Exploitation films

Thriller: A Cruel Picture

The eyepatch Tarantino copied. Contains real hardcore inserts and a real animal death.

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Fulci does psychedelia. The dog scene got him prosecuted.

A Touch of Zen

Three hours, a bamboo forest, and a Cannes prize. Barely exploitation.

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.

Keoma

Late, strange, half-sung by a folk narrator. Castellari's best film.

Milano calibro 9

Di Leo's masterpiece. Cold, fast, well written.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

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

The Beast

An acclaimed animator's fairytale about a noblewoman and a well-equipped forest beast, banned on sight.

Torso

Sleazy for an hour, then a brilliant silent final act.

Alice, Sweet Alice

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

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

Black Emanuelle wanders into a cannibal picture, and D'Amato lets both halves misbehave.

Wake in Fright

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

Walking Tall

One sheriff, one hickory club, and the blueprint for every Southern vigilante picture after it.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Meyer and Roger Ebert, at a major studio, on drugs. Somehow released.

Don't Torture a Duckling

Fulci's best film and his angriest. A giallo about mob justice in a village.

Foxy Brown

Coffy again, louder and worse written. Grier is still magnetic.

Mountain of the Cannibal God

The cannibal cycle in a dinner jacket, ex-Bond girl and real animal deaths included.

Rabid

Cronenberg gives Marilyn Chambers a blood-feeding stinger. Montreal falls apart around her.

The Crazies

A military bioweapon drives a town homicidally insane. Romero on institutional failure, again.

What Have You Done to Solange?

Unusually sad for a giallo, and much better for it.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah

The psychedelic pollution one. Godzilla fights a smog monster, and the film goes completely strange.

It's Alive

A mutant newborn kills the delivery room and goes on the run. Larry Cohen means the metaphor.

The Vampire Lovers

Hammer clocks that the censors have loosened and sends Ingrid Pitt to make the most of it.

Vampyros Lesbos

Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet

Argento's third. Unavailable for decades, and worth the wait for the last shot.

Shivers

Cronenberg's debut. A phallic parasite turns a luxury apartment tower into an orgy of the infected.

The Brood

Cronenberg turns a divorce into monsters. Rage made flesh, and it is about his own custody battle.

Two-Lane Blacktop

Almost no dialogue, almost no plot, and completely hypnotic.

Blacula

William Marshall plays it completely straight and almost saves it.

The Cat o' Nine Tails

Argento's least favourite of his own films. He is roughly right.

Vanishing Point

A white Challenger, amphetamines, and an existential crisis at speed.

Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS

Shot on the leftover Hogan's Heroes set. Nothing here is defensible; it's catalogued, not recommended.

A Bay of Blood

Bava invents the slasher a decade early. Friday the 13th copied two kills outright.

El Topo

Jodorowsky's mystical, violent acid western. It essentially invented the midnight movie.

Orca

The whale wants revenge and has a plan. Morricone score, oddly moving.