Exploitation films

Boardinghouse

The first shot-on-video horror feature, blown up to 35mm and just as ugly as that sounds.

She-Devils on Wheels

H.G. Lewis hands the gore to a real biker gang. The acting is a crime; the piano wire is the point.

The Burning Moon

Shot-on-video German splatter so homemade you can smell the garage. Ittenbach's Herschell Gordon Lewis tribute act.

Seeding of a Ghost

Ninety minutes of restrained Shaw revenge, then twenty of rotting-corpse insanity.

Five Element Ninjas

Chang Cheh spills more guts here than in any Shaw film before it, and grins the whole way.

Run and Kill

A drunk man accidentally orders a hit on his own wife, and it is all downhill from there.

Mystics in Bali

The Indonesian one everybody means: a flying witch's head, viscera trailing, hunting in the dark.

The Gore Gore Girls

Herschell Gordon Lewis signs off with a meat tenderiser and a gag about chocolate milk.

The Wizard of Gore

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

Ebola Syndrome

Anthony Wong versus the world, armed with a virus and no impulse control.

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood

The fake snuff film that got Charlie Sheen on the phone to the FBI.

Night of the Bloody Apes

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

Brain Damage

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

Color Me Blood Red

Lewis finishing his gore trilogy. A painter, and his pigment source.

Tromeo and Juliet

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

Nekromantik 2

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

Tokyo Gore Police

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

Class of Nuke 'Em High

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

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

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

The Untold Story

Anthony Wong won Best Actor for this. Then you find out what goes in the pork buns.

Street Trash

People melt in primary colours. Tasteless, inventive, weirdly beautiful.

Blood Feast

The first gore film. Barely competent, historically unavoidable.

Frankenhooker

A man rebuilds his dead girlfriend from the parts of exploded sex workers. Exactly that stupid, and great.

Dead & Buried

Stan Winston effects and a good twist. Underseen.

The Driller Killer

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

Two Thousand Maniacs!

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

Frontier(s)

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

Maniac

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

The Exterminator

A flamethrower and a meat grinder. Death Wish with the restraint removed.

Basket Case

$35,000, shot on 42nd Street, and completely charming. The best kind of cheap.

Nekromantik

German, banned widely, and much sadder than its reputation suggests.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Sixty-seven minutes of industrial nightmare. Nothing else looks like it.

Bride of Re-Animator

Herbert West builds a woman from parts. The sequel goes bigger, wetter and more demented.

From Beyond

Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs do Lovecraft again. A machine that lets you see what should stay unseen.

Inside

The French extremity wave stripped to one room, one night, and a pair of scissors.

Ichi the Killer

Miike hands out sick bags at the premiere and earns every one of them.