Exploitation films of the 1980s

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.

The Queen of Black Magic

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

Bewitched

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

Next of Kin

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

Seeding of a Ghost

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

The Clones of Bruce Lee

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

Bare Behind Bars

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

Five Element Ninjas

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

The Boxer's Omen

The most deranged thing Shaw Brothers ever paid for, and it never slows down to explain itself.

Turkey Shoot

The budget vanished mid-shoot and they kept going. Chaotic, mean, fun.

Fair Game

A woman alone at an outback wildlife reserve is hunted by three kangaroo poachers. Lean and nasty.

Hawk the Slayer

Jack Palance chewing a fantasy kingdom to splinters while a sword flies about on wires. Beloved for it.

Lady Terminator

The Terminator, if the machine were a sea goddess and had no shame whatsoever.

Mystics in Bali

The Indonesian one everybody means: a flying witch's head, viscera trailing, hunting in the dark.

Purana Mandir

The hit that proved Indian audiences would pay to watch a man in a rubber demon mask.

Dead End Drive-In

A drive-in turned into an internment camp. The satire is not subtle.

Exterminators of the Year 3000

The Italian Road Warrior with sand instead of the Bronx, muscle car included.

2020 Texas Gladiators

D'Amato and Eastman's Mad Max in a cowboy hat. Assembled entirely from better films.

Chained Heat

Linda Blair goes to prison. A sleazy 80s update of the formula, with a corrupt warden and a hot tub.

Conquest

Fulci does Conan through so much fog you can barely see the gore. Somehow that helps.

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood

The fake snuff film that got Charlie Sheen on the phone to the FBI.

Reform School Girls

The women-in-prison film as its own punchline, fronted by the lead singer of the Plasmatics.

The Living Dead Girl

Rollin's best late film. Melancholy where the Italians were loud.

Barbarian Queen

Corman's Argentine Conan-with-women, honest bottom-shelf swords and loincloths.

Brain Damage

A parasite gives a young man euphoric highs in exchange for feeding it brains. Addiction as horror.

Burial Ground

Incoherent even by the standards of the cycle. The Peter subplot is unforgivable.

Cannibal Apocalypse

Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.

Nightmare City

Zombies that run and use guns, decades early. Incompetent in enjoyable ways.

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter

Lau Kar-leung's brutal last great Shaw film. A massacred family, and pole fighting as grief.

Zombie Holocaust

Cannibals and zombies at once, reusing the Zombi 2 sets and cast.

Ator the Fighting Eagle

Joe D'Amato's Conan, giant puppet spider and all. Miles O'Keeffe swings the sword.

Veerana

The Ramsay brothers' witch movie, with musical numbers between the murders.

Vigilante

Lustig doing it straight. Robert Forster deserves better and knows it.

Women's Prison Massacre

Late Italian entry. Laura Gemser, and a body count instead of a plot.

Contamination

Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.

Hell of the Living Dead

Bruno Mattei rips off Dawn of the Dead with a Goblin score he also stole. Gloriously shameless.

Pieces

Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'

Q: The Winged Serpent

Larry Cohen, a dragon over Manhattan, and a great Michael Moriarty.

The House on the Edge of the Park

Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.

Class of Nuke 'Em High

Troma's toxic high school, second only to Toxie. Exactly as stupid as you want it to be.

Razorback

A giant pig film shot like a perfume ad. Somehow works.

Deathstalker

Corman in Argentina. The genuine article, for better and worse.

Escape from the Bronx

More of the same, with flamethrowers and property developers as villains.

Hell Night

Linda Blair, a frat hazing, an old dark house. Atmosphere over arterial spray, and better for it.

Road Games

Rear Window in a truck, with Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Street Trash

People melt in primary colours. Tasteless, inventive, weirdly beautiful.

The New Barbarians

Castellari's Mad Max, with perspex cars and George Eastman. Sold in the US as Warriors of the Wasteland.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future

Starts as caveman fantasy, becomes science fiction with no warning.

2019: After the Fall of New York

The last fertile woman on Earth, in a quarry outside Rome.

StageFright

A killer in a giant owl mask, a locked theatre, and Soavi announcing himself.

The Slumber Party Massacre

Written as satire, shot straight, and stranger than either choice on its own.

The Sword and the Sorcerer

A three-bladed sword that fires two of the blades. Sold on that alone.

Anthropophagus

Almost entirely people walking around an island. Then two minutes of infamy.

Eaten Alive!

Lenzi recycling other films' footage into a Jonestown story. Grim work.

The Funhouse

Tobe Hooper does a carnival slasher. A deformed killer, a hall of mirrors, and real dread.

1990: The Bronx Warriors

Fred Williamson in a cape. Castellari doing Warriors on a Roman budget.

Dead & Buried

Stan Winston effects and a good twist. Underseen.

Society

A teen suspects his rich family are not human. The finale proves it, wetly.

Ms. 45

Ferrara's best. Zoë Lund is extraordinary and the ending is a genuine image.

The New York Ripper

Genuinely nasty and hard to defend. The killer quacks. It doesn't help.

Maniac

Savini's effects, Spinell's performance, and a very bleak little film.

Santa Sangre

Jodorowsky's late masterpiece. A circus, a cult, an armless mother, and her son's hands.

Shogun Assassin

Two Lone Wolf and Cub films chopped into one English dub. A grindhouse legend regardless.

Terror Train

A costume party on a moving train, a killer swapping disguises, and Jamie Lee Curtis again.

The Exterminator

A flamethrower and a meat grinder. Death Wish with the restraint removed.

Basket Case

$35,000, shot on 42nd Street, and completely charming. The best kind of cheap.

Class of 1984

Death Wish enrols at high school and the faculty loses.

Nekromantik

German, banned widely, and much sadder than its reputation suggests.

Sleepaway Camp

Ninety minutes of nothing, then an ending nobody who has seen it forgets.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Sixty-seven minutes of industrial nightmare. Nothing else looks like it.

The Prowler

A killer in WWII combat gear stalks a graduation dance. Savini's best gore work.

From Beyond

Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs do Lovecraft again. A machine that lets you see what should stay unseen.

Happy Birthday to Me

A prestige director slumming in the glut, and a poster more famous than the film.

My Bloody Valentine

Canadian, mine-set, unusually well shot. The censored cut ruined it for decades.

Opera

Needles taped under the eyes so she cannot look away. Argento's last truly great film.

The Burning

The raft scene is the best kill in any slasher. The rest is fine.

Cannibal Ferox

Lenzi chasing Deodato with none of the argument. Real animal deaths, no defence.

City of the Living Dead

The drill scene. Otherwise thin, but the atmosphere is thick.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

The killer-Santa movie that got itself run out of cinemas in a week.

The Beastmaster

The one that is actually fun. Ferrets steal the film.

The Man Who Saves the World

Turkish Star Wars. Contains actual Star Wars footage. Not licensed.

The Toxic Avenger

Troma's only good film, and the head-crushing is still funny.

Alligator

Sayles again. A flushed pet in the sewers, and it knows how silly that is.

Prom Night

Jamie Lee Curtis, a masked killer, and a decade-old secret. Halloween cashes in, disco included.

Bad Taste

Shot at weekends over four years by Jackson and his friends. Astonishing.

Inferno

Argento's sequel to Suspiria. Even less plot, even more colour. A building that is alive.

Maniac Cop

A dead cop stalks New York in uniform. Larry Cohen writes, Robert Z'Dar's jaw does the rest.

Phenomena

Insect telepathy, a Swiss boarding school, and a straight-razor chimpanzee. Argento off the leash.

Possession

On the nasties list by pure bureaucratic accident. An actual masterpiece about divorce.

Tenebrae

Argento's coldest and cleverest. That crane shot earns its reputation.

The Beyond

Makes no sense whatsoever and is Fulci's best film. Dream logic, fully committed.

The Changeling

George C. Scott versus a bouncing red ball. The best serious ghost film of its decade.

The Return of the Living Dead

Punk soundtrack, running zombies, and the film that invented 'BRAINS'.

Death Wish 3

Abandons realism entirely. Bronson defends a housing block with a machine gun.

Re-Animator

Where the effects and the writing finally matched. Jeffrey Combs is perfect.