Exploitation films

Master of the Flying Guillotine

A blind monk, a bladed hat on a chain, and a tournament. Perfect.

Supervixens

Meyer's biggest hit of the decade, and his cartoon violence at its most cartoonish.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

The killer paralyses you first so you feel it. A first-rank giallo nobody name-checks.

The Man from Hong Kong

Jimmy Wang Yu wrecks Sydney, with hang-gliding and a man actually on fire. Peak crossover.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

A family curse, a killer in a red cloak, and a legend that kills every hundred years.

Tourist Trap

Mannequins that move, telekinesis, and a masked killer. Far stranger than a slasher should be.

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Best title in the genre. Poe adaptation with Edwige Fenech and a black cat.

Daughters of Darkness

Delphine Seyrig as Bathory in an empty Ostend hotel. Genuinely elegant.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry

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

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks

Same Ilsa, new empire. The harem keeps the whip, loses the swastika.

Jungle Holocaust

Deodato's first pass. Slower, meaner, less interesting than what followed.

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.

The Cars That Ate Paris

Peter Weir's debut. A town that farms car crashes. Very strange.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

The Martino/Fenech formula, arriving fully formed. Cut and retitled Blade of the Ripper in the US.

Tombs of the Blind Dead

Eyeless Templars on skeletal horses in slow motion. Best monster design of the 70s.

White Lightning

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

Who Can Kill a Child?

Spanish, sun-bleached, upsetting. The opening newsreel is a hard sell.

All the Colors of the Dark

Satanic paranoia in Swinging London. Edwige Fenech is excellent.

Caged Heat

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

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Spanish-Italian, shot in England, and much smarter than its stablemates.

Phase IV

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

The Blood on Satan's Claw

A plough turns up a skull and a village falls apart. Coined the term.

The Case of the Bloody Iris

The Fenech giallo distilled to its purest form: models, murders, and no reason to solve any of it.

The House with Laughing Windows

A rural giallo with no gloss and a deep, patient dread. Often voted the best one going.

The Psychic

Fulci does a clockwork giallo. A woman's vision of a murder turns out to be her own future.

Who Saw Her Die?

A child is murdered in Venice. A grieving father hunts the killer through the fog.

Gone in 60 Seconds

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

Lady Snowblood

Where Kill Bill got most of its ideas, including the snow.

The House That Dripped Blood

Four Robert Bloch stories, Cushing and Lee on hand, and barely a drop of the title's blood.

To the Devil a Daughter

Hammer's last gasp. Christopher Lee said it finished the studio off.

Companeros

Zapata western with Franco Nero and a very good Morricone theme.

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.

Rolling Thunder

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

The Driller Killer

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