Exploitation films of the 1970s

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.

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.

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.

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.

Assault! Jack the Ripper

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

Macon County Line

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

Snapshot

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

Willie Dynamite

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

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.

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.

House of Whipcord

Pete Walker builds a secret prison to punish the censors who wanted one. Sheila Keith is the nightmare.

Psychomania

Zombie bikers, toad worship and George Sanders' last film. As English as horror gets.

Rituals

The Canadian Deliverance, and grimmer than the nickname promises.

Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters

Every monster at once, all of them on a budget of nothing. Delightful.

Street Mobster

Bunta Sugawara as pure appetite. The jitsuroku style arriving fully formed.

The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist

Late-cycle Castellari. Everyone is exhausted and it shows productively.

They Call Her... Cleopatra Wong

The girls-with-guns spy picture Tarantino keeps name-checking, and rightly.

Three the Hard Way

Brown, Williamson and Kelly against a plot to poison the water supply.

Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs

Toei's red-coated killer cop, and the blueprint for every lone avenging woman after her.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

Ito's second, and the most formally daring film in the whole category.

Girl Boss Guerilla

Norifumi Suzuki at full speed. Reiko Ike is the whole show.

Island of Death

Mykonos has never looked prettier or hosted anything uglier. Mastorakis dared himself to be banned and won.

Sugar Hill

Revenge via Haitian zombies. The best of the blaxploitation horror crossovers.

The Lickerish Quartet

The most elegant film ever filed under sexploitation, and the reason Metzger belongs in the canon.

The Loreley's Grasp

A Rhine myth relocated to Spain, with a monster that only works in long shot.

The Mack

Half drama, half documentary of 1970s Oakland. The real players are in it.

The Violent Professionals

Martino sends Luc Merenda undercover and off the leash. Prime cop-on-a-rampage stuff.

Thirst

A secret society farms humans for blood. Ozploitation does vampires as corporate agribusiness.

Violent Naples

Merli takes his no-mercy cop routine to Naples. Fast, brutal, and politically incoherent as ever.

Women in Cages

Pam Grier as the sadist for once. Bleaker than its stablemates.

Angels Hard as They Come

Jonathan Demme's first script, produced by Corman. Rashomon on bikes.

Beyond the Door

The Italian Exorcist. Warner sued. It made money anyway.

Death Walks at Midnight

Ercoli's brighter, faster Death Walks. Nieves Navarro sees a murder and nobody buys it.

Dirty Ho

A prince and a thief, master and pupil in disguise. Lau Kar-leung's wittiest choreography.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable

Ito's last. Kaji drags a severed arm through Tokyo in the opening minutes.

Ganja & Hess

An art film that was sold as a vampire picture. Recut and buried for decades.

J.D.'s Revenge

A dead 1940s gangster possesses a mild law student. Blaxploitation crossed with the supernatural.

Messiah of Evil

Made by the couple who then wrote American Graffiti. A nightmare that never explains itself.

Requiem for a Vampire

Rollin at his purest. Two women in clown costume, a castle, almost no dialogue.

School of the Holy Beast

The Japanese entry, and formally the most accomplished of them.

Sex & Fury

The naked snow swordfight. Everyone remembers it; the rest is decent Meiji melodrama.

SS Experiment Camp

A DPP video nasty far better known for its poster than for anything in the film.

Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom

The title is the pitch. Delivers on it with unusual formal care.

The Big Bird Cage

Funnier and better than the first. Sid Haig is having an excellent time.

The Gore Gore Girls

Herschell Gordon Lewis signs off with a meat tenderiser and a gag about chocolate milk.

The Nun and the Devil

Convent politics played as Renaissance power-drama. More Borgia than bondage.

The Wizard of Gore

A stage magician whose tricks are real. Lewis's most interesting idea.

Abby

The blaxploitation Exorcist. A minister's wife is possessed by a sex demon. Warner Bros sued.

Barbed Wire Dolls

Jess Franco's contribution to the cycle. Cheap, delirious and utterly shameless, even for him.

Behind Convent Walls

Borowczyk brings his erotic art-house eye to the convent. Beautiful, explicit and barely plotted.

Dolemite

Technically inept and completely irresistible. Boom mics in every other shot.

Executioners from Shaolin

Lau Kar-leung's revenge epic. A survivor spends years learning the one style that can beat the villain.

Fascination

Rollin's best, and the one where the pretty dream logic finally grows teeth.

Graveyard of Honor

Fukasaku's nastiest. A gangster too unstable for organised crime.

Lips of Blood

Rollin's most coherent, which is not saying a great deal. Gorgeous.

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man

Two cops who are clearly the villains. Ruggero Deodato, before the jungle.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx

The best of the series. A pram, a snowfield, and a small army that should have stayed home.

Long Weekend

A couple litter, and Australia decides to kill them. Excellent.

Night of the Seagulls

The Blind Dead ride out one last time. A quiet, sad closer to Spain's best monster series.

Patrick

A man in a coma does telekinesis. Better than that sentence implies.

Rome Armed to the Teeth

Maurizio Merli punches Rome for 100 minutes. Politics: incoherent.

Scream Blacula Scream

The rare sequel that adds Pam Grier and a shred of dignity.

Shoot First, Die Later

Di Leo's dirty-cop picture, and the rot goes all the way home.

Stone

Australia's outlaw-biker scripture. Mad Max drank from this tank.

Switchblade Sisters

Jack Hill doing Othello with teenage gangs. Much smarter than it needs to be.

The Big Doll House

Jack Hill and Pam Grier invent the modern formula in the Philippines.

The Chinese Boxer

Jimmy Wang Yu invents the empty-hand kung fu film. No swords.

The Fifth Cord

The best-looking giallo nobody names, shot by Storaro between two Bertoluccis.

The Ghost Galleon

The Blind Dead put to sea on a model boat in a visible fish tank. The runt of the four.

The Iron Rose

Rollin with the vampires stripped out, and his best film for it.

The Legend of Boggy Creek

The Arkansas Bigfoot docudrama that invented an entire regional-monster format on a hundred grand.

The Nude Vampire

A secret society, a Paris chateau, and dream logic all the way down.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black

Barely a murder mystery. A slow psychological collapse, and superb.

Trouble Man

Cool to the point of refrigeration, scored by Marvin Gaye the one time he ever bothered.

Truck Turner

Isaac Hayes in front of the camera for once, and Nichelle Nichols swearing.

Almost Human

Tomas Milian as a repellent psychopath. Deeply unpleasant, very good.

Blue Sunshine

A batch of ten-year-old LSD makes people go bald and homicidal. A great, paranoid premise.

Death Walks on High Heels

Ercoli's best. Structurally cleverer than most of the cycle.

Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion

Sold as a women-in-prison quickie. Shot like an art film. Meiko Kaji barely blinks.

Heroes of the East

Chinese kung fu versus Japanese martial arts, as a marriage. Lau Kar-leung's most good-natured film.

High Crime

Castellari's breakout in the genre, and Franco Nero furious for ninety minutes.

Hunchback of the Morgue

Naschy's grisliest, and the one where the rats were not an effect.

Images in a Convent

D'Amato's convent, where the theology is a coat-hook for the softcore.

Man from Deep River

The one that started it, by remaking A Man Called Horse in Thailand.

Return of the Evil Dead

Blind Dead again, this time besieging a whole village. The best of the four.

Schoolgirl Report

West Germany's pseudo-documentary sex series. Thirteen entries, vast profits, zero shame.