The Ungodly (2007)

Dir: Thomas Dunn

Wes Bentley stars as a down-on-his-luck documentary maker who decides to follow a serial killer (played by co-writer Mark Borkowski) around New York and, uh, find the human behind the monster? Maybe? It's never entirely clear just what prompted this. However, we're asked to draw awkward, questionable paralells between Bentley's addiction to drugs and Borkowski's addiction to murder and just buy into the two men being pretty much star-crossed as a result. There are one or two nice ideas here and the leads work hard with the material but it's too muddled to ever fully engage. Unfavourable mental comparisons to "Man Bites Dog" do it even fewer favours. This probably isn't a film I'd recommend unless you're particularly in thrall to Wes Bentley's beard. *1/2

P2 (2006)

Dir: Franck Khalfoun

A hi-octane horror set in the unlikely location of a parking lot. This one pits a busty businesswoman (Rachel Nichols) against a psychotic security guard (Wes Bentley) in a cat and mouse game that, despite being shot almost entirely with two people and one set, never gets boring. There's no question that "P2" is ridiculous. If you're looking for something dark and serious, go elsewhere. This is pure exploitation gold though. Nichols has her cleavage on prominent display for almost the whole run-time, Bentley gives a truly insane performance (including an impromptu song and dance number!), the script is tight and lively (and loaded with classic one-liners), and the gore, when it happens, is unflinching and splattery (although I wasn't fond at all of the animal scene - they could've quite happily ditched that and replaced with a good old-fashioned human death). It's not exactly cerebral but it's a ferociously entertaining slice of suspense that never lets up. I enjoyed this a lot. ***

A Dragonfly For Each Corpse (1974)

Dir: Leon Klimovsky

A Spanish take on the then-popular giallo craze, "A Dragonfly For Each Corpse" sees a subdued Paul Naschy (who also wrote the script) playing a medium-boiled cop (he knows kung-fu and thinks all hookers are "garbage" but wears an apron while he cooks and loves presents) on the trail of a serial killer in Milan. There are some amusingly weird red herrings here, including a Nazi, a gay dressmaker, some hookers and a transvestite, as well as a few crazy deaths (death by golf club and death on a ghost train are both fun) but the mystery is quite weak by the time it reaches its lacklustre conclusion. A shame because there are some enjoyable elements. At times, the film almost feels like an intentional send-up of the genre (especially when Naschy is seen boiling pasta, eating salami out of the fridge and making coffee in a Bialetti kettle) but there's enough gore, nudity and fashionable outfits to make this a passable, though by no means essential, giallo. **

The Cat With The Jade Eyes (1977)

Dir: Antonio Bido

(aka Watch Me When I Kill!, The Cat's Victims)

Decent, well-crafted giallo in which a cabaret actress named Mara (Paola Tedesco) goes to buy some aspirin and finds the pharmacist dead on the floor. Worse yet, our ubiquitous black-clad, gloved killer is fleeing the scene! The killer now thinks Mara knows his/her identity and begins to stalk our hapless young lady, dragging her and her sound engineer boyfriend (Corrado Pani) into a web of serial killings and deep-running conspiracy. The film is, on one hand, typical giallo fare and there's nothing particularly bizarre or flamboyant about it to instantly grab one's attention. However, this has a tightly written plot and a good twist that delights rather than puzzles. There's also a sleek, pulsing score by Trans Europa Express and some great one-liners from Pani. The titular cat is nowhere near as sinister as you may expect (although it is significantly cuddlier) but, otherwise, this is a decent way to pass a rainy afternoon. **1/2

The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire (1975)

Dir: Ricardo Freda

Obscure giallo that's every bit as baffling as its title, this one finds the ubiquitous black-gloved killer throwing acid in people's faces then slitting their throats (because, y'know, just the one simply wouldn't be enough). Unusually, the killer's at large in Dublin which, while it does make an interesting change of pace, means that everything looks a little grey and chilly compared with the bright, hot, colourful Roman climes typical of the genre. The mystery here is pretty dismal with the final reveal being more of a "huh? who?" than an "ahhh! them!" but there are one or two nice touches. The detective's batty mother - a half-deaf, half-blind Miss Marple type - is great and has all the best lines but there's also some decent gore and nudity to pass the time while the parade of red herrings are wheeled out ad infinitum. Still, I'd say it's only really worth bothering with if you're a hopeless giallo completist who just can't help themselves. That'd be me then. **

Buio Omega (1980)

Dir: Joe D'amato

(aka Beyond The Darkness, The Final Darkness, Buried Alive)

Millionaire playboy Frank (an unforgettable turn by Kieran Kanter) is consumed by grief and decides to keep his beautiful girlfriend (Cinzia Monreale) around after she dies. He steals her corpse, embalms it and keeps it in bed with him at his isolated villa, convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan... and how could it, right? "Buio Omega" is a wild original. A film so unutterably barmy that it plays almost like an extreme Horace Walpole novel, blending high camp soap plotting and gothic melodrama with genuinely disgusting, graphic gore and sex. It's hard to take the latter elements seriously when the story hits its most absurd highs and yet still somehow the combination of gorgeous location photography, a fantastic Goblin score (one of their best ever) and the sheer grimness of the ideas leaves an unsettling feeling behind. It's illogical, uneven and ludicrous but you'll never see another film like it and for that it's kind of brilliant. ***1/2

Deep Red (1975)

Dir: Dario Argento

The giallo's giallo, Deep Red is about as good as the genre gets. Although its plot follows a pretty familiar pattern (a foreigner (David Hemmings) in Rome witnesses a brutal murder and must prove his own innocence before the cops lock him up for it), the script is way slicker than most. There's a great rapport between Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi (a reporter who offers help in solving the crimes) and even some humour in there, which is rare for Argento. The set design and photography are both unbelievable and Argento's direction keeps things tight, brutal and beautiful. Goblin's ferocious musical score still sounds incredible today and the killer's reveal at the end is simply the most audacious and ingenious twist I've ever seen in a detective film. Brilliant stuff. ****

Psychos in Love (1986)

Dir: Gorman Bechard

I first saw this on a bad quality VHS bootleg about fifteen years ago and, when I found out it was finally out on DVD, a part of me expected to be disappointed. I wasn't. One of the genuine gems of the early direct-to-video boom, "Psychos in Love" is a low-budget splatter comedy about a bartender and a manicurist who fall in love. The only problem is that they're both psychotic serial killers who murder people at random because they feel they can't fit in with society's "norms". The story is somehow tender, absurd, grotesque and hilarious all at the same time and it has depth far beyond the "bad jokes", near-constant nudity and copious bargain basement gore effects (although that's not to say all of that isn't enjoyable too!). The humour, if anything, seems very ahead of its time and it's well delivered by the two fantastic leads (Carmine Capobianco and Debi Thibeault). 24 years on and there's a lot of cheap and strange movies out there but none quite like this one. ***1/2

Candyman (1992)

Dir: Bernard Rose

Genuinely creepy little film with Virginia Madsen as a graduate student researching urban legends. She focuses, in particular, on the subject of the Candyman, a hook-handed killer who appears in the mirror if you say his name five times. The first half of the movie is intelligent, gorgeously shot and eerie as fuck, as writer/director Rose (also responsible for the underrated "Paperhouse") creates a dark canvas on which to paint his nightmares. Sadly, he stretches our disbelief just a little too far in the second half, but even this is redeemed by Tony Todd's terrifying performance as the titular ghoul and some genuinely shocking special FX. Although it isn't perfect, "Candyman" is far stronger than average and still has the power to unsettle in its own way. Never comfortable viewing and its stylised depiction of urban entropy is really quite beautiful, in a strange sort of way. ***

Hellbreeder (2004)

Dir: Johannes Roberts/James Eaves

You were walking an eight year old child home? After 11:30pm? On a schoolnight? And you took a shortcut? Under the bridge? WERE YOU MAD?!

Crawlspace (1986)

Dir: David Schmoeller

Empire Pictures funded nonsense with Klaus Kinski as a mad Nazi landlord who spends his time crawling through the air vents of his building, spying on female residents, beheading rats, applying lady make-up, watching Hitler rallies on a projector, playing Russian roulette and killing people indiscriminately. In fairness, Kinski is a blast in this and his creepiness carries the otherwise abysmal movie single-handedly. The screenplay is total balls, although I did learn a lot about women from it. Did you know that, when alone, women will cut peepholes out of their bras in front of the mirrors and perform studio quality renditions of bad 80s ballads on the piano? Or that, when in groups, women will hold slumber parties in which they all drink tequila milkshakes, giggle about boys and jump up onto tables shrieking when they see a rat on the floor? Educational value aside though, the film bites. A lot of it feels improvised and even at 80 minutes, it's one Hell of a slog. Although it's almost redeemed by a lunatic scene in which the sexagenerian Kinski, dressed in an old man's jumper and full face make-up, finds a metal sheet on wheels and propels himself through the air vents as though bodyboarding, for what seems like about 10 minutes. A wonderfully inventive and unintentionally hilarious moment. EL BOMBA!

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (1973)

Dir: Antonio Margheriti

Jane Birkin was never really the world's greatest actress, but she looked so staggeringly stunning in 1973 that you won't even mind as she flits, flounces and flounders her way through this goofy, gothic giallo, even though it's little beyond a vanity vehicle for the vintage vixen. Plotwise, Jane plays the absurdly named Corringa, a convent girl who's expelled and returns to her family home; a sprawling castle in the Scottish countryside. There's a curse on the place that involves cats and vampires as well as a secret passage in the wall, a horny gorilla in the attic, a rat-eaten corpse in the cellar and (as the title suggests) a promised number of throat-slashy murders (von, two, I love to count!). We also get nudity-free sex, unconvincingly lumpen red paint in lieu of decent special FX and a wonky synthesiser soundtrack. Too patently ludicrous even for the genre, "Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye" is a messy affair that's probably only enjoyed as a slice of high-camp nonsense that looks pretty and requires no thought at all. The bonus of an atrociously dubbed Serge Gainsbourg, slumming it here as a Scottish policeman with a squeaky Glasgae accent, is appreciated though. The things we do for love, eh, Serge? *1/2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Dir: Tobe Hooper

Although aped a few zillion times since (not least of all by some of its own sequels), the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" still somehow retains its scare factor, despite the familiarity of the material. It's your standard 'mad rednecks' story; bunch of kids driving through Texas run low on gas and get themselves caught by a family of inbred cannibal killers. What sets it apart is hard to place, but the film possesses an unusual power that few of its successors have captured. The skilled photography makes for an incredibly eerie atmosphere, as do the filthy, horrific set designs. The edgy musical score sets you on the edge right from the start and the final final third is quite insane; essentially just 20 minutes of non-stop screaming, it's an interesting experiment in how far you can push cinematic terror. A strange, disquieting and original little film that richly deserves its place in horror history. Never what I'd deem a 'nice' experience though. ***1/2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Dir: Tobe Hooper

Superior sequel which reunites the crazy cannibal family from the original for an infinitely gorier exercise in pure delirium. Caroline Williams stars as a supercute rockabilly DJ who inadvertantly broadcasts a live chainsaw killing on air (two college kids phoning in a request before being hacked to pieces). This attracts some unwanted attention from the killers, who decide to put her out of business once and for all. L.M. Kit Carson's multi-faceted screenplay is a fiendishly clever slice of Texan grand guignol; daring, disturbing, surreal and deeply, darkly funny. The gruesome set design, manic performances and unrestrained, MPAA-baiting bloodshed (courtesy of Tom Savini) all make for a truly feverish one-of-a-kind experience and, for my money, Hooper's masterpiece. Spectacular stuff, if you've the stomach for it. ****

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Next Generation (1994)

Dir: Kim Henkel

This perplexingly banal send-up of the series from its original creator pits a group of swiftly disposable teens against a bizarre new family of chainsaw-wielding murderers. That's really all there is, plotwise. Renée Zellweger runs around and screams. Matthew McConaughey runs after her and screams even more (by Christ, he's such an irritating hack actor; how on Earth did he get famous?). Some guy called Robert Jacks plays Leatherface, but he doesn't do a lot besides scream, run around and, uh, dress up as a woman. In drag, he's a deadringer for Kelly Osbourne; this is probably the scariest part of the movie. Otherwise, it's predictable, moronic stuff and devoid of thrills, gore or even the laughs it seems to be striving for with its, um, eccentric brand of black comedy. I have absolutely no clue what the ending (featuring a time-travelling Marilyn Burns cameo) is supposed to mean, but I detect it's some kind of surrealist private joke that the audience hasn't been let in on. Maybe I just don't understand the subtle nuances of Kim Henkel's Texan humour, but this is 83 minutes of my life that I will never see again and that saddens me a little. *

Broken (2006)

Dir: Adam Mason

A woman (Nadja Brand) wakes up in a coffin, with a razor blade sewn into her intestines. Once it's removed, she finds herself chained up in a wood and kept prisoner by unnamed man who proceeds to torture her, physically and mentally, until she is, as the title suggests, broken. If 90+ minutes of women screaming and being abused sounds like your idea of fun then, for Christ's sake, don't encourage these sad tendencies by watching films like this, get yourself some help! Even ignoring the questionable subject matter (and the fact that it never actually leads to any substantial denouement), the film is bad bad bad. It's under-scripted (it plays like a 10 minute short dragged painfully into 99), it's over-directed, it's abysmally shot on graceless digital video, it's slow, it's repetitive, it's riddled with continuity errors, it displays no attention to detail and it's completely illogical (ie: how is Brand's make-up so immaculately applied after 40 days of being tortured in a forest?). This is horror made exclusively by and for mentally stunted sociopaths and represents the absolute nadir of the genre for the rest of us. Avoid at all costs. I'm serious.

Sexbomb (1988)

Dir: Jeff Broadstreet

Inane spoof from the ever-schlocky production house of Fred Olen Ray. This one is an elaborate cause-and-effect farce about "I Rip Your Flesh With Pliers", a fictional splatter movie. The cast and crew seem less concerned about manufacturing onscreen violence and more into just killing one another. There are some sporadically amusing moments (the exploding horny werewolf raised a smile), weird ideas and Grade A eye candy (Linnea Quigley and Delia Shepphard being the female leads), but this can't sustain it for 86 laboured minutes. There's even a terrible musical number half way through in which 'Ethan', the plier-wielding serial killer, chases Linnea (wearing a 'VICTIM' t-shirt) around the set whilst occasionally stopping for the twist and the mashed potato. I really need to stop watching this kind of film before my brain gives out entirely. *1/2

The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971)

Dir: Robert Fuest

Cruel and unusual classic with Vincent Price in the titular role, a mad/genius doctor hellbent for revenge upon the nine surgeons present when his wife died on the operating table. He holds them responsible and is killing them off, one by one, in the style of Biblical plagues. The tone of the movie is (very) darkly comical with a vicious streak, yet occasionally it achieves a certain sublimity. Price is haunting and eerie as Phibes, the set design is lavish, beautiful and quite unlike any other film. The imaginatively bleak ending is merely the icing on an already thoroughly original cake. An obvious precursor to "Theatre of Blood", "Se7en" and the "Saw" movies, "The Abominable Dr Phibes" is essential viewing for any genre fan. It's also the only film in which you'll hear the wonderful line, "A brass unicorn has been catapulted across a London street and impaled an eminent surgeon. Words fail me, gentlemen." ***1/2

Slim 'Til Dead (2005)

Dir: Wong Jing/Marco Mak

Sporadically gruesome, occasionally sardonic and undeniably slick thriller from the ever-dependable Wong Jing production line (with help from his protege Mak). "Slim 'Til Dead" (aka "Sul Sun") stars Anthony Wong as an ineffectual cop tracking down a serial killer. The victims are all glamour idols who promote a slimming centre called Friends of Fitness and regularly appear on a TV Show, "Slim Queen". Their bodies are found either horribly starved or mutilated until they weigh exactly 70lb (at which point they're stamped with a delicatessen barcode proclaiming this). This isn't exactly top-drawer filmmaking but it's solid enough entertainment, moves along at a good pace, is loaded with quality actors and has a decent enough twist at the end to have made it worth your while. There's also a wonderfully shot scene in a room of mirrors that, whilst an overdone trick, looks fantastic. Good popcorn fodder. Would work inappropriately well on a double bill with Brett Leonard's "Feed". **1/2

Satan's Return (1996)

Dir: Ah Lun

This rollicking Hong Kong actioneer with a supernatural twist stars Chigmy Yau and Donnie Yen as a pair of cops in pursuit of a serial killer. He calls himself 'Judas', likes to crucify young women and is convinced that the Daughter of the Devil will be reborn on the 6th June 1996. At first, it seems he's just a nutter (well, he does like eating human hearts, after all) but then, as evidence mounts up that may well confirm his batshit theory, the cops find themselves doubting their own sanity and quite possibly plunging headlong towards the apocalypse. The movie bounds along at a rate of knots, loaded with hi-energy camerawork, exagerrative lighting and tons of blasphemous imagery (unusual for an Eastern film). Yau, as ever, lights up the screen and sizzles, whilst Yen looks suitably intense and kicks everybody's ass, as the hard-as-nails no-nonsense detective (who also wields a mean chainsaw). True, the script has a few holes and the ending is annoyingly goofball, but there are some wicked action sequences, a few moments of creepiness and enough quirkiness to keep you guessing. I'm feeling generous. ***