Exploitation films

Goliath and the Vampires

Maciste renamed again, fighting a shapeshifter. Cheerfully incoherent.

Goodbye Uncle Tom

Jacopetti and Prosperi's slavery reconstruction, and the most indefensible thing the mondo pair ever shot.

Hell of the Living Dead

Bruno Mattei rips off Dawn of the Dead with a Goblin score he also stole. Gloriously shameless.

Kill, Baby... Kill!

A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance

A disgraced executioner and his toddler take the assassin's road. The pram has blades in it.

Nekromantik 2

Buttgereit's necrophilia sequel, prosecuted on arrival, and stranger than the first.

Pieces

Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'

Q: The Winged Serpent

Larry Cohen, a dragon over Manhattan, and a great Michael Moriarty.

Revolver

Di Leo's saddest. Oliver Reed, and a Morricone theme that hurts.

Short Night of Glass Dolls

Narrated by a paralysed man presumed dead. Unusual and very good.

Squirm

Electrified worms in Georgia. Rick Baker's early effects are the draw.

The Blood Spattered Bride

Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

Martino at his most efficient. Nobody wastes a frame.

The College Girl Murders

The point where the black-and-white krimi tips over into full-colour giallo delirium.

The Gestapo's Last Orgy

The most extreme of the sadiconazista cycle, and the only one shaped like a love story.

The Grapes of Death

Rollin does an outbreak. A pesticide turns wine-country villagers into oozing killers.

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock

Barbara Steele married to a necrophile surgeon, and Freda smuggling it past the 1962 censors on innuendo alone.

The House on the Edge of the Park

Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.

Tokyo Gore Police

The Japanese splatter movement at full arterial pressure, from the man who built it.

3 Dev Adam

Captain America and a Mexican wrestler fight Spider-Man, who is a murderer. Unlicensed, obviously.

Across 110th Street

Grim, well acted, and the best film in the cycle by some distance.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity

Not pinky violence. Fukasaku's handheld yakuza epic, and a classic.

Castle of Blood

Barbara Steele in a haunted house on a bet. Better than it sounds.

Class of Nuke 'Em High

Troma's toxic high school, second only to Toxie. Exactly as stupid as you want it to be.

Five Fingers of Death

The one that broke kung fu in America, months before Bruce Lee did.

Flower and Snake

The film that made Nikkatsu's S&M line a going concern. Rope, and lots of it.

Four of the Apocalypse

Fulci does a bleak, hallucinatory western. Four outcasts cross a hostile frontier. Most do not make it.

Grizzly

Jaws with a bear, pitched exactly that way, and it worked.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

A bridal-couture killer who narrates his own psychosis, and the best ghost gag Bava ever staged.

Killer Nun

Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.

Master of the Flying Guillotine

A blind monk, a bladed hat on a chain, and a tournament. Perfect.

Matango

Honda's mushroom-people film. Far bleaker than anything else Toho made.

Mom and Dad

Kroger Babb toured it for twenty years with a fake nurse in the lobby.

Operation Kid Brother

They cast Sean Connery's actual brother. That is the entire idea.

Razorback

A giant pig film shot like a perfume ad. Somehow works.

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

A live-action gore manga where nobody has heard of restraint or arterial pressure.