The films

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Baron Blood

A resurrected torturer stalks his own castle. Bava on more commercial autopilot, still gorgeous.

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Black Belt Jones

Jim Kelly karate-chops the mob to save a Watts dojo. Blaxploitation meets kung fu, joyfully.

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Black Mama White Mama

The Defiant Ones with Pam Grier, shot in the Philippines by a Filipino who actually knew the terrain.

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Calvaire

Deliverance relocated to the Belgian mud, and just as unwilling to let anyone leave.

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Cemetery Without Crosses

The French corner of the spaghetti cycle: gaunt, ritualistic, and dedicated to Leone.

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Cotton Comes to Harlem

Two Harlem detectives chase a stolen fortune hidden in a bale of cotton. The one that opened the door.

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Five Deadly Venoms

Chang Cheh's oddest. Five styles, five masks, one whodunit.

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God Told Me To

A detective investigates random killers who all say God ordered it. It goes somewhere insane.

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Goyokin

A samurai returns to stop the massacre he could not prevent the first time. Shot in real snow.

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Hell Up in Harlem

Larry Cohen's weekend sequel to Black Caesar, rougher and more berserk than the original.

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High School Confidential

An undercover cop infiltrates a high school drug ring. Reefer, hot rods and Jerry Lee Lewis.

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Lisa and the Devil

Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.

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Maciste in Hell

A muscleman drops into a full gothic hell. Peplum crossbred with a haunted-castle picture, and it looks it.

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Race with the Devil

Satanists chase a Winnebago across Texas. Better than that sounds.

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Shock Waves

Underwater Nazi zombies rise off a tropical island. Peter Cushing, John Carradine, and real dread.

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Successive Slidings of Pleasure

A nouveau-roman novelist makes a nunsploitation film and refuses to let it mean anything.

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Succubus

Franco's arthouse credentials, such as they are. Fritz Lang liked it.

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The Blood Spattered Bride

Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.

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The Boss

Di Leo's most cynical crime film. A mob enforcer navigates a Mafia war where everyone is corrupt.

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The Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef, one three-way showdown, and the Bacalov theme you know from Kill Bill.

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The Immoral Mr. Teas

Historically pivotal, formally inert. Watch ten minutes and read about the rest.

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The Indian Scarf

Ten heirs in a Scottish castle, strangled one at a time. Kinski included.

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The Italian Connection

Mario Adorf on foot versus a car. Best chase in Italian cinema.

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The Shiver of the Vampires

Rollin with a fuzz-guitar band and a vampire who lives in the clock. His most fun.

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The Toolbox Murders

A proto-slasher that front-loads its nastiness, then becomes a different and stranger film.

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Tromeo and Juliet

Body piercings, a penis monster, and Lemmy on narration. Troma's actual masterpiece.

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Veerana

The Ramsay brothers' witch movie, with musical numbers between the murders.

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Vigilante

Lustig doing it straight. Robert Forster deserves better and knows it.

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White Line Fever

Trucker versus the cartel. Earnest, blue-collar, better than expected.

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Women's Prison Massacre

Late Italian entry. Laura Gemser, and a body count instead of a plot.

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99 Women

Franco doing the formula early, with Mercedes McCambridge as the warden.

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Alucarda

The most hysterical nunsploitation film ever made. A convent, two possessed girls, and constant screaming.

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Black Caesar

Larry Cohen shooting Harlem guerrilla-style. James Brown scores it.

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Cleopatra Jones

Tamara Dobson, six feet two, government agent. Shelley Winters overacts gloriously.

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Contamination

Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.

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Der Todesking

Buttgereit's bleakest: seven suicides, one rotting corpse holding it together.