that a biker gang named The Hellcats probably had some involvement in the murder. The two disguised themselves as bikers and join up with The Hellcats. Eventually they learn that it wasn't exactly the bikers who did the killing but some mobsters with a score to settle.
This one is pretty rough around the edges. Its filled with plotholes, bad acting and some really bad music but the film still manages to stay entertaining. One thing this one had going for it is the fact that the gang is very big. Most of the time when you watch these cheesy biker exploitation flicks the gang consists of three guys and it comes off rather embarrassing. The Hellcats may be a big gang but they are a very odd one at that. Some of the members look like legit biker folk while some look like hippies. These guys and gals are pretty rough and tough. They drink like fish, they drop acid and they pretty much party through the whole movie. If they are not partying they are probably fighting rival gangs or challenging each other to weird duels. For me some of the best scenes where party scenes with beer foam flying all over the place and crazy Go-Go dancing babes with eye patches. We also get a chain fight and a very strange game where the loser is dragged by his feet through dirt roads by a motorcycle. The Hellcats isn't exactly a good movie but you could do much worse in this genre, Hells Bloody Devils for example... What ever you do stay away from that one! I still recommend Ross Hagens rape/revenge biker film Sidehackers. If not I suppose this one is worth a watch.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Off the wall craziness with hot go-go babes in tight skimpy outfits, fast cars and violence from the great Russ Meyer. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is probably the most entertaining of all Meyer films and its definitely the one hes remembered for.
Three beautiful big breasted Go-Go dancers take their cars through the desert where they meet a all American couple, in other words "Squares!" If there is anything these girls can't stand its squares. The girls challenge the couple to a race and the gratification of winning isn't enough for the leader of the threesome girl gang played by Tura Satana. She swipes a stop watch from the couple and tells them to split. When the couple refuse Tura gives "Lover-Boy" the beating of his life and breaks his spine with some hilarious Kung Fu. The three babes tie up the now single bikini clad girl, force feed her some sedatives and continue to travel across desert as they make up their minds what to do with their little witness. The audience is treated to a nonstop sexual teas-o-ramma as the camera drops in on very revealing angels of bra busting boobs and hot-pants shots. The deadly trio of femme fatales form a plan to steal the riches from a hillbilly family in the desert who is supposedly "loaded". The girls get a  little more then they bargain for when they learn that this family has some sort of sick perverse form of vengeance that they are taking out on pretty young girls. Old grandpa is in a wheel chair due to a bad accident involving a pretty young girl and a train. The old man has a big "stud" of a son who spends all of his time working out and fondling pretty babes the only problem is that he plays a little to rough. The family and the girls have a big bloody fight and the ending is as incredible as the beginning.
This one has something for everyone. Sexy babes, race cars, really bad Kung Fu, Go-Go dancing, pervert rednecks and really silly dialogue. Anybody who likes trashy exploitation movies would get a total kick out of this movie and its a little hard to even place a genre to this movie. Its almost a cross between a roughie and a on the road flick. It can't really be considered a sexploitation flick because there is no nudity on display. Despite the lack of flesh, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is the ultimate in tease exploitation flicks.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Deer Hunter is one of the best Vietnam movies ever made, in the same class as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. There is nothing glamorous about this one. It shows war for what it is and the affect it has on the men who fight and the families and friends back home. Actually The Deer Hunter shows very little war. Its a very long film it clocks in at 182 min. and the first 4o min or so is before the two main characters (Robert De Niro & Christopher Walken) even leave for Nam. Instead we have a huge wedding party and a hunting trip but in these scenes you can sense that these two characters aside from their front have some deep emotions going on inside. They might be surrounded by friends and family but these men are not happy.
When we finally get to the war stuff The Deer Hunter leaves us with one of the most powerful and memorable scenes in any war movie. Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken (who are best friends) are held at gun point in a shack on a Vietnam river and are forced to play Russian roulette. They already witnessed their friends play and one by one they are dying. One guy slightly misses and hits his skull on a angel. He thrown into a rat infested pit and left to bleed to death with a shattered skull. De Niro and Walken are the last two to play. These two actors are incredible in this scene. It seems to go on and on as they take turns putting the gun to their head and pulling the trigger. You have no choice but to let out a sigh of reliefe with them when we here the gun click to an empty chamber. De Niro explains to Walken that the only way they are going to get out of this alive is to play with more bullets. They need at least three in the gun and then they have a chance of killing the scum who is making them play this horrible game. Well they end up getting away and they are separated in Vietnam but the two made a pact that they would not leave each other behind. Walken ends up losing his mind and De Niro tries to bring him home. Lets just say theres some more Russian roulette and only one of them survives.
This one isn't the easiest of movies to watch but it is done so well that it will never be forgotten.

Death Wish (1974)

1974 was a great year for cult films. We had one of the best horror films of all time The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,  Then there was the incredibly trashy Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and the role that made Pam Grier immortal Foxy Brown. We had the early slasher Black Christmas, a few Women In Prison films and of course Death Wish, the film that brought the rape/revenge genre to the mainstream public.
Charles Bronson plays a family man named Paul Kersey who's wife and daughter were brutally raped and beaten by a ridiculous 70's street gang consisting of a skinhead, a bandanna wearing long-hair and none other the Jeff Goldblum.

The gang swipes the girls address from a counter at a grocery store and shows up at their house pretending its a grocery delivery. Luckily for Goldblum and friends Paul Kersey was off to work. The gang spray paints the walls of the apartment along with the asses of Paul Kerseys wife and daughter and it makes for a pretty disturbing scene when the daughter is forced to perform oral sex on the skinhead character. The wife is beaten to death and the daughter remains in a state of shock throughout the film. When Bronson (Paul Kersey) learns that there is very little chance of the police ever finding these criminals he decides to take revenge to a new height. Bronson becomes a one man vigilante and takes on the muggers, rapists, murderers, junkies and thief's of New York city. Bronson walks the city streets and night and puts himself in the most dangerous situations as possible, just waiting for the first punk to come and make a move on him and he shoots them down with a pistol that a old cowboy gave him.

Its not long before Paul Kersey is the hype of the city. He is in the paper, on the t.v. and he is known as the vigilante. Nobody knows the true identity of the vigilante but the crime rates are dropping and the public no longer are waiting for the police's help. New York city is fighting back against the criminals and taking justice into their own hands with the vigilante as inspiration. Its not long before the police are onto Kersey but it doesn't stop him from acting out his vengeance.
Death Wish was such a success that it spawned four sequels and a whole mess of ripoffs. The Death Wish films got worse and worse with every sequel and they also became more ridiculous where the character of Paul Kersey takes on full gangs with bazookas and Gatling guns. As in almost every case the original is the best and theres no doubt about it with this series. Death Wish is king and Paul Kersey is a bad-ass mofo.

Death Race 2000 (1975)

This is probably my favorite car movie of all time. Its nonstop campy fun from beginning to end with a wacky plot that never takes its self to seriously and still manages to deliver. Some films were destined to become timeless cult classics and that's pretty much what we have with this one. I have not seen the remake nor do I want to. Why would anybody want to sit through a politically correct Hollywood version of this? Ill stick to the original Paul Bartel Roger Corman classless classic.
Death Race 2000 is the biggest sport of the future. Its a car race across country but this race has a point system. The drivers get points by hitting pedestrians as they roar through city streets and country side. Each car has two people, the driver and a navigator. The route that the pair chooses is entirely up to them and obviously more populated areas are better for the drivers. Each car has its own bizarre, tacky style. One has big swords protruding from the hood that the driver uses to ram through pedestrians in the street. While another might be covered in swastika's. After all this buzz-bomb is driven by "Herman The German".

The movie also costars Sylvester Stallone as Machine Gun Joe and for once a Stollone film doesn't completely suck. He plays a over the top violent prick in a old-time mobster get-up with a Brooklyn accent. Machine Gun Joe is hated by most and it seems hes always doing something obnoxious like spitting on his fans or beating his female navigator. He pretty much yells all of his lines and in one of his best scenes he has an argument at a diner table as he spits food all over the place and has mashed potatoes or some mess all over his face. Another reason Machine Gun Joe has a shortage of fans is because he is the rival enemy of the films hero, Frankenstein. Frankenstein is played by David Carradine and the fans love him. "America loves you Frankenstein" is one of the greatest lines in the movie and its very true. They call him Frankenstein because of the amount of car crashes he has been in and all the surgery and reconstruction that he has gone through. "He lost his left arm 76 and his right in 79" They say he lost both eyes, most of his skull and face and hes supposed to be covered with scars but we don't get to see because Frankenstein wears a leather gimp suit. Its awesome to see David Carradine walking around in a leather S&M get-up and just being a all around bad-ass.

Eventually Frankenstein looses his mask and underneath he is just normal, young looking David Carradine. He's supposed to be kind of handsome in this movie and its not long before he is screwing his hot blond navigator and saying things like this "What did you expect, just another pretty face?".

Theres a descent amount of violence in this movie with peoples heads being run over and torsos being crushed. We also get a decapitation and a guy who gets his crotch split in a crash. We also have a subplot going on about some anarchist rebels who want to stop the national Death Race sport and assassinate the president. The subplot helps add for a bit more violence and a few car explosions. Not to mention a airplane crash and burn. There is also a few bare breasted women on display and Mary Woronov is in here as well but unfortunately she doesn't show to much flesh in this one. (gotta watch Sugar Cookies for that) Death Race 2000 has a few more twists and turns within the plot and I'm not going to go into them in here. All I have to say is "Frankenstein for president"!

The Hard Road (1970)

The Hard Road is not a pretty picture! Or at least that's what the tagline says and I think I'm going to have to agree. This anti-drug sexual hygiene scare flick is about a 17 year old girl named Pam and bad choices she makes and The Hard Road she chooses. The film opens up with teenage Pam delivering a baby which unfortunately they didn't show in true exploitation fashion. Pam chooses to put the baby up for adoption and tries to get on with her normal teenage life but the kids in school all know what happened and they are making life very hard for Pam. Pam's parents also feel the pressures of their judgemental surroundings and dad starts drinking heavily while mom pops over the counter pills. Pam gets a job as a secretary for a sleazy man named Leo who runs a music agency. Leo likes to watch Pam through a secret two way mirror in his office but unfortunately the most Pam skin we get is watching her fix her thigh high stalkings. Sorry guys but this ones not a skin flick. Pam meets a rocker who introduces her to some grass and trashy hippie folk. Pam plunges further and further into depravity as she gets turned onto wild orgies, psychedelics, pills and heroin.
As I mentioned this is not a sexploitation flick so we don't get much nudity in the sex scenes. Instead were treated to another disturbing film within the film. Pam catches Gonorrhea and we get a good honest sex hygiene scare film with nasty pictures of rotting genitals and open sores. Its really the typical stuff you see in all these v.d. scare flicks but this one manages to catch us a bit off guard when it pretty much comes from nowhere.
My favorite scenes are probably all the weird hippy-trippy scenes with wide angle lenses and unique camera work. The proper use of lighting and camera angles actually shows a bit of talent on the filmmakers end. As the film goes on we enter darker territory with harder drugs and more violent characters. Pam eventually sees not everyone is a peace loving hippy. There is one hilarious seen where a "o.d." hippy is running through a long tunnel screaming his lungs out. He is then picked up by a friend and the two junkies mug a business man. They kick him in the face with sandals on their feet until the mans face is red with blood and every time they kick him his head rocks back and forth like a bobble-head. This scene has to be seen to be believed. Another very memorable seen is the painful withdrawal from heroin in a prison cell. The junkie smashes his face into a cement wall and goes into convulsions in a pretty realistic scene. The film all comes to a 70's downer ending with Pam having a hell of a acid trip at a airport runway. She is hit by a car and killed. As the tagline says The Hard Road Is Not A Pretty Picture.