Exploitation films

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.

Dead End Drive-In

A drive-in turned into an internment camp. The satire is not subtle.

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.

Exterminators of the Year 3000

The Italian Road Warrior with sand instead of the Bronx, muscle car included.

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.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell

Bleeding skies, a forehead-splitting alien, and an ending with no comfort in it whatsoever.

J.D.'s Revenge

A dead 1940s gangster possesses a mild law student. Blaxploitation crossed with the supernatural.

Love Camp 7

The film that invented nazisploitation six years before Ilsa made it a genre.

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.

Santo vs. the Vampire Women

The best-shot Santo film. He wrestles twice for no reason at all.

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.

Spider Baby

Jack Hill's first, Lon Chaney Jr's last good role. Very odd and very fond.

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 Black Abbot

The standard-issue Wallace krimi. Hood, abbey, inheritance, fog.

The Blood Beast Terror

Cushing called it the worst film he ever made. He was being generous.

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 Sinister Monk

A whip-wielding monk killing heiresses. Closest the krimi got to giallo.

The Wizard of Gore

A stage magician whose tricks are real. Lewis's most interesting idea.

2020 Texas Gladiators

D'Amato and Eastman's Mad Max in a cowboy hat. Assembled entirely from better films.

Abby

The blaxploitation Exorcist. A minister's wife is possessed by a sex demon. Warner Bros sued.

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

The first Brazilian horror film, and the birth of Coffin Joe, a national icon with terrible fingernails.

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.

Chained Heat

Linda Blair goes to prison. A sleazy 80s update of the formula, with a corrupt warden and a hot tub.

Conquest

Fulci does Conan through so much fog you can barely see the gore. Somehow that helps.

Dolemite

Technically inept and completely irresistible. Boom mics in every other shot.