Exploitation films

Bamboo House of Dolls

Shaw Brothers takes on the WIP film. As strange a combination as it sounds.

The Twilight People

The cheapest Island of Doctor Moreau ever committed to film, and one of the most watchable.

Alvin Purple

The sex comedy that funded the entire boom. Historically important, hard going.

Boardinghouse

The first shot-on-video horror feature, blown up to 35mm and just as ugly as that sounds.

Human Lanterns

A Shaw wuxia that turns into a slasher, with lanterns made of human skin.

Penitentiary

Prison-boxing blaxploitation that out-grossed every indie of its year and got forgotten anyway.

Petey Wheatstraw

Rudy Ray Moore makes a deal with the Devil to come back from the dead. Deranged and delightful.

She-Devils on Wheels

H.G. Lewis hands the gore to a real biker gang. The acting is a crime; the piano wire is the point.

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter

Meiko Kaji before Toei, leading a girl gang through Nikkatsu's coolest delinquent picture.

Stunt Rock

No plot. A stuntman and a prog band. Exists purely so Grant Page can work.

Tarkan Versus the Vikings

A Turkish barbarian, his wolf, and the most beloved rubber octopus in world cinema.

The Burning Moon

Shot-on-video German splatter so homemade you can smell the garage. Ittenbach's Herschell Gordon Lewis tribute act.

The Queen of Black Magic

Suzzanna, Indonesia's horror queen, wronged by a whole village and collecting on the debt.

TNT Jackson

Cirio Santiago's Manila blaxploitation at full tilt, remembered for one fight staged in the dark.

Werewolves on Wheels

Exactly what it says, at half the pace you want.

Bewitched

Shaw Brothers black magic: worms, curses and a Taoist priest fighting a Thai sorcerer.

Assault! Jack the Ripper

A couple who find that killing is the only thing that works, followed all the way down.

Bad Girls Go to Hell

The definitive Doris Wishman roughie: grimy, deranged, and edited by someone allergic to faces.

Dr. Lamb

Simon Yam as the Rainy Night Butcher, fully off the leash. Cat III at its ugliest.

Kilink Istanbul'da

The homegrown Yeşilçam pulp: a skeleton-suited supervillain lifted wholesale from Italian comics.

Macon County Line

One of the most profitable independents ever made. Nastier than its reputation.

Next of Kin

A slow-burn gothic in a nursing home. Much better than its obscurity suggests.

Satan's Sadists

Al Adamson's grimiest, shot partly where the Manson family was living.

Seeding of a Ghost

Ninety minutes of restrained Shaw revenge, then twenty of rotting-corpse insanity.

Snapshot

A young model is stalked after a nude shoot. A slow-burn Australian thriller with a real sense of dread.

The Clones of Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee is cloned three times to fight crime. Bruce Le, Bruce Lai and Dragon Lee, together at last.

The Eternal Evil of Asia

Black magic, exploding wizards, and a curse that turns a man's head into a penis. Cat III lost its mind.

Willie Dynamite

A flamboyant pimp fights to stay on top as everything closes in. Sharper and sadder than most.

Bare Behind Bars

Brazil's Boca do Lixo does women-in-prison with everything the drive-in cut left out.

Cops vs. Thugs

Fukasaku again, arguing the two categories in the title are the same.

Crippled Avengers

Four men maimed by a tyrant learn to fight through their disabilities. Chang Cheh at his most inventive.

Detroit 9000

A biracial cop pairing hunts jewel thieves in Detroit. Tarantino re-released it for a reason.

Ecstasy of the Angels

Wakamatsu wires the pink film to a detonator and steps back.

Five Element Ninjas

Chang Cheh spills more guts here than in any Shaw film before it, and grins the whole way.

Free Hand for a Tough Cop

Tomas Milian debuts Er Monnezza, the filthiest man in Italian crime cinema, and steals his own movie.

Horror Rises from the Tomb

A decapitated warlock's head, still working. Naschy wrote it himself.