The films

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Face to Face

Sollima's smartest western: watch a decent man discover he likes it.

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Female Trouble

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

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Martin

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

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Psych-Out

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

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Rolling Thunder

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

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Society

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

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The Beast

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

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The Devil Rides Out

Hammer's best occult film. Lee as the hero for once, and enjoying it.

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The Driller Killer

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

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The Giant of Marathon

Reeves again, with underwater battle scenes Bava shot uncredited.

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The Mercenary

Corbucci's Zapata western. A Polish gun-for-hire, a peasant revolutionary, and Jack Palance in a frock.

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Two Thousand Maniacs!

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

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War of the Gargantuas

Two giant humanoid brothers, one good, one savage, tear up Japan. Weirdly beloved, and Brad Pitt's favourite.

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Witchfinder General

Vincent Price with the camp removed. Reeves died at 25, a year later.

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Alice, Sweet Alice

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

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A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Fulci does psychedelia. The dog scene got him prosecuted.

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A Touch of Zen

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

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Coffy

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

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Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

The film that invented the Amicus anthology, dealt out as tarot on a train.

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Faces of Death

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

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Frontier(s)

Texas Chainsaw with a French accent and a swastika over the door.

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Keoma

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

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Lorna

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

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Milano calibro 9

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

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Ms. 45

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

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Rodan

Toho's first colour kaiju. A supersonic pterosaur levels a city with its wingblasts.

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Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

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

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The New York Ripper

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

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Torso

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

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Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

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

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Hercules in the Haunted World

Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.

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Maniac

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

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Mothra

The most charming of Toho's roster, and openly anti-colonial about it.

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Reefer Madness

A church-funded warning that became a comedy 40 years later.

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Santa Sangre

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

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Shogun Assassin

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