Exploitation films

Deathstalker

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

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry

Ninety minutes of driving and one of cinema's great abrupt endings.

Hell Night

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

Street Trash

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

Super Fly

Curtis Mayfield's score critiques the film it's in. Remarkable object.

Tales from the Crypt

The best Amicus omnibus, and Joan Collins versus a killer Santa two years before Black Christmas.

White Lightning

Burt Reynolds, moonshine, and the blueprint for a decade of Southern comedy.

Blood Feast

The first gore film. Barely competent, historically unavoidable.

Caged Heat

Jonathan Demme's debut, and it is visibly a Jonathan Demme film.

Frankenhooker

A man rebuilds his dead girlfriend from the parts of exploded sex workers. Exactly that stupid, and great.

Phase IV

Saul Bass's only feature. Ants, geometry, and an ending nobody saw for 40 years.

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.

Wild in the Streets

A rock star is elected president and puts everyone over 35 in LSD re-education camps.

Gone in 60 Seconds

93 cars destroyed for real. The director broke his own ankles. Worth it.

Hells Angels on Wheels

The biker cycle's Jack Nicholson entry, shot by Laszlo Kovacs and a cut above the AIP norm.

The Funhouse

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

Dead & Buried

Stan Winston effects and a good twist. Underseen.

Female Trouble

Divine's crime spree as performance art. Waters at his most focused and vicious.

Martin

Romero's vampire film. A boy who needs blood, and no fangs, cape or certainty that he is one.

Psych-Out

A deaf runaway searches for her brother in Haight-Ashbury. Nicholson with a ponytail and a band.

Rolling Thunder

Paul Schrader script, and the last twenty minutes are perfect.

Society

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

The Driller Killer

Abel Ferrara's debut. More interesting as a document of downtown New York.

Two Thousand Maniacs!

H.G. Lewis, a Southern town, and gore effects that predate everyone.

Coffy

Pam Grier's arrival. Jack Hill knows exactly what he has.

Faces of Death

Mostly fake, entirely cynical, and a rental-shop legend regardless.

Lorna

Meyer stops joking. The one where the sun goes behind a cloud.

Ms. 45

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

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

Financed independently, structured like nothing else, and it changed the industry.

Alice, Sweet Alice

American giallo in Catholic New Jersey. Genuinely disturbing and well acted.

Maniac

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

Shogun Assassin

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

The Exterminator

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

The Wild Angels

Corman starts the cycle. Peter Fonda, real Hells Angels, and a funeral.

Wake in Fright

A masterpiece and an ordeal. The kangaroo hunt is real footage and it is unbearable.