The films

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Heroes of the East

Chinese kung fu versus Japanese martial arts, as a marriage. Lau Kar-leung's most good-natured film.

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Lips of Blood

Rollin's most coherent, which is not saying a great deal. Gorgeous.

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Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man

Two cops who are clearly the villains. Ruggero Deodato, before the jungle.

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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.

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Night of the Bloody Apes

Mexican horror at the gore end: a gorilla-heart transplant, real surgery footage, and a masked lady wrestler.

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Night of the Seagulls

The Blind Dead ride out one last time. A quiet, sad closer to Spain's best monster series.

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Patrick

A man in a coma does telekinesis. Better than that sentence implies.

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Reform School Girls

The women-in-prison film as its own punchline, fronted by the lead singer of the Plasmatics.

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Rome Armed to the Teeth

Maurizio Merli punches Rome for 100 minutes. Politics: incoherent.

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Scream Blacula Scream

The rare sequel that adds Pam Grier and a shred of dignity.

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Shoot First, Die Later

Di Leo's dirty-cop picture, and the rot goes all the way home.

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Stone

Australia's outlaw-biker scripture. Mad Max drank from this tank.

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Switchblade Sisters

Jack Hill doing Othello with teenage gangs. Much smarter than it needs to be.

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The Big Doll House

Jack Hill and Pam Grier invent the modern formula in the Philippines.

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The Born Losers

The first Billy Jack film, and much nastier than the sequels.

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The Chinese Boxer

Jimmy Wang Yu invents the empty-hand kung fu film. No swords.

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The Dead Eyes of London

Blind killers, insurance fraud, and the best fog in the series.

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The Fifth Cord

The best-looking giallo nobody names, shot by Storaro between two Bertoluccis.

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The Ghost Galleon

The Blind Dead put to sea on a model boat in a visible fish tank. The runt of the four.

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The Inn on the River

The Rialto Wallace machine at full tilt: fog, a harpoon and Klaus Kinski looking guilty.

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The Iron Rose

Rollin with the vampires stripped out, and his best film for it.

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The Legend of Boggy Creek

The Arkansas Bigfoot docudrama that invented an entire regional-monster format on a hundred grand.

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The Living Dead Girl

Rollin's best late film. Melancholy where the Italians were loud.

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The Long Hair of Death

Margheriti and Barbara Steele do the burned-witch gothic, and the fog does half the acting.

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The Nude Vampire

A secret society, a Paris chateau, and dream logic all the way down.

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The Perfume of the Lady in Black

Barely a murder mystery. A slow psychological collapse, and superb.

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The Spook Who Sat by the Door

The most political film the blaxploitation boom made, pulled from cinemas and buried for thirty years.

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Trouble Man

Cool to the point of refrigeration, scored by Marvin Gaye the one time he ever bothered.

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Truck Turner

Isaac Hayes in front of the camera for once, and Nichelle Nichols swearing.

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Zinda Laash

Pakistan's first horror film: Hammer's Dracula, plus musical numbers, minus permission.

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Almost Human

Tomas Milian as a repellent psychopath. Deeply unpleasant, very good.

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Ator the Fighting Eagle

Joe D'Amato's Conan, giant puppet spider and all. Miles O'Keeffe swings the sword.

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Barbarian Queen

Corman's Argentine Conan-with-women, honest bottom-shelf swords and loincloths.

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Blue Sunshine

A batch of ten-year-old LSD makes people go bald and homicidal. A great, paranoid premise.

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Brain Damage

A parasite gives a young man euphoric highs in exchange for feeding it brains. Addiction as horror.

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Burial Ground

Incoherent even by the standards of the cycle. The Peter subplot is unforgivable.