Exploitation films

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.