Casablanca (1942)

Wanna get sappy for a change? Well there is no better movie then Casablanca to get all watery-eyed to. Filled with memorable lines, a great cast, excellent cinematography and a story that you can't help but love, Casablanca tells the tale of two lovers who were separated in Paris while on the run from the Nazi's. Years later they meet in a swanky saloon called Rick's Cafe and to rekindle that old spark seems hopeless due to the war and other opposing circumstances.

Humphrey Bogart plays Rick, the bitter owner of Ricks Cafe. Tormented by his love for Ingrid Bergman, Rick shows nothing but contempt for the people around him. His choice in friends are the likes of a Peter Lorre, who plays a pick-pocket criminal, Claude Rains (The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man) who plays a witty corrupt police officer and a African American piano player/ lounge singer named Sam. Rick's future seems rather bleak and he gives off the impression that he is waiting to die in Casablanca. That is until Bergman enters his life once again but this time with a husband "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Aside from the misery that most of these characters seem to carry with them Casablanca also has a very humorous side, especially from Claude Rains character. His smart-ass remarks helps Casablanca move along at a nice pace and offers up some chuckles even in some very dramatic moments.

Bogart and Bergman eventually reach a level of understanding and some things just aren't meant to be. Bogart changes his philosophy of "I stick my neck out for nobody" and helps the love of his life escape Casablanca along with her husband. Casablanca is a true classic with a sad yet uplifting ending. Emotionally its to good to ignore and there is only one thing left to do... "Play it Sam".

The Wolf Man (1941)

Ten years after Universals classic monster movies Dracula and Frankenstein the studio slams out another timeless classic. Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot who is bitten by Bela Lugosi and transforms into a Werewolf on the next full moon and terrorize the neighborhood.

The Wolf Man isn't the first Werewolf movie but it certainly is the most important Werewolf flick ever made. Lon Chaney is emotionally torn and questions his sanity. Nobody believes that he is a monster and he fears the next full moon.

Claude (The Invisible Man) Rains plays Chaney's father and although it isn't very convincing that these two iconic actors are actually father and son, we get an excellent performance from both. In the following year Rains would go on to do Casablanca which he is remembered for by most but for me it is these Universal Pictures that I will always identify him with.

There are certain things that seem a bit silly by today's standards. For instance a Werewolf sees a pentagram in the palm of his next victims hand. Naturally it appears in the palm of loved ones. We also have a scene where Bela Lugosi is transformed into a wolf and Chaney kills him with a silver plated cane. When the authorities get to the scene of the crime and Lugosi is laying cold and dead he has his clothes on except for his shoes. The wolf clearly wasn't wearing any clothes so my question is, who was dressing Lugosi's dead body? The Wolf Man also chooses to strangle victims rather them maul them with teeth which I always found a bit funny but then again these minor continuity problems just add the the fun of these old monster movies.

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

American Werewolf In London is one of the best Werewolf movies ever made. The Howling would come out the same year and both films have about an equal amount of notoriety. Unlike Joe Dante's more serious movie, John Landis throws much more humor into his werewolf movie.

Landis blends horror and comedy perfectly with this one. Between the ground breaking special effects with the Werewolf transformation and the gory bloodletting the movie stays fresh all the way through. The comedy never takes away from the story and just when you might be getting tired of laughing a decapitated head might roll across the screen.

Like the title says, two Americans who are back-packing across Europe get attacked by a Werewolf in England. One of them is killed and the other terrorizes London.

American Werewolf In London offers up a Nazi Werewolf home invasion, complete with child murder and splattery throat slashing, mangled zombies (not the flesh-eating type) who "walk the earth in limbo as the undead", a porno theater massacre, male and female nudity, decapitation, dismemberment, punk rockers, and plenty of homage to Lon Chaney's The Wolfman. "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright". Rick from the Young Ones shows up and has a pint in a pub scene and we also get a decent soundtrack.

I watched this recently at a local screening and it was nice to hear audience members shout out "Fuck CGI during the transformation scene. American Werewolf is a true classic and has stood the test of time. This is more then we will be able to say for movies like Underworld.

28 Days Later (2002)

Take Omega Man with Charlton Heston and cross it with Dawn Of The Dead and you would come out with something like 28 Days Later.

Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) takes on an apocalyptic style horror flick about a man who awakes from a coma and finds he is alone after a viral epidemic has destroyed London. England has been quarantined and the the whole country has been killed off by the outbreak of violence.

The thing that makes 28 Days Later interesting is that the obstacle is not zombies. These people aren't dead at all. "They have been infected by rage". Sounds pretty silly but no more ridiculous then an outbreak of flesh eating ghouls in a George Romero flick.

Like a Romero flick the characters have plenty of depth to them and never come off as one dimensional but come on, we came here to see people die. We have a strong female lead played by Naomie Harris and she is quick for some chop-chop action with her machete. Unfortunately she doesn't offer up any nipples. The most we get is a bra shot in an attempted rape scene but the female audience is treated to some swinging dick action from Cillian Murphy who plays the main character. Aside from his penis we have the privalege of watching him push in eyeballs with his fingers and kill an infected child with a baseball bat. We also have some gun violence and some blood spewing but over all 28 Days isn't a very gory movie. Instead it relies on fast paced chase scenes and jump scares. Unfortunately there is more cgi then needed but its still a good watch.

Its sad to say but I would take 28 Days Later any day over Romero's Diary Of The Dead or Survival Of The Dead. Its been a long time since anyone has made a decent zombie flick. Maybe Boyle should try one out.

Inside (2007)

For some reason people like to relate this movie to Martyrs which really doesn't make any sense at all other then the fact that they are both French and they are both extremely disturbing. Inside is one of the most disturbing movies to come out in recent history. The subject matter is disgusting and the bloodletting is relentless.

Being lucky enough to see this gory spectacle in a theater and witness the audiences reaction was a treat all in its own. You could almost feel people cringe behind you while heads explode and hands are impaled by a pair of scissors. Personally being a bit of a gore-hound and a big fan of this movie I myself can't help but get a bit squeamish during some of the nastier scenes. I just wish that Herschell Gordon Lewis could have been there in the audience with us and maybe hear his feelings on how far gore has come since the days of Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red. I bet the godfather of gore himself would squirm in his seat.

I suppose the only downside to this movie is that the story is a bit shallow but it really doesn't hurt the over all experience because the acting is really pretty good, especially from our female lead and the villain as well. The camera work is better then your average Hollywood flick and the score is simple but yet very effective.

Inside tells the tale of a widowed woman who is trapped in a house with a psycho womb-raider. For those of you who don't know what a womb-raider is, its someone who cuts fetus's out of pregnant women's bodies and steals the baby. The womb-raider in this situation uses a pair of scissors as a weapon of choice and goddammit she does some awful things with those scissors.

I have no idea how many gallons of blood was actually used for this movie but it must have been up there with Evil Dead and Dead Alive but unlike those films, Inside doesn't ever try to be humorous. Eyeballs are poked out, stomachs are cut open, blood spurts from neck wounds, blood pours down the stairs in a really nasty penis stabbing, a cat has its neck broken, we get achy-breaky skulls complete with flying toaster to the cranium, faces are burnt up with aerosol can to open flame. For me the most memorable and nastiest scene of them all involves a self tracheotomy (complete with ductape to the wound). Gross!

Anybody who likes splatter films needs to see this movie. They don't get much sicker then this!

Nightmares In, Red, White And Blue (2009)

This documentary explores American horror movies and its appeal to society. The docu. goes back as early as the films of Thomas Edison and his 1910 version of Frankenstein and moves into modern times with the "torture porn" genre with Saw and Hostel.

It offers up a scan through the decades and shows clips from some of the better known horror movies in each time period. We also get interviews from horror icons such as George Romero, John Carpenter, Joe Dante etc.

Nightmares works as background filler for a room full of drinking friends (as long as they are fellow genre nerds) but doesn't offer up anything new or all that much different from the millions of other horror documentaries. This thing is available in a two pack set with the far superior exploitation documentary American Grindhouse. Nightmares is worth picking up if not for anything else, the other movie. You wont be disappointed.

Freeway (1996)

This 90's dark comedy takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood in a completely different direction. Reese Witherspoon plays Vanessa Lutz, A teenage girl with a bad upbringing. Her mother is a junkie/prostitute and her step daddy has been molesting her since age eleven. When the police raid Vanessa's house and arrest her parents she decides to skip town with her dead boyfriends gun. She is abducted by a sick serial killer named Bob (Kiefer Southerland) and the tables are turned once Vanessa whips out her boyfriends pistol. She shoots Bob in the face and runs for the hills. The only problem is that Bob isn't dead and it becomes a game of cat and mouse which all comes to a bloody conclusion at... You guessed it, Grandma's house.

For a comedy, especially a 90's comedy Freeway is very violent and I suppose that is what makes the movie tolerable. The dark subject matter, the foul language and the excessive violence make for a pretty enjoyable ride. The great Sydney Lassick (One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Carrie, The Unseen) shows up for a quickie death scene. We also get some racy racist talk which is pretty unusual for a 90's flick unless of course Tarantino had something to do with it, which he did not.

Check it out for some straight razor slashing, suicide, drive-by shootings, and a deformed, drooling Kiefer Southerland.

Sisters (1973)

Not enough people pay attention to the early work of Brian De Palma. Before Carrie there was Sisters. This morbid horror/mystery tells the tale of Siamese twins and murder but it tells it in true stylistic De Palma fashion.

Margot Kidder (Black Christmas, Amittyville Horror) plays the part of a conjoined twin who has been separated from her other half. The two couldn't be more different Kidder is a nice girl who wants to live a normal life but her sister is a demented lunatic. Kidder is haunted by what seems to be a telepathic connection to her sister or is Kidder the one who is crazy? These Sisters are in for big trouble when a newspaper reporter witnesses a murder inside Kidder's apartment from her window. Or is it the reporter who is in big trouble?

The murder scene is done in De Palma's trademark split-screen and it turns out to be one of the most memorable slash-em-up scenes in horror history. The victim is stabbed in the penis with a kitchen knife, then stabbed in the face. He crawls across the floor and writes "HELP" on the window in his own blood and is then finished off with a few stab wounds to the torso. It makes for a pretty disturbing scene and leaves the viewer thinking it was a lot bloodier then it actually is.

Sisters also offers up some bare breasted action from Margot Kidder and a sleazy looking doctor who hypnotizes women and disposes of dead bodies. We also have a nut house which automatically adds points for me because I love loony-bin movies, especially horror ones. It all comes to a twisted ending with more penis stabbing.

So hold on to your genitals and keep sharp objects away from your sister and check out this slice of 70's madness.

Legend Of Hell House (1973)

Four people researching paranormal activity (not the movie) join up and visit an old haunted mansion known as Hell House with the mission to prove whether or not there is in fact any haunting's. Amongst the researchers is a scientist, his useless yet sexy wife, a religious medium, and Roddy McDowall who is the only survivor of a previous visit to Hell House and McDowall does a great job explaining the evils of the house "Drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, bestiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism, not to mention a gamut of sexual goodies. Shall I go on?".

Its your typical ghosts and hauntings flick with creaky doors that open and close on there own and random objects fly from tables for no apparent reason, except this one offers a couple of really affective moments. The best being a all out ghost attack on our logical thinking scientist. He is cut by flying glass and thrown from his seat at the dinner table, nearly burnt to a crisp by a fireplace that turns into a sort of flame thrower and nearly crushed by a falling chandelier. Legend Of Hell House also offers up a scene in which a possessed cat goes ape-shit and claws up our religious fanatic. Death by falling crucifix and a legless Michael Gough (Crucible Of Horror, The Skull) who I remember best as the psycho who drives around and decapitates his victims in Horror Hospital.

Roddy McDowall is great as usual, playing yet again the sensitive, soft spoken, sympathetic character but this time around he becomes possessed and goes into violent, over acted convulsions. He also goes to war with the spirits of the house in a final showdown. We also have the privilege of seeing McDowall smack around a naked nympho.

One of the better of 70's haunted house flicks and worth a watch for fans of these types of horror flicks. Aside from McDowall all the other actors do a good job as well. Legend Of Hell House is a all around good film, with nice camera work and excellent framing. However, seeing it for the first time on the big screen I couldn't help but notice the extreme close-ups on the actors. Especially side profiles. So if you have some kind of weird nose fetish you might want to check this one out as well.

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

By the title, you would probably guess this is a zombie movie but by the release date you would have to quickly discard that idea. Night Of The Living Dead wouldn't hit the screen for another four years and that is fine because The Flesh Eaters is not a zombie flick at all.

Two pretty girls are stranded on a island with a macho pilot. They are greeted by a mad-Nazi scientist and a skeleton that washed ashore. It turns out that there are flesh eating parasites in the water. They rip every bit of flesh from the body, leaving nothing but bone.

Of course our Nazi scientist is to blame and the creator of these nasty creatures and its not long before these things mutate into a giant man eating monster.

The story is silly and full of plot holes but the movie itself is awesome. For 1964 this thing is pretty goddamn gory. In one of the goriest moments a Flesh-Eater gets into a mans leg and as the blood gushes out, help arrives to stick a knife into the wound and dig the little sucker out. We also get a shooting, a brutal stabbing and a really disgusting suicide with a bullet to the achy-breaky skull, complete with falling out eyeballs. Some of the other highlights consist of dissolving stomach's, complete with guts spilling out. Flesh pealing away and some really silly special effect where it looks like they scratched the film negative for added weirdness. Our sex appeal comes in the form of a blond who rips her shirt off to mend a wound. Luckily for us she spends most of her remaining screen time in her bra or in a bikini.

This is one of my all time favorite black and white 60's horror flicks. Its right there in the same vein as The Horror Of Party Beach which would come out the same year. Its really to bad more people haven't seen this thing because I feel it's cult status should be much higher. Flesh Eaters is fun all the way through and never gets boring. The story on the other hand is a mess, as is the day for night and night for day shots. The time continuity is so bad that you don't even know how long they have been stranded. Has it been one day or seven? Who the hell knows... Then we have a ridiculous climax in which our tough-guy hero learns that human blood shot directly into the nucleus of the monster will kill it. So he makes a gigantic syringe and they all take turns drawing blood and we have a final battle between the monster and our hero. Why would human blood kill something that is called a Flesh Eater?

Despite the obvious flaws in this campy B-movie from Mars, the ineptitude isn't the main point of interest here. Its the fast paced gory mayhem that really holds the interest. A must see for lovers of oldie B-Movies and gore-hounds alike.

Grave Of The Vampire (1974)

How does this even happen? The guy who directed this thing did one of my all time favorite roughies called Help Wanted Female. It sleazily depicts senseless violence and exploits sex to the fullest with an amazing pace that never bores.

This piece of shit on the other hand starts off with a bang and becomes a total let down. In the early part of the film we are treated to a couple who leave a house party to spend some quality time amongst the dead in the local cemetery. Boy proposes to girl and I guess the setting turned her on as much as it did me because she says yes. Next a rotting corpse pushes open his coffin and he has a spider crawling across his hand and some kind of a lizard crawling on his face. The undead man looks more like a zombie then a vampire and is oddly reminiscent of the vampire in Herschell Gordon Lewis's A Taste Of Blood. Our grotesque vampire sneaks up on our couple while they are playing doctor in the back of the car and before the guy can let go of the boobage he is ripped from the car, lifted in the air and has his spine shattered on a tombstone. Next the walking dead pulls the girl into a grave and rapes her. The girl becomes pregnant and gives birth to a vampire baby and while breast feeding the little blood-sucker she accidentally cuts herself (I don't understand either) and spills blood on her baby sons face. Next she draws blood from herself with the help of a needle and feeds her newborn properly.

With an opening like that how can this movie fail? Well sorry to say folks but its all down hill from there. The vampire baby grows up with the mission to kill the vampire who raped his mother and created him. He finds his father vampire as a college professor and plots out how he will destroy daddy.

As I mentioned before, the vampire looks pretty damn cool in the beginning of the movie but through the rest of the film he just looks like a Cameron Mitchell look alike. I have nothing against Mitchell, in fact I'm a big fan but there is just nothing entertaining about his appearance.

We get a few more murders, non of which are very graphic or anywhere as cool as the opening cemetery scene. We get lots of boring dancing to shitty music. We get a stupid possession scene that doesn't make much sense and it all comes to a end with daddy and son brawling on a stair case, complete with (Yes, you guessed it) a wooden stake through the heart.

I feel fucking gypped and the worst part is that I now own two copies of this piece of garbage. For an interesting time with vampires check out Martin and leave this one in the grave where it belongs.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Typical 80's Slasher with a really memorable killer but not much gore to offer. Surprisingly enough there really isn't a lot of nudity here either, with the exception of a quickie high school shower scene in the beginning a little bit of tit groping in a car.

With a title like Slumber Party Massacre one would expect tons of nudity and rivers of red stuff. Despite the lack of the two slasher essentials, somehow Slumber Party Massacre still entertains. Personally I feel it is mainly due to the unforgettable killer who runs around with a giant drill and has his way with high school kids. In what is probably the most memorable scene, he kills the pizza delivery guy with a drill-bit to the eyes. The funny thing is that this is the most memorable death but it happens off screen. We just get to see the eyeless body fall into a room. Later one of the dumb bimbo's will eat a slice of the pizza. I really shouldn't call the females dumb in this movie because they have more survival instinct than the average scream queen in a 80's Slasher. This is probably because the film was written by a feminist. Yes, I know... its almost impossible to believe that a feminist would chose The Slumber Party Massacre or even consider it as a project but it is a fact.

Don't worry, the message doesn't come across and it plays like every other Slasher from this time period, with dead bodies falling out of refrigerators and cats jumping out of closets for the jump scares. Scream Queen Brink Stevens (Sorority Babes In Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) shows up here in one of her earliest films along with Robin Stille who plays Valerie, who is the best looking in the film.

While Driller Killer will always be my first pick for a drill wielding maniac Slumber Party Massacre is still a fun time passer. The average slasher fan shouldn't be overly disappointed unless of course if they were looking for tons of nudity. So tell your friends to bring their pajamas and stay up late with this silly slasher for some death by drill.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Every generation needs a good Halloween anthology horror movie. For me growing up it was Creepshow and I still love it to this day. Personally not being a big fan of modern cinema I was pretty surprised with how much I liked this one and I am happy that younger kids have at least one movie to celebrate the season with.

This one offers up a child killer, a little bit of nudity and some red stuff but its done in a totally campy sort of way that isn't or at least shouldn't be taken serious. For this reason, I was surprised that the movie is rated R. If this thing came out in the 80's it surely would have a PG13. I guess tits in celluloid these days is an automatic R. Too bad because Trick 'R Treat is a total kids movie.

The stories all play together in a sort of Quentin Tarantino kind of way with no real importance on the chronological order. When its all finished, it works quite well. The kiddie killer sort of looks like Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator with his white shirt and tie and his nerdy glasses but instead of bringing the dead back to life he poisons the candy of little brats and chops their heads off. Now that's the Halloween spirit! We also have a "Halloween school bus massacre" in which a greedy old man drove his bus full of retards off of a cliff, into a lake.

We get our sex appeal from a werewolf story, with a bunch of sexy lycanthrope bitches, who put the werewolf orgy in The Howling 2 : Your Sister Is A Werewolf to shame. These babes offer up some bare breasts and then rip their flesh off exposing the wolf underneath. I guess you can call them a wolf in a babes clothing... The special effects look pretty good in this scene but unfortunately Marilyn Manson is playing on the soundtrack. Next we get some zombie action with yet again some child killing, complete with gut munching. We have a slasher type story that offers up the most gore complete with Achilles tendon slashing, nasty glass wounds to the hand and a dead dog. We have a monster with a pumpkin-head (complete with shotgun wound and drippy mess). Theres also a vampire running around and the whole thing is just a fun ride of Halloween mayhem.

Skip Monster Squad this year and check out Trick 'R Treat. You're never to old for a fun Halloween horror flick.

Straw Dogs (1971)

Cinema rebel, Sam Peckinpah delivers this classic tale of rape revenge right in the height of his career. Pecikinpah proved two years earlier with The Wild Bunch that he can build and build suspense and then deliver the nasty goods with a bang. He succeeds once again!.

Wes Craven's cult classic Last House On The Left would follow in the next year and the Death Wish wouldn't hit screens for another three. Of course this genre of film has already been toyed with but perhaps Sam Peckinpah is once again under credited by genre fans.

Straw Dogs casts Hollywood lame-o Dustin Hoffman as a wimpy American married to a British women played by the incredibly hot and stylized actress Susan George (Die Screaming Marianne, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry). The couple move to a back woods shack in the middle of nowhere England and have more to deal with then relationship issues. Dustin Hoffman's character is a weak coward who runs from everything and avoids confrontation and Susan George has had enough of it. Ms. George looks as good as can be and the local pervy, lowlifes have some nasty plans for her.

In Susan George's introduction the camera zooms in on her chest and her erect nipples poke through her sweater for all to see. She complains that the men in the village are undressing her with their eyes, as is the male audience. Her husband warns her to wear a bra when out in public and she ignores him. Peckinpah chooses a voyeuristic style of shooting her scenes. For instance, when she gets out of her car the camera gives a glimpse up her skirt, leaving the audience wondering if this is just carelessness on her part or if she enjoys taunting the men around her. Its not long before she is standing in front of her window with her beautiful bare breasts exposed, as the men stare in at her we suddenly realize that this is all going to end very badly.

The men become more aggressive and go as far as to kill the couples cat and hang it from a noose in a closet. Of course Hoffman is to much of a pussy to confront the men that did it and this shows them that they can walk all over this man and do what they want. Susan George is raped by two of the local scum and the rape scene is also open to suggestion because it seems to weave in and out of what is a mean spirited, violent experience to something that Susan George seems to enjoy at times. Eventually the rapists and three of their friends accidentally shoot the towns sheriff in a angry drunken stupor. Hoffman and George were witness to the brutal killing and the couple finds themselves fighting off a home invasion from the five drunk rapists and murders. Hoffman's character shifts gears once his life is threatened and kills the whole lot of them.

What Straw Dogs has in store for us next is some boiling vegetable oil to the face. A head caught in a bear trap, a stabbing, achy-breaky skulls are smashed with blunt instruments, a man has his foot blown off with a shotgun and another has his guts blown apart. We also have a pervy village retard named Henry who strangles a young girl in a barn.

Although Straw Dogs isn't quite an exploitation film. Fans of this type of extreme cinema are bound to love it. From the nasty rape scenes to the dead cat in the closet, the violent vengeance and not to mention the dead cop, Straw Dogs is another example of amazing renegade film making from Sam Peckinpah. Of course Hollywood has their greedy little hands on this title as well and the remake is due for release any day now. I doubt it will ever come anywhere near the original and I'm sure Peckinpah would be turning over in his grave. Until we have another outlaw director who likes to piss on the buildings of the executive producers, Straw Dogs will always remain king.